PL: Arsenal vs West Bromwich Albion | 20/11/04

[kel varnsen]

stop blaiming jens; he is quality. stop blaiming cygan, lauren and freddie. today, and the last couple of weeks, it's the so called big names that has let us down. henry, pires and cole are struggling with small injuries, vieira has been shi*e and bergkamp lacks a bit of sparkle. why does wenger keep insisting on using players out of form and injured? henry needs rest and van persie has been amazing the last few weeks.

in eindhoven i'd like to see this starting eleven:

jens
lauren,toure,cygan,cole
ljungberg,fabregas,vieira,pires
van persie,reyes

 

[huyha123]

Well, looking on the bright side - it shows just how abysmal Sp**s are at the moment, if they managed to lose to us.

to be honest, i would say we win in that game due mainly to Spur go for attacking way than defence. that's how we can win it. team go attacking against us only got 2 results. lose or lose badly.

 

[Aussie]

Get someone in to sort out the defense. Adams maybe

 

[huyha123]

ATTENTION:

A few weeks ago in a thread about managers that you hate, I mentioned my dislike for SAM, well after careful consideration, screaming at the top of my lungs, running around like a headless chicken, I would like to now apoloigise for my very wrong appraisal of SAM and retract that statement, and show my absolute love and appreciation for ramming one of your pies down the through of the arrogant gob that belongs to Jose whoremino. :twisted:

thank you

also i see somebody here say that Mourinho just state the fact when he said our defence is a "disgrace". really? i think about after Spur match with chelsea, he complain "bus" tactic. so he just a ffffffffffffffff guy.

let see what he said today.

 

[huyha123]

I wouldn't say this is a crisis but we do have problems. The team looks stale and out of ideas. I have to agree with some of the replies here that Bergkamp needs to be dropped. We all know what a wonderful player he is but he is not playing well. I would have liked to see Van Persie start with Henry in today's game but Arsène seems to persist with Bergkamp. Also why the late substitutions? Hardly make any difference at all. It's time for Arsène to drop the ineffective players and play the young players like Van Persie and Pennant. They would bring something fresh and be hungry and raring to go. The only good thing is Chelski dropped points and that's a let off for us. Still we shouldn't be relying on other teams to do the job for us. No excuses.

what i do not understand is. at the begin of season, wenger always use sub and make change at 60 minute. boro, fulham and some others. i see it as a very good sign of changing his tactic. but now everything the same again with this 5 minute sub.

 

[huyha123]

Pennant is playing very well for Reserve. so do VP. If they can beat Everton then i think they are good enough for PL and WBA. Why they are still not in our 1st team?

They are not in the first team because they have BETTER players ahead of them playing at the moment, would you swap ljungberg for pennant at the moment? i certainly wouldnt. and as for VP he may be good but Bergkamp offers more...much more.

But what did Bergkamp does in the match?

Stop judging a player on a 1 match basis, look at what he offers us in the long run. Bergkamp is irreplacable.

Give the old man a break, everyone has a dip in form, if he scored the winner today, i bet u would have been praising him

i think that's exactly what Bergkamp need now. Rest. He can come on as sub (5 minute from time, wenger way).

 

[skart14]

anyone's got wengers email add???i've got a few choice words for him....we don't know how to keep a lead anymore??...he better sort things out before the psv match or we will DEFINATELY lose...

 

[siddharth]

As much as i'm pissed with wenger for not playing van persie in place of bergkamp and not making early substitutions we can't overlook the fact that we are missing campbell and gilberto. We are going through a bad patch and to make things worse we got injuries to our very important players. Obviously all these factorse are going to affect the team.

With the kind of the attacking players we have we will always score an odd goal in a match but we need to master the art of defending leads. It's easy to blame individual players for conceding goals but for me the coaching staff and wenger need to take the blame too. It's the job of the coaching staff and the manager to organize a defence but sadly it's not been the case. We have conceded late goals with campbell in the side so it's unfair to blame cygan though he isn't arsenal quality.

There are two major problems in our defence. One problem is that our marking at set pieces and crosses is poor and the other major problem is lehmann atleast thats what i think of it. I'm dead sure that there is no communication between our defence and lehmann at all. Lehmann isn't sure of the defenders in front of him and our defenders don't have confidence in him. The goal which west brom scored today highlights my point. Jonathan greening crosses the ball into the box and earnshaw scores even though we have 3 defenders in the box !!!!. The commentator said that Toure was guilty of ball watching and TBH toure is not a good reader of the game and he should have cleared it but what people didn't notice is that toure was hoping for lehmann to come out and collect the cross while lehmann was expecting the defenders to clear it. When the mighty campbell is in the side he never does such kind of thing and always clears the ball or intercepts the crosses regardless of lehmann coming for the ball. From what i have seen our defence doesn't concede many goals from open play but a majority of our goals have come from crosses and set pieces which is interesting. I would really love to see Almunia in goal for 5 or 6 matches in a row but considering how stubborn wenger is it won't happen. I hope lehmann is injured for a few matches so that we can see what Almunia is all about.

