We are 1-nil down to PSG and we are playing today at their home ground. Not an ideal situation to be in, specially when PSG under Luis Enrique are playing some beautiful attacking football. But we have our midfield back and with Thomas anchoring it and Declan getting his freedom to move forward, we can certainly play better football today. The only goal from first leg will force Mikel to go all out attacking and the second leg of the Semi Final could turn out to be an exciting affair.
There are couple of things. Declan Rice is an asset, a 100m player when moving forward with the ball but he is not a match to Partey as a DM. Having both fit and in the squad boosts our win rates. Secondly, we can’t afford to miss our chances today. In the first leg, we did fail to bury some of them and it could be fatal to our Champions League run. Barcelona v Inter was a treat to watch last night, and gave us a hope that it’s not over till the final minutes.
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I am expecting Merino to be back to his newly found CF role with a back 4 of MLS, Kiwior, Saliba and Timber. Partey, Rice and Odegaard will start in the midfield while Saka and Martinelli will retain their positions. We were a threat whenever Saka moved towards the middle and we have noticed it with Martinelli too, but I have no idea why Arteta instructs them to stick to the side line. If we are expecting to win this, we need to be more direct, we need to move ball faster and we need to be precise in our passing and shooting. There’s zero margin for errors if you expect to qualify to the finals for the Champions League.
There was a news earlier that Ousmane Dembele had picked up an injury and will not be available for today, but we are not that lucky. He is back to his fitness and he will be a bigger threat today at his home. Kiwior and Saliba needs to find a way to suss him while allowing the wing backs to move forward.
1-0 is a dangerous proposition and can work in favor or against. If we put some pressure initially, manage to score one in the first 30min, we will be in the driving seat.
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Truth be told, I have never seen Arsenal play a semi final game (except the first leg). The last time it happened in ’09, I was still playing cricket. If we win today and go to finals, there is a very good chance we can beat Inter (compared to Barcelona), and it can make things easier for Mikel.
Right, a short one today. Extremely sorry for being absent recently, the immunity overall after Covid has been fucked up and doc says another week before I can get back to normal.
Lets conquer Paris and paint it Red and White! #COYG
That’s it, then.
let’s face it they don’t have any natural finishers on the pitch either…we all know what would have happened if Dembele was brought on earlier….good on Raya though, as that could prove to be a lightning rod of a save
now that could be the final nail
Get that miserable fucking stain out of the club. Time for a new direction with a trophy winning experienced manager. All that money wasted.
Another season of nothingness.
very fortuitous bounces, but a crack nonetheless
It may change but right now I cannot spend another minute of my time thinking about this club. How many more years are we going to be tortured by Ar-fucking-teta?
PSG is looking a little like Real at the back presently
tbh Timber looked a little off all evening…I’m surprised he even lasted this long
So with 9 minutes left and needing 2 goals to stay in the tie Arteta bring on another FB – is he trying to set a record for being the world’s biggest cunt?
TRVL
You can make 5 subs – Arteta’s made 3 and 2 have been defensive players when he’s chasing the tie.
He might as well go all in and bring on Zinchenko and Tierney.
Kroenke
I’m getting to the stage where my hope for next season is a relegation battle just so we can see the back of Arteta.
how your best chance at scoring a goal never sees the pitch in a must-win battle when your several goals down is a sackable offence in my eyes…it’s not like this defensive side would be too much for him to handle
we scored one “lucky” goal over two legs…says it all
Amabrish—what PSG (attacking) midfielders would you take over Rice?
My only positive from tonight is that they missed the penalty – not that it would have affected the outcome but it would have been shitty for Skelly to have such a piss poor decision against his name.
managerial boys to men…see how Enrique brought in forward thinking players late on so we couldn’t just set up camp in and around their box…meanwhile our MIT’s fiddling about with defensive subs
if MA stays on, which seems incredibly likely, don’t be surprised if we run it back with Havertz up top and simply buy a secondary option on the cheap like Delap
Didi Hamann is on telly over here criticising Arteta for everything we’ve said over the last 5 yrs.
