Tottenham 2 – 1 Arsenal Player Ratings by KJ
Ospina – 6
Made a lot of good saves but also looked very nervous and seemed to always parry the shot into a dangerous area for us.
Bellerin – 4
Completely destroyed by Rose today. Couldn’t deal with the pace and was never able to intelligently pass it out from the back.
Mertesacker – 5
Didn’t do anything really to prevent Spurs from pressing us into submission. His clearances weren’t great and didn’t seem to lead the team.
Koscielny – 4
Had an absolute shocker for the majority of the game. Rash tackling and was beaten in the air by Kane for their winner.
Monreal – 6.25 (our MOTM)
He was the best of a bad bunch. Never did anything special was never defensively exposed and made good tackles when needed.
Coquelin – 5
Sat off too much at times and then didn’t do enough with Ramsey to systematically press Mason and Bentaleb.
Ramsey – 4
He was like Bellerin very poor today. Didn’t get his passing right, too easily dispossessed etc. He should be stepping up in these types of games and yet he was one of the worst offenders.
Welbeck – 5
Did well to beat Rose to set up our goal but other than that, he constantly misplaced passes and was too easily frustrated.
Cazorla – 5
He didn’t have any real influence. Marked out of the game and lost the ball too easily. Hopefully this doesn’t affect his confidence too much but this was a poor game by the Spaniard.
Özil – 5
Scored but didn’t influence the game much after that. Similar to Santi, crowded out by Tottenham players too easily.
Giroud – 4
Didn’t do enough at all throughout the game to aid our attack. Lost the ball too easily or didn’t play it forwards quickly enough.
Subs:
Rosicky – N/A
Didn’t do anything to really influence the game
Walcott – N/A
Same as Rosicky, Tottenham had the majority of the chances and possession in the second half.
Akpom – N/A
Came on far too late to have an influence.
Horrible feeling this morning, but our next games are all winnable so let’s get back on a winning streak!
The reason we lost was plain and simple. Aaron Ramsey. You can only attack if you have the ball.
Ramsey lost possession 24 times in the match.
That is someone gifting the ball once every 4 minutes.
Including stoppages, corner kicks, throws in, free kicks and substitutions, it is even worse. More like once every 2 minutes.
Continous pressure on the defenders will only lead to one thing goals.
This is before you add other players’ loss of possession.
While giroud is pretty average, you cannot blame a striker when the ball is not even coming from the back.
24 times? Wow that really is shockingly bad! Can hardly believe that.
Our defenders never really stood out (except for Monreal who had a very decent game)
Ramsey, Cazorla and Giroud were absolutely rubbish yesterday
Giroud responsible for not holding the ball well even once.. which should be his duty
Ramsey lost every ball as he gave away even simple passes over 10m distance
Cazorla was invisible and had zero influence
I am backing Welbeck, Coq and Ozil simply because they had no support to be able playing their game.
The thing I actually don’t understand that Welbeck was our best player offensively while he just returned from injury
Ospina made a few good save, but his handling was never convincing yet. I want Arsenal buy musa sissoko to replace Ramsey. Because Ramsey is too slow and always try to be smart. Ramsey is a not first XI player. Also If the 17-year old Polish kid is not ready yet. We need another cdm to provide competition or upgrade to le coq in the summer.
Just goes to show, for all the positives of new formation..etc we still require a top DCM to absorb all the pressure in the middle when it comes.
Wenger once said Arsenal could go 1-0,2-0 down and it was fine…because Henry hadn’t of scored yet and he always scores. We don’t have that currently so I would be keen to see a natural goal scorer in the mix.
What a difference yesterday would of been with Vieira and Henry!
Instead of dreaming, let’s go get them…
You guys over do it with this DM talk.. The Coq is good enough and did his job with no help at all….
Ramsey kept losing the ball and is very slow to react, he is also very slow speed wise, so every single time he most the ball The Coq was under pressure.
Cazorla our Main midfielder and orchestrator that makes us tick as a team had an absolute nightmare game, he could not hold onto the ball, could not pass, lacked energy for some reason and looked disinterested all the time he was on the pitch. Which I will let him off as he has been so good and intense for more than 2 months I a row, so maybe another high intensity game was a game too far for him. Anyways The Coq had to cover for him too.
