Hey Mebe, Thanks bro lol work kept me super busy and Emery's reign was just too deflating. I'm just glad there is hope based on the fact that Arteta actually has a plan. I'm excited to see what comes next. Hope all has been well with you man!
Thoroughly enjoyed the match. I have to say though that I can’t wait for this “play the game in their third” football Arteta is preaching comes to fruition. At 1-0 and we are spraying square balls across the back line, my heart is literally pounding. That, and Arteta will have to work on how to play with a lead and the ball. Fair play that the defense were up to the task, but will they be against the watfords and burnleys? I fcukkng saw ozil win a header against Harry McGuire. He hasn’t played this hard in what, 4 years? Falling in love with him again I have to say. So smooth on the ball, such awareness. Watching him run his socks off for 90 mins is like watching a super model clean my house and cook me dinner—total package. I think Pepe was key to this match myself. While he does give the ball away sometimes, he is an outstanding outlet. The defenders just freeze and give him a yard when he gets the ball allowing us to push up and be in position to attack and counter press if we lose the ball. This is something we needed against Chelsea and haven’t had since Sanchez. I thought Auba wasn’t too great today, but did his part with effort. If he and Laca had been sharper we would have scored 4-5 goals easy. Laca was better than against Chelsea, but still rusty. Another game for home and maybe some rotation for both will help.
I’ll back you on this one. Saka I think has a future at forward, or at least has a another year or two to test those waters. If AMN doesn’t embrace fullback/wingback, he’s a moron honestly. He only needs to look up the pitch to see what a winger at a top club looks like and he won’t be that. He could do a job at CM, but I don’t think he has the passing range or the touch in small space. But he has the opportunity to be a top fullback. And if arteta plans on using fullbacks like pep, then he can really make a career out of it.
So clearly Raul should be told to just go organize emails because no one I respect for their opinions on football thought the Emery hire was a good one, except Gary Neville, SMH
There's a rumor from some guys in Private Equity that Kroenke's are planning to sell LOL Nah man I was just super busy and at the same time turned off from Emery's reign of error
I really hope aubamabloodclatyang will stay until summer Looks like Xhaka has been talked out of a Jan move
The Ozil turnaround really illustrates how little the pundit class understand what high performance really is. We get deluged with nonsense about attitude, intensity, grit etc- as if all that is needed is for the players to decide to work harder But without the overall purpose & frameworks joining up all their efforts everything falls apart. Suddenly multiple guys who supposedly had no future look very competitive when given structures they believe in, by a charismatic and intelligent leader. This is also why Freddie couldn't do it himself despite being a great communicator. He is not on top of the detail But actually we all know this stuff from our working lives You can work bloody hard and have a great attitude but when the bosses are complete tools, you quickly end up with a crap culture where everyone looks out for no 1
Yeah. He had Shaw pooing his pants nearly the entire time he was on. I like what Arteta is doing with Nelson thus far, and I understood the subbing him on yesterday as Pepe seemed to be tiring a bit. But you could really notice a difference almost immediately in how Shaw started getting forward more when he no longer had Pepe to worry about. And that's saying a lot given that Nelson certainly works hard and isn't exactly slow. Yep. Neither were sharp. Laca missed one or two good chances and Auba killed at least one or two counters with some poor passing/decision making. They both worked their socks off, just wasn't coming off for them. One thing I'll add about Lacazette. Someone posted during the match that Lacazette was embellishing contact. Based on the time of the post, I couldn't tell exactly which incident they were referring to. But right around that time was when Lacazette was grabbed and then nearly tripped by Maguire but kept his feet and barely missed scoring with the outside of his boot. If Laca had gone down there, it would've been justified, and I think a PK would've been awarded. So that was an instance when he actually was punished for not being cynical.
The UK media is really a pox upon the sport of Football. They dumb football down to something devoid of anything other than "workrate" or "passion" and even some of the ex players feed into that nonsense. Some of the worst offenders are ex Arsenal which is really annoying.
Very good tactical analysis We finally have that magic spacing. It's interesting the extent that Arteta brings an IP download from City who have excelled in these areas NEW: A look at Arsenal's first half last night and what Arteta has the team doing. For @arseblog: https://t.co/aAbIyXdanT— Lewis (@LGAmbrose) January 2, 2020
Very few elite athletes understand and can articulate their game well. welcome back, we gon make em mad like the old days
teally cool breakdown. Amn being a cm really helps slot in there and i noticed that especially vs Utd helps outnumber and support defensively
yep, lots of thick ex pros with no education. Just natural ability, arrogance and ‘banter’ some players are a bit more educated but even elite guys sometimes spout shite
So far we have installed the fundamentals of Pep-lite. The changes are fascinating obviously but I'm even more interested to see how, in the coming year, Arteta might differ from the tactical approach of his mentor. If Arteta is able to bring his own unique stylings and personality to this team, we'll know we have someone special and not just someone who, as you say, is basically giving us a Man City oppo dump.
The two facts that 1. Gary Neville was working in the shadow of *Emery* at Valencia, and couldn't get out from under Emery's legacy and was thus over-awed by him, AND 2. That Gary is the leading light/great savior of English football punditry should tell you everything you need to know.
Teaching Xhaka to use his weak foot is like Pep teaching Sterling to open up his body to receive passes in the box to finish Surprising that a professional needs that lesson in either instance, but both Arteta and Pep saw it needed to be done and got it done! Pro-active managers
The one-footedness in this squad has been driving me mad, so this was nice. I also saw ozil use his right foot more than usually as well. Not to be a Debbie-downer, but still plenty for arteta to work out even in attack. We had one shot from midfield the whole game. As elite as our strikers can be and as promising as our wingers are, we need some goal threat from CM.
i stopped being surprised with that when i saw blurbs from . . . i wanna say it was guardiola's book? about how he was shocked how little . . . boateng, i think? knew when he joined the team guardiola's team.