:lol:
We've lost god knows how many games in a row to Man City, they haven't lost on a Wednesday in the league in god knows how long.
:rose:
Printable View
:lol:
We've lost god knows how many games in a row to Man City, they haven't lost on a Wednesday in the league in god knows how long.
:rose:
Could possibly be our greatest ever PL result if we won.
I don’t think there is a human being alive who can make a compelling case for us taking 3 points though.
Personally I’m expecting a very heavy loss but meh, you got to live in hope I guess.
Hope they send an emergency alert out if we are winning this one going in to injury time.
6-0 Haaland double hatter
Had we got the extra four points we should have got against West Ham and Southampton I’d be extremely nervous about this game. I was shitting a brick before the Liverpool game. But not nervous at all now, the expectations are minimal…if we lose and I think we will then the title although not mathematically over will be over (we would require City to lose one and draw one of their remaining fixtures whilst we would not be able to drop any more points)
I am half expecting a similar calamity to last season. But that said if Brentford can win at the Etihad so can we. To my mind the greatest Arsenal win in our premier league history was winning the title at Old Trafford (although more because of the symbolism…the game itself was actually a reasonably easy win they never looked like coming back into it when we went 1-0 up)
We can’t compare it to 26th May 1989 either because that was the last game of the season. We have five more to play after this.
I don’t think we will get hammered because no matter how poor we’ve been the last fortnight we haven’t lost a game. We’ve lost six games in all competition all season (City have lost that many albeit having played more games overall).
I’m going for 3-1 City
Agreed on all points.
I’m taking the “look up the result afterwards and tut” approach.
I play football on Wednesdays and a couple of weeks ago I was going to skip this week and watch, but not after the last few results. I will regret it if we win, but…we won’t.
Yeah i was thinking of watching in the pub in case it turned out to be a legendary win, but will probably just watch at home as the irony is even if we did win, City would probably win the PL anywayQuote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Saliba out of Man City and Chelsea games
It’s just as well we’ve done enough to secure 2nd or end of the season could get really messy
Arteta is to be blamed for playing Saliba in nothing fixture in Europa league
Holding cannot, must not play Wednesday. If he does I really have to question Arteta’s continuation as coach
We could get battered with or without Holding in there, this is all pretty academic to me now. Holding is obviously not good enough but I don’t think he’s even been that bad across the last 3 games. I think these are games we could have dropped points in even with Saliba there, simply because they’ve succumbed to the pressure.
This game is about putting up a fight and going out on our shield.
Hopefully with the CL next season, we make some smart signings that can slot in and not have the technical level of the team suffer.
Disagree, with Saliba in there we had a good chance of affecting a shut outQuote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
We kept 9 clean sheets away from home with Saliba at centre back and conceded four in the last two without him
I don’t enjoy targeting Holding, I do think he tries his best and the penalty against Liverpool aside (which was a marginal call) he hasn’t made glaring individual errors. But if I award him 3 or 4 in player ratings it’s because that’s his level. It’s not his fault, he simply lacks the pace, awareness or technical ability to not be a liability to us.
We had a chance to get rid of him to Newcastle a year or two back but chose not to because he’s considered a likeable squad member. Well I’m sorry but if you want a mascot buy a puppy, we shouldn’t have passengers in the team. And it comes back to Arteta lacking the strength to handle big personalities.
I think it’s more about the fact we have a finite amount of resources and needed to overhaul the squad in order of priority first. Holding is one of the lowest earners, happy to sit on the bench and ticks the homegrown quota box. It’s easy to see why he was kept.
It’s unfortunate that we’ve had to call on him at the most crucial stage of the season but shit happens. I can’t remember a time where we didn’t suffer key injuries during a run-in that would eventually cost us. Last year it was Tierney and Tomi that were out and we had to play Cedric and Tavares who were absolutely shit.
Where we dropped the ball was not having the foresight to buy a CB last summer when it was decided that White would be moved to RB.
I’m sure Arteta’s aim is to have a squad where the technical level doesn’t drop when a cog or two is missing. With the CL to offer I suspect that those gaps will be plugged this summer. This is the difference with City who seemingly can chop and change without needing to worry about a drop in quality because they all play the same way.
I'd go with your score prediction.Quote:
Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
Disagree that Saliba's absence was Arteta's fault for playing him in the EL game though. That's captain hindsight. Given the time he was out during and after the WC he was actually one of our 'fresher' players and throwing the EL is something that I think would have sent the wrong message out. It didn't work well in the end but the injuries that we sustained were pure bad luck.
I've thought for a couple of weeks that trying to rush Saliba back for the Etihad was a mistake - even if he had been in training a couple of weeks ago the player hasn't been great in his first couple of games after a period out and I never expected him to make it. Saiba is one player - and our problems in recent weeks have been as much a collective loss of team composure as much as anything else.
I'm with you that the league has gone. The priority on Wednesday is to avoid a morale-sapping drubbing. We need to avoid a hangover that lasts into what will be an even more challenging season next time in order to kick on from this one.
We signed a centre back in January and spent almost twenty million on doing so. This is a player who is 23 and has played top flight football and international football…we bought this player as a back up to Gabriel because they are left footed so either presumably they are lacking the requisite experience, is not rated by Arteta despite the money spent on him or is for some reason reticent on playing two players who are left footed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
We’ve spent near on 200 million on defenders since 2019, the lack of a better understudy than Holding is not due to limited resources
Quote:
Originally Posted by IBK
Respectfully disagree, I think playing Saliba in the Europa league was an unnecessary risk and I said at the time that I was not happy with first team players featuring in the Europa league so I’m not just being wise with hindsight.
