You do seem to have turned into a YouTube streamer, massively overreacting to every goal or set back.Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
You were calling for Arteta’s head or declaring “season over” at 1-0 down in the week.
The main thing this year is injuries. Last year we were pretty lucky, this year we’ve been quite unlucky.
Obviously we need a striker but at full strength there are more goals in this team than we are getting.
TBH I'm struggling to think of enjoyable moments in this season. I mean besides the double over the Spuds (who are generally doing poorly) there hasn't really been any other highpoints seeing as we've failed to beat all our other rivals.
Oh and I'm not counting the Man U win because it was a bit pathetic to only be able to beat a struggling Man U with a party trick at home...and as predicted our inadequacies did come back to bite us in the ass in our FA cup fixture also at home.
Last edited by 21_GOONER_SALUTE; 19-01-2025 at 10:30 AM.
I think the utterly joyless way the ref deestroyed the Citeh away game was hard to recover from, that was a travesty, not just for us but the game itself, millions worldwide had their viewing experience ruined by one egotistical idiot in the middle - if the FA really cared about their 'product' they'd clamp down on that crap if for no other reason
I can’t think of a single season where we’ve had so many debatable calls go against us. What alarms me about PGMOL is that they can’t not be aware that even if they feel confident that they have all the decisions correct, the perception that has been created through inconsistency. At its most generous, you can say the Havertz decision last night showed different things from different angle and the more I look the less conclusive it is, and yet they were content in less than ten seconds not to award the goal. Even with the Gordon goal last season you could argue that they took their time and even though their was legitimate questions over whether the ball had gone out of play or whether there’d been a foul on Gabriel…they wanted to find a reason to give the goal and although the goal was against us, I’d rather officials find reasons to give the goal than find reasons not to.
The only time I’ve known VAR really agonise over a decision was whether to award Martinelli’s goal against Southampton, and I won’t lie it felt like they were looking for any reason not to give it, it was a borderline offside call but one that getting the lines out should have resolved quickly.
Where we as a club have gone wrong is to put ourselves in a situation where these calls operate on fine margins and they shouldn’t. We should have been in a situation where we were comfortably ahead and the chalking off of the goal wouldn’t have mattered…a bit like a few years ago where Jesus goal got scrubbed against Bournemouth (very tight call but probably about right, but we were already 3-0 to the good so no one cared).
There have been passages where we have played like we could play every match. Forward passes, higher tempo, solid defending, stand-up keeper performances, we've had some moments. But they are transient. The big problem right now is the consistency, we just can't achieve it. And that's an old story that was re-written for the first time in a couple of decades last season. This season though, back to the same old. That consistency is a mindset, something I have been talking about for years. Everyone probably laughs when I complain about white shirts with white numbers, it seems irrelevant. But every small piece of excellence combined is what makes the excellent final product. Allow shit into the mix in any way and you can't have that feeling and that confidence and that presence like the Barca or Utd or Liverpool and, certainly, us under Wenger at his height experiences before they even step on the pitch. And the opposition experiences it too, and half of them are defeated before a ball is kicked. Excellence doesn't have a single chink in the armour. This club needs to learn how to get every, tiny, single instance of excellence right and not let a single one slip. We can see what city are up to this season, same team, same operation, but Pep has dropped a notch. It matters.
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Though the CL campaign hasn't been that bad with the win over Sporting being the highlight.....but hadn't Amorim resigned by then?
The Sporting Lisbon game is the only game I can think of where I thought we played well for 90 minutes. It helped that we had probably for one of the few times this season our strongest team starting. We didn’t do anything extraordinary but we clicked.
Squad depth is what solves that. We don't have any.
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He's right though, this season has sucked the life out of me compared to the last two.
Our football makes my eyes bleed, it's awful to watch.
You cannot blame injuries either, we started the season 3 players short of a full squad (which is a disgrace) and because of Arteta's incessant tinkering when we lose one player has been the root cause of more injuries happening.
Where is the backup to Saka who we all said will get injured if he keeps playing all the time?
Where is the top striker replacement for Eddie, Auba, etc?
Where is the replacement for Xhaka?
Where is the backup for Odegaard?
What about Partey?
Instead it's square pegs in round holes - we've been there before and that was a disaster too.
Why does he keep playing Partey at RB when it doesn't work? It didn't last season either when he tried him there so why do it all again.
6 games he has played him there and we have won once and drawn 5
The reason - because we lose control of the midfield without Partey there and Merino is fucking tragic and cannot hold the midfield in the same way.
Rice would be the obvious choice to playing a holding role at that point but he's being used as an attacking midfielder - without the attacking part.
You think there are more goals?? Where from??
Every time one of our players shoot, they either kick it over the bar or hit it straight at a defender - EVERY TIME!!!
It's actually fucking insane the number of times this has happened this season.
Too many to suggest we are unlucky, more to suggest it's something we are doing wrong.
Havertz looks like it's his first professional season, Martinelli looks out of ideas and Trossard has been pretty shit since he had a strop for not being started in games.
Saka is our only decent creative attacker and without him the rest are a total shambles.
Last edited by KSE Comedy Club; 20-01-2025 at 09:20 AM.
I don’t think you can dismiss injuries, how many times this season have we been able to put out our strongest team. I know we live in a world of binary consideration but the fact is you can both excoriate Arteta for the choices he has made both in the transfer market and tactically. And at the same time understand that with constant injuries (and yes he takes responsibility for that as well) and the fact that officials have been atrocious with us hasn’t helped either. It’s the perfect storm
I’ve wanted to solely blame Arteta because of how furious I was (and still am) that we won’t be winning the title this season and in all likelihood won’t be for the next ten years, as the vibes being sent out by Man City are that they are going to be allowed to get away with what they’ve done. Which shows that money doesn’t just buy you silverware, it buys you leniency as well.
But I have to concede that even if we had a different coach than Arteta, who didn’t keep infuriating us with these tactical idiosyncrasies….Im not entirely convinced we would be any better off. It doesn’t mean he’s good enough to win us the important things, but ultimately there are so many factors at play.
What’s noticeable is that Arteta is talking about our lack of options on the bench, which feels like a thinly veiled dig at the owners. Arteta of course isn’t removed from blame from this, he took the decision to bring in Calafiori and Merino essentially gambling that our attacking players would stay fit and score as many goals as last season.
Take away the anger and disappointment which I don’t blame anyone for feeling and it all just feels more complicated than get rid of Arteta = major trophies. Which isn’t a suggestion we should keep him (although that’s a decision that’s clearly out of our hands, Wenger wasn’t removed because of fan pressure he was removed because he failed twice in a row to get us top four).
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