EPL: Arsenal vs Chelsea - Sun. Jan 24th, 4:00pm

[Rimaal]

Solid assessment, and accurate when you look at the bare facts on the table. The mental issue is indeed a scapegoat for me, to cover up my refusal to believe they were better.

Fabregas has been **** for months, until recenty, and has come in and bossed the game against us yesterday. That was the obvious reality on the day.

You do speak confidently on the Coquelin replacement for Flamini at the time Willian had the ball. It would be great if what you saying there is true. Whereas it makes sense to me, I just cannot completely accept that personnel alone will save us this year.

I am concerned with both the quality and pressure of the coming weeks in this race. We may get the quality back to a certain level, but I feel it wont be enough for us. Lets see though.

Ofcourse he bossed the match, he had the space and time to do it. We did NOT HAVE a midfield yesterday. Fabregas had the run of it. Oodles of space, and an eternity of time. in the last 4-5 matches, if you go back and read the threads, you will notice the same comment over and over... Where is our midfield??????
Ramsey/Flamini/Ox midfield don't work. It's basically an absence of a holding and a defensive midfield compromising us both going forward and going back, and ceding control to the opponent.

Fabergas didn't improve yesterday, he just had a free hand to do all he could do, which against another opponent with a midfield that would press and tarry, would have proven little enough.

 

[Wilshere's Right]

Slept on it so less angry now. But a couple of points, pros, cons and general.

Pros:

Sanchez is back and looked as sharp. Will take him a couple of games but fully expect him to back to where he was last season.

Four of our back five are brilliant. Cech, Bellerin, Monreal and Kos are all top class and as a rule put in great performances week in, week out. The fullbacks especially. Monreal should of got closer to Ivanovic but generally was good. Bellerin was superb and probably our best player on the pitch. Mertesecker is the weak spot.

Campbell looked decent and was really our only attacking outlet. I hope Wenger drops Theo and players Sanchez, Giroud, Campbell. Considering Campbell and Sanchez can both play on either wing, that gives us a huge advantage. Plus they both defend.

We contained them with 10 men. They didn't really have many chances to score bar the one that they actually did. That's a really good sign.

Cons:

Walcott is really out of form. I don't know who told him that dribbling your way out of defence is acceptable but they need to be fired immediately. Seriously, what the **** is that?

Koscielny really dozed off for the goal. He wasn't looking at all and should of been much closer to Costa.

Mertesecker needs to be dropped. He was great for us but he's not there anymore and should be replaced. Looking at the linesman?! Seriously?! And he was watching the Fabregas pass which he couldn't do anything about instead of focusing on Costa which he could.

On Per, that lunge made no sense. What was he thinking? It was the 19th minute of the match. So Costa would of scored, so what? It was a red regardless of whether Costa made a meal of it (and the fact is, he was right do so). When Kos was in their box in the second half and pushed he should of done the same. Go down. Per was always getting a red on that challenge. It was stupid, it was idiotic and it lost us the game. He should be dropped as a result.

Özil was extremely poor yesterday which was worrying. His passes were off and he kept on slowing down play by passing behind rather than in front. Hope it was just a one off.

Our mental strength has always been fragile, even during the invincibles. I bang on about this point but its true. We crumble against perceived stronger opposition. Chelsea are not a better team than us but we think they are. And all Wenger's teams have that same attitude which means it comes from him. He doesn't know how to instill a belief, an arrogance and a swagger that Chelsea and United have. It makes them win even if they are weaker than their rivals. Funnily enough, City seem to have a similar problem to us.

Flamini has to be dropped. How the heck was he our most forward player on several occasions? And why was no one telling him to stop being a prat and stay back? The first is about the player's own ability and responsibility. The second however, is far more important and it falls on Wenger/Bould and that is the truly worrying part.

Elneny should of started.

General:

The Giroud sub made sense at the time. Of course hindsight suggests that Walcott should of come off but at the time taking off Giroud was the best choice of a rubbish situation. Taking off Theo would have sacrificed width and theoretically helping out defend on the wings. We also were supposed to player counter attacking football which meant we needed wingers and not Giroud.

I don't think that it will affect the title race too much but frankly it should. A team winning the title shouldn't have lost to Chelsea twice and 4-0 to Southampton.

 

[celestis]

Ofcourse he bossed the match, he had the space and time to do it. We did NOT HAVE a midfield yesterday. Fabregas had the run of it. Oodles of space, and an eternity of time. in the last 4-5 matches, if you go back and read the threads, you will notice the same comment over and over... Where is our midfield??????
Ramsey/Flamini/Ox midfield don't work. It's basically an absence of a holding and a defensive midfield compromising us both going forward and going back, and ceding control to the opponent.

