Chelsea’s run came crashing to an end at Wembley as a rampant Spurs picked them apart and showed that if you stop Jorginho, you stop all the good things Sarri has to offer.
That puts today’s game in an exciting light. Win, and we’ll close the gap on 4th to one point. Lose, and we’ll bring Bournemouth to within a point of our Europa League 5th place. A lot rides on this result, the most important item being confidence heading into a really tough period.
We’ve had one win in five, which isn’t ideal. Our last league win was October 22nd. This becomes a minor blip in the season, or it becomes a very big problem if the game goes badly today.
I’ll be looking for a few things today, knowing Emery has likely been holed up in a video room for 2 weeks working out a plan of action for phase four of the season.
Balance:
He’s going to have to work out how he can find more balance in the team. Our midfield base of Xhaka and Torriera isn’t offering enough protection for the back 4 and going forward, our Ozil experiment isn’t returning a bundle of assists. The coach is going to have to make a decision. He doesn’t get enough from Ozil defensively to keep rolling with what he’s doing.
Does he switch things up and try Mikhi in a more modern #10 role? Arguably his best season in a Dortmund shirt came under Thomas Tuchel who played him centrally or on the left. He’s naturally a #10 by trade. I remember being told years ago that the thing Arsenal like most about his game was how industrious he was. A relentless attacking talent that could open up matches like a chess player. Is he as good as Mesut Ozil at threading passes? No. But could he give us more balance in midfield if he could do 100% more than Mesut defending, and 70% of what he can moving forward? Is that a sacrifice that could help us find more rhythm moving forward?
We’re running extremely low on options…
Starting 11:
We’ve been appalling in nearly every opening 45 this season. That has to stop. We aren’t going to be able to chase game forever. We need to play more cautiously in the opening 20 minutes, or we need to find our game quicker. Bournemouth are likely going to explode at us this morning, if we haven’t picked the right starting 11, we’re going to pay a painful price. I don’t know the answer to finding focus early on, but we all know it’s an issue, hopefully, the coach has a plan.
Strikers:
Auba and Lacazette both have exceptional individual talents, but playing one of them out of position isn’t really working. Do we lean in hard at working out a two-striker system? Or do we search for a better way to achieve width? We have a bit of a nightmare with the two of them. One can’t hold up the play and is best as a fox in box or over the top. The other is great at holding up the ball and bringing people into the game, he’s just a bit lightweight and easily anonymised against big teams. If the club is going to be ruthless this summer, you’d imagine one of the two will be on their way. We need to find a balance of skill sets, and unfortunately, we need to lean into someone who is a Giroud+++.
Plenty of excitement to look forward to this morning, let’s hope this is the start of a beautiful run that sees us take phase 4 by storm!
x
I agree that the drum beats are annoying.’
They really must be piping it through the P.A system.
Five more minutes of this shit and we will end up drawing
Ramsey sitting so far forward hoping to get on the end of something to impress the Bayern scouts.
he was also the main penalty taker for Dortmund. So scratch a little deeper and stats just fade away
Pretty sure that’s not true I’m pretty sure that was Reus and Nuri Sahin was known to take a pen over the years too.
Are these Auba critics for real?
He’s the joint top scorer in the PL as it stands. And he’s done it playing largely out of position.
Why didn’t Ramsey square that ball?
What a fuck up.
Mustafi is useless.
Mustafi is so shiiiite
Ffs mustafi
Same fuckin old
We have some real dumbos on our team. If they score from this Mustafi should be slapped
Mustafi is shit
Mustafi!!!
Mustafi is the worst CB I’ve seen at Arsenal
Worse than Cygan, Senderos etc.
Mustafi being Mustafi. Jesus Christ.
Ramsey is another waste of space
Great win away from home!
Another 6 inches and it would have been a penalty
Mustafi is so freaking useless.
Someone needs to smash Mustafi’s face against a brickwall, could that stupid c**t put us into more unnecessarily dangerous positions every game if tried?
That’s 3 points we desperately needed.
So many glaring holes in this squad though.
