PL: Newcastle United v Arsenal | April 15, 2018 13:30 BST | Sky Sports

[Penn_]

Wenger’s Thursday excuse doesn’t make much sense given that only Lacazette, Monreal, Elneny and Mustafi started both games.

Even if that were the case we had replacements for at least two of those, there was no need for them to start.

 

[pacstud]

Rating Holding and Chambers today simply has to be passport driven.

At least Chambers has the excuse of being out of position.

Holding is simply outclassed by quite a margin.

Hilarious that people are saying only Mustafi is the problem.

 

[Linson]

Right boys, didn't see the game...
Someone give me a lowdown

 

[pacstud]

Right boys, didn't see the game...
Someone give me a lowdown

Newcastle was Rick James

 

[Ceballinhos]

I truly don't get that line of "reasoning". Sound so daft to me.
I am an Arsenal and I am hoping they win, specially a European trophy, whatever the circumstances and environment! But what do I know..

I hope they win too mate. I get your point. Maybe it's my frustration making me write daft stuff

But I don't think we have a genuine chance to do it. We've never outplayed a better team than us in the recent history over the course of 2 games in Europe. I'd give us a 10% chance to qualify for the final.
In the case we get knocked out by A.Madrid I'm starting to hope it would be bad enough, to put Wenger/the board in an unsustainable position where they would have no other choice but move on.

I'm afraid if we get knocked out by Madrid on away goals for instance, they will use this as an excuse to keep going with our current setup by saying "we are in the right direction, we're close from a top top team".

 

[HBL]

Thought Iwobi was decent today tbf, maybe willing to give him one more season but he needs to start producing better next season. Today was a shambles though. Think playing Nelson instead of Elneny, moving Iwobi to no 10 & Willock next to Xhaka, with Nelson on the right would’ve worked better.

 

[marting]

Few things I don’t understand:

Why we sunddenly need to rest players after playing Thursday..... it’s not like we had this problem against better opposition in the champions league?

Why resting players for the champions league means removing them from the squad all together?

Why when we “rest” all our players we don’t change our tactics or style to help suit the players coming in.... or at least enable us to not lose!

Why outside of our normal 11 are we suddenly hosting an awful squad of which maybe 1 or 2 outside the 11 can actually fight for the first team?

How the hell we got into this mess?

 

[Notorious Big]

Newcastle was Rick James

Gta SA !

 

[Toby]

some things to take away from the game:

Absolute lack of clear defensive structure, any one of the back four is basically on his own out there and it's a breeding ground for costly individual mistakes. It puts the players under pressure and makes them play worse than they actually are. If you look at stupid individual mistakes at other clubs, they happen, too, but just not as often as here and it's down to defensive organization.

Cech and his backline have absolutely no idea how to play with each other. Someone else mentioned some time ago, they so often pass the ball to his wrong foot, and that's bad if your keeper isn't a good baller. The amount of misunderstandings between Cech and especially Mustafi is baffling and there's more behind it than just the individual quality or lack thereof. There's just seemingly no fine tuning between CBs and GK.

Generally, Cech is horrible. He gets beaten far too easily when shot at and he's apparently lost all ability to organize a defence. He's cost the team quite some points and needs urgent replacing.

Chambers is not a RB. Holding isn't good enough for Arsenal right now, the lad needs a loan. Mustafi is a solid player, but far too rash and headless when under pressure. His proactive style doesn't suit the needs of the backline right now. Someone like Mertesacker would be better, as Mustafi's approach of trying to do everything on his own gets him into stupid 50/50 situations and adds to the chaos at the back. He looks a lot better when playing for Germany. I think the lack of structure and organization really gets the better of him. Just reinforces how good a pairing Koscielny/Mertesacker were.

The Xhaka Elneny combination in midfield doesn't provide enough movement and initative from central midfield, especially without Özil in front of them. Concerning movement, during buildup, there's too less off it from the whole team.

Aubameyang on the wing works. He's been used by Tuchel ghosting in to great success in some games. But he was playing on the right at BVB. Now Wenger sticks a left winger, Iwobi, on the right, and Auba, who's proven he can be useful on the right, onto the left. Why?

The drop off from first to second team, or even the 1.5 team so to speak, is too big. A lot of the lesser players work out quite good when they're on field with the best club players. If the best are rested, they're unable to reproduce these good performances and that's a problem. Iwobi, Elneny, Xhaka, Chambers are nowhere close to being able to impose themselves on games like Özil, Ramsey, Koscielny and Mkhitaryan can. I want to exlude the forwards cause they're at the end of things, without sufficient service, they're isolated.

 

[mavelous]

in hindsight would've been a better to give a debut to Nketiah, and why why why oh why for the love of God didn't AMN start RB? if Wengz really wanted to stick with Chambers for his confidence/momentum, why not go 3 CBs?

 

[GeorgiaGunner]

Didn't watch the game, but not too bothered. Eggs are all in the EL basket -- we should play the kids from here on out.