Fabergas didn't improve yesterday, he just had a free hand to do all he could do, which against another opponent with a midfield that would press and tarry, would have proven little enough.

It's not even a holding midfielder Rimaal I reckon it's an appetite to win the ball back . You could play a bunch of lightweights but if they hunt in packs you are going to swarm midfield . With Santi and Coq I have never seen the space we have been seeing and Santi is a midget.

 

[WhatAFC]

Cesc bossed the game for 2 simple reasons, down to 10 men and playing in his favoured role of Playing behind the striker in a basically free role. He's been pony for months because of playing as part of the CM.

 

[TakeChillPill]

There was hardly anything English about that team. Like today, hardly anything English about any team, especially the big one's. But yeah, that team was amazing.

okay EPL then.. that's what I meant

 

[Gooner n Proud]

Don't disagree, but I think the injury excuse is a poor one. Fact is, we have the worst injury record in the league of the past several seasons. We know this, and we know we have several injury prone players. It is Wenger's job to manage the team and because we know we are hit with an injury crisis every season, he should be better prepared by now. Yet he keeps on even the questionably gifted injury prone players (like Gibbs, Ox).

Our squad depth has always been somewhat poor and Wenger has not done enough to reinforce. We fade at this point in the season, and if Elneny is the best Wenger can do, I'm afraid we'll fall short again.

But cant you see its actually our strong squad depth thats kept us in the top 4 whilst being hampered with unfit players.

Give me one team in the league who would be near the top if they had an injury record like ours?

The point Im making is the sheer number of players we've had out for 2 and a half seasons is utter madness and abnormal! I could fathom having 3 or 4 key players out for 2 or 3 weeks or having 1 vital player injured for the bulk of a campaign (Kompany for Manchester City) however to consistently be without 7-8 players for months suggests there is something fundamentally wrong at the club, specifically with the medical team.

 

[tap-in]

But cant you see its actually our strong squad depth thats kept us in the top 4 whilst being hampered with unfit players.

Give me one team in the league who would be near the top if they had an injury record like ours?

The point Im making is the sheer number of players we've had out for 2 and a half seasons is utter madness and abnormal! I could fathom having 3 or 4 key players out for 2 or 3 weeks or having 1 vital player injured for the bulk of a campaign (Kompany for Manchester City) however to consistently be without 7-8 players for months suggests there is something fundamentally wrong at the club, specifically with the medical team.

You could argue that part of our injury problems is down to playing certain players into the ground, simply because we dont have quality cover. Coq for eg was undropable because his cover was Flamini or Arteta. Alexis was undropable because we had no-one. If our full backs get injured we have Gibbs and Debuchy.

I dont see how you can say we are in the top 4 because of our squad depth. We are there because the only team showing any consistency is Leicester. If City start to pick up the pace now they will be hard to stop. 2 pts from our last possible 9 is not Champion material.

 

[Gooner n Proud]

You could argue that part of our injury problems is down to playing certain players into the ground, simply because we dont have quality cover. Coq for eg was undropable because his cover was Flamini or Arteta. Alexis was undropable because we had no-one. If our full backs get injured we have Gibbs and Debuchy.

I dont see how you can say we are in the top 4 because of our squad depth. We are there because the only team showing any consistency is Leicester. If City start to pick up the pace now they will be hard to stop. 2 pts from our last possible 9 is not Champion material.

Perhaps you have a point because rotation is important when your competing for different titles there have been many players in the past who have played the majority of games for their teams within a campaign and maintained there fitness throughout. John Terry and Ivanovic started every game in the EPL for Chelsea last season.

When I talk about us sustaining our position in the top 4 because of our squad depth its not in terms of this current campaign but in previous ones where we were again hindered by injuries but still soldiered on through the adequate quality in our squad. The woman I quoted before said that our squad depth has always been poor which is totally far and away from the truth.

 

[Batman]

This is pretty much baseless.

There's about 10 years of evidence supporting it but ok.

 

[Batman]

Wenger does spend money just look at players like Özil, Alexis, Cech
if we want see real quality added in the areas we need then we have to get shot of waste players like Wilshere which none of the fans on this board are happy to do cause they think his something special when in reality his not. to many average players in the CM role get rid of Wilshere, Arteta, Flamini stop playing with the idea of playing Chamberlian centrally and sign somebody like Pogba who is French so Wenger could persuade.

