How did he lose his midfield battles if he won 8 out of 9 duels? More like he was the only player who won his battles in the game.
Since when do we judge on tackles made? Usually you want to stay on your feet not make tackles. And it was a successful tackle, he never gave away any fouls in the game.
You can see Tierney position is someone who can't play Zinchenko role. Also our defence is deep because of holding also G.Jesus dropping much deeper. Its vital we have Zinchenko and saliba back because Arteta won't change his system and Holding Tierney wont be able to do the job
You don't have to go to ground to make a tackle mate.
The duels stat is misleading because it lumps in meaningless headers, which is why I couldn't find stats to back it up. It was pretty clear while watching the game that Xhaka (along with his partners in midfield) were struggling to impose themselves on the game.
Even if you remove the statistical aspect from this conversation, you would have to really make an effort to notice Xhaka was even on the pitch for most of the game. While he wasn't directly involved in anything terrible from what I remember, he was pretty anonymous.
Even with Rice I didn't expect us to get anything out of the midfield battle in this game, but with Partey playing a stinker and Xhaka drifting around without much purpose we ended up actually doing alright there. The first 20 minutes or so was basically what I expected the whole game to be like - we're talking about a team that conceded 75% possession to Fulham - but the lackadaisical approach from your entire midfield opened the door to our comeback.
Lot of people giving us a bottler mentality. Even on here. You could of course say this was a bottle job and we had plenty of time to get back in front, but it’s very very hard to regain momentum once lost. We had our chance with the penalty but blaming this on Saka as some are is harsh to say the least.
After going 2-0, we switched off and tried to lower the tempo and control the game. This is where we lose it. We’ve seen the same before. Not as obvious against Pool but it was there as well. But it’s a pattern we’ve seen before in previous seasons under Arteta. It’s really down to one of two things, or a combination of them; either the players become afraid of losing when going up and start to feel the pressure. Or it’s tactical and Arteta has instructed the team to bring down the tempo and control the game.
Regardless, we bring the tempo down to a pace we’re not used to. We play “walk football” and once you do that a bit too long it’s really hard to get back into gear. You can see the players almost find it boring and they switch off or become nonchalant. No movement, slow on the ball, no risk-taking. It’s a completely different way of going about the game mentally and that’s why it’s hard to get back.
I believe this is actually on Arteta more than the players. He’s the one bottling it.
A tackle or an interception is not a duel. A duel is when you contest an opponent on the ground or in the air. That is where you win or lose individual battles, and Xhaka won his. He‘s not judged on interceptions. He’s avoiding tackles, which is a good thing but for some odd reason you’re treating it like a negative.
If a player has to make a tackle then it likely means they’ve made a mistake regarding their positioning.
A tackle is a dual, an interception isn't. You can't even list what duals he won, because you don't know but most of his duals won were headers
And yes winning the ball back through intercepting and tacking is an important part of being a midfielder and Xhaka simply can not do that. The quote from Alonso about tackling being a mistake in positioning is because Alonso would intercept before needing to make the tackle but he would also tackle frequently to win the ball back. Xhaka does neither
We're still trying and we're all gonna be here next week. Hopefully to see a w.You're nuts. We threw away two 2-0 leads within the space of one week trying to win the league. You don't do that.
Lol we needed to win @ LFC tooShut the **** up, we needed to win this.
This is exactly it.Back in 1989 (very similar to this team) the team got into a great position to end our title drought of near two decades, then looked liked they had bottled it with some horrible results/performances near the end, before they eventually best Liverpool on the last day...but in 1991, pretty much the same group walked the league with ease as they now had that belief in them.
IMO 25% chance of happening, but you would have still taken it at the start of the year for sure.This is exactly it.
Many on this forum have little to no experience of watching Arsenal as genuine title contenders.
We won at Anfield in 89, despite appearing to falter in the run in, because we had no choice; we played the 90 minutes plus, as Wenger would have put it had he been around, with the handbrake entirely off.
Obviously that was a unique situation against our direct title rival on the last day of the season, but there are comparisons to City next week.
At one level we have to beat the best to be the best.
But we also need to have the confidence to play our own game, rather than falling back on more traditional footballing concepts such as “what we have we hold”. Slowing the game down didn’t in the end help us against Liverpool (albeit we conceded very late in the game) And certainly not at West Ham, where that approach started at the 30 minute mark and basically gave the result away from a massively dominant position. There is no chance (in my opinion) of setting out for and achieving a draw at the Etihad next week. If by some chance we score the first goal, we can’t sit back - in that eventuality the intelligent use of Martinelli, in my opinion our most dangerous player in the toolbox against City, will be key.
We‘d obviously all take a draw if offered now because it would keep the title in our own hands, assuming (as I do) that we’ll get back on the horse and overcome Southampton on Friday.
But imagine the scenes if we did the business on Friday, went there, won on our own terms and came away with a ten point lead?
As per Anfield 89 it’s looks like mission impossible in context of the last seven days results but it really isn’t. Its just a game of football.
Maybe not physically but possibly mentally. We have been leading the whole season and have already had to pull out some desperate last minute wins against Bournemouth, villa and utd. You exert a lot of emotion in such games, it was one of my concerns, given there were still so many games to go. IMO whilst they have stayed on course and continued to win, most of the 2nd half of the season has been a struggle, it hasn’t come easily.The team’s not fatigued they’re playing a game a week they’re getting plenty of rest. It may have been an excuse in November or January when we were playing 3 games a week but certainly not now.
It seems as if the team got overconfident yesterday, lost focus then panicked. Flicks and tricks and players trying to dribble too much on their own for no reason, unprofessional.