PL: Bolton vs Arsenal | 20/12/03

[Jinn]

Rain in your eyes?

To be honest, Bolton outplayed us for large portions of the game, and a draw was almost a fair result.

 

[Jasper]

We are second in the league in draws!
Behind guess who?
Bolton!

 

[Webdesignlab]

It must be the rain and wind!
There has to be a explanation for our terrible play.
The rain and wind must have affected our passing.

Yeah thats it LOL. Actually though it was in Boltons favour (the weather) it really slows us down, but bygad this is the country we have to play in not Spain. Come on gooners so we drew, at least the headlines are not Bolton beat Arsenal tomorrow.

 

[thegame24]

Equal on top with Chelski.

Equal points, equal goal difference, equal number of goals scored.

which isnt bad going. its not the end of the world. even if united win tomorrow, they are top by a point. Doesnt mean they have won the title now does it? our position in the table isnt the worry. it is the manner of the performance whch is. maybe we need a defeat, as a wake up call because it seems the draws (3 in the last 4 prem game) isnt doing that. I'm glad we are unbeaten, but that advantage is irrelevant when you consider how many games (six) we have drawn. Wolves at home next, lets hope for a reaction and a performance.

lol you say i talk rubbish then you mention something i said earlier about loosing being a good thing.

 

[Anonymous]

compared to arsenal many teams are **** yes or no?.

They are all premiership teams and need to be respected if you show disrespect you get your ASS kicked!

 

[Jasper]

Terrible I think we had something like only 5 shots on goal.

 

[patrick42uk]

that jj is something else, hope he carries this form into the nations cup. vieira is way off his best as well. it seems he needs a couple more games still to get back to his best. campo dominated the center for much of the game.

The difference between drawing to bolton now and drawing to them last season is that now, we have over four months to make up for it.

 

[thegame24]

It must be the rain and wind!
There has to be a explanation for our terrible play.
The rain and wind must have affected our passing.

Yeah thats it LOL. Actually though it was in Boltons favour (the weather) it really slows us down, but bygad this is the country we have to play in not Spain. Come on gooners so we drew, at least the headlines are not Bolton beat Arsenal tomorrow.

thats the thing though.

if the headline was bolton beat arsenal then players would try and redeem themeselves.

the only consolation is that manure go top and everyone will start sucking their **** thus getting us pissed off and back to winning ways

 

[Webdesignlab]

We are still the best team, whoever goes top at Crimbo doesn't mean that much look at least season we were well away, so we thought.

Next year is the big run in, this we will have a bloody good go at.

 

[Anonymous]

to be honest, i really do not think Arsenal are good enough to win the EPL this year. The hav'nt been playing well recemtly and the milan game was a freak score that probably will never happen again.

The need a of decent defender to partner SOL is a must. Cygan is ok,but is slow and makes mistakes.

Midfield is where i see our weakenss. If we had a strong midfield then the weakness in our defence would be covered. Patrick is still finding his feet from injury. Gilberto is the weakess link. Rubbish player

Remember we won the EPL without him, and then Wenger gets this ****.

 

[thegame24]

that jj is something else, hope he carries this form into the nations cup. vieira is way off his best as well. it seems he needs a couple more games still to get back to his best. campo dominated the center for much of the game.
quote]

i agree vieira is way way off. what pisses me off is that he talk about real and manure and its getting on my nerves especially when he isnt even playing as good as he should.

and yea JJ is class.

 

[Jasper]

yeah jj and campo pretty much controlled the game.

Vieira had one good run, he should do more!

 

[bobbypires]

Vieira can't play. He lost a lot of balls since his comeback. I think Edu & Gilberto are ok playing at the centre.

 

[Mark]

the only positive thing is that when we played bad last year and even when we played well last year we still lost games, today we were very poor but still didn't lose. what's disappointing is we went infront and should've held on, but cygan was at fault again as he was when we conceeded the late equaliser to leicester. his weak clearance went straight to pederson. he has got to be dropped imo, he just isn't reliable enough.

 

[Webdesignlab]

The hav'nt been playing well recemtly and the milan game was a freak score that probably will never happen again.

Er? Wolves?

Come on you are always so negative, why support Arsenal if this is how you feel?

We will get a new striker New Year and maybe an attacking MF.

You are correct to say that MF was our weakness. Vieiras need more games. Gilberto is fine, but not great, though I do like him.

Ahhh big deal, let's debate which strikers we want rather than this match.

 

[Jasper]

We loaned Van Brock and replaced him with Gilberto.

Gilberto is so quiet in some games.

 

[thegame24]

bring back lauren at RB for a while cause e dont have any other defenders apart from kolo and keown. and after what i saw from keown against wba he aint looking to good.

 

[Jasper]

Cygan gave up many crucial goals last season

 

[Mark]

yeah i don't understand why gilberto is never dropped either. the only time i remember him not starting was in the milan game when he had been playing for brazil a few days earlier. i think parlour needs to start more games and edu has been great this season when called upon, i really don't understand why wenger refuses to drop gilberto.

 

[JGooner]

it's not that difficult to explain, and we have seen it happen in other games against inferior opposition over the past 18 months. the problems should be obvious but many gooners can't see them because of their belief that any criticism of the team or manager is disloyal or morally outrageous. The problems are this:

1) Cygan is not good enough. He is crap in the air despite being the tallest player on the pitch, his pace is sub-tortoise level, and his tackling is horrendously clumsy. Keown or Toure should be played ahead of him if fit.

2) Gilberto is not good enough. He is the worst passer in our first team squad, he covers lots of ground to no effect at all, and gets caught in possession more often than any of our players. The "tiredness" excuse which he has kept using since he got here is (pardon the pun) tiresome. Parlour and Edu should be played ahead of him when fit.

3) This is the most challenging problem because there seems to be no obvious solution. The problem is this: our star players (Vieira, Henry, Pires) sometimes do not give a **** in games like this against weaker sides who we are expected to beat. Vieira was especially guilty of this against Pompey back in September but today the other two were the guilty parties. I don't think the problem is tiredness so much as complacency. They take to the field expecting to win without exerting themselves, and then seem shocked for 90 mins that the opposition is refusing to just roll over and let them tickle their tummies. Tony Gale and some others who regularly watch Arsenal point this out - but what can be done? We can't sub them because they are our core and we have no players good enough to replace them. Wenger should give them a lecture about their attitude in games like this, but I presume he does so already (remember the rumours about his team talk at half time during the Man City game?).

If we can solve these problems, we'll be fine but I worry that we have done nothing about them since they started becoming obvious around this time last year.