PL: Portsmouth vs Arsenal | 13/05/07

[EMIR8_SOLDIER]

i understand your pain rocky...the teams a disgrace and wenger is really getting on nerves as he just doesnt seem to have no mentality and seems easily exposed as of late
he was lucky as he inherited a squad with players with great mentality(most were english) and built around them and therefore players could settle easier and learn that mentality say ...pires, freddie,anelka,paddy,henry,campbell learning off nige,tony,dixie,seman,parlour,keown
who does hleb,rosicky,senderos all these players learn from??
we should of replaced our english players with english players that inherit the mentality and bring foreigners to learn that too, wenger as i said before...chose the hard way
proof-2 trophyless seasons!!
im really upset with this f****g team
no drive...after the chelsea game, thats what summed up wenegers 2 seasons for me and sheffield united away for half hour with a player in goal...couldnt even score!!

 

[marco]

very sensible
last game of season why not rest 3 of your best players and play 6 defenders..
what a farce...

cheering at the end of a nil nil v pompey.. waste of time and money

It was sensible.

Many injuries. Had no choice. Secondly, we had to give Hoyte, Djourou and Senderos a run out. They've hardly figured this year.

so what! why rest gallas gilberto and lehmann.. whats the point..
surely there are reserve players who could play on one of the wings

only decent thing to come of the game was that djourou played ok..
other than that a waste of time and we didnt even bother for third..
pathetic

Neither of those players are attacking players. Stop contradicting yourself.

You said we were playing 6 defenders. Well, Toure, Eboue and Clichy have attacking instincts. Gilberto and Gallas don't. Why are you blaming Poom? Seeing as we didn't concede we can hardly blame him.

And I find it laughable you actually want Toure out of the club.

The point he is making is that why rest players like Gallas etc - as a reward for thier fine performances all year?

And why play such a defensive team when if we had gone for it a bit more we could have come third?

Anyway, that fat useless Brazilian c**t cost me a lot of money today. I didnt think I could dislike him more than I did, but I was wrong. Fat f****g mug. f**k off!

same here.. dont even want to go into how much money today cost me..

one league away win in 2007( even that was down to complete fluke at villa) when we have been playing one game a week since march tells it own story./.

united went out of europe at the group stage last year went on a run towards the end of season and it gave them some momentum..
us on the other hand have gone so badly backwards its unreal.


i looked at the team there today and compared to the glorious cup win down there 3 years ago and its painful to think that only fabregas and toure would even have made that squad...

 

[chachacallis]

why are people complaining about our attacking options, wenger had no choice but to play the team that was selected. according to Arsenal website alumnia got injured in training, Ade is also out injured, leaving only Bap. The only thing that i dont agree with was him not giving the youngsters even two minutes playing time, that shows that he doesnt have any confidence in them.

 

[RC8]

EMIRA8_SOLDIER, your logic is completely wrong, and flawed. I might elaborate more on it later if no one else has, but now I have something to do. Let me outline basically where you are wrong:

1. Nationality has nothing to do with the problem our squad is facing.

2. Anelka?

3. The unbeaten squad did not learn from the past players only, they were significantly older, and players such as Lauren, Vieira, and Campbell, had learned by themselves over the year most of what they knew. This team is extremely young still, and they have come a long way from last season.

4. "wenger is really getting on nerves as he just doesnt seem to have no mentality"... so, you are saying he does have a mentality.

5. Your point about the need to replace English players with more English players is ridiculous. Who would you have bought? At what price? Would they be better than our current midfield? The answer is no. Also, during our unbeaten season we had Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell, as well as Keown, who to be honest didn't play that much. Touré offers the grit Keown used to, Clichy has more grit than Cole, and Gallas has as much "grit" as Campbell. Your point?

 

[curtland]

Yeah, using English players would have guaranteed success. That's why the English national team always... oh wait.

 

[EMIR8_SOLDIER]

look its like passing along a baton....our previous squads have passed that mentality onwards but this squad just didnt get the nurturing from others as wenger decapetated the players...start again , theres many english players with the mental strength to ply for arsenal
im just really angry today boys with the way we can not get a result and i just show passion thats all...anyway roll on next season....this summer is going to be long and im going to do a lot of resting and sitting back waiting to see what appens...have a good rest too boys and lets be ready for next season

 

[RC8]

theres many english players with the mental strength to ply for arsenal

What about with the skill to play for Arsenal? And which ones of the little bunch with both skill and mentality can we afford?

Vieira was not English. Young players such as Diaby could have learned from him. Nationality has nothing to do with it.

 

[DC Gunner]

sheffield united away for half hour with a player in goal...couldnt even score!!

did you have to remind me of that one :evil:

 

[stiiphunn]

I just watched the game and I thought we had a pretty good game. Not anything special obviously but given the players on the pitch it had enough quality.
But as usual the finishing's letting us down. Bap is even more useless than I thought. It's frustrating because he seems like a decent guy but he's just not good enough.

Senderos had a good game. Just like Hleb- even if his decision making is a bit poor at times.

 

[Nemesis]

I think we've made tremendous improvement from last season. Until the last part of the season we couldnt even get our passing game up and running, and when we finally did we reached the CL final and got 4th place, while amassing more points iirc than any other prem team in that period.

This season teams have learnt how to play us better and so we havent been converting our massive superiority into wins. But with experience and one or 2 signings im confident we will overcome this. I also think our lack of quality on the wings has really hurt us. When Hleb and Rosicky were flying in Jan so were we, but with Tom injured and Aleks in variable form we are struggling. Diaby is not a wing player period. He can do an average job but we arent threatening enough with him there. I dont understand why Arsène doesnt give Ali an oppurtunity on the wing. Hes always looked good when playing there. And he is a superior option to Diaby who should only be utilised down the middle. I hope he isnt on his way out.

