Quote Originally Posted by Terry Tuffnutz View Post
let's be clear. as you have noted yourself, we were under the cosh way before the sending off, which was down to lack of ball retention in the middle and going forward out wide.

you suggest that taking off our 'out balls' to gerv and walcott irreparably damaged our chances of seeing out the game from a winning position, yet losing those two players had no effect on how threatening fulham were becoming.

you mentioned above that once dj had come off, rosicky wasn't offering enough cover which was right but that is down to bad positioning by the player, i'm sure it wasn't wengers idea to send him on to offer more space for fulham. we lost the game because our first teamers need freshening up, through fulham taking full advantage of our full back situation and the wrong decisions from outfield players.
So Wenger sent Rosicky on without giving instructions? Without telling him to protect Djourou? He sent on a central midfield player for Walcott in an attempt to win back the ball because the centre couldn't cope. Wenger likes his players to flow and interchange. I don't think Rosicky came on to disobey orders. It also didn't help that he brought on Yossi, another central player. Wenger wanted to gain control on the middle but we sacrificed a lot on the flanks and we couldn't win back possession either way. He'd have been better off taking off Ramsey and Arteta since their legs were gone and they couldn't pass.

We were struggling for a while, but the game flipped and we were defending in our own half for a while after the subs. Then we pick up the red card.