PL: Arsenal v Manchester City | August 12th, 2018 16:00 BST | Sky Sports

[Highbury_2006]

The thing I don't get is why is it so hard for our fans to see this? I thought EXACTLY this after the game and didn't need this video to tell me. It's obvious we have been working very hard on ensuring our press is effective and will get better with time, it's how these things work and it's the same with playing out from the back.

I understand the Ramsey at 10 to help the press but I think it affected our attack so I hope Emery can find a way to work that out.

If we get top 4 this season, the season after will be massive. I liked what I saw, I hope we're better against Chelsea.

Great coaches like Tony Adams and Sam Allardyce are better sources for our fans.

 

[OnlyOne]

Great coaches like Tony Adams and Sam Allardyce are better sources for our fans.

GDeep was right when he said Arsenal fans were the worst.

R.I.P

 

[Toby]

Xavi, iniesta, Messi, Puyol, and Eto’o. That’s what Guardiola “inherited”

Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol are arguably Spain's best players of the last 15 years/their generation. Messi is one of the all time greatest. Eto'o one of the best African players ever and one of the best strikers of his gen. Having them in the same team without having to go out and buy them is like winning the lottery.

Add Abidal, Marquez, Valdes, Milito, Touré and Henry who somehow often go unnoticed when talking about Guardiola's inherited squad.

He did bring through Busquets, but Pedro had basically broken into the fringes of the first team the season before. He worked great with these players, but they all had buckets of talent in the first place.

In 2008 he spent 70m on Alves, Hleb and Keita.
In 2009 100m on Ibra, Maxwell and Chyrinskiy.
In 2010 70m on Villa, Mascherano and Adriano.
In 2011 60m on Fabregas and Alexis.

That's the third highest spend on transfers in the time frame of 08/09 to 11/12 during which he was Barca manager, only after Real and City. Pep has always spent money.

There's no denying he is inventive, tactically great, has an own brand of football and a superb understanding of it, but the sheer luck of randomly having so many great players at Barca at his disposal, their money and the choice of clubs he managed afterwards and their money have clearly always rigged the game to his advantage - and while it doesn't cast a doubt about him generally being a very, very good manager, it does raise doubt about whether he is one of the absolute all time greatest managers.

And I do see where the argument of "to play his brand of football you need the best players and they are expensive" is coming from, and you could similarly see how Klopp's Liverpool is improving with better players, but that's mostly the case with any team - add better players to a working team and the team gets better.

Great managers should have shown they're capeable of making good use of what they have at their disposal at any given time. From this point of view, I honestly think Klopp has shown more than Pep, developing BVB into BL winners and salvaging that first of his Liverpool seasons with a more than questionable squad and pushing on from there. I think Heynckes is a greater coach than Pep, and I think Simeone, too. One could make a neat case about how Wenger staying in the top 4 (without digging into any transfers failings etc., but only regarding on field performance) with limited funds and some questionable squads is a bigger managerial achievement than guiding Barca's golden generation to a CL, even if you include their exciting football.

 

[TheArsenalis]

We lost the game now every body has a voice about what every did wrong. Lol we played the best team the prem has to offer. The champions none the less. We were hopefully at best.

My biggest disappointed is how far behind city we are not only our 1st 11 but squad and quality hardly a surprise we lost.

 

[Tourboh]

Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol are arguably Spain's best players of the last 15 years/their generation. Messi is one of the all time greatest. Eto'o one of the best African players ever and one of the best strikers of his gen. Having them in the same team without having to go out and buy them is like winning the lottery.

Add Abidal, Marquez, Valdes, Milito, Touré and Henry who somehow often go unnoticed when talking about Guardiola's inherited squad.

Barcelona has always had top players. No coach is ever going to walk into Barcelona and find a team of mediocre players, but many coaches have failed to be successful at Barcelona. The season before Pep came Barcelona finished third....18 points behind Real Madrid. Pep had never coached a top
Flight team. All those players you mentioned failed miserably that season. Messi, Xavi, Iniesta etc etc. It was a colossal mess.

Btw I think if we exclude Ronaldo and Messi, Thierry Henry is the greatest forward club football has ever seen.

He did bring through Busquets, but Pedro had basically broken into the fringes of the first team the season before. He worked great with these players, but they all had buckets of talent in the first place.



