Thought we played well today. But for the sending off we'd probably have got a point.
At least we showed a bit of passion today.
Frimpong was brilliant.
Squad is worryingly thin though, have to sign some players. If Nasri (who was excellent today, kudos to him for that) goes then we really will struggle, he's one of our few players of real quality. We just can't afford to lose him and Cesc and not buy.
Then i apologise. im not a kid im 28Originally Posted by She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
on the supporters' chants...
I think the target is to have a good team and good players. You can spend money and have a bad team. You want the supporters to be happy and when you don't win the game you can understand that they are not. But I think we had eight players out today and we still had a good performance. So it is not all doom and gloom, there are positives in the game today.
on potential new signings...
We look, you know? But we try to do the right things for the Club. I think Koscielny and Vermaelen are a fantastic pair of centre backs but it's very difficult as well because if you buy another centre back and then someone gets injured I have to buy another one. You cannot do that every time you have an injured player.
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-arc...enger-reaction
The penny has finally dropped with Denilson, Eboue, Bendtner & Vela. Will it finally now drop with Walcott?
The worrying thing about Walcott is his lack of dribbling ability. Whenever he's closed down and doesn't have a lot of open space ahead of him, he really struggles to manipulate the ball past his opponent. How often did we seen him run out of space against Enrique and walk the ball out of play? You can have all the pace in the world but without good technique you won't be able to make good use of it.
We have a sprinter and we're using him as a corner of a triangle. Tip-tap-tip-tap, 5 yard bollocks. We're static and one paced. It's almost as if we find it honourable to play this shit but deeply dishonourable to even entertain the though of lobbing the ball into space for Walcott and Arshavin to run at the back four. Theo is a player who should always be facing goal, he should never have to drop back to receive the ball or work one-twos on the wing. Everything he does should be at pace, that's his weapon and we aren't deploying it. He's dangerous at speed, virtually useless at a slower tempo. It's almost as if when he has time to think he fucks it up.
Trouble is, with Fabregas gone and Nasri halfway out the door, do we have any players who could supply the ammo? If we can't use him properly we should let him go somewhere else, although I can't help feeling another club would turn him into a lethal weapon. He's also go that prick Capello on his case, first dropping him because he wouldn't play to his weaknesses and then getting the hump over a stupid book. Capello was the slimy little git who wanted to sell web site stats on all the players, wasn't he? But he doesn't like it the other way around and maybe this has been on Theo's mind of late? Then again, how come Theo's writing a book when he hasn't done anything yet? Whatever, he played shite today, the worst I've seen for a while.
Für eure Sicherheit
wrong thread.
We played well considering the circumstances, if this is us playing well though I worry for our season...as we barely created any chances.
Defended well enough but offered nothing going forward.
Wenger's reign of terror is coming to an end. lol
We've totally lost our way. I hope the board are looking for a new coach to replace Wenger by the end of the season. I doubt it, but I hope.
We've been sold a dream about the stadium bringing in more money for players and the youth that will go on to dominate in years to come. The youth project has come to nothing. Years of hype about these kids being world beaters.....he's practically started again and it's a totally different team that will need another 6 years. It's time for him to go.
2 articles from The Guardian:
Appealing for calm, Arsčne Wenger said: "We live in circumstances where every defeat is absolutely a disgrace – an earthquake." But there was no mistaking the tremors after Liverpool's 2-0 victory as the Arsenal manager's troubled team face the second leg of a Champions League qualifier against Udinese on Wednesday and a visit to Manchester United at the weekend.
Cesc Fábregas is kissing his new badge in Barcelona, Samir Nasri's move to Manchester City is still expected to go through and the 19-year-old Emmanuel Frimpong joined Alex Song and Gervinho in the suspension pen by spoiling a promising performance in central midfield with some ludicrously aggressive tackling.
With three players banned and six injured, Wenger calls on youth and promise to dispel the mounting sense that Arsenal are in for the toughest season of his 15-year reign. Beauty's glow is no longer visible above their home and Nasri, whose commitment here never wavered, has a new set of reasons to tell his agents to stop haggling over their fees and force through his transfer to City.
Reports in France claimed the Nasri deal had broken down but after a 0-0 draw at Newcastle and a home defeat to Kenny Dalglish's Liverpool, he is unlikely to turn down a Ł60,000-a-week pay rise and stick around in London while Frimpong learns some self-control and Wenger patches up an ailing squad.
"If we decide to sell him [Nasri] we'll do it and we have to stand up for it, but at the moment I'm glad he's here," Wenger said.
Some order may return with Jack Wilshere, Abou Diaby, Kieran Gibbs, Johan Djourou and Laurent Koscielny, who went off after 15 minutes with back spasms – plus Song, Gervinho and Frimpong – but for now Wenger is left to correct the impression of serious malfunction across his operation. As the transfer window closes, few elite players across Europe will see Arsenal as a coming force, however much Wenger sticks to his mantra of eternal promise.