The sooner players like Mustafi, Xhaka, Ozil, Mhiki and Ramsey are off the sooner we can actually progress and improve as a club
Isn’t great having an ineffectual forward that scored 18 in 26 games score the winning goal today.
Elneny padded Emery and followed him down the tunnel…
El: boss, let’s celebrate the win..
Em: yeh; good moment today. Good ideas?
El: let renew my contract and I buy u dinner?
Is Ozil injured or has Emery realized he’s not fit for away games?
This time last year we were out of championship race against a poorer City side now we are trailing 7 points but in reach.
A great 3 points though with a very indifferent performance.
Bournemouth are a very good side.
Goodness knows what Emery can do to try and prepare for Spurs.
Guendouzi next to Torreira next week?
That’s not good. Anyone know if Maitland Niles is match fit?
Forgot about Elneny
3 points is 3 points is 3 points.
A win on the road. Take it all day long.
Get rid of Mustafi and Mhki at the earliest opportunity and replace.
Weigl on loan and Pepe and a CB in January please
HUGE result for us there.
Doesnt look great ahead of our next two but will take that W
Mustafi is a train wreck waiting to happen.
Same old issues that’ll be a problem for United/Spurs… but we keep grinding those three points.
Ramsey to be fair to him did exactly what you would a substitute to do in that situation.
I really hope Emery just dropped Ozil today, telling that a player leaving the club and a 19 year old with no EPL experience were preferred as substitutes even with Mkhitaryan who was only really effectual from the beginning of the second half to about 80 minutes.
Now to murder Spurs,twice !!!!!
Stressful game, happy we won it in the end.
Bring on the Lillywhites now
#17 and counting
Pedro
Not worried about United at all.
Spurs is a big worry.
I think we just have to face it, this team needs another 2 years of spending and heavy stripping of the side.
Fortunately I had a defibrillator to hand so you can all breath a sigh of relief I’m still here! Fuck me. So priorities over the next 2 transfer windows and I appreciate some things can’t be done in Jan. New LB and sell Kolas (we should be able to get £10 million ish for him), new CB to replace Mustafi (should be able to get £20 million ish for him), new CM to replace Xhaka (should be able to get £20 – £25 million for him) and then a winger. Now if we can bring in say £60 million including… Read more »
CA, I just worry about Mourinho. His side is in decline, but he always does it against us.
Not a great showing on any front really — with lots of fairly poor individual performances —- but in the end we worked hard, had a bit more quality than Bournemouth and got the three points.
Good on Aubameyang to get that sliding finish and goal.
Many will say that Emery continues to ride his luck — and we were a little lucky in this match — but hard work played a big part in this result as well, IMO.
Cue Pedro’s post telling us all how we shouldn’t have won this game. Haters gonna hate.
Honestly Auba is just a le tap in merchant la not even that fast when chasing a perfectly timed through balls.
Ramsey being Ramsey just do a few Hollywood flicks then lost the ball with shit eating grin.
Xhaka instantly went to shit the second Guendozi comes on with 2 successive misplaced passes that would’ve cost us.
Mustafi is Mustafi that one is a lost cause.
Leno and Sokratis had to make some proper goalkeeping/defensive works to clean up the mess of the passengers.
You suspect that in the Spurs game we’ll give a good showing of ourselves.
The United game though, as average as they are I’m even less confident about that one.
The players have looked quite up for it versus the big boys so far, hope we will see the same energy and determination than against Liverpool in the coming weeks
Pedro
Agreed.
But they don’t really have anything that worries me. I was far more worried today given Bournemouth’s intensity and directness.
Spurs are like that only more intense and with better players. Unless we drop a Liverpool performance a draw would be a good result. That is going to be a tough game.
Watching this season and I’m so f*****g angry we waited this long to change thing. Both in terms of our squad composition and financial situation we’ve made the change that was inevitably needed much, much harder.
Can’t believe all the negativity towards our own players …after a poor first 20 minutes I thought we looked solid (reasonably) and looked dangerous going forward.
I said before the start that Kolasinac has a decent final ball and whatever anyone says ,I thought Mhkitaryan had a very influential game and obviously the manager was of the same opinion as he kept him on ……good result and a good performance against a decent side.
