Ahhhhggghhhhhhhh… WHY CHELSEA, WHY?
I wanted them to win. Smash West Brom. Keep hope OUT of this weekend. Make the Liverpool game an exercise in nothing.
Tuchel losing his first league game 5-2 has opened this afternoon up. It went from largely uninteresting, to… hmmmm… this could be sexy?
For Arsenal AND Liverpool.
If we win today, we go to within 6 points of top 4. SIX POINTS OFF TOP 4 WITH 8 GAMES TO GO.
That would be tantalising. There are still a lot of teams in the mixer. Too many to topple in my opinion, but still, the Premier League season, as it stands, is not over by a longshot. Our last few games are not the worst… we also play Chelsea, who we can beat.
My worry, as usual, is we’re world-class at punching ourselves in the face. Think about the self-inflicted wounds we’ve inflicted this season. We’ve been smacking ourselves about all year, no one is better at fucking things up than us.
The Liverpool game today, at home, is not looking great on many levels.
The Xhaka haters are about to see what happens when he’s not in the side.
David Luiz, who I’ve been desperate to see out of the starting 11 isn’t going to be included because of injury.
Saka AND ESR have very late fitness tests.
We’re not exactly cooking on first-team gas here…
What do we have going for us?
Well, we’re at home. Jurgen Klopp had a lot more players away last week than us. He’s had one training session to prepare.
I’m hoping that we might have carried through a bit of belief from the backend of the West Ham game. We are playing, mostly, like a top 4 team of late. We have the players to do damage today, there’s confidence that we can come back from going down in big games, and at some point… something has to click for us.
We’re waiting for a bang-bang moment.
Liverpool is a great team, they’ll be top 2 next season… but at the moment, there is a weakness in their system.
What am I looking for from today? A fucking performance.
We gave Manchester City too much respect. We let them score early, then we spent the game trying to keep it respectable.
That can’t happen today. We cannot let Liverpool control proceedings from the off. We have to stop conceding after 6 minutes in the big ones. There needs to be a show of force out there.
Which Arsenal will show up?
As Matt from podcast always says, you’ll know after 5 minutes.
Will it be the team that bossed the Spurs game? Or will it be the team that showed up thinking about what they were having for dinner at West Ham.
These are moments Arteta needs to own. He has to get his team firing. At a minimum, we need to come away from this game thinking there’s been progress
We’ve beaten Liverpool with Arteta. This squad can do anything on its day. Let’s see if we can do it under the pressure of a ‘maybe’ run for top 4.
HUGE GAME. See you on the other side. x
Everyone is Auba shit , Pepe looks shot .And maybe Martinelli will come in and save the day. Relax none can ,the way Arteta sets these world class individuals, outstanding in their speciality, deficient in other things , set to fail. Auba at left who can’t defend or track back, whereas Pepe is more deadly in that place. Auba has the knack to arrive and score goals in the box. Coming back to Pepe not syncing with Tierney , because a coach didn’t play them consistently together nor ironned out these things. Martinelli has been getting occasionally 10 minutes, not… Read more »
At this point, if he doesn’t start Martinelli in the next few games, Arteta needs to fuck off. Would rather lose Arteta than Gabi.
Look at Arteta’s players he has brought in, look at who’s still here. In over a year this is his set up, his training and coaching. Same as the Man City game he lost it before it started, he’s afraid of loosing and is just an average Joe rookie . I watched Leipzig play Bayern yesterday. What a contrast, quick one touch football , aggressive forward play , exciting stuff. Naglesman changed the set up to try and win and all he lacks is a stronger cf. Watching our slow ponderous play was such a sad contrast, we are way… Read more »
S Asoa
“Arteta is learning. He needs to be at a Championship level Club”
I wonder how he would fare in the Championship with overall lesser players to work with.