When Frimpong jumped into Lucas Leiva's leg in front of the referee Martin Atkinson, who had already booked him in the first half, a familiar inability to match actions with consequences was apparent in Wenger's young and stressed XI. When the substitute Henri Lansbury was booked after coming on for Andrey Arshavin, who was dreadful, the young replacement yelled at Atkinson and jabbed his finger aggressively: a level of dissent that could have earned him a second yellow card.
Anxiety is bound to afflict a side who have failed to score in their first two league games for the first time in 42 years, yet there is repeated evidence of some Arsenal players failing to repay the loyalty shown by their manager, who has spent the six trophy-less years since 2005 promising the fans that these are men of real stature.
Liverpool exploited the numerical advantage stemming from Frimpong's dismissal by forcing an Aaron Ramsey own-goal and then closing out the game with a Luis Suárez tap-in in the final minutes. Wenger blamed Frimpong's "lack of experience" but also spoke of his "enthusiasm and heart".
An admirer of Michael Essien, his fellow Ghanaian, Frimpong brings thrust and menace to Arsenal's midfield, too long a refuge for players who can decorate but not shape a game. More than once he neglected to track a runner and was shouted at by Thomas Vermaelen for not showing for the ball when Arsenal's best defender was under pressure. But he does offer flashes of hunger and steel: qualities that will be useful to his team only if he can confine his studs to the turf.
With a depleted squad, Wenger was obliged to summon at right-back Carl Jenkinson, who had played nine times for Charlton before earning a move here over the summer. Again, Jenkinson has promise, but many fans now detest that word. They saw Fábregas high-stepping it back to Barcelona, read about Nasri's restlessness and want decisive action in the transfer market to alleviate the sense of regression.
The problem is that Wenger has no great reserve of faith to draw on. After six years without a trophy his senior players have become accustomed to hiding between the beautiful football excuse and the youngest are being asked to compete with United, City, Chelsea and Liverpool without the bedding-in period that was available to previous generations.
Wenger will demand more from Arshavin (who appears to have lost all interest), Theo Walcott and Ramsey, and would doubtless like Marouane Chamakh to justify his reputation. But imagine the ennui around this stadium when Nicklas Bendtner jogged on ahead of Chamakh for the last 10 minutes as Arsenal's last goalscoring hope. Wenger can escape another "earthquake" – a further "disgrace", as he puts it – by sliding past Udinese in Italy. Whichever linguistic tricks he tries, though, the Emirates is shaking.Arsčne Wenger says there is no chance he will walk away from Arsenal, effectively overruling the intervention of David Dein, his former vice-chairman, who warned that if Gunners' fans kept complaining and demanding more money be spent the manager could wash his hands of the club.
"There is no chance of that happening, I like to keep a sense of perspective," Wenger said after seeing his side lose 2-0 at home to Liverpool, suffering another player dismissed and one more injured, and hearing his players booed off at the end. "It is still the start of the season and we have had a couple of disappointing results, that's all. I don't feel under any more pressure than usual. We have an important week coming up and this is a time to stick together."
Wenger made the reasonable point that, even with eight players missing, Arsenal had put in a good performance against Liverpool, at least when they still had 11 men on the pitch.
He could have added that Samir Nasri, expected to miss the game and turn up in Manchester before the end of the transfer window, had surprised everyone by playing and playing well.
"Why not? He is an Arsenal player and he loves the club – I always said I would try to keep him. It may be that, in the end, we have to sell him, but until he goes he is still happy to play for us."
Wenger claimed to have no knowledge of reports emanating from France that talks with Manchester City had broken down, and would not be drawn on whether Nasri will be seen in an Arsenal shirt again.
If he plays in the Champions League qualifier against Udinese in midweek, Nasri will be cup-tied in Europe and be a less attractive buying proposition. But even though Wenger could undoubtedly use an extra body, he would not commit himself either way. "I have not decided about that yet," he said.
The game at the Emirates changed when Emmanuel Frimpong marked his full Premier League debut with a dismissal for two yellow cards and, simultaneously, Liverpool made a double substitution. Kenny Dalglish sent on Luis Suárez and Raul Meireles and saw them create the late goals.
Wenger had no problems with the dismissal. "He deserved a yellow card for the challenge," he said. "Frimpong was the victim of a lack of experience and his own enthusiasm. He didn't need to make that tackle."
A beaming Dalglish was delighted with the way the game went. "That's a hell of a pair of subs to be able to bring on," the Liverpool manager said, before owning up to a mistake on the opening day at Anfield against Sunderland.
"I went with Suárez last week because he was on such a high in training," he explained. "He had only just come back to us after spending the summer with Uruguay and he didn't seem tired, but maybe it was a wee bit romantic of me to put him straight into the team. He wanted to do well and everyone else wanted him to do well, but perhaps he needed a bit more rest, and that's why I was more careful with him this week.
"I might have made a mistake against Sunderland, but you could see the benefit of an extra week's training today. We are a stronger squad than we were last season and being able to bring on two substitutes of such quality proves it."
Last edited by The Verminator; 20-08-2011 at 07:54 PM.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote