Match Reaction - Arsenal 1-2 The Cavs and their ref

[Bumble]

Great post.

Typical rookie manager game, naively comes into the game wanting to us to play a certain way and thinking that if we do we'll win, that won't happen, you need to adapt to what's happening in the match and make changes, this reminds me of what Wenger wanted to do, play your game and not worry about the opposition which is a worry.

I still stand by the fact we should have got someone experienced given our situation, we need results, not 35-45 minutes of decent performances.

that was Wengers style but if you have players like Vieira, Campbell, Bergkamp, Cole, Pires, Henry, Lauren etc then it doesnt matter what the opposition does. Playing your way will win most of the time. They were intelligent, powerful, quality footballers.

You want the team to have a style of play, but also adapt to the opposition. i dont think we have the players to actually adapt to the opposition. We need our own style but we arent able to keep the high press high intensity either. We dont have that sort of player. so it will just take time to evolve the squad to start taking steps forward.

[Niall_Quinn]

Spot on. There were several experiened Manager's available and we went with a rookie. This may prive a very costly mistake.

I've already seen enough to believe things are going in the right direction. For the first time in a decade. Anyone expecting more than that. given a decade of decline, is wishing for the moon. Look for the little things, the big things come later. We won't see anything dramatic in terms of results for the remainder of this season. But we have already seen some dramatic changes in terms of commitment, discipline and basic football requirements. We shouldn't get carried away. To move from absolutely nothing, which is where we were mentally and tactically, to the very basics is a baby step. But a step that Wenger and Emery refused to take.

We were robbed today. For once in a long time we can say we were the better team and deserved to win. Okay, saying that doesn't get 3 points. But being the worst team and in no way deserving to win doesn't get the points either. This way, eventually we'll start picking up the points. We just have to keep heading in the same direction. No back-tracking allowed.

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

Spot on. There were several experiened Manager's available and we went with a rookie. This may prive a very costly mistake.

TBH, if we had to rate Arteta on just these 2 games, their has been a marked improvement in general. Definitely his team's performances have been better than anything Emery or Freddie offered us this season.

The question is could this not have been achieved or even surpassed by an experienced manager who shared the same ethic of needing to get the team to work harder (e.g Simeone and half a dozen other top managers) and had other proven tricks in his arsenal.

Anyone being unbiased would point out that Lampard easily got the better of Arteta tacticaly today and it wasn't that difficult.

Like someone said in another thread, "in the end, it comes down to who is the best fit for a club at that time"... yes Arteta seems to be rebuilding the psyche of the team but what about the results we need to stay competitive? Bournemouth lost convincingly yesterday, Chelsea lost before they met us and should have lost today... how many more points can we afford to experiment with??

Like any true fan I hope our gamble with Arteta pays off,
I really do, and their are some encouraging signs, but honestly the guys running this club didn't need to take this risk at this time.... any serious person who loves this club wouldnt have done so. Simple.

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

I've already seen enough to believe things are going in the right direction. For the first time in a decade. Anyone expecting more than that. given a decade of decline, is wishing for the moon. Look for the little things, the big things come later. We won't see anything dramatic in terms of results for the remainder of this season. But we have already seen some dramatic changes in terms of commitment, discipline and basic football requirements. We shouldn't get carried away. To move from absolutely nothing, which is where we were mentally and tactically, to the very basics is a baby step. But a step that Wenger and Emery refused to take.

We were robbed today. For once in a long time we can say we were the better team and deserved to win. Okay, saying that doesn't get 3 points. But being the worst team and in no way deserving to win doesn't get the points either. This way, eventually we'll start picking up the points. We just have to keep heading in the same direction. No back-tracking allowed.

Spot on TBF.

We've already taken the gamble so we might as well all get behind the moving train.

Though I'm still calling them out now, because if the train derails I'm going to be as mad as hell!

[Özim]

I've already seen enough to believe things are going in the right direction. For the first time in a decade. Anyone expecting more than that. given a decade of decline, is wishing for the moon. Look for the little things, the big things come later. We won't see anything dramatic in terms of results for the remainder of this season. But we have already seen some dramatic changes in terms of commitment, discipline and basic football requirements. We shouldn't get carried away. To move from absolutely nothing, which is where we were mentally and tactically, to the very basics is a baby step. But a step that Wenger and Emery refused to take.

We were robbed today. For once in a long time we can say we were the better team and deserved to win. Okay, saying that doesn't get 3 points. But being the worst team and in no way deserving to win doesn't get the points either. This way, eventually we'll start picking up the points. We just have to keep heading in the same direction. No back-tracking allowed.

I'm not quite as lenient as you, we've had 2 games under him and picked up 1 point out of 6, sorry but for me that's not good enough, Ancelotti has won both his matches at Everton, Mourinho has been picking up plenty of points at Spurs and even Pearson has been picking up points for lowly Watford, it's not our fault the board decided to appoint a novice, so for me I'll be judgng him like I would any manager who I'd expect to come in now on results.

