There is no use crying over spilt milk, so they say, but for Arsenal fans and our playersa it will be tough to just put the disappointment of the performance against Chelsea to0 one side, and what the defeat at Stamford Bridge means to our already slim chances of claiming the Premier League title.
But Arsene Wenger somehow has to rally the troops because the season is far from over and in just 10 days the Gunners travel to Germany to face the Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich in the first leg of the Champions League knockout round which could go a long way towards rescuing something from this campaign.
To be fair the Frenchman should not have to rouse the team for this massive game but he will have to get them in the right frame of mind and well prepared for this hugely difficult away game. If he was looking for suggestions I would chip in with the advice to not approach it as we did the Chelsea match this weekend.
I am sure he won’t. The situations are much different for one thing and Wenger should have almost all of his players available again, except the central midfield pair of Aaron Ramsey and Santi Cazorla according to the sports injury website physioroom.com.
The Germans have their own injury problems though, with Metro reporting that their vital midfield star Arturo Vidal is likely to miss at least the first leg with a rib problem. They have not been their usual dominant selves this season either, although they did manage to get their noses in front in the German league just before the winter break.
The reason we are facing them despite winning our group is that they failed to win theirs so Wenger should be able to build some confidence that we could finally get through this round just as we finally won the qualifying group. An away goal and anything but a big loss would keep us interested for the home leg, but can Wenger get his players up and ready for this big match?
Bob.
no, we win our group, still draw bayern, and in the space of 5 days go from challenging for the league to concern to make top 4, and yet its not shocking… this is the yr to sink low enough that management must act, chelsea, city and united have had extremely poor yrs forcing needed change, out w mediocrity,
Even if we some how managed to beat Munich 3nil away in the 1st leg, you can guarantee that we would go and lose our home leg by a bigger score line, in other words we’d still end up getting dumped out of this competition lol?
City struggling at home to Swansea 1-1 ?
Big ups to the glorious Wenger trophy ?
Jammy James hunts, nicked it at the death 2-1 city.?
We have dropped to 5th. Nobody should tell me that we are heading towards Euorpa league.
Well our boys would wake up now knowing that we are outside CL places.
Let’s get the Job done against Bayern and move on.
What ever, I will still fly Emirate.
Oh. Forgotten that Pool also throw away. We are 4th but just GD. Can we then win 10 at a stretch and hand Wenger another contract that he will do better next season.
These guys have a way of tormenting us.
We’re 4th …. Liverpool lost away to Hull, otherwise we would have been in 5th spot…. Thanks Hull, if only other clubs were as courteous as you.??
this yr is the first yr wenger ends up under spurs, then if he finishes 5th, maybe we make the needed changes, kroenke without CL, lets see how that sits,,,,
He could do us all a favour and get himself up and out of door and never come back.
Oh and while he is at it, he can take kroenke and gazidis with him.
My Five Points from Yesterday’s Game
1. Wenger is too emotional to win anything significant in today’s soccer world. Arsenal need a ruthless coach. Wenger have also lost his tactical edge.
2. Alex Oxlade Chamberlain is Arsenal’s best replacement for Carzola. He should start in that position ahead of Ramsey and even Wilshere (if he returns).
3. Arsenal still doesn’t have a defensive midfielder. Coquelin is extremely average (forget stats, because it tells nothing). For the rest of the season Arsenal should play any of the decent ball playing central defenders in that position – Mustafi or Gabriel, with the Ox playing next to him. We have too many average players in central midfield and we need to sell a few of them to buy World Class stars – at least two or three of Ramsey, Wilshere, Elneny, Coquelin – should go to give room for really strong and technical players in the centre of the pack.
4. Ozil is too inefficient to be our permanent number 10. He is for sure very very creative, but for the premier league there is a need for creative midfielder that can give a little bit more. I’ll go with our youngsters for the rest of the season and fling him in the summer. He is just too lackadaisical for the fight. I’ll play Iwobi, Jeff or even Alexis Sanchez in that position and play Welbeck upfront.
5. Sad as it sounds, Petr Cech is done. Buying him and loaning Szczesny was a terrible mistake. He is not considerably better. Remember the season before this happened they were the joint best goalkeepers in the league and loaned the one that is still developing for the one that is declining. Lets face the bitter truth, he’s cost us the 15 point we were promised he will give us this season alone. He should sit on the bench and share experiences with the younger and sharper goalkeepers.
