Shit. Back to our midtable dross.
No win in three.
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Shit. Back to our midtable dross.
No win in three.
Had a few wins against poor teams. Played some of the better ones and can’t win. Smells of mid table to me.
Must be one pretty big corner we’ve been turning.
Trash. Go away Arteta or sort it out.
Not great. Very sloppy start set the tone and never really got going. Eventually started building some momentum in the 2nd half, but that died with Willian coming on for Partey and Pepe moved off the left.
Cedric, Bellerin and Willian when he came on were awful
Ryan did well enough as did Holding and Gabriel but we just were nowhere near the quality of the first half against Wolves
so annoying as we could have gone above Spuds if we'd won
We're performing worse overall than we did under Emery so it's hard to really justify him staying.
How many times have we registered a nil for goals in a game this season? It's embarrassing.
I only saw the second half and thought we played ok actually.
We didn’t really do enough up front and I thought Villa defended well.
Probably deserved a point but oh well.
In terms of a performance, we deserved nothing and the less said about bringing on Willian the bettter., how can Arteta think he would be a better threat then Martinelli?
However, another refereeing decision changes the game. Villa should have played 60 minutes with 10 men. That was a clear red card on Saka for denying a goal scoring opportunity. In a week where the FA claimed Luiz was a red, how they can now claim that one today wasn’t is a joke.
16 points off the top
17 points clear of relegation
10th in the league.
That, by definition is mediocrity.
What's with Arteta's fetish for Willian? Does he really believe he can offer something or is it stubbornness to not admit he's signed a bum.
Probably bothQuote:
Originally Posted by Gooner23
Genuine quote from Walton on BT Sport. I’v read it several times and still cant work out what he is saying. The only reason lacazette leans on the goalkeeper is because his shirt is being pulled towards the keeper!Quote:
Walton: “From a subjective point of view, has Lacazette used that [shirt pull] as an opportunity to then lean on the goalkeeper? We all agree within football there is a certain amount of physical contact allowed.”
Plus, he is claiming contact is allowed yet spent all week justifying why Luiz was red card on Tuesday
Fuck football. Do drugs
:gp:Quote:
Originally Posted by LDG
Zammo :bow:
:haha:Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
that programme was one big lie - we never once got served sausage and mash for school dinners :sulk:Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
https://youtu.be/LICssgTjI-s
This is a prime example of how VAR should work. Referee makes a quick decision based on replay, the VAR doesnt try to protect them and right decision made. The Referee himself doesnt seem to care he made a mistake at first, just wants the right decision made.
Quick & easy and transparent.
absolutely, just shows what happens when you have officials that simply deliver the process instead of being egotistical Arsenal-hating showboatersQuote:
Originally Posted by Ollie the Optimist
Matt Ryan did alright. Solid. Just what you want from a backup keeper.
Referees should all be killed.
:gp:Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
Deliberately left it until today for my tuppence worth.
Felt deflated in Saturday, as I was expecting a win at Villa, given how we have been playing recently. What depressed me was not so much the mistake that led to their goal (these things happen - albeit seemingly too much with our players), but how straightforward Villa's game plan was. Dean Smith did not have any magic strategy. He just made sure that his players were absolutely on it from the get go, then really disciplined in defence once they had scored. Not rocket science. And despite us being almost at full strength attacking wise, we had no way through. We seemed always to go for the pass, and allow them to get back into shape when going forwards, and this lack of speed - in thought as well as execution - made us look quite blunt.
2 days later I'm a little more phlegmatic. We are (and always were) a work in progress, and I think that expectiations were raised a bit too high by our little unbeaten run. We are still IMO a long way away from the shambles before Xmas. We have a better shape and more options generally going forwards. I have a bit more faith in Arteta and Edu after our January business - Odegard and Matt Smith look like sensible acqisitions, and while Cedric is not good enough as a back up to Tierney - I am not going to kill them for not finding a better replacement. Aubameyang worries me - and in hindsight his contract renewal looks a bad deal but none of us really thought this at the time. The big black mark is Willian - both the deal and the manager's bewildering continued faith in him - but not much more to say about that.
