I'm not one to complain about the commentators, as we often deserve the criticism we get, but today's commentator was absolutely dreadful. A bitter 13 year old spurs fan would have been more professional.
For real - he took every opportunity he could to moan about how much he dislikes the way Arsenal do everything.
Kolasinac down the left was a problem today. Way too many immediate sideways and backward passes from him when there was space in front. We missed a bunch of attacking opportunities because he doesn't want to take the space.
Usually don’t agree with you, but your posts in this thread were spot on. Fair play to Southampton. They were excellent and very well prepared. Alexis dropping so deep played right into their hands.
Ozil too. I saw him back with Xhaka quite a bit. I think both he and Sanchez were very frustrated today. In our inability to break them down. Our two superstars were full of sound and fury, but… Edit: actually they weren't so full of sound and fury… nobody was on our team.
Alexis and Ozil dropped so deep because Ramsey, who is supposed to be a midfielder, is playing next to Lacazette. Why Ramsey cannot play in his f'ing position after 10 years is unbelievable.
It's games like this that explain why Ozil and Alexis were allowed to move on by Real and Barca. As spectacular as they can be often their games don't fit into the style being played on any given day. eta - the same criticism can be made of Cesc
Summed up when an injured Ramsey, in the box, takes the ball thats crossed in perfectly for the left footed Giroud, and Ramsey does some back heel flick towards goal. that short of the keeper being hit by a block of ice or lightning would save 100/100 times.
He's playing exactly how he did at the beginning of the year when we were awful. It's like being a goal down makes his brain go to shit and he panics and pushes as high as he can. Complete lack of discipline (I wonder from where). Then tons of people are on Xhaka for his play, yet if you need your DM to provide your offense, you're doing football wrong. He didn't play well, but if you believe your deepest midfield is the reason you aren't scoring against a team that is bunkering, I got news for you.
Have not visited in a while but tough to watch. Kos gave away the ball at least 5 times from the back...must have been exhausted. Sanchez was not sharp. Xhaxa...just don't see why this guy starts..slow not a play maker nor enforcer. Wellbeck was a ghost...please sell him to Everton.
Alexis Sanchez lost possession 32 times today. Two short of the most by an Arsenal player in a single game this season which was Alexis (34) v Man Utd.— Orbinho (@Orbinho) December 10, 2017
If Özil or Ramsey played like Alexis has this season, they’d have been strung up by their sacks by now.
Yeah this. A lot of Arsenal fans have rationalized themselves into believing that Ozil and Alexis are right next to Neymar and Ronaldo as world class players, we're going to see it again any moment now. And in some world that might be true, but not for us. Wenger has turned them into utterly pedestrian players.
This is the perfect to the United game really. You can say that we had a good performance (same w the Chelsea game earlier for that matter), and in another situation that might matter but not for us. We didn't win, we didn't get the results we needed. Things could be different if we had a different outcome in games like today. Performance was mediocre, the result was a bit fortunate. If we were taking care of business in these games, you could say the United game was just bad luck and move forward. But we're not so we can't.
It's getting to the point where if we're two midfielders and three forwards, we're best off w JFW and AMN. Let Alexis drop deep to get the ball if he wants to.
You cannot replace his Pashun and how busy he appears on tv even though he actually doesn't run that much. It's critical.
He's a high risk high reward player. The turnovers aren't a good reason to get worked up about Alexis. A better reason to get worked up is that he drops so deep (though I wonder if he's been instructed to do this).
By no means whatsoever do I attribute our insipid performance (and insipid is probably too kind a term) on S'oton's time wasting, but was it my imagination or did all the ball boys completely disappear for the entire second half?
Second half overlapped with their Christmas party. We need to give more credit to Southampton though - this was more a case of them playing well (and covering the wide areas well - something United didn't do).
That announcer was a dick, but he wasn't wrong when he said it could have been 3-0 after 10 minutes. They defended really well and got in the way of anything adding up to a good chance.