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EPL: Southampton vs Arsenal | Sat 26th Dec | 19.45

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Country: Iceland
Bayern Munchen 5 - 1 Arsenal
Southampton 4 - 0 Arsenal

I'm not liking where this is heading. Are we gonna get spanked on all away grounds?

Like I said, there is no title talk, with the amount of hard away games we have left. Specially when we can't even bother to show up against pub team.
 

Gooner Zig

AM's Resident Accountant
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Country: Canada
What a train wreck of a performance...took a mate who was visiting from Australia to this game, who didn't really watch 'soccer' and I was bigging up The Arsenal to him all day before we go to the pub and we get this ****!! :mad:
 

RandyMarsh

Established Member
Bayern Munchen 5 - 1 Arsenal
Southampton 4 - 0 Arsenal

I'm not liking where this is heading. Are we gonna get spanked on all away grounds?

Like I said, there is no title talk, with the amount of hard away games we have left. Specially when we can't even bother to show up against pub team.
Haven't all the spankings in recent years come with Flamini/Arteta at DM? Not sure we get destroyed like this with Coquelin in the team. He's such a massive loss.
 

Country: Iceland
Haven't all the spankings in recent years come with Flamini/Arteta at DM? Not sure we get destroyed like this with Coquelin in the team. He's such a massive loss.

Yeah and Giroud as forward. There are managers who will always having easy time outsmarting Wenger when he plays Giroud. Press high up the pitch and play fast and hard ball. It is even easier when we have Flamini who only knows how to chase people. Run a circle around the dog.

Thankfully we have home game tomorrow where we can put things right. But we need to drown those kittens in the river, that title talk is. There is no title. The away games are to hard, and we don't know how to play them without Coquelin.
 

Gooner Zig

AM's Resident Accountant
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Country: Canada
:lol::lol:

We didn't just lose. We got humiliated 4-0 by a team sitting above relegation, by a team who've got 1 point from their last 5 games. Straight after we turned City over less than a week ago??

It doesn't make any ****ing sense. And I'm tired of seeing performances like this where we just capitulate. It's completely and utterly unacceptable from a team that's meant to be a big club.

I am on a few fan pages on Facebook and they make A-M look like Oxford University scholars. We're a very level headed bunch here and actually realise where the team is at currently.

The stuff that gets posted on other sites though (ie. what I mentioned above) is down right delusion. You get ridiculed for daring to be pessimistic, negative...the collective amount of heads in the sand to our failings on other fan sites is breath taking tbh.

The kicker is that these are the same people that are surprised when we inevitably finish 3rd/4th every season :lol:
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
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Country: Wales
Tbf we've been alright away from home this year. We played Leicester off the park.

It's the injuries that are continuing to f*ck us.
 

celestis

Arsenal-Mania Veteran
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Country: Australia
I am on a few fan pages on Facebook and they make A-M look like Oxford University scholars. We're a very level headed bunch here and actually realise where the team is at currently.

The stuff that gets posted on other sites though (ie. what I mentioned above) is down right delusion. You get ridiculed for daring to be pessimistic, negative...

The kicker is that these are the same people that are surprised when we inevitably finish 3rd/4th every season :lol:

So can err anyone join these pages :D
 

gunner4lyfe

Established Member
Every fvcking time we have had the chance to go top this season we fvck up. Every fvcking time. Wtf is going through these players minds? We knew what Southampton were coming with. We knew they would press high and hard. Yet we still tried the tippy tappy bullsh!t. Pop some more balls up top to Giroud for gods sake or to the runners on the wings. Flams gave us nothing yesterday and quite frankly it was always going to happen sooner or later and the defense had a horrible day because of it.
Maybe the Christmas party was lit the night before. Lol
 

Dennis_Bergkamp_10

Established Member
FFS what a weekend. Watching the game in a pub with some friends who support the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool, and they laugh at you at every single goal. Of course, I can laugh back at them for their own crap but they are right: we are pathetic sometimes.

And that is why we won't win the title, again. Yes, we're still in it, but we bottle bogey grounds. And we have to go to a lot of them.

Now let's bounce back as Per so beautifully puts it.
 

Maxim

Well-Known Member
Now that this thread has settled down a bit after the initial rage. Can we talk about what actually went wrong?

