A swift kick up the Arsenal needs to happen before our next round of games!
After that rather appalling performance from our boys against West Ham on Saturday, Arteta really needs to sort the boys out this week if we are to beat Leicester and Liverpool in the space of five days.
The performance against West Ham or should I say lack of a performance, was far from perfect, in fact it was an awful disappointing performance and we were lucky to come away with the three points.
How we can have such a contrasted performance in the space of one week to go from a comfortable enough win against Fulham on the Thames, to conceding a goal with poor passing, and no team connection, is beyond me. Nothing changed that much for the team to be so off the beat at the Emirates, but whatever it is Arteta will have to address it and quickly.
Our new signing shined against Fulham but Willian in my eyes had a very quiet game for his standards, and don’t get me started on Ceballos in midfield, the only time I feel he woke up was when he got his assist for the winner but other than that there just wasn’t a connection for me with him in that midfield.
Fulham last week showed us what we need to be, but Saturday’s performance was very poor, and it needs to be sorted. Even Arteta acknowledged in his post-match interview with Sky Sports (transcript by Arseblog) that it was not perfect and there is a lot more work to do:
“…. I always said it’s not going to go like that [upwards gesture] and we need games like this as well to understand the things we need to do better. But probably they trained the best week since I’ve been here in terms of understanding what the game requires and positions with the ball, but in the first 15 minutes are the worst we’ve played with the ball since I’ve been here.”
An honest analysis from the gaffer, but now is the time to put the words into action if we are to have a more comfortable week. Gooners?
Shenel Osman
The positives is that we played two London denies n won, performance in the last game may not be topnorch,but I would take the 3 points any day,the gaffer knows what to do.
Up next is the foxes,come on u gonners,upward we go.
Foxes game is a difficult away game we should only play our youth and subs for the EPL cup games and hope for the best
Same as that,I will take any win however it comes,its still a good start but we have a very tricky bunch of fixtures ahead and he will hopefully get those bad points sorted.
In mid we need party and xhaka not ceballos ohhhhj waist player
Arsenal fans always have something to moan about. The boys delivered 3points on Saturday against an hungry determined London rivals, and still with around 60% possession, still we complain.
May I remind you guys that there is no easy game in EPL, what matters most is the result, 2 wins in 2 EPL opening games, that achievement is one of the best we had in decades, so cut d team some slack when you think the performance isnt up to your expectations., we are in the rebuilding phase, not yet in the level of city or Liverpool.
Expecting us to play like we did against fulham every week is stupidity, especially knowing that we have an unbalanced team.
Yet that doesn’t mean against Liverpool we would get trashed, I believe MA tactics is more efficient against big teams, am not worried
@Adajim Great post!
Well said mate 👍👍
Not true though it it ?
We won our first two games last season
Adajim, I don’t disagree with your sentiments; however the key issue in the “rebuilding phase” is that Arsenal’s midfield is not strong enough and unbalanced for the EPL. Arsenal played poorly because Arsenal were over powered in midfield by West Ham.
I recommend a YouTube discussion involving Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Thierry Henry discussing the transformation of the Arsenal midfield from the days of Viera, Petit and Gilberto Silva. It explains in detail the changes in player type that led to what we see now.
We’r still in preparation phase giving that we hadn’t a proper preseason….You need as a professional football team four weeks of holidays (wich we had between 1st august and 26th august )and SIX weeks of preparation wich we’r yet to fullfill (26 august -21 september) that’s why United had a nightmarish game against CP giving that their season (as underlined by Soljskeaar) ended the 16th of august so they didn’t have enough time to get ready
Yeah you nailed it there. Adajim; Expecting us to play like we did against fulham every week is stupidity, especially knowing that we have an unbalanced team. Yes rightly said and do you know why? The team selections is simply not balanced and coupled with the fact the hammers came fully prepared/determined.
3 points was vital though and I give it to MA.
You know what annoys me is fans deluding themselves that we can’t be on form all the time blah blah,,, and comparing ourselves with Liverpool.
Arsenal, until we begin dominating matches and playing more progressive football, we won’t finish higher than 6th.
Even the supposedly good performance against Fulham, we allowed Fulham an immense amount of time on the ball.
Liverpool multiple performances likes ours vs Villa not to mention similiar struggles against so smaller teams early in Klopps reign. Being and optimistic aboput the obvious progress our team is makings is not delusion pretending its not a postive thing is.
It’s called learning as we go along!
We will learn from the Wham game plus what we did well in the Fulham game, Rome wasnt built in a day and 2trophies in 6mnths isnt a bad return for a rookie and a team floundering near relegation when he arrived so calm down.
I agree with someone above I worry about the smaller teams now as Mikel has a way to play against the bigger teams. Again all in the space of 6months at his 1st go as a manager.
Auba has signed a new deal (brilliant) also had a quiet game, Laca is scoring so that’s a plus & we have won 1st 2games which we needed to as I next fee games are against the big boys and we may not win any of them but we wont be walked over that’s for sure. Mikel installed this also in this time, never say die attitude. That’s why we hot the 3points playing badly…
Have patience as Mikel Arteta has the mixed attributes of his predecessors in Moyes, Wenger and Pep. Players want to play for him and will want to come to the club because of his methods and management.
Give the man a damn break and the team. Kudos to all of them for getting us out of a terrible spell as we were going off the rails to disatser, Even though a long way to go yet but we have got back on track again.
I’m not deluded and know top4 is still just shirt of our squad but never know with maybe a free signings the Partey could get going!!
Cmon Arsenal
The big difference was not having Tierney. Nobody is talking about him and what he means to the team. This guy is outstanding in his effort and his intelligence. He makes the whole team better when he is on the pitch. He will be captain in a few years. Hopefully he can stay healthy. So far we don’t know how durable he is.
As I said before as long as we have so many average players, we will not play Champion league and we need to play our best 11 in the EPL. The 5 at the back system, it’s a system that we don’t have to use very time. It’s a defence setup, to play again poor defence team like Fulham with 3 centre backs and 2 holding midfielders doesn’t make sense. It’s a set-up for games against Bayern, Liverpool or the old Barcelona. We score 3 goals in this game. I wonder how many gaols we could have score with only 2 CB, 1 HM and 2 extra acting midfielders like Dani and Saka and it would have increase our creativity.
I never saw Arteta make a sub that chances our whole game. Saturday our problem was creativity, the subs was Pepe for Willian and Nketiah for Laca, is the same type for the same, just fresher legs. I think you could increase the creativity by add Pepe to Willian, Saka and Dani for one the strikers, probably Laca, because he score a brilliant gaol given to him, but other than that pretty average like most times. He had a couple of opportunities to create or even assist one of his teammates, but it was just poor play most of the time.
Some fan got carry away with Xhaka performance in last 10 games, but they total miss the circumstance around those couple of games. Teams were playing under difficult circumstance, playing games with short interval, small team just manage the teams, and Liverpool already wins the league. Xhaka is just average and we will see again this season, it already started last week, and we will see it again this coming week. I see some fans get exciting about Elneny who just pass the ball safely to the side and back.
Arteta need to pick his stronger starting 11, front and mid
Auba,
Saka,
Pepe or Willian
Dani (until we get Aouar)
Matteo
Xhaka (until we get Partey)
Playing 5 at the back again Liverpool will only have 2 possible outcomes, playing a back 4 with extra midfielder will have 3 possible outcomes.