Match Reaction Arsenal 0-1 Swansea

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Originally Posted by Thierrymon

Claude really is king muppet. Is he capable of any rational thought or is it all just juvenile reactionary garbage?

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It's funny how his concerns morph in line with the latest shit coming from the media. "I've been fucking saying since I read it in the Daily Mail - we need a keeper. It's not good enough! It's not fucking good enough! AAAAARGGGHHHHH!"

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Originally Posted by Bob Loblaw

I'd rather win the cup as well. But if we somehow manage to drop to a poor third or collapse into fourth place, then we are less likely to win the cup.

You can't turn on and off form and momentum ( well it's easy to turn off, harder to regain) and more performances like this coupled with the recent resurgence in Villa's form make it far less likely that we retain the Cup.

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Fine, but we were fantastic against Hull. I didn't see last night's game but by all accounts we were poor first half, better second and on another night would have won.
It's a bad result but after the run we've been on it's a little churlish to moan too much, it happens to every team.
We need to get something at OT, do that and get results in our last two home games and I won't be panicking too much about the Cup Final.

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Originally Posted by Letters

Fine, but we were fantastic against Hull. I didn't see last night's game but by all accounts we were poor first half, better second and on another night would have won.
It's a bad result but after the run we've been on it's a little churlish to moan too much, it happens to every team.
We need to get something at OT, do that and get results in our last two home games and I won't be panicking too much about the Cup Final.

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You realise that we've now probably lost the chance of second spot, what with QPR's ridiculous capitulation? We've lost the chance to finish above one of the dopers and claim a genuine achievement? That was the test in front of us and we have failed. It wasn't even a difficult test, Swansea at home, a Swansea who came to defend and hit on the (one) break. How many years have we been waiting for Wenger to come up with an answer for that style of opposition play?

It's not churlish in the least to lament the passing of a real opportunity, instead having to settle for another fall at the final hurdle. Groundhog Day. Going on a run of wins might have meant something if it had culminated in some sort of achievement, but it's just more of the same when the end result is failure to step up compensated by qualification for another chance to throw it away to the likes of Monaco in the CL.

Wenger has underperformed very badly again. This is the sad fact. The Monaco game, the crunch match against the chavs, the chucking of second place. He can grab another secondary pot and try to wave that around as evidence of something but I don't think he'll be fooling many.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

You realise that we've now probably lost the chance of second spot, what with QPR's ridiculous capitulation? We've lost the chance to finish above one of the dopers and claim a genuine achievement? That was the test in front of us and we have failed. It wasn't even a difficult test, Swansea at home, a Swansea who came to defend and hit on the (one) break. How many years have we been waiting for Wenger to come up with an answer for that style of opposition play?

It's not churlish in the least to lament the passing of a real opportunity, instead having to settle for another fall at the final hurdle. Groundhog Day. Going on a run of wins might have meant something if it had culminated in some sort of achievement, but it's just more of the same when the end result is failure to step up compensated by qualification for another chance to throw it away to the likes of Monaco in the CL.

Wenger has underperformed very badly again. This is the sad fact. The Monaco game, the crunch match against the chavs, the chucking of second place. He can grab another secondary pot and try to wave that around as evidence of something but I don't think he'll be fooling many.

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There is no convincing the blind. There is a ceiling of achievement which Wenger cannot exceed, same applies to Letters. Let them revel in their mediocrity. This season Chelsea have been ugly, City woeful and Manure disgusting. we will most likely end up below all of them. There is never a good situation Wenger cannot find a way to Fk up.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. What difference does it make? The cup is lucky dip anyway and an indicator of precisely nothing. Us not securing second when it was in our hands is the real indicator. It's more of the same. When the chance to push on arrives Wenger blows it. It's a decade of watching this, regardless of the configuration of the team. One constant in this constant failure to step up to the top level. He's should go regardless because as we saw again yesterday he's fresh out of ideas and getting slapped around by Gary Monk FFS.

I said it after the Hull match, Wenger will be happy now that 4th is secure and he'll let the momentum slip. One week later and here we are. Anyone could have predicted it by glancing back over the last decade. We also predicted he'd make shitty subs - tick. The more attentive predicted we'd play to Bif's strengths but only after he'd been subbed off - tick.

