We were able beat Monaco at home 3-0 with the help of two goals from Saka and the other one from Havertz earlier this week. It brought us closer to the round of 16, we are sitting 3rd with equal points between 3rd to 8th ranking teams. There’s no sure thing in football and 2 game weeks are still left but another win should get us the automatic qualification to next round. Top 8 qualifies automatically and the next 8 teams are selected between 9th-24th ranking teams when they will play a 2-legged knockout game between them. We don’t want to end up in that situation and for now, it looks like we won’t – unless we lose both.
In the Premier League, last 2 weekends have been shit for us. We shared points against Fulham at Cottage and then Everton restricted us to a goalless draw at Home. When you are competing for the title, a draw is 2 points lost. We have now got enough chances to cover the gap with Liverpool but we have failed to do so. Remember last season when we gave one of these chances to Man City and they took it with both hands and never looked back? Well, Liverpool gave it to us by dropping points against both Newcastle and Fulham and we couldn’t capitalise on that. As a result, we are sitting on 3rd, 1 point behind Chelsea and 6 points behind Liverpool when both of them has played 1 less game than us.
What’s going wrong for us?
First, team selection. Injuries are coming in dozens. Ben White is ruled out for the season after a minor knee injury. Gabriel / Calafiori / Timber has been IN and OUT of the line ups and we had both Saka and Odegaard absent for more than 2 weeks earlier. Coupled with injuries, the poor team selection from Mikel hasn’t really helped us. Moving a RB Timber to left and putting Thomas Partey to weaken the only strong side of our game was a very poor decision. Mikel did game MLS a start on the left and reinstated Timber on the right which looks better which he should have done earlier. Also, we are failing to score goals. Let’s be a bit blunt here – Premier League teams have found out what we are trying to do. They can just shut Odegaard and Saka on the right and sit back happy while we struggle in the middle and on the left side of the pitch. There is no real threat either Martinelli or Trossard are creating on the left. The fact that there are two DMs playing behind them isn’t helping them either. We hated Xhaka but he was more of an attacking player than a DM and it helped Martinelli.
Second, poor player’s form. Havertz have been struggling, Martinelli / Trossard are struggling too. Mikel Merino is slow for Premier League football or is going to take some more time to adapt to a new league. We needed a CF who can score and win us a game every once in a while which Havertz isn’t capable of. He has started 15 of our 16 games this season and has scored 5 goals. Please remind me how many of those goals have won us a game? When we are in the 70th minute on a level score, we need a brilliance from our CF to win a game which he fails to provide. This creates an over reliance on Bukayo. On the left side, Martinelli has been struggling with goals. I can count 3 factors – his form, no support from middle and his reluctance to go in the middle.
Third, poor game planning. If it’s not working, you should find a way to fix it. Bringing Gabriel Jesus in 65th minute when the scoreline reads 0-0 is not going to help. Jesus can’t score if his life depends on it so what’s the point. If your left side is not clicking, putting an attacking player behind him might help, and Nwaneri can play on either side of the pitch. Thomas Partey on the RB creates a lot of mess, it puts the player on the injury risk, hampers our right side chemistry, our mid field struggles and some more. There’s no point playing a fit Partey in defence. Declan Rice is not Odegaard, stop treating him like one. He is a defensive midfielder and both Partey and him shouldn’t be on the pitch at the same time unless you are trying to protect a 1-0 win. Or else, you will end up with lots of draws and that’s what we are doing so far this season.
Right, I have a lot to say but the Champions League run is keeping me positive so far. Monaco was the toughest game of December and lets hope we better ourselves in Premier League.
Would love to hear from you, see you in the comments.
TVRL
We made Manchester City better, by buying their cack and helping them with their FFP bollocks.
and this useless one dimensional cunt has now actually made Chelsea better by buying their cack.
Notice the spirit has improved in the Chelsea squad the moment , Sterling
left them.
Anyone who has a clue, realises you don’t buy your rivals trouble, you let
them cause more grief there and let it be.
Absolute amateurs, the whole fucking lot of them.
Art Fraud
My biggest fear is after getting rid of Arteta is that he’s pissed so much money up the wall on questionable signings and destroying the value of players he doesn’t want that any new manager won’t be given anything like the resources Arteta has.
Almost €800 million spent – inherited a clutch of good players and raised fuck all in fees.
