I'd be very surprised if Marvo doesn't start.
He’s not in the Europa league squad.
I'd be very surprised if Marvo doesn't start.
He’s not in the Europa league squad.
My sense has been that the top teams are dropping fewer points this year, maybe I'm wrong about that. Just has seemed like there's barely been any upsets compared to usual, but maybe that's not been the case. Could be that Liverpool's long unbeaten run and Sp**s being so consistent is making it seem more that way than it is.Why not just say 'I don't think we've made enough progress', rather than making up false news about the quality of the league / our performances relative to the top 6 though?
I don't think I could ever find watching Arsenal boring tbh, but maybe that's just me. I've enjoyed watching us more this season than I have done for years.
Trouble is today's performance has only been a particularly poor version of what we've been doing for weeks, We haven't really had a good one since the Spuds game, arguably only had four good games in the PL this season.1 point behind United, with them still to come to the Emirates. Still right in that race for the top 4, plus the EL doesn't have an Atletico style powerhouse in it this year so winning that could be a route into the CL.
I'm talking in a general sense, not necessarily today's performance. I think the football will be better next season if the club signs a good replacement for Mustafi and a new LB who actually bothers tracking back unlike Kolasinac. Emery has chopped and changed a lot trying to find the right combination and the lack of cohesion is a result of that, but hopefully signing an AM + winger will give the attack a spark. With Xhaka/Torreira/New AM/New Winger/Aubameyang hopefully we'll see a more settled team each week with Emery having more players he's signed (and therefore trusts).
My sense has been that the top teams are dropping fewer points this year, maybe I'm wrong about that. Just has seemed like there's barely been any upsets compared to usual, but maybe that's not been the case. Could be that Liverpool's long unbeaten run and Sp**s being so consistent is making it seem more that way than it is.
And it's not even that I don't think we've made enough progress yet. Coming into the season I wasn't expecting us to be really any better in terms of where we are in the table than where we are now. Our start to the season was so promising though, and then I think some poor decisions caused us to lose the opportunity to be in a better position than we are now, and have made our play progressively worse as the season has gone on.
I just think there is some overstating of where we are really at the moment going on. We've had some great performances in some big games, but the way we scrape by with really ugly football (and sometimes don't) in other games is disheartening. I think our players are good enough to aspire to a better approach than we often see. We are getting results again at the moment thankfully, but we're making hard work of it, and the way we seem to be trying to play doesn't make me all that excited about where it can take us. Hopefully I'm wrong and next year we'll see it all start to come together.
Yeah those are all fair points. There has certainly been improvement over last season in some areas. But we need to remember last season was the worst season this club has had in the past 22 years. So while it's good we are ahead of where we were last year, we shouldn't get too excited at this point. And again, insofar as position in the table were are essentially stagnant as is. But that could (hopefully) change. And of course it is just year one.Last year Arsenal dropped 8 points to relegated clubs and 22 to the bottom half. After 26 games this season, Arsenal has dropped 7 points (a pace for about 10 on the season) to teams currently in the bottom half. So certainly Arsenal is not dropping points to the lesser clubs like it did last year. This has been an enormous improvement.
Arsenal has dropped too many points away this year (19 in 26 games), but last year dropped 41 in 38 games. So there's definite improvement in this area as well.
Emery doesn't have a squad of his players just yet. It's natural that they should struggle at times adapting to the new system, which some of them frankly don't fit. He needs to make more changes and get the players he wants and who fit what he's trying to do. Until then, there will naturally be ups and downs. Injuries to the defense have been catastrophic as well since early December.
So while it's not always exactly what I'd like to be seeing, I'm encouraged by the fact that Arsenal is truly in a battle for 4th place. I realize that right now United looks really good, but they'll hit a rough patch and have some very tough games coming up. It's up for grabs and that's enough for now. There's also the Europa League and Emery has proven he knows how to win that, so maybe he will again. Be not discouraged!
Yeah those are all fair points. There has certainly been improvement over last season in some areas. But we need to remember last season was the worst season this club has had in the past 22 years. So while it's good we are ahead of where we were last year, we shouldn't get too excited at this point. And again, insofar as position in the table were are essentially stagnant as is. But that could (hopefully) change. And of course it is just year one.
But as I've said before, the manner of how we seem to be trying to play is pretty worrying. I'm just far from convinced at this point that it's going to get us to where we want to be.
I am hoping the reason Emery sets us up to play such primitive football is because he knows we have players who are not very good.
It makes sense - Wenger's team was diabolical to watch in the latter years (actually, from the 12/13 season onwards) and all he knew was "sexy possession football" yet it still didn't work despite that being all he knew.
Due to that, I'm optimistic we will play better football with better players in.
To say Eriksen hides is just ridiculous. You're brave putting those stats up tbh. I remember the days when people laughed at those who compared the two players... There's nothing between them stats wise.Eriksen 193 league games, 56 assists, 45 goals
Özil 156 league games, 51 assists, 30 goals
If Eriksen is your standard bearer then we already have one of those creative dudes who doesn't hide.
Well nothing's changed on that front then. It's looked off the cuff for about the last 4 years tbh. It's been said many times too.What you describe as sexy football requires a fair bit of structure and technical know how and it was successful . If anything our attack looks completely off the cuff now .
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If anything our attack looks completely off the cuff now .
Think to completely get dominated in midfield like we did at Huddersfield is a worry only thing that stopped them from popping two or three past us was the fact they hadn't scored for 8 hours at home . We had Guendouzi , Torreira ,Iwobi and Mkhi they are technically better than their counterparts yet we were easily pinned .
Well nothing's changed on that front then. It's looked off the cuff for about the last 4 years tbh. It's been said many times too.
It looked like that when we had Alexis and Özil playing well together as well though. We're talking slight variations of consistently disjointed. The attack hasn't looked structured since RvP left tbh.Indeed which is why I bring it up because now it completely looks hit and miss .
I think this is largely due to Emery going with a back 3 because he doesn't trust any of the defenders he currently has, aside from Koscielny. Arsenal was a midfielder short. Things were starting to look halfway decent with the back 4 until Holding went down and then Bellerin. As far as I know Emery had never used a back 3 in the past. He's always been a flexible 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 guy.
Maybe once Sokratis is back and Emery can pair him with Koscielny they can use an extra midfielder again. I think it would have been completely different today with either Xhaka or Elneny or Suarez along with Torreira and Guendouzi.
In any case, I'll be glad when summer comes and they can get busy addressing their defensive issues.
We have defensive issues but a lot of of it is down to the lack of protection and lack of ability to hold on to the ball .
I hope you are right though .
It looked like that when we had Alexis and Özil playing well together as well though. We're talking slight variations of consistently disjointed. The attack hasn't looked structured since RvP left tbh.
I agree. At one point I noticed that when we were playing out from the back and Leno had the ball, Huddersfield were pressing in such a way that he had to pass to Mustafi to play it out. And most often then not, it resulted in a poor pass to Maitland-Niles, or a long ball towards Lacazette. The latter option completely killed our short spell of possession very quickly on several occasions. It is so obvious how much Bellerin is missed at right back.I think a lot of the inability to hold onto the ball today came from Mustafi and Maitland-Niles. Torreira and Guendouzi weren't in great form today, but they were under a lot of pressure because of the team's inability to play the ball out from the back. They were too slow and took too many touches.