So, Arsenal’s long unbeaten run finally limps to the end against a relegation-threatened Southampton, and the performance was even worse than our awful win against Huddersfield last week. Yes we had a makeshift defence but surely these highly-paid players can adapt to any position if needed?
Anyway, here are my ratings on a very unimpressive performance….
Leno: 4
Hardly looked like trying to stop the first two goals, and was the third one down to him?
Bellerin: 5
A real shame that he got injured. As if we could do with losing any more defenders!
Lichtsteiner. 4
Obviously not comfortable in the middle, and didn’t look half as keen as usual.
Koscielny. 3
You have to feel sorry for him being rushed into action with such pressure. Awful performance but is unlikely to play in big games for a while once everyone else is back.
Xhaka. 4
Definitely not a centre-back, and why did we have 5 at the back anyway?
Monreal. 4
Another one just returned from injury and rushed back. The whole defence was shambolic
Guendouzi. 4
Lots of energy but not his usual flair.
Torreira 6
Our Man Of the Match, as is usual these days, but he can’t do everything on his own.
Iwobi. 3
He has lost the confidence he had at the beginning of the season. Another very poor performance.
Mhkitaryan. 5
Somehow scored twice but had many more wild and wasted opportunities.
Aubameyang. 4
Didn’t have much service in first half. Improved a little in the second but it was just not happening for him.
SUBS
Maitland-Niles. 5
Needs more game time to get backup to speed.
Ozil. 5
Another one returning from injury.. blah..blah..
Lacazette. 5
Tried hard. Should have started the game.
I’d give Mikhitaryan more points for scoring 2 goals and keeping us in the match. Probably 6-7
But other than that Torreira was the only other good player
Torreira has been very consistent
Pity we don’t have much of a defence behind him
Agree, Mkhitaryan should be Arsenal’s best player in that match. Had he not scored two goals, the result could be more embarassing
In my opinion, Torreira and Guendouzi should have similar ratings. I believe Guendouzi had similar number of tackles and interceptions in that game
Good point. Guendouzi is fantastic for a 19 and more consistent than more experienced players
Mkhitaryan was man of the match, the only player to show up. Torriera done ok, not enough to stand out though. Emery probably gave his worst performance of the season. It was like he didn’t know what shape to stick with, too much instruction it seemed. I thought 442 we looked best, but then our weakness at CB showed in the end. Surely CC would’ve been better to have on board for times like that day, heck, afterwards I wished Medley had gotten the call. If that was tactical mind-games, calling him up into the first team, it backfired stupendously. Laca and Auba were in top form, ripping it up they were. Then Emery had to go and fock about with it, we had a winning formula, a bit of a Ranieri about this fellow. I hope he learns from it.
All the same, I had a bad feeling going into this game. They have a new manager and his genga-pressing tactics or whatever they call it. At 2-2, I was thinking, ya know what, I’d take a draw here, because teams will drop points against this side if they have games coming thick and fast. Ah well, it’s only our first loss of the season, lol.
Iwobi deserves a 6. His replacement Ozil was directly responsible for the Southampton 3rd goal. His stupid dummy cost us a point. Iwobi wou9have made such a mistake.
His stupid dummy cost the third goal. I’m not saying this in his defense but do the distance between where he lost the ball and where are goal post, if our players are agile and proactive they would have prevented that goal by committing a foul or something. Besides, we had 4 players at the back against 2 soton players. And why was Kos running into an empty space instead of running towards Austin. That goal was due to team bad positioning and error and not solely Ozils fault.
No don’t blame the teams positioning, we were on the attack before Ozil decided it was best to do a silly dummy close to his own half of the pitch instead of trapping a simple pass laid into him. A team trying to defend a counter attack isn’t usually organized. Ozil is to blame for that goal. How can he get a 5 and Iwobi who didn’t put a foot wrong the whole match only got a 3? Another biased rating
He didn’t put a foot right either ?
@Mobella is one hundred percent correct.
