It wasn’t a game Arsenal fans would like to remember but we are not going to forget these important 3 points against West Ham at their home. A nervous game, where first 30 minute was basically two teams trying to give it away in a boring display.
Tomiyasu was back in playing XI, White picked up an injury against United last week and Holding had to start. Rob Holding had a decent game where he blocked a shot from Lanzini around half an hour mark and then scored at the other end from a Saka’s corner. He is solid defensively and does provide some protection against aerial threats.
However, we couldn’t keep our lead for long when Bowen scored of a slight deflection off Gabriel. There has been a pattern where we are giving away our lead within minutes of scoring. Surely, this is something Arteta has to take notice of, and teach those lads to soak up pressure and calm things down.
Ten minutes into the second half and a clearance of Saka’s corner goes to Martinelli’s feet who lifts it to far post and Gabriel didn’t miss it. I was nervous for the rest of the game but we managed to steal it. Nketiah got few changes because of his brilliant runs and it’s a shame he wasn’t on scoreline. I’m sure he is going to get better in coming days.
I have been a Xhaka’s critique from the famous ‘fuck off’ incident but he has been having some good games recently. It wasn’t a prime Partey’s display but he was solid enough in the game. Nketiah was brilliant, Holding provides much more to defending than White and I wouldn’t mind him having some rotation. In IT, most of the MNCs have a grading system with ‘met expectation’ right in the middle. These are the guys who do not care about appreciations and fat bonuses, only believe in finishing the work assigned and do not complain. Elneny qualifies for it!
Overall, it was a poor game with good result, which took us back to 4th place with 2 points lead over Spu*s. Should we give credit to the hair transplants our defenders had? Fucking YES – both the goals came from our Centre Backs with new hairlines. In fact, it was Holding’s first Arsenal goal and he has been with us from a century. It’s too late to ask Laca to get one though, I don’t think Nketiah is allowing him any more game times in this season.
Talking about our Centre Forward position, Nketiah’s case has ‘Willian’ written all over it. Arteta stuck to Lacazette for a full season without much output and we struggled to score. I don’t understand how link up play gets more weightage than scoring goals for a striker! Eddie is showing what a striker should be capable of, considering the fact that he has gotten a whooping 9 minutes in few matches earlier and only been starting when it matters most because of sickness to Laca, has some added pressure on him.
Arteta should have ‘called him’ sooner! Eddie’s treatment is inline with Willian, Saliba and Pepe’s and this is all on the manager!
Talking about the points table, we are sitting in 4th position – 2 points above our North London rivals. Spu*s have a tough game to play against Liverpool at Anfield and bin dippers can do us some favour for once. We have three winnable games against Leeds, Everton and New Castle and a North London Derby at Shite Hart Lane. If we win those 3 and Pool do us a favour, we will finish as the fourth best team in Premiership irrespective of what happens on Derby Day. This does not mean losing to Spu*s is acceptable in any way, only shows we have a better chance than them.
We are playing Leeds on Sunday 08th, in the afternoon. We will have the home advantage and we will be favourites. A draw/loss can completely ruin this top 4 fight for us, lets hope we remain hungry for the win and players show up as they are doing in last few matches.
Would love to hear your thoughts in comments!
If we beat a faltering Leeds team and as expected spurs lose against Liverpool. We will be 5 points ahead for the NLD.
All ifs and buts. I believe ❤
And we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, of course.
Welcome, Crimson!
Mb,
Hit all the main points,very good take on things. The Xhaka question won’t go away. Just as the summer( and his possible sale) arrives,he starts playing his most consistent football,enough for many to want him to stay(not me,but I do get the argument).
Eddie/laca is also infuriatingly like ESR/Willian,it’s one of the main doubts that still hang over Arteta,his solutions often seem forced upon him as opposed to being thought out. They also seem to take forever. Looking at him as the man who’ll take us back to the pinnacle of the game long term provides far more questions than answers.
