"He’s no better than Eboue was."
OUCH!!!
Aubameyang = You're now the captain so Jesus Christ play like one! His attitude is unacceptable with the way he saunters around the place, when Stones shouldered him off the pitch near the end of the game it summed up his performance - weak!
Elneny = Solid but too safe, doesn't want to play an attacking pass where others would, pick him or Xhaka but not both together.
Bellerin = As I've said in a previous post he's good average or average good, his knee injury took away his most coveted ability - pace.
Arteta = I like the man but this off season will make or break him, unfortunately he needs to spend some serious money on the squad which he certainly won't get from spendthrift Stan Kroenke.
Auba shouldn't be captain but I don't think you can blame him for being made captain, that's on Arteta.
We all know the captaincy hasn’t meant anything for years because of how many soft personalities have come through the doors at this club. Auba is just another one of them.
Anyway, it is acceptable for this team to lose matches narrowly against teams who are better than them. There isn’t any drive to be better or maybe even try to compete with them, that’s just the way it is. Mid table mentality fully activated now. I’m sure it will be ok if/when we don’t win at Leicester this weekend too.
we don't stand a chance in that game - a team with the absolutely right starting 11 plus the absolutely right tactics might but you won't get that from Arteta - every time we think he's cracked it, he just shows that he can't see what's in front of him and changes it again
Best post on this thread. Always expecting a loss to Citeh - and let's face it they would beat any team in the league just now. What was frustrating I agree is that we were caught in two minds with how to approach this game, and the team set up was all wrong. Why put Pepe back on the right when he has been so good on the left and Saka has made the RW his own when we have played well? Why start with Auba when ESR was not on the pitch and therefore service to him was never going to be great (he is no hold up player). Why no Martinelli when he is such a good option to inject some pace and movement into what looked like a fairly pedestian starting 11?
Yesterday's team would have been a better bet against Benfica on Thursday (yes I know Tierney may not have been available), given that they wanted to play sloooow.
...and WTF is it with our slow switched off starts - although this is not helped by swithching central defenders in and out of games.
As so often - frustration rather than despondency is the post match feeling for me.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
i'm finding watching our games (Leeds excepted) quite broing at the moment
the optimism from bringing in ESR has now faded as Arteta is simply flogging him into the ground while insisting on playing Xhaka and Willian (apart from yesterday) in every game.
meanwhile Laca's really picked up form but is now left out in the cold because of one Auba hatter against one of the most porous sides in the PL
i'd rather Auba hadn't got those goals if it means he starts every time and Laca gets frozen out
It's quite a head-scratcher really. Our best performances this season have been when we play one-touch football and speed the game up - and we clearly have the players to do so, and oour worst ones are when the game slows to a pedestrian pace. I agree that ESR looks knackered, and Odegard and him should rotate in his position IMO, but yesterday Arteta screwed it up by playing Elneny with Xhaka and swapping out Saka and Pepe. The manager should be replacing individual moving parts rather than changing wholesale and expecting it to work, and yes its difficult to understand his apparent aversion to keeping some on form players while running others into the ground - I fear that we are on the verge of ruining Saka...
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
My guess is that Arteta is probably going to give up on the league and go for the Europa. Which is fine if we win it but that’s a pretty risky game to be playing.