I had a feeling that if we won all our remaining games we would’ve won the title tbh but we have struggled against almost everyone lately
If we’d beaten Everton and beat pool at Anfield, there’d be a 6 points gap with 6 other games and all the pressure on pool.
Truly this is the season where we’ve just not wanted it enough as a club. It feels like the club made peace with the possibility of only coming second way back in December and has been on autopilot ever since
Having watched the highlights, I can't understand how anyone thinks that what MLS did is a pen.
He leans heavily over Harrison who is tugging him causing him to fall over and then Harrison collapses like a pack of cards, and this is a pen?
Harrison even gets up and starts running before the ref blows the whistle to call it a foul/ pen.
PGMOL somehow have once again found a way to have us drop points.
Gutting to say the least. Could we have done better and scored, yes. But there is nothing wrong with grinding a win with a 1-0 considering the state of our team this season.
that’s it - arguing against bad ref decision doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done better. I’ve seen so many bad arguments regarding this season. reviewing thr season it is pretty obvious what cost us:
1. injuries
2. refs
you can argue - rightly so - that we’ve looked robotic at times, not creating enough. I would argue that’s mostly down to us unable to field a fit front 5 for the whole season.
we should and must be able to change based on our injury-record this season - whatever that means, I am no expert
regarding refs - we can live with it and do what many here suggest - making able that bad decisions doesn’t influence you a lot. that’s hard especially if we talk about red cards. I would rather have action from the club but I don’t know how it would work as we have seen time and time again that certain northern teams TEND to profit from this ans they have no incentive to kill a PGMOL. so getting 14 other clubs to agree is impossible and we basically need to be a level better than anyone else (comparable to the 100 points city team) to have a real shot
The PGMOL shits want to screw us over once again and have with the mildest reasons possible that other teams get away with.
Arteta and Co thought that a reduced team would survive another season without injuries. Totally delusional when you have a manager constantly claiming how robust a player is before breaking him.
There is nothing wrong with our football... as long as Arteta stops overtraining the players. The initial stint in Dubai showed what a rested and trusted team could do. But when you have a control freak, he'll lose sight of letting the players express themselves.
For some reason, the club wanted to save money and not spend huge amounts this season. This has definitely bitten us in the arse.
This season is on Arteta. Liverpool have been there for the taking. To drop 4 points to Everton is unforgivable. Never mind all the other wasted points. West Ham. Fulham.
Anyway...full internal review needed in the summer. Training methods, formation and tactics and most importantly transfer practices. If physio's need to be replaced or outdated coaches need to go then it needs to happen but most importantly they need to completely change the transfer policy and let Berta take complete control. We can't keep pissing away hundreds of millions and be left with shit football and predictable finishes. I'd like to see a difference under Berta as opposed to whatever was happening under Arteta. I'm not seeing that with Zubimendi and Gyokores or Williams though they're just the same rehash of the last few seasons. What might turn me into a proper believer is if we were bringing in a proper LB or an 8 or if all of a sudden there was a plan for a CAM to compete and push Odegaard.
As for the whole bitching and moaning about referee decisions...I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't be giving them the opportunity to influence the game. If we got our shit together were playing good football and scoring freely this shit wouldn't matter. Yesterday we had 14 efforts (1 clear cut chance created btw) and drew against a team that has been battling relegation. That's the real issue not some soft penalty. We've had other examples this season where we've had an excuse lined up but rather than getting a reaction or turning around a performance we've instead gone the excuse route
It’s the top 4 target mindset vs the title winning mindset
When you’ll settle for CL qualification, you can fall into this rut of making excuses and blaming everyone else
But when the goal is the title, you never win that with a mindset that looks to avoid owning your results
You make far more mistakes when you’re comfortable palming them off as not your fault vs the number you make when you take ownership and accountability for every match. The club has come out of this season talking about refs (many of our red cards/pens were self inflicted even if some were soft), injuries (many were self inflicted, not freak impact injuries caused by opposition fouls), the ball used in the league cup (lol), fatigue (the club hasn’t managed player loads well) yada yada
Meanwhile the football has been turgid and were a worse team in the league this year than we were for the last 2. As long as the club wants to hide behind those excuses, we won’t make the next step to win a league title.
To win that you need a winner’s mentality.
If we’d cut out just a couple of those silly last ditch professional fouls (example can be Saliba at Bournemouth and pick any MLS one you want) we’d be at least 5 points better off.
If we’d managed the loads of Saka and Havertz better, we’d have probably had at least one of them available this year - especially having Saka around would’ve won us another 4-5 points minimum
That alone would’ve had us basically top or there abouts right now.
