Loss PL: Nottingham Forest 1 - 0 Arsenal | Saturday, May 20 | KO: 17:30 BST | Sky Sports

 

[HighburyHigh]

...pic sums it up perfectly, tbh.

Jesus’ favourite position……sitting on the floor whining.

 

[Makingtrax]

Yes it wont be easier, but this year wasnt easy, or weaker either.

We dont play City, Liverpool, Chelsea, United, Sp**s every week mate. Also, their strength have no little to no direct impact on our performances against the other 15 or so teams we face week in week out.

Every team will struggle again next season because it gets more difficult for everyone. The only ones who dont have to care as much, is City.

The other 14 teams are getting easier to beat as time goes on. This graph of average points score for the top 4 teams shows how much easier they've found the league in recent years. They points don't lie.

 

[Yousif Arsenal]

People always say it won't be easy next year well every season is not easy if you play like that it'll be easy when you preform consistently and stop looking at other clubs and what they do.

We finished top 2 comfortably.

 

[HighburyHigh]

We could have finished 1st if we didn’t bottle it!

 

[Xln]

@farzad4daarse Tets leaving? Celebration time?

 

[lomekian]

From a tactical standpoint, the big issue in this match was that Arsenal didnt had anyone exploring the open central corridors.
Nottingham was clearly creating defensive overloads near the wings in order to not let Saka and Trossard to create options there. This would force Nottingham's central corridors to have a lot of space that was to explored by Xhaka, Odeegard and Jesus through a sickle movement. This didnt happen.
For some reason, Odeegard, Jesus and Xhaka were trying to help create triangulations on the wings while no one tried to infiltrate the box. As a consequence, Arsenal didnt had offensive options and could barely find space.
To make things worse, because if the lack of options in the box, the wing players would keep returning the ball to the back losango.
In the back, there was no disruptive pass. Gabriel would rarely try to invert the ball or explore the diagonal to active the central midfielders. Instead, the passes would be player to player, in a slow place, that allowed NF's low block to cover the movement without problems.
Gabriel Jesus was just awful as well. One of his biggest problems, ever since the Man City days, is that he just pannicks when he can't perform. He starts to hold too much on the ball and dribble past 2 or 3 players, something that almost always results in turnovers and counterattack possibilities.

Without Martinelli we lack penetration...very few players actively trying to make fast off the ball movements into the box.

 

[ThisFather]

Worrying end to the season. Need to be wary this form doesn't go into the next season.

Performances in the last two months makes me think how on earth we managed to get even 2nd place.

 

[Morning_woody]

You and brother farzad should do a only fans collab

But I shan’t be subscribing to that babeh

Why not bro

 

[Erlis]

It’s not Xhaka’s fault that he hasn’t had many touches. All our football is down the right. They totally ignored the left hand side in that half.

I thought it is only me, but was not Jorginho ignoring Xhaka most of the time?

 

[kofigunner]

Play some kids the next game, I say

 

[Patjen]

Yes it wont be easier, but this year wasnt easy, or weaker either.

We dont play City, Liverpool, Chelsea, United, Sp**s every week mate. Also, their strength have no little to no direct impact on our performances against the other 15 or so teams we face week in week out.

Every team will struggle again next season because it gets more difficult for everyone. The only ones who dont have to care as much, is City.

We wont get a better chance to win the league

All other topp teams have been under par this season (obviously excluding city) . I wouldn't expect that next season. It'll be extremely difficult next year I would think

 

[SA Gunner]

The other 14 teams are getting easier to beat as time goes on. This graph of average points score for the top 4 teams shows how much easier they've found the league in recent years. They points don't lie.

This is an interesting graph.

I considered doing a complete write up for this, and will save it for the league’s harder thread. In a nutshell that graph also factors in the performance of City and Liverpool in recent years, which pulls up the average points.

To finish 4th itself (base CL qualification) its largely remained the same over the last 30 years. With these last 5 years or so actually being back in the mid 60s to around 70 point’s again, which is on the lower points side looking at historical data.

