UCL - AC Milan Vs Arsenal 19:45 15/02/12 ITV1

[Airknight]

70 minutes, i don't think i need to watch more, the team just lacked any drive to attack, Milan never looked in danger. After an encouraging 7-1 and a good win against an in form Sunderland this was an absolutely depressing performance.

Wenger's worst decision was thinking Gibbs was ready imo, major part of our defence looking so weak, and keeping Ramsey on of course, but considering the alternatives is mildly justified.

 

[AliBabaBrewer]

Am I the only person who sees the logic in starting Rosicky?
Granted, it backfired immensely, but everyone's talking as if it was made with an attacking view in mind.

Gibbs hasn't played in months. So when his first game back is against AC Milan away, who do you think could give him the most protection? Really?

Arshavin - Famed for his lack of defensive cover
Oxlade-Chamberlain - Young and attacking and not very good at covering back
Henry - Striker
Benayoun - Perhaps, but to be honest I've not seen enough of him to know
Walcott - OK at covering, but would be played on the wrong wing
Rosicky - The best of all 6 to help the defender out.

It made sense. Granted, it didn't work and offensively Rosicky was crap all game. But if anything, I thought Milan attacked our right side more.

With Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs on the same flank, can anyone honestly say that that wouldn't look our weaklink defensively before the game?? That Milan wouldn't've tried to exploit two of our most inexperienced players? Because as a manager, I'd've definitely seen that as a strong possibility.

Not saying it was a fantastic call, because it made us toothless up front, but by no means can I say it was a rediculously unwarranted call.

 

[Rain Dance]

@Alibaba & Airknight

I second your opinion on there is no mistake starting Rosicky to cover Gibbs defensively.
Most team when playing away in CL tends to play defensively, and given the information on the pitch situation in Italy in general, playing defense would be a wise choice (those who didn't know,in the last few weeks several Serie A matches has been cancelled cause of snow, the bad pitch should have been predicted beforehand)

However, although playing Rosicky to act as defensive cover, Wenger played Gibbs who is obviously a very attacking fullback ON his comeback, ramsey who is also attacking minded, and I am sure you can point out more about his offensive choices
If he wanted to go full all-out defense, the mid should be Coq - Song behind Arteta with Rozza on the left wing while defense I would choose Miquel on LB, or Verm on LB although that means DJ as CB

I think he did made a blunder. not by playing Rozza on the flank, and I'll ignore Walcott for now ( I can't judge him atm)
but by playing Gibbs who just back from long absent and not ready
and by sticking to half hearted tactic, half attacking and half defending

 

[dysphoria]

@Alibaba & Airknight

I second your opinion on there is no mistake starting Rosicky to cover Gibbs defensively.
Most team when playing away in CL tends to play defensively, and given the information on the pitch situation in Italy in general, playing defense would be a wise choice (those who didn't know,in the last few weeks several Serie A matches has been cancelled cause of snow, the bad pitch should have been predicted beforehand)

However, although playing Rosicky to act as defensive cover, Wenger played Gibbs who is obviously a very attacking fullback ON his comeback, ramsey who is also attacking minded, and I am sure you can point out more about his offensive choices
If he wanted to go full all-out defense, the mid should be Coq - Song behind Arteta with Rozza on the left wing while defense I would choose Miquel on LB, or Verm on LB although that means DJ as CB

I think he did made a blunder. not by playing Rozza on the flank, and I'll ignore Walcott for now ( I can't judge him atm)
but by playing Gibbs who just back from long absent and not ready
and by sticking to half hearted tactic, half attacking and half defending

the onus was on us to attack really, we had the advantage of scoring away goals and we've all known for some time now that regardless of who plays, our team doesn't defend that well either. By playing rosicky on the flanks, not only did wenger nullify our attacking threat, he also handed milan the advantage because the moment we started off in reverse by failing to play a quick attacking game with width, all milan had to do was to stick with their gameplan which was to press us hard, drop quickly and look for space between our midfield and defenders to exploit.

