They had skyrtl, Lovren, and Sakho. All of those as good or better than mustafi. Lovren and Sokratis probably a wash. Toure didn’t play that much, but he was better than mustafi or xhaka at CB. He also had Cline and Moreno who played almost every game and both better defenders than Leicsteiner and Kola. Benteke is no PEA, but with Coutinho, Firmino, Lallana and Milner with him I don’t see their front 4/5 as much worse than what we’ve been able to start lately. Dyche? Are you serious? And what exactly are we “seeing now”. We pounded spurs, Huddersfield, and Burnley In the league. We had a stinker at Brighton but should have taken the points but for individual errors from a thin back line just as at OT, at soton, and now pool.
We pounded Spurs because Emery brought on two players he has been reluctant to start at half time and Huddlefield and Burnley are in the relegation zone, so Arsenal should pound them. But I'm not sure I consider matches where Arsenal only generate 11 and 14 shots, respectively, to be poundings. I'm not concerned with the 5-1 loss to Liverpool they are the better team. My reservations about Emery stem from the problems with chance creation. The number chances per game that Arsenal are creating are about the same the number of chances per game created by Mourinho's United, for much the same reason. Emery's primary focus appears to be the defensive side of the game. He has started games with three defensive midfielders. In addition, he has gotten into the heads of Arsenal's two most creative midfielders, they don't know what to expect, including when they are going to play. He has shaken their confidence and to some degree their play reflects that lack of confidence. If you want a correllary, look at the difference in Pogba's play after the change in managers. DaPrince84 sees Emery as the Spanish Sean Dyche, I'm concerned that he is Mourinho light. There is very little creativity in this team.
A lot of this is because the best players don't naturally fit into a cohesive team. We've got a lot of players who simply lack versatility.
Agree with Emery when he says Arsenal should take inspiration from Liverpool’s progression in last few years. But that’s gonna require a real shift in approach at ArsenalThis was the Liverpool v Arsenal XI’s a few months after Klopp took charge.Arsenal have the stronger squad pic.twitter.com/5pqVpoWThm— Socanalysis (@SocanalysisHQ) December 30, 2018 Since that game Liverpool have spent ~£392m (~£139 net)Arsenal have spent ~£304m (~£150m net)So there hasn’t been a huge difference in spending. But now Liverpool have a far stronger squad. It’s totally flipped. pic.twitter.com/lRNwNm1DnO— Socanalysis (@SocanalysisHQ) December 30, 2018
I disagree about the smoke and mirrors part. I think it's about Holding, like I wrote in another comment. With Holding in the team and playing well, we were legitimately better than the teams we were beating, including Spurs. Without him, things fell apart pretty quickly. I don't think you can blame Emery for that, except to the extent that it was Emery's fault that he got injured. Without him, our options at the back are Mustafi, Lichsteiner, and Larry K, and even playing 3 cb's isn't enough to shore up the defense.
Sort of. There isn't very much Ozil-style "creativity", but lots of goal-scoring and in fact we have a pretty good record so far. And if we could have kept the form we had a month ago, I think it would have gotten even better. Part of the realization of the squad we currently have is the idea that if we dominate possession and space, we can score a lot of goals without a lot of "creativity", like Iwobi to AMN yesterday. And frankly we haven't scored enough of that kind of goal this season.
Yeah but Liverpool also had the benefit of better pipeline from the youth ranks as well. I think we're catching up, but they've got the consequent advantage at the senior level. I think Gomez, Alexander-Arnold and Robertson are from their academy or bought at a very young age. We've got AMN and Iwobi and that's it. I don't think you can fault Emery for that one.
There is a lot of goal scoring because Aubameyang has an unreal 27% conversion rate. Where would Arsenal's goal scoring be if his teammates ct Related more chances for him.
That’s was from when we played them, not the team they put out most of the season. Toure was one of their least played defenders: Lovren, Sakho and skyrtl cost them about 50m total iirc. Today, they’d cost double that i guess. So pretty similar to the three of say holding, mustafi and Sokratis would cost today. Cline and Moreno cost them about 25m combined which would be more today and not too much less than what we’d get for Bellarin and Kola. Coutinho was better than Ramsey has been lately. Ditto for ozil. Milner about the same as miki. Lallana about the same as iwobi. Firmino about the same as laca. Difference up front PEA>>Benteke/Sturridge. Midfield, not sure. Can/Lucas vs Lucas/xhaka. We edge that, but it’s not night and day. GK, Mignolet vs Leno? Again, coin toss at the moment. Except that we have 50 or more million in revenue than they do annually. With the right moves, I see no reason we can’t be where they are in a few years. We’ve already started to manage personel better than under AW IMO. Torreira has probably doubled his fee, guendouzi would command a good fee, the Nelson loan move after extension seems good business, Chambers is actually making himself useful at DM so that might turn a few quid, holding and iwobi’s stock have risen. I also recon that next season, we will have 500k/wk off the wage bill even if Mesut stays. So while we may not have huge cash for fees, there is money to take a step forward.