Gabriel Jesus 3 goals and an assist in 3 appearances.
Wenger: “There is no quality during January”. There always is.
And concerning the topic – no, we can’t.
We will get whooped in the first leg, probably 3-0 or 3-1. Then in the 2nd leg we will ‘make the comeback’ which of course falls too short and we crash out, but in paper it will look like “it was close”.
Jesus was signed in the summer, not January.
To the topic – yes I think we can beat Bayern. The problem isnt that Wenger cant get Arsenal up for an occasional great game. The problem is that he can’t do it consistently..
We’ve nothing to lose really, the pressure will be on them. I actually give us a decent chance with Bayern, so long as our players are fit. Ozil should not play in the away game, we need our best players at combing off the ball skills with on the ball ones. I’d go with a four three three, it would look like five midfielders at times or six defenders, when attacking allow one of them to join attack so long as he sprints back. Danny Alexis Perez front three, I’d pick Perez because he’s shown creative qualities which we’ll need with Ozil sitting out. Midfield Coquelin Xhaka and I’m in two minds over Elneny Oxlade, whichever one will need to join attack at good moments. I’d go with Ox, there’s no point going with three def mids.
three C rate CFs do not add up to an A, you need an A CF to win this league, for a decade we have had very good defenses and very adequate mid fields, we simply have lacked a consistent scorer for 10 yrs… you need 20+ goals per season in the middle to win this league, take pressure off the rest of the pitch. The lack of success to buy one dominating consistent scorer has cost us, look at last yr, our feature striker goes 14 matches w/out a goal… Wenger knows this, thats why he sat OG for much of the year, but his own incompetence in knowing how to go into the market and buy one is the issue we have…
I completely agree with you on playing 4-3-3 and really our best option will be Welbeck Sanchez and Perez. They are stickers and are all very creative. But in the midfield I’ll go for Xhaka – Ox
I dont agree at all on the A rated striker issue. With 15 Goals and 8 Assists in the league today, Alexis is the best and most complete striker in the league. I wouldn’t even swap him for a griezmann who is not tested in the premier league. I will give him anything to be Arsenal’s predominant striker for at least the next three years And with Welbeck, Perez and Giroud, he has good back ups. Where Arsenal actually need a surgical operation is in the Midfield. Nothing more. Get quality, class, creative and strong midfielders in and we will become dominant. We are simply stocked with too many average midfielders
he is played on the wing, put him in CF, then I agree, i would love a CF such as a suarez teamed up w Alexi on the left, alexi also creates, but there lacks quality for his efforts, last yr we had alexi… what happened, no support from the middle.
I don’t think so. It’s not clear what our best lineup/formation is. Especially the CF role.
Meanwhile Mourinho is too scared to drop Ibrahimovic. They guy hardly moves in a game unless there is a cross that comes in. Oh well thats their bad.
Firstly its clear that Wenger can’t motivate this team,he doesn’t even use any tactics,saw him talking with an ear piece on during the Chelsea game and Bould was just rooted to his sit,so I asked “who’s Arsene Wenger talking to?” As for UCL, he has managed to make a good history with Arsenal as the only manager to have consistently qualify his club for champions league without ever lifting the trophy. Hopefully we finish outside top 4,maybe then Wenger might leave the club and just maybe without Champions league money kroenke might sell his shares. It is funny how Wenger is in the final months of his contract and yet he hasn’t been linked with any club not even a rumour,have been noticing that for some years now.
What do fellas here think about Lukaku? 77 goals in 162 appearances for the likes of WBA and Everton, and he’s 23! His goals per match ratio is currently better than ie. Owen’s, Fowler’s or Andy Cole’s.
Giroud turns 31 next fall and Lukaku would be a huge improvement on him if we want a big target man. Lukaku is crazy fast for his height as well.
c’mon, would it not be funny to see LC in the relegation zone… vardy and mahrez tore up winning lottery tickets ?
A Lot of us predicted at the end of last season that they will probably get relegated this season.
But how funny would it be if they went and won the champions league this year and got relegated ??
Wenger can’t organize us to defend well, BM will score at least 3-4 goals over the 2 games and can anyone see us getting 4-5?