TRVL
Well, we have a manager who drills his players to not be bothered by the lack of goals in open play, where set pieces are slowly drying up, as opponents block our runs, and generally disrupt our positional play, to such an extent that even with rare Rice’s dead balls were very decent for a change against Everton; whipped in low and hard to its intended receiver’s head being mostly Big Gabs that teams are getting better at defending.
I imagine KSE have their people scanning blogs to test their club’s temperatures. LG will be blowing smoke up MA’s endless arse, which he chooses to speak around 99% of the time to the press. I dread to think about what he says to his players with this season, because clearly as we drop faster than a GoGo dancer’s panties, down the leagues pecking order.
Problem is our questions I know LIR would support make Mr. Lewes look bad as he is supposed to be the head of our “overwatch” for KSE.
I would suggestion of 2 things are happening:
Mr. Lewes has detailed our TW failings monetary or otherwise or both to Josh & Stan who are happy with profits, but not lack of winning, but happy to keep the financial status quo as it is, where the £800k was never out of their pockets, but leveraged against the club in some way or that is what we have been led to believe from reports.
Mr Lewes along with KSE refuse to see what’s in front of them with three season’s capitulations, huge losses in wrong player investments because quality do not want to play for MA, as was evident in the last window.
I call this subjective eyesight, which I would equate to today’s ‘passive scrolling’: looking but not really seeing.
I look at myself as an average Gooner with 60 years of football knowledge and insight from playing youth county level, at best, like no doubt, many of my age and either side of it.
I can say without any agenda MA is the worst manager in my time of supporting The Arsenal, where he would never have lasted 5 years with the poor ‘still Rookie’ mistakes’ made with non sensical shoehorning selections, youth progression and TW additions that really just make up the numbers badly, and are too often injured, such as Merino & Calafiori as you said who seems to get injured playing his favoured LB.
When you think LG is KSE’s MA’s supporting blog, which I’m sure Josh reads, as it massages his ego vicariously. You could see Josh stroking his, er well, er – beard lovingly thinking this is so cool, yet it is far from that, where daddy’s Heir needs to really understand the game and talk to people like you TRVL; someone with your all round sporting understanding that can address the root cause that is MA, and get it across to Josh & Stan because this season is already a dumpster fire and MA is fanning the flames completely oblivious to KSE who only see the emperor’s new clothes, and probably fruitlessly thinking MA will turn it round?
They had the big recent meeting in America and we are still dropping points and looking a mid table club. MA will come unstack when he plays the top CL sides; he always does as Wenger before him.
What’s next? Another KSE meeting holding hands and singing Kumbya together because they would get the same results as their previous meeting a continued roller coaster, fire dumpster season and us not winning the league as expected.
Just excuses and more excuses from MA. Aren’t you tired of excuses KSE?
Don’t you want to win the PL and CL or is it just about the money?
You and I and many more here have said from day 1 MA will not win the league or CL with us or any PL club.
I’d love for MA to take over at City and watch them regress and be Artetarised, like MA is doing with Ethan now with BS lip service saying Ethan chooses his minutes – that’s about the same as MA giving you a lottery number saying it will win – nothing is going to happen.
Madhu
The way MA is handling Ethan I would not be surprised if he leaves for BM or a top Euro club. If I were his agent, I would not be happy and be looking for ways to improve life for his obvious star.
I’ver said before Ethan is a rookie who needs to start, so he can warm into the game and settle finding his game rhythm; not be sent on to win it for us at 17 when out game/tactics have gone tits up, as they do in most games.
One minute in MA eyes Ethan is a rookie he can’t trust, and then next is is our new Cesc saviour who gets slated by fan boys for not saving us from a cameo when joining a poor selected side who can’t score in the game, but the same fan boys would be singing Ethan’s praises when he scores with “we told you how good he is” utterly plastic fans with Pedro leading the charge for those stupid enough to pay to post, to put money in Pedro’s pockets.
My view is as above Ethan is getting Artetarised like many players before him in MA’s 5 years with us.
LIR
If we take out Ode as being a gifted natural that most of us liked before he came to us on loan. I’d followed him in Holland. So, discount Ode as Ode improves himself and probably teaches MA, because MA was a bang average player who paid to join us not being good enough for us at his full price. Wenger loved the ‘yes man’, cut price, fire sale player. The collector of player fines and buyer of watches for the CEO. He was poor player so had to do something to get selected and Wenger loved himself a yes man; he bought enough of them.