I still expect us to finish top 10, and as long as we continue to show that there is a game plan on the pitch and can build on this then I will take that this season. However I need the manager and team to show that we really have moved on from the first half of the season - and the more games that go past without 3 points the more shaky our 'renaissance' seems.
:gp:Quote:
Originally Posted by IBK
The depressing thing for me on Saturday was that we went 1-0 down after just 2 minutes, I just knew we wouldn't get anything out of the game.
We have some good young players and we should get better. However, is Arteta the man to get the best out of them and turn our fortunes around? Personally, I just don't think so :(
* Why does Arteta continue with Luiz, Bellerin, Lacazette, and Willian?
* Why is Saliba still out on loan when he once again got MOTM for Nice at the weekend? (3-0 win).
* Guendouzi is also catching the eye of the Berlin and European press with his performances for Hertha.
Arteta has his obvious favorites, this is why I say "rookie out"!
* Why does Arteta continue with Luiz, Bellerin, Lacazette, and Willian?Quote:
Originally Posted by Chippy
well Laca has been our most prolific scorer i think and generally played quite well - and i speak as one of his big critics last season - so no mystery there but i agree on the others
The Saliba thing is a huge messup and clearly plays to Arteta being stubborn to a fault, a la his insistence on playing Willian, also his shutting out of Guendouzi who actually won us the game the last time we did win at home against Villa
Martinelli's the only person on the bench who could've changed that result but he got no minutes.
very stubborn
I was actually quite confident that we would get something out of the game - which was the stark difference from these games before Xmas. The difference was that our forward players were not quite on it as they had been. In fact, I felt that the whole team lacked some snap. Was this complacency; lack of confidence or something else? The subs were poor. Nothing Arteta could do about Partey I suppose, but Ceballos should have replaced him. Saka worked well for Cedric, but IMO Martinelli would have provided the zip we needed to cause problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chippy
I'm not going to hammer Arteta again just yet though. A point against Manure was fine, and Wolves wasn't his fault. In hindsight Saliba looks like a glaring mistake in any number of ways, but Guendouzi??
The one that I cannot understand is Willian. We don't even need him as a body on the pitch any more FFS. How many shit performances does the manager need to watch?:fury::fury:
It is worrying that Arteta seems to still default to 'experience', with Willian and Luiz getting more minutes than deserved. I thought he had learnt his lesson on this but it seems it was more a case of availability forcing his hand before Xmas, and Saka & Smith Rowe now being too good to drop.Quote:
Originally Posted by IBK
The challenge this summer will be another tight budget (European football now very unlikely) and still a number of positions that need filling / upgrading on.
In my view we still need;
- Back up keeper (maybe that will be Ryan)
- Back up left back
- Starting right back
- Starting striker
- Starting centre mid
- Back up / starting attacking mid
Even if you flog one or two like Bellerin and Lacazatte that's still a huge amount of work to be done.
Mike Dean is stepping down at the weekend due to death threats received after sendings off.Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
although your comment is tongue in cheek... there are some real loons out there who do believe that.
they're a nice set of fans at West Ham, aren't they :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bumble
Absolute Scumbags :censored:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
I was at the game in the 80's when some idiot let off a smoke bomb in the North Bank and later that afternoon killed one of our fans by stabbing him. (I am sure that was the same day, cant be 100% sure).
Poor boy :rose::pray:
A couple of years back I was in a Weatherspoons Surrey Docks a W Ham fan/prick came in wanting to fight all the Millwall fans, this being around 4 in the afternoon on a Saturday when they were away from home.
:gp:Quote:
Originally Posted by IBK
IBK, pretty much my thoughts too. We are still very much a work in progress. The reality of the situation is that we are very much a Top 10 side, but at the moment, no longer a Top 6 side.