After scoring and creating the opening goal Giroud, Ozil and Welbeck did nothing after that, Welbeck was too far up the pitch in the first half leaving Bellerin to deal with Eriksen and Rose. He was not doing anything of note offensively after the goal so I don’t know why he kept staying upfront that much.
Ozil losing the ball and putting up his hand everything asking for fouls.
Giroud looked heavy and lanky, all the balls he got were in slow slow motion and it looked like his brain and body were not co-ordinating, losing each and every ball and could not try to win them back as he looked knackered.
Kossy has been dodgy since coming back, he looks like a headless chicken when it comes to high balls, how many goals have we conceded from crosses and Kossy was easily beaten? Stoke away and home, Liverpool, Southampton he was also at fault for the second goal. Crouch could have punished us at the Emirates due to Kossy giving the ball away so easily at the half way line, pace rescued Kossy. Against villa Benteke had a free header where Kossy was beaten all ends up, he never seems to get gud co-ordinations right with good crosses into our box.
Giant Mert was bullied by Kane all game, and whenever our Mert got the better of Kane he tried to be too smart and clever by chesting or caution headeribg the ball to a teammate which alway ended up to the oppositions player.
Ospina looked nervous for some reason while at sometimes he pulled off some great saves, now we need to watch him carefully. Honeymoon period over now.
Moreal, The Coq and Ospina did alright.
The second goal Walcott, Bellerin and Ramsey were switched off.
I love it, great reply.
And I love tactics talk. I am not going to question what you wrote, I agree.
Defensively I would add more focus was require on eriksen. I mean not only the full back on his case, but our DCM to stop the supply line. Top DCM do that naturally…it’s in there dna to sense it out. Although I like Coq (specially as a back up but currently as a starter) he is taught zonally. He would go out with only one thought in his mind…Take Over.
With that calm control, your team become solid and positive.
Instead it was mayhem
I thought wenger was a new man recently, he’s been making all the right decisions for a few weeks now but had a shocker yesterday. I never felt like we should have played such a defensive game and try hit them on the break, especially when the only quick player we have to counter has just got back from injury. We should be playing with an attacking mentality, keeping possesion and not playing like a relegation side! With all our fantastic technical talent we have on the pitch we should be doing something creative not just trying to park the bus. Also the players were supposedly led to believe that a draw was fine which is crazy when we could have definitely one it with the right mentality.
Im still upset about the spurs lost, but you can’t cry over split milk, its already gone we gotta move on and take every game one at a time starting with leicester city on tuesday, which is a winnable. So lets be focus and bounce back with a win and 3 priceless points at the emirates coyg!
in football, avoid usage of words like “WINNABLE”
Teams facing the drop are like wounded animals they will give you a fight! They cannot be underestimated, man city were lucky to escape with a point against a very stubborn hull city team thanks to a great milner free kick that avoided them embarassment!
Someone lost huge money to a bet yesterday
Not sure why all the low ratings, we simply played a team that was more hungry with a man of the moment striker in their team.
They swamped our midfield and played a fast game against us, kind of what we have been doing recently.
Where we fall down is in our ability to REACT to the opposition and out play them. That requires a manager with excellent reactive tactics and one who is willing to use substitutions wisely.
Put simply, they wanted it more than us on the day. We can still finish 4th easily and I believe we may even reach the dizzy heights of 3rd! 😀
Out of all the posts I have read Mark I like your attitude the best.
We ALL feel sick. I can never watch MOTD or even want to think about football when we lose games like this one
Yes we played badly Yes spurs were better than us. But it’s one game. We had an off day , it happens
But I agree with you we can still get 3 rd or 4th. Win the FA. Cup. & possibly do well in the CL
We lost by one goal !!
