Gabriel Paulista has insisted he is set to keep focused on Arsenal despite the festive season being upon us.
The defender has found himself back in Arsene Wenger’s first-team plans following a couple of injuries in recent months, and after two devastating defeats, he has moved to dumb down the Christmas celebrations.
This will be his second year playing football in England, and he confirmed that before moving to this country, he would have usually had time to spend with his family and friends whilst having a short break, but he is ready for what is to come.
He said: ‘When I played in Spain, I got a few days off to enjoy with my family. But not here. There’s no pause, it’s all about working.
‘We players can’t think about partying, we only focus on our job. We are focused on what we have to do.’
‘Brazilians are used to celebrating the festive season, it is strange. It feels a bit strange to be playing on Christmas Day or on New Year’s Day.
‘It’s indeed unusual for us. But I’ve already put this new reality in my head and I’m focused on my job.
‘Let’s leave the party for later.’
This is a great attitude from a professional especially considering that he comes from a strongly religious country and that he is not completely used to having to play without a winter break.
Gabriel has come in at centre-back in the past week to cover for the absence of Shkodran Mustafi, and since coming in we have moved to lose two consecutive matches, but the Brazilian has not been the weak link in our side.
Our midfield has lost its composure and appears tired at times, and Arsene Wenger will have his work cut out to eradicate those errors over the busy winter period.
Do we think the Arsenal players will be partying at Christmas?
Pat J
HA HA HA is he really? That’s rich it really is
Its really really as simple as this, We have no leaders in the pack, Mustafi is emerging as a potential and Cazorla does a good job when he plays, but apart from those two there’s no one to really rally the troops and pull results together when things are going wrong.
Lets be brutally honest here Gabriel isnt fit to play in the shirt, and if Mustafi is out who is there really to cover who is of any quality?
Ozil is brilliantly creative when he wants to be but quiet often goes on the missing list as he refuses to own the team or the game and much like the rest there is no ownership of the mistakes. Wenger is no use in this respect as he is rarely seen berating the team or calling from the side-lines and it appears that the team can go from being frighteningly creative to being totally rudderless in the space of seconds. We just don’t have the full squad to compete, when one or two players are not good enough its too difficult for the rest to pull it together especially when there’s no clear “ironclad” leader.
We spend the best part of 100 million this summer and we brought in.
Mustafi: great signing a solid relaible defender who partners well with the KOS
Granit Xhaka: so far so….well he’s got the potential but all I see so far is a clumsy hachet man needs to put it together and quickly or become a waste of money
some japanese kid: shirts sales, wont see him play or if so in the same team as yammaoto (whatever his name was?) and whatshisname park. waste of time and money
Lucas Perez: who is he where did he come from? where is he going? spend 17 million on him to keep the fans quiet when really if you’d have added another 40 to this you’d have a striker who can score goals and do the business rather than a 17 million waste of money who cant.
Wenger seems hell bent of discovering a new world class talent but he’s not going to, he should concentrate on winning the title with proven players rather than attempting to dine out for the next 20 years on a new Thierry Henry cos as Fergie will tell you, these players only come along once in a lifetime.
Nothing will change until the club realises that being in the black isnt the ONLY aim of a competitive football club.
Were still not good enough and we wont be until the attitude at board and management level changes.
It’s ground hog day all over again. I have never seen our fan base so divided before, but we have to start looking at facts here. Arsenal players earn BIG money, the money many of us could only dream of. They are professional athletes, they do this for a living. They are insanely fit and have everything they need at a basic level to be EXPECTED to perform their best on the pitch. When I say best, I don’t mean technically, I mean the passion and attitude to do your utmost to win. The question is, are we seeing this? I think both WOBS and AKBS can agree on the answer – NO we are not. There are a select few players that we can clearly see they try all the time, even if not having such a great game, they put in extra effort. But then there are those who just seem to not give a flying f*ck.
In light of the above about football being their JOBS, this is unacceptable. Its actually a disgrace and I am primarily talking about Ozil here. Don’t get me wrong, he has more talent and vision in his left pinkie toe than most players, but his lack of enthusiasm and fight on the pitch is extremely frustrating to watch. It is not just him though, most of our team just seem to lack conviction especially in big games or when the opposition is applying pressure.
Why have Arsenal had this weak mindset for so long? It has been going on for years and years we know exactly when they will fold or bottle it. There is only one reason gooners, we need to look at the common denominator here which is the manager. I have had my share of defending and ridiculing him in the past, when he does well I recognize this and applaud him, but there is still fundamental problem within our team that after years and years of this broken record I think it has become painfully obvious we need a new manager with a different mindset, because as far as I’m concerned our players have adopted Wenger’s mentality and attitude.
There are just no more excuses for Wenger. Money is no longer an excuse and hasn’t been one for 3-4 seasons now. I also don’t think the quality of our squad is to blame, although we could still do with a true world class centre forward/striker. The entire problem here is mindset – only way to fix this is a new manager with passion and desire to succeed. Wenger is old and needs to retire gracefully.
It’s ground hog day all over again. I have never seen our fan base so divided before, but we have to start looking at facts here. Arsenal players earn BIG money, the money many of us could only dream of. They are professional athletes, they do this for a living. They are insanely fit and have everything they need at a basic level to be EXPECTED to perform their best on the pitch. When I say best, I don’t mean technically, I mean the passion and attitude to do your utmost to win. The question is, are we seeing this? I think both WOBS and AKBS can agree on the answer – NO we are not. There are a select few players that we can clearly see they try all the time, even if not having such a great game, they put in extra effort. But then there are those who just seem to not give a flying duck.