Despite losing back to back games, some of the play has been very encouraging in both the Wolves and Villa games. We are looking more like a "team" now and seem to be slowly developing a style of play. Despite this, we do still lack quality pretty much all over the pitch and I think it's going to take a few more windows to address that. You could also argue that a more experienced high quality manager could address several of the shortcomings in this team, take for example Chelsea hiring Tuchel and him ironing out the weaknesses in Chelsea's team due to Lampard's lack of experience.
Our current league position is pretty much reflective of the level of this team, I do personally think we have drifted quality wise away from the traditional top 6 even though I feel we are good enough to give all of them a very competitive game with the exception of City.
Regarding the Europa league and a possible route into CL, honestly I don't think we are at the level to progress from a CL group assuming we make our way into it via winning the Europa League, to be honest I don't think we are good enough to win the Europa League given the teams left in it.
I wouldn't fancy us to beat any of these sides over 2 legs or a one-off in the Europa League, AC Milan, Spuds, Leicester, Ajax & Man United.
Europa League Ties:
ROUND OF 32
Whilst I agree that the state of refereeing in this country is the pits and they do genuinely seem to be very harsh on us, I don't think we should pin our lack of points on them. For instance we should have been 3 nil up at Wolves before the Luiz debacle.Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
We shouldn't have given away a soft goal at Villa early on, we created enough chances to get something out of the game.
We have been very wasteful in front of goal the past few games, that is more of an issue than the dodgy refereeing IMO.
Yep - 100% agree.Quote:
IBK, pretty much my thoughts too. We are still very much a work in progress. The reality of the situation is that we are very much a Top 10 side, but at the moment, no longer a Top 6 side.
Despite losing back to back games, some of the play has been very encouraging in both the Wolves and Villa games. We are looking more like a "team" now and seem to be slowly developing a style of play. Despite this, we do still lack quality pretty much all over the pitch and I think it's going to take a few more windows to address that. You could also argue that a more experienced high quality manager could address several of the shortcomings in this team, take for example Chelsea hiring Tuchel and him ironing out the weaknesses in Chelsea's team due to Lampard's lack of experience.
Our current league position is pretty much reflective of the level of this team, I do personally think we have drifted quality wise away from the traditional top 6 even though I feel we are good enough to give all of them a very competitive game with the exception of City.
Regarding the Europa league and a possible route into CL, honestly I don't think we are at the level to progress from a CL group assuming we make our way into it via winning the Europa League, to be honest I don't think we are good enough to win the Europa League given the teams left in it.
I wouldn't fancy us to beat any of these sides over 2 legs or a one-off in the Europa League, AC Milan, Spuds, Leicester, Ajax & Man United.
I suppose the only real question here is whether we persist with Arteta. The reality is that we should not be surprised about some of the mistakes he hs made - the principal one being his over-reliance on reputations and experience of some senior players, and alienation of younger ones. This is understandable to a degree for a manager who himself lacks experience and is relying on that of his players to help manage his team on the picth and the training ground. What is less so is his stubborn persistence with the likes of Willian when the overwhelming evidence is that he is simply not up to it and his signing was a huge mistake.
I always advocated keeping the manager at least to the end of the season. I still think that we should aim to persevere with Arteta - the Chelsea approach would IMO be a disaster for a club that has been through too much instability already, and we need to take the long view. Whether by accident or design, we are now a team with a far better profile when trying to build a platform for future sucess - even more so if Saliba can be re-integrated successfully, and unlike others I think that we are good to go with a half decent striker (remember we have Martinelli already); a MF (Odegard?) and a back up left back signed in the Summer.
Our January business was much more sensible than some of the previous transfer decisions under this regime, and has made me more confident going forwards.
But...we are now in another crucial stage of the season. IMO our recent revival will count for nothing if we go into another period where we drop more points than we gain, and our seeming improvement on the pitch must now be translated into fewer results than we have seen over the past week. European football seems unlikely next season, but we need to finish close to achieving this for even sesnible fans to feel confident about a future under Arteta.