Ode is already a £100M+ player who has improved himself. Saliba the same, and Rice is still trying to justify his price tag, and will if he plays 6 to his best ability and forgets being a MF or ST.
So?
Who else has MA improved that was his buy? Maya?
Who has been Artetarised and put in the non-negotiables bin, in the last 5 years?
Long list starting with Ozil, Auba, Willian……
Anyone care to add more to the lists, LIR?
Will someday MA understand? I doubt it too stubborn, dogmatic and inflexible being always right.
Have a good one lads……..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNBJJb7teLs
Tony—I’ve only got a few minutes, but I felt it necessary to respond to another one of your spirited and appropriately skeptical posts…never stop bringing the heat…maybe if there were more of us out there doing likewise this club wouldn’t have continually backed this poor man’s Wenger-esque cult of personality reboot…we’ve known from the onset that left to his own devices MA was always going to struggle to achieve the desired results, yet instead of bringing in an experienced and proven DOF, who would provide some much-needed direction/guidance when it came to roster construction, we continued to empower him further…this in turn led to a whole host of short-sighted and frankly nonsensical decisions both on and off the pitch
take for instance the Havertz situation…all that was required of MA was to secure the services of a suitable replacement for the departing Xhaka…the requirements were rather specific, especially in light of what transpired during Xhaka’s most productive season, get a younger, pacier version who could both unlock defences and finish in a clinical fashion…instead of adhering to the above brief he paid a sizeable fortune for someone who could only ever meet the age requirement
once again this isn’t to suggest that Kai doesn’t have anything on offer, he just wasn’t the right fit, unless MA was intentionally trying to deviate from what had worked the previous season…as predicted, that new path required us to play less expansive football, in the hopes that this would increase our title chances, and yet by season’s end our trophy cabinet remained bare…to make matters worse, it negatively impacted our transfer plans the following summer…instead of correcting his obvious missteps, by acquiring someone who fit the original brief, he doubled-down on Havertz by making him our first choice Striker and then buying Merino to help remedy another deficiency of our gangly German tweener, his inability to pot headers…so by this point we’ve functionally spent 200+M to replace Xhaka, if you include the 100M we spent on our recently converted DM, Declan Rice, and adopted some rather dire bully-ball tactics in the process…now that’s some fucked up roster construction…Cheers
Tony and TVRL- agree with you both completely. For a couple of seasons now some of the negative points of MA are clearly evident if people wants to see it. They are
1. His obvious blind spots to squad requirements both in quantity and qualities
2. His over coaching and suppressing the natural abilities of attackers primary example being Martinelli.
3. He cannot build a good attacking unit while he has proved he can fix the defence no doubt
4. His appalling handling of academy prospects I would go as far as mentioning that MA has a particular disdain for our academy graduates.
5. His in-game management is not existent and mostly a punt
6. His handling of personalities or let’s say he doesn’t like personalities , but it’s the personalities that always bring the x-factor which we clearly lack
7. His penchant for fitting square pegs in round holes and vise versa when not needed to the detriment of the team.
These are for everyone to see and the worst that be are not performing their roles if they are not cognizant of the above and working to overcome it by augmenting him with support of a DoF to provide checks and balances.
Where I do differ is the comparison with Wenger. Wenger is a legend and still the last Arsenal manager to have won the PL that took unbeaten when Fergie was at his peak and had all referees in his pocket. He built his credit and after the 05 season of CL he started his project of building Emirates. It’s almost like he was managing the P&,L of AFC. He was more a CFO than a manager and it’s the failure of the mgmt which was fighting control battles to notice this. If you honestly look at that period Wenger managed books and built the club to be self sufficient tat we we are now because of his ability to manage the stadium finances and the team. In that period he won FA cups, finished PL second couple of times. It’s another matter if he should have been the person doing all these. Finally he should really have left the club after the year 2008 when we finished second the season when the young team were brutalized by the horrific leg break of Eduardo. The team witnessed it from close quarters and I still remember the look on Cesc face. After that we drew 4 games in a row if I remember correctly and lost the league. That squad was excellent and could have done wonders but that brutality of Eduardos injury meant that the squad was mentally broken and Wenger could do nothing. He should have left then and some fresh manager might have done something different. But again that was a period when the owners were fighting their own battles.