Very impressive interview from Howe. Class act.
Barely deserved but would take that all day
Difficult place to snatch max points
And apart from that assist Kolasinac was pretty horrendous tbh with his positioning. Was so high up that Holding need to come up to fill his role and where was he to back Holding up when Bournemouth scored?
Beat the Spud’s at home and a draw away at Utd and I’ll have all the Christmas presents I want.
I don’t think Bournemouth are up to that much. We were pretty wasteful in front of goal and creatively, they had huge gaps between there midfield and defense for most of the game and we beat them without playing well.
The positives today were
-a nice 3 points, ending our barren run.
-The new formation got the job done and might be worth keeping
The negatives were
– a pretty average overall performance
– poor attacking play from most of the team. Auba was wasteful, iwobi lacked intensity and end product and mikki was dismal
I totally disagree with the subs. We are leading by one goal in the 75 mins, most of the managers will try to defend the lead. Instead, he took out our best DM. Miki was so bad the whole game. He took out Iwobi. What is the point of brought in Eddie. We need another defender to see out the game.
If they score at the end of the game, it would be the fault of the coach.
On the other hand, I have to give him credit for the lineup. We’ll need that to play the Spurs and MU.
I think it is important as well to have a good December because that might go some way to determining what the club invests.
If they feel 4th is seriously on the cards but that Emery needs better players, which he does, they might be more willing if we’ve beaten Spurs and United.
Leno and Torreira are going to have to have absolute top games.
Thank goodness Ramsey is on his way out.
As soon as he entered the fray, our shape and discipline went AWOL. He has become a massive liability in Emery’s system.
Yep, GX made his customary mistakes towards the end, as did Mustafi. However we held out, although I was crossing my fingers and touching lots of wood with that last minute free kick.
Predicted 2-1 or 3-2.
A wins a win.
‘I totally disagree with the subs. We are leading by one goal in the 75 mins, most of the managers will try to defend the lead. Instead, he took out our best DM. Miki was so bad the whole game. He took out Iwobi. What is the point of brought in Eddie. We need another defender to see out the game. If they score at the end of the game, it would be the fault of the coach.’ Disagree. Torreira was tired, I think that was the reason. He had been our most active player and because Xhaka is a… Read more »
I hope Pich plays that young center back against us he’s Mustafi mark 2
Pedro
We outllayed Spurs last year at the lush green Emirates. Beat them 2-0. Our best performance of the season. Should be able to get something from that game
Not convinced by Emery at all. If he is our manager in two years, then we are going nowhere.
Great 3 points despite the performance. But if we don’t get our act together in the 1st half against the Spuds we will definately get thrashed before half time comes. We will need to have a Liverpool kind of performance against Spurs to get a result. But hey, its the Spuds……fcuk them. Lets start the game with the mindset that we can beat them. Hope Lacs plays in that, because we would need to be clinical against them as you know Kane and his hordes will score any chance they get against our defence. As for United, only issue is… Read more »
Samesong
Foyth or something, isn’t it?
Yeah he likes to give away penalties, 2 against Wolves and should have conceded 1 yesterday.
Just tell Lacazette/Aubameayng to run at him and push it past him.
Nelson
You do realise that Torreira played in both of Uruguay’s international matches? Maybe Emery was looking to keep him fit for next week.
Not convinced by Emery at all. If he is our manager in two years, then we are going nowhere.
So so negative like we losing game after game. Ask yourself will all the same players be here??
Torreira gives calmness and discipline, whereas Ramsey brings panic and a lack of structure.
Thanks Aaron, but goodbye and good luck.
I thought kolasinac was dangerous going forwards and the 3 CBS and 2 DMs freed him up a lot which was a solid move Auba also was more involved than usual which was great to see and he worked his ass off – but he was also pretty sloppy with his shooting outside of his typical poacher’s goal which he always does so well I can’t stress enough how bad that mikki performance was tho. He was the worst player on the pitch, probably by some margin. He was offensively bad, by which I mean the performance was so bad… Read more »
Yeah would be more worried about the Spurs game if it was away from home but we should be able to put in a performance at home against that lot. Plus you gotta factor in that while we have an away game in Mordor on Thursday in the Europa League we’ve already qualified and Spurs have a massive must win game against Inter Wednesday night.
Cesc Appeal
Torreira still struggling with Premier league playing speed. Not the first time he’s been tired after the 70th minute. Shame we don’t have the depth to leave him out for a game or two and bring him back in mid December. Better and mature players like Pires and Veron struggled.with adapting as well. No biggie. Don’t trust Elneny or Guendouzi defensively.
Guys slating Mustafi but I saw it the other way. The guy get into the penalty area and it’s 2 against 1 and most likely they could have scored. So Mustafi took a gamble to foul him outside the box and it paid off. What the hullabaloo?
To think we have about 500k a week worth of n10s and we aren’t even very good in this position fml
This
‘To think we have about 500k a week worth of n10s and we aren’t even very good in this position’
Agree.
Shocking.
We have taken 27pts from a possible 33 since losing to MC and Chelski.
“Not convinced by Emery at all”.
Unbelievable!
If we have an excellent December then I’d expect the club not to spend much in January
An excellent December would suggest to the higher ups that we don’t need the investment not vice versa. If investment is the goal, we’d probably need to be a few points outside top 4 to show that the investment would be worth it
G62
You know as well as I that some just say things on here to bait a reaction
Dream10
A big part of it is how much work he’s being asked to do.
He has to cover so much ground and he is so good at intercepting and getting us on the front foot. But because his partner has all the speed of a 60 year old it must be exhausting.
Then you factor in new league, internationals etc.
This team needs so much going forward.
This is another comment from another blog. “Doesn’t belong. Has had so much trouble gelling this season and whatever gains I thought he was making were lost in this one. Was more of a liability than anything else. Took seven shots, only one was on target, his touch was horrible. Had a couple of good runs in open space, but anyone can run in open space. Lost the ball nine times all on his own. That’s more than the rest of the front four combined. Troubling times for the Armenian. Have no idea how he was left on for the… Read more »
Agree with China1
Leno is a great bit of business.
First time in years we aren’t at a big disadvantage by having a sub-standard goalkeeper.
Torreira still struggling with Premier league playing speed. Not the first time he’s been tired after the 70th minute
First time he’s been subbed off in his last 7 premier league games. So no
Average performance and a great result.
Second best thing was Chelsea being cut off from the top 3. They’re the team that we can catch for 4th if we string results together. Won’t be a surprise if they go on a run of one win in five/six matches in the PL.
Excellent weekend for us
I see that most guys are unhappy with the performance. I thought we played very well. Our first half was a step in the right direction while in the second half B’mouth had close to no opportunities in the second half, while we managed to push them in their own box and dictate game as well as create some decent chances. Very happy with the way we saw the last 10-15 mins out. You could see the players only cared to pass the ball around and not make a mistake or get caught on the counter. We looked nervous passing… Read more »
I don’t get the whole poor performance comments.. We had a good second half and the first half was even. This was always going to be a tough game.
Hope all those trying to raise doubts on Leno are calm now. Emery was just according Cech the respect due to him and Cech was playing well.
You know what they say
“It’s better to be lucky than good ” and atm Emery sure is getting the run of the green .
Another offside decision given in our favour and a superb strike for the own goal.
Thank God VAR was not brought in this season or we could be 5/6 points worse off.
for years we were known as Lucky Arsenal …
Don’t know how they will fare against der Juden next week but based on certain individual performances it’s quite concerning tbh. But it’s derby day forms are usually thrown out of the window just want to see how Emery try tp win this.
It may be Ozil gets a chance to shine against totally shit opposition on Thursday, wonder whether being dropped completely today will put a rocket under him. But then people were saying the events of the summer would.
Wonder what those left at the club think about this whole situation?
Wenger rightfully gets shit for being in love with Ozil but it seems Gazidis had a big hand in this contract fuck up if the Ramsey situation was anything to go by.
