Match Reaction v Villa (away)

[McNamara That Ghost...]

An utterly crap team.

Back to what we have seen all season.

Spuds above us again now this season. Wankers.

[Marc Overmars]

The usual away day misery and another season below Spurs confirmed.

Going into the final day in 10th. :haha:

Absolutely rubbish. All well and good raising it for one off games but if the bread and butter doesn’t improve then Arteta won’t last long next year.

[Mac76]

Really glad i didn't bother watching, i had a feeling it might be dire, let's hope Arteta does the sensible thing and rests everyone important for Watford and just focusses on the FAC final

[McNamara That Ghost...]

https://i.imgur.com/dGpjG9M.png

They said it. :haha:

[Gooner23]

A real lack of creativity costs us against teams happy to sit back and counter punch. Don't think there was a decent performance out there.

[Globalgunner]

Where have I seen this type of Arsenal performance before?. Oh yes. For the last 15 years. Beat Madrid last week and lose to Bolton 4 days later. Wenger is still here or .maybe he never actually left.

[Niall_Quinn]

Aaaaaaand - that's Arsenal.

Every false dawn is covered.

Didn't see the match, so don't know how we played. I can guess. Forgot it was on. Which would never have happened if I thought for a minute the fluke against Liverpool and the one of three decent performances we put in every year was anything significant.

Mid table, and they can prove it.

[Penguin]

No creativity in this team.

As good as Auba is at scoring goals he doesn't offer much else. But at least he normally scores.

No excuse for everyone else.

[Niall_Quinn]

Can't recall, but wouldn't we have opened a gap to the spuds, or overhauled them at least - had we just won that fucking match? Now where are we? 5 points behind, wondering if we can catch leviathans like Sheff Utd and Burnley.

Wolves? Don't think so. Different level.

[I am invisible]

No, they’d still have been a couple of points ahead of us - we would have had to have beaten spurs too to have stayed ahead of them. Otherwise they would have needed to have lost one of their other remaining games.

[Gooner23]

If we'd have won our last 2 I think we'd have had a chance of 7th as Wolves go to Chelsea last game of the season. Now it's all eggs in the FA Cup final basket.

Some of these players are just so so poor. Arteta desperately needs funds in the summer.

[I am invisible]

This kind of sums up the problem with us at the moment...

https://www.football365.com/news/opinion-aston-villa-1-0-arsenal-mikel-arteta-mesut-ozil

...basically the players we have fit together one way because we’re heavy on wide players and forwards, but lack a midfield, and because our CBs need an extra man (because they’re not good enough to cope with one-on-ones).

It’s a setup that’s good at absorbing pressure and counter-attacking when teams play high against us, and we can force errors when teams try to play out from the back, but when teams sit deep in numbers and are happy to let us have the ball then we’re not much use. We just don’t have enough creativity in the squad to
deal with it.

And, as we say every week, even when everything goes to plan, we’re still riddled with players that can switch off, regress or completely self-destruct at any moment. I doubt we’re ever going to fully coach that out of them at this point - best we can do is maybe turn it into a ‘once every 3 or 4 games’ occurrence instead of 6 or 7 times every match, which I think we’ve done.

I’ve seen enough over the last few months to be optimistic about where we’re going though - we’ve improved in a lot of areas, but I don’t think we can really be too much more than this right now. If we were actually consistent then we’d be talking about a team that was capable of challenging for the title next year - did anyone really expect that after just 4.5 months (*not including lockdown) with this bunch?

[I am invisible]

If we'd have won our last 2 I think we'd have had a chance of 7th as Wolves go to Chelsea last game of the season. Now it's all eggs in the FA Cup final basket.

Some of these players are just so so poor. Arteta desperately needs funds in the summer.
And even then we’re probably only going to have the time and money to do a fraction of the rebuild - I’m bracing myself for this taking *at least* 2 summer windows to fully turn around.

Hopefully we’ll be able to do enough this summer to at least take a decent forward, though.

