Match Reaction Vs Newcastle away

[Seaman's Ponytail]

Chez - 10 - Did everything asked of him (which admittedly was fuck all) Great to see our keeper dominating his area aerially
Gibbs - 6 - Defensively sound but seemed to lack the skill or maybe confidence to play a cutting ball going forward. Had many opportunities to thread the ball thru to RVP but opted to go back
Kos - 9 - Excellent performance, dominated strikers more physically imposing than him
Verm - 8 - Rock solid though did seem to play a little deep at times
Sagna - 7 - Solid if unspectacular, didn;t add a lot going forward and final ball was average
Song - 8 - Another solid performance, probably only a 7 but gets an extra point for stamping on that cunt Barton
Ramsay - 5 - Gave too much ball away and looked like he needs to lose 5kgs at least
Arshavin - 6 - One great ball to RVP but faded out of the game too much
Rosicky - 7 - Surprising looked ok, needs to be more direct though
Gervy - 4 - Looked clueless "(as demonstrated by the Barton incident) and final ball was truely woeful, needs to improve
RVP - 5 - Gave ball away and didn't get involved enough (sometimes not his fault admittedly, lack of service was appalling)

[Olivier's xmas twist]

we need to get all the laughs we can get if Arsenal keep playing like that.

[Olivier's xmas twist]

Have to Kos looks good when he has a world class CB next to him, he seemed to know his job today. Wenger has to find that Balance so w get it right, why does it feel that we be ok defensively but shite offensively.

[fakeyank]

Mate 1st if i was rude to you in previous posts then i aoplogise. I agree with you and understand the frustration. I Rather we played in the Cl because at least this team would not feel like losers all the waythrough the season. We don't need the players to get a bigger hangover for most of this season.

Problem with suppoters is that they need to do the talking with their feet and people don't want to do that, its the only way AW and his cunts will listen.

Why don't some posters like ACH ,etc give in their season ticket if they feel strongly about the situation.

There is a big problem the team looked alwful today, nobody seem to know what was going on, you could see the fabregas and Nasri thing is affecting them big time.

This is where it should have been sorted out big time, we don't even have a captain atm. IMO the manager does not look healthy and if he don't wantch it he could go the same way as Gerard Houeilie.

My bad if I sounded rude too. I was pissed off after the result. However I still do think we need a drastic jolt i.e. getting out of CL or out of top 4 for the board n manager to get out of the slumber they are in now! I'm just sick of seeing the same thing happening season after season.. I want my club to be a football club, not a business club!

[fakeyank]

Have to Kos looks good when he has a world class CB next to him, he seemed to know his job today. Wenger has to find that Balance so w get it right, why does it feel that we be ok defensively but shite offensively.

It was just one game where Newcastle really didnt push us. I will be more at peace when I see us defending one goal leads. You know what, we'll find out soon enough against Pool, Manure and Udinese! I still do not think we defend well as a unit and we are one injury away from having headless chickens at the back. I do think Schxsdy is a great presence at the back and is commanding!

[Power n Glory]

Missed the last 30 minutes of the game but I'm not surprised about the draw. Gervinho was dangerous and we seemed to be attacking the flanks more than passing around the edge of the box. Arshavin seemed okay as well but the final ball and finishing was missing from both players. Gervinho's lack of shooting worries me. He had loads of chances to shoot but went for the pass. That has to change.

Good to see us looking more dangerous on the flanks, but now we have a problem down the middle. Ramsey was Mia but what did we expect! He's just a kid. Wenger might as well go back to 442. If the creativity isn't coming from the middle and we no longer rely on Cesc conducting play, we might as well move on from 433.

[Olivier's xmas twist]

Missed the last 30 minutes of the game but I'm not surprised about the draw. Gervinho was dangerous and we seemed to be attacking the flanks more than passing around the edge of the box. Arshavin seemed okay as well but the final ball and finishing was missing from both players. Gervinho's lack of shooting worries me. He had loads of chances to shoot but went for the pass. That has to change.

Good to see us looking more dangerous on the flanks, but now we have a problem down the middle. Ramsey was Mia but what did we expect! He's just a kid. Wenger might as well go back to 442. If the creativity isn't coming from the middle and we no longer rely on Cesc conducting play, we might as well move on from 433.

You have to wonder why we were playing balls down the middle when we had all that pace. How gould was Theo when he came on? can see him being a striker in the next few games as Chmackh was not even brought on, could he be out the door too.

[Darth Vela]

Missed the last 30 minutes of the game but I'm not surprised about the draw. Gervinho was dangerous and we seemed to be attacking the flanks more than passing around the edge of the box. Arshavin seemed okay as well but the final ball and finishing was missing from both players. Gervinho's lack of shooting worries me. He had loads of chances to shoot but went for the pass. That has to change.

Good to see us looking more dangerous on the flanks, but now we have a problem down the middle. Ramsey was Mia but what did we expect! He's just a kid. Wenger might as well go back to 442. If the creativity isn't coming from the middle and we no longer rely on Cesc conducting play, we might as well move on from 433.

That was pretty much what I was thinking, especially about 4-4-2, I think it kinda bodes well for future matches as when we do have that 'little bit of sharpness in the final third' I think we'll be able to break teams down a little more easy without it being congested in the middle

I reckon some of it is down to the legacy of last season, as you suggested a few weeks back, we know the immense pressure that is being piled on and with the fans getting on the back of the manager and the team in pretty much every game we play it must be some form of hindrance.

[Boss]

4-4-2 isn't a formation that's successful anymore as everyone uses 4-3-3.

Do it and we'll be outnumbered in CM, that you can cope with if the players are good enough and you're playing in Spain, in England there's no chance.

[Power n Glory]

That was pretty much what I was thinking, especially about 4-4-2, I think it kinda bodes well for future matches as when we do have that 'little bit of sharpness in the final third' I think we'll be able to break teams down a little more easy without it being congested in the middle

I reckon some of it is down to the legacy of last season, as you suggested a few weeks back, we know the immense pressure that is being piled on and with the fans getting on the back of the manager and the team in pretty much every game we play it must be some form of hindrance.

It makes sense to move back to 4-4-2 now. Our two most creative players are wingers and number 10 type strikers like RVP and Arshavin. I saw a load of chances created from the flanks but we had nobody running into the box to follow up and that's what Cesc was good at doing, arriving late in the box. It may take some time for Ramsey or Wilshere to get that down but to be honest, we don't have the time to see they get it right. Just play the strongest formation against the right opposition. I can understand playing 4-3-3 against stronger teams, but not against every team.

For me, I'd play Arshavin with RVP as a pair with Gervinho and Theo on the flanks. We have a load of options but I doubt it will happen. It took Wenger a very long time to switch us from 4-2-2 to 4-3-3 and even when he did it, we were playing Cesc too high up the field with Denilson and Song holding behind him. Tactically, he's slow and it takes him a very long time to try something different.