Dream
Echo your sentiments on Emery. I know we have a lot of deadwoods in our squad but what worries me is I don’t see any pattern developing in the way we play. It’s very haphazard. Riding our luck so far .
Cesc Appeal
I don’t think Ozil will play on Thursday. He’ll probably start against Spurs..
The big problem is we have an unbalanced squad with a group of players who don’t fit any system.
For years we’ve all, or most of us, said that we’ve bought players with no regard for a system.
Now we’re seeing the effect, we have clusters of players who fit different systems but not an 11 that make any one system work.
Going to take time, money and clever acquisitions.
Nelson and Dream Cesc thought it was just me.
He constantly gave the ball away and was miles back on the goal
yes I agree he is being asked a lot in that position.
It’s alright pushing forward but you need to be able to get back?
Cesc appeal some would rather put it all on the new manager.
How anyone can say he can’t see the pattern being implemented is beyond me. Yet the players may not fit into it but what he wants to do is there for all to see
‘I don’t think Ozil will play on Thursday. He’ll probably start against Spurs’
Thanks for ruining my week before it even starts.
TR7
Agree with you. Results wise, he’s doing well. I’m happy with any manager than can avg two points per match. If he gets CL football, he deserves credit. Just hope the club see him as a contuinity guy. Someone who takes us above water.
RH I don’t get it. We know what Emery wants to run. But how does Xhaka, Ozil, Mustafi etc fit that system? What does he do instead? Adopt a system that he doesn’t like that equally won’t work because he doesn’t have a balanced 11 at all? It’s all well and good people shouting for him to find a system that works, but there isn’t one because we’ve assembled a team like a kid playing FIFA for years aside from last summer. In fact, does it not register with people that if you were to ask fans for our best… Read more »
“Not convinced by Emery at all. If he is our manager in two years, then we are going nowhere.”
You’re not very good at this trolling lark are you fella ?
Think Emery has improved us – mostly mentally. We don’t carry the same mental scar tissue in games, and that ability to shrug off poor periods of play enables us to take advantage and impose ourselves the moment the opposition cool down and try to rest. Under Wenger we would play like zombies even when the opposition were flagging and there for the taking.
We just seem more switched on in general and sense opportunity better.
The club needs an injection of money if they want to see Emery’s full potential.
TR7
“Haphazard”?
Better than being headless chickens.
Cesc appeal they were many on here harping on about Sarri having done better at Chelsea in shorter time.. Forgetting that Sarri actually has better players and has also been as lucky if not luckier than Emery. I mean his system is simply give the ball to Jorginho and pass pass pass. Yesterday’s result was no fluke I actually put money on Spurs to beat them cos they aren’t a very good team. Emery has changed the mentality here, yes we make mistakes but we keep plugging away, despite those short comings. I repeat I will only start getting on… Read more »
Paulinho
“We just seem more switched on in general and sense opportunity better.”
in general, I would agree with that..
Cesc Appeal I’ve said many times…this season was very much about Emery getting his system in place without too much expectation. Emery wants to see who can and who can’t adapt and step up. Then I guess he will try (emphasise try) to replace those that can’t perform at a higher level. So far you would have to say Mustafi, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Iwobi, Mykhitaryan, Ozil are not capable. Jury still out on pretty much everyone bar maybe Leno, Torreira and Guendouzi. I think this approach was a mistake. But I’ll wait and see where we are in May. A huge… Read more »
A few of us were trying to name our best team recently not including any invincibles and the 2 positions that were the most difficult to fill were keeper and a holding centre mid .
So yes ,by bringing in Torriera and Leno we are at last addressing our weaknesses.
Mustafi got 1.5 assists today, but is a shocking full back.
Goes to show how important FBs are in this system.
I would like to see us really go out and find the best LB out there next summer.
Aubameyang did his bit…………just!
Needs to show himself far more in the games.
Anyway he scored, so all is well.
Kolasinac, not Mustafi.
I wonder if the reliance on FBs is a flawed strategy.
Your FBs are never going to be as good in the final 3rd as AMs and we seem to be so open at the back.
Maybe it’s an acceptance that we just don’t have wide players that can stretch a game.