My five takeaways from our game against Norwich by Lagos Gooner
Happy new week gooners all over the planet. Hope we all had a splendid weekend? Hope we enjoyed our game? Well, I don’t know about you all; but as for me, I did. These are my five takeaways I brought away with me from the game against Norwich.
Number 1: Leno is the real deal- Hope you will agree with me that we would have lost that game if not for the heroics of our efficient goalie, Bernd Leno? He was simply at his best on Sunday, and if I were to choose my man of the match I will gladly have chosen him. He made several great saves from Pukki and Cantwell; these saves kept us in the game and gave us the needed push to surge on in search of goals. I wrote a piece sometime ago questioning if Leno was actually the goalkeeper we needed and I won’t be ashamed to say that Leno responded to my query with a positive performance on Sunday. I love German keepers for one thing; and that is the fact that they ooze confidence whenever they are in between the goalposts. I saw confidence written all over Leno on Sunday. I am proud we have him.
Number 2: Aubameyang should work on his penalty skills- If not for the VAR, we probably would have lost that game. We had a chance to level up against Norwich and our top scorer was luk-warm in executing the penalty! The VAR gave us a second chance and thank God he scored. If it were in the days when we had no VAR, we probably won’t have had the opportunity to retake the penalty. Last season, against Spurs, we had the golden opportunity to cart away three points from that game; but our top scorer failed to score the penalty we won and we drew against them. Auba is a good striker and we are so lucky to have him play for us but he needs to improve on his penalty taking skills, ASAP.
Number 3: The Defence is still shaky- Should I really write much concerning this? Our defensive issues continued and it almost cost us the game yesterday. I believe our coach will eventually find a solution to our defensive issues on the long run.
Number 4: Xhaka and Luiz may play much more under Ljunberg- A few minutes before the start of our game against Norwich, I went online to check out our team list and when I saw Xhaka and Luiz in the starting lineup, I smiled sheepishly. I guess there is something coaches see in Xhaka that we fans are not seeing. Wenger made use of him, Emery made use of him and now, Ljunberg seems to also want to tow that line. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and watch how things unfold on the long run.
Number 5: The team may take time to earn its confidence back- I sensed a lack of confidence in the way our team played on Sunday. We had not won a game in 8 attempts now and this showed on Sunday. How do we build our confidence back? By winning games and winning them in style. This will take time to find but our confidence will surely come back to us.
So that’s my five takeaways, what are yours?
Cheers for now!
Sylvester (Lagos Gooner)
Ozil and Xhaka have played inconsistently for three managers/ caretakers, especially in away matches. So there should be no excuse for them, if they fail for the third time
Give those senior players two more EPL away games to show their extra efforts. If they can’t show major improvement in those away games, bench them and put them in transfer list
I commend the author for holding up his hands concerning Leno..the guy is a top gk only that he has no defense,, yesterday he had a comedian and a sponge Bob character as defenders.. even Oliver Kahn would concede bucketloads with those guys in front of him
Sylvester, A “shaky” defence then eh? I would use the term “no” defence. Shaky at least implies they exist. I saw NO defence at all , only some preposterously so called “defenders” disgracing our shirt. I would be interested to know how you define bad or awful, if you think thatlot of clowns were merely “shaky”!
Lol…whatever you call it boss.
To be honest, when I read that I decided it would be my entrant in the “Understatement Of The Year” competition! Surefire winner!
I was also surprised by the team selection and had to admit that if 3 managers rate Xhaka than maybe we don’t see what they see. I do think he was at his least useless when he had Torreira covering him. So I could not understand why Torreira didn’t start.
I was also shocked Kolosinac beat out Thierny. With respect to our central defenders, one is as bad as the other. Personally, when fit, I would like to see Holding and Chambers get a chance gel over a few games but I admit this is not a confidence-inspiring suggestion.
The fact Pepe was on the bench highlighted the folly of spending £70 million on a winger when we have the worst CD in the PL. Do you guys remember that we were told we bought Pepe to improve our away record? So we could score more on the road? Yet the guy can’t get a start even with Freddie. This makes me think about what I started to fear, that Pepe’s problems are rooted deeper than needing PL minutes to adapt.
I don’t think Freddie is the guy, I prefer him over Emery but he is too light for the position.
We will have big problems attracking a big-name manager with experience. Given that we won’t get CL football next season, we need a big-name manager to attrack at least some halfway decent players.
As I have said on numerous occassions,speculation as to who will be our next Manager is immaterial, as no Manager on the planet can convert the likes of Sokratis, Luis and Mustafi into decent defenders.We have no chance of improving if these three continue to be selected.Hopefully Ljungberg will recognise this shortly and leave them out.In the January window we need to unload Xhaka and Torreria and try to acquire a top quality defensive midfielder.
👍 Arsenal got rid of Sven Mislantat and Steve Morrow, so one hopes the scouting and recruitment team can source a decent DM and CB’s.
We obviously have a caretaker manager who cant see players like xhaka etc are and have been a massive disaster for us. My first problem with Emery was his involvement of xhaka and now Lungberg, i don’t think he will take us far, his reliance on the unreliable is telling. The sooner Fred is gone and a proper coach installed the better. We don’t need inexperienced coaches to run this team, im sorry he aint good or experienced enough. He isnt forward thinking or ground breaking.
Five things i didn’t like
1, starting xhaka
2, playing mustaffi and Luiz
3, poor subs
4, letting game drift away
5, playing kolasinac instead of Tierney.
Tierney apparently picked up a knock in training.
takeaways !?, did somebody mention that . if yous are buying may i have the special chow mein with prawn crackers, chicken and mushroom soup,the salt and chilli chicken wings and a coke zero please. many thanks my friend, you are too generous.
Gerry, you’re wasting your time with Coke Zero with that order; may as well go full bottle with the strong stuff!