Thanks for the memories but proper manager needed now. Not somebody who runs the place from top to bottom, a more limited role that concerns itself with sensible team selection, tactics, team talks and motivation, etc. The stuff Wenger can't do.

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I do see the Cup win as important but we could lose it for ridiculous reasons - it seemed to me the ref was doing his upmost in last season's final, denying us 4 or 5 pretty clear penalties. We got there in the end but had we not it wouldn't have entirely been our fault.

I don't really see a huge advantage in finishing 2nd rather than 4th. It would be nice and I'd be disappointed if we don't finish at least 3rd but Gary once posted he didn't care which order we lose in. We're in the top 4, we're miles away from Chelsea so finishing a distant 2nd isn't going to worry them a huge amount.
We've won 9 out of our last 10 league games, the one we drew was Chelsea who came for a draw and are experts in not losing when they decide not to.

Of course at some point we're going to lose one. And from what I understand we weren't awful last night, it was just a bit of a lacklustre performance which got better in the 2nd half and on another night we could have won, but we didn't. Every team gets nights like that. Some people seem to have had a posts like they've written in this thread typed up for ages and the minute we lose a game - and they've had to wait a while - pasted them here.

Wenger has his flaws, obviously. But the next bloke is just going to have different flaws, probably bigger ones. IMO there are very few better managers around. Mourinho is one, he'd have walked the league with this squad, but personally I wouldn't want him anywhere near the club.

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Originally Posted by Letters

I don't think I I've said once this season we've made progress, of if I have it's been conditional depending on how we do, so stop the WUMming. You are such a toddler sometimes.

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Not in so many words but you were saying that this unbeaten run is something we haven’t seen since the Invincible era as if it were an indicator of progress As if this season is somehow different to others we’ve seen before. As most warned, it’s a good run but it’s no indicator of progress and we’ve had plenty of seasons where we’ve gone on unbeaten runs or beaten the very best clubs in the world only to end up with a very disappointing league finish. It’s now impossible for us to top last season’s tally of 79 points and we should be aiming for 80+ for club with title ambitions.

Teams will lose but what really alarms me is the way we lost that one. We’ve seen it before during the Cesc era. Champaign football and looking beautiful but no end product. That’s the outcome of Wengerball when it finally starts to work because teams catch on, sit deep and just counter. We’ve struggled for a few years to dominate possession like we used to under the Cesc era. We dropped off a peg and struggled to get that fluidity in our play. But we shouldn’t aspire to reach a level that was never good enough in the first place. Back to that tippy tappy, narrow football with no end product and every manager has a play by play handbook on how to deal with it.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

It's not churlish in the least to lament the passing of a real opportunity, instead having to settle for another fall at the final hurdle. Groundhog Day. Going on a run of wins might have meant something if it had culminated in some sort of achievement, but it's just more of the same when the end result is failure to step up compensated by qualification for another chance to throw it away to the likes of Monaco in the CL.

Wenger has underperformed very badly again. This is the sad fact. The Monaco game, the crunch match against the chavs, the chucking of second place. He can grab another secondary pot and try to wave that around as evidence of something but I don't think he'll be fooling many.

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If the run culminates in the FA Cup and 3rd place then it won't have been for naught.
And 3rd is par, that's not underachievement. The two billionaires may well have bought the top two spots, we should be finishing 3rd.
The real underachievement is in the CL.

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I don't really see a huge advantage in finishing 2nd rather than 4th. It would be nice and I'd be disappointed if we don't finish at least 3rd but Gary once posted he didn't care which order we lose in. We're in the top 4, we're miles away from Chelsea so finishing a distant 2nd isn't going to worry them a huge amount.

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Letters, this isn't an actuarial table, it's the PL table - this ain't insurance, it's sport. There's a huge difference between 2nd and 4th in our case. 2nd means we're heading in the right direction, towards the prize. 4th means we're stuck in a rut looking up and something it appears we simply can't obtain. Certainly the chavs aren't going to be worried watching Swansea throw a blanket over us and then nick the points. Maureen will be delighted seeing that, no change there then, he'll tick us off his list and go back to studying the gypos and Utd.

But if we'd gone for it at home and taken 3 points off him and then pressed on to the end of the season with full points - now the fucker is paying attention.

Momentum.