People are taking this defeat to heart to much we played two 3rds of the game with 10 men and were arguably still the better side if Flamnini was a footballer we would of won the game 2-1 even at 10 men Chelsea offered fk all. With a CM of Coq & Carzorla, a starting Alexis and nobody sent off we would off wiped the floor with these ****s tonight but we fail to realize this will be the case in the coming weeks who have Chelsea to come back injury, Who have City or Leicester NOBODY

We have the better team 13 games to go and the majority of them at home you'd be a fool to write off Arsenal title push. The team will be extremely disappointed with tonight

We've been **** since the Southampton defeat but at least this crumble hasn't come in March like it usually does and we have no time to recover


Burnley (H), Southampton (H), Bournemouth (A) & Leicester (H) All of these games need to be won NO EXCEPTIONS

I admire your optimism, I really do. I wish I could be the same but I've just seen this movie too many times now to not know how it ends.

 

[Frenchy_Gooner]

This team has a real psychological problem. Not the first time we commit **** when the pressure is important. Wenger is to blame for this, he doesn't prepare the team well mentally or he should find a psychologist who can do that better than him. In the first minutes of this game, you could see our players were scared and were shaking, for example this confusion between Mert and Kosc that lead to a Chelsea chance. Otherwise, how do you explain an experienced guy like Mertesacker commit such a massive mistake early in the game.

 

[Enfield]

TBH considering how fast both players are on either side of Mert, I would have hoped that
a) Our midfield would be constantly pushing on our opponents to make so much more difficult for them to isolate Per with a pass to Costa
b) That if Per is isolated (regardless of whether they have possession or not) one of the two is ready to get across. When you consider that Costa is about as fast a a young Per I would have backed both our guys to get across.

Finally on the Giroud sub thing, we are all forgetting that when Wenger made the sub the game was scoreless. Therefore it wasn't completely illogical to hope that a speedster would cause Terry problems. It was only after we conceeded that we needed a box specialist. The flaw in Wengers plan was that he expected Theo to work.

Can you imagine how much more work Sanchez would have put in if he was up there alone.

 

[celestis]

There's about 10 years of evidence supporting it but ok.

No there really isn't . I shouldn't have responded though .

 

[Gooner_girl14]

When I talk about us sustaining our position in the top 4 because of our squad depth its not in terms of this current campaign but in previous ones where we were again hindered by injuries but still soldiered on through the adequate quality in our squad. The woman I quoted before said that our squad depth has always been poor which is totally far and away from the truth.

Perhaps we are talking about two different things - you seem to be saying that we have adequate squad depth to keep us in the top 4. I don't disagree, and yes we've won the imaginary trophy of consistently securing a CL spot year after year. I have no doubt we will again this season.

But I was meaning more in terms of actually pushing on to win the title for the first time in a decade. And for that, I don't think one can argue our depth or overall quality has been good enough in the past. Again, we have the worst injury record. It's tough luck but Wenger knows this and should better manage the team and get in proper cover (and cull those who are no longer good enough/never been good enough).

I mean really, Wenger left Coq's cover as Arteta and Flamini, also keeping in mind Coquelin himself is still young and relatively inexperienced. He rolled the dice hoping Coquelin wouldn't be out for too long a time...and came up dud.

 

[Gooner_girl14]

The point Im making is the sheer number of players we've had out for 2 and a half seasons is utter madness and abnormal! I could fathom having 3 or 4 key players out for 2 or 3 weeks or having 1 vital player injured for the bulk of a campaign (Kompany for Manchester City) however to consistently be without 7-8 players for months suggests there is something fundamentally wrong at the club, specifically with the medical team.

I agree. After several years of the same thing, and the same players getting injured over and over, it's troubling how Wenger and co. haven't figured out a solution yet. We dont know what goes on with the medical team, but why do we keep on so many injury prone players, even the ones who clearly aren't good enough? Every team has their fair share of passengers and injury prone players, but I think we have an inordinate amount of both kinds.

 

[Gooner_girl14]

Finally on the Giroud sub thing, we are all forgetting that when Wenger made the sub the game was scoreless. Therefore it wasn't completely illogical to hope that a speedster would cause Terry problems. It was only after we conceeded that we needed a box specialist. The flaw in Wengers plan was that he expected Theo to work.

The other thing Wenger overlooked is that Theo has been utterly cack for the past month or two, Man City wonder goal aside.

 

[SuperGoon]

Everybody still delfated/angry about the result?

 

[Gooner_girl14]

Everybody still delfated/angry about the result?

I'm gutted, it almost feels like I've been through a breakup

And something has just popped up on my Instagram feed about the club who's top at the end of January has gone on to win the title in the past 11 seasons. I guess Leceister really are going to win it

 

[tap-in]

Everybody still delfated/angry about the result?

Not deflated but yes angry at Per for being such a prick, and angry that with Wenger for removing our main source of goals. I guess he didnt want to ruin poor Theo's anniversary party!

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

I'm pretty calm to be honest, that's what low expectations do to you I'd say.