Instead we’re spinning in circles deciding which scapegoat to blame after each new disappointing game
In an ideal world I’d agree.Blow them out of the water inside 20 mins.As per the Invincibles.Game over & no chance for the PGMOL to f** k us over.How I wish.Except this is 2025 & not 2004.A great shame.
I mean the league is done so it doesn't matter but this right here is what has been happening the last 4 months. Waiting for a slip from Liverpool and never capitalizing on it. I remember December the gap was something like 7 with a game in hand then one week we got it down to 4 but by the end of the month it was back to 7-9. Same then happened in January and February whenever we got a step closer we immediately went two steps back and then it got embarrassing. Definitely feel like we lost this league (again) more than Liverpool won it. But the footballs been by and large shit and the results mirror that.
Whatever we say about ref decisions going against us, I don't think we've deserved to win PL. Are Liverpool better than us? Not really.
At season's end there needs to be a honest review and Berta's voice will hopefully be heard. If they wanted to employ a 'yes' man, I don't believe they would have plumped for him.
As is no we don't deserve to win it but I don't think anyone can convince me otherwise that had we signed up a striker last summer that we probably would be winning the league this season. Sure we'd still have to endure Arteta ball but ONE guy brought in last summer would have alleviated so much to the forward line. Probably wouldn't have had as many injuries.
No mate it’s a reality.Our treatment by PGMOL.Dont think there’s any connection whatsoever between us pointing out PGMOL failings & other clubs hatred of us.That has been there since the year dot.
I know we've gotten a lot of shit decisions from refs.
But I think it's more about them being incompetent than hating Arsenal. Maybe Arsenal gets on the side of shit decisions more, but every team gets shit decisions.
If Liverpool drew Everton, they could make a point about the red card Everton didn't get.
Now, I don't use ref decisions to defend Arteta because every season will have shit ref decisions.
If we point our microscope at red decisions, we'll have ready made excuses every season.
And I still maintain (to some people's anger), if refs are what's stopping us from winning the premier league, why didn't we win Europa league?
Every team that beat us in the Europa league (under Arteta) were smaller clubs than us.
Why didn't we beat Bayern when they were in poor form?
All I'm saying is that even a perfect ref performance won't solve many of the issues we see on pitch.
Our first shot on target was in the 34th minute. They scored in the 49th minute. So, we played 46 minutes after that and had only 2 shots on target.
What the refs do is out of our control. We need to bother ourselves with what we can control.
There are currently 22 Refs on the PGMOL panel.Of that panel there are a Dozen who get the most matches.Only two fall into the 2nd half for matches officiated.That will change.Interestingly the “ Dirty Dozen” as I shall refer to them ,are the Refs we’ve had the most serious & contentious decisions either as match ref or VAR.The dirty Dozen are as follows in no particular order: AnthonyTaylor
Michael Oliver
Chris Kavanagh
Robert Jones
Simon Hooper
Craig Pawson
Darren England
John Brooks
Andy Marley
Jarrred Gillett
David Coote
Stuart Atwell
All of these refs at some point in the last two seasons have been involved in Arsenal dropping points.More than once in quite a few occasions.
Coincidence? Not a chance in Hell.You can ignore these facts.As some are hell bent on doing so.But I can’t guarantee you that the chances of Arsenal on the wrong end of decisions are extremely high whenever any of the said above are officiating us .Either on the pitch or worse,VAR.
I had a feeling that if we won all our remaining games we would’ve won the title tbh but we have struggled against almost everyone lately
If we’d beaten Everton and beat pool at Anfield, there’d be a 6 points gap with 6 other games and all the pressure on pool.
Truly this is the season where we’ve just not wanted it enough as a club. It feels like the club made peace with the possibility of only coming second way back in December and has been on autopilot ever since
I concur that Liverpool are Not a better team than us, the difference is the managers
Having watched the highlights, I can't understand how anyone thinks that what MLS did is a pen.
He leans heavily over Harrison who is tugging him causing him to fall over and then Harrison collapses like a pack of cards, and this is a pen?
Harrison even gets up and starts running before the ref blows the whistle to call it a foul/ pen.
PGMOL somehow have once again found a way to have us drop points.
