To @The Jitty Sitter, and anyone else who was dissing Cech for his performance today, read on... As I said during match, we were weak all over but GK was relative bright spot. I just googled player ratings and literally the first 4 articles I read had Cech at the top of player ratings... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...Arsenal-Kane-continues-fine-derby-record.html Cech 8; Bellerin 6, Mustafi 5, Koscielny 5, Monreal 6; Wilshere 7, Elneny 6 (Iwobi 65, 6), Xhaka 5 (Welbeck 86, 5); Ozil 6, Mkhitaryan 5 (Lacazette 65, 4), Aubameyang 5 https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/tottenham-1-0-arsenal-player-12002504 Petr Cech 7 – Plenty of decent saves but no chance with Harry Kane's opener. Hector Bellerin 5 – Solid enough until allowed Davies to cross for Kane opener. Shkodran Mustafi 6 – Held Arsenal together with strong and decisive defending first half. Laurent Koscielny 5 – Frenchman was out-smarted and out-jumped by Kane for vital first goal. Nacho Monreal 5 – A willing worker as always but always on the back foot. Jack Wilshere 6 – Midfielder overrun at times but brought fine save from Lloris. Mohamed Elneny 5 – Had a tough time trying to stem Spurs attacking flow. Granit Xhaka 5 – Swiss midfielder struggled and offered Arsenal little going forward. https://paininthearsenal.com/2018/02/10/arsenal-vs-tottenham-player-ratings-3/ Petr Cech GK, Arsenal 6.8 Man of the Match. He was pretty much David Ospina with a helmet. Made some absolutely baffling decisions with the ball at his feet, but when it came to stopping shots, he was a titan. Made ten saves and kept this game from getting really out of hand. https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/917139/Arsenal-player-ratings-Tottenham-sportgalleries
Not sure if I’d give us a “best player” but if I had a gun to my head, Jack or Ozil. Although Ozil didn’t have a god game today.
Thing is with jack is at least he tries to start moves and pushes the ball quickly I think he would be fine in a competent midfield
what if i told he completed the 2nd most passes of anyone on hte pitch today despite being subbed? Or that he 2 tackles, 3 interceptions, and several clearances. (most on Arsenal) This isnt a case to say Xhaka was good today, but that there were others around him who were less competent. Including Wilshere.
This isn't true, but it is hard to see how he fits in a midfield with Ozil also playing centrally long term
Problem with Xhaka is that he’s slow, switches off, is an inconsistent short passer, and isn’t always great positionally. I’d be open to keeping Ramsey, but the rest of the midfield is useless.
Thoughts: 1) Alex Iwobi should be permanently attached to the bench. He was just horrid today. There are several better choices. Personally I would have left El Neny on. But if you needed a sub, Welbeck would have been a much better choice, with Wilshere pushing back next to Xhaka. 2) Monreal was invisible. When does Kolasinac get another run out? It felt like Bellerin was the only fullback on the pitch for much of the match. 3) Mustafi goes way too far forward way too often and leaves Kos and Cech to cover counterattacks on their own. 4) It's a mistake to ever move Ozil out of the CAM role. Pushing him to a wing to make room for Wilshere destroyed any chance Ozil had at linking play. If you want to play both Wilshere and Ozil put Wilwhere in the deep-lying role Ramsey played against Everton - next to Xhaka or El Neny. If you think El Neny will help with defensive cover next to Xhaka, which seemed to be the choice today, then leave Wilshere or Ozil on the bench. Danny Welbeck would have been a better choice on a wing. Or Auba, with Lacazette in the middle (though Lacazette was ridiculously bad at finishing today). Just don't play Ozil as an outside midfielder anymore. It completely takes him out of his game.
Remember that Xhaka was supposed to solve the problem of needing 3 players to do the work of 2 If the first half Ninny was doing critical defensive work that Xhaka doesn't do - but this "3" means Ozil and Mkhi aren't involved enough
The trouble is none of them can play together and 2 are always injured. So I guess two of them need to go. Xhaka isn't worth carrying in my opinion as he needs Javi Martinez or peak Schweini next to him - but if you had one of those guys, why play Xhaka? I think a case could be made for keeping either of the other two as they can cover a lot of positions But in my ideal team with elite 6 and 8 - none of these guys would start The rumours around Max Meyer are really interesting. When you see Liverpool signing Kaita its clear Arsenal need to be winning the signature of one of the rising midfield stars if we hope to compete.
you've been... Wumgerstruck Arsenal have won none of their last 16 away against the other teams in this season's top six - Lost 10 drawn 6.They have lost seven of the last eight.— Orbinho (@Orbinho) February 10, 2018
Ozil is CAM. That is set in stone. You have 2 CM behind him. One should be more defensively oriented. Xhaka, Ramsey & Jack can’t be the defensive CM. That mean you have 3 CMs trying to squeeze into 1 position. Honestly I think any would be fine with the right defensive cover. Between injuries and fixture congestion’s we should keep any two. But we need to make CDM (and CB) our top priorities bc we aren’t going anywhere until we get proper defensive cover for our other two CMs. Coq was as close as we could get but his passing and touch weren’t good enough for a team with top 4 ambitions let alone winning the league. The Xhaka experiment needs to end and we need to ID the DM.
We are a much better team with Ramsey than with Wilshere. This really shouldn’t be up for discussion. Wilshere had one decent game as a 19 year old 7 years ago. The days of our midfield terrorizing opponents is long gone. Yesterday Dier and Dembele put a foot in our ass Plain and simple
Ramsey would of been worse as he bombs forward more Wilshere is a better cm in certain regards where as Ramsey is a goal threat Neither are cms u want in a middle 2 however for arsenal as we are shot defensively from front to back
https://www.nichefutebol.com/home/europa-league-round-of-32-comprehensive-preview/2018/2/11 Anybody else think Arsenal might struggle against Ostersunds in the Europa League this week??
Wilshere is good on the ball, and his decisionmaking has improved, though he's a liability if we're outnumbered in midfield. The biggest problem with a three of Xhaka, Elneny, and Wilshere is that it's really slow and has limited range. We were better off playing a back three against Sperz and working the ball wide like we did at the Emirates. Miki on the left was an issue, but I wonder if part of the problem was that he was really narrow and didn't have a whole lot of support. A back three would have meant that Kolasinac or AMN would have provided him support.
Absolutely not true. Jack has had more than 1 good game. Ramsey has had position issues. Are we forgetting the first few games this year where Ramsey completely abandoned the midfield to play forward and we were hit hard on the counter? Xhaka was bad but so was Ramsey. He also takes about 4-5 games to get back to his better form after each injury. And he has 1-2 of those a season. The issue isn’t Ramsey vs. Wilshere. Its the support they get from the deeper midfielder. Both have had stretches of great play and both have had stretches of invisible play. But it’s not Ramsey as 100% better by any means.
If you DID notice a lack of posts from yours truly here, blame my management Len Enders for taking down my webmail account, which resulted in my privileges being suspended as Big Soccer had no way of contacting me due the e-mail's non-existance, I got it all fixed now, the address is back up and running so that's why I wasn't able to keep up with you guys yesterday morning on Derby Day. As for the match itself, I couldn't believe how many time we were caught offside, I counted about a half a dozen I believe. As for the lack of offense, being offside so many times does not help the cause, and the Gunner Killer, Harry F'n' Kane, well WHO THE HELL LEFT HIM OPEN for an almost-free header that got by Petr Cech??? 1-0 is till a loss but it could've been far worse.