Man City vs Arsenal 26.04.2023 Match reaction and player ratings

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Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

:gp:

A sensible take, because it’s largely the same as mine :haha:

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;)

Dear old Piers Morgan claiming the difference between City and Arsenal is the quality of Pep Guardiola

Not to defend Arteta, but Guardiola has all the virtues and flaws of Arteta….very similar characters temperamentally and tactically.

The difference is at Arsenal, Arteta’s flaws are far more likely to be exposed because you have less room for error than you do if you have top players in every position and a deep squad.

Guardiola has never had to manage a club like Arsenal where he’s having to build a project rather than make improvements to a team that is already full of winners.

If Guardiola was a tactical genius he’d have won the champions league with Man City or Bayern and he hasn’t

And I’m not convinced he will. City show the same emotional flakiness going for the big trophy as we’ve done going for too four and premier league.

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Originally Posted by KSE Comedy Club

However, being so many points clear for most of the season, having our destiny in our hands and then throwing it all away in the same manner we seem to do every season is a bit different.

I feel completely let down now, and us finishing second just seems like a loser mentality to me.

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Well, I think that's fair. I mean, we were 8 points clear. But since that City have P13 W11 D1 L1.
We have certainly dropped points where we shouldn't have. But don't all teams do that in every season?
We've also picked up points in games where other seasons we'd have dropped them.
Overall it's been as much City being a relentless machine as us collapsing. The two head to heads have shown the gap between the sides.
They have some of the best players in the league and they can bring players off the bench who would walk into our team.

I am disappointed because there were a couple of moments in the season where I thought the title was possible. But, overall, there's no disgrace in losing the title to City. They're just at a different level to us. And we all know how they got there. Fuck them.

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Originally Posted by Letters

Well, I think that's fair. I mean, we were 8 points clear. But since that City have P13 W11 D1 L1.
We have certainly dropped points where we shouldn't have. But don't all teams do that in every season?
We've also picked up points in games where other seasons we'd have dropped them.
Overall it's been as much City being a relentless machine as us collapsing. The two head to heads have shown the gap between the sides.
They have some of the best players in the league and they can bring players off the bench who would walk into our team.

I am disappointed because there were a couple of moments in the season where I thought the title was possible. But, overall, there's no disgrace in losing the title to City. They're just at a different level to us. And we all know how they got there. Fuck them.

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There’s also the fact that in none of our five league titles did we go four games without winning

Two (three at most) tends to be the maximum you can afford and this is even without City

Liverpool I think have the excuse of putting their hands up and saying “what can you do?”. It’s an excuse I don’t think we have going by results this month.

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Originally Posted by selassie

I expected us to get a beating last night, it was a non-contest, we were defeated before a ball was even kicked. Our form and general confidence has pretty much gone and the team we are seeing now is performing like the Arsenal of last season. Arteta certainly has a part to play in this, he is just repeating the same things now with the line up of the team and the tactics, he is expecting to see different results which clearly isn't happening. This team even with everybody fully fit is not good enough to go to City and win, especially a City who are now in top form.

City are great and all that but we have made it very easy for them with our recent form, we have dropped points in unexpected places and have performed way below the level we maintained earlier this season, our form nosedived from the Liverpool game onwards.

Despite the above, it has been a successful season in terms of my personal expectations of the team / squad. To maintain this standard going into next season with the added bonus or headache of CL! We need to invest in real quality, as others have said, 2 CM's, a CB that is good enough to properly challenge for a starting place and possibly a LB if Tierney goes. The squad as it stands is clearly not strong enough to mount a challenge next season in PL and CL, we have to buy ready made players like Rice, Caicedo if we want to maintain this standard going forward.

P.S. Agree with what others have said about Arteta use of the squad, it's become a bit of an issue now, changes most certainly should be made for Chelsea, especially offensively where you could argue 2 of the 3 starting players (Saka and Jesus /or Martinelli) could and should be rotated with the likes of Trossard and Nelson. I would also rotate Jorginho with Partey, Partey has been really bad in this run-in.

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Again - an excellent post. And the analysis of Arteta's big weak spot in this thread is spot on. It's so disppointing that we 'armchair' analysts can see that the manager's bullish perseverence with a system that the players have lost some confidence in; is not suited to every single game and has been worked out by other teams over the course of the season - not to mention unsuited for second choice players - but the manager refuses to accept this and change things up. It's also self-defeating that he insists on playing his 'favourites' while potentially able back ups who might at least add a little variety are discounted as starters.


What I would say is that last nigtht was not a time to suddenly change things. West Ham away and Southampton at home should have been used to tweak the system to see whether more protection could have been given for Holding - alternatively leave him out (eg Zinchenko at RB; White at CB and Tierney at LB, and Jorginho alongside Partey) but this opportunity went begging.


We saw this 2 seasons ago - when we started to look so rigid and ineffective and ball progression to our forwards dried up. And we are seeing it again now - albeit with a system that has served us well until it really counted. The players last night need to have a look at themselves, but our collective loss of confidence is not just down to 3 disappointing draws - its the players realising that our set up is flawed and lookign a bit tired. Arteta's refusal to change things up looks passive and fearful, and if our players look scared - which they did last night - this has to a degree been transmitted by Arteta.


