Carabao Cup 25/26

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Swansea 3-2 Forest, Forest were 1-2 up in injury time.

Ange.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Oh and Brentford dumped Villa out last night.

Emery.

[Mac76]

Swansea 3-2 Forest, Forest were 1-2 up in injury time.

Ange.

Without him where would our laughter come from? Long may he continue to manage in the PL

[IBK]

So...I don't watch many matches where Arsenal are not involved, but I watched Liverpool v Athleti last night. Was disappointed by yet another Liverpool late goal to win the tie.

And I started thinking why this keeps happening with them. Yes, you can say 'that's what Champions do', but there's a difference IMO between a team that is simply pushing everyone forward to try to win a game at the death, and what Liverpool do. Athleti are no patsys when it comes to defending. There is a purpose to Liverpool when going for the late win - an intent that is not simply panic/desperation - that is menacing. This is different to my recollection of us trying to reverse dropped points last season.

For me, this is not simply down to good luck. I think that Slot's most impressive achievement since he arrived is building a team whose levels do not drop even after 90 minutes. Liverpool's fitness levels are unvbelieveable, and achieved with a team revelling in broken play and making dynamic runs all game - in contrast to Arsenal's more controlled, often even pedestrian style that I believe has partly been with an eye on preserving stamina.

The impressive part is that Slot seems to have achieved this level of fitness/stamina without breaking his players (maybe because of this).

Of course, there's also the self-belief which is a virtuous circle. The more Liverpool score these late goals, the more the players believe that they will come - and with belief comes mental clarity rather than panic.

I hope very much that Arteta, with such strong benches now at his disposal, will achieve similar levels - as there are bound to be situations this season where we also need to score late. The Bilbao game midweek saw evidence of this, with our late subs both scoring and creating our goals.

[HCZ_Reborn]

See where I disagree is that it’s not tenable for a team to be consistently having to chase a win in the last knockings of a game. And that’s been the story for Liverpool every game this season, now with the exception of Burnley they’ve been able to do that because as you say their attacking ability or with us a one off bit of magic. But the reason they are having to do it is because they are vulnerable at the back, the main difference between Arsenal and Liverpool is that if we had managed to come out of the blocks and get a 2-0 lead early that would be the game done (in the last three years there has been three occasions where we’ve blown a 2 goal lead and each time it’s because our defence was significantly compromised by injury)

I think it’s actually arguable that Bournemouth and Atletico could have shown more courage and pushed for a winner but they were punished because (a bit like us) they tried to settle for a draw.