None of their centerbacks were good. Lovren was a disaster until VVD arrived. Those guys wouldn’t get in at Arsenal. Henderson and Can were clown shoes too. Torreira is already better than both and Xhaka has actually been good the last few seasons here. (He can be improved tho) Moreno isn’t better than Nacho (they are both Spanish and we can point to national team appearances with that) and Clyne is on Love and Hip Hop Miami more than the Liverpool pitch. Coutinho got a good fee but he was wildly inconsistent then. (Still is, story of his career tbh) Coutinho had five goals that season, Ozil has three this season and people think he washed (and Ozil isn’t a goal scorer and gas player less games) And Leno is error prone but Mignolet effing sucked lol.
Re: The evolution of the 2 teams since Klopp's arrival. Just me but I think again this goes back to Wenger's personnel moves over that time. He spent money but arguably not wisely, chasing bargains instead of building a cohesive team. Likewise he struggled in developing talent, in part because of the first point left him trying to shoehorn an imperfect roster into playing his style, often at the expense of implementing a strategy for winning a match. Conversely, Liverpool have followed S***s footsteps in buying talent in true positions of need, only they've done it better due to more money and a desire from up top to contend for honors. True, Emery could and probably should be doing better at getting the players to match his high-pressure, build from the back style, but arguably he's learning about the ability of these players and shaping his rapport with the admin team that will manage recruitment, etc. They had a great run for a spell, now they're rising though a bad patch. Let's see how they adjust. Most importantly, because of the money Wenger spent and mismanaged Emery doesn't have the same resources for near-term change unless someone takes Ozil off his hands, so the prospects of landing our own van Dijk are slim at the moment.
Yeah that's true, and that's exactly my point even. The amazing thing about this team, especially as it pertains to PEA and Lacazette, is their goalscoring record is how many of our goals are truly excellent finishes: outside the box, upper 90, inside of a post, etc, and how few of them are tap-ins like AMN scored against Liverpool. That's good and bad. It's good that our center forwards are such great finishers, certainly it's not anything that we've been guaranteed at Arsenal in recent times. But it's bad that we can't create enough chances to give them some easy finishes as well. IMO, for a short period, Emery found the answer to this (given who we had available). Play 352, Lacazette and PEA on the field together, and no "creative", or explicit #10. The defense is shored up by playing three at the back, and we get penetration on the offensive side through the wings, Kolasinac on the left, Bellerin on the right, and Ramsey doing his Ramsey thing. We're not looking for Ozil to produce one magic ball. Instead we want to control space, and with some good player movement, any of our players can hope to create relatively simple chances, again like Iwobi to AMN. The problem is, we had the players to execute this a month ago, we don't any more. This works if you have Holding and Bellerin. It doesn't work if you have to play Lichsteiner, Larry and/or AMN. As things are right now, three at the back is not enough to solve our defensive problems, and we're not getting enough penetration on the offensive side. So at this point, I think we have to look at the transfer market, as obvious as that may be for some, or facile as it is for others. We just don't have enough quality players to play the minutes we need for the fixtures we have. We're just beyond a situation where the manager or the formation is the leading variable in the equation.
Yes, quite a few of us do. Not sure if it warrants it's own thread, but if you start it, that will become clear. Their comments/opinions usually show up in our various threads, depending on the relevant topic. E.g. This week's show, where they come down clearly on the side of unloading Ozil and freeing up his wage, I would expect that might show up in the Mesut thread or possibly the Transfer thread.
I feel like it used to a lot more. Our conversations have gotten muddled over the last couple of years. For example, people complaining about how Emery is the worst manager ever show up here, in the Ozil thread, and in the Emery thread.
Not to mention hoops taking over the Other Teams thread for pages. But yes this has been an ongoing issue at BS where people tend to drift off-topic. Shoot the same thing happens in Email threads with very clearly focused subjects. Personally I'm quite disciplined that way, so my feeling is that if the convo goes more than 3-4 posts in an off-topic digression, then it should be moved to a more appropriate forum/thread. In the past, certain mods would do this regularly to keep threads "orderly" but I don't think that's happened too much in recent years. Anyway, with this very digression, we have managed to exceed the above threshold! So I guess we should just call it quits now.
Comin up on 16 hours before KO. Anybody wanna make a thread?! Before you seriously start drinkin for the night?
I suspect at least some of them are bogus. But either way, there is really no "good" answer, just whatever actually happened (or will happen), and we probably ought to know what it is. It reminds of Kawhi Leonard a little bit (of the Spurs), and tbh I actually have more sympathy for Kawhi Leonard than for Ozil.
The comparison is Liverpool relative to the league then vs arsenal relative to the league now. Lovren back then was not far from what we’ve seen from Sokratis this season so far. Sakho was better than mustafi has been as well. Maybe I’m just colored by recent performances though I’ll admit. Nacho has been poor this season, out and he’s the wrong side of thirty. Remember we are comparing nacho now to Moreno then. In a back 4 I’d take him over Kola as well who’s been a disaster in a 4. Liverpool were 4th in XGA that season so their defense wasn’t exactly horrid. Henderson didn’t play back then either. It was mostly Lucas and Can. Lucas led the league in tackles iirc that year or previous. And Can was in Germany’s euro squad the following summer. So while I’d take xhaka/torreira they aren’t miles apart. Coutinho had 8 goals and 5 assists that season. Can’t see ozil getting that many goals this year, but maybe the assist mark. A lot of this is subjective opinion and I think Arsenal edges it, but I also think the narrative that Klopp inherited a dumpster fire is ridiculous.