Gutting to say the least. Could we have done better and scored, yes. But there is nothing wrong with grinding a win with a 1-0 considering the state of our team this season.
that’s it - arguing against bad ref decision doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done better. I’ve seen so many bad arguments regarding this season. reviewing thr season it is pretty obvious what cost us:
1. injuries
2. refs
you can argue - rightly so - that we’ve looked robotic at times, not creating enough. I would argue that’s mostly down to us unable to field a fit front 5 for the whole season.
we should and must be able to change based on our injury-record this season - whatever that means, I am no expert
regarding refs - we can live with it and do what many here suggest - making able that bad decisions doesn’t influence you a lot. that’s hard especially if we talk about red cards. I would rather have action from the club but I don’t know how it would work as we have seen time and time again that certain northern teams TEND to profit from this ans they have no incentive to kill a PGMOL. so getting 14 other clubs to agree is impossible and we basically need to be a level better than anyone else (comparable to the 100 points city team) to have a real shot
reviewing thr season it is pretty obvious what cost us:
1. injuries
2. refs
I would counter with:
1. Shit football.
2: Transfer decisions.
It is all 4 reasons Marko.
The PGMOL shits want to screw us over once again and have with the mildest reasons possible that other teams get away with.
Arteta and Co thought that a reduced team would survive another season without injuries. Totally delusional when you have a manager constantly claiming how robust a player is before breaking him.
There is nothing wrong with our football... as long as Arteta stops overtraining the players. The initial stint in Dubai showed what a rested and trusted team could do. But when you have a control freak, he'll lose sight of letting the players express themselves.
For some reason, the club wanted to save money and not spend huge amounts this season. This has definitely bitten us in the arse.
Couldn't it be all 4?
It depends. A better squad can mitigate injuries and better football can mitigate poor refereeing decisions.
Potato, po- tah- to
I mean I suppose it's easier to blame bad luck and referees than question decisions by Arsenal.
For some....
I think Harrison thought the ref gave a foul in attack lol.
Villa up to 6th. Just behind city and Chelsea. In the 1/4 finals of the CL.
Interesting
It’s a disgrace we are finishing 2nd to this Liverpool team. Thats on Arteta. No excuses.
This season is on Arteta. Liverpool have been there for the taking. To drop 4 points to Everton is unforgivable. Never mind all the other wasted points. West Ham. Fulham.
I’ll say it again. Arteta ain’t him.
No excuses for this season.
Ramsdale the relegator
He took it like a man
His critics were right all along
Nonsense. Put Alisson in the Saints' team and he'd have saved them?!
Arteta paid 30m for him to replace martinez. It's unbelievable that he's still being trusted to do another transfer window again.
Anyway...full internal review needed in the summer. Training methods, formation and tactics and most importantly transfer practices. If physio's need to be replaced or outdated coaches need to go then it needs to happen but most importantly they need to completely change the transfer policy and let Berta take complete control. We can't keep pissing away hundreds of millions and be left with shit football and predictable finishes. I'd like to see a difference under Berta as opposed to whatever was happening under Arteta. I'm not seeing that with Zubimendi and Gyokores or Williams though they're just the same rehash of the last few seasons. What might turn me into a proper believer is if we were bringing in a proper LB or an 8 or if all of a sudden there was a plan for a CAM to compete and push Odegaard.
As for the whole bitching and moaning about referee decisions...I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't be giving them the opportunity to influence the game. If we got our shit together were playing good football and scoring freely this shit wouldn't matter. Yesterday we had 14 efforts (1 clear cut chance created btw) and drew against a team that has been battling relegation. That's the real issue not some soft penalty. We've had other examples this season where we've had an excuse lined up but rather than getting a reaction or turning around a performance we've instead gone the excuse route
It’s the top 4 target mindset vs the title winning mindset
When you’ll settle for CL qualification, you can fall into this rut of making excuses and blaming everyone else
But when the goal is the title, you never win that with a mindset that looks to avoid owning your results
You make far more mistakes when you’re comfortable palming them off as not your fault vs the number you make when you take ownership and accountability for every match. The club has come out of this season talking about refs (many of our red cards/pens were self inflicted even if some were soft), injuries (many were self inflicted, not freak impact injuries caused by opposition fouls), the ball used in the league cup (lol), fatigue (the club hasn’t managed player loads well) yada yada
Meanwhile the football has been turgid and were a worse team in the league this year than we were for the last 2. As long as the club wants to hide behind those excuses, we won’t make the next step to win a league title.
To win that you need a winner’s mentality.
If we’d cut out just a couple of those silly last ditch professional fouls (example can be Saliba at Bournemouth and pick any MLS one you want) we’d be at least 5 points better off.
If we’d managed the loads of Saka and Havertz better, we’d have probably had at least one of them available this year - especially having Saka around would’ve won us another 4-5 points minimum
That alone would’ve had us basically top or there abouts right now.
