Other thoughts on reflection. Apologies for the tl;dr.
- I certainly agree with Atkinson being awful. They got away with perpetual fouling and roughhouse tactics with no punishment which meant they had license to keep on doing it. It was really quite annoying and the one where Ozil gets hacked from behind only be told by Atkinson to get up was particularly egregious.
- Even though Welbeck had a shocker up top and bringing on Giroud was the correct move, personally I think he should have stayed on the pitch but gone out wide with Ramsey (who was terrible) coming off.
- Speaking of Ramsey, I'm not sure playing him out wide against teams set out to defend is the correct move. It'd worked against Liverpool who only had three at the back but against a team like Reading it seems like a poor move. He doesn't have the pace nor natural flair to get behind the Fullback.
- Speaking of Welbeck, he really needs to work on his centre forward play. His last two outings in that position have been very poor (I know he scored against Utd but apart from that he was bad). At the moment it's not even a contest between him and Giroud and if we want to challenge next year we need two top quality viable options in that position.
- Starting both Debauchy and Gibbs was clearly a wrong move. Only one of them (probably Gibbs) should have started with the other on the bench as first defensive sub. I don't think Wenger planned on Debauchy playing 120 mins but BFG's injury forced his hand. He looked spent by the end and that nearly cost us.
- Gabriel needs to bulk up and be more confident in his passing.
- Coquelin had a decent game but his passing looks ropey as fuck. For all the shit Arteta gets (most of it rightfully) he has a fantastic ability to start attacks with quality passing. There were too many times yesterday where Coquelin got the ball and had no clue what to do with it, albeit in the face of some excellent Reading pressure.
- The more I reflect on it the more angry I get with Szechny. You can bet that a top keeper like Lloris or De Gea would have save that and we would have scrapped to a 1 - 0 win instead of going through the pain of extra time. Just fuck off.
- If you haven't heard Steve Clarke's post match interview have a listen to it. I was all aboard the "applauding the plucky underdogs and wishing them well" train but after that ....... Complete tosser who implies that the ref was the difference. Fuck off, we had the clearest chances out of the game and had Gabriel and Rambo had their shooting boots on we would have ended it without the need of extra time.
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Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico
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