“is he trying to set a record for being the world’s biggest cunt?” Love that Marc but it lacks context. This is still a work in progress,phase 9 part 2 was always going to see us take 5 steps backwards, anyone who isn’t a spud would know that. How quickly you’ve forgotten the state of Arsenal when Arteta arrived,fighting relegation,empty stadium,on the brink of financial collapse. Some weeks we couldn’t even field a team. Now we have the finest players in the world playing football from the Gods and a manager that is the envy of every club in the world. Happy days!
We probably lost the tie in the first 25 minutes at the Emirates, we were playing catch up from then on but unfortunately their keeper made outstanding saves in both legs.
Not scoring in the first 10 minutes tonight hurt us and PSG grew into the game as we became sloppy in our passing and every time we gave the ball away it gave psg confidence.
For me we played too many long balls, I believe we are a much better team than having the keeper lump it up there and then rely on long throws and corners to create problems.
All 3 PSG goals in the tie were excellent strikes , something we could have done with but it never materialised.
Arteta won’t lose his job which I think is right, but next season I would expect Arsenal to dominate the league and if we falter then the knives will be out and it could get messy as the minority of fans will become very loud and demanding we change manager as we will see a return to the days when the noisy wenger out brigade brought embarrassment to the club.
The wenger out brigade did get their way in the end despite wenger winning 3 trophies in 4 seasons , so maybe they never learn as we have only won one trophy ( with a predominantly wenger side) since his departure.
Who is to say that sacking Arteta will improve the side , let’s not forget that Tottenham sacked poch after he took them to a champions league final and look how they have struggled since his departure .
Pochettino at Tottenham and Arteta at Arsenal have had a very similar experience at their respective clubs , both can be regarded as the nearly men (or bottlers) but both had their clubs challenging for the big trophies without managing to cross the finishing line
Be careful what you wish for , I said when wenger was getting slaughtered and I I’ll say be careful what you wish for regarding Arteta as a new manager coming in will find it difficult to get more points than Arteta has over the past 3 seasons and will need to win the champions league to improve on our European performance..
I get the feeling that the Berta hiring has bought Arteta some more time to figure things out…maybe there’s a feeling amongst those at the top of the financial food chain that if only Arteta could focus all his energies on the on-field product and leave the roster construction side to the professionals, we could have something here…unfortunately that little plan is fraught with problems:
(1) he simply doesn’t possess the tactical wherewithal to match wits with many of the managers he will invariably face both domestically and abroad, so giving him more time won’t solve that dilemma
(2) Berta is saddled with a completely unbalanced roster, the likes of which can’t be solved in one window…of course getting a bona fide Striker and another offensive weapon should help matters, but only if MA’s willing to tailor his tactics around their given skillsets, which isn’t really his strong suit
(3) he’s given a whole host of players assurances regarding their playing time and positional requirements that are counter-intuitive from a greater good perspective…simply-put, all this fucking shoehorning can’t continue…presently we’re paying an absolute fortune to have Havertz forced in up top and Rice as an attacking midfielder, neither of which would happen on any other side wanting to compete at the highest of levels…this kind of shit only happens in youth leagues when Dad’s the coach and his kids get to play wherever the fuck they want…it’s almost as if he thinks we’re stupid enough to believe that we couldn’t get a top-notch Striker and a vastly better option at the 8 for 175+M
I could go on and on…
Arteta went full Pricksy in the post-game presser suggesting not only that we were the “much” better side over the two legs but that the PSG sideline staff fully supported his take…what a delusional and naive clown of a manager…why don’t you stop spending so much time trying to win the post-loss interview sessions and actually win fucking something on the pitch you egotistical wannabe…thanks to you we’re now known as both the “nearly team” and the tin foil flopping fuckwits…thank fucking God we have class acts like Saka and Saliba or things could be considerably worse