Yep. I'd feel more comfortable focussing on ourselves rather than outside factors that we can't change.Quote:
Originally Posted by selassie
well i don't agree we can't change it - there's enough clear evidence now for the club's lawyers tp put together a case to clearly show the FA that we get rough treatment and they need to instruct refs to treat us like any other team - preferably spuds who get away with murder.Quote:
Originally Posted by IBK
I don’t see what’s going to change though. We’ll win a few, draw a few, lose a few. It’s the very definition of a mid table side, it’s the same pattern of form we’ve had for 2 years now. Just meandering along with no relevance to the teams we once considered our rivals.Quote:
Originally Posted by IBK
At the end of last season if someone said we’d be past halfway through this and 9th or 10th (where even are we? I can’t bring myself to look at the table these days) and already lost 10 games we would have considered that a failure. If Arteta doesn’t get us into Europe it would be the first Arsenal team in 25 years to not qualify for Europe...but it would be ok if we showed improvement on the pitch? Without a correlation with results and the league table, what even is improvement?
Of course he should be judged at the end of the season but I don’t like this idea that this season can be written off as more transition. Last season fair enough but this was the year we spoke about last season, he’s brought in his own players, he’s had time to work with the squad but nothing has really changed so far...now you want to kick the can further down the road?
What kind of crazy idea is that? :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
:coffee:
It’s the least a rookie deserves in fairness.
Not an old man past his best. :coffee:
You judge any game at its end.
You judge any season at its end.
:)
I think that this is too simplistic a view. Firstly, it is not just about results when you are trying to re-build a team. It's about many things. Identity; age profile of players; style of play; communication; continuity and a framework for both playing and recruitmment to name just a few. I think that the best example of this in recent times is Klopp's Liverpool team. Klopp inheroted a team; instilled a styleof play and a clear approach to how he wanted to play the game; identified which players fitted this style; communicated his ideas effectively and instiulled belief in them and then together with the executive of the club embarked on process of recruitment and player sales that was incredibly effective because he knew precisely what was needed to get to wherehe wanted to go.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
Yes - Liverpool never sunk to where we currently are under Klopp, but at the same time they never had to deal with the chronic instability that we have suffered since Wenger - the inevitable outcome of the end of that all-encompassing regime; the churn at exectutive level; the disastrous appoitnment of Sanheli; the sheer rudderlessness of our recruitment policy and the muddled thinking that left us as a club still wedded to the idea of top 4 football as a 'quick fix' while unable to compete with clubs able simply to buy sucess.
I think it is againstthis background that we need to judge where we have been for the past couple of years and where we need to get to. Emery was always a transition manager. he was appointed IMO with a view to trying to win the Eurpoa League and thereby get into the CL (and in fairness he almost did so). He also nearly achieved top 4 in his first season. But his lack of bottle; clear thinking and communication then broke us and he never got to grips with the mentality of the players. Arteta inherited a complete mess - and noone expected more than he delievered last season.
So we are really talking about this season and this season alone when it comes to evaluating Arteta so far. Pre Xmas he was a disaster, but even then it difficult to argue that he did not do something to address the woeful lack of defensive shape that was Emery's legacy. Since Xmas there have been some green shoots offensively too. There have been changes. It's taken Arteta more time to get there perhaps than a more experienced manager, and there have been some obvious mis-steps but if this is part of a general and sustained improvement that properly steadies us for a push to better things - yes I will take kicking the can down the road.
So for me its not just a question of looking at league position and saying nothing has changed for 2 years. Its a question of seeing this in context, properly considering the realistic alternatives and looking at the stability of the club - without which we will unlimately achieve nothing.
Whether Arteta really has turned a corner remains to be seen...
Fair enough. Totally understand the need for patience and to examine the context of what’s been going on. My position has always tended to ebb and flow with results but I feel like with Arteta it is the smallest of green shoots and even then I’m struggling to truly believe these shoots exist.
I feel like we’ve been in the wilderness for long enough now that another year doesn’t really matter anyway. We’ve spent like we’re still a CL club but the reality is we’re looking at 5 seasons now without CL football. So that is one mess that needs clearing up and I guess that’s underway by offloading the expensive deadwood.
I’ve always been a glass half empty guy and I guess it’s been difficult accepting such a drop off in standards.