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The Unpopular Opinion Thread

BigPoppaPump

Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares
If we wanted to we could sell Lacazette for £50-70m.

How is our second worst ever signing winning POTS here, seriously get a grip.

He shouldn't have been POTS, Aubameyang got robbed.

Also, as @hydrofluoric acid said POTS doesn't mean anything since we sold Alexis because we've been sh!t every season. It's like winning a race but all your competition was white guys.
 

Red London

Anti-Simp Culture
Trusted ⭐
He shouldn't have been POTS, Aubameyang got robbed.
I wouldn't say robbed, even though we didn't play that well last season we actually supplied Aubameyang extremely well (he obviously made that easy due to his fantastic positioning) but he did miss a bucket load of chances as well as being poor on the ball.

Lacazette provided the highest amount of assists in our club, as well as providing a good amount of goals. His role in the side isnt solely for scoring goals, and he added more than that. He almost played as a false 9 at times for us. A lot of people have discussed his away game form but on the flip side look at some of the goals he scored; in very big games. Scored against Sp**s, Liverpool, Chelsea not to mention vs Napoli and Valencia in the EL.

In my opinion Aubameyang didnt win the POTS because the fans rightly thought he could have scored a heck more goals for us, he really did miss some sitters over the course of the season.

Anyway, regardless of all this, its perfectly acceptable to be of the opinion Auba deserved the POTS award, but to think Laca was a terrible signing is silly to be honest. He's an asset regardless, one of the biggest in the club.
 

progman07

Established Member
I wouldn't say robbed, even though we didn't play that well last season we actually supplied Aubameyang extremely well (he obviously made that easy due to his fantastic positioning) but he did miss a bucket load of chances as well as being poor on the ball.

In my opinion Aubameyang didnt win the POTS because the fans rightly thought he could have scored a heck more goals for us, he really did miss some sitters over the course of the season..
Auba's top class movement allowed us to create those chances for him though.

Fans in general underrate the importance of off-the-ball movement, either in attack or in defense. How would Bergkamp have given those legendary assists if Vieira or Ljungberg have not made the runs they have?

Scoring the amount of goals Auba has done with partly playing from the wings in a team that finished outside the top4? I'd argue it's ****ing brilliant even if he missed another 10. I'd rather he keeps on getting into those positions and miss a few, than play a striker who doesn't make those runs...
 

BigPoppaPump

Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares
Auba's top class movement allowed us to create those chances for him though.

Fans in general underrate the importance of off-the-ball movement, either in attack or in defense. How would Bergkamp have given those legendary assists if Vieira or Ljungberg have not made the runs they have?

Scoring the amount of goals Auba has done with partly playing from the wings in a team that finished outside the top4? I'd argue it's ****ing brilliant even if he missed another 10. I'd rather he keeps on getting into those positions and miss a few, than play a striker who doesn't make those runs...

There's a section of Arsenal fans that just hate giving Aubameyang credit for anything. Lacazette will score a tap in from 3 yards out and they go on like he's better than Messi it's shameful.

I genuinely think t's because Lacazette is better looking.
 

Mark Tobias

Mr. Agreeable

BigPoppaPump

Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares

freeglennhelder2

Established Member

Country: England

Player:Elneny
Everyone is waiting for the holy day when Tierney and Bellerin ascend from the bench, the stars align, and the team is magically transformed into title challengers.

But the reality is they both have track records as crocks and we’ll be extremely fortunate if even one of them completes the season.
 

BigPoppaPump

Reeling from Laca & Kos nightmares
Everyone is waiting for the holy day when Tierney and Bellerin ascend from the bench, the stars align, and the team is magically transformed into title challengers.

But the reality is they both have track records as crocks and we’ll be extremely fortunate if even one of them completes the season.

Tbf Bellerin was never a crock. He pretty much played every game for years. He got two big injuries back to back last season so he's been out forever. Thought people are really overrating him in his absence, it's only gonna lead to disappointment when he comes back.

This Tierney kid just seems like a myth at this point, I called him the Scottish Kim Kalstrom as a joke but now it's looking real. I have no patience for injury prone players after over a decade having to suffer with them at Arsenal, if Tierney is injury prone then I'm already writing him off tbh.
 

Mark Tobias

Mr. Agreeable
Tbf Bellerin was never a crock. He pretty much played every game for years. He got two big injuries back to back last season so he's been out forever. Thought people are really overrating him in his absence, it's only gonna lead to disappointment when he comes back.

This Tierney kid just seems like a myth at this point, I called him the Scottish Kim Kalstrom as a joke but now it's looking real. I have no patience for injury prone players after over a decade having to suffer with them at Arsenal, if Tierney is injury prone then I'm already writing him off tbh.
Well said , in both paragraphs!
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
4-2-3-1 with Laca, Auba, Özil and Pepe all playing won't work anywhere near as effectively as people think it will. It'll probably end up being more of a 4-2-4 leaving our 2 man midfield very vulnerable and will get crowded out by teams who pack the midfield. It's even worse if we encourage the full-backs to go forward. But in general Pepe and Auba aren't going to help out defensively, or at least they aren't gonna do it well enough to prevent our full-backs being isolated in 2 v 1 situations.