[Marc Overmars]

I don’t fancy our chances of top 4 next season unless Arteta does some miracle work over the summer. Chelsea are quietly building a really good squad and you’d expect United to build further too should they seal qualification this week. It’s funny thinking back to this time last year when we all thought we’d have a shot because they had rookie managers...

Frankly until certain standards are firmly drilled into their heads, this team won’t be doing much anyway. Performances and wins like the one over City are so blatantly outliers there isn’t any point pretending otherwise. Every dog has its day but there are real issues here that need addressing before we can move on.

Anyway, let’s just pray we win the cup so this league campaign can never be spoken about again. A maximum of 14 wins. WTF.

[Letters]

Didn't see it and I'm a bit annoyed but, honestly, I can't get that worked up about it or draw too many conclusions from it.
Villa are scrapping for their lives. Lose last night and they're in real trouble.
We...well, maybe it was the different between 7th and 9th but...meh.
With the FA Cup Final in our minds and no-one wanting to get injured, I can kinda understand them not putting everything into it.
Maybe it was part of some masterplan to get Watford relegated.

[I am invisible]

I don’t fancy our chances of top 4 next season unless Arteta does some miracle work over the summer. Chelsea are quietly building a really good squad and you’d expect United to build further too should they seal qualification this week. It’s funny thinking back to this time last year when we all thought we’d have a shot because they had rookie managers...

Frankly until certain standards are firmly drilled into their heads, this team won’t be doing much anyway. Performances and wins like the one over City are so blatantly outliers there isn’t any point pretending otherwise. Every dog has its day but there are real issues here that need addressing before we can move on.

Anyway, let’s just pray we win the cup so this league campaign can never be spoken about again. A maximum of 14 wins. WTF.

Step 1 has to be to get that ridiculous wage bill under control - without that financial millstone hanging around our neck we might actually be able to start making decisions that aren't being driven by panic. As you say, there's no fast-pass back to Champions league, especially with so many strong sides in the league - we've tried taking short-cuts and buying our way back to the top and it hasn't worked. I don't want to count us out before we've even kicked a ball - top 4 should always be the minimum target for this club - but we also need the freedom to grow and build and make some fuck-ups along the way without it meaning financial ruin and a firesale of assets any / every time we don't make it.

[Globalgunner]

The problem remains and is our midfield. We do not get any goals from midfield. Literally everyone in this team is a passenger to the co drivers Auba and Laca. If the strikers do not score then no one scores. So to beat Arsenal you just have to nullify the 2 main threats. Anyone can do that if they so choose. Seems we only get joy from teams that are technically superior to us and do not set to nullify out attack. Even then it is pure luck that gives us the win. This team is bereft of quality on so many fronts. If we line up with Xhaka and whomever as our midfield next season. Its curtains again. Everyone around us will improve while we spend all our resources on giving Auba a new contract.

[I am invisible]

The problem remains and is our midfield. We do not get any goals from midfield. Literally everyone in this team is a passenger to the co drivers Auba and Laca. If the strikers do not score then no one scores. So to beat Arsenal you just have to nullify the 2 main threats. Anyone can do that if they so choose. Seems we only get joy from teams that are technically superior to us and do not set to nullify out attack. Even then it is pure luck that gives us the win. This team is bereft of quality on so many fronts. If we line up with Xhaka and whomever as our midfield next season. Its curtains again. Everyone around us will improve while we spend all our resources on giving Auba a new contract.
:good:

No goals from midfield, no creativity, no powerful runners or ball-carriers, no dominant physical presence, no one who is particularly press-resistant (maybe Ceballos) - we pretty much only have midfielders who can keep the ball moving from deep (and even then it has from their good foot).

If it were up to me (and it's probably a good thing it's not), I'd probably focus all our efforts on CM this summer and leave everything else for another window. Aside from anything else, it's hard to assess how good / bad anyone else is until we sort that out. Maybe the defenders will look better with someone more powerful and mobile sat in front of them? Maybe our non-Auba forwards will score more with better service? Maybe our wingers will be more creative / more of a goal threat if it weren't so painfully predictable that everything we do is going to come from the wings?

[Mac76]

we need to hope Villa go down and we somehow land Grealish though why he'd come to Arsenal i've no idea