If the team who scores are at the opposite end of the pitch when starting the move, and is having to bypass, midfielders, defenders, and a goalkeeper. It’s hardly putting anything on a plate, now is it.
It’s bad defending pure and simple, it doesn’t color Ozil in anything glory like, it was daft by Ozil, no disputing, it definitely was daft, and it put us straight on the back-foot. But if every-time you are on the back-foot, it means it’s an easy goal, there’d be over 30-50 goals scored throughout every game.
That’s ridiculous. Ozil isn’t to blame for the 3rd goal, he was 65 yards from our goal. Our players had ample opportunity to stop the move, long before the goal.
I’m assuming you blame Ozil for lots of things, regardless of whether he had any involvement at all?
The Ozil fan girls keep exhausting their Ozil excuses. So Ozil who had just come on for 20 minutes loses the ball, does not break any sweat to track back and win the ball back. And his fan-girls have the nerve to be blaming other players for not stopping the attack.
People want Ozil to keep making a poo / a sh!t and and expect others to clean up or deal with his own mess. Why can’t ozil have a poo and cleans up his own mess without having a o burden others to do the cleaning up for him?
Smh
Goonster, apart from Sue, I’m not aware of any other posters on here, who consider Ozil is a talented footballer, who are female.
Why be disrespectful to people calling them “fan girls” simply because they have a different opinion than you. There are probably a few people on this site, who you wouldn’t want to meet in an alley on a dark night.
Probably more than a few, and Sue might be one of them, depending on her mood?
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You can clearly see Ozil running back towards goal when he lost possession.
So much so that he runs past Torreira and ends up much closer to our goal than our defensive midfielder.
Do you want to make any other baseless statements against one of our players?
Leno needs to step up, he’s been known for making mistakes over there in Germany. This is the EPL. Teams won’t hesitate to punish you if you let your guards Down. Hoping for a bounce back on Wednesday. Iwobi shouldn’t even play, he needs to be loaned out. If a player like Batshuayi at his age could be loaned out, Iwobi should be loaned out too.
Czech will definitely be in post on Wednesday, the defense still needs a sorting. A strong bounce back would do our confidence a big good. We are playing Liverpool in almost 2 weeks time from now. I hope we have the best players available. But the focus is to first get back to winning ways and picking up the points for the top 4 race. I’m so gutted that teams like Chelsea and Spurs ain’t dropping points and we just dropped 3. Fight till the end. I think Emery will sign a defender in the Jan transfer, but please I hope it’s not this whole Gary Cahill crap I’ve been reading. He’s past it, plus we ain’t running a retirement home. I said before that we could pay to get Christensen from Chelsea, since we can’t get Koulibaly or De Legit because of their fees.
He’ll be perfect for us and still has age
Perhaps a loan to Bundesliga would be good for Iwobi and Nelson could prove his worth in Arsenal’s first team
Not sure about Christensen. Arsenal missed Yerry Mina, but maybe they can chase Eric Bailly instead
Don’t see United selling us Eric Bailly
I like the shout Eddie, Christensen looks a good fit. Those Dutch are known for bringing through good defenders for modern day football. He has a good height, decent speed and strength. You don’t see him making many school boy errors that even the experienced Kosceinly makes. Someone needs to sack the boss. A young guy like Christensen, or your man off Juventus, would be good, make a name for themselves. I don’t think we’ll go for Koulibaly, looking at VVD numbers there, we’d need CL money to pull that off and get the wingers and another CM player. Unless we can get Rabiot on the free. I like the look of Pavon, both footed, plays on either wing and through the middle. Looking at about 50m though. Pavon, Rabiot, Christensen, I’d be delighted with that business. And if we could bring in Fekir, our midfield would immediately be looking one of the best in Europe. And no, I’m not a professional – nor am I associated in any way to Arsenal’s recruitment team, for anyone that’s wondering.
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Leno has made 34 saves so far this season 4 fewer than Alisson and Kapa and 5 more than Ederson who all had more game time. I think he has saved us more than he was given credit for. Arsenal needs to defend as a team if we want to challenge for trophies.
