Arsenal 0-1 West Ham Match Reaction

[HCZ_Reborn]

As I said in the match thread I’m not really interested in holding the players accountable for this result, end of the day…we are set up to play in a way that leaves space behind us. I think this is a foolish thing to do when you are missing so many goalscorers. So with that in mind, I’m not going to do a player rating because I think the players have been set up to fail, by a management and ownership structure so risk adverse that ironically it’s taken a Hail Mary pass of a gamble by leaving us without a single striker and with our second choice on both wings.

Was speaking to an Arsenal supporting mate and I said to him before the Leicester game that we would at most get 4 points from the next three games. He said this was nonsense, but he couldn’t answer me where the goals were coming from. We didn’t lose today because of shambolic defending, we lost 1-0 not 3-2. Could we have done better for Bowen’s goal? Yeah definitely but apart from absolutely worldies you can do better for every goal you concede.

If we play like we did today, Forest is a guaranteed defeat. And by that I mean not that we played poorly (although we did) but the way we set up. Forests are the masters of the counter attack, and as Newcastle have shown to beat us you just need to stick 11 behind the ball and break competently. This was true before we lost all our attacking players

We need to play like a team with no striker, and an attacking midfielder who is clearly not fit…and that is conservatively. The title is over, we need to make our peace with that. With a fully fit side could we have caught Liverpool? Yes I think we could have. But we don’t so we will never know

[Letters]

Focusing on the Champions League

[Niall_Quinn]

PSV will be fist bumping and congratulating themselves on their CL semi-final place if they watched this game.

[Mac76]

PSV will be fist bumping and congratulating themselves on their CL semi-final place if they watched this game.

I don't think the CL will be taking up our time for much longer

But if we want to be in it next year we need to do much better than we did yesterday

I agree with all the Arteta criticism here, this is on him

[HCZ_Reborn]

In terms of the difference between a defeat and a draw it’s on him. But we do need to accept (whoever we blame for that being the case) that we simply do not have the capacity to score goals, at most with what we have available we can average a goal a game (which is what we have done).
I wasn’t expecting anything more than a draw yesterday, it’s always nice to hope that we’d get an early goal draw West Ham out and score a few more. But I knew when they scored it was game over.
We don’t have the type of player who can take a game by the scruff of the neck with individual brilliance, we can bemoan Arteta for discouraging individuality but we are where we are.
I said the other week (before the Leicester game) that we had to modify our expectations significantly and not so much on here but if you look at the reactions of the Twitter imbeciles, they have reacted like yesterday was a massive shock and not something that’s a reflection of where we are.

[Mac76]

we do need to accept (whoever we blame for that being the case) that we simply do not have the capacity to score goals,

Which is Arteta's fault because of his neglecting the attack in the last two windows, plus selling/loaning a whole bunch of attackers

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

Was speaking to an Arsenal supporting mate and I said to him before the Leicester game that we would at most get 4 points from the next three games. He said this was nonsense, but he couldn’t answer me where the goals were coming from. We didn’t lose today because of shambolic defending, we lost 1-0 not 3-2. Could we have done better for Bowen’s goal? Yeah definitely but apart from absolutely worldies you can do better for every goal you concede.

I disagree with the emboldened, though we probably had no chance of winning with the way we played and setup today. However there is no doubt that we lost today's game due to poor defending as we had 3 defenders in the box marking space rather than Bowen, who was having his 3rd opportunity to score a pretty basic goal.

It was foreseeable and definitely avoidable and IMO pretty embarrassing, from a team (West Ham) that has been truly poor in scoring early goals, as the stats show.

However, I have said a few times here that Arteta's strength is his system, and now that his system has gone to the dogs with the lack of a passable frontman, its affecting the whole team in many ways as everyone seems to be approaching the game differently and overthinking. No one played with instinct today and cowards passed the buck at every opportunity.

As for the CL, if Arteta can't find a passable frontman to make his system work, PSV will put us out of our misery probably as early as the first leg.

Again, this was all avoidable and I blame only one person for repeatedly tempting the gods despite all the gracious warnings they gave him till January. That is a fact, no matter how people try to revise it and blame others.

[HCZ_Reborn]

The thing is sometimes you concede even when you defend well. The problem isn’t the 1 we let in, it’s the 3 or 4 that we couldn’t score the other end.

As for failure to recruit attacking players that’s a collective failure from manager to scouting to the lawyers to the owners. Injuries ? Well I think that’s again a combination of over coaching and too many games (saw an article the other day about an exponential increase in the amount of hamstring injuries)

Injuries and recruitment failure are the two factors in play today. Nothing really else is relevant. Odegaard probably been carrying an injury for months, Nwaneri our only creative outlet.

There’s something to be said for sure for Arteta putting all his eggs in one basket in terms of tactics but ultimately you can’t polish a turd and the main issue at play was that we have no goalscorers currently

[HCZ_Reborn]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football...s/ckgzvj97vl2o

Lego haired cunt

Asked by the Irish woman whether having no attacking options meant that we had only two shots on target

“I don’t want to put it down to that”


Really? Twenty shots on goal and only two on target and you don’t want to put it down to you breaking the only attacking players we have


Silly, silly man

[Mac76]

TLDR, we weren't great, but what do you expect with multiple injuries, an under-resourced attack and referees who are determined to stop us from having a hope of winning the league

There were fans who left when MLS was sent off and tbh I nearly did the same, why should paying fans endorse this fucking bullshit?