I don't - he often gives the ball away in dangerous positions and gets the opposition onto the front foot - you could pick this out 2-3 times in every game, so he doesn't provide safety and when he isn't giving the ball away, he just slows our attack down by clogging up the midfield, taking too many touches and often not doing much with his passingOriginally Posted by IBK
Last edited by Mac76; 15-05-2023 at 03:21 PM.
Sorry but I just don’t buy the Everton game excuse. If that was really case and that game made them essentially give up, quite frankly they’re cowards.
I wouldn't be calling Keown a coward personally. I mean, he's been there and done it. He also talks about squad depth, we all knew that was going to be a problem.
i'm not sure 'cowards' is the right word, but I do think Arteta could have tried to lower teh pressure by saying "whatever, fuck it, just go out there, play good football and show Brighton how it's done"
he clearly had them all fired up about winning the title which is all well and good, but once that's gone you've got to have a motivational plan B - but of course Arteta doesn't do a Plan B so ...
Yeah maybe not the right word but I just don’t understand why they’d throw the towel in. That’s literally all they’ve been fighting for this season. The likelihood of City slipping up was slim but at least be there to capitalise. Just sounds like loser talk to me.
Liverpool never had that attitude and they pushed City to the extreme. They missed out twice with 90+ points but they also created a monstrous team as a result of that never give up attitude which did win the league and everything else to go with it.
No I think Cowards is the exactly right description. As soon as they saw that Brighton were prepared to get physical…they decided they weren’t up for it
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65595331
DataData experts Nielsen's Gracenote suggest it was not a case of Arsenal 'bottling' the title, with their current total of 81 points exactly matching their projections.
Instead, it is Manchester City raising the bar even higher, with their calculations showing City have "outperformed expectations by seven points since mid-January".
I think a lot of these debates per say come down to us not having a strong enough squad. I am not suggesting that if we kept our starting XI fit all season we would have won the league, but right now the system and the performance level is reliant on pretty much our core starting XI being fit. As we have seen over the past few months and especially yesterday, our performance levels drop off a cliff when we have core players missing. MO touched on it earlier but our defensive record at home or more importantly recently has been actually really bad, we are conceeding 2 or 3 goals on average in a lot of games.
We have run out of steam and we are clearly not quite good enough when it comes to mounting a challenge on City to the final day.
This summer is going to be really crucial in terms of recruitment, we need to get it right and we need to purchasing players who are capable of slotting straight into the First XI without an obvious performance drop, this summer is not about finding gems, it's about finding quality players who are ready to contribute right now to a CL and PL challenging team, that's the standard we need to aspire to.
Obviously other factors come into play such as Arteta and the coaching staff and even the players within the club continuing to develop / improve, but we need to get the basics right first otherwise next season may not be anywhere near as enjoyable as this season.
Last edited by selassie; 15-05-2023 at 04:18 PM.
The data gathering method used to create a points projection is often just as technically sophisticated as tossing a coin 500 times and basing your prediction on where it’s likely to land based on where it’s landed the previous 500 times. Add some XG into the equation for good measure and you’re essentially doing little more than reading tea leaves.
Yet it couldn’t predict City winning the games that it did yet none of us batted a single eyelid about it
The two fixtures where I could have conceived of them dropping points they’ve yet to play but we’ve crumbled to dust before we even got to that point.
As far as I’m concerned the points dropped at West Ham, Southampton and Brighton were eminently winnable fixtures. More so when you drop 15 points after 29 games and drop a further 12 in the following seven I’m literally amazed anyone can reach any conclusion but bottling it
Ultimately titles are usually won, one of two ways. The first is to go on a run of winning games from February-March to the end of the season. The second is to build up such a substantial lead that it doesn’t matter if you have the odd unscheduled bowel movement.
Either way if anyone can tell me who last won the league despite going four games without a win I’d be grateful because I sure as hell don’t recall it happening in my living memory
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