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29 Wed UEFA Champions League A Manchester United 19:45

arsmile

Established Member
ricky1985 said:
BTW - tonight told us, as if we didn't already know, exactly what Wenger currently thinks about Denilson. He was nowhere in sight, nor was he likely to be. He can bang on about his stats being great, and his 'quiet efficiency', but tonight proved it's all bullshit. He doesn't trust him as far as he can throw him.

i dont think that is quite fair....Arsène decided not to play an out-of-form player in an important match; i think that is one of the only selections Arsène made that showed any sort of tactical astuteness.
 

Don Pacifico

Established Member
sabret00the said:
Don Pacifico said:
sabret00the said:
I have no idea when you all became brainwashed in the way you are but a strikers primary job is to finish play not link it.

Let's be honest though Sabre, Ade (and any of our other strikers with the possible exception of Eduardo) shouldn't be playing lone ranger. There's nothing wrong with forwards linking play in preference to finishing, so long as we actually have a striker on the pitch that can finish.
To be fair, i was always firmly against using a striker as a link up player, even during Bergkamp's reign. But at least then we had two dedicated finishers on the pitch at any one time. Now we don't have a single one.

...or at least Wenger won't play one. We have Eduardo back, so why hasn't he started for ages? Also, why is Wenger so aversed to giving Vela (a finisher) a start? It's a bit late in the season to expect him to start important games, given his development but there were loads of games earlier on in the year where we could have used him. I'm sick of seeing lineups where we have no one who can finish.
 

ricky1985

Established Member
At least if we don't play Ade anymore it'll (hopefully) put an end to the absurd amount of long hopeless balls we keep hoofing up to him. Which is not Ade's fault btw.
 

clockwork orange

Blind faith in "LVG filoshophy"
Exactly gave Ade a 6 in my ratings. Strikers have to live of what you feed them, he was on a diet last night. Can't blame him for the team not being able to get the ball to him.
 

Webdesignlab

Established Member
Gibbs was immense (for his career mark).

We should just become a LB academy, Cole, Clichy. Traore ... now Gbbs. We could make LB's and then sell them to other more ambitious teams.
 

marco

Well-Known Member
Webdesignlab said:
Gibbs was immense (for his career mark).

We should just become a LB academy, Cole, Clichy. Traore ... now Gbbs. We could make LB's and then sell them to other more ambitious teams.

yep agreed he looks a great player.
played really well
 

HollandGooner

Established Member

Country: Netherlands

Player:Ødegaard
The one that deserves a mention against the best player in the world is Gibbs very very good match from him.

On the match himself. one word totally outplayed, but it will be different next week.
 

Anzac

Established Member
Meek said:
Anzac said:
Meek said:
Damn its been a long time since I posted on Arsenal-Mania. over a year now. It is good to be back though. Not an ideal performance from our team to be fair. but it could have been a lot worse (but for Almunia). I still think we have a good chance in going through.

Welcome back - why you been gone so long?????

by the way- we do have one thing in common. we both public servants. lol.


and we're in OZ................ :wink:
 

Lord Dula

Established Member
HollandGooner said:
The one that deserves a mention against the best player in the world is Gibbs very very good match from him.

On the match himself. one word totally outplayed, but it will be different next week.[/quote]

In that we wont get away with only conceding one?
 

Mbaki Mutahaba

Established Member
sabret00the said:
Don Pacifico said:
sabret00the said:
I have no idea when you all became brainwashed in the way you are but a strikers primary job is to finish play not link it.

Let's be honest though Sabre, Ade (and any of our other strikers with the possible exception of Eduardo) shouldn't be playing lone ranger. There's nothing wrong with forwards linking play in preference to finishing, so long as we actually have a striker on the pitch that can finish.
To be fair, i was always firmly against using a striker as a link up player, even during Bergkamp's reign. But at least then we had two dedicated finishers on the pitch at any one time. Now we don't have a single one.

Despite all the hoopla about one striker, dedicated striker,4-5-1 we have more goals than United in the CL and prior to scums letting in 5 the past weekend we also had scored more than them in the EPL. So go figure! Our footie has always depended on midfielders coming to score..its how we play. That said, our man/men upfront have to be link man as much as scorers. Ade offers that better than anyone we have.
 

Anzac

Established Member
If we're going down the lone striker route then we should sell about 3 strikers in the summer - we won't need them & they'll only kill some other f*cker if we play them out of position...........
 

General

Established Member
ricky1985 said:
How much do we have to take a look at the players last night? Were they nervous, did they bottle it on the big occasion?