Instead we’re spinning in circles deciding which scapegoat to blame after each new disappointing game
In an ideal world I’d agree.Blow them out of the water inside 20 mins.As per the Invincibles.Game over & no chance for the PGMOL to f** k us over.How I wish.Except this is 2025 & not 2004.A great shame.
I mean the league is done so it doesn't matter but this right here is what has been happening the last 4 months. Waiting for a slip from Liverpool and never capitalizing on it. I remember December the gap was something like 7 with a game in hand then one week we got it down to 4 but by the end of the month it was back to 7-9. Same then happened in January and February whenever we got a step closer we immediately went two steps back and then it got embarrassing. Definitely feel like we lost this league (again) more than Liverpool won it. But the footballs been by and large shit and the results mirror that.
Whatever we say about ref decisions going against us, I don't think we've deserved to win PL. Are Liverpool better than us? Not really.
At season's end there needs to be a honest review and Berta's voice will hopefully be heard. If they wanted to employ a 'yes' man, I don't believe they would have plumped for him.
‘Are Liverpool better than us? Not really. ‘
If only there were some metrics we could look at to answer that question.
Oh wait, there are.
Points totals, goals scored, conceded, GD,goals from open play, xG difference.
Arsenal are only better at one of those , goals conceded.
I said that, in my opinion, Liverpool are not a better team than us. They have had a better season, for sure.
Following soccer ball, it’s all about opinions, tribal or otherwise. Don’t bash your head against a proverbial brick wall about it.
As is no we don't deserve to win it but I don't think anyone can convince me otherwise that had we signed up a striker last summer that we probably would be winning the league this season. Sure we'd still have to endure Arteta ball but ONE guy brought in last summer would have alleviated so much to the forward line. Probably wouldn't have had as many injuries.
No parallel universe!
Is irritating watching Fulham blitzing Pool today. Infuriating to think that we didn't even push them.
I agree we should have bought those extra 2-3 players to challenge and cover for injuries
We knew at the begining of the season we needed a forward cover for Saka and a left winger.
Add to that pgmol being dickheads. Ffs this season needs to end
No injuries last game so it’s back to blaming PGMOL because we couldn’t put 2 goals past 15th place Everton.
Surprised that mong raptora hasn't berated you with multiple paragraphs about why the refs screwed Arsenal out of a title.
The PGMOL victimhood and constant bleating is beyond embarrassing.
No wonder most football people I come across cannot stand us Gooners, gives us a bad name.
No mate it’s a reality.Our treatment by PGMOL.Dont think there’s any connection whatsoever between us pointing out PGMOL failings & other clubs hatred of us.That has been there since the year dot.
So you think that we have not been hard done by ?
I know we've gotten a lot of shit decisions from refs.
But I think it's more about them being incompetent than hating Arsenal. Maybe Arsenal gets on the side of shit decisions more, but every team gets shit decisions.
If Liverpool drew Everton, they could make a point about the red card Everton didn't get.
Now, I don't use ref decisions to defend Arteta because every season will have shit ref decisions.
If we point our microscope at red decisions, we'll have ready made excuses every season.
And I still maintain (to some people's anger), if refs are what's stopping us from winning the premier league, why didn't we win Europa league?
Every team that beat us in the Europa league (under Arteta) were smaller clubs than us.
Why didn't we beat Bayern when they were in poor form?
All I'm saying is that even a perfect ref performance won't solve many of the issues we see on pitch.
Our first shot on target was in the 34th minute. They scored in the 49th minute. So, we played 46 minutes after that and had only 2 shots on target.
What the refs do is out of our control. We need to bother ourselves with what we can control.
Oops.Make that a bakers Dozen.Omitted our friend “ Paul Tierney “.
There are currently 22 Refs on the PGMOL panel.Of that panel there are a Dozen who get the most matches.Only two fall into the 2nd half for matches officiated.That will change.Interestingly the “ Dirty Dozen” as I shall refer to them ,are the Refs we’ve had the most serious & contentious decisions either as match ref or VAR.The dirty Dozen are as follows in no particular order: AnthonyTaylor
Michael Oliver
Chris Kavanagh
Robert Jones
Simon Hooper
Craig Pawson
Darren England
John Brooks
Andy Marley
Jarrred Gillett
David Coote
Stuart Atwell
All of these refs at some point in the last two seasons have been involved in Arsenal dropping points.More than once in quite a few occasions.
Coincidence? Not a chance in Hell.You can ignore these facts.As some are hell bent on doing so.But I can’t guarantee you that the chances of Arsenal on the wrong end of decisions are extremely high whenever any of the said above are officiating us .Either on the pitch or worse,VAR.
I'd rather watch singapore 7s and F1 than the cowardly football we are getting served.
By all means fuck off and do that