I don't know what was said in the dressing room before kick off but whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't inspiring, not only did we not put in effort, our lads also looked lost. Almost seemed like as if the the lads didn't know what they had to do, even players like arteta and sagna seemed nervous, the few times we did attack, we ended up slowing it right down, milan just dropped quickly and effectively, gave us no space to exploit and we had absolutely no answers to that.

 

[Anzac]

I just find the whole idea of deciding who starts as WF based upon providing cover defence for the FB more than a little fraked up.
No wonder RVP was so isolated & why we looked like a poor man's 451/4411.

The FBs only 'need' cover because we allow them to join the attack in the final 3rd;
we only allow them to join the attack so as to provide width & the 'bail out option / cross';
we only do that because we get the WFs to cut inside to link with the AMC in support of the lone striker;
we wouldn't 'need' the WFs to cover IF the FBs concentrated on defending & didn't get so high so quickly (moreso than either Barca or Dortmund);
and same IF our midfield actually worked as 3 CMs & even the 2 provided coverage to the flanks, as opposed to playing narrow to allow Song to play B2B between a DLP & AMC.

In short our patterns and the roles are frakked.

And if this is AW making match day tactical adjustments then he really DOESN'T do tactics,
as all he did was compromise our play by changing the type of player utilised in fundamentally the same patterns and roles - little more than when he says we finished any game with 4 strikers on the field = too bad that 3 of them were utilised as WFs/AMs.

 

[Rain Dance]

@Alibaba & Airknight

I second your opinion on there is no mistake starting Rosicky to cover Gibbs defensively.
Most team when playing away in CL tends to play defensively, and given the information on the pitch situation in Italy in general, playing defense would be a wise choice (those who didn't know,in the last few weeks several Serie A matches has been cancelled cause of snow, the bad pitch should have been predicted beforehand)

However, although playing Rosicky to act as defensive cover, Wenger played Gibbs who is obviously a very attacking fullback ON his comeback, ramsey who is also attacking minded, and I am sure you can point out more about his offensive choices
If he wanted to go full all-out defense, the mid should be Coq - Song behind Arteta with Rozza on the left wing while defense I would choose Miquel on LB, or Verm on LB although that means DJ as CB

I think he did made a blunder. not by playing Rozza on the flank, and I'll ignore Walcott for now ( I can't judge him atm)
but by playing Gibbs who just back from long absent and not ready
and by sticking to half hearted tactic, half attacking and half defending

the onus was on us to attack really, we had the advantage of scoring away goals and we've all known for some time now that regardless of who plays, our team doesn't defend that well either. By playing rosicky on the flanks, not only did wenger nullify our attacking threat, he also handed milan the advantage because the moment we started off in reverse by failing to play a quick attacking game with width, all milan had to do was to stick with their gameplan which was to press us hard, drop quickly and look for space between our midfield and defenders to exploit.

That's what I mean by half hearted tactic, if he wanted to press the attack then attack, that would give a little reason for playing Gibbs even-though he is just back from a long injury

Note that I only discuss left flank only,
Walcott case I have no idea what's going on

 

[celestis]

Am I the only person who sees the logic in starting Rosicky?
Granted, it backfired immensely, but everyone's talking as if it was made with an attacking view in mind.

Gibbs hasn't played in months. So when his first game back is against AC Milan away, who do you think could give him the most protection? Really?

Arshavin - Famed for his lack of defensive cover
Oxlade-Chamberlain - Young and attacking and not very good at covering back
Henry - Striker
Benayoun - Perhaps, but to be honest I've not seen enough of him to know
Walcott - OK at covering, but would be played on the wrong wing
Rosicky - The best of all 6 to help the defender out.

It made sense. Granted, it didn't work and offensively Rosicky was crap all game. But if anything, I thought Milan attacked our right side more.

With Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs on the same flank, can anyone honestly say that that wouldn't look our weaklink defensively before the game?? That Milan wouldn't've tried to exploit two of our most inexperienced players? Because as a manager, I'd've definitely seen that as a strong possibility.

Not saying it was a fantastic call, because it made us toothless up front, but by no means can I say it was a rediculously unwarranted call.