 

[Ridge]

i thought when we concede that goal, we should've of put Reyes and RVP up directly. but instead he was still hoping that Bergy could do some magic for giving him a few more minutes to play.

 

[jay-d]

Absolutly shocking, Bergkamp plays crap and Wenger plays him till the 86 min whats the flipping point. Whats RVP gonna do with 3 bloody mins?? The season is over im afraid and before anyone tells me to get a grip, u get a grip can u see Chelsea messing up? I can't

i can. its f****g november! man utd were ruled out in october, but look where they are now. we were 5 clear of chelsea, but look where we are now. in the space of a month, there have been major changes. so how the f**k anyone can rule any team out with 6 full months to go is beyond me. form changes. fact! i'd rather do badly now and have form change in teh new year rather than vice-versa. this is the same bloody team that won the league unbeaten for ****sakes so no one can dispute the fact we have it in us to change our form.

agree totally, its only a matter of time before chelsea have a dip in form, theres 6 months still to go and every team has a dip in form at some point, man u have had theres and look to b on the mend, we are in ours now, but its still not terrible form, we're keeping up with chelsea who have been on top form and have only lost 1 game. Its only a matter of time before we get our form back and finish teams off in the first half

I must admit i over reacted i was just totally gutted after such a lackluster performance, i honestly think Wenger needs to DROP bergkamp but as for the season being over, i was truly talking crap, but thats emotions for you.

 

[SoUL]

hmm this results really frustrates me to say the least... :evil:

can't see chelsea dropping many points at the moment and against west brom was an ideal oppurtunity to get back on level terms :evil:

 

[KingReyes]

but its still not terrible form, we're keeping up with chelsea who have been on top form and have only lost 1 game. Its only a matter of time before we get our form back and finish teams off in the first half

thats the most sensible post i'v read in a while. whilst chelsea are being portrayed as this majestic, infallible side over the last couple of weeks and arsenal the direct opposite, its easy to forget the gap is only 2 points. i mean we could have easily been top today putting into perspective the extent to which this supposed shocking form has affected us.

Well said Patrick, people here tend to forget that the same time last year we weren't in first place. In fact we only remained in first place in Jan/Feb. There is still a long way to go, yes maybe Chelsea have a better team than last year but it doesn't mean we have turn crap all of a sudden.

This is the same Arsenal side that was beating teams with ease at the start of the season(some of those games without Sol) there is no reason why we can't get that form back.

Last season we drew with Pompey, Leicester, Fulham etc but we still managed to win the league. Why are people making it sound like its all over in NOVEMBER!!

 

[sabret00the]

to add my two pence to the whole Dennis/RvP thing, even if you forget the form issue, the fact of the matter is, Wengers keeping up dependant on someone who's retiring, and i think that's wrong, even if Dennis stays another season we really need to start that transition from now, theirs been no rotation of Dennis/RVP to get that communication and flair with the rest of the first team right, the reason i'm so pro-RvP is because as a fan of Arsenal i'm worried about a post-Dennis Arsenal, and while he's having this blip in form it's the time to try and make sure RvP can emulate dennis's effect on the team, thus not leave us feeling like we're missing a gaping hole, i know in our hearts we'll miss dennis, some of you probably as much as i missed and sometimes still miss Ian, but we need to make sure the transition period is a long one rather than a steep slope. and tbh i think outta respect for dennis, it would be great for him to have to compete for his place, he should be the better of the two playing, not he favourite.

 

[Jkreffer]

Why are people saying start Van Persie up front and rest Henry? Lets think about this for a second...we really need to win, so we should rest our top goalscorer!? :?
Seriously i think some of you need to lie down and take a breather.

 

[Henry IV]

The draw was a dismal result.

 

[Feanor]

Haven't seen the match yet but it didn't look like (highlights) that we played that poorly, the problem was that Cygan the best chance to score the second goal. I think we need to rest Henry and BK. Everybody is going with 70% of Henry is better than 100% of most other strikers, that is fine when the rest of the team is performing and picking up the slack, right now no one is doing anything extra...it's still just a slump and we'll get out of it, Chelsea are only 2 points ahead.