Southampton v Arsenal, 15:00 BST (16/04).

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Another must win that we'll sure balls up.

[Mac76]

3-0 Ward-Prowse hatter

[dazthegooner]

Well if he plays Xhaka as a left back you could be right, he may not be the best midfielder but at the moment he's the best available also if fit Laca needs to be benched.

[Bumble]

we will win as we are Southampton worse run of form than us

[dazthegooner]

So were Brighton.

Arsenal: Ramsdale, White, Gabriel, Saka, Odegaard, Cedric, Tavares, Sambi Lokonga, Nketiah, Xhaka, Martinelli.

Subs: Leno, Smith Rowe, Holding, Pepe, Elneny, Azeez, Ogungbo, Swanson, Hutchinson.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Southampton: Forster, Valery, Bednarek, Lyanco, Walker-Peters, Perraud, S Armstrong, Ward-Prowse, Romeu, Elyounoussi, Broja.
Subs: Caballero, Stephens, Long, A Armstrong, Adams, Redmond, Livramento, Salisu, Tella.

No Lacazette at all then. :popcorn:

[Bumble]

So were Brighton.

Arsenal: Ramsdale, White, Gabriel, Saka, Odegaard, Cedric, Tavares, Sambi Lokonga, Nketiah, Xhaka, Martinelli.

Subs: Leno, Smith Rowe, Holding, Pepe, Elneny, Azeez, Ogungbo, Swanson, Hutchinson.

formidable bench with all the game changers we have.

[Bumble]

brighton result not so bad as they just beat spurs. 4th place the position nobody seems to want to be consistent for

[dazthegooner]

So a 9-0 win and were all set :blink:

[Mac76]

Tavares :bow:

[Marc Overmars]

Huge opportunity here now to erase last week.

Cannot fuck this up.

[dazthegooner]

Good save from Forster Saka should have done better though.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Forster saved to deny Saka.

[dazthegooner]

Another shit freekick fron Cedric <_<

And ANOTHER!!!!

[dazthegooner]

And here we go 1-0 Southampton

[LDG]

Fucks sake

[dazthegooner]

1-0 HT

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Us. :haha:

Woeful.

[Mac76]

The Project :bow:

[Marc Overmars]

Fucking useless. How can that Spurs result not be enough motivation?

[Letters]

Huge opportunity here now to erase last week.

Cannot fuck this up.

Watch us.

The twats.

[LDG]

Pick the fucking pace up. Effort seems out the window.

Has AW been on the phone to say they’re not doing it right? “More sideways passing”

[dazthegooner]

Taveres makes into the second half :yikes:

[Munchies]

Dog shit so far

[dazthegooner]

Smith-Rowe on for Cedric

[dazthegooner]

Pepe on for Tarvares

[dazthegooner]

Another save from Forster

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Us trying to get back in to a game. :lol:

Utterly pointless.

[Marc Overmars]

Quite unforgivable really should this be a defeat. Which it probably will seeing as I have no faith in our ability to salvage results.

[dazthegooner]

Well the way we are playing cannot see where our next win will come from.

[LDG]

Come on you fucking cunts

[dazthegooner]

We're out spursying the spuds <_<

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Well what a shameful collapse.

Add it to the list.

[Marc Overmars]

Piss poor, really undermines a lot of the work done this season. Never before have I seen such a weak and impotent Arsenal team.

Utterly desperate for some new attacking options, the season needs to end now before we sink any further.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Another game where we fail to score.

Well and truly back to the early season misery.

11 defeats in the league is really bad.

Sixth now. :wave:

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Chelsea away and Man Utd at home next. :lol:

[Mac76]

So glad i was out in the sun this afternoon and not watching

0 points from 9 against Palace, Brighton and Southampton - that really is utter shite

[dazthegooner]

Any teams that we have to play going through a bad patch in need of a confidence boosting win?

