Riou
In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over
Country: Northern Ireland
Player:Gabriel
Lot of nostalgia and remembering things better than what they were going on here. Giroud scorpion kick and that Walcott goal were once in a season moments, every season has a few golazos like that, last season was dire football for the most part but still had Tierney's golazo, a few Pepe golazos, the quick Wenger-esque combination play against Leeds with ESR and Lacazette, etc. Much of the same. In these years you talk about in reality we were all complaining about the state of our football and doing precisely what you're doing now, asking what had happened to our football of 07-08 and especially the Highbury era.I think what disappoints me most was in the past we always had exciting players that could pull off something outrageous. Henry, Pires, RVP, Sanchez, Fabregas, Wilshere, Ramsey, Cazorla, Özil etc. Even Giroud with his scorpion kick and Walcott with that amazing goal against Chelsea where he went through 4 players, tackled and even got from the ground to score.
It’s not so much that we’re mid table or below, but these players, although workman like, don’t have any magic. Where are the flicks, audacious dribbles, ruthlessly incisive passes, clever interchanges and 100 mile an hour transitions. It’s all meh! We may not have won the league for a while but Jesus we had entertainment and a beautiful game.
Lot of nostalgia and remembering things better than what they were going on here. Giroud scorpion kick and that Walcott goal were once in a season moments, every season has a few golazos like that, last season was dire football for the most part but still had Tierney's golazo, a few Pepe golazos, the quick Wenger-esque combination play against Leeds with ESR and Lacazette, etc. Much of the same. In these years you talk about in reality we were all complaining about the state of our football and doing precisely what you're doing now, asking what had happened to our football of 07-08 and especially the Highbury era.
The last season where we really had a good amount of delicious Wenger combination play was 13-14, with that brilliant performance where we ran rings around Napoli in CL, the Wilshere goal against Norwich and another similar one I think also against Norwich involving Rosicky later in the season?...but even that season it was more the exception than the rule, in reality we were grinding out results during our good phase in that season (such that we were outperforming our xG in very flukish and unsustainable fashion, much like Em*ry in 18-19 first half).
But in reality it's been since 07-08 and up until about 10-11 in steady decline since we've seen that type of football consistently.
Football has also changed significantly, it is much less artistic now, which is just the reality of evolution, as technical analysis grows and methods become more precise there is less room for art, basketball fans see the same thing happen and lament it. In the current world of football where it is all about pressing and resistance and more premium on physical conditions in combination with technical ones, that art is slowly squeezed out each day more (decline of the pure James / Özil / Isco type 10, bla bla bla). Everyone in football is complaining about the same, it's not something personal or specific to us.
In reality for the modern football we have a rather attractive team (I'll certainly give you that last season the first half until ESR insertion was absolutely unconsumable, and the season before of course, and anything under Em*ry which was indeed a function of his style or lack thereof) Saka, Pepe, Ødegaard, ESR are all visually attractive footballers. We'll see some decent spectacles from them in the context of today's football if Arteta is doing his job at a decent level this season.
This pr bs needs to end ffs!!
It’s so bad. We can play well, dominate for a 20 minute period and come out with one shot on target. I guess that’s what happens when you only attack via crossing which is the most inefficient method of creating chances.Today weirdly terrifies me even more. This was us playing well and we could have had only a draw late on, despite Norwich doing **** all the entire game. Kind of terrifying how us at our best is so close to drawing against almost certainly relegated Norwich
14-15 was pretty dire for me, it was just the Alexis individual brilliance show for the most part.I would say we still had a good structure, up until around 2015/2016, think that's when things started to fall apart and we became more reliant on individual quality than team brilliance.
Has any team ever had their main playmaker, be their left back before?
That could be something Arteta created, I guess.
14-15 was pretty dire for me, it was just the Alexis individual brilliance show for the most part.
Sevilla with Alves I can think of but obviously he was at a totally different level to what we have.
Sevilla with Alves I can think of but obviously he was at a totally different level to what we have.
Great...so Mikel is crap and does nothing original, ffs
Speaking of Dani Alves, damn was he soooooo good at his best. Tierney can only dream of reaching those sort of levels.
He’s easily top 5 fullbacks of all time imo especially for how influential his attacking play was in that great Barcelona team.
I guess Alves was on the right if we're being picky