PL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 19:45 PM

[WengerFaithful]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Not to long ago it was stated everywhere you read including here that we had the best midfield in the league.

Granted take out Ramsey/Walcott and it appears to be imbalanced and inept but I wouldn't concur that it is a problem going back to 2008 as we have solved it until injury stabbed a big hole in it.

 

[Hunta]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Agree with rwa, time for Gnabry to come back in, he's sat a few games out now after a couple of quiet performances but he can't do much worse than what's out there currently, at least he runs at players now and again.

 

[ScotVieira]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Still furious with our lack of fighting last night. This was the crappiest United team in decades, they were there for the taking and we failed to score past them.

I was particularly annoyed with Wilshere and his nonchalant play. Too many times he got caught in possession and United did a job on him as they found his runs too often.
One thing he should know is that you cannot score Norwich-like goals so often. Those tippy-tappy moves around the box are fruitless against top sides. Several times when he lost possession and United started a counter, you see him jogging back and not chasing the runners. This reminded me of shocking memories of Denilson as he jogged back from few seasons ago when Rooney scored on counter.

The less we say about Giroud the better. His chance conversion stats are there for all to see. What I find frustrating about him that once defenders start shackling him him (as Vidic did all night in him) he spends more time on ground complaining than following the play. He could've done better on that tap-in chance.

Sczesny, Cazorla, Özil and Gibbs were our better performers.

Two huge points dropped.

I also noticed Wilshere doing that last night. If he persists, he is likely to become more of a liability to the team than an asset.

 

[Jasard]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Still fuming that we went out at home to a **** United with the mindset of "don't lose". **** sake.

 

[goonerwarsh]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

I agree with Anzac and Outlaw here completely.

There's not much point slinging mud at this player and that. We've all done enough of that already anyway. We know by now the strengths and weaknesses of these players.

My point would be Wenger talks a lot being judged by consistency. He says that our record of finishing in the top four should be seen as an achievement and I agree with him to a certain extent. But it's only really doing half the job. If he wants to look at patterns instead of isolated cases then he needs look no further at his record against clubs such as United, Chelsea, City and teams of similar quality. Teams that considering our stature in the game, should be considered our level. Well his record speaks for itself, it's extremely poor.

I'm not quite sure how many more times we have to watch games like last night before it dawns on him that whatever he is doing is absolutely not working. You could watch the vast majority of our games against such sides from the last 6 or 7 years and you'd be hard pressed to see much change in the performance.

I'm reading Ferguson's book at the moment, there's a chapter dedicated to Wenger and playing the Arsenal. He basically says that Wenger just keeps signing exactly the same kind of player and the blueprint to play Arsenal is pack the middle and stay with the runners. As soon as one of their players plays the ball just stick with his run because a one-two is pretty much all they will do.

Arseblogger this morning talks of us having to take a sideway step similar to when we lost to City in order to move forward. Normally I agree with what he has to say but I think he was wrong in this case. At some point, when the chance presents itself we are going to have to step up, take the initiative and deliver. We can't keep losing and drawing to anyone half decent we come up against, particularly at crunch times of the season. We've performed poorly against our main rivals this year so I'm not sure we have the luxury of taking a sideways step.

Yet again, when everyone knew that we we're entering a massive run of games where we were going to see the real level of where this team is, we've come up short.

 

[Yousif Arsenal]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

to solve this problem now is playing with another formation we have 4 wingers in the squad Walcott injured Podolski wenger not give him chance AOC play better as midfielder and Gnabry is so too young to play in top level game everybody knew that we are so slow without Walcott in 4-5-1 4-3-3. i feel playing with 2 strikers could help to solve a problem a bit 4-1-2-1-2 is my ideal formation now.

 

[Jasard]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Why were we messing about in injury time, pretty much time wasting? Angered me so much. Such a negative attitude in that game.

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

There have been countless situations yesterday, where Özil was up front all on his own, with only Giroud being in the box at times. It was two/three against eight in 80% of our attacking moves, at home!

Bloody hell, I still can't believe how I was able to watch the whole match.

 

[Yousif Arsenal]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

There have been countless situations yesterday, where Özil was up front all on his own, with only Giroud being in the box at times. It was two/three against eight in 80% of our attacking moves, at home!

Bloody hell, I still can't believe how I was able to watch the whole match.

the game yesterday remind me of chelsea game at emirates boring as f**k and the both teams looks will settle for a draw. lets hope now we have the same run we did after Chelsea game.

 

[Hunta]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Nah this was much worse mate, we played for the draw at home, all this talk from our players after he match saying it's good to get the clean sheet etc is a load of bullshit as far as I'm concerned, City, Chelsea, Liverpool and ****ing Stoke destroyed these ****s at home yet we struggled to make chances against them, when was the last time somebody got put through 1v1 for us? Our attack is a disgrace, the LW and ST positions need upgrading in the summer, two world class players or it'll be a battle for fourth next season.

 

[eye4goal]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Arsenal, Norwich, Palace and Villa are the only teams not to score in the PL against Utd this season(Palace and Villa only played them once mind)

 

[outlaw_member]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Retaining possession for the sake of denying the opposition the ball is nothing more than encouraging yet more 'Passive Possession/Control', as their is no end state/objective established. Players push up in some mindless numbers game rather than actually thinking about what we are trying to achieve, and then we become more vulnerable to losing patience and over committing and conceding on a quick/direct counter.

Not only do we have a thousand passers in the side, we also lack a clear direct route to goal. It's farcical. It's a directionless attack, without any actual attackers. We keep the ball for the sake of keeping the ball, and we don't know what else to do with it. The players try to pass and keep it flowing, but it's obvious that they are attempting a failed strategy. The last 3 minutes of the game summed up just how flawed the set up is. The players didn't know what the **** to do, because the team is built to pass, and only pass. We spent 90 minutes passing to no avail, so what hope did we actually have to pass it around for another 3 minutes. The team is like a body without any arms. There is nothing going on to the sides. It's an army without any flanks. It's farcical. Same old system for years.