[Globalgunner]

So glad i was out in the sun this afternoon and not watching

0 points from 9 against Palace, Brighton and Southampton - that really is utter shite

Progress. Or that's what Ive been told it is

[Gooner23]

Even by our standards this is a real bottle job. To lose the last 3 games like this is shameful.

[Letters]

Sod it. I’m back on the Arteta Out bandwagon.
The lack of mental strength and squad strength when we are in a Top 4 fight is unacceptable.
And today was the perfect opportunity to get back on track after recent disappointments and the ballsed it right up. Twats.

[Niall_Quinn]

Progress. Or that's what Ive been told it is

It has become almost impossible to explain or even point out reality to most people. So many seem to be suffering with serious mental impairments that particularly affect memory.

[Letters]

It has become almost impossible to explain or even point out reality to most people. So many seem to be suffering with serious mental impairments that particularly affect memory.

When you’re 12 points ahead of where you were at the same stage last season this late in the season, and when you’re favourites for a top 4 spot when last season you weren’t even in the conversation last year then it looks like progress.

You keep thinking you have 20:20 foresight, you regularly show you don’t.

On this occasion the naysayers were correct, it seems.
We have fallen flat on our stupid arses again. It looked like this lot were made of sterner stuff. Alas it seems they are not.

[dazthegooner]

On our day with out first 11 fully fit and on form we can compete with most teams in the league but Arteta could not expect them to do this over a full season without sufffering from loss of form or injury, and the players we have waiting in the wings are either not good enough or just too raw with no first team experience we needed so add in January and we didn't,
so hopefully we can scrap a place in the Europa next season (fourth place is now gone) and sign players good enough to push on for the Champions league.

[Niall_Quinn]

When you’re 12 points ahead of where you were at the same stage last season this late in the season, and when you’re favourites for a top 4 spot when last season you weren’t even in the conversation last year then it looks like progress.

You keep thinking you have 20:20 foresight, you regularly show you don’t.

On this occasion the naysayers were correct, it seems.
We have fallen flat on our stupid arses again. It looked like this lot were made of sterner stuff. Alas it seems they are not.

This is what I mean about people who struggle with memory. Everything happened within the confines of the last trip around the bowl, all prior circumnavigations are eliminated along with all context and comparison. It's like you are drowning in shit (and have been for years) but, every now and then, you somehow break the surface to steal a fetid breath. Well your situation is positively rosy all of a sudden, in that instance. Of course you are still neck deep in shit. You don't need any sort of hindsight to smell that kind of reality. A decade of utter, utter garbage by the standard set in times not so long gone. That just so happens to coincide with the arrival of non-footballing sharks. Years spent moaning about the big spenders while boasting about sustainability in a wild west marketplace. And even after all the years some fans still ask - how could they have not strengthened or even replaced what was lost, just as we were bound for glory?

Ah well, we wait until the next time exactly the same thing happens and then we can hear the same fans without memory dismiss the blatantly obvious on the grounds of it being "hindsight".

Sun rises, sun sets, guess what happens next.

[Letters]

This is what I mean about people who struggle with memory.

Do you think you (and I guess Globalgunner) uniquely remember what has happened last season?
Or the season before that, or the last n seasons.

Yes yes, we know things are shit. We know we have been in Groundhog Day too long. If that’s your hot take then it’s not particularly insightful. The hope, of course, is that at some point we will break out of that. If you believe that we never will then holy shit what is the point of following it at all?

I mean, I don’t follow it much these days but till the last few games there did look to be some improvement. They looked more willing to fight for each other and the fans, they were grinding out results. Suddenly we were favourites for Top 4 when last season we weren’t even in the conversation.
Ok, so it was another false dawn, we’ve collapsed again. And yes, it’s tiresome. But if you don’t have any hope that things will ever change then there’s no point in any of this.

I always said that Wenger going wouldn’t fix the problem. It certainly fixed A problem. Not because Wenger was a bumbling incompetent, that was always bullshit. But because Wenger had that early success and was such a legend because of that, it was always going to be hard to move on from that although we certainly needed to. The best thing about Emery or Arteta is they’re not Wenger. They don’t have all his baggage, they’re easy to get rid of if they’re not delivering. I always felt the ownership was a big problem too although to be fair we’ve hardly been frugal in the last couple of summers and it feels like there’s the core of a good young team in there which with the right additions could do something. But with an increasing number of teams having the infinite money cheat turned on things aren’t as easy as they used to be.