We CAN still do well
Thanks mate, I too didn’t watch MOTD…onwards and upwards. We’ll be fine. 🙂
No disrespect to “rambo”! I love and respect all my arsenal players, ramsey is clearly out of form yet wenger is still playing him! He needs to be rested until he recapture his best form and be replaced with thomas rosicky!
watched the game yesterday late as i had it on my pvr and though i would comment. Not long after scoring spuds started to pile on the pressure and we needed to change our game, formation, tactics or players, something needed changing to stop the onslaught.
i could they were putting our defense under a lot of pressure and i said that it was only a matter of time before they put the ball in the back of the net. i understand not wanting to change anything at half time but in the second half the manager like so many games i have seen in the past just seemed to hope for the best. we have to have a plan B if plan A is not working and we never seem too. We have so much talent on the bench i dont get why he does not use it if something is not working or a player is have a hard time on the pitch.
Let me just say on sanchez he should have been rested before he go injured he played in games that we did not need him to play in and again only a fool could not see with all that game time something had to give especially with his work rate.
We should have won because if you were to choose between the two squad and pick one team maybe the spuds get two players with the rest made up of Arsenal players, our inability to change in games is hurting us.
we need 2 cb’s + 2 strong cdms (kondogbia & schendrlin/Kramer) & a world class striker .
wenger cannot complain about other club’s money resource as a reason for our weakness look at atheltico Madrid & Southampton even bvb did well until this season
Games remaining against current top 7
Liverpool 6
United 5
Spurs 5
Southampton 4
Arsenal 3
Tottenham in particular will have to go some in their remaining away fixtures; Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd, Southampton, Everton, Newcastle, Stoke, Burnley, QPR.
We only have Man United left as a Top-7 away game.
Wenger has to learn that he should play Cazorla OR Özil and not one of them out wide!
they both can’t play together wenger has to make a decision on one of them
same shit every season…..fighting and struggling for 4th…
and fans just love it…
time to go Wenger…
You know Hafiz you have a strong point there, for a team that’s had the same manager for almost 2 decades we should be putting in some world class performances on a regular (putting money aside) we should at least be the masters of tactics since we went through such a financial constraint. Now the funds ARE there and it now seems we’ve regressed even more. Tired of getting beaten by younger or new managers especially the ones on their debut seasons…
very biased and ridiculous ratings as usual….
A bitter defeat but don’t be amazed when you let the opposition have that many shots. We failed to contain them going forward and our midfield trio never ticked.
Let’s move on, have a string of big wins are we are back in.
We the Fans were overconfident about this game after having a few good games, we had to keep in mind that this was the team (SPUDS) that massacred the CHELSKIS not too long ago scoring 5 goals against arguably the best team in the league, in all fairness we came out fine, the SPUDS could have scored at least 2 more if it was not for OSPINA. Parking the BUS is not our game, we can’t go from our attacking mentality to just try to hold a 1 – 0 lead, GIROUD and WELBECK back in defense, giving us little chance for an effective counter which seemed yesterday’s strategy. Unfortunately and I promised to myself I would not blame WENGER anymore, he did not address the game plan, when he watched the team cornered by an inspired rival. Overall our Players played poor and our Manager once again missed the chances to show what a Top Class Manager is supposed to do specially when playing a derby with a contender that now looks fierce and inspired, ready to take 4th place from our grasp.
@MIA GUNNER FAN
Th biggest difference between US & THEM was that they adjusted their play and stuck to their game plan. After the 1st goal, they patched up that hole and continued as planned, just like professional footballers are supposed to do. We had a huge gap on the right with Bellerin being sucked into the middle which was exploited time after time. We did not address the problem and it came back to bite us.
What pizzed me off the most is, we’ve returned to our “ball watching” ways.
@ NY Gunner couldn’t agree more, you could tell by just watching the game how Pochetino was coordinating from the bench and pushing his team forward, taking advantage of being the home team, and making the right changes, while from our side well we were just the punching back and nothing was done about it……….. 10 minutes into the game the TV commentators warned about how easy the Spuds were exploiting our left side…….my question is how everyone could see it and WENGER couldn’t, we can’t STILL rely in Bellerin for big games neither with Chambers, WENGER tends to forget these are just kids with not enough experience to play these games with proper direction. Well what is done is done.
Harsh on bellerin he was left badly exposed with numerous 2 on 1 situations as welbeck was not tracking back and also kept moving inside so left so much space and spuds took full advantage. Bellerin is going to be top draw no doubt about it but when u get the player in front of u not doing his job then of course its going to make him look poor!!
