It's disappointing since it feels like an opportunity wasted. Credit to West Brom for getting a deserved point, they worked hard and look like a dangerous counter-attacking team. But we kind of played into their hands with an odd team selection. It's all well and good blaming the ref but we made a hard job more difficult for ourselves IMO.

I have no idea what Wenger is thinking with Wilshere and Ramsey on the wings. If you're going to play a CM on the wing make sure it's a dynamic midfielder that knows how to adapt his game to the position, which Wilshere and Ramsey clearly don't. I've said it before, we're wasting Ozil like that because there aren't any runs or movement behind the opponent's defence or in threatening areas.

Another thing I noticed was that Arteta was our deepest midfielder and Flamini played like a box-to-box midfielder. But Arteta was nowhere near as effective as Flamini has been in protecting the back four, and Flamini is not Ramsey. I would have thought the back four would be safer with both of them in CM but West Brom got a lot of joy against us on the counter. I have to say the Flamini-Ramsey CM looks more sound defensively as well as in attack.

Quote Originally Posted by Dennis Bendtner View Post
The challenge on Wilshere was a penalty wasn't it? I thought the defender went through him.

MS is probably right about us needing speed and directness today. Wenger did say after the Napoli game he picked Flamini with Arteta to shut Hamsik down. Today perhaps didn't require that even though it looks like a good set-up to play away. Then again West Brom are quite good going forward and the narrow midfield annihilated Napoli - with Rosicky the one player who didn't play that well - so continuity seemed fair enough.

Definite penalty. From the first camera angle it looks like the defender might have got the ball first, but the second angle shows he clearly went through Jack to get to the ball. The ref had a perfect view of it too.