I just done know why people are blaming the poor guy for other people’s mistakes and errors.
Meant “don’t.”
Auto correct shit.
You’re right not to blame him. The CB’s, mostly Kos, and our fullbacks letting them swing balls in too easily. The winning goal, Leno made the right choice. You cannot allow a striker like that to have a free header on the back post, disgraceful decision making by the experienced LK. 9 times from ten the ball had goal written all over it, too close for the keeper to react to it, if he had stayed on his line that is. Only chance we had was making the player work for it, try and put him off, and hope it goes badly for him. Left our keeper no choice but to gamble and hopefully get a finger to it. If Leno had more experience, he would’ve bollocked Koscielny for looking like a freekin mannequin.
Another display against a “struggling” team in the relegation zone that proves once again how average Arsenal are, unfortunately..
We’ve seen it all before and will see a lot more of until Emery has time and money to bring in the players he wants (needs).
More than half of this current are simply “sub-standard” and not at the quality needed to challenge the top four (maybe five)!!
We are about as far away from challenging for the EPL as Earth in from the sun. FACT!
Ohh stop whingeing you Gunners fans, our team had injuries as well, but we went for it as you have to do against top sides. It was win or bust for Saints and the new boss has produced character. Every one of our team would not get into the Gunners team, but sometimes grit and determination can make up for lack of talent. Even the top sides have to do more than just turn up in order to win. Maybe the score did flatter Saints a little, but they really earned it and three times came back to lead after some things went against them. Nine times out of ten Saints would have drawn or lost this match, but you have to work really hard to make it your day.
Torreira is ALWAYS impressive
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He plays like a seasoned mature footballer. His decision making is almost always perfect.
Agree with you Sue!
Torreira is just what we need. With another seven Torreira’s we would be even better!!!!
Another seven Iwoblys or Xhaka’s and we would be Braintree F.C !!!
Hahaha brilliant!! Totally agree GunneRay ??
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I’d give Guendouzi a better score too.
Me too!
Guendouzi is the future for sure.. He’s young and is trying his hardest to go forward all the time. Problem is, not everyone is as quick thinking or moving like he is!
It’s like “Wenger’s disease” has set in good!
i think emery will sign a defender in january and then in summer. he will sign wingers and no 10 also and will ship out deadwoods and ozil type players who have low workrate he wants to build a style of pressing like dortmund and now liverpool but he needs players of high workrate for that but he will build his own team full of fighters but it will take time and he knows best that which players he needs in upcoming transfer windows to complete his jigsaw. The players which i would like to sign in central midfield position to replace departing ramsey will be Hector Herrera full of high workrate and stamina and more importantly a good leader on the pitch. to replace elneny with doucoure again player full of high workrate and intensity. sell ozil with a good re-sale value and sign pablo fornals from villareal again a young talent full of quality and a good no 10 with high workrate who will track back unlike ozil. If mikhtaryan fails to adopt high pressing style of emery then sell him as well and sign miguel almiron from MLS who is a good CAM and has a high workrate and good pace and skills for a counter attacking side. for wingers we need to recall back reiss nelson from hoffenheim and sign one good winger who is pacy direct and a natural dribbler like leon bailey etc. For defenders we need to sign a top class Centre back my wish is to sign kalidou koulibally from napoli.
OT:
some exciting ucl matches in knockout stages
liverpool vd bayern
dortmund vs tottenham
psg vs man united
plus barca vs lyon u cannot underestimate lyon with the way they are playing in ucl especially the way they beat man city in etihad and drew them at their home so they were unbeaten against man city and unlucky to finish second in their group in my opinion so it will be a good attacking contest of both these teams fekir, depay in good form and barca is barca but they bottled against roma in quarters so barca will be more casual in their approach this time. These are all excellent draws in my opinion..