In general I'm actually not a massive fan of 4-2-3-1 in general especially if it's with an Özil style 10 and two out and out wingers. At least with the 4-2-3-1 we played in 2015 Ramsey would come in to make it a 3 man midfield so Özil didn't have to come back and stay in positions that could hurt the opposition. There are just too many flaws for it to work without us getting punished. There's a reason why Wenger would deploy Cazorla, Ramsey or Rosicky wide in that formation, so they could also help us control the midfield. Even Martinelli-Auba-Pepe ahead of Özil would have some issues imo.

I know there's a craving for us to play our best players or as attacking as possible but it cannot be to the detriment of team balance and it cannot make us vulnerable defensively.

Onto our current predicament, we almost have an issue where Özil and Pepe are both kind of luxury players. The only times they've played together it's usually forced us to play an extra midfielder or an extra defender to compensate. So it's gonna be tough for us fitting them both in unless Özil plays on the left, we play Pepe as a striker with Auba and a diamond midfield or we play 3-4-3 or something like that in order to maintain balance and have numbers in midfield. Only other options I can think of is maybe Willock or Ceballos on the left in a 4-2-3-1, but I can't imagine that being too popular.
 

chessygoal

Well-Known Member
4-2-3-1 with Laca, Auba, Özil and Pepe all playing won't work anywhere near as effectively as people think it will. It'll probably end up being more of a 4-2-4 leaving our 2 man midfield very vulnerable and will get crowded out by teams who pack the midfield. It's even worse if we encourage the full-backs to go forward. But in general Pepe and Auba aren't going to help out defensively, or at least they aren't gonna do it well enough to prevent our full-backs being isolated in 2 v 1 situations.

In general I'm actually not a massive fan of 4-2-3-1 in general especially if it's with an Özil style 10 and two out and out wingers. At least with the 4-2-3-1 we played in 2015 Ramsey would come in to make it a 3 man midfield so Özil didn't have to come back and stay in positions that could hurt the opposition. There are just too many flaws for it to work without us getting punished. There's a reason why Wenger would deploy Cazorla, Ramsey or Rosicky wide in that formation, so they could also help us control the midfield. Even Martinelli-Auba-Pepe ahead of Özil would have some issues imo.

I know there's a craving for us to play our best players or as attacking as possible but it cannot be to the detriment of team balance and it cannot make us vulnerable defensively.

Onto our current predicament, we almost have an issue where Özil and Pepe are both kind of luxury players. The only times they've played together it's usually forced us to play an extra midfielder or an extra defender to compensate. So it's gonna be tough for us fitting them both in unless Özil plays on the left, we play Pepe as a striker with Auba and a diamond midfield or we play 3-4-3 or something like that in order to maintain balance and have numbers in midfield. Only other options I can think of is maybe Willock or Ceballos on the left in a 4-2-3-1, but I can't imagine that being too popular.
I disagree, let's take a look at teams performing better than us this season :
- Liverpool plays with 3 Forwards and 3 runners in midfield but with 2 fullbacks almost higher than our winger in the pitch. It's not even fair to compare our players' work ethic to theirs.
- City almost exclusively played with 3 forwards and 2 attacking mid in a weird 4123 shape. But as for Liverpool, their work ethic is far above what we have.
- Leicester plays exactly with the setup we'd have with Pepe, Laca, Auba, Özil. With arguably Maddison working harder than Özil
- Chelsea had 2 systems, 3 Forwards and 3 runners, or a more similar to us 4231.
- United plays with something similar to us, but with Rashford and James having a far better work ethic than Auba and Pepe.
For me it shows that both systems : 433 and 4231 can bring results as long as your team is well drilled. And more importantly, each of these team seem to have players more in-sync with each other and that work a lot harder for their team than ours.
So here is my unpopular opinion. It's not the players or the team, it's a coaching problem. We aren't underperforming because our squad is poor, or our setup is wrong, as long as we don't play 4312 or 343.
We are underperforming as a team because we don't play like a team with and without the ball. We used to be good with the ball and bad without. Now we are bad at both. We used to create overloads through slick passing and moving movements, now we play Iso after Iso movements (to use a basketball terminology) and hope for the best.
So for me it doesn't really matter if we play 4231 or 433. But we need to commit to a system and a set of players, until we make it work, at least regarding defensive shape and pressing.
And only when we play again as a team and not as 11 individual players, we can start discussing what's the best way to use Pepe, Özil, Auba etc. Now is the time for each player to put their ego aside and just play for the team.
 

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