However,short term, if he has us in the champs lge next season then he has earned the right to lead the team into that campaign. I have no problem with that as long as realistic targets are laid down,including a serious narrowing of the gap between Arsenal and the top 2 and a style of football that is somewhat entertaining and consistently so. That’s nothing against Arteta by the way,it is the minimum I would ask of any Arsenal manager at this stage of their reign.
Xhaka has not looked better recently – he’s doing and playing exactly the same as he’s always played for us the difference is Arteta’s got the whole team playing at such a pedestrian rate Xhaka doesn’t look as off the pace.
That isn’t good coaching it’s appalling management.
Marc
Give me Willock and Guendouzi any day over Xhaka. I guess I’ve convinced myself that he is not going anywhere and playing every game possible under Arteta and the fact that his goal against Manure earned him this unusual accolade from me (:
“Eddie/laca is also infuriatingly like ESR/Willian”
Willian and Laca preferred over Eddie and ESR unless injuries happen, which forces Arteta to play the young guns.
Last December, it was probably the injuries which saved Arteta’s arse.
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The fact that every second Arsenal fan can notice Willian (then) and Laca (now) has nothing more to offer than ESR and Eddie, and at the very least should have been given game time to prove without waiting for injuries is infuriating.
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Fans like me have very short memory, if we make it to Champions League and buy couple of good players, I would be very much excited for next season…
Hi Ambarish,
Thanks for the report/review. Just re-watched the game and it doesn’t get any better nor easier to sit through – I had forty winks at the start of the second half – I wish I’d done the same when I saw it live! West Ham were equally ineffectual and physically shot in the final quarter. More pressing issues for them. We were lucky that circumstances conspired to make the game relatively straightforward.
Agree with Marc about GX. By any metric, he simply isn’t good enough and it’s Arteta’s problem that he doesn’t see it. Other comparitors all do a better job. If he were going for reasonable money, I’d consider Loftus-Cheek in his place. His teammates wouldn’t admit it, but they all cover for him. Having GX and Nuno on the same side of the pitch is also an accident waiting to happen. He makes Elneny look like peak Fernando Redondo.
Eddie IS an upgrade on the Laca of late. But like GX, I don’t believe Arsenal will collapse if he moves on in the summer. His shooting was on song yesterday but it still lacked power and killer accuracy. He and several other players’ passing was abysmal. It made me wonder if WH did their usual trick of keeping the grass dry and longer to restrict our passing (although the surface looked OK on the box). And they call themselves the academy!
Am I right in thinking Partey might be available again soon? If so, Tets ought to be thinking carefully about whether to keep MO and jettison GX. Some chance.
You can think of any team in the top 15 or so PL teams and their version of Xhaka is better than him. And that’s not even thinking about Europe. Bissouma, Ward-Prowse, Gallagher, Ndidi, Ramsey (AV), Neves. A long list…
Kroenkephobe
Ideally we should have allowed Xhaka to go to Rome and brought in Neves or Bissouma last year. Of course, Arteta ptries to cover his shortcomings and he has always a mistake in him that can cost us.
I hate to disagree for Eddie. He is young, hardly got any game time and has broken some records at U23. Mathematically, we have qualified for Europa and chances are that we can make it to Champions League.
We need him and an experienced CF, I would have loved it if it was Auba but that ship has sailed.
Even if Partey makes it sooner, it won’t be possible for NLD. We should be able to manage without him in other games.
Offer him a decent wage inline with ESR/Martinelli and it solves thr second string striker problem. One who can play against the likes of Norwich and Watford in league.
But rotation is not something Arteta excels in.
Almunia
That hug Ronnie gave Trump went on far too long. It was getting weird…
I often think that’s how it’d play out if we ever met mate! 😊
Ambarish
That’s cool man. IF Eddie Unket stays and IF he starts scoring 20 goals a season, I’ll be delighted. I like the kid a lot, and even more so after riding Rice and the other West Ham oafs like he did in injury time. That he did so with that angelic look on his face was priceless. I’d like to hear what he or his agent has to say about his contract situation.