When we people realize it is not about personal. Our defending is comical. Do people only watch Arsenal match. We need to play defensively the way teams like mancity and pool defend, close marking and not giving an opposition player with the ball at his feet 2/3 feet space. The space and time on the ball given to the players who assisted Soton goals are too much. We can get Van Dyke, Koulibally or Yerry Mina (who is average by the way) we will still lick goals if we don’t improve on the methods of defending.
Koulibally is average ur smoking something he is today’s world best defender
You need to have your eyes examined my friend. I’m talk about Yerry not Koulibally
i think emery will sign a defender in january and then in summer. he will sign wingers and no 10 also and will ship out deadwoods and ozil type players who have low workrate he wants to build a style of pressing like dortmund and now liverpool but he needs players of high workrate for that but he will build his own team full of fighters but it will take time and he knows best that which players he needs in upcoming transfer windows to complete his jigsaw. The players which i would like to sign in central midfield position to replace departing ramsey will be Hector Herrera full of high workrate and stamina and more importantly a good leader on the pitch. to replace elneny with doucoure again player full of high workrate and intensity. sell ozil with a good re-sale value and sign pablo fornals from villareal again a young talent full of quality and a good no 10 with high workrate who will track back unlike ozil. If mikhtaryan fails to adopt high pressing style of emery then sell him as well and sign miguel almiron from MLS who is a good CAM and has a high workrate and good pace and skills for a counter attacking side. for wingers we need to recall back reiss nelson from hoffenheim and sign one good winger who is pacy direct and a natural dribbler like leon bailey etc. For defenders we need to sign a top class Centre back my wish is to sign kalidou koulibally from napoli.
Hard to take these grades seriously if they are out of 10. With these grades, you would think we lost 0-4.
Yes we lost to an energized Southampton but we created enough chances to win and Southampton took their chances well. A draw would not have been an unreasonable result IMO.
Leno: 5
Made some saves but was not to blame for the first 2 goals conceded and had to make a spur of the moment call on the final goal. If it wasn’t for the 3rd I would have given him a 6.
Bellerin: 6
Might have given a bit too much room for the cross on the 2nd goals but it was a perfect cross from pretty far away from our box.
Lichtsteiner. 6
Over all did a decent job given this was not his prefered position.
Koscielny. 5
You have to feel sorry for him being rushed into action with such pressure. I still think with his experience he can do a job for us we just have to be reasonable with our expectations.
Xhaka. 5
Definitely not a centre-back but gave it his best
Monreal. 6
Did OK given it was his first game back.
Guendouzi. 6
Was often involved and created some real chances. Getting better all the time.
Torreira 6
Busy but does best IMO with Xhaka next to him.
Iwobi. 5
He has lost the confidence he had at the beginning of the season and needs to take on defenders and force them to stop him.
Mhkitaryan. 6
Scored two important goals but still looks like he is not on the same wave length as the rest of the team.
Aubameyang. 5
Had a few good chances but wasn’t clinical enough. Seemed casual.
SUBS
Maitland-Niles. 6
Didn’t do much wrong and needs time to catch up.
Ozil. 5
Started the error that lead to their 3rd goal and seemed to not bring the energy we could use with 20 minutes to go. Not much of an impact sub.
Lacazette. 5
Tried hard. Should have started the game.
It was hard to take, but that game is in the past now, we have to think about Wednesday….beating those spuds! I see Piers Morgan & Peter Crouch are doing the draw for the semi final…. how Piers would love us to be in it!!! Come on Arsenal, let’s get back to winning ways against that lot down the road ?
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Let’s take out the trash on Wednesday just like we did two weeks ago! Though I’ll be honest, our shaddy defence worries me. I can’t believe am saying this but, I hope Mustafi will be back!
That’ll be brilliant if we do it again QD… yes I’m with you on that about Mustafi (& Sokratis!) He can get back to his wrestling (on Alli!!)
Arsenal just needs to get rid of Ozil, move Iwobi into his preferred position, sign a winger or bring back Nelson and our problems will be solved.