I also respectfully disagree that we should not have done everything possible to play Saliba even if it meant getting him through this period with painkilling injections. At 21, a back injury is unlikely to be career ending…and if he broke down we’d be no worse off than we are now.
I've decided to start thinking that we have no chance and will loose tomorrow.
That way if we get any other result I will be over the moon! :haha:
Man Utd tactics should be used. Go for the draw and play a couple of hackjobs with the specific purpose of injuring Haaland and De Brownstuff. Worked very well for Utd over many seasons. As a bonus, bribe the ref, but that might be a hard get at the gypo camp.
Agree 100% with the first para but not the second, any player needs to be given the time they need to recover, we rushed Partey back a season or two ago and ended up losing him for longerQuote:
Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
I feel like this too....lets see though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
The only chance we’ve got is if Jesus, Saka and Martinelli have the game of their lives. I think we all accept that we’re going to concede goals here so the only way to combat that is with some goals of our own. We’ve got to make it difficult for them, otherwise they will just suffocate us again like they did in the second half at the Emirates when we just froze and stopped playing.
I was hoping to play football tonight to avoid this but it’s looking like we aren’t going to get the numbers and I’m going to sit through it. :(
There's no way out, you have to suffer with the rest of usQuote:
Originally Posted by Letters
:pal:
You're not that special Letters, we ain't doing this alone!Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
To be honest I would like to see Trossard in the mix too, he certainly would make City sweat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by KSE Comedy Club
Fair enough. We’ll all suffer this together
If we win tonight, I will donate £100 to the Good Law project and buy a copy of Jolyon Maugham’s terrible book
That’s how confident I am that we won’t
I’ve already told my mates who are ready to banter me I’ll buy them dinner if we win.Quote:
Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
It ain’t happening.
Good show old man!* ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
*Letters may not be old.
ShitQuote:
Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
Double shitQuote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
a good result would be a spirited performance and defeat by the odd goal, I suspect we're looking at something more like a 4-1 though, where our niaivities and inexperience are well and truly shown up
what's really annoying is the way people are talking it up like it matters, the title's already gone, I suppose if we won it might shake City up a tiny bit, but tbh we'd probably just drop points elsewhere and hand it to them anyway
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
Bollocks to that, a defeat is a defeat no matter how nicely it’s dressed up or how much effort the players put in. I don’t think we played at all badly when we last went to the Etihad in January but we still lost (so it wasn’t a good result even though I still maintain an unneeded cup run did not help us so wasn’t heart broken)
A good result is a win. Drawing with Southampton made nothing else acceptable. Just because we believe (and with good reason) that a win is unattainable it doesn’t change what the parameters of a good result are.
Tonight we will be disappointed and there’s simply no way of skirting around that.
I don’t say a win is unobtainable simply because of the last three games or because of missing Saliba
I say it’s unobtainable because our head coach has proven unable to adapt in circumstances where we have lost important players to injury.
Losing to Everton, drawing with Newcastle and Bournemouth was a result of failing to adapt to teams putting in the deep block and we couldn’t handle that in the absence of Jesus.
Losing at home to City and away to United was a failure of adapting without Thomas Partey.
I’m not saying we should have been expected to win all these games, I’m simply saying why we didn’t
There is also a psychological aspect. Players in the last few games have been making individual and collective errors that they haven’t at other points in the season…we can blame Salah’s goal on Xhaka or we can look at the space Liverpool players had in our box despite having so many back
There is Partey trying to be cute and being dispossessed by Declan Rice, there is Ramsdale kicking the ball straight out to Zinchenko rather than taking the easier option of playing it to Gabriel
That is intermixed with the lack of faith in our system by the players in the absence of Saliba and not pushing up as high as a unit
It still matters until the final whistle goes tonight and confirms an Arsenal defeat. Then it’s all pretty much in miracle territory.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
A win would be monumental. I’d still question our ability to take maximum points from the next few games that follow but there’s no doubt a win would offer up one final and very real chance to win the league.
Funnily enough I’m not even nervous about this game anymore. I would have been shitting bricks if we had taken at least 7 points from the last 3 because then we would have been on the brink of winning it. Now we’re just clinging on to a fading dream.
This is how I feel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
I'd be more nervous if it meant something but it doesn't really now. I mean...I guess if we won it would put us back in a decent position in terms of the title, but we all know that isn't going to happen.
I'm nervous only because of it potetially being humiliating, that's why i talk about needing a spirited performanceQuote:
Originally Posted by Letters
that's exactly my reasoning tooQuote:
Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
Given that it’s not an aggregate competition where we are defending a lead, how much we lose by is largely academic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
Will other fans take the piss more if we lose 5-0 than if we lose 1-0, yes but fucked if I care what other fans think.
If you’re 1-0 down during the game it’s different because there’s hope of getting back into it, but as a result?….couldn’t give a tuppeny fuck. I’ll respond to a 5-0 defeat the same way as a 1-0 defeat….it’s a defeat
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
Same
Nah - a heavy defeat has the potential to affect us next season - not just this. If we are to kick on, the players have to believe Citeh can be beaten. A narrow loss with a decent performance helps this.Quote:
Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn