Win Premier League: Arsenal 2 - 1 Nottingham Forest | Saturday 12th August | KO: 13:00 BST | TNT Sports

Football is back, baby!!!

Likely starting XI

Prediction
Arsenal 3-0 Nottingham Forest

 

[Ash10]

He wasn't benched for performance reasons lol, this is a guy who started like 70 PL games in a row

I know it’s tactical but it’s a tactic that specifically gets him benched

 

[Riou]

Never a pen but TNT show the replay endlessly and have Rio nodding along to how much of a pen it is.

What...what incident even is this?

 

[blaze_of_glory]

Forest should have scored in the first 5 mins though

Sp**s should definitely sign that guy as Kane replacement imo

 

[Batman]

Thing is for £65m we’re expecting a lot more than just not doing nothing wrong. The same energy will be applied to Mason Mount by our fans, so it’s only fair game to do it for him too.

Havertz was a ghost for large parts of the game. He needs to do a lot more for me.

It's 1 game and you have people writing him off and it's the same people who have been nitpicking every single thing he does. There's a difference between mocking Mount who plays for United and overreacting to Havertz not actually doing anything wrong and he plays for us. I could understand if he had been shocking like White's debut for example but to kill the guy for today when he did plenty of good things is ridiculous. He didn't set his fee and worse players are going for more money in this ridiculous market. This notion that the guy should automatically go from playing Haram ball for 3 years to automatically being fully keyed in to a system that it took most of the players who have been here more than 2 years to thrive in is weird.

 

[DJ_Markstar]

What...what incident even is this?

Rice and some Forest plodder challenged for a ball from a corner, deflects lightly off the Forest plodder onto Rice and then into Ramsdale's arms.

 

[Riou]

Rice and some Forest plodder challenged for a ball from a corner, deflects lightly off the Forest plodder onto Rice and then into Ramsdale's arms.

Oh, the same corner were that player two armed shoved Ødegaard to the floor to even win the header in the first place.

Factoring in the Arsenal tax though...clear pen, red for Rice and yellow for Martin for diving.

 

[Sniper Mik]

That felt like a very unsatisfying win from the Emery era. Gonna have to wait for another 9 days to see some attacking fluency against Palace.

 

[Clrnc]

Has always been rock solid aside from that patch when he came back from injury

Yeah, he did admit he wasn't right mentally after Japan got knocked out. Good to see him back to his best.

 

[Gooner Zig]

That felt like a very unsatisfying win from the Emery era. Gonna have to wait for another 9 days to see some attacking fluency against Palace.

Hate Monday games fs

 

[Clrnc]

Wtf was White doing?

Was absolutely shocking defending. Rice let the player run past him in a straight line but we can say maybe he is tired, White firstly let him run for free to cover the middle, then let his marker free to score a tap in. Brain dead defending. Very reminiscent to many goals we conceded from cut backs in the first season when White was playing CB.

Hope we bring Gabriel back as CB next match.

 

[2Smokeyy]

It's 1 game and you have people writing him off and it's the same people who have been nitpicking every single thing he does. There's a difference between mocking Mount who plays for United and overreacting to Havertz not actually doing anything wrong and he plays for us. I could understand if he had been shocking like White's debut for example but to kill the guy for today when he did plenty of good things is ridiculous. He didn't set his fee and worse players are going for more money in this ridiculous market. This notion that the guy should automatically go from playing Haram ball for 3 years to automatically being fully keyed in to a system that it took most of the players who have been here more than 2 years to thrive in is weird.

He didn’t set his fee but that’s the level to which people are expecting and you can’t blame them especially when there were other options on the market for £65m or less that could have come in and improved us significantly. I could probably name 5-10 players off the top of my head.

Anyways, I actually liked Havertz and rated him even when he was stinking up the place at Chelsea and was getting bantered on here a while back for it but I just find the whole signing bizzare tbh.

If that’s the today’s performance by him is the standard that some assumed is an excellent performance then we’re in for a long season.

 

[Rattata]

Still feel our defence looks uneasy with Gabriel back there, he's the only one who organises in the backline...hope he's back fully fit for Palace.

Gabriel was fully fit. It was Arteta tinkering with the team.

 

[BergMan]

Positives for me are Saka and Martinelli. They are looking even sharper and stronger than last season. They just keep improving season by season.

 

[Riou]

Gabriel was fully fit. It was Arteta tinkering with the team.

If this is true (hoping it isn't) then Arteta got very lucky and hope he learns not to try this again.

Saliba AND Gabriel every game, if both are fit.

 

[Riou]

Hate Monday games fs

I can't even remember what Selhurst Park looks like in the daylight anymore

 

[lamby22]

People really think we looked shaky at the back? I thought we were very solid.

That Rice shot goes in snd I think everyone sees this game very differently tbh

I think when it went to 2-1 some of us just got the fear again. Call it PTSD from all those bottled leads over the years.

 

[Tomb Bombadil]

If we can keep chopping and changing and churning wins out I’ll be happy as it means we’ll have a fresh(ish) rotated squad at the end of the season and the players will have multiple styles of play ingrained in their psyche. This is exactly what Pep does and it’s why City finish seasons as strongly as they do.

But we've just taken out our CB. He's the last in need of rotation.

 

[Batman]

He didn’t set his fee but that’s the level to which people are expecting and you can’t blame them especially when there were other options on the market for £65m or less that could have come in and improved us significantly. I could probably make 5 off the top of my head.

Anyways, I actually liked Havertz and rated him even when he was stinking up the place at Chelsea and was getting bantered on here a while back for it but I just find the whole signing bizzare tbh.

If that’s the today’s performance by him is the standard that some assumed is an excellent performance then we’re in for a long season.

I don't think anyone said the performance as a whole was excellent. We can have some nuance. It can be true that he didn't have the best time in attack but was very good in our press as well as taking up some good positions to free up space for others. He's meant to be replacing Xhaka. He's doing the defensive side that people were worried about well. Now he needs to find his comfort level within a system that is far more intricate than anything else he's played in. Surely he can be given more than one game where the entire team was underwhelming for an entire half before being written off. That's all I'm saying. It doesn't have to be oh he's sh*t or oh he's the 2nd coming. Just be fair.

 

[BergMan]

Mods can you change this “betrayed by Xhaka” tag to something else? I don’t feel betrayed by him I am supporting him 100%. I’m watching as his Bayer Leverkusen team are winning 4-0 at the moment.

Just subbed off. Alonso resting his best player when they are cruising, responsible managing.

 

[Penn_]

I’m not quite getting the issues with selection. A common issue on here towards the end of the season was you could guess the lineup at any point.

We need some different setups and the quality of the squad actually allows for that without drop off.