Arsenal simply can’t hit a barn door!

So the Gunners have now completed three full games without putting the ball in the back of the net once, but last night against Southampton it certainly wasn’t through lack of chances. The first half was a bit more even and it was Mesut Ozil that came the closest a few times and we had to wait until the 44th minute before we saw Olivier Giroud kneeling down with his head in his hands, which is traditional celebration after a miss….

The second half was all Arsenal and we created chance after chance, but Frazer Foster either got lucky or skillful every single time to deny us the lead. Arsene Wenger bemoaned the Gunners’ finishing, especially considering that we had 70 per cent possession and 22 shots on goal!

He was asked after the game if he found it frustrating: “It is,” he said. “Because we produced quite a good performance, especially in the second half when we created 10 goal chances. At the end of the day we came out with no goals. I believe the performance we wanted to produce was there, but we can not be happy with the way we finished our chances. I think what’s most disappointing is some players missed some chances that usually they would take. Our finishing is very bad at the moment – we have played three (league) games now without scoring a goal. In all those three games we had chances that we didn’t take. At that level it’s important.

“We started slowly but in the first half Ozil had two great chances. It’s true we started slowly, a bit nervous because we lost our last game at home. But in the second half it was one-way traffic. We still couldn’t score. We didn’t make enough of our set pieces, we didn’t take them well, we didn’t finish well. It’s just that our finishing was very poor.”

Wenger was asked if he thought Foster was the main reason Arsenal couldn’t score, and he replied: “He had a good game, a brilliant game, but you expect that. You rate the quality of the chances you create and the quality of the finishing. The quality of the chances we created today, considering it’s a Premier League game, was high. The quality of the finishing was poor. That differential explains the 0-0.

“It’s maximum frustrating, when your team puts the energy in and creates the chances. When you have no chances you come out of the game thinking ‘OK, there was not more in it.’ When you come out and you think there was much more in the game like that (tonight), when you have our ambition of course it’s frustrating.”

With the quality of the players on the pitch it seems amazing that we can’t score. Even with Walcott joining Giroud for the last half hour it simply wouldn’t click, and the longer we go, the harder it is going to get.

Maybe in hindsight we could have actually predicted this result. Arsenal can’t score, and the Saints have now gone four games without conceding. Maybe 0-0 was fair in the end…..

Tags Giroud Ozil Southampton

32 Comments

  1. Have you ever seen giroud score from outside the box ?
    have you ever seen giroud outrun a defender to score ?
    Have you ever seen giroud sell a defender the dummy and score
    Have you ever seen giroud start a counter attack from inside our box and get at the end of it to score.
    Have you ever seen giroud best 3 players to put the ball in the net.

    That my friend is why you will not win the league.
    Combined with Ramsey ,flamini midfield, this is why we will not qualify for the champions league.

    1. Giroud is average while Aguero is world class,having played less games Aguero has already scored 13 goals while Giroud has 12 goals that’s the difference between a World Class striker and a bang average striker like Giroud

    2. To be fair, you know exactly what you’ll get from Giroud. He’s never been an Aguero or a Suarez and let’s face it, Harry Kane would do very nicely too. Faulting him is almost futile coz that was a typical Giroud display.
      The problem is clearly management. Flamini and Ramsey are the most uncoordinated and lumbering midfield duo you’ll ever see from any team apparently (?) fighting for a title. No team panics when they see those two starting in particular Flamini who brings pretty much zilch to the team. His attributes are so limited and as someone who was at the Emirates, when you hear the team news announced live, it instantly deflates the fook out of you. Wenger’s just too stubborn

      1. Any midfielder would struggle alongside Flamini, or did you forget the Bayern thrashing we received when Ramsey wasn’t in the team ??

        1. He’s not a DM and the sooner you’ll get that through your delusional heads then the sooner you’ll realize the manager is at fault for not finding a midfielder that complements the Welshman’s strengths, which happen to be attacking qualities and NOT defensive ones. Rambo isn’t a player that keeps possession like Cazorla or retrieves the ball like Coquelin, his ability consists of creating goal chances and scoring goals, if you knew how to analyze football you would have realized this.

            1. Yet pundits and media claim him to be one of the best ACMs and Barca scouts have been watching him since the start of the season. Their opinion > yours

              1. Assume Arsenal and Spuds squad together and try to pick the best 11, sure no place for Rambo. The only players that can get a place are Check, Cos, may be Nacho and Hector, Ozil, Alexis if free from injury Coq and Santi. Others will not get a single game time

          1. His ability means he should not be in the squad. Ozil is superior in creating chances and probably equal in scoring. Rambo is inferior on the wings and as a DM. No space for him in a well balanced squad.

        2. @GoonerLad
          LOL Good Lord, you’re gnashing your teeth little lad. Simmer down, yeah? I said “midfield duo”. That usually implies a partnership of some sort, and not Ramsey alone…that combo doesn’t work. Okay? Although yeah, I don’t rate Falmini much anyway but that’s probably due to my being delusional and not having a clue about football analysis. Heart breaking. Now don’t be so angry. Oh and besides, Bayern annihilates everyone.