If a Gunner like Ramsey is off-form, the boss has got to be playing him even if as a sub to get him back to form. Could we say it was because we didn’t have Alexis to play for the Gunners, that’s accounted for their losing out to the Spuds. Could Alexis be the leader of the Gunners on the field of play? With only Monreal game being ratted high and the remaining 10 Gunners that started the game unusually got a low ratting. With my experience in watching football games, I think there was a problem that occured within the rank and file of the Gunners before they went to play the Spuds. If I may speculate. Szczesny was reprimanded and fined by the boss for smoking. But the boss has come out to defend Jack Wilshere when he was caught on camera again with another evidence of smoking. Has that singular favoritism and injustice by boss shocked the Gunners and demoralized them ahead of the Spurs game?
Are you kidding me? Ospina is obviously the MOTM… Welbeck comes 2nd..
All d defenders tried, the pressure was so much on them.. We had no midfield, Giroud was a waste of space.
..And Monreal with his stale shadow-marking style.
I still feel short changed after the Spuds loss, we had so much quality to have given it a real game, but we did not do enough defensively nor offensively, we were just seemed to be unsure about our game plan, we has attacking players who looked a bit confused for some reason. Spuds had more than 20 shots and a lot if them were great saves from Ospina, possession was about 72% and we were 28%. Clear cut chances were created at will by the Spuds in the first half.
If we are going to player like a relegation team with 28% possession at least make our attacks pontent when we attack.
I’d question a few of your marks you gave there, mainly because I don’t think you’ve paid attention to what was happening tactically from Tottenham’s POV or from the POV of the game plan Wenger had clearly set up.
Bellerin – 4 (should be 5)
This is wrong. I’m sorry but you actually highlighted why you are wrong in your own post – you say he couldn’t handle Rose. HE WASN’T MARKING ROSE. He was marking Eriksen – a player who was actually mostly quiet in the game. The problem was that Rose overlapped when Eriksen drew Bellerin inside and Welbeck never tracked him. This leads to two questions – why was Bellerin being pulled so far inside and why was Welbeck not tracking? Bellerin inside = poor central midfield and a shakey Mertesacker not taking Eriksen when he came inside. Welbeck not tracking because Welbeck can’t defend that well!
Welbeck – 5 (should be 4)
To place this guy above Giroud and on par with most of the team is unfair. He had a MARE. He had 2 sparks of play in the whole game – his curling shot and beating Rose. Rose got mugged by him for our goal and it was embarassing to get done so easily – a fact not even close to being recreated the entire rest of the match. He did not defend and gave away the ball cheaply and ended some of our best counter attacks because of bad decisions. Even his cross for our goal was a poor ball to Giroud.
Ospina – 6 (should be 5…at most)
He did NOT make great stops. He made good stops and parried them into bad areas. The best save he made he got injured from and it was not as good as the save Lloris made against Welbeck. Furthermore his distribution was abysmal throughout and he consistently was uncommanding in the box which lead to their equaliser. It’s unfair to say that a guy doing routine things fine but also making some huge howlers that he got away with (or didn’t in the case of the goal) is on par with players who actually defended well and kept to their job consistently is again just unfair grading.
Sadly I’d say Rambo probably deserved a 3 for how bad he played though your logic is right for why he gets a bad mark. I’d say Mert and Kos were as bad as each other – we just expect more of Kos. They were both SO wayward in possession it was embarassing. As for Giroud, he wasn’t that bad, just isolated and lacking any sort of service to play off of. Kinda hard to be a lone striker when you have no runners and every ball into you is a 50-50 you have to win off a defender and his mate. Giroud also covered Welbeck more then his fair share of times – there was a period of about 5-10 minutes Giroud actually ended up as right mid! I’d have probably given him a 5 but if we were being harsh a 4.5. Certainly he was not as bad as Kos, Mert or Rambo.
Ugh, we were so poor. Individual players playing crap is just something you can’t account for. When they all have a bad day though and you’ve got nobody to pick the team up by example, you really do get left in the ditch.