No your'e not ... Rosicky was one of our better players without actually doing anything - quite an achievement .

 

[celestis]

Am I the only person who sees the logic in starting Rosicky?
Granted, it backfired immensely, but everyone's talking as if it was made with an attacking view in mind.

Gibbs hasn't played in months. So when his first game back is against AC Milan away, who do you think could give him the most protection? Really?

Arshavin - Famed for his lack of defensive cover
Oxlade-Chamberlain - Young and attacking and not very good at covering back
Henry - Striker
Benayoun - Perhaps, but to be honest I've not seen enough of him to know
Walcott - OK at covering, but would be played on the wrong wing
Rosicky - The best of all 6 to help the defender out.

It made sense. Granted, it didn't work and offensively Rosicky was crap all game. But if anything, I thought Milan attacked our right side more.

With Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs on the same flank, can anyone honestly say that that wouldn't look our weaklink defensively before the game?? That Milan wouldn't've tried to exploit two of our most inexperienced players? Because as a manager, I'd've definitely seen that as a strong possibility.

Not saying it was a fantastic call, because it made us toothless up front, but by no means can I say it was a rediculously unwarranted call.

No your'e not ... Rosicky was one of our better players without actually doing anything - quite an achievement .

 

[dysphoria]

I just find the whole idea of deciding who starts as WF based upon providing cover defence for the FB more than a little fraked up.
No wonder RVP was so isolated & why we looked like a poor man's 451/4411.

The FBs only 'need' cover because we allow them to join the attack in the final 3rd;
we only allow them to join the attack so as to provide width & the 'bail out option / cross';
we only do that because we get the WFs to cut inside to link with the AMC in support of the lone striker;
we wouldn't 'need' the WFs to cover IF the FBs concentrated on defending & didn't get so high so quickly (moreso than either Barca or Dortmund);
and same IF our midfield actually worked as 3 CMs & even the 2 provided coverage to the flanks, as opposed to playing narrow to allow Song to play B2B between a DLP & AMC.

In short our patterns and the roles are frakked.

i don't think there are any designated 'roles' within the squad that wenger switches to obtain 3 points, rather, i think wenger lets the players sort it out amongst themselves to play as they individually are capable of and hope that a sum of combination of their strengths works in tandem towards how he wants the team to play. Thats why many other manages are capable of setting their teams out in specific ways to stop us rather effectively, when many of our players ultimately have 0 end product and are quite similar in the sense that they all only know/are trained to play only in 1 style of football, there is very little room for tactics to work for us.

most teams play a certain specific way when they face us, press hard, drop deep in numbers and play on the counter, we however seem capable of carrying out 1 and only 1 method of playing only, when we're unable to play in such a way effectively, we look absolutely clueless on how to proceed. One good way to summarize how we play would be to look at theo, he represents our shortcomings quite well, when he is allowed to play in a certain and specific way, he is very effective and dangerous, when he isn't, he looks absolutely clueless and is very incapable of doing much damage. This is similarly true for the style/role/pattern for our team as well, if we're allowed to play we can play well, if we're not, we usually quite poor.

 

[Anzac]

Speaking of Theo I thought the ESPN team made a great observation of him as a footballer = as an opposition manager they AREN'T worried about him as a player on OR off the ball,
but rather they ARE concious of the space & cover behind the FB / defence.

Close/compete for the space & Walcott is nullified as a player,
as he lacks the close control or passing ability to hurt you.

 

[Anzac]

I just find the whole idea of deciding who starts as WF based upon providing cover defence for the FB more than a little fraked up.
No wonder RVP was so isolated & why we looked like a poor man's 451/4411.

The FBs only 'need' cover because we allow them to join the attack in the final 3rd;
we only allow them to join the attack so as to provide width & the 'bail out option / cross';
we only do that because we get the WFs to cut inside to link with the AMC in support of the lone striker;
we wouldn't 'need' the WFs to cover IF the FBs concentrated on defending & didn't get so high so quickly (moreso than either Barca or Dortmund);
and same IF our midfield actually worked as 3 CMs & even the 2 provided coverage to the flanks, as opposed to playing narrow to allow Song to play B2B between a DLP & AMC.