    3. Our only reward as fans who spend loads and loads of money are WINS & TROPHIES nothing more. We don’t get a % of any profit the club makes or do we become owners of the beautiful stadium.. Its simple as that Anything else apart from WINS & TROPHIES is a loss to we the FANS .. So stop being deluded with wenger gives us stability & de other bunch of crap cos I don’t see how we benefit from dem….

      Anyone who blames GIROUD IS = FOOL + UNGRATEFUL…..

    1. More
      Have you seen giroud round a keeper to score?

      Anyone who knows wenger should tell him that I hereby apply for a job on the Arsenal playing staff.

      What I bring to the squad
      I am willing to stay in the hospital all season for £100,000 a week only.
      And When I turn 35 , I am willing to be injured for three quarter of a season ,and do nothing after for £60,000 only

  2. Forget it! The league is meant for City or Leicester. The players were all over the pitch and the midfield duo of Ramsey and Flamini is not creative. Arsenal are five points behind the leaders and showing no sign of end product. Arsene has to know now is the time or shall forever look it as the missed oppertunity.

  3. in Wenger’s own words, “I cannot find a player who’s better than Welbeck at the moment ”

    And we all wonder why we haven’t won the league for 12 YEARS.

  4. if u got ur shooting boots on

    u aren’t wenger’s favourite…..

    Try to walk the ball into the net(even in a crowded box), u become his first son

    cuz he thinks u r messi

  5. On a more serious note,it has only taken Claudio Ranieri less than six months to transform Leicester from relegation candidates to serious title contenders. (with limited resources). Wenger meanwhile has been ‘building’ for over a decade but seems to still be stuck in laying the foundations.
    Leicester are proving that Wenger’s long standing excuse of “having limited resources to compete ” is actually Invalid.

    Pep is going to Man city,but there are still other good managers out there with far greater ambitions than Wenger who,let’s face it,is more interested in the money aspect of the club rather than winning trophies.
    Diego Simeone is a manager that has proven he can stick it up with the big boys despite having a lesser budget.
    Claudio Ranieri can also do a better job than Wenger.
    Ronald Koeman has what it takes. Just to mention a few.

    But ofcourse the Wenger fanboys would rather die than see him leave Arsenal.

  6. Why you people are crying?
    Do you want to win the pL with Filamini& Ramsey pairing in the middle; do you want to win with GR and Walcott as strikers? Believe or not Ramsey, GR and Walcott cannot get a 50% match time at SPUDS. I know many of you cannot swallow this fact let alone Filamini, Ramsey and walcott are very average players. OX, Welbeck below average.

    The only hope I had at the beginning of the season—Coq and Santi’s paring at heart of midfield now gone….. We are at the 4th place below Spuds it is heartbreaking

  7. Forget about Sanchez, Ozil and other players…. Let’s get Wenger out of our dear Club before he ruin it…. Mourinho was right about him all along, Raineri, Pochettino were Proofs of it.. They don’t have big budget yet they delivers.. Arsenal can only dream of going further in the champions league, Let’s prepare for proper Trashing from the Masters… Soton Away was jst a tip of d iceberg!!

  8. As much as I don’t want to be a dooms day prophet…this has already been unravelling before our eyes for more than a decade now. In my opinion, building us a stadium and giving us 3 titles in 19 years obviously is not good enough. If we continue like this, we’ll end up playing catchup to Tottenham for a long while.
    This title was lost last summer when Wenger thought only Petr Cech could win us the title…and going as far as saying ‘There was no available player better than Welbeck’ in the winter window.
    Oh Wenger…how much low can we go?

    1. You mean Wenger built you a stadium? No he didn’t. Not a penny of his went to that project. He collected his wage as at when due. He never sacrificed a day wage in favor of the stadium. I live in Africa and over the past few years, I have traveled to the emirates stadium trice to watch my team play, despite not winning anything substantial. Now that is sacrifice. We the fans are the one who sacrificed to build that stadium, not Wenger, not the board!

      1. @eloaking
        You can say that again buddy…awesome comment.
        I only said Wenger built a stadium for the benefit of the AKB’s.

  9. The year we don’t see a St. Totteringham’s day is the year Wenger needs to get a sack. This year smells like that year big time.

  10. Did you say Nervous? What about Arsene’s favourite saying, “Beliefe in themself’s”!!! That is, a joke, that team has the talent, Mostly!!! Beliefe? None!!!! There is something BIG, wrong with Arsenal, start with AW!!! Lovely money Honey!! Win the PL, another JOKE. 4th, or 5th more like it. I really cant watch the rest off the games, waste of time.

    1. The problem with Arsenal is the manager and the board members who leave such an obviously underperforming manager in place year after year after year. They are now apparently considering ‘awarding’ him a contract extension. When you reward failure you get failure!!!

  11. The most important transfer opportunity since Thierry has been totally missed by the Arsenal board and Wenger and it’s a massive oversight and dereliction of duty by both parties- the signing of Pep Guardiola who wanted to come to us-expensive mistake.

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