One final point. If ever we wanted evidence last night as to why Citeh sold us Jesus and Zinchenko - it was there last night in neon lights. Its lamentable that these so-called 'winners' that were bought to take our team to the next level went hiding last night. The real question is not their talent (albeit that Jesus is showing that he is not a reliable goal scorer), but their mentality. And that is a worry for sure.

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Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

There’s also the fact that in none of our five league titles did we go four games without winning

Two (three at most) tends to be the maximum you can afford and this is even without City

Liverpool I think have the excuse of putting their hands up and saying “what can you do?”. It’s an excuse I don’t think we have going by results this month.

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Agreed. Twice hitting 90+ points and not winning it. That’s rough. At no point during those seasons did Liverpool enter a funk like we find ourselves in now. They also gave City a torrid time in the head to heads.

City are a machine but we haven’t covered ourselves in glory here. The “what can you do?” stance lost its credence when we threw away the lead at West Ham and followed that up with a total mess of a performance against the team bottom of the league. What else could we have done? A lot more, actually.

We’ve got 5 games left and the absolute bare minimum aim now is to ensure it isn’t a procession for City. If we stumble through these games and City win it by a big margin that would be hugely disappointing.

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Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

There’s also the fact that in none of our five league titles did we go four games without winning

Two (three at most) tends to be the maximum you can afford and this is even without City

Liverpool I think have the excuse of putting their hands up and saying “what can you do?”. It’s an excuse I don’t think we have going by results this month.

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I kind of agree with you both, hear me out!

I like Letters have been saying for a while that for us to maintain this title push we need to be near perfect because City are machine like at this point in the season. Their have been numerous reasons why we have fallen short, City's recent form being one of them, but we certainly haven't helped ourselves over the past 4 games. It is why I am starting to lean towards the middle and acknowledge that we have done as much damage ourselves in this title push. When I say damage, i mean some of Arteta's game management, starting XI's, use of the squad, the players mentality, all that kind of stuff.

I agree with what you are saying about Liverpool too, their recent title pushes were near flawless and they looked every bit as good as City for multiple seasons, we at present don't and I can accept that if we do everything in our power to maintain and improve the current group and standard. I would like to think we are in the early stages of this improvement of Arsenal.

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Originally Posted by IBK

Again - an excellent post. And the analysis of Arteta's big weak spot in this thread is spot on. It's so disppointing that we 'armchair' analysts can see that the manager's bullish perseverence with a system that the players have lost some confidence in; is not suited to every single game and has been worked out by other teams over the course of the season - not to mention unsuited for second choice players - but the manager refuses to accept this and change things up. It's also self-defeating that he insists on playing his 'favourites' while potentially able back ups who might at least add a little variety are discounted as starters.


What I would say is that last nigtht was not a time to suddenly change things. West Ham away and Southampton at home should have been used to tweak the system to see whether more protection could have been given for Holding - alternatively leave him out (eg Zinchenko at RB; White at CB and Tierney at LB, and Jorginho alongside Partey) but this opportunity went begging.


We saw this 2 seasons ago - when we started to look so rigid and ineffective and ball progression to our forwards dried up. And we are seeing it again now - albeit with a system that has served us well until it really counted. The players last night need to have a look at themselves, but our collective loss of confidence is not just down to 3 disappointing draws - its the players realising that our set up is flawed and lookign a bit tired. Arteta's refusal to change things up looks passive and fearful, and if our players look scared - which they did last night - this has to a degree been transmitted by Arteta.


One final point. If ever we wanted evidence last night as to why Citeh sold us Jesus and Zinchenko - it was there last night in neon lights. Its lamentable that these so-called 'winners' that were bought to take our team to the next level went hiding last night. The real question is not their talent (albeit that Jesus is showing that he is not a reliable goal scorer), but their mentality. And that is a worry for sure.

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:gp:

Especially the bit about Jesus and Zinchenko.

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Originally Posted by Marc Overmars

Agreed. Twice hitting 90+ points and not winning it. That’s rough. At no point during those seasons did Liverpool enter a funk like we find ourselves in now. They also gave City a torrid time in the head to heads.

City are a machine but we haven’t covered ourselves in glory here. The “what can you do?” stance lost its credence when we threw away the lead at West Ham and followed that up with a total mess of a performance against the team bottom of the league. What else could we have done? A lot more, actually.

We’ve got 5 games left and the absolute bare minimum aim now is to ensure it isn’t a procession for City. If we stumble through these games and City win it by a big margin that would be hugely disappointing.

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I agree with all of that. City have been relentless, but we have dropped points in games where we shouldn't have and made it easier for City to chase us down than it should have been. I can't help feel City would have caught us in the end anyway, but I agree we've stumbled more than we should have.

Le Grove the Arsenal twitter account which is the biggest “trust the process” gimp is being very scathing of Arteta

States that the greatest weakness last night was the space left for De Bruyne where Holding drops off because it’s not tenable for him to hold the high line that Saliba could and Arteta must have known this would happen but made no attempt to address it