In short our patterns and the roles are frakked.

i don't think there are any designated 'roles' within the squad that wenger switches to obtain 3 points, rather, i think wenger lets the players sort it out amongst themselves to play as they individually are capable of and hope that a sum of combination of their strengths works in tandem towards how he wants the team to play. Thats why many other manages are capable of setting their teams out in specific ways to stop us rather effectively, when many of our players ultimately have 0 end product and are quite similar in the sense that they all only know/are trained to play only in 1 style of football, there is very little room for tactics to work for us.

most teams play a certain specific way when they face us, press hard, drop deep in numbers and play on the counter, we however seem capable of carrying out 1 and only 1 method of playing only, when we're unable to play in such a way effectively, we look absolutely clueless on how to proceed. One good way to summarize how we play would be to look at theo, he represents our shortcomings quite well, when he is allowed to play in a certain and specific way, he is very effective and dangerous, when he isn't, he looks absolutely clueless and is very incapable of doing much damage. This is similarly true for the style/role/pattern for our team as well, if we're allowed to play we can play well, if we're not, we usually quite poor.

Agreed - we play the same patterns & roles,
AW looks to switch the TYPE of play in those roles / positions so as to strengthen an aspect of our overall play - defence / midfield / possession / transition / pace / direct goal threat.
It's why we saw Bentdner come on as a sub & play out wide rather than joining a change of shape to a 2 or 3 man striker combo.

 

[dysphoria]

Speaking of Theo I thought the ESPN team made a great observation of him as a footballer = as an opposition manager they AREN'T worried about him as a player on OR off the ball,
but rather they ARE concious of the space & cover behind the FB / defence.

Close/compete for the space & Walcott is nullified as a player,
as he lacks the close control or passing ability to hurt you.

whats worse is that when they only need to be aware of the space and cover behind the FB to nullify theo so they simply play deep and press, this also ends up nullifying our entire game plan all at once because since we lack any players who can actually consistently pick out pin point passes from deep anymore, everything stagnates, slows down and because we have no real alternative gameplan, everything then falls nicely into place for the opposition. Just look at our winner for the sunderland game, it came about after 1 simple thing that we're almost always incapable of, putting a dangerous ball into the box to be attacked, took us until injury time to actually use that method which most other teams use very frequently.

 

[Glovegun]

I think Mertesacker was a big miss. I've suspected for a while that Vermaelen and Koscielny are too similar to play together in the middle consistently. I love Vermaelen, we all do, but he needs to calm down, think, and watch the game. He's too rash. Good defending isn't all about throwing yourself at crosses and hurtling into challenges. If it was then Lee Cattermole would be playing at centre-back.

 

[Braydz]

Our worst Champions league defeat, what a poor effort the players made. What's worse is that the team playing was pretty close to our first XI. Just sums up the season really, the 8-2, the 4-3 and now this, havn't been this disapointed in Arsenal for a long time. Best we can do is get behind them and hope we can win the FA cup while retaining fourth, would at least make this season bearable.

 

[Anzac]

Speaking of Theo I thought the ESPN team made a great observation of him as a footballer = as an opposition manager they AREN'T worried about him as a player on OR off the ball,
but rather they ARE concious of the space & cover behind the FB / defence.

Close/compete for the space & Walcott is nullified as a player,
as he lacks the close control or passing ability to hurt you.

whats worse is that when they only need to be aware of the space and cover behind the FB to nullify theo so they simply play deep and press, this also ends up nullifying our entire game plan all at once because since we lack any players who can actually consistently pick out pin point passes from deep anymore, everything stagnates, slows down and because we have no real alternative gameplan, everything then falls nicely into place for the opposition. Just look at our winner for the sunderland game, it came about after 1 simple thing that we're almost always incapable of, putting a dangerous ball into the box to be attacked, took us until injury time to actually use that method which most other teams use very frequently.

