Manchester City vs Arsenal| Saturday 17th October 17:30| Sky Sports

The first half was our best half that’s where our chances were. If we scored those 2 chances and got the penalty we’d be winning 3-1 or 3-2.

 

You need your eyes checked because Xhaka was the best midfielder on the pitch against City. Played very well.

 

Basically if we took every chance we created and they didn’t we would win. Yes we had 2 big chances first half. But they completely dominated that half and there was a 10 min period where they had 86% of the ball camped in our half. The commentator I was watching said it was like power play in hockey. They also had huge chance when they were a goal up and missed. This defensive approach and countering is cowardice play. But we will play Leicester next and let’s see how we do. I see another defeat and another if we took them on how they would beat us and it was great tactics. Nothing worse than lose 1-0 in football and accepting it like we did

 

Like I said, they only created two good chances all game, one of which they scored from. We created two good chances too, but failed to score. We were not dominated at all. In the first half we were pressing high up the pitch it wasn’t so defensive. You may need to rewatch the game.

 

1.43 expected goals vs 0.84. And I’m not even a fan of stats. City is out of form and last 30 min focused on protecting what they had. This is the weakest they been in years. Leicester put 5 past them. Leeds and Leicester expected goals were 2.57 and 2.87 and ours was 0.87 and acting like we deserved a draw.

 

You get good internet service up there in Xhaka's bum?

 

First of all that’s rather close, not far apart at all. Second, I don’t like using xG as a metric, not when used as a comparison in one game. It doesn’t paint an accurate picture. A thread for another day.

As for your other point, you must think Leicester and Aston Villa are going to win titles, that’s your logic there.
Comparing other results is fruitless, every game is different. I explained that here: https://arsenal-mania.com/forum/thr...-race-for-the-top-4.34487/page-4#post-5256619

 

It buffers every 20 seconds.

 

No my point is those teams approached the game with much healthier attitude than we did. We could have got something if we were braver or we could have lost 2-0 or maybe 3-0 in the end. We will never know because we didn’t give ourselves a chance. Staying in games means you go for it in the end. Staying in the game while losing and not changing much is just weak. I do believe Leicester will finish ahead of us again

As I said you have to look at the whole picture to see we are far too rigid. Shef United and West Ham showed that. We squeezed wins, but as season goes on those type of performances will lead to drop points. Arteta has been here a year now. He should be passed the stabilising things now and actually try to put our mark on games. We may lose some but that approach will win us more games than not. Instead we will play every small team and have close games which can go either way.

 

50% voted a win huh? You Kroenke shills are really deluded. I thought you fanboys were saying Arteta is the new Arrigo Sacchi or some ****? How'd you enjoy your rookie getting found out? You corporate Kroenke shills are really clowns. I've got more bad news for you people: more bad results are coming up. Leno can't possibly be Superman every match. Can't wait to see the new excuses you people would come up with in the coming matches lmao .

 

“Top top team”

“I was in that dressing room (City) for four years & I know how much it takes for a team to do what we’ve done tonight”

I think he’s showing them too much respect and that interview pretty much proves my point. It’s all good that he worked there and knows the quality of Pep, their team etc but we should go to these grounds and show no fear. The likes of Leicester, Lyon etc went to the Etihad and caused them all sorts of problems.

Arteta showed Liverpool too much respect aswell when we played them at Anfield. If we want results at these grounds then we need to cut this stuff out and not be too cautious.

 

Don't think it's that simple.

Going by understat's xG numbers, City had 3 significant shots to our 1.

https://understat.com/match/14480

The result felt pretty fair to me.

 

Eh even I wouldn’t say that. He had some good contributions, but he was in the bottom half of CM’s on the pitch. Ceballos was better.

 

Eh. We've probably had the best run against top sides in a decade. And at least our recent losses to Pool and City have been close.
It's progress. If we play our cards right, it might take another season or 2 till we can make up that ground and feel like a top team.

 

I only saw the first half as I had to put my kids to bed, I hate these 5.30 kick offs!

The mood is pretty low on here, I guess we must have been really bad in the 2nd half as I thought we were pretty decent in the 1st half. We defended well, passed the ball around OK and created a couple of really good chances. It didn't feel anywhere near as 'backs to the wall' as the first game after the restart or the FA Cup semi final.

 

I think it’s more of him not believing in the quality of his team. That translate to our play in these games. I can imagine in preparation for these games arteta builds these teams so much our players are too focused on what they are capable of and too little on what we are capable of.

 

I get bored watching us attack. Pretty much every team in the Prem attacks better than we do. Auba’s goals drying up was inevitable. Feeding on scraps.

Willian as CF spelled disaster from the beginning.

 

Do we have more quality than the likes of Crystal Palace? Arteta was so cautious, he played Willian as a false 9



Having a system in place and focusing on the opposition works well at times but becoming too fixated on it hinders our attacking play and forces us to feed off scraps. Arteta needs to find that balance and not just solely focus on our opposition. Like Arsène Wenger used to do, it’s better to give freedom to the attackers at times as that’s how they’ll be able to express their creativeness. With 10 minutes to go and us chasing a goal, I noticed that Lacazette was constantly dropping deep in midfield rather than playing on the last defender.

They were large periods of that City game when we could have tested the likes of Ake, Ruben Dias, Cancelo etc a lot more. Rodri, Ake, Dias and Cancelo were all on yellow cards too but we didn’t provide enough of a threat to give them something to worry about.

 

Why am I seeing all these posts about playing 5 at the back? I thought it looked obvious that we were playing a 433 formation, which if Arteta played at Man City showed that will be the formation going forward, especially when we integrate Partey!

 

xG is dumb (not Xg)? In fact it's the exact opposite of dumb, it's incredibly smart. It's not just about 'chances', it's about the quality of chances. It gives a manager an idea of how many goals you should be scoring from your play.

If your xG is continually lower than the opposition's, it means you're not getting in good enough positions to score. It also means your odds of winning matches are low.

You put endless posts on here about transfers and how poor Wenger was, but I really don't think you know much about football at all.