It’s taken Mohamed Elneny a few months to settle into the Arsenal team since his arrival in January, but he certainly came of age in last night’s defeat in Barcelona. Even when he made his debut for the club in the FA Cup against Burnley, we all saw that the Egyptian was keen to take long shots from outside of the box and he came close in most of his games until last night.
His perseverance finally paid off when he scored a wonderful equalizer in the Nou Camp to give the Gunners a chance to get back into the game, but as usual our mis-firing (or unlucky?) strikers failed to build on Mohamed Elneny’s first ever goal for Arsenal, and we were duly undone by Barca’s MSN threesome.
Elneny was interviewed after the game, and it shows that he is still learning the English football cliches, but at least he is positive about the rest of the season. “We did what we could today. Sure, we lost, but we tried our best. We were playing against a big team.” he said.
“We’re still up for the league. We need to focus. We still have nine games to go and God willing we can do it.
“We know it’s a big stadium and a great stadium too but I’m happy with my performance today, but not that happy about the result. I knew it’d be hard, but there is no ‘hard’ in football.”
Okay he may not be able to give our seasoned performers any lessons in how to give an interview, but he is certainly showing the team how to take more speculative long range shots, especially when they are not kicked straight at the opposing keeper!
In the first half of this season (at Basle), Mohamed Elneny scored 5 goals. Now he has broken his duck in the Premier League it would be great if he could match that number and inspire the rest of the Arsenal team to make more of their chances….
We got no striker#FACT
The WOB, you must be the happiest lot. I’m predicating we’ll finish below Spurs and below 4th for the first time since Wenger arrived. And that should be end of the road for Wenger. Today I’ve officially joined the WOB.
One decent ‘striker’ and our season would have been a completely ‘different’ story!
I said in an earlier article that we had all the pieces of a great team, but thinking about things apart maybe from ManCity and Aguero (and that could be debated) is there currently a World Class striker in the EPL? Does Costa count this year really?
I dnt think we ve gat strikers, introduction of Giroud and Walcot killed our game last night, thumbs up elneny.
Hahaha……they (giroud and walcott) were supposed to be the impact subs and game changers!
Like Coman and Alcantara..
Yes. Thumps up Elneny. Haven’t seen us scoring from outside 18 in recent time. That’s why bus parkers usually have a field day against us. I hope others will not convince him not to be taking shots from outside.
More of EL-Neny………Less or None of Ramsey
I don’t think we ve gat strikers, introduction of Giroud and Walcot killed our game last night, thumbs up to elneny, the lad is really inspiring.
Are there any Easy premier League Fixtures from here on?………..Truth is…. ReLegation teams are no Joy to play against towards the end of the season
Yes take more shots
Ka Boom !!!
Mohamed Mohamed Elny
he flys like an eagle
and shoots like Messi 🙂
He should netted the same goal against Watford with easier angle. But he showed how to do it. Instead of scoring goal, Giroud made stupid blunder for the third goal. Arsene’s gambling has been justify as feeble. At the end of the season, he should step out as gentleman for Arsenal and for his own good. I still respect him.
We are 2 points clear of LC and then we get an opportunity to extend it to 5 points – we bottle it and some fans think it’s no biggie as we are still top of the table. We then drop 2 points and LC closes in – some fans think it’s no cause for alarm since we are still top with GD. We then go 3 points behind LC – some fans believe the criticism is overboard since we are just 3 points off the top. We drop 2 more points and go 5 behind LC – folks still think we are in it. We drop 3 more points and go 8 behind – the calculators come out and we are told there is still a mathematical chance. I’m sure that even when we go 14 points behind, I will still hear that it is mathematically possible as long as we win all our remaining games. And while this is happening, LC will enter crash mode and allow us fly pass.
If this is not the height of delusion, then I don’t know what it is. Question is, if you really think AFC can upturn an 8 point disadvantage to win the league, why are you not worried that WHU & MUFC can upturn a 3/5 point disadvantage to kick us out top 4? Go figure!
This is what I was warning them about after that embarrassing Southampton defeat. It’s 2013 all over again, we lead for half the season and slowly find ourselves dropping points until eventually we’re struggling to retain 4th spot. Wenger said he still expects the team to finish “top 3”, not top2, not 1st but top 3. He’s made it clear he doesn’t expect us to win this season and 3rd is what we should be happy with smh. He has totally lost my faith this season and I’m done defending his actions, we had the chance to improve a team everyone but him could see weren’t the finished article and instead he opts to save money and rely on mediocre players like Theo and Flamini who are happy to earn a paycheck for doing nothing.
The fact that Barcelona were celebrating when they got drawn with us says it all.
Wenger, Kroenke, Gazidis Out
LOL @reddb 10
I thought I alone noticed that.
When shall we break the curse of the LAST 16 ROUND?
Barcelona twice
Bayern twice
AC Milan once
Monaco once
Who next?
neymar should have had a hattrick messi should have scored 4 and suarez at least 2
What do you mean? They SHOULD have scored nine? That’s what you wanted was it?
So you wanted Arsenal to be destroyed? Go join a Barcelona website!
That was on your FIFA16 mate. Wrong game!
Will Arsene leave? No… You can expect same movie next year! But we’re in a scrap battle with City, United and West ham for those 3rd and 4th spot!
This is what happens when you depend upon quality of Giroud & Walcott. You cannot win anything with these type of forwards. you require a lethal finisher who can score on important occasions. Our problem is that we play wonderful football when going is easy and in tricky situations when we have to play out of our skins, we falter. We need great leaders on the pitch and off it too.
Lukaku and Vardy would be the perfect strikers for arsenal.
They have high energy and great finishing
anyone know anyone that actually goes to Arsenal games?
I can’t believe I’m asking this on an Arsenal Forum but still..
My TV showed no wrong dude. My eyes either.
Since we where linked with him and I saw what he can do I have been protesting for Elneny to play more..I remember describing him as an Egyptian Xabi Alonso he can pass, defend and last night he showed he can finish from outside the box…He should really play over Ramsey but behind Santi Carzola…
In terms of our team we NEED changes these must be made…We need a striker who can dribble score and pick out pass and my number 1 preference showed quality last night in his assist Alvaro Morata (he ran through Bayern defence)..he does not play enough at Juve and We could use someone of his quality on our team….but will Wenger connect the dots is another question…
We need a new CB (per is to slow and old)..we need a second choice RB and a second choice keeper (Ospina wants to leave and Szczesny is just not good enough)…
Changes need to be made and i think the first change must be the leadership of our whole team!!!!
That’s topics for next season. You’ve to wait.
Tbh look at this in the prem
aguero
vardy
lukaku
ighalo
kane
costa
sturridge
they are all better than our current strikers.
And if we had a goalie in the capacity of courtois de gea hart
They would not be letting in so many simple goals.
I know cech is great but he fails to communicate well with the team
Petr Cech is doing what he do best. He’s PL Buffon in the making. Defenders in front of him that need to be improve.
Hey Gooners 🙂
The season starts on Saturday.
That’s right a fresh start 🙂
Now it’s a nine game season.
Beat Everton away and we right back in it.
Right back to 8 points off top. Seriously, what will be the excuse in May? We are more likely to finish outside the top 4 than finish 1st. As Fergie said, Leicester will win it with 3 games to spare!
Leicester on the verge of doing it. But with 3 games to spare, I don’t think so. Fergie said the same thing about Moyes. In fact, he personally picked him. ManUre ended up at seven didn’t they?
There’s a fine difference between Leicester and moyes though; Leicester has actually shown that they can win the league, whereas with moyes, Ferguson underestimated his own importance on the team he won the league with the previous season
Just EPL to compete. Our strikers must dig deep to find where the hell that scoring boots are buried. That is the one and only way to do it.
Just read that first half of last fiscal year (April to September 2015) arsenal made a £3.2m trading loss. This was due to high player transfer costs of £39.4m. We all know that Cech cost £10m, the extra £29.4m were payments due to clauses being triggered in previous contracts for other players.
So now we know why no outfield players were bought last season. As Kroenke said “if you want to win championships you would never get involved”. Kroenke also talks about growing the brand, until he realises that to grow the brand you need success on the field, (fourth in PL is no longer good enough) then arsenal will not progress and may decline as fans get fed up with paying top dollar for mediocraty.
I don’t think Kroenke will realize anything than his benefit or cost dude. Usmanov or Dangote will need to drain their wallet to take over. I don’t think they have balls either. One thing separate us from wind of change is Arsene’s consciousness. A man with his wisdom must have that gentleman side. We wait and beg for it.
There’s no shame in losing to Barcelona at the Nou Camp,
But it’s a God damm shame when you can’t score half of the chances you create!
And that has clearly been our downfall this season,
And Wenger’s biggest mistake, by not buying a quality striker!.. The failed attempt to buy Suarez will surely haunt Wenger and many fan’s, forever and a day!
Not like he didn’t try to. 40 millions + 1 pound, the funniest offer ever made in modern football era. And I even thought Liverpool wont sell this “dracula” with 60 M pounds offer made by their direct rival, thanks to Gerard who told him : you deserved better than Arsenal.
The Arsenal team is often let down by lack of clinical finishing. Anyone who watched last night’s game must have been greatly disappointed at how comical our players looked infront of goal. There were so many opportunities which, if we had taken them, would have made last night’s game different. I strongly believe Arsenal needs to employ some of our former strikers such as Thierry Henry, Ian Wright, Robert Pires etc as goal scoring coaches! I also feel that as part of routine practice our forward players should have at least one hour of practice on how to score goals. Similarly our midfielders should learn how to shoot from outside the box. Last night’s defeat as many others in the recent past have all been down to lack of clinical finish. Too many chances go begging which is very disgusting. Anyone who saw Barcelona last night could see that all they do is aimed at scoring goals while our players just keep rotating the ball around. If Wenger still wants to save his legacy or whatever is left of it he has got to hire proven goal scorers to train the team on how to score goals. All the problems the team has suffered boil down to one thing, lack of goals inspite of very good possession, passing, defence and all round play. Football is all about goals and nobody should deceive himself that a team can be good when it is not scoring goals. What makes a team great is scoring goals not rotating the ball around or having high statistics of ball possession and passes. Furthermore Wenger needs to stop treating players as if they were his most beloved children whom he should always handle with kid gloves. Each of us has suffered because of these ineffective players.
It is time the board and the manager got ruthless with some players. Some harsh methods to hold these players to account such as reducing their weekly allowances, fining them for any act of laxity or negligence, benching whoever proves unequal to the task and putting on notice those who persistently let down the team may have to be employed. There could also be provisions in the strikers’ contracts to the effect that the contracts may be prematurely terminated if a striker continuously fails to score for a certain number of games. These may seem excessively harsh measures but desperate situations call for desperate measures. The manager should also suffer some punitive action for continuous failure to deliver for the team such as being fined. Calling for the sacking of the manager should be the ultimate punishment but there should also be short term punitive measures for the manager which would keep him on his toes. These could bring back discipline and ambition to the team and ultimately lead to success.
It’s plain to see that there isn’t much practice being done during training sessions!
The constant injuries have given Wenger such a complex, that he decreased training in an attempt to avoid injuries!
Sanchez used to stay behind for extra target practice in the beginning of the season but that has stopped since he returned from injury and Ozil hardly trains at all now, because of a foot injury.