In light of the above about football being their JOBS, this is unacceptable. Its actually a disgrace and I am primarily talking about Ozil here. Don’t get me wrong, he has more talent and vision in his left pinkie toe than most players, but his lack of enthusiasm and fight on the pitch is extremely frustrating to watch. It is not just him though, most of our team just seem to lack conviction especially in big games or when the opposition is applying pressure.
Why have Arsenal had this weak mindset for so long? It has been going on for years and years we know exactly when they will fold or bottle it. There is only one reason gooners, we need to look at the common denominator here which is the manager. I have had my share of defending and ridiculing him in the past, when he does well I recognize this and applaud him, but there is still fundamental problem within our team that after years and years of this broken record I think it has become painfully obvious we need a new manager with a different mindset, because as far as I’m concerned our players have adopted Wenger’s mentality and attitude.
There are just no more excuses for Wenger. Money is no longer an excuse and hasn’t been one for 3-4 seasons now. I also don’t think the quality of our squad is to blame, although we could still do with a true world class centre forward/striker. The entire problem here is mindset – only way to fix this is a new manager with passion and desire to succeed. Wenger is old and needs to retire gracefully.
i do agree with you but i think we cant always blame özil for that we knew what kind of a player he was and he did try to rally up the team but the whole team except walcott and sanchez was pretty bad.. particularly coquelin i was extremely disappointed at his stupid play
First of all i was absolutely gutted too to see the second half performance against city.. the goals were coming, it was a disgrace.. but after that we cant always put the blame on özil every time we lose… i thought the main culprit was coquelin and xhaka for defending so deep and constantly losing the ball and playing short passes when they should have cleared it.. and özil and sanchez did scream to the other players that they should come out and not defend so deep and why does nobody care about the performance of walcott? IMO he was the best player out there did his best in attack and always ran back for the defense..
to the fans on here, whats with the lot of you constantly abusing and disrespecting the team and the manager and demanding respect for yourself? come down from the high horse i care more about the my team (arsenal) than the fans who abuse them, what some of you do is never criticizing with that i have no problem, but when the other fans disrespect you, you start being offended and are like some children who is angry.. so why is it wrong if someone disrespects you but its absolutely okay for you to abuse arsenal? if you cant take it dont aim abuses at ramsey, wenger, walcott, ox etc.
I think your assessment of Ozil is way off. 90% of the time when he loses the ball, he just shrugs and never chases. Is this the attitude of a world class player? It shouldn’t be. Physically there is no reason why he cannot chase and try win the ball back. We see Sanchez and others do it ALL THE TIME. If Ozil worked harder off the ball he would be the best attacking midfielder in the world, but a lot of the times his whole attitude seems like he just doesn’t care. It has become the norm. What about the fans that travel hours and hours and spend money and time away from their families to watch and support Arsenal? Then they get to watch that BS performance against Man City and countless other games where out players just don’t fight hard enough. Apparently at away games only 2 or 3 Arsenal players actually take an interest in the fans and thank them for coming all that way to support. The rest couldn’t care less and walk off the pitch like everyone owes them something. The passion simply is not there and the manager is primarily to blame.
first of all many things you said now is just emotional and not facts. he does chase the ball 90% is just a number you picked out of nowhere to be dramatic and yeah he isnt the fighting one but no chance that it can always be blamed on him when we lose and dont fight.. we all know what to expect from him, i dont look at walcott and expect him to dribble past 2-3 players and score a goal.. no i expect him to make intelligent runs and score goals.. and now back to özil the blame that he doesnt fight the english way is right but its just repetitive nonsense if we constantly talk about that.. i also think that everybody has to defend and özil did defend but was one of the worse players on the pitch but whats with coq and xhaka? aren’t they the ones with the “english ATTITUDE” who have a better “Body language” (not that i care about body language) where were they? they disappointed extremely, from them i expect the fight not from özil he has other duties (of course also defensive) and yeah the sentence “pend money and time away from their families..blabla” is just nonsense too… we arent writing a dramatic novel here, dont talk as if they made some sacrifice lol.. of course the fans can be disappointed and the team should be sorry and thank them, but if i was a player i wouldnt thank the fans every game too… especially if i lose, then i would be angry at myself and go to the cabin, instead of some fake thanking
I’m not talking about one game, I’m talking about years of Arsenal having the same frail and weak minded mentality, especially in big games. At a fundamental level, nothing has changed. Our record against the other big clubs, especially away is just pathetic.
The thing is this, if we lose we lose, but its HOW we lose. If we can see our team all putting in 110% on the pitch (which is not a lot to as considering how fit they are and how much money they made doing it) then fair enough we tried our hardest and it was evident. But this is not the case with Arsenal right now. Our players just do not have much fight in them and as soon as the opposition applies some pressure we just fold.
Also the players need to show some respect to the fans who make sacrifices of their won to come and support them. It works both ways.
I don’t think it was wise using Gabriel over these tough fixtures. He didn’t do anything horribly wrong but he didn’t do many great things either. Koscielny was the worst of the two in the city game, but I think that was due to having someone beside him that still struggles with English. They kept retreating even though Alexis was urging them forward, that was down to Gabriel, Koscielny couldn’t push forward alone as they have to be close to one another. With our centre backs so close to our GK it meant our CMs where also too far back from Alexis and co, that’s what stifled our pressing and countering game. It’s a bit like when a defence has a calm assured gk behind compared to having someone shaky or erratic. There was definitely at least one player back there who was not making the players feel calm. I thought Gabriel looked alright at right back though, and I think I would have liked the extra defensive cover he offers from that position. Although the Bellerin Alexis Walcott move was sweet to watch, and we’ll need Bellerin getting games for him to get back to his usual best.
Are we really in for Jose Gaya from Valencia? A while back I thought it would be great to have him and Bellerin as young Spanish fullbacks for years to come…