Arsenal 5-1 Man City, Player rating and Match Reaction

[HCZ_Reborn]

I shouldn’t engage with Salacious Crumb but honestly

I stand by what I said about Rice, his passing isn’t great, he’s slow, he’s technically not brilliant either. That’s why I didn’t want to sign him. I think he’s got a good engine, he’s excellent at spotting danger and putting out fires but we’ve also seen he doesn’t cope with the press.


I equally stand by what I said about Gakpo, average players can go on scoring runs. Martinelli has had two awful seasons with us but would tear the opposition apart if he had the space the more expansive high pressing play Liverpool have. Gakpo is one of those players if he’s not scoring his overall contribution is negligible.


But never mind, I should let a guy who thinks he could tell Xhaka was a teachers pet by going to games and who thinks the Labour membership is made up of salt of the earth working class types (despite being told by someone who was a Labour Party member and went to local and national party conferences that they are no such thing) continue to believe the world in his snow globe is the real one

[Niall_Quinn]

Except Rice was faster to the ball than anyone in city's midfield could handle and his passing was spectacular. Hell, I think Partey is like an anchor dragging the team down with his negative passing, but even he was on it yesterday. Quick to the ball and looking up the field for a pass. Can't always judge the players purely on how they play, it also depends on how they are instructed to play and Rice said in his post match interview yesterday (paraphrasing), the manager scripts everything down to the last detail, we don't need to think about it, just do it.

But clearly we can all see Rice is a genuinely excellent footballer and essential to the Arsenal midfield for years to come. Denying that, having watched him play yesterday, isn't at all sustainable.

[Mac76]

Except Rice was faster to the ball than anyone in city's midfield could handle and his passing was spectacular. Hell, I think Partey is like an anchor dragging the team down with his negative passing, but even he was on it yesterday. Quick to the ball and looking up the field for a pass. Can't always judge the players purely on how they play, it also depends on how they are instructed to play and Rice said in his post match interview yesterday (paraphrasing), the manager scripts everything down to the last detail, we don't need to think about it, just do it.

But clearly we can all see Rice is a genuinely excellent footballer and essential to the Arsenal midfield for years to come. Denying that, having watched him play yesterday, isn't at all sustainable.

precisely

[Mac76]

I equally stand by what I said about Gakpo, average players can go on scoring runs.

in the last 15 games (which is basically since he began having regular starts this season) he's scored 8 goals and got 3 assists - that's more than a run but proof of a consistenty quality player - and while I dont know what his defensive game is like, as a forward his job is mainly to score and get assists - not all teams are like Arsenal where Arteta expects everyone to track back etc

who thinks the Labour membership is made up of salt of the earth working class types (despite being told by someone who was a Labour Party member and went to local and national party conferences that they are no such thing) continue to believe the world in his snow globe is the real one

The conferences prove nothing as they aren't representative as it's people who can afford to take the time off and pay to go plus lots of industry lobbyists

But never mind, I should let a guy who thinks he could tell Xhaka was a teachers pet by going to games

which of course is far less evidence-based than thinking they know Arteta's mind from a heavily edited documentary...

[HCZ_Reborn]

Except Rice was faster to the ball than anyone in city's midfield could handle and his passing was spectacular. Hell, I think Partey is like an anchor dragging the team down with his negative passing, but even he was on it yesterday. Quick to the ball and looking up the field for a pass. Can't always judge the players purely on how they play, it also depends on how they are instructed to play and Rice said in his post match interview yesterday (paraphrasing), the manager scripts everything down to the last detail, we don't need to think about it, just do it.

But clearly we can all see Rice is a genuinely excellent footballer and essential to the Arsenal midfield for years to come. Denying that, having watched him play yesterday, isn't at all sustainable.

City don’t have a central midfield, why do you think they are so easy to get through. They’ve got Kovacic protecting their back four and that’s it. I know you have this rose tinted view of footballers that makes you think someone like Steve McMahon being an uncompromising tackler means he’d be able to cope with the modern game.


It’s like watching Ramsey play against CSKA Moscow six-seven years ago and how he was able to meander about unimpeded and a Juventus scout concluding he was a top midfielder. Without the proper context it’s absurd

[Mac76]

Without the proper context it’s absurd

The proper context being Rice, now he's back up to standard, is consistenly playing as NQ describes, it's not a one-off

[HCZ_Reborn]

in the last 15 games (which is basically since he began having regular starts this season) he's scored 8 goals and got 3 assists - that's more than a run but proof of a consistenly quality player - and while I dont know what his defenseive game is like, as a forward his job is mainly to score and get assists - not all teams are like Arsenal where Arteta expects everyone to track back etc



oh and on the Labour point, the conferences prove nothing as they aren't representative as it's people who can afford to take the time off and pay to go plus lots of industry lobbyists



which of course is far less evidence-based than thinking they know Arteta's mind from a heavily edited documentary...

Are you lying when you say you go to football matches, or are you partially sighted and as a result get seated in the disabled stands and simply go to games because it’s cheap. Because you give me the awful impression of not knowing a lot about the game if you think football is a binary of either defending or scoring goals. No you’d expect link up play from attackers, finding someone in space being able to read the game to sell dummies etc. All the things Salah can do as well as score goals and all the things Gakpo doesn’t….for someone with a reasonable amount of pace he can’t keep himself onside a lot of the time.


I use the Ramsey example a lot as that of a player who scored goals but largely lacked the attributes technically to make for a top footballer. Gakpo has the advantage over Ramsey of pace and strength but that’s it.

The point of being a Labour member as opposed to just a voter is to be politically active and attend local constituency meetings. I can guarantee you now that the conferences absolutely are representative of political membership. I’m not even singling Labour out, all party political membership holders are middle class….the working class are usually busy working or looking after their families….not spending evenings being political hobbyists and pretending that they are making a blind bit of difference to anything.

Though party membership tends to have hollered out, and the same middle class people have joined groups such as just stop oil or go on the pro Palestinian marches and pretend not to hear the same vile antisemitism on display (in fairness to them, the Met do exactly the same thing)

[HCZ_Reborn]

The proper context being Rice, now he's back up to standard, is consistenly playing as NQ describes, it's not a one-off

The proper context is as soon as you have a team that doesn’t give us all the space in the world, our build up play will again be too slow because Rice lacks the technical ability to play at 8. It’s utter lunacy to believe otherwise

[Niall_Quinn]

City don’t have a central midfield, why do you think they are so easy to get through. They’ve got Kovacic protecting their back four and that’s it. I know you have this rose tinted view of footballers that makes you think someone like Steve McMahon being an uncompromising tackler means he’d be able to cope with the modern game.


It’s like watching Ramsey play against CSKA Moscow six-seven years ago and how he was able to meander about unimpeded and a Juventus scout concluding he was a top midfielder. Without the proper context it’s absurd

So we didn't win yesterday, it was city who lost? It's still city and they were coming off a run of wins, weren't they. In the PL. So while they aren't at their own standard of recent years it doesn't mean they've dropped to a standard where "poor" players can dominate them. We dominated them because we finally decided to exploit weaknesses that have come into their game, and to do that we have to be capable of exploiting those weaknesses. It wasn't as if city were kicking he ball into the net for us.

[HCZ_Reborn]

which of course is far less evidence-based than thinking they know Arteta's mind from a heavily edited documentary...

Well it would be if I ever claimed I knew what Arteta was thinking

But again if you can’t tell the difference between understanding personality types and psychic powers…it’s another example of your ignorance. That’s in fact Owen Jones level (where he couldn’t tell the difference between wealth from income and wealth from asset ownership)