Gutted! by CT
Before tonight’s game with Monaco, I was fairly optimistic after four years of drawing against stronger opponents and only being narrowly defeated, we finally had a great opportunity to make it through to the quarter finals of the Champions League. But after watching that absolutely disgusting display, which took me by surprise to say the least, has left me wondering what the problem actually is at Arsenal.
What I’ve came down to is one major flaw in our team. We once had Tony Adams and Patrick Vieira as captains. People to look to when we weren’t playing our best. Someone to relay on to tell the big guns in the team to step up and get working harder. Now who do we have? Per Mertesacker. Need I say more..after his utterly useful performance once again.
And even worse we have a manager who just sits down and does nothing to try and inspire his team. Maybe if Wenger had fired into Ozil from the sidelines, he might have gotten a well needed kick up the ass. Its a shame because I believe this team had the capability to go and destroy Monaco tonight.
But we’ve got to give the French side credit where credits due. They totally deserved to win the game. It just seems like we Arsenal fans are stuck on repeat with the same old problems every year.
I wonder if this will ever change.
CT
I don’t believe we necessary need someone in the field. Someone from the side can chime in. Unfortunately Wenger is not a guy shouting at the players from the side.
On thing comes to mind now. Remember the ball Ospina cleared with the head against Crystal I believe. That incident involved Mertesacker too (just as the equalizer at Liverpool) and what does he do? He fu cking ducks! He ducks! Such a high tower he makes himself small.
In fairness, his long legs managed to pick many balls at the ground level but unfortunately these won’t help him being more aggressive or faster.
@Budd, Kudos to Wenger for dropping Wojciech after is blockbuster calamitous performances. But we are watching. It’s high time guys like Per and Ozil got the same treatment.
True. And they will, I am sure of that.
They wont with wenger still incharge…I still feel that ozil should’ve been subbed not Santi…….SAF, didn’t give players special treatment , if he felt u playing bad, u sat on the bench…Wenger has his favourites…Needs to learn to pick squad and substitute according to “at that tym” requirements…
Does anyone here think we still have a chance to go past Monaco? Can we beat them let’s say 4-1? I remember a certain night where in Milan we destroyed inter,but we had henry and pires to thank for.a brace from giroud and goals from ozil and welbeck. Coyg
Hahaha, what a joke ey?
That’s true but back then we had Henry. Do you see Welbeck doing the same?
@budd no I don’t. Just can’t get over the fact that we will be knocked out by Monaco. Surely we will put on a fight in the return leg,but that third goal killed our chances.wished we played with real or barca instead of Monaco. We would not be so frustrated now would we?
@seancali
We can still do it…
Why is Özil getting such a bad treatment from us fans? Has he done any worse than Cazorla, Sanchez or Coquelin lately?
The problem lies exactly in the sad fact, that Cazorla was needed in the deeper areas of our midfield, and he simply rejected his role by hanging around as a CAM. This foolishness made things difficult for Ozil, Coquelin and the back 4. Cazorla is not a deep lying midfielder, cause he won’t ever be willing to fill out this role. He wants to play as a 10. Yesterday you had 2 CAMs (Ozil & Cazorla) stepping on each others feet and only one defensive midfielder (Coquelin). Wenger was absolutely correct to withdraw Cazorla. His only fault was that he didn’t do it much earlier.
Been saying for ages that for his height, Per is pretty useless in the air. Occasionally he will win a vital air ball, but we should be seeing more of this. Last night, we saw his pace exposed again, as as Gary Neville mentioned for a player of his experience he should never have left Berbatov open. But it gets worse than that – besides having such a carthorse of a DB, we have full backs who think they are wingers, racing forward and then leaving old Merts and Koss to defend counters alone. Will Wenger ever address these issues? Why are Arsenal always caught out in counter attacks? Why can we never capitalize when we counter attack?? FRUSTRATING
True. He falls to the ground very easily and I find that terribly embarrassing. Can’t imagine Kevin Hart knocking either of the Klitchko brothers down.
We need a kick in the asss’ we all do.its time to wake up from this long sleep.big changes needed.I have been a huge Wenger fan all my life but last night was a turning point.a cl semi final and the fa cup was my goal for the season and now I have lost all hopes.we may not even get the usual 4th spot. I’m very frustrated with what I saw last night,words can’t describe how I feel,just can’t get over this one.just can’t
our players are simply not good enough.
The invisibles :
all the players were full or ex internationals.
All of them were matured or peak players
All of them had good ball control, ball retention, stamina.
Only 2 young players had a sniff of the bench at anyone time. ( Ashley Cole was almost sold, benthley was was sold).
