Arsenal v Man City EPL Match Reaction

[Letters]

You're such a vagina sometimes. You have to appreciate a good quality game when you see it otherwise what's the point of watching football? We didn't play badly, we played well - as did Man City, and it was a great game to watch with some fantastic individual performances from both sides and great goals. Sanchez and Wilshere for us, and Aguero, Silva and Fernandinho for them. I was far more pissed off about the Leicester result or even the Crystal Palace performance (despite the win). Today wasn't bad even if we didn't get the win.

That

[Xhaka Can’t]

You said we generally play like relegation fodder. Not a selective quote, it was a complete sentence in your post. If you didn't mean today then I don't understand why you posted that in a match reaction thread to the game.

We didn't play poorly today. It was disappointing to get our noses in front and then drop points but overall I was encouraged by the performance. I was far more concerned with the performance at Leicester where we did look like a mid-table side, today was much better.

I'm unclear why people are blaming Wenger. It was a good game which could have gone either way, Ramsey finishes that chance when Wilshere put him through (difficult chance to be fair, but he's capable) then I reckon we'd have won it. Conversely City had chances to win it. The post was hit 3 times, once by us and twice by them. There are such fine lines in football, you can't generally blame one person for a result, unless you get a real thumping I guess.

The rest of the post talks of today. Save confusion and quote the whole post. You took the totality of what I said and twisted it by quoting one sentence.

[Letters]

The rest of the post talks of today. Save confusion and quote the whole post. You took the totality of what I said and twisted it by quoting one sentence.

Fine. I was just making the point that I thought today was a good performance and I don't understand (although I guess I should have got used to it by now) the negativity.

[Syn]

In an alternate universe where we are really going for the title, that game today could have been the decider. How often has 1 point made the difference? If we were away then I could understand the negative approach. But at home, against a weakened opponent, we dropped vital points today. We had the players to get those points, but not the manager.

We didn't set out to get a point. I thought we got the balance right. A bigger push and rather than us getting the winner, Man City would've been far more likely to pick us off on the counter. Thinking of the home game against Dortmund last year where the team seemed to get carried away.

[GP]

Gibbs

[Niall_Quinn]

Which brings me on to Ozil....he's the opposite of Sanchez. He hides, he doesn't work hard enough and showed zero quality in that game. He should be benched for the Champs League game. Cazorla should be starting ahead of him. He's been a flop. Ramsey had another off game. Wayward passing and wasn't working hard enough in the middle. He needs to rediscover his form. Missed his chance to score a goal. Welbeck.....besides the chance he missed, their isn't much else to say about his performance, which worries me. It's early days for him so he'll need some time to adapt but I wouldn't be surprised if Wenger took this opportunity to start Sanogo, I bloody hope not

Don't agree with any of that. Ozil is getting caned because he's not playing like Ronaldo, not because he's playing badly. People are judging by expectation rather than performances. He gave the ball away a few times, which is rare for him, but so did other players, particularly Ramsey. But he'll still provide at least a couple of incisive passes a game and they often make a difference. Playing him on the left is a criminal waste and that's down to the manager. Expecting him to cover back is just dumb, that's not his game. Stick him in the Silva role and you have twice the result. Welbeck was a good presence up front, much more mobile than Giroud, hassled their defenders, stole the ball back a few times and wasn't afraid to take responsibility. Was an inch away from a dream start. Media will be all over it like they were about his cross that was perfectly good but Sterling gave up on. They'll ignore the fact with his chance today he was sharp, got into the position and looked plenty composed to me given he didn't lash at it. When Wenger says he'll improve him it makes me shiver. Probably end up with another back to goal flickmeister.

[Niall_Quinn]

Gibbs

Which one?

[Niall_Quinn]

Fine. I was just making the point that I thought today was a good performance and I don't understand (although I guess I should have got used to it by now) the negativity.

It's simple enough. We had the tools to beat them today but the manager blunted them with his negative team selection, crappy tactics and laughable substitutions. These are the games we HAVE to win. Massive victory for the gypos today, they'll take an away point against a rival any day. Defeat for us. We had something to prove but all we proved is the manager will hide when the tough games arrive.

[Niall_Quinn]

We didn't set out to get a point. I thought we got the balance right. A bigger push and rather than us getting the winner, Man City would've been far more likely to pick us off on the counter. Thinking of the home game against Dortmund last year where the team seemed to get carried away.

They exploited the glaringly obvious weak point for the first goal. Wenger has seen this for months and done nothing about it. The for the second goal watch Monreal again. It's all very well blaming the guys who actually tried to prevent the goal, yes they failed but they tried. Reality is they were a man short, Monreal was as perplexed as usual, standing around watching. A defence is a unit, take out one of the parts and all the parts fail. Now we have lost Debuchy, I bet this turd gets a run of games on the right so he can carry on destroying cohesion in the defence. Wenger will see it and do nothing. He's even got him pegged as cover for CB. What sort of a joke is that?

Playing Flamini meant we set out not to get beaten. I can even accept that in some ways, after the hidings we got last year. But when he saw the gypos were light in midfield, were playing Silva behind the striker and particularly when he saw the first 15 mins he could have adapted to take advantage. But he didn't. He never does. It gets wildly frustrating.

End of the day, two home points dropped. Manager at fault.

[Letters]

It's simple enough. We had the tools to beat them today but the manager blunted them with his negative team selection, crappy tactics and laughable substitutions. These are the games we HAVE to win. Massive victory for the gypos today, they'll take an away point against a rival any day. Defeat for us. We had something to prove but all we proved is the manager will hide when the tough games arrive.

I've made the point above about fine lines. We could have won today, we could have lost. A draw was probably about right on the day.
If you get a thumping then you can think about where it all went wrong, with a game which could have gone either way and where one or two incidents could have gone a different way and produced a different result it doesn't make sense to over-analyze everything like the press do and declare so definitively that so-and-so got it wrong.

Good performance. OKish result but could have been better, could have been worse.