We have not been beaten yet in Champions League. In fact, we have dropped zero points so far in 7 games and 3 of those games were against the likes of Bayern, Atletico and Inter. Also, lets not forget that we have achieved this while competing for the title in Premier League (sitting at the top there, too) and playing in semi finals in Carabao Cup. Lot of games, and not only we have managed to keep ourselves in the competition, we have been bossing it.
The best Arsenal we have seen is the Champions League one. I’m pretty sure it’s because some of those teams we played against – Bayern, Inter, Atletico believed they could beat us and we were able to open them up. In the 7 games we have played so far, we have scored 20 and conceded only 2 which is a solid defensive stat. While we were arguing about who gets to play at the LW, Martinelli has scored the most goals while Trossard has the highest number of assists in Champions League.
Last night, we beat Inter without Gabriel, Rice, Calafiori and Odegaard in the starting line up. Gabriel Jesus took it upon himself to give us the lead, twice before Gyokeres scores the third one to seal it off. While Cristian Chivu tried his best to do some damage on the counters but also pressed us hard through out the game, Mosquera and MLS managed to keep hold of them. Two non-starters, one of them is 19 years old, the other one is 21.
Champions League nights are madness – we saw Madrid scoring 6 past Monaco, PSG losing to Sporting, Leverkusen losing to Olympiacos, Tottenham winning, Bodø/Glimt thrashing Man City to name a few. Only Arsenal has looked consistent and even on our not so great days, we have come out as winners. I don’t wanna talk about Premier League today, but when we drop points there like we did against Forest, Aston Villa lost to Everton and City lost to Man Utd. We literally dropped 2 important points and still ended the week with a +1 point advantage over our rivals. The luck is in our favor so far.
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I have a complaint though, for Saka. He needs to keep his head up and forget what the legend Henry told him years ago – about being brave. He is shooting a lot but with no end results. We have a CF in place and he needs to practice more of feeding him rather than trying to find an angle from the wings. Against Forest, we did see Gyokeres frustration once and I think it’s only going to grow if he doesn’t get the service. Martinelli / Trossard doesn’t help him either while Odegaard is too slow to read his movements.
I think it’s not a Gyokeres problem. I think Arteta needs to instructs his attacking players to find him near the opposition box and feed him more.
Right, that’s all for today. We have a good game coming up this weekend, against Manchester United. They feel they can beat us because they did it to Man City but didn’t we beat them at Old Trafford earlier in the season? Everyone deserved to hope, we can only make sure to end it.
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Vieira and Art
This confirms a lot of your thoughts about Arsenal’s reliance on goals from set pieces which, let’s face it, are not the most thrilling way to score goals and win games. I even became bored just reading it. ‘Enjoy’
KP—the two most intriguing points raised by the author involved the manner in which our corners are or aren’t being policed (“allowed to do a lot of things at the corners”) and the fact that so many have refused to change their approach even though PSG had provided everyone with an alternate blueprint (“Paris Saint-Germain found some success defending Arsenal corners by intentionally leaving players upfield rather than bunkering down”)…now this latter plan wasn’t without its risks, but I would think that Enrique felt that the potential positives outweighed the negatives (either Arsenal commit less men in the box, thereby hurting their chances of scoring, or you flip the script completely and burn them on the counter)
it raises some interesting questions, like why have we been given so much leeway when it comes to our set piece antics and why have so many sides continued to employ the same flawed plans over and over again
as to the former it appears to be a VAR era loophole…it’s almost as if the corner kick is the only component of the game that’s still be officiated under the pre-VAR rules, yet similar contact elsewhere on the pitch would typically be subjected to a review process…much like all other sports, where replay exists,.the powers that be are always talking about trying to find a balance between “getting it right” and not completely stifling the flow of play…the latter of which would definitely happen if everything that was going on inside the box during a corner kick was heavily scrutinized…I have no doubt that our analytics team noticed this loophole some time ago and this is when we completely revamped our set piece strategy…good on them, I guess, but bad for anyone who would much rather see a match being decided by open play goals
as to why teams continually opt for highly questionable plans, I can only assume it has something to do with the lack of time being devoted to defending set pieces during training, which will undoubtedly change moving forward…if you only face a couple sides each season who are successful in this regards it’s difficult to justify “wasting” too much time on the training pitch, but now that the low block era is in full bloom you’re starting to see more teams trying to emulate our success in this regards, so I would suspect that training practices will adapt so as to better reflect this new reality
Hi Vieira
Intriguing. I’ve often wondered that myself. If you leave three spread out attackers upfield for an opposition corner, then they must commit at least 4 and possibly 5 players to cover them. If your GK is dominant and has good distribution then it helps to nullify the threat from attacking corners. Only doable perhaps with a top GK like donnarumma and lightning fast skilled attackers.
But the PL is ultra cautious this year, with an emphasis on getting players behind the ball when out of possession.
KP, TRVL
Such a simple way to beat El B’s system – El B would be chewing his fingernails should other managers adopt the practice.
Kroenkephobe
This cunts gameplan is to play for set pieces.
Same as Wimbledon did under Dave Basset.
Rice is our Denis Wise with the corner kicks and Gyokeres is our Alan Cork. Although Cork is quicker and better all round player.
Difference is they never had a pot to piss in nor a stadium.
This cunt has all the inbuilt advantages of an elite side and has the budget to play like Flick or an Enrique side
No fucking excuses to play like he does.
Hoping Carrick plays total attacking football in the United tradition tomorrow and smashes the cunt.
I am not one of those drippy fans , that always supports his side through that thick and thin bollocks prism.
I support my team on my fuckin terms, no one else’s.
“I support my team on my fuckin terms, no one else’s.”
Which is how every fan should support their club. Anyone who disagrees with that either doesn’t understand supporting a club, is a massive cunt or both.
Match day post is live.