I’d remind you that when Wenger announced he was leaving you were giddy with excitement and said that you expected a title challenge in 2 years and if not we should get rid of Wenger’s replacement. So don’t pretend you knew all along we’d keep being this awful post Wenger as you had some insight the rest of us did not.

TL;DR, the hope is always that with different managers and different players the results will be different. Because historically there have always been ups and downs. The Wenger years were the outliers, not now. The only times of real dominance were the 1930s and the early noughties. I’m not sure how far we can go with the current ownership and Arteta always felt like a risk. If it’s not working then fine, get the next person in and try and push on. If you believe that’s not possible then there’s not much point in following it, which I know you don’t much these days. I don’t either really but for slightly different reasons, I’m just jaded by the way football has gone generally. It’s not the sport I grew up with. Its barely a sport at all any more.

[Niall_Quinn]

If you believe that we never will then holy shit what is the point of following it at all?

I don't.

I just wonder why any fan above the age of 12 bothers. Not only that, they actually get excited when we take a decent corner. It's not a demand for them to stop, it's just a curious observation on their strange behaviour.

[Letters]

You were over 12 when you stopped. Why did you?

[Niall_Quinn]

You were over 12 when you stopped. Why did you?

The only reason I didn't get there sooner was the inertia that comes from close on a lifetime of supporting the club. Probably would have taken even longer were it not for football in general being so tiresome. The club died, the game died. Some of it might have been me moving on but, as you say, it took a long time to finally ditch it. So it's more to do with the reality of a club with no ambition (and not the slightest hint of that changing) and a sport that sold its soul to the highest bidders.

[Letters]

The only reason I didn't get there sooner was the inertia that comes from close on a lifetime of supporting the club. Probably would have taken even longer were it not for football in general being so tiresome. The club died, the game died. Some of it might have been me moving on but, as you say, it took a long time to finally ditch it. So it's more to do with the reality of a club with no ambition (and not the slightest hint of that changing) and a sport that sold its soul to the highest bidders.
I'm not a million miles behind you. With me it was the father son thing that dad and me did together. When he got too ill to go it did lose something for me, but that coincided with getting married so that was a factor. And of course it all got so expensive and football is barely a sport these days. So lots of factors have combined although Arsenal being so bloody awful is a factor too. It's not even that they're bad in itself, it's the fact that their primary goal is financial success, not success on the pitch. I did start to identify with this current lot as they looked to be made of sterner stuff than teams of the last decade. But the last few games have unfortunately shown that it's plus ca change. Shame. I doubt I'll ever completely disconnect from it, but I've pretty much fallen out with the game. I was away over Easter so didn't watch the FA Cup Finals but honestly I didn't really miss it. I might watch the final for old time's sake but I couldn't tell you when it is. Back in the day it would have been long since in the calendar and I'd have arranged my whole day round it. Shame really, but that's what happens when you turn a sport in to a business. I don't understand people who still buy every shirt and obsessively watch every game but each to their own I guess.

[Niall_Quinn]

I don't understand people who still buy every shirt and obsessively watch every game but each to their own I guess.

Predominantly the younger fans who never experienced what football can actually be like. To them everything that represents the high point for the older fans is a set of pages in a history book. And that's how the likes of Kroenke can do it, just wait the longer term fans out. Literally wait until they die in some cases. That's why the 4th Place Trophy is so insidious, why favourably noting a 7th place finish is improvement on 8th - well it is, but both are shite finishes for those who know better. The younger generation doesn't know better, so Kroenke gets away with it. And it's not like we are talking ancient history - we've seen total transformation from eleven warriors to a bunch of pitter, patter fops in the relatively short time Kroenke has remotely owned the place.