 

[Jasard]

How can you wonder why we are resting players in a pointless game??

 

[mavelous]

How can you wonder why we are resting players in a pointless game??

You don't have to wonder if you accept the reality that we may really have no European football next season.

that being said, you may well wonder whether we need european football anyway if we just keep getting humiliated every season.

 

[marting]

How can you wonder why we are resting players in a pointless game??

Pretty simple really, we haven’t needed to do it in the champions league before, not to the point of having 5 or 6 not even in the squad considering they have 4 days before the Europa game. The team usually goes all the way in the fa cup with a pretty strong team, we didn’t need to rest players for that.

When your away form is so dire that your job SHOULD be on the line, what u rest players? Did the boys work so hard for that 2 all draw midweek to need a rest?

Common man, if our away form continues we will finish behind Burnley. Have some damn pride wenger people are paying there money to watch this.

 

[marting]

I

I hope they win too mate. I get your point. Maybe it's my frustration making me write daft stuff

But I don't think we have a genuine chance to do it. We've never outplayed a better team than us in the recent history over the course of 2 games in Europe. I'd give us a 10% chance to qualify for the final.
In the case we get knocked out by A.Madrid I'm starting to hope it would be bad enough, to put Wenger/the board in an unsustainable position where they would have no other choice but move on.

I'm afraid if we get knocked out by Madrid on away goals for instance, they will use this as an excuse to keep going with our current setup by saying "we are in the right direction, we're close from a top top team".

think we will be beaten comfortably over 2 legs as well, as much as I love arsenal and I want to win, losing this with united away in the middle of it and our last home game against Burnley after, might just do enough for the club to take action. We are lottery having to go backwards to get him out so we can go forwards again.

 

[The_Playmaker]

I don't understand how Wenger can watch Iwobi in training everyday and not realise he is rubbish from the right hand side. I bet our next game sees Nketiah debut. There is no logic behind any of his decisions. Why not give Nelson a chance to build confidence? Someone who is actually comfortable on the right.

 

[GunnerBP]

This match shows how bad of a coach Wenger is. He puts a lot of trust and confidence in his players, and that's great, but he never gives us a tactical foundation for success. He's dependent on world class players making the difference, so when we rotate and rest our best players, we have matches like this.

Our defense looked disjointed today, but that is just how our defense looks under Wenger. Unless we have someone world class in the back like Kos, we look out of sorts. All of our defenders looked bad today, and I'd say it is mostly coaching and not talent that's the cause of this.

However, the worst part of this match was the attack. It honestly doesn't make any sense that we didn't play with a 4-4-2 today. The EPL is kind of pointless at this point, and we have three strikers in good form right now, so we should be trying out formations to get them on the pitch together.

PEA and Laca should have been playing centrally today with Iwobi at AM with Elneny and Willock at B2B, and Xhaka as the DLP.

Instead we had PEA and Iwobi on the wings, and Willock and Elneny not sure what they were supposed to do.

Such an easy decision to make in a pretty meaningless match, yet he can't do it.

 

[Coolin]

So many players I’m tired of. I hate the way Chambers knocks it out for a throw when he’s under no pressure. I hate the fact we bought Rob Holding. I hate that every Iwobi shot ends up on the motorway. I hate that Monreal offers nothing in attack. I’m sick of Mustafi not doing his job. I’m tired of Cech not bailing us out like other keepers do.

Struggling to like half of these players. Need 8 new starters over summer. A whole new midfield and a whole new defence.

 

[Batman]

Sven is really going to have to earn his money this summer. He did a nice job in January and he's got everything stacked against him with the World Cup this summer. To let the club fall into such a state of disrepair is absolutely unacceptable. Far too many players who have no business wearing our shirt who are continually given games to go out and embarrass us in. All of this before we even get to the mess that is the manager whose fetish for trying to fit square pegs into round holes and then making excuses when it doesn't work is destroying the club on and off the pitch.

 

[mavelous]

We have a great first 11, albeit not always fit together, have some decent talent that came through (at least to the fringes), and a few more who could potentially carve out a great career.

But the problems are rooted much deeper than just lack of quality or tactical ineptitude (which is only getting exacerbated among the greater surrounding mess). The farther reaching malaise starts from the expectations of players - they have been conditioned on some horrible psychological scars, and even worse, the apathy stemming from the certitude that nothing will change because the manager will just keep carrying on.

and for sure they will have no fear of losing their spot, or facing the wrath of teammates/manager/club, or just the good ol' hatred of losing. the entire club - players, staff, personnel, fans, board, manager - have gotten desensitized to failure, and the next embarrassement is now more like time bomb if not an expectation. you just never know how much further we can descend - a few years back, missing out on CL was unthinkable, let alone for consecutive years.

just what's next? Özil gets nutmegged by a sundayleaguer from Uzbekistan? Wenger kicks a water bottle in the ref's face? Sp**s finish 20+ points ahead of us? i'm all doom and gloom, but no other failure under Arsène Wenger will surprise me.