Kroenkephobe,
Yeah,it was a little odd alright, not like Ronnie to show that much emotion. Who knows,we might get to have a pint in the Emirates some day,haven’t been over for far too long now but definitely going to go back soon. You probably have the longer trip given that I’ll fly across…
Rice is some loss to Ireland,was hoping Arsenal would buy him for the last few years. No hope now. Straight choice between Chelsea and Utd for him now.
‘I’d like to hear what he or his agent has to say about his contract situation.’
That’s poor player management. We either let him go on free, or offer him more wages than needed.
Christ I am sick of hearing ‘I’m so glad Jurgen is a red’. I swear if Villarreal do the impossible tonight I would take a day off work and rewrite the lyrics of ‘yellow submarine ‘ to celebrate the death of the quad. It’s Liverpool mania over here,difficult to explain, every second knob has a liver bird on them in some form or other.
Almunia
If it makes you feel better I hate the scousers as much as I hate Arteta!
Would very much like to see an all Spanish final.
Almunia
I sympathise mate. Count West Wales as another area that’s jam-packed with reds and red devil’s. When I (rarely) see Gooners round here – be it in the post office, weatherspoons, or waiting at the dentists, I always make a fuss of them and find out what they think about Arteta. Ms K rolls her eyes and this sign flashes on her forehead that says, ‘Kroenkephobe is a twat and is not with me’.
I’ll tell you a funny story. One of my daughters has a boyfriend (nice lad – like her, he’s only 15 years old) who is a Liverpool fan. His dad has an ST and drives a 500 mile round trip to watch games. He’s from NE Wales which is practically a suburb of Scouselandia so he has some credibility.
Anyway, said boyfriend was wearing this nasty Liverpool tracksuit. Black, orange and white for some stupid fucking reason. Top AND bottom – the whole shebang. My son took me aside as said its no longer cool to wear both simultaneously and suggested he was a ‘full tracksuit wanker’.
Anyway, these two mates of ours turn up who are plumbers. Like almost all other geezers in Pembrokeshire, one is a manure supporter and the other is a red.
The latter frequently laughs in my face when we talk about footie but he’s a good egg.
The Liverpool supporting plumber sees the boyfriend and says to Ms Kroenkephobe, ‘he’ s a good kid – proper marriage material’. This look comes over her face of utter horror and the blood drains from her cheeks. Cue the two plumbers and me absolutely pissing ourselves.
And that, my friend, counts as top banter in these neglected, windswept, god-forsaken parts.
Coquelin, Emery and Co. might be about to piss on Klopp’s patatas fritas. He’s some boy that Spanish manager – we should have employed him. Oh, hang on…
In the words of Jim Royle, of the Royle family, ‘quad, my four arses’. Dedos cruzados – or fingers crossed as they say in Spain.
Kroenkephobe,
Your story is very similar to a warning given to me by a friend of mine. If a boy ever takes out your daughter and is wearing his ‘good’ tracksuit, make sure she gets shot of him.
As for this Villareal debacle,I said it last week and I’ll say it again,my respect for Emery has increased tenfold that he managed to get this pile of shite to a champs lge semi. That keeper wouldn’t get a game with the Irish special Olympics team.
Almunia
A sound, modern piece of advice for the parents of any daughter there. 600 or 700 years ago, it’d probably have figured a suit of armour or hessian tabard.
Agree about Emery 100%. Knowing of a certain other blogger (not you Ambarish) who has an agenda driven, irrational and xenophobic dislike of the man only confirms it more. That said, I’m still affected by those arse-wipingly bad displays. The 2-2 versus Watford…. But he was put in a terrible position by some real cunts who were inhabiting the club at the time (some are still there of course).
Towards the end Emery totally lost it to the toxic atmosphere. Didn’t help his communication was poor because the Club didn’t do the proper thing of providing him a translator.
But the worst cut was the rotten apple Raul. That was a Connundrum of sorts since it was Rayl who gave Emery the job.