We don't need a manager who tells us what he can't do. Can't beat the chavs and gypos because they have too much cash - well the gypos were there for the taking, scrub that excuse - what happened? Injuries? There are none, scrub that excuse. Tiredness? The fixture pile up? Doesn't apply, we already fucked the CL. Scrub that. Next excuse please...

Yeah, sure, ever team gets nights like that, once in a while. Our problem is we get them on a schedule, year after year. Every time it really matters we "get a game like that". Must be coincidence or bad luck. No way could it be the manager.

There's only one handbrake at Arsenal and that's Arsene himself.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

Not in so many words but you were saying that this unbeaten run is something we haven’t seen since the Invincible era as if it were an indicator of progress As if this season is somehow different to others we’ve seen before. As most warned, it’s a good run but it’s no indicator of progress and we’ve had plenty of seasons where we’ve gone on unbeaten runs or beaten the very best clubs in the world only to end up with a very disappointing league finish. It’s now impossible for us to top last season’s tally of 79 points and we should be aiming for 80+ for club with title ambitions.

Teams will lose but what really alarms me is the way we lost that one. We’ve seen it before during the Cesc era. Champaign football and looking beautiful but no end product. That’s the outcome of Wengerball when it finally starts to work because teams catch on, sit deep and just counter. We’ve struggled for a few years to dominate possession like we used to under the Cesc era. We dropped off a peg and struggled to get that fluidity in our play. But we shouldn’t aspire to reach a level that was never good enough in the first place. Back to that tippy tappy, narrow football with no end product and every manager has a play by play handbook on how to deal with it.

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Well, it's got us to the Cup Final and propelled us from 7th (I think) to 2nd. We've let that slip now but after 9 wins out of 10 I think it's a little churlish to complain too much.

Our points tally was always going to be hit by our awful start - 4 wins in 12 was nowhere near good enough and put me firmly in the "Wenger Out" camp. Since then there have been reasons for optimism though which has made me reconsider.
If we win the Cup and finish 3rd, or even 4th, then I guess you can't say that's progress since last season but over a longer period there has been progress. The new level of signings we're able to make have made a difference. We finally have a squad that I believe can compete. I'm not sure if that's the right point to change manager although the counter-argument is that if you don't think Wenger can push us on any further then we need to find someone who can. The question is who. As I've said, Mourinho would but I wouldn't want him near the place even though I think he'd win us the league.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

Letters, this isn't an actuarial table, it's the PL table - this ain't insurance, it's sport. There's a huge difference between 2nd and 4th in our case. 2nd means we're heading in the right direction, towards the prize. 4th means we're stuck in a rut looking up and something it appears we simply can't obtain. Certainly the chavs aren't going to be worried watching Swansea throw a blanket over us and then nick the points. Maureen will be delighted seeing that, no change there then, he'll tick us off his list and go back to studying the gypos and Utd.

But if we'd gone for it at home and taken 3 points off him and then pressed on to the end of the season with full points - now the fucker is paying attention.

Momentum.

We don't need a manager who tells us what he can't do. Can't beat the chavs and gypos because they have too much cash - well the gypos were there for the taking, scrub that excuse - what happened? Injuries? There are none, scrub that excuse. Tiredness? The fixture pile up? Doesn't apply, we already fucked the CL. Scrub that. Next excuse please...

Yeah, sure, ever team gets nights like that, once in a while. Our problem is we get them on a schedule, year after year. Every time it really matters we "get a game like that". Must be coincidence or bad luck. No way could it be the manager.

There's only one handbrake at Arsenal and that's Arsene himself.

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2nd would have been good, 4th would be disappointing. I could live with 3rd. And what does 3rd mean? It's better than last season but points wise we'll be worse off. I think we can all agree this season hasn't shown great progress but there have been some good signs too.

Had we won we'd have been 11 points behind Chelsea. I don't think Mourinho would have been looking at us too closely. We have had plenty of momentum during this run but sometimes there are fine lines in games and it goes the wrong way. Why did that game 'really matter' and the Hull game (in which we were outstanding) didn't? Your definition of a game which 'really matters' seems to be one in which we slip up and the games where we don't are ignored. Fact is all games matter and we've been winning more than our fair share of late. You predicted a win in the match thread, now you're claiming you had foresight on us slipping up. :shrug: