It is sometimes hard to find anything positive to think about after your football club suffers a disappointing result or puts in a below par performance, but we Arsenal fans have had more than enough practice so I reckon I am getting quite good at it.
There is no doubt that we have good reasons to feel down this morning. November is turning out to be the usual kink in the road of our season with players underperforming, poor results and a general feeling of deja vu among the fans. We have also blown another great chance of topping our Champions League group and so must wait and hope for an unlikely slip by PSG in the final group game or a favourable draw.
To the positives then, and the main one is that we have actually made it to the UCL knockout stage, unlike some clubs I could mention (cough, spuds, cough) and the fact is that the two groups seem more even this year with the big names spread around more.
The team that Arsene Wenger suggested this week was the one to fear most is Real Madrid and they look set for second spot as they need to beat an in form Dortmund in their final game and it comes just a few days after an El Clasico clash with Barcelona and it looks like Bale will be out with injury. We also have Bayern Munich in the runners up group and with our luck we would probably have got one of those two had we won.
The Gunners may still get a very tough draw but I do not think coming second is such a bad thing this year. Another positive for us to take from the game with PSG last night is that just like in the away tie we did not lose but managed to get a draw in a game that we could easily have lost.
Of course we want to play better and to win but we often hear that the mark of champions is the ability to dig in and grind out results when not at your best. Do not forget that Arsenal have been awesome at times and will be again, so if we can keep in touch and suffer no disasters while struggling, it bodes well and we have not lost a game since the opening day when our side and especially the defence was wracked with injury problems.
Finally we now have a better run of fixtures after a run of games that was always going to be tough, so for now at least I think we can still be positive, don’t you?
Sam P.
As always November has been underwhelming at best. We lacked pace, cutting edge and that crisp bot offensively and defensively.
Cazorla is a big miss but that doesn’t excuse totally the lack of performance we’ve put together. We’ve got the quality we should be doing better. At this point I wish Wenger would switch things up a bit and play 3 at the back with Gibbs-Kos-Mustafi and stack the midfield as we have wealth in that department.
Xhaka should be getting more mnutes specially with the way Ramsey is playing ( he hasn’t been awful like some suggest but not great either). But to his defense he is close to being a world beater when played in his proper position (Wales).
We have to get out of that funk as we can’t afford to drop more points aside from the Chelsea game we have failed to win games with authority against big teams.
Also we need to stop looking at Spurs and celebrate each little details we’re doing better…yes they’re out of the champions league but that should be irrelevant. Instead we should be annoyed by the fact that again we’re going to finish 2nd and likely play another big team!
There was once Arsenal played with three central defenders in this season, but I forgot when. I agree that maybe Arsenal will play better if they use this formation correctly. I would like to see a line-up like this:
———————Cech————
—–Mustafi—-Koscielny—-Holding—–
Bellerin—Ramsey—Coquelin—Gibbs
————-Cazorla—-Iwobi————-
——————-Sanchez————-
I will leave Ozil, Walcott and other midfield players that are usually very easy to be dispossessed by the opponents.
I want to see Arsenal dominate with more ball possession consistently in all games. We cannot control the games consistently in this season, if we rely on players that play very well in one match but disappear in the other matches.
no Ramsey. Xhaka
@Jansen…are you related to Xhaka?
The reason I mentionned a back 3 is because of Bellerin absence otherwise 4 at the back is better. But I would never leave Ozil out.
I would play Gibbs-Kos-Mustafi than in the middle Coq-Cazorla-Xhaka-Ozil than as a front 3 Iwobi/Ox-Sanchez-Walcott
Well, we still have 2 more games at home against Bournemouth in the PL and Southampton in the ELC to play in this month of November. And should we win these 2 games which will likely be difficult to win, it will therefore be said and be written that, we Won 3 Draw 3 Loss 0. And that will not be a bad month of November campaign by us. I should think.
Arsenal should be careful in their game with Bournemouth on Sunday. And not to play the kind of game they played at the Ems last night against PSG. The Gunners forgot the nouns of defending a lead in the game when they had that advantage in the PSG game. They cave-in through Alexi Iwobi’s novice defending who shouldn’t in the first place be where he was when he helped the ball past Ospina. Was he supposed to be roaming the PSG’s half, eighteen yard area and box looking for goals to score or assist to score? Arsenal should learn how to be properly organized in defending a lead they have in any game successfully next time without given it up. And should losing their lead happened in error next time, they MUST play with general team discipline in defending individually and as a team unit so as not to concede a backbreaker goal which almost happened yesternight if Cavani was more prolific.
of all the things said I feel positive about the Team. Come November we not only could have lost Players injuries and lost games, but also giev Points to our rivals. But this season what I see is we have drew the games and have less injuries. Don’t take me wrong I am not happy with the draws but think about it, if it is old Arsenal we could have gifted 3 Points to Spurs, Manu and PSG. Now we share Points with them. We didn’t help ourself, but we certainly didn’t help our main Rivals.
End of Nov and December there is a lot of football
Our matches against Southampton and Basel are good opportunities to rest some of our top players
No way will Ludogorets beat PSG and League Cup we usually rest top players anyway
But Bournemouth, West Ham, Stoke, Everton, City and West Brom we need to play our Top players if we want to stay in the PL race
Hopefully we can get Lucas, Cazorla and Bellerin back next month
Some atrocious defending last night for sure we could have lost by a big margin ospina kept it together for us and cavani waisted a few Thank God we survived but this should be a wake call a call for tuning :- (analyze the pitfalls rectify and execute solution ) we are not seating in mud but we need to adjust our posture so we don’t slid into the mud hole …..we went through a difficult part unsaved so if we win the next few games we would be seating pretty smiling for sure
Clutching at straws, another possible positive for us in regards to winning our Champion’s league group is that as things stand, Ludogorets still have something to play for. As unlikely as it may seem, if they get a draw away to PSG and we beat Basel, they will continue their European adventure in the form of the Europa league and we in turn will win the group.