If we want to compete at the top, we gave to buy the players needed to compete at that level.
Personally, amongst the younger players, I will keep ox Walcott and Gibbs and send bellerin on loan.
Sell Ramsey, wilshere, welbeck, Campbell, podolski
Release arteta, flamini and diaby
Then close down the academy and youth scouting for 3 years because they have been scouting rubbish since fabregas.
how long have we been saying we need some leaders?
zzzzz its getting old
i know wenger is not the shouting type, but imagine going 1 down, seeing us slump our shoulders an simeone running to touchline shouting at mesut , gesticulating at santi to track back, going absolutely mental – the fans would be fired up , halftime team talk an u would see arsenal come out all cylinders firing after diego teared them each a new one.
i love arsene but ive grown weary of him being a coach
I often expect Arsene to stay up on his feet for longer spells, yelling out orders, screaming instructions. But he hardly does that.
Meh… So sad.
I remember saying we shouldn’t have signed the big eyed German. I got literally crucified. That guy’s presence on the pitch is like that of a rich man’s spoil kid.
When some of us come out and comment on certain players we are called haters. We are labelled as having personal issues with those players..
I have been saying all season that Giroud is our best ST and not Welbeck. I said Giroud is our best but in an ideal world he should be 2nd or 3rd choice at best. But I like him. Honest guy.
We have been highlighting Sanchez’s flaws and that he is not yet world class, we have been highlighting how he loses the ball far too much, he holds on to the ball for far too long, his passing and link up is poor, he will try 8 easy passes and only get 1 or 2 right. He needs to work on those aspects to be labelled as world class.
Ozil, I don’t need to say anything more about him, everyone here knows my views about him.
After the Palace game I said we were lucky but then people on here came out with some funny comments, “It’s all about the 3 points. Our game plan worked. We won ugly. It’s you guys that have been going on about Arsenal having much possession and losing games, but now we have 35% possession against teams like Villa, Swansea, Stoke, Palace, Spuds etc but win the games” blah blah.
I said since Welbeck came back, him and Giroud together makes us play mechanical football, no balance.
I have been saying all season that Ozil and Cazorla together in the middle is asking for trouble, both are small players while one of them couldn’t care about running and fighting. I said Ramsey, Wilshere, The Ox or Rosicky would give us some balance even though a stronger and more athletic B2B would be better, but for now those 4 are what we can field.
The last point, I said we are giving away too much possession, we lack intensity, can’t press out of possession, we look clueless and don’t know what to do without the ball. In possession we are pressed and hurried by everyone half decent, but when they are in possession we just sit back, jog around with no purpose just waiting for them to make a mistake or lose the ball instead of us trying to win the ball back.
Same mistakes. Rosicky, The Ox and our CB for the last goal were all just ball watching, jogging about while the Monaco players made runs off them. Exactly how United scored their second goal at the emirates, exactly how Anderlecht scored at the emirates, now Monaco. And let’s not include others and those from last season. We are not learning from our mistakes.
We still have players that ain’t got no defensive instincts, they are just reactive rather than proactive. Danger first arises then they will react. Smh.
This is our worst season in recent yrs….I can remember ao bad we re @ d begining of 2008 2009 season…but we picked up eventually…but we’ve been bd all season nd nofin has been done…a bigger contributing factor is welbeck who can neither top strike nor can he play as a winger nd he has been doing both all games…am not so sure but had it being we met dis monaco team last season we wud ve won home and away…this team lacks balance and leader…we miss arteta and it makes d purchase of an intelligent passer and strong anchor man necessary….schnederlin
Its nao not even abt mourinho and wenger…it seems every average coach is pulling d stuff against hm…monaco have beaten us twice on our ground and d third win for them is inevitable…forza monte
I do think people are overacting on this one,if you look well we have been grinding victories lately playing ugly and flirting with luck.
In honesty we should have won this game but for bad luck and finishing.
Giroug missed two sitters and this year he scors those one.
Wellbek shoud have sore one but shot straight at Walcot.
First goal of monaco was luck.
Third goal of Monaco was inexperience from Ox and bad luck fron Ospina,He will sop 8 out 10 of these shots.
I bet you we gonna trash Monaco at the next meeting,we are a better team.,mark my words.
we lost bcoz we didn’t respect monoco. even ppl on d site were predicting 4-0 5-0 lolz we deserve every laugh and every insult coming our way.
