Highlights made us look a lot better than we actually were. A lot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bumble
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Highlights made us look a lot better than we actually were. A lot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bumble
Credit to Sanchez.
If he didn't chase them down, we'd have dropped points again
2 goals were absolute gifts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Munchies
Still, a much needed win. Lets hope we've started to sort our lives out.
Name a player on that pitch yesterday that has star quality other than Sanchez. We absolutely lack quality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
I watched the Man City v Spam game and even though they lost, City are the team closest in quality to the Invincible's. Quality all over the pitch.
If Wenger adds one star player per season like he has done the past two seasons (Ozil is debatable right now tbh) then we'll get there eventually. I'm amazed we managed to convince Sanchez to sign for us but I'm hopeful within the next 2-3 years we'll have a core of 5 or 6 world class players.
Sunderland need to be investigated. He actions of some of their players in these past two games go beyond just silly mistakes.
We were a good team last year in the 'Premier League'? While you can raise the banner of 79 points (which means nothing btw), we got hammered in almost every big game we played in. How is that progress? We made one step forward and one step back. Whether its 83 points in 2008 or 79 last season, the truth is that we are 4th position and 3rd at best, in some cases.. I can accept 4th position if there was anything good to look at in our football. You cannot honestly tell me that Arsenal plays anything resembling a team that charges one of the highest prices in world football. We play some seriously horrible stuff.. for the players we have, we should at least be entertaining the fans, forget winning something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
I can accept that we will not win trophies because that can sometimes just boil down to a ref's decision in a very crucial game.. what I cannot accept is that we look like we cannot score against the crappiest of crap teams. We look devoid of ideas in almost every game we play in. In 2006 when we got 4th (lasagnagate season), we barely scrapped 4th, but what we did was play some blinding football. Since 2008, we have been in 4th position or thereabouts but unlike 2006 we have taken one step backwards and are playing football that is slightly better than Tony Pubis's worst sides. Unacceptable!
Quote:
Originally Posted by fakeyank
Whilst I accept what your saying, I don't agree about the 2005/2006 season. I thought especially away from home the football was dire, the very epitome of what you dislike about our current football....I think our play was only better at Highbury because the pitch was smaller and naturally compressed the play anyway
Well...yes. We finished 4th :shrug:Quote:
Originally Posted by fakeyank
We won more games than anyone outside the top 3.
We lost fewer games than anyone outside the top 3.
We scored more goals than anyone outside the top 3.
We conceded fewer goals than anyone but City, Chelsea and Everton (Liverpool contrived to concede significantly more which, I guess, is why they failed to win the title).
In brief, by every reasonable metric in terms of overall league performance we were about 4th best. The word 'good' is a bit vague but I'd say that's a pretty good team.
And yes, we got 79 points, that's more than in the 97/98 season when we did the Double.
Football has moved on, you need to do better than that to win the title these days, but it's a decent tally, only two fewer than Chelsea and seven fewer than Champions City.
It's the most points we've got since 2008 and, it's also the smallest gap between ourselves and the champions since 2008.
The bit in bold is significant IMO, I would call that progress.
I'm interested how you would back up the claim that our points total 'means nothing'? Surely in assessing league performance it's pretty key.
We got hammered in the 3 away games against the top 3 (I thought we played well at City actually and on a different day, with a different ref, that would have been closer, I didn't see the Liverpool game but heard we were hopeless, I did see the Chelsea game and we were hopeless!)
Against those sides at home we won one and drew two. Not good enough overall and showed up our title credentials. But the league isn't determined over 3 games, it's over 38. And it's surely better that way round than getting better results in those games and then keep losing to teams we 'should' be beating and overall doing worse. The ideal is both, obviously.
Last year we did seem to make some progress, the league points tally was encouraging and the FA Cup win finally got the monkey off our back about not winning trophies. It seemed like a good platform to push on and whatever you think of Wenger he deserved the chance to lead us on if he wanted to (for his sake he should probably have retired on a high, but there you go). And we seemed to be making good signings in the summer. I'm completely baffled as to how we can suddenly be as crap as we've been this season although it has to be said at the tail end of last season we were struggling through games a bit and maybe that's carried on to this season. We're not good enough to win the title and I agree about the style of football but we're a better team than our results and performances are suggesting so far. I'm a bit baffled at how clueless we're looking tbh.
Compared with City and Chelsea maybe, but looking through the lineup there's plenty of good players out there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grebbo
We're far less than the sum of our parts right now.
The attacking side of our game has fallen flat. It can't even be described as 'tippy tappy' because we can't even string together a flurry a passes without turning over the ball. Heavy touches, reckless passes, poor decision making, over dribbling.....all too common in our game now. Since we sold Cesc and Nasri, we haven't been playing tippy tappy.
We're now heavily dependent on individual brilliance because the system doesn't work. The more 'direct' style we saw last season wasn't a result of any tactical/philosophical switch by Wenger, we hadn't abandoned 'tippy tappy' as some argued. We just couldn't do it. Instead of a flurry or passes then a goal, we'd get one great ball and a goal like we saw with Song and RVP or Walcott and Giroud.
Over the past few seasons we've relied heavily on inform players to bail us out. RVP, Song, Walcott, Giroud, Ramsey and now Sanchez. The attacking system we once had is broken which is why we can no longer pick our kids for Carling Cup matches and expect them to blow away lower league/division opposition.