I really DON'T understand why we aren't more aware of our distances & spatial awareness - hang on, I know why = because AW DOSEN'T drill the team but relies upon player intelligence to work it out. :roll:

Just because a team drops deep DOSEN'T mean we have to accept the deeper line to play off the last man = wonder what would happen IF the lone striker held position BETWEEN the lines????
As for the WFs = if we want them to run AT defenders then they still need to be able to recieve the ball to enable them to do so - regardless of where the defence is setting from.

Having said all that essentially we lack players who are willing to take responsibility on the field.

 

[dpt49]

Having said all that essentially we lack players who are willing to take responsibility on the field.

I don't think it's so much that we lack players who are willing to take responsibility on the field, it's we lack the quality of players who are willing to take responsibility.

In previous seasons we have had players that can turn a game round, make things happen and lead by example.

This teams lack that, and the lack of match winning players that can do these things has been highlighted this season after the sale of Cesc and Nasri and not being replaced by similar quality.

Players like Ramsey, Walcott and Rosicky are no where near that standard.

 

[DiamondGooner]

Should have ended 6-2. Abbiati made a wonderful save on RVP and the no-call when Mexes yanked RVP down was criminal.

Played well:
Song
Henry

Played well in patches:
Rosicky
Ox
RVP

Very very poor:
Arteta
Ramsey
Gibbs
Kos

Total embarrassments:
Sagna
Vermaelen
Djourou
Walcott
Sczez


It was like Verms forgot how to play football. And Sagna's effort on the 2nd goal was the worst embarrassment of the evening. These are two of the top defenders in the world. What the hell happened?

Good post I agree fully with your summary, Verms was a mess last night on the other hand Robihnio impressed me greatly he's still a great little player, I'd like to have him at arsenal.

I'm still refusing to blame Wenger though for this one, the players just didn't show up last night and a very big concern is our offense again.

Our midfielders cannot find our forwards because they're always buried to deep amongst the defenders, they need to do what Milans forwards were doing and move and find space, break in good positions and make themselves available.

Walcott needs to take a long hard look at himself, this guy cannot play on the wing and needs to either demand a central role or leave because he's falling apart this season.

Defence was not worth mentioning last night, that was awful.

 

[Rain Dance]

I don't think it's so much that we lack players who are willing to take responsibility on the field, it's we lack the quality of players who are willing to take responsibility.

In previous seasons we have had players that can turn a game round, make things happen and lead by example.

This teams lack that, and the lack of match winning players that can do these things has been highlighted this season after the sale of Cesc and Nasri and not being replaced by similar quality.

Players like Ramsey, Walcott and Rosicky are no where near that standard.

Lack of Quality is the cause?
No, Overdepency on quality players is what causes this. Last season, everytime we got a problem we throw everything at Cesc and hoped, the season before that Arshavin and Cesc, this season RvP

Let me put this into an easier analogy, Argentina has a team full of match winning players but their overeliance on Messi is so sickening that if Messi doesn't perform so does the team. ring any bell?
Swansea/Zambia has no star players but they are a TEAM. They don't rely on 1 player but their togetherness.

Arsenal lack team spirit.

 

[dpt49]

@ Rain Dance.
I agree.
I don't know what the average age of the AC Milan team were last night, but it must have been around 30, or more, and they out played us as a team.

They have the three things that we have lacked, as a team, all season.
They played with maturity, self belief and a quality in depth we can only dream of.

How many of our players, that played in that game, would have got into their starting
line up. Players like Walcott and Ramsey wouldn't even get on the bench.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

I think Mertesacker was a big miss. I've suspected for a while that Vermaelen and Koscielny are too similar to play together in the middle consistently.

Interesting point. Most would agree that individually, Vermaelen and Koscielny are superior to Mertesacker, but obviously that doesn't mean that they make the best partnership (case in point, Toure-Gallas).

Actually thinking about it, Mertesacker's injury might have cost us big last night. If our back four had been Sagna-Mertesacker-Koscielny-Vermaelen, it's possible that Arsène would've started Chamberlain instead of Rosicky (Vermaelen not needing to be 'babysat'). We would've had a back four who were more familiar with each other and a more dangerous wide player. Interesting to think about.