I hope it was not Wilshere’s fault that we lost this match too… It seems like 99% of the fans on here have all agreed in unison that Wilshere is the reason Ozil, Cazorla, Ramsey, Rosicky play bad football..
smh
Ive said it before and Ill say it again we have NO real Midfield muscle, we are not intimidating on the pitch we have no real “Master and Commander” we have no Viera, in days gone by you knew that if you clobbered an Arsenal player you would get clobbered at some time by one of ours, I mean cmon we are talking about players like Welback who to my mind is absolute rubbish and was a total waste of 16million, Yesterday was TOTALLY UNEXECTABLE BOTH FROM THE PLAYERS AND THE MANAGER
A couple of minutes before Kondogbia scored, I told my friends that he’s the kind of midfielder we could buy to add muscle to the midfield and team in general. As of Welbeck, i think the way he’s used speaks for itself. Bought as a striker, quickly moved to the wing when realised he cant score a strikers amount of goals per season.
Dybala and Kondogbia, sell deadwood and replace Mertesacker with someone like Höwedes (or a french talent like Umtiti, Varane or Laporte – or columbian rising star Balanta) It would be a good summer window.
Couldn’t agree more with this article, spot on. Truth is, our team is spineless, we have no leaders and they’re all injury prone delicate flowers, now I’m not going to slate Wenger, because I’m neither Wenger in nor Wenger out because at the end of the day, we all know the board will never get rid of him. We need leaders, Mertesaker and Arteta are two of the worst players in the squad and they are captain and vice captain? It just doesn’t make sense, what does Wenger see in shit like that.
Sorry to raise the ghost of George Graham on this ocassion – however part of his approach was for the players to understand that the strikers are also the first line of defence. He used to go mad if Merson or Smudger failed to a) hold the ball up b) chase down defenders. He never wanted to see a CB bring the ball out between our two strikers without being intercepted first. Our strikers failed miserably in this respect last night, were physically brushed off the ball too easily and gave away possession at crucial moments putting our midfield under pressure. The whole team needs to defend front to back, as a first principle before being in a position to attack as a whole unit.
Time to drop Per and give Gabriel a chance! also start walcott over welbeck… walcott looked more dangerous than welbeck did when he came on!
I would also drop Ozil after that performance and when he does play Wenger needs to start taking him off around 70minutes, Ozil always goes missing in the later stages of the game!
OT – Sell any 2
ryo/poldi/flamini/campbell
I would like to see the OX given more opportunities in the #10 role. Lets not forget, he was one of our best players before his injury. The OX is not a central midfielder, his ball retention is good enough. He’s best used further forward. I would drop Ozil and Mertesacker in the next game and go with:
Giroud
Sanchez OX Welbeck
Cazorla Coquelin
Monreal Koscielny Gabriel Bellerin
Ospina
*is not good enough.
OX was like a hot knife through butter yesterday. Until he came, we completely lacked penetration. I hate to say, but does anyone think Szczesny is a better shot stopper than Ospina? That third goal never should have been scored.
Ozil has no winning mentality whatsoever. How he has a world cup winner’s medal is beyond me. He lost the ball on one specific occasion last night and hung his head. Meanwhile, Sanchez, from a position further away, comes racing across to try to win the ball back. Ozil should have done that to be fair. I think Wenger panders to Ozil’s needs too much. Play rubbish then you’re dropped, simple as. Team for Everton game. Ospina, Chambers, Gabriel, Kos, Monreal, Coquelin, Rosicky, Cazorla, Sanchez, Walcott, Welbeck.
Like that isn’t common knowledge. Ozil defensive display does not exist. And not only at Arsenal but also at Real, national squad , Schalke, Bremen etc
You guys knowledge of football is better than mine, so I will ask you.
Do we need a new defensive coach or new CB ?
Do we need a defensive leader like Terry or Tony Adams?
How do we improve our defense?
Last year we had a very good defense. And Koscielny/Mertsacker was the best CB pairing in the PL.
Also, I still believe we need a top striker like Aguero and Costa. Lacazette is really good. He has scored 21 goals in 23 league games. And 25 goals in 30 total games for Lyon. He is being tipped to win the Balon d’Or in future. I think he would be amazing for us. He is only 23 so still can improve even though he is nearly finished product
Something needs to be done because last night was simply pathetic and not on. We had a great draw and got Monaco (1st leg at home!!!) and we Made them look like Real Madrid. It’s so embarrassing and sad.
BTW: If we don’t get Schneiderlin than we should go for Kondogbia
What a champions league winning squad. Ride on oh gunners…lol
Kondogbia??
Powerhouse midfielder, good technical ability, breaks up play and can shoot from distance! He was the glue that kept Monaco together and gave them a platform to play yesterday. This is 100% the kind of player that we need but obviously we won’t get!
ozil is the costliest mistake that this french clown wanger has ever made , ozil has no intrest in playing for thr arsenal , even a blindman would see that . off with him in the summer i say .