In 2008 he spent 70m on Alves, Hleb and Keita.
In 2009 100m on Ibra, Maxwell and Chyrinskiy.
In 2010 70m on Villa, Mascherano and Adriano.
In 2011 60m on Fabregas and Alexis.

That's the third highest spend on transfers in the time frame of 08/09 to 11/12 during which he was Barca manager, only after Real and City. Pep has always spent money.

This is Barcelona we are talking about ffs. What else is new?

There's no denying he is inventive, tactically great, has an own brand of football and a superb understanding of it, but the sheer luck of randomly having so many great players at Barca at his disposal, their money and the choice of clubs he managed afterwards and their money have clearly always rigged the game to his advantage - and while it doesn't cast a doubt about him generally being a very, very good manager, it does raise doubt about whether he is one of the absolute all time greatest managers.

His record of success and the quality of his teams is hard for me to dismiss under any circumstances. He took an underperforming team to unprecedented success in all competitions in his first season. That’s unheard of. Well, was. Enter zidane lol

And I do see where the argument of "to play his brand of football you need the best players and they are expensive" is coming from, and you could similarly see how Klopp's Liverpool is improving with better players, but that's mostly the case with any team - add better players to a working team and the team gets better.

I understand where you are coming from and it’s valid. I do think there’s more than one way to be great though

Look at Real Madrid and Barcelona for example. Part of their image and brand recognition is that they sign the best and most hyped players every year. Win or lose they are going out to spend a fortune and they will always have top talent. Based on your logic there is no path to greatness for any coach that coaches there. Despite the pressure for instant success and the fact many top coaches have failed to deliver there.

Great managers should have shown they're capeable of what they have at their disposal at any given time. From this point of view on, I honestly think Klopp has shown more than Pep, developing BVB into BL winners and salvaging that first of his Liverpool seasons with a more than questionable squad and pushing on from there. I think Heynckes is a greater coach than Pep, and I think Simeone, too. One could make a neat case about how Wenger staying in the top 4 (without digging into any transfers failings etc., but only regarding on field performance) with limited funds and some questionable squads is a bigger managerial achievement than guiding Barca's golden generation to a CL, even if you include their exciting football.

I think those are all top managers you mention and it’s not unreasonable to think they are very great. I do however think that Pep could perform at a very high level with those teams had he coached them. His career has taken a different path and we need to judge him based on the situations he is in and not some hypotheticals. That Klopp or Simeone could coach that Barcelona to a perfect season is not a guarantee. Coaching expensive teams comes with its own set of challenges and pressure and I think we oversimplify when we narrow it down to spending.

I don’t think Wenger should be on your list though. I think top talents underperformed for extended periods under him and at some point one needs to start to question their management.

 

[KrissKringle]

Anyone else impressed by the impact of our pressing game yesterday?

We forced quite a few errors out of the most technically gifted team in the league which on another day would have led to goals.

It was the first game of the season, so some of their players were rusty. They were also without Silva and Sane along with KDB came on with half an hour left to play.
We put on a disappointing display considering they weren't 100% and created very, very little with just 3 shots on target vs. their 8.

 

[Highbury_2006]

It was the first game of the season, so some of their players were rusty. They were also without Silva and Sane along with KDB came on with half an hour left to play.
We put on a disappointing display considering they weren't 100% and created very, very little with just 3 shots on target vs. their 8.

You do know that it was the first game of the season for us aswell, right?

 

[KrissKringle]

You do know that it was the first game of the season for us aswell, right?

Oh, really? I had no idea! That's why there was an opportunity here to hit them when they're weak and failed to do anything. We looked like a bunch of school boys making silly mistakes both at the back and when creating chances.

 

[Highbury_2006]

Oh, really? I had no idea! That's why there was an opportunity here to hit them when they're weak and failed to do anything. We looked like a bunch of school boys making silly mistakes both at the back and when creating chances.

And they had an opportunity to hit us when we was weak.

 

[KrissKringle]

And they had an opportunity to hit us when we was weak.

They did, because we've been weak against them for the past year and a half or so, ffs.

 

[CurryFlavoured]

Some of the comments from here and the press are plain stupid.

We're in a huge transition. We've had our two worst seasons in 25 years back to back and have a new manager with a new style, taking over from a guy who basically ran the football at the club top to bottom. How Adams can question Emery after one game against the champions shows how ill informed he is. And Allardyce is a fool, of course he thought that we should have booted it long all game

 

[TheArsenalis]

're watched the game. Thought I'd make a few points. I couldn't catch the live game so I try keeping updated by watching this forum. After seeing the game twice for myself, I have to say the player hating on here is too much sometime. The Mustafa bashing has got to stop, he was undoubtedly our best defender and none of them was particularly bad neither.

The service from midfield was piss poor especially from the three behind aubameyang. Özil mini ramsey. Guendoozi and xhaka was our best midfielders ironically the mistake were made by them. The others ddnt help.

Aubameyang cannot play lone forward, can't hold up play.

We don't have the personel to play 433 emery needs find a solution I know he likes it but nah.

Lastly, drop Ramsey and mikhitarian, absolute duds. Lacazette has to start. And despite the silly mistakes our best attacks in the 1st half was started by xhaka passing. He guendoozi and torrierra. M3

 

[Gooner Zig]

I thought your press worked really well when all the players did it, but too often one or two didn't bother and it was easy to play through, thought you were pretty decent for the first 15 mins in the 2nd half, not bad the first 10 minutes of the first half too but lacked the confidence to keep going that way, it's understandable, it's going to take time for Emery to bed his ideas into the players, who got used to Wengers methods for so long.

One game for me always sticks in my mind from Wengers latter years at Arsenal, he departed from his usual 'fight fire with fire' approach when you played us at ours one time, as he knew City's attack had become better, he set up very defensively and counter-attacked, you ended up beating us 0-2 and it was a complete performance, but he didn't do that often enough in the top games. The last few games against us with Wenger in charge, were pretty poor in all honesty, I just think he was unable to motivate the players any more and you were beaten comfortably in all three games last season.

That result was facilitated by one of the better performances you'll see at CM. Santi Cazorla was running rings around everyone that day. We haven't had a functioning midfield for years. Xhaka who I had high hopes for isn't the answer in today's PL.

 

[TheArsenalis]

You do know that it was the first game of the season for us aswell, right?

The funny thing is city maybe understrenght, but we were still at a disadvantage. They are a settled team, this talk about who is missing from them hardly makes a difference to how they gonna approach the game. Even in terms of quality, there substitutes are not subpar players they are there so that the standard doesn't drop.

Arsenal in the other hand, emery doesn't even know the best eleven, it's not his team yet, they are not fully adopted to how he wants to play.

 

[Toby]

No coach is ever going to walk into Barcelona and find a team of mediocre players, but many coaches have failed to be successful at Barcelona.

Riijkard inherited an overall worse squad, I think - not to say it was bad but worse than what he left for Pep. For Guardiola it was world class all over. He also won two La Ligas, came second two times and just messed up his last out of fives years. A lot of people make him worse and paint Barca as some garbage type of team before Pep came along.

He rightly cut loose some older players, managed to hang on to the right ones and randomly happened into some very good youngsters.

He took an underperforming team to unprecedented success in all competitions in his first season.

Underperforming puts it quite right. He took it to its level of performance again but in no way did he miraculously make them stretch their ability to achieve something unheard of. This is like Conte taking Mourinho's Chelsea and winning the league with them. Even if a WC team underperforms, they still have WC ability.

Based on your logic there is no path to greatness for any coach that coaches there. Despite the pressure for instant success and the fact many top coaches have failed to deliver there.

Maybe there isn't. And maybe those guys weren't top managers.

I do however think that Pep could perform at a very high level with those teams had he coached them. His career has taken a different path and we need to judge him based on the situations he is in and not some hypotheticals. That Klopp or Simeone could coach that Barcelona to a perfect season is not a guarantee.

So Pep can do what they do, but they can't do what he did? Awfully biased.

His record of success and the quality of his teams is hard for me to dismiss under any circumstances.

The quality of his teams can't be dismissed, but it's enlightening to look at the context in which he was able to assemble those squads. 200m less and not enough top players - will Pep be able to make his team perform? That's a big big question.

Let's leave it at that. You are an admirer of his, I don't think he should be on top of manager mountain as there's contest and serious doubt. That's it.

And we haven't even gone into the doping.