Wenger definitely made mistakes, but ultimately our game is founded on playing a high-line in defense and squeezing the game. We didn't do that last night, well actually that's not true, we managed it for most of the second half, and we utterly dominated. Yes, they countered us everytime our passing broke down in the final third, but we pushed them back and probably had 60% of the ball in the second half. Why did we drop so deep in the first 30 mniutes? Because they came at us and we didn't have the confidence or belief to stand-up, push-up, and stand tall.
.

Really, I don't know how anyone can be surprised by the poor start we had yesterday. I fully expected it once I saw the setup. Wigan and Villareal did it to us and could've been out of sight by half time. Liverpool also did the same and we all know Arshavin was the difference between a hammering and a draw. There's a glaring link between this ridiculous Cesc in an AM role and our poor start to games/sub-par ball retention.

So really we should've seen this coming. Wenger's players are never nervous during a big game. In fact I'd go out on a limp and say it's one of the outstanding traits he's instilled in his players. We can go to Milan and outplay them on their pitch simply due to this characteristic. But when you play your key players out of position (Cesc as AM, Diaby out wide and Nasri centrally) then it is very easy for your team to descend into a misfiring unit. Wenger just went and reversed the roles of the key players who contributed significantly to us beating the same team at Ashburton. To put it bluntly - that was incompetence of the highest order. We mock Rafa for his unhealthy taste for rotation but he at least keeps his key players in their preferred roles.

There was nothing wrong with the team Wenger picked. It was the ridiculous manner he deployed them that caused the damage. Keeping Diaby behind Ade, Cesc centrally and Nasri in front of Gibbs, in my opinion, would've made a huge difference. It's been tried, tested and yielded results. If it ain't broke....
 

General

Established Member
hackajack said:
We just watched as they flooded Song and Nasri, pushing 3 CMs right on to them. Cesc need to drop deep and match it up until we saw off their opening burst.

Add to this the only person who could use Theo's pace to good effect was very often found ahead of play. This is why I said playing Cesc as AM is having a ripple effect all over the pitch. Wenger you bloody idiot. I just can't believe we're throwing away season that suddenly looked like it could yield something positive because the manager has suddenly found a new world of tactical astuteness. There are no more Billy Gallas tantrums or poor refereeing decisions to blame.
 

BannedKwame

Active Member
Oh my god, we have the worst team in the premiership!! Wenger, get a new CM, CB, CF, and assistant coach. Thw whole world is crashing dowm. We lost 1-0 in the semis of the CL to the defending CL champions at home, who are fully healthy. We are terrible!!

All nonsense.

Next week, if we manage to beat United at home, all of sudden Ade becomes the best striker in the world, Cesc the best midfielder in the world, and Wenger a genius.

Also nonsense.

Extremists are always clearly not thinking straight. I will boil all this down to frustration, but sometimes it gets a bit much. No, we don't need a new striker. We have four very good strikers who as a tandem are just as good as any out there; they also won't cost us millions in transfer fees (just what we need right now) plus adaptation time. We have a very good midfield, bar some experience in the middle, but in reality i think its unnecessary. Where we can improve is in defense. Nevertheless, we are third in the league, in the semis of the CL, and lost in the semis of the FA cup-- all with too many injuries and a lot of youth. How terrible we are.

Wenger needs to be a bit practical at times, and he's showing a willingless to at least try, just not as complete an awareness of practicality as say Ferguson or Mourinho. It doesn't make the two better managers than Wenger. Personally, I just want a healthy Arsenal and Senderos' retun. From there, I don't see how anyone can say Liverpool, Chelsea, or United are that much better than us. With our team, we"ll find it easier to win agaianst mediocrity. Against the top teams, it comes down to mistakes or moments of brilliance. If i pick one, I choose moments of brilliance. If we have Walcott/Rosicky--Cesc--Song---Arshavin, Ade--Eduardo playing, I really can't see how anyone can say any team out there even comes close in terms of attacking brilliance.

Chill out a bit. It gets irritating.
 

A_Gooner_Matata

Established Member
^ Good bit of perspective there. If we made some of the changes proposed on here because we lost to the best team in the world, we'd end up like Sp**s.
 

Rohit

Established Member
General said:
There was nothing wrong with the team Wenger picked. It was the ridiculous manner he deployed them that caused the damage. Keeping Diaby behind Ade, Cesc centrally and Nasri in front of Gibbs, in my opinion, would've made a huge difference. It's been tried, tested and yielded results. If it ain't broke....

I agree. The reason for the team's poor performance was deployment of personnel in this formation.
 

Anzac

Established Member
So if the squad is really that good then does that mean the manager is the weakest link??????

All this frustration comes down to the key matches in the season, where the manager & players HAVEN'T stepped up to date, and they're running out of time to do so in any significant manner.
 

ibby

Established Member
I don't buy all this talk about formations anymore, I just think it's as simple as the players weren't good enough on the day.
 

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