 

[SA Gunner]

We wont get a better chance to win the league

All other topp teams have been under par this season (obviously excluding city) . I wouldn't expect that next season. It'll be extremely difficult next year I would think

It could not be our best chance this year, when we ran out of energy to compete at the top with 2 months to go still.

Our best chance comes when we are able to compete at our best level for the entire season. This means perform at a high level, consistently through, and be able to adjust when we get injuries or loss of form of players. Adjust by bringing in players of similar quality.

Yes, Chelsea, Liverpool, Sp**s, will be stronger. With less distractions and can focus on top 4 finish alone or even a title challenge. But let’s see if they are able to improve their teams and get them playing well together in time.

 

[HollandGooner]

Embarassing performance yet again our players already gave up 3 matches ago and they dont care anymore, still they should have showed motivation and dedication for the badge and the away fans.

 

[Jack badmon]

Yes but as a manager and leader, you adjust to the situation you're in. Leceister didn't say "nobody expected us to win" so we mess up the opportunity anyway. It's a BS excuse. We were in the driver's seat ALL SEASON and chose to throw away 2-0 leads and lose home games. We didn't need to Beat City home or away to win the league. We didn't need to win all our games either. What should be looked at is our ability to be consistent over 38 games and still we fall short...from winning positions. Some players need to go. We need 2 proper wing backs. We need a top class striker because Jesus isn't one. We need more dynamic midfield player alongside Ødegaard. Despite all this, this team has brought us some great moments this season and my only hope is that Arteta and the coaching staff looks the games we lost, the situations we faltered and address them ASAP.

Looking at last season would suggest that this is very much the case

 

[BergMan]

Only positive is that thanks to the result, today we get to enjoy Chelsea’s shame of having to give Man City a guard of honour.

 

[bingobob]

He is a striker who doesn’t score a lot of goals. No amount of hard work can change that and spending most of the game doing other things to look busy won’t cut it. I’m amazed there are still people who think you can win anything with such a meek nr 9

TBF I said elsewhere Jesus is a wide forward that can play CF. Good for a couple of games but not a full season.

We need a 9 who scores goals and allows for proper rotation. KDB, Haaland, Mahrez, Grealish, Foden and Alvarez all rotate throughout a season. Arteta needs to do the same.

 

[Makingtrax]

This is an interesting graph.

I considered doing a complete write up for this, and will save it for the league’s harder thread. In a nutshell that graph also factors in the performance of City and Liverpool in recent years, which pulls up the average points.

To finish 4th itself (base CL qualification) its largely remained the same over the last 30 years. With these last 5 years or so actually being back in the mid 60s to around 70 point’s again, which is on the lower points side looking at historical data.

There's a lot more evidence than that. Look at average points per game for the top 6 compared to the rest of the league over the years. Its's rising as the revenue gap gets bigger.

 

[SA Gunner]

There's a lot more evidence than that. Look at average points per game for the top 6 compared to the rest of the league over the years. Its's rising as the revenue gap gets bigger.

But you do understand what Im saying about Liverpool and City's influence on the statistics right? Their fights for the league over the last season have been around 95 points. Its them that have been the outliers in terms of points put on the board and increasing the difference between the so called haves and have nots.

The qualification points for 4th has largely remained the same over the last 28 years, averaging from around 65 - 71 points. I've measured every 7 years since 1995 (when we became a 20 team league). This suggests that the effort required to qualify is still the same, despite the increases in revenues and subsequent quality of the top teams. It also suggests that the so called smaller teams are able to raise their strength and competitiveness to compete more now.

The financial strength of the PL as a whole is also an indicator of a stronger league. Looking at managers for example, we have top quality managers who are and have been at mid table teams. The likes of Emery, Conte, Loptegui, Marsh, Ancelotti, Bielsa, Mourinho, Frank, Silva, Moyes, are further indication of the level of quality and increased difficulty across the PL.

 

[Hunta]

Sat with Forest fans for this and got to boo that criminal in our midfield.

Lovely stuff.