Match Reaction v Spuds (home)

[WGC Goon]

Partey played a solid game, more Gilberto like at the moment but will hopefully show a touch of Vieira (without the red cards) when probably fit.
Odegaard is going to be a bit special in my opinion, full of confidence with good technique.
ESR also, he just gets better and better.
The sending off did us no favours whatsoever, we lost focus thinking the game was already in the bag, couldn't happen to a nicer player though...wanker

[I am invisible]

Arteta’ s attitude to team discipline continues to baffle me.

He drops Auba for being a bit late to the squad meet up. Understandable.


However, Willian went to dubai in November against Covid regulations and nothing. Carried on playing.


He seems to pick & choose when to enforce discipline and its a struggle to work out

Has Auba even be disciplined? It might be as simple as they didn't know if / when he was going to show up and had to make a call on who was going to start. The clock was kind of ticking at the time, and a decision needed to be made - do you wait for another unspecified number of minutes for him to show, or do you start prepping the team to work with the guy who is there?

The Willian thing was bloody stupid, but at least it wasn't half an hour before kick off on a match day, so it gave the club plenty of time to react - not just time to consider an appropriate punishment, but also enough time (and distance) to compose a statement. There wasn't a team of match day reporters hanging around outside the dressing room, waiting to shove a mic under the manager's nose.

[I am invisible]

Partey played a solid game, more Gilberto like at the moment but will hopefully show a touch of Vieira (without the red cards) when probably fit.
Odegaard is going to be a bit special in my opinion, full of confidence with good technique.
ESR also, he just gets better and better.
The sending off did us no favours whatsoever, we lost focus thinking the game was already in the bag, couldn't happen to a nicer player though...wanker

Yeah, you've got to be happy with Odegaard - he probably won't even be fully up to speed with the league until the end of the season and he's already looking useful.

[I am invisible]

Yes - I agree that there would have been speculation - but Arteta could have simply said that it was an internal matter - or that his omission was for management reasons or something...

Yeah, I think it needed a little detail in this instance. The reporters were already there, and they knew something had happened - if we'd gone with silence then they would have just started speculating.

I'm not sure Arteta got it quite right here - as I said above, I think he could have buried this one by saying that Auba was late / held up in traffic / whatever and we simply had to start prepping the team to start the game with the players that were present. More details, if anything. But these are the things he's going to have to learn as he goes - he is a rookie, after all, and this current project is as much about his development as it is the team's...

[Mac76]

Partey played a solid game

I thought he was terrible, hopeless shots, giving the bill away, conceding stupid FKs - i think it was the worst game by far he's played for us

[IBK]

Trip to Greece, a lost day of training / recovery and, let's face it, there's probably still an element of PTSD to this group of players that's taken root after years of chaotic / non-existent structure and heavy beatings. Any kind of pressure and some of these guys are straight back in the trenches!

We've made strides in this area over the last year - I no longer fear that we'll go from zero to 5-0 down in the space of 15 minutes any more - but there's clearly still some anxiety there that can see us retreat into safety mode until we get our heads straight. Don't really see that changing until the turnover fo players is complete, tbh.

Just like muscle memory - I think that psychological 'muscle memory' is a real thing. progress for us will be incremental and it will take time for the collective to deal with the anxiety...

[Xhaka Can’t]

[WMUG]

That guy was funny 4 years ago.

[WGC Goon]

I thought he was terrible, hopeless shots, giving the bill away, conceding stupid FKs - i think it was the worst game by far he's played for us

The free kicks near the end were tired challenges from a player who is still trying to find his full match fitness.
Yes his shooting could have been better and let's hope he not going to take as long to score as John Jenson did!

[Mac76]

this is a really great video of Odegaard v spuds - what a player

https://twitter.com/HMDComps/status/1371171991370280960