Match Reaction v Scrotes

[Japan Shaking All Over]

GHELkinson offered nothing going forward but he was pretty solid generally, I think he needed to give Gervais an option though because that mongo is always going to run himself out of play.

I liked how Poldi and Gibbs linked up in the first half, very Pires/Cole like, more of that please.

Just need to sharpen up up front, but making ourselves hard to beat comes first, the rest should follow hopefully.

Good post. ..GHELkinson is solid enough, needs to be told what to do and cant really think for himself very well. . .doesnt seem to be crossing the ball in as much as this time last year.

Kos needs to come in for Merts, the big German hasnt done badly but for such a big fella he is a bit lightweight.

Things up front just need a little patience. . .I thought we should have played Giourd against MONgerland, he should be starting from now on in my opinion, with Pods out left. Gervs? I fear for this guy, and I am one of his few fans but he is showing himself to be far too limited, squares off with a defender and more often than not run it over the by line. If we dont bring in another than Ox is the man to play out wide with Theo and Gerv fighting for the bench.

[Cripps_orig]

Merts has been excellent

Keep the defence as it is.

[Xhaka Can’t]

He was asked about the crowd's reaction to Ramsey and he basically said there's nothing he can do about it so he doesn't care.

A typical show of class from Pubelice.

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[Joker]

Reckon Scrote could struggle this season. The Premier League have put in place regulations concerning pitch size, so they no longer can make the pitch extremely narrow by bringing in the touchlines. You could see it's effect somewhat in the way they found it much harder to close us down.

[GP]

Hope so. Hope they get relegated, go bust and the whole town is swallowed up by a massive sinkhole.

[jelgoon]

I agree with you. We are not a million miles away from being a successful team that is also exciting to watch. The last thing we need now is to abandon what remains of our stylish football and revert to a George Graham type outfit ( notwithstanding that he was a great manager in terms of success). This all comes down to the board as we know and their transfer policy. If Kroenke was prepared to say AS A RULEthat we will not sell any of our star players to English clubs ( whatever the price) then that would be a start.Obviously it wont happen cos the board dont give a shit about the fans - in fact they only tolerate us at all because we pay their huge dividend cheques.

i have to disagree....we create the chances, we just cannot produce in the final third.

You only have to look at the premium of players like Messi, Ronaldo etc as they are guys who can be the difference.

Henry used to do that for us all the time as a recent example, as did RVP last season.

We need to give Giroud a chance, as he was very good today in all aspects except in the final third. However it is hard to be placid when we are screaming out for a goal.

Carzola was immense and looks like a proper player, next to Wilshire and Podolski that will be exiting to see.

Where i agree with you is the quality of some of out players...eg Gervhinio is just pants, yet Wenger persists with him.

The big big problem we have is who can we bring in who can replace 30 league goals...anyone who can do that potentially is going to cost a shit load more than the £25m or whatever it was we got for RVP.

We are two world class signings away from competing, DM and striker, i hope Wenger knows that, but tbf i dont know who is left on the market of that calibre and for a reasonable price.

[Letters]

There were more positives than negatives and that should be very encouraging for a team with new players in key positions : Jerkinson looked good and will be a ready-made replacement for Sagna by the end of the season . Gibbs and Metersacker have also improved their game which made the defense sound with Verminator being the beast as usual .
Attacking-wise there was some good combinations but we were let down in the final third . Podolski was good on the left and will certainly score some goals . Giroud was good and worked hard . He remind us of Ade when he joined the team . With his strong physic he tried to be everywhere helping the defense and midfield . Players to blame are :
1) Gervinho , a really headless chicken .Gifted with fantastic dribbling ability he still doesn't know how to use it and how to link up with is teammates to make think happen . He doesn't understand the body language of other players : definitely a non-starter .
2) Diaby , although he ha s improved and showed some maturity in his game , he still revert to " old Diaby " at time and give the ball away . He lacks some defensive instinct to close players down . He rather look like a bodyguard protecting the opposite players : A defensive midfielder needed to teach him what to do .
A part from that decent result against a team full of wresllers .

Far too early to be pushing the panic button yet. The defence is looking better, the lack of goals is a worry but we didn't score in the first 2 games last season and ended up scoring more than anyone bar the top 2. That was in no small part down to RvP of course but we've bought 2 decent strikers who will get goals but need to find their feet in the PL. I just hope they do it sooner rather than later.

[IBK]

This. Seems to me that there is a great deal of analysing going on to suit people's beef with the club about selling RVP and Song, and relatively little common sense. Attacking wise our team has been disrupted more this season than last and IMO its naive to expect the new boys - new to the league as well as the team and each other - to be gelling and understanding each other properly yet. It takes a great deal of skill and understanding to break down a settled, defensively minded team like Stoke, at home, with no desire whatsoever to do more than prevent us from scoring. We would have struggled to score with RVP and Song. As far as I recall both players were part of our shambles of a team at the outset of last season (rvp may have been injured but if he was that tells its own story anyway). They developed an understanding as the season progressed, but there is no reason whatsoever to think that the players we have won't do so this season.

Are we in transition again? Yes. Is that frustrating? Yes. But it is what it is and writing off our players after 2 games is childish. Torres is looking the part finally, but how long has he had to adapt to the Chavs' game? It is simply not fair to be concluding that Podolski and Giroud are not good enough based on what we have seen so far.

I would agree that we could use another flair player to make the difference in attack - mostly because AW has always (at least recently) tended to rely on individual skill to bring him goals. But that's not the same as concluding that what we have seen so far is garbage. It's been frustrating not to make more use of our ball domination in both games, but I am seeing a pretty good platform for improvement. If people were expecting this team to match Citeh and the Chavs out of the blocks that was an unrealistic expectation, and I'm not surprised they have been disappointed.

[AKBapologist]

Conversely, too much is made of this "they need more time to gel" bollocks. Chamakh arrived and scored on his debut, however poorly he's been since, he did a job for us during the first few months of his arrival. RVP, Kawaga, Hazard, Mitchu - new signings from other teams, all have scored so it's a little trite to give ourselves a free pass on this considering how competitive (I believe) this season, and the top 4 place, will be.

RVP should never have been sold tbh, having him run down his contract whilst the other strikers gel would have been less of a gamble and would have saved a lot of face - which to be honest, is all we're really fighting for this season.

[Marc Overmars]

Conversely, too much is made of this "they need more time to gel" bollocks. Chamakh arrived and scored on his debut, however poorly he's been since, he did a job for us during the first few months of his arrival. RVP, Kawaga, Hazard, Mitchu - new signings from other teams, all have scored so it's a little trite to give ourselves a free pass on this considering how competitive (I believe) this season, and the top 4 place, will be.

Pretty much.

Although we've essentially bought a new hub to our attack and I do get what Wenget said yesterday about them needing a bit of time to find an understanding. They need to sharpen up quickly though with the fixtures we've got coming up.