Iwobi is no saviour!! He’s made that bloody obvious!
We are talking about the same Iwobi who has started so many games this season and done WHAT EXACTLY?Yesterday was the same Iwobi of the last two seasons.ABSOLUTE CRAP OF A PLAYER.
And YOU seriously want to play him in a No10 role?He can’t even be trusted in that position for Nigeria so what on gods earth makes YOU believe he could play there for Arsenal?
Are you in love with Iwobi! Your other post said he did not put a foot wrong. You are clearly not watching with the detachment from natural fan bias that all need if WE ARE TO SEE THE ACTUAL TRUTH and not our own bias. Iwobi is playing poorly, as so many other posts rightly say! You should bin those rose tinted specs!
Iwobi isn’t playing poorly, so far he has done everything the coach has asked of him. What he needs is a chance to expres himself 6in his preferred position and watch him excel. He has the flair and tenacity, something Ozil clearly doesn’t have.
I’m sure Emery hasn’t asked him to run round like a headless chicken!
Haha! Good one Sue.
But at least he’s running unlike Ozil who strolls around the pitch looking uninterested. Iwobi isn’t the problem, Ozil is.
Running with no end product! He just looks like a deer caught in the headlights
you must be a owl city fan.
Damn I’ve been rumbled ??
I am not defending Ozil in the least nor comparing him to Iwobi. I simply say, having normal working eyes, unlike you my strange friend, that Iwobi is playing rubbish as almost all outside Nigeria can also see. You are clearly biased!
Torreira and Guendouzi need better players behind them (defence) and better central midfielders in front. Otherwise its such a waste of consistent hard working defensive midfielders
Apart from Lichtensteiner, who in my opinion is dire, your ratings are an accurate reflection of the players performance. While the absence of our recognised centre backs made life difficult for Emery, he compounded the situation by adopting a defensive back three system against a bottom four side.Hopefully Emery will have learned lessons from the defeat .To make progress we must revert to a flat back four used by Man city, Liverpool,Barca and PSG…We are desperately in need of quality upgrades at centre back and left back.When you compare our lot against the likes of Gomes, Van Dik, Stones and the highly impressive La Port is it little wonder we continue to leak goals as we did under Wenger.Let’s hope our Owner releases funds to give Emery the opportunity to compete with the best.
Grandad, I would have preferred Emery to have brought in a specialist CB from the U23’s (Medley, Plequezuelo) than play Xhaka out of position. In my opinion this weakened Arsenal in two positions.
Spot on,it thought we were supposed to be promoting our youth as much as possible?
Grandad, I also thought Emery picked far too defensive a line up. Remember we were playing Southhampton NOT City. With all our regular CB’s out, we should have picked an attacking line up and kept far more possession. And definitely played both our top strikers from the start. I hope he is not turning into a Jose Mourinho style coach, with defence given too much emphasis. Ironic since our last manager ignored defence completely for a decade. There ALWAYS must be a proper balance.
The less said about yesterday the better. Some of those players shouldn’t even register a point let alone 3s and 4s.
Koulibally to arsenal
Continue dreaming gunners
Kochielny thought he was a defender
Cause he defended worst than every player
On the pitch even the attackers defended
Far better …he should be moved back to
Under 23 permanently it’s not a coincidence
That arsenal lost there streak with him on
Pitch even wearing the armband we lost this
Game because of him….he had a hand in all 3
Goals what a handicap we where playing at a point
I even wanted to change him for elneny that’s how
Bad he was he deserves nothing above 1 point to me
What did he do right in whole 90% to even get 3 out of 10
Someone should tell me
So Miki take a 5 with two goals AND ozil got the same score by taking a walk in the park.
Woaw
A 20 mins walk in the park, cost us a goal and the writer feel he deserves the same accolade as Mikki who got a brace. Double wow ?
Apologies.My comments on the ratings were directed to Times Are Changing who has taken a factual view.With regard to Ozzie Gunner’s comments concerning promoting our youngsters, I agree wholeheartedly.