 

[Biggus]

Alfonso, i'd sacrifice the penalty and therefore 3rd place if it finally pushes wenger over the edge to not sign baptista. It'd be worth coming 4th for

If Wenger signs Baptista then we would really have to question the sanity of our manager.

im doing that now whilst your tossing off over that naked pen like darren and barry in extras !!!

I'll be in on that too!

 

[hertyid]

From an objective point of view, I think the one thing preventing you from being the team you should and could be is a lack of team spirit. Your squad seems split into small sections and there doesn't seem to be any real mental cohesion. Maybe I'm wrong, and I know injuries will be playing a big part, but it's just a thought.

 

[Biggus]

You must be loving all our heartwrenching introspection Hert.
You must be bemused by the fact that coming 4th and no trophy of any sort is viewed as dismal failure for us.
You'd be thinking "we should be so lucky as to have such worries" :wink:

 

[hertyid]

You must be loving all our heartwrenching introspection Hert.
You must be bemused by the fact that coming 4th and no trophy of any sort is viewed as dismal failure for us.
You'd be thinking "we should be so lucky as to have such worries" :wink:

Not really. Success and failure is all relative. We managed to get 5th again having played 19 games more, and without our captain for 90% of those games or Carrick for all of them. You have to go back 25 years to find us finishing in the top five two years in a row. So for us, this is a big stepping stone to success. Consider the season before Jol joined we finished 14th, then in his first season (having taken over from Santini a couple of months in) we finished 9th, then 5th, then 5th again with substantial cup runs. It's all about making continual progress and we did that this year.

 

[RockyRocastle]

You must be loving all our heartwrenching introspection Hert.
You must be bemused by the fact that coming 4th and no trophy of any sort is viewed as dismal failure for us.
You'd be thinking "we should be so lucky as to have such worries" :wink:

You have to go back 25 years to find us finishing in the top five two years in a row. So for us, this is a big stepping stone to success.

Always good to start the day with a laugh.

 

[Zico]

Wow. there's a lot of anger on this forum. I'm going to defend some of the things that happened yesterday.

1) Baptista had a woeful game, but his penalty was well-taken. He hit it powerfully and high. I saw Ronaldinho score the exact same penalty with similar movement in his approach last night. It was just an extraordinary save from James.

2) Wenger was correct to rest the team. Whether we finish 3rd or 4th is largely meaningless. More meaningful is an extra week of summer holiday for injury-suspect players like Gallas. Do recall that with rising capitalism, football seasons are starting earlier and earlier. These players are going to be in Austria on the 17th of July (that's only two months away) and then play Champs league a month later. Gallas hasn't rested for two years. Same with Gilberto, Rosicky and about a dozen others.

Now I can rant

1) Hleb had a lot of movement, but did nothing useful other than one hard low cross late in the game. I've never seen so much talent wasted over an entire season. The guy was holding the ball too long, passing to ghosts, and shooting the ball with the power of a 4 year old girl. I was particulary disappointed that he was the most experienced player in our midfield but failed to lead the way.

2) Baptista is having a laugh. The kid's off the ball movement is even worse than what he does when he has the ball. Shocking, shocking, shocking. Definition of passenger.

3) Gallas is right about depth. we need to sort this out right now. Our team is good enough to win the league if we didn't have the Champs league to contend with, but we need to face reality and buy 2 good players.

 

[Biggus]

1) Hleb had a lot of movement, but did nothing useful other than one hard low cross late in the game. I've never seen so much talent wasted over an entire season. The guy was holding the ball too long, passing to ghosts, and shooting the ball with the power of a 4 year old girl. I was particulary disappointed that he was the most experienced player in our midfield but failed to lead the way.

2) Baptista is having a laugh. The kid's off the ball movement is even worse than what he does when he has the ball. Shocking, shocking, shocking. Definition of passenger.

3) Gallas is right about depth. we need to sort this out right now. Our team is good enough to win the league if we didn't have the Champs league to contend with, but we need to face reality and buy 2 good players.

Now you're having a laugh Quincy.

 

[EMIR8_SOLDIER]

theres many english players with the mental strength to ply for arsenal

What about with the skill to play for Arsenal? And which ones of the little bunch with both skill and mentality can we afford?

Vieira was not English. Young players such as Diaby could have learned from him. Nationality has nothing to do with it.

diaby could have laernt from vieira, but was vieira here to teach him that mentality...who did vieira gain his from...tony adams...there are english players here that have the skill to play for arsenal....woodgate,barton and many more that can help the foreigners but where are they....dont blame me, its all down to Arsène...hes the one that hasnt won anything for us for 2 years with 'his' team he has made and not inherited
would drogba have done well his season if terry or frank wasnt at chelsea and they told him about how to earn respect in england(score goals)
some of our players need that english mentality to win the league and sadly we do not have it
gallas and cesc, rvp and jens and henry learnt it.....just listen to their interviews
hey i hope next season im proven wrong but well see

 

[Biggus]

Barton belongs in a cage Emir8- not in a football team, and certainly not with us.

 

[EMIR8_SOLDIER]

Alfonso, i'd sacrifice the penalty and therefore 3rd place if it finally pushes wenger over the edge to not sign baptista. It'd be worth coming 4th for

If Wenger signs Baptista then we would really have to question the sanity of our manager.

im doing that now whilst your tossing off over that naked pen like darren and barry in extras !!!

I'll be in on that too!

which part, tossing off!! because i was only in questioning the sanity of wenger part