An extract from the brilliant Tim of 7 am kickoff “I like all the Arsenal players on the pitch today. I don’t have an agenda against anyone. Many of those players have shown some streaks of brilliance and I was actually eager to see Partey and Ceballos in midfield. But at the end of the day, what I saw were a number of guys who lack the touch and vision – along with the a system which was asking them to do things that they cannot do – getting beat by a system and set of players who were doing… Read more »
Nothing wrong with a defensive set up as we beat Liverpool twice with a back 5 and counter attacking approach. The difference then was that they were controlled displays e.g the back 5 reduced the threat from their wide players and then we counter attacked with pace down the flanks. Yesterday we were exposed wide and then when the ball was in our box we simply hoofed it down the middle to the smallest CF in the Prem, so it simply came straight back again. Plus of course we now have Leno in goal not Martinez. Liverpool were just on… Read more »
Now that it’s obvious we need a partner for Partey, I’ll love to go against the grain and say fuck Bisouma, I want Boubacar Soumare instead.
Maybe we just need a manager that has experience in getting results out of mid table squads. Arteta is just expecting our lot to be Man City level and then getting confused when they fail.
Wiglaf.
If he doesn’t learn to rotate and keep everybody fresh then he doesn’t belong in a top 4 team. Especially for a coach that love the Vets that’ll break down ever so often, he needs to learn to keep everybody fresh.
Kroenkphobe Thanks for the insight. Athens was a crazy place also to watch football back in the 80s. Seats were usually ripped out to be used as aerial weapons even on their own supporters. Once saw a Greek trying to navigate his way through a wild melee when his crutches were ripped off him by his own supporters who then went forward swinging at anything close while the guy was picked up and carried behind. S E Asia lawlessness probably rivals the South American levels bar perhaps the drug cartels. That said the collective S E Asia mafia gangs can… Read more »
The only plus point is games like yesterday highlight players we need to move.on like Laca, ceballos and Holding and care I say it Leno.
“Naglesman changed the set up to try and win and all he lacks is a stronger cf.” That’s exactly what went wrong at the team level… it wasn’t set up to play at all, and as much as players should take responsibility the manager is accountable. Is it too hard to accept? After all, when the ‘players’ won the FA Cup, who got a promotion?? So it wasn’t too early and impatient for the generational one to claim the credit of a trophy , yet its too early to sack him when , with defo poorer squad, Emery did better… Read more »
No keeper comes out for an outswinging cross like Trent’s. I dont think we can play the blame game with the first goal because the cross was sublime. But if you want to blame someone, it should be Holding. Just before the cross comes in, Holding moves forward in free space where no-one is instead of marking the only target in the box for the cross ( Jota) He did a similar movement against City for Sterling’s header. He is a good rotation option, not good as a starter. His horrible on the ball skills actually made me miss Luiz.… Read more »
I dont know why people still have a hard on for Emi. He is badmouthing the club every chance he gets. Recently at ESPN.
Yes he is a good keeper, but he talks like be should have become a starter 5 years ago.
His only loan spell where he showed he could have a future at Arsenal was his latest one at Reading. He should be grateful Arsenal kept him for so long. Instead he is talking like a disgraceful ex.
Both Pepe and Auba can’t keep and run with the ball. In a way we were doomed before the ball was kicked. I’d rather put Pepe on the left and Nelson or reluctantly Willian on the right.
Never commented on player hairdo… but can’t help but feel Auba attends more precisely to his hair than making simplier 5, 10 yard passes yesterday. Hospital balls, stray flicks nothing came thru…
What a shocker, really negative tactics. I can understand that got us a result last year against them, but they have been loosing games lately when other teams got at them. It just feels like Arteta had not done his homework and just decided I’ll do what i did last year. Some poor player performances also did not help, but the culprits have been called out in earlier posts. There have been some good posts on this article and we have definitely made some poor decisions on personnel over the last few years, some will make a good argument that… Read more »
Will anyone be calling MA into the office on Monday to explain what went wrong,not saying he should go but he should be told that, that performance was just not good enough PULL your finger out
Who are these ones calling for the introduction of the young players? Is it that you just started watching arsenal under arteta or you just haven’t discovered that arteta isn’t just a tactical genius but a mere coach who just relies on the big players? Covid 19 lockdown cum injuries had to help him suss out our best first 11 which arteta was forced to play for few games and we won but as soon as both lockdown and injuries eased out, arteta went back to destroy the chemistry and he’s been doing this excellently well since then. Arteta is… Read more »