When you lose your third game in a row and concede three goals in each of those losses it is not easy to come up with anything positive, however, I have dug deep, real deep and come up with five things that we can take from the 3-0 hammering inflicted on us by the Foxes.
On the face of it, some of the points are not what you would call classic positives but sometimes a negative can be seen as a positive because it highlights a problem that you can then act upon, well, that would be the hope anyway.
Bernd Leno
Yes, he had a bad game against Wolves but every goalkeeper on the planet has the odd bad game and overall Leno has shown consistency all season long and yesterday against Leicester he showed that he is absolute quality and if it was not for the German it could have been a lot worse.
Mesut Ozil cannot be blamed
Because he did not play and it means we can go a few days without reading how much he gets paid, how he lets us down, how he goes missing, how he is inconsistent, how he ducks out of challenges etc. Anything that gives us a break from that same old crap is positive.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan has to go
Surely his performance today will have convinced Unai Emery that Mkhitaryan must be sold this summer, forget what he earns and forget what we can get for him and focus on his stats today, Shots 0, Shots on target 0, Key passes 0, Aerials won 0, Dribbles 1, Crosses 0, Accurate long balls 0, Through balls 0, not bad for 73 minutes. If Emery does not realise how useless he is now he never will.
Unai Emery has his favourite players and they are no good
How else can you explain the inclusion of Shkodran Mustafi and Alex Iwobi? All I can think of is that Emery has a soft spot for them, they are his favourite players in the team because there is no way their continued selection is justified but wait and see, he will pick them again as sure as night follows day.
This Arsenal squad has no fighting spirit.
Contrast our performance today with that of Watford when they went down to ten men, the difference is on a galactic scale. At no time did any of our players dig deep and show the necessary fighting spirit that teams need when they go down a man, they basically downed tools and accepted that defeat was inevitable.
Leno: Great goalkeeping as always, despite few bad decisions in some games
Ozil and Mkhitrayan: Too inconsistent for their roles. Their wages prevent Arsenal from getting new 50+ M players and the youngsters get limited chances because these stars have to start
Mustafi: Produced many errors, but maybe because Arsenal’s defending coaches are not good? Because we saw similar ridiculous mistakes in the last decades with different actors, such as Silvestre, Squilaci, Djorou, Gallas, etc
Iwobi: I think this guy is mismanaged like Wilshere, Chamberlain, Walcott, Gibbs, Clichy and Ramsey. Another big potential that could be wasted
Like the article said gotanidea – Ozil didn’t even play!!!
Mismanaged?? Oh dear…..
Mismanaged ?
Cmon dude he’s been given chance after chance after chance .but now you’re blaming management .
I myself blame the management but that’s only because he keeps picking him to play .
Please try and convince me otherwise why you think he’s a good player ,I would love to hear facts to back it up .
GotNOidea to supply facts for ANY of his incessant, useless blatherings? As the late great Buddy Holly used to sing: ‘That’ll Be The Day’!
??
Yes, Miki needs to go. But so does Ozil. Miki at least had a very goid run of form for about 4/5 games a month or so ago. Since then, he seems to have decided not to bother. Therefore, I agree that he should do one. And you can chuck Ozil, AMN, Mustafi, Sokratis, Kolasinac, Koscielny, Monreal, Jenkinson, Xhaka and Welbeck in with him (some due to age, some to injury proneness and some due to being useless), if you want to make a decent challenge for the title itself.
There is Nothing, Absolutely Nothing, stopping us from benching the overpaid underperforming and bringing through the youth. This is what Chelsea did to Florent Malouda on the final year of his contact After they won UCL.
Where did our ruthless streak go? I too would rather see players who at least try. If we can’t buy any of that, we just look from within. We’re not a holiday resort.
?
Mike Dean (10 red cards)
Michael Oliver (7 red cards)
This two over rated referees are the worst in England but they seem to the FA of England as the best.
Oh don’t they both love that bit of power! I can’t stand either of them, actually make that any of them! They’re all incompetent
Don’t worry, VAR will clip their wings next season and I will see if they will defile VAR too.
Combined Leicester & Arsenal squad
Gk: Leno
Defence: Chilwell, Maguire, Pereira
Mid: Ndidi, Maddison, Albrighton, Choudhury
Attack: Lacazette, Vardy, Auba
In my opinion we only have 3 players making it and that is why we lost. The quality of our squad is simply pedestrian.
Combined Everton v Arsenal
Gk: Pickford(13 clean sheets penalties save 3/5) Leno 6 clean sheet 0/5 penalty saves (Pickford edges him out)
Defence : Coleman, Jagielka, Zouma, Digne
Midfield: Gana Gueye, Sigurdsson, Gomes
Attack: Ozil, Lacazette, Richalison
Only 2 of our players make it.
Wolves v Arsenal combined
Gk: Leno
Defence: Doherty, Koscielny, Sokratis, Boly
Midfield: Moutinho, Torreira, Neves
Attack: Ozil, Lacazette, Diogo Jotta
We edged them out quality wise 6 to 5 I don’t understand why we lost this one.
@quantic, we lost because we lock fighting spirit. Wolves worked harder than Arsenal. Recently arsenal has been outworked, out muscled, outrun, and out-jumped. Need I say more? We need a coach that will put fire behind the turtle’s butt.