Arsenal v Chelsea. 02/05/23. 20:00

[Mac76]

Ramsdale, Tierney, Gabriel, Holding, White, Jorginho, Partey, Trossard, Martinelli, Jesus, Nelson


I get why you'd play Nketiah on one level, but he's so shit i'd prefer Jesus still in the absence of Balogun (who btw we really should have recalled in January)

and Kiwior is a left-sided CB who was signed to alternate with Gabriel - Holding should be enough for Chelsea, but we don't want to play the untried Kiwior plus Holding

Trossard can do the Xhaka role and that allows us to play our best player, i.e. Martinelli

[HCZ_Reborn]

Ramsdale, Tierney, Gabriel, Holding, White, Jorginho, Partey, Trossard, Martinelli, Jesus, Nelson


I get why you'd play Nketiah on one level, but he's so shit i'd prefer Jesus still in the absence of Balogun (who btw we really should have recalled in January)

and Kiwior is a left-sided CB who was signed to alternate with Gabriel - Holding should be enough for Chelsea, but we don't want to play the untried Kiwior plus Holding

Trossard can do the Xhaka role and that allows us to play our best player, i.e. Martinelli

We have Newcastle on Sunday and Holding cannot, must not play that game…he will be absolutely rinsed

I don’t care that Kiwior is left footed, it’s another one of Arteta’s neuro diverse behaviours. Fine it makes sense to have a left footed back up for Gabriel but when Holding is such a complete and total detriment to how we are playing…we could change the system but I think it will affect us too much going forward….there’s no rule that says we can’t play two left footed centre halves.

Holding must never play for Arsenal again, not even in a league cup match against Our stadium will become an Aldi in five years FC.


I don’t really care if Jesus plays or not, I think a lot of them need to be punished for playing like a bunch of limp wristed pansies on Wednesday. Fulham lost to them, granted it was at home but they put up a fight (in fact they did so in both fixtures)

Should be consequences, Arteta can talk about the love he has for his players well “get a room fun boys”, now is the time to put the boot in. Not quixotic querulous team talks, not screaming like someone on day release from Broadmoor, avoiding basic eye contact etc. A calm teamtalk that tells the team that for the last however many games the overall standard has not been good enough.

[Mac76]

sure i just think Eddie is so bad although he does at least keep CBs busy and doesn't abandon his post like Jesus does, so fine

but I'll say again Holding is being scapegoated for not being Saliba and while some people think Kiwoir is some kind of magic bullet, we just don't know how good or not he is

surely the point of having both Partey and Jorg is to give extra cover to shore us up and make Holding less of an issue

that said, if we want to prepare for the Newcastle game, then even though this one is at home, I'm not sure i wouldn't prefer a back three, with both Holding and Kiwior as CBs and maybe ditch Partey on your grounds that he's been awful lately

[HCZ_Reborn]

sure i just think Eddie is so bad although he does at least keep CBs busy and doesn't abandon his post like Jesus does, so fine

but I'll say again Holding is being scapegoated for not being Saliba and while some people think Kiwoir is some kind of magic bullet, we just don't know how good or not he is

surely the point of having both Partey and Jorg is to give extra cover to shore us up and make Holding less of an issue

that said, if we want to prepare for the Newcastle game, then even though this one is at home, I'm not sure i wouldn't prefer a back three, with both Holding and Kiwior as CBs and maybe ditch Partey on your grounds that he's been awful lately

Unfortunately don’t have the luxury of benching Partey

When you have a system that means your centre backs push up high to win the ball but you have a centre back who doesn’t have the pace to do that, not only that but isn’t comfortable enough on the ball to play out of defence it’s a massive problem. On an individual basis he hasn’t made the one responsible for errors leading to goals. But his mere presence causes uncertainty because a system is based on every player adopting a certain role and it’s a role Holding simply can’t adopt.
I don’t think he’s the best centre back ever but neither is he the worst, if he was playing for any premier league mid table side like West Ham, Brentford, Brighton etc he’d be fine…he’s probably not massively worse than someone like Adam Webster or Ben Mee and actually if he was playing next to Saliba he’d be ok because Saliba can play out from the back but next to Gabriel who is also not great on the ball it creates problems.

Kiwior is an unknown quantity to me, he could be no better than Holding, he could even be worse but at the moment i think there’s a giant red flag that keeps being ignored

[Marc Overmars]

Forget Newcastle, we’re not going to win that. It’s not as cast iron as the Etihad was but it’s very difficult to see us rallying at this stage and beating a team currently as strong as them.

[HCZ_Reborn]

Forget Newcastle, we’re not going to win that. It’s not as cast iron as the Etihad was but it’s very difficult to see us rallying at this stage and beating a team currently as strong as them.

I think we are better than Newcastle and that’s borne out by our respective points totals. Our strongest team available…I think we’d beat them. At the Emirates they had to pub their way to a draw

[Marc Overmars]

Team to play Chelsea: Ramsdale; White, Kiwior, Gabriel, Zinchenko; Odegaard, Jorginho, Xhaka; Saka, Jesus, Trossard.

Subs: Turner, Tierney, Partey, Smith Rowe, Martinelli, Nketiah, Holding, Vieira, Nelson.

Saka still makes it in.

Kiwior, Jorginho and Trossard start though.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Harsh on Martinelli I feel.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Team to play Chelsea: Ramsdale; White, Kiwior, Gabriel, Zinchenko; Odegaard, Jorginho, Xhaka; Saka, Jesus, Trossard.

Subs: Turner, Tierney, Partey, Smith Rowe, Martinelli, Nketiah, Holding, Vieira, Nelson.

Saka still makes it in. : Kiwior, Jorginho and Trossard start though.

Chelsea: Kepa; Azpilicueta, Fofana, Silva, Chilwell; Kante, Fernandez, Kovacic, Madueke, Aubameyang, Sterling.
Subs: Mendy, Badiashile, Felix, Loftus-Cheek, Chalobah, Mudryk, Ziyech, Gallagher, Havert