Wenger is the only manager in the history of the game who plays without any wingers and wingbacks. We paid for it yesterday, much like we pay for it almost every single time we come up against a strong team. Wenger doesn't value one of the basic facets of football, width. No width, at all. Farcical.

 

[Enfield]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

As I saw it last night

Chesny – Top drawer, title winning goalkeeper and could one of the very very best out there
Sagna – Looks like he has already made up his mind to leave and his mind is on a beach somewhere
Mert – Kept it nice and tight back there
Kos – Another top drawer performance, did a lot to keep RVP quiet which is easier said than done
Gibbs – good to have him back, brough some energy
Arteta – I’m not his biggest fan, gave away the ball when he was pressed in the first few seconds. No where near the standard required as our alledged DM
Jack – Needs to wake up a little, probably not 100% fit but could do with dropping the brattish attitude and getting on with the game
Rosicky – Should never be out of the starting team when he is fit
Özil – Showed the detractors what he can do, pity there was literally no one there to help him by receiving a pass from him
Cazorla – Tried and had one of his better games but TBH isn’t consistent enough
Giroud – Tried his best but when you run a decent but not brilliant player in to the ground and then take away his support players it is always going to happen

Wenger – Quickly losing the good will built up over the last few months. 100m+ sitting in the bank, chronic injuries due to his refusal to rotate and he signs an injured squad player in his 30s. Yesterday we were devoid of inspiration and everyone could see the problems. He left the Ox on the bench until his magic 75min mark and didn’t give Podolski, the best finisher he has worked with, any run. Despite his striker playing poor and missing chances

 

[Buhry]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

How anyone can blame the players or even Giroud is beyond me? How so many are incapable of seeing that we are experiencing a systematic failure against the big sides going back to 2007 or so is baffling. The problems we saw yesterday go beyond the players on the pitch. We've averaged less than 1 goal per game against the big 3 teams in almost 40 games against them. ******* Everton, Tottenham and Liverpool have over 10 more goals scored against the same opposition over the same time period.

How can so few see that Wenger's Emirates era system is one-dimensional, imbalanced, flawed and easy to defend against. We use 5 or so playmakers, who all collapse into the center of the pitch, who all attempt the most difficult form of football, to pass through the middle via one-touch play. The opposition simply has to flood the centre with many bodies, and they will 9/10 stifle our attack. This issue existed even with van Persie and Fabregas in the side, so why was it going to change with their replacements?

Wenger has accumulated an abundance of creators, who all end up having to create for themselves. We play without any width whatsoever, all of our football occurs in the centre of the pitch, teams with strong defenders can stop us without breaking a sweat simply by remaining compact. We only have two goalscorers in the entire squad, one is injured and the other is on the bench. Wenger never learns, because he can't accept that his system is inadequate. It's easy to combat, and he left the players hung out to dry, again.

Agreed. The system we have right now is good enough to get top 4 since we usually manage to beat the weaker teams and we are good at that, but against teams that aren't pushovers we pretty much come up short every time. What was the last time we beat one of Chelsea, United and City now? It didn't happen last season and it hasn't happened this season either.

The team right now is incredibly unbalanced and the only time we have a shot at scoring is when we manage to pass the opposition team into their own box. And good teams don't let us do this, hence we struggle badly to get goals against them. Our counters and lack of pace is a complete joke. Watching Rosicky and Giroud trying to counter over and over again last night made me want to poke my eyes out.

Like you said we have too many creators and not enough directness in the team. Doesn't help that giroud is midtable striker at best either, if we had a messi or Suarez maybe we could get away with playing a bunch of playmakers behind him, but giroud, no.

Another thing that was really annoying to watch last night was wilshere never ever making runs into the box to try to get into scoring positions. probably because he doesn't have the stamina tbh. Ramsey's sensational form at the start of the season was covering up a ton of problems in our offence. I thought in the summer we needed a wide player and a striker, we still do. As well as a better CM to partner ramsey.

 

[outlaw_member]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

This is Arsenal on the offensive against a strong team with the right tactics to nullify us;

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[Webdesignlab]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

Were we playing for a draw or just a bit crap?

It's hard to say.

Maybe BOTH.

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

We were playing for a crap draw.

At least during the last ten minutes.

 

[outlaw_member]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

We settled for the draw by the 70th minute or so, but we didn't start the game to draw. We attacked to obviously score and win. The game against Chelsea and Man Utd were exactly like all the ones we've had against them in the past, except van Persie and Lampard hit the bar rather than the back of the net. What we actually saw is that even when they are devoid of an attacking threat, our rivals can still stifle our attack because it is predictable and one-dimensional. We could have played for another 400 minutes and we still wouldn't have scored. We were a Szczesny double save away from defeat.

 

[Webdesignlab]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

We were playing for a crap draw.

Sums it up nicely.

 

[Taylor Gang Gunners]

Re: EPL | Arsenal vs Manchester United | 12/02/14 | 7:45 PM

We settled for the draw by the 70th minute or so, but we didn't start the game to draw. We attacked to obviously score and win. The game against Chelsea and Man Utd were exactly like all the ones we've had against them in the past, except van Persie and Lampard hit the bar rather than the back of the net. What we actually saw is that when devoid of an attacking threat, a strong opponent can still stifle our attack because it is predictable and one-dimensional. We were a Szczesny double save away from defeat.

You could also say in both games we could've won though, Giroud had guilt edge chances against both teams and failed to tuck them away. Had we got the opener in either of those matches in sure we would've won. It's a shame the chances fell to Giroud.