The biggest issue I saw was that we were incredibly naive defensively after conceding the first goal. We KNEW they are going to sit deep after that, We KNEW they were going to keep Long and Mane higher up the pitch ready to break with their pace and we KNEW Per is a completely liability in this situation.

Yet Nacho and Bellerin both pushed up in search of an equalizer and we looked incredibly vulnerable.

Look at this in the build up to their 2nd goal:

Ft5sCI2.jpg

Even before Kos is blatantly tripped this situation is dire.

Kos cannot win here, he has to go and cover Per because Long is about to fly past him. But why are both hector and nacho over the halfway line and Mane is by himself in acres?

There were many more chances for Southampton created by a fairly simple balls over the midfield for long to chase.

The 3rd Ox just lets Fonte stroll past, i don't think you can criticize Cech since theres a wall of players in front of him he can't really come for it.

For the 4th i think it's just nacho and Kos are both exhausted and can't keep up with what was a great run by Long. Cech should probably save it too. Nightmare.
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
Özil was well marked by their two holding midfielders and perhaps we see why Wenger likes a midfield out wide. Because Campbell and Walcott were offering very little in a game like yesterdays. It's alright when we're playing very high tempo in a game we're dominating or playing a bit on the counter attack but yesterday was a game we needed to gain control of and we failed to do so. I think yesterday the injuries really hit us hard for the first time considering out lack of options.

At least if you have Ramsey/Wilshere wide they can come for the ball and offer themselves as an extra man, it was almost as if Southampton knew that Theo/Campbell could only come alive when there was space to exlpoit or in and around the penalty area. When it comes to them being involved in the build up it becomes too slow and they end up just go back, losing possession or just making the easiest pass available. Maybe we even saw the importance of Cazorla, at least with Özil being so heavily guarded it'd have given Cazorla a lot more space to make some passes and dictate a little bit of the play.

Look it was a setback but the good thing about this period is that we've got a game almost straight after to respond and another chance to go top.
 

albakos

Arséne Wenger: "I will miss you"
Administrator

Country: Kosova

Player:Saka
With the way Giroud was playing, I wouldn't be surprised if he sneaked one of his mistresses in his hotel room.
 

Vinci

The Sultan of Unai

Country: Netherlands
Why didn't Gabriel play instead of Per?

Shane Long is crap to be fair, but he is quick and that's the only way he would cause trouble for Per – which he did.
 

General

Established Member
Haven't all the spankings in recent years come with Flamini/Arteta at DM? Not sure we get destroyed like this with Coquelin in the team. He's such a massive loss.
We most certainly wouldn't have suffered this trouncing with Coq in the middle of the park. Inevitably his absence will dictate where we will end up because Flamini/Arteta are quite simply not top 4 quality. Campbell was another weak link and he just couldn't sustain the intensity of the game. In the end we were carrying too many passengers and we will probably lose if we played this game again.
 
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RandyMarsh

Established Member
It's no coincidence we play much better when we sit deep and concede possession. Because Mertesacker excels in that system.

He's completely exposed and so are we as a team when we choose to play our gung-ho attacking style pushing most of the team forward (as we see on the second goal above).

That's not to say we don't get exposed when we sit deep too, but I feel if we're going to continue playing Mertesacker we cannot afford to play such a high line.
 

blrgooner

Established Member
It's a simple tactic but we don't know how to counter it. Fergie loved to use it against us - lob the balls deep over our centre halves and make them turn & the harry them them with quick dogged players. We didn't know where & when to press. It's a tactic that Wenger better find a solution to
I don`t think it is as easy as that. Our problem yesterday was that we found ourselves in 2 on 2 situations with Mane and Long yesterday far too often. I think this was because the fullbacks were the only players we were dependent on to provide creativity due to which it Southampton got possession of the ball far too often when the fullbacks were in advanced positions. This was because we had a sum total of two players who were capable of keeping the ball and passing it properly(Ramsey and Özil) and Ramsey is not even very good at it.
When we play a team like we did yesterday, We are very dependent on the first goal. We get the first goal, let the opposition play and counter them effectively at times like the Aston Villa game and all of a sudden we look like a dangerous team(Even though we were equally bad against Aston Villa IMO). If the opposition lets us have the ball, we just have no idea how to use it. Things are very different when we have Sanchez and Ramsey playing on the wings though. We have had poor games with them on the pitch, but we were never dominated like yesterday IMO.
 
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