 

[Mo Britain]

I thought your press worked really well when all the players did it, but too often one or two didn't bother and it was easy to play through, thought you were pretty decent for the first 15 mins in the 2nd half, not bad the first 10 minutes of the first half too but lacked the confidence to keep going that way, it's understandable, it's going to take time for Emery to bed his ideas into the players, who got used to Wengers methods for so long.

One game for me always sticks in my mind from Wengers latter years at Arsenal, he departed from his usual 'fight fire with fire' approach when you played us at ours one time, as he knew City's attack had become better, he set up very defensively and counter-attacked, you ended up beating us 0-2 and it was a complete performance, but he didn't do that often enough in the top games. The last few games against us with Wenger in charge, were pretty poor in all honesty, I just think he was unable to motivate the players any more and you were beaten comfortably in all three games last season.

You forgot the FA Cup semi-final. Agreed about that 0-2 game, played that way a few times and almost always worked. Never understood why he didn't do it more often and avoid some of the drubbings we got.

 

[Toby]

Aubameyang cannot play lone forward, can't hold up play.

He did so at Dortmund and was one of the most prolific and dangerous lone strikers in Europe's top flights, but 'cause you say so he can't

This isn't even about contesting Auba having had a rather bad game, or that he clearly profits from Lacazette being on the pitch...

...but maybe don't look at football so narrow with such one dimensional statements. Some people clearly don't get that systems and movement play a big role in football, and that whatever is written on paper mostly looks very different on the pitch, that how positions are interpreted and played vary from team to team and manager to manager and player to player.

Auba played lone striker successfully for most of his career, he didn't just unlearn it. It's the system and football that's the difference. BVB's 4231 is different to Arsenal's system right now and that's the reason Auba struggles a bit without Laca to find his voodoo 'cause he creates space and at Dortmund this was done differently, but in no way is Auba unable to play lone striker in general. Most systems are asymmetrical anyway with every and each player having a specific role.

 

[Sanchez11]

He did so at Dortmund and was one of the most prolific and dangerous lone strikers in Europe's top flights, but 'cause you say so he can't

This isn't even about contesting Auba having had a rather bad game, or that he clearly profits from Lacazette being on the pitch...

...but maybe don't look at football so narrow with such one dimensional statements. Some people clearly don't get that systems and movement play a big role in football, and that whatever is written on paper mostly looks very different on the pitch, that how positions are interpreted and played vary from team to team and manager to manager and player to player.

Auba played lone striker successfully for most of his career, he didn't just unlearn it. It's the system and football that's the difference. BVB's 4231 is different to Arsenal's system right now and that's the reason Auba struggles a bit without Laca to find his voodoo 'cause he creates space and at Dortmund this was done differently, but in no way is Auba unable to play lone striker in general. Most systems are asymmetrical anyway with every and each player having a specific role.

He was very isolated yesterday as the build up play was too slow, pissed me off tbh!!

 

[Toby]

He was very isolated yesterday as the build up play was too slow, pissed me off tbh!!

he was, but that wasn't down to him being generally unable to play as lone striker. Without another player doing certain things like occupying certain spaces, making diverting runs and distracting defenders or luring them out, it's hard to be involved for any striker - be it Ronaldo or whoever, be it a lone striker or one in a two. Right now Laca does this best for him, but it's a system question not an individual question.

 

[TheArsenalis]

He did so at Dortmund and was one of the most prolific and dangerous lone strikers in Europe's top flights, but 'cause you say so he can't

This isn't even about contesting Auba having had a rather bad game, or that he clearly profits from Lacazette being on the pitch...

...but maybe don't look at football so narrow with such one dimensional statements. Some people clearly don't get that systems and movement play a big role in football, and that whatever is written on paper mostly looks very different on the pitch, that how positions are interpreted and played vary from team to team and manager to manager and player to player.

Auba played lone striker successfully for most of his career, he didn't just unlearn it. It's the system and football that's the difference. BVB's 4231 is different to Arsenal's system right now and that's the reason Auba struggles a bit without Laca to find his voodoo 'cause he creates space and at Dortmund this was done differently, but in no way is Auba unable to play lone striker in general. Most systems are asymmetrical anyway with every and each player having a specific role.

433 in Dortmund, and 433 at arsenal is a different story. At Dortmund he had wingers, full frontal forward with him he was never alone.