So we played ok for 35 minutes, so what, we ended up with 0 points and results are what matter, I'd rather play rubbish and have one shot and win one nil, this kind of thin is exactly what was happening under Wenger, playing ok but losing. Chelsea came out in the 2nd half and dominated and in the end got what they deserved the 3 points, Arteta didn't react to try and stop them dominating and he paid the price. Lampard said in his interview Chelsea were terrible for half an hour which says a lot as well.

The stats highlight this:



So all we had were two shots on target and 7 off, Chelsea had double and they're the away team, even before the goal Abraham headed straight at Leno when he should have scored, the signs were there.

For me not good enough, what we're seeing is a rookie manager doing rookie things and not knowing what to do when things aren't working.

I'll also add I don't know what we're doing with Pepe, we paid 72 million for this guy only for him to sit on the bench, Nelson played well today but has been poor in the 2 matches prior to this so you can't say he earnt his place. If you don't play someone you're never going to get the best out of him and given how much he cost, maybe we should be trying to.

[Marc Overmars]

Good post Zim.

Standards are so low now that any sort of reasonable application is met with glee.

From what I was watching, I saw a team that tried hard but didn’t create much and just put all their eggs into defending an early lead because they didn’t have the confidence to try and kill the game off.

[Letters]

Does anyone know the last time we were this poor at this stage of the season? Till recently it was "the worst start for 35 years" but we've now managed to beat that record as the team from 82/83 had more points after 20 games than this lot.

I don't agree with NQ that it's been a decade of decline. You can cherry pick where you compare from and to I guess but the way I've always seen it the real decline happened between 2004 and 2006. That's when we went from the Invincibles on 90 points to 4th place on 67 points. Compared to Wenger's last season when we got 63.
In between those two seasons we kinda bumbled around in the top 4 most years. There were good seasons like 2007/8 when we were close to the title but that was the only time we threatened to win it, there were other bad seasons like 2010/11 when we got 68 points.
All in all though it's really hard to draw a sensible line through it all. Drawing it from 2005/6 to Wenger's penultimate season or last season would even imply a steady improvement which would be dishonest:



Last season was somewhat of an improvement on Wenger's last but with 70 points it was still only marginally better than 2005/6.
I'd say there's been a decline in terms of how much I've enjoyed watching the games, in terms of end result there's been no steady decline and towards the end of Wenger's tenure we even picked up a few trophies. This season we've fallen off a cliff edge but the side Wenger left us with got to a European Final last year and went close to top 4 so I think pinning this all on him is a stretch.

[Mac76]

We need to accept the squad is painfully thin, our bench offered little today, the game was lost by the time Pepe came on

though for what it's worth i'd have brought Smith-Rowe on instead of Willock who did nothing as far as i could see

[Bumble]

One thing arseblog mentioned and i agreed with. Was that for first time in a while i was bothered by the result. So thats a positive.

I do like the fact arteta gets off the bench too and that freddie was in the stand for a different viewpoint. So small positives.

[Niall_Quinn]

I'm not quite as lenient as you, we've had 2 games under him and picked up 1 point out of 6, sorry but for me that's not good enough, Ancelotti has won both his matches at Everton, Mourinho has been picking up plenty of points at Spurs and even Pearson has been picking up points for lowly Watford, it's not our fault the board decided to appoint a novice, so for me I'll be judgng him like I would any manager who I'd expect to come in now on results.

So we played ok for 35 minutes, so what, we ended up with 0 points and results are what matter, I'd rather play rubbish and have one shot and win one nil, this kind of thin is exactly what was happening under Wenger, playing ok but losing. Chelsea came out in the 2nd half and dominated and in the end got what they deserved the 3 points, Arteta didn't react to try and stop them dominating and he paid the price. Lampard said in his interview Chelsea were terrible for half an hour which says a lot as well.

The stats highlight this:



So all we had were two shots on target and 7 off, Chelsea had double and they're the away team, even before the goal Abraham headed straight at Leno when he should have scored, the signs were there.

For me not good enough, what we're seeing is a rookie manager doing rookie things and not knowing what to do when things aren't working.

I'll also add I don't know what we're doing with Pepe, we paid 72 million for this guy only for him to sit on the bench, Nelson played well today but has been poor in the 2 matches prior to this so you can't say he earnt his place. If you don't play someone you're never going to get the best out of him and given how much he cost, maybe we should be trying to.

42% possession and 7 attempts is preferable to 90% possession and zero attempts. It was a well organised and controlled first half. We looked like a real team for a while. It's a start. And we're right at the start. It appears we need to work on fitness levels too. I'm not sure what people were expecting at this stage? A sudden transformation of the results and a bid for the top 4? Led by a rookie manager who's learning as he goes and trying to bring a group of undisciplined and untrained players with him? Yesterday's showing could have been a lot worse. We could have seen a team with no clue, doing the same old things and no sign of improvement anywhere. We didn't see that. So we're already better off than we were. Big test now is to continue improving, rather than falling back into the bullshit we've seen for most of the season.