Confirmation again that Arse do no meaningful preparation for key opponents Pretty scathing assessment, even though it's been said with no malice. pic.twitter.com/wMVlohiE0v— Lewis (@LGAmbrose) October 16, 2017
Granit Xhaka is not good off the ball. Actually, it's not clear that Xhaka is good at anything other than lofted long balls.
If nobody else steps up beforehand, I'll make one Tuesday evening . PS thanks for your good run @Darth Norteño
i think he is good still. I still believe, but he needs to leave Arsenal as long as Wenger is around. If Wenger is here next season, I can see a Xhaka loan to some Bundesliga club on deck. Everything we see of these players, we have seen from different players over the last decade.
The Wenger way since... since he been here. Even Cesc didnt develop to the midfielder he could have been. Thats no excuse for Xhaka literally picking his nose instead of tracking the man, but still lol.
Is this really true though? Are they really that good? You've gone on about how terrible Elneny is (though you focus too much on his technique - his positioning is even worse), Wilshere is never fit, Coquelin has always been meh, and Ramsey is good but a mixed bag. What we're really talking about then is Granit Xhaka. And it's not at all clear that Xhaka is that good: he's a really good passer, but he's been poor defensively his entire time at Arsenal, and is slow, and Arsenal don't have the players to give him the support he needs in a midfield 3. You can talk about coaching all you want, but the recruitment of midfielders has been even worse. It's been haphazard and ad hoc since Fabregas and Nasri were sold. There hasn't been anything like a plan put in place, and the only times Arsenal's midfield has looked competent since 2011 were when: 1) Mikel Arteta played, either with Song or Ramsey, and 2) when Cazorla played.
I think we're overrating the result and underrating the performance. Now that I've had time to calm down, a few thoughts: 1. This wasn't a bad performance by any means. Not dominant, but I think we were the better team, and got hosed on a bad penalty call. 2. Watford have lost one league game all season, and that was to Man City. City, if they don't have their usual mid-season meltdown, will finish with 105 points and goals. 3. This was a post-interlull game. Those tend to be crapshoots anyway. 4. For all the talk about away form, aside from the Liverpool game (and Wenger deserves to be fired for that game alone), we haven't played badly away from home. The results against Watford and Stoke were pretty unlucky, and the game against Chelsea was a good performance. We've been the better team in all of these games. 5. Don't overrate the Chelsea game though: I think we match up really well with Chelsea in ways that are hard for them to manage. Even our one loss to them involved an opening goal that should have been disallowed and a holy shit goal by Hazard. At this point, a good performance for Arsenal against Conte's Chelsea is to be expected, and a bad performance is a huge warning sign. Finally, 6. Now that I've said the sky is not falling, let's get to the elephant in the room: mistakes. Every single league goal we've conceded this season has been down to massive mistakes by 2-3 players. You can say that the mistakes will stop, but this has been a trend since January. The mistake issue isn't an individual player issue (though Granit Xhaka has been the culprit on a few of these). It's a structural issue: the team isn't built to clean up mistakes made in midfield, and the movement of players is such that Xhaka frequently doesn't have many "safe" options. What's worrying is that the move to a back 3 was made to clean up the mistakes, but we did so by sacrificing a midfielder, and that increased the frequency of mistakes. I have no idea how good this team is.
New thread is up https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/crvena-svezda-red-star-belgrade-vs-arsenal-uel-19-oct-2017.2075376/
This is a great post of course - but one counter point. Arsenal only gave up .7 xG - unfortunately most of that came in the 94th minute with Xhaka ball watching. But that's acceptable defensively overall. Just a bad collapse of concentration. But they only created 1 xG themselves - that's not nearly enough to win these games reliably. Most of Arsenal's xG was created by Ozil in 10 mins
Just caught this post-match interview of Per... https://player.arsenal.com/video/it-was-wake-call-not-loud-enough I have to say that his honesty & intelligence are refreshing. Compare that to any interview that Ramsey has ever done, and you see why Mertesacker wins hands down, why he's our captain, and how it may put him in good stead for a coaching career.
I watched it. Can you explain to me how it was materially different than this..... https://www.arsenal.com/news/ramsey-we-have-say-sorry-fans
Well, you've only supplied the transcript and not a video, but from what you've provided it seems pretty classic Ramsey: vagueness & cliches. Contrast that to the clear, thoughtful specifics that Per gave: "They wanted it more, they were all attack and we were timid, trying to protect the goal we scored" "There was a change in momentum... in the 2nd half they were more up for the fight" "We need to protect Hector better in that situation, create a 2-v-1..." "We lost too many balls, when we regained the ball we lost it straight away" "It's difficult to talk about bouncing back... we have to make sure we turn up, with more effort" That enough?
You point out Ramsey's cliches and then cite Per saying "they wanted it more," "there was a change in momentum," "turn up with more effort," and "more up for the fight." Those are cliches upon cliches.
You claimed in your initial post that Mert was more honest in his assessment. When questioned about the performance against Liverpool, Ramsey said it wasn't good enough and that there were no positives that could be taken from the match. Not sure how he could've been any more honest than that. So to answer your last question: no.
Have you listened to Per's interview? To me it didn't sound much cliched at all. And definitely not vague! It had quite a bit of thoughtful, frank analysis. And if you watched the game, especially the 2nd half, I can't see how you could say that Per's comments about momentum change, our lack of effort, and their superior fighting spirit... were all just vague cliches. Not to mention the other quotes I cited.
I didn't, but I don't need to. Those aren't insightful critiques. They boil down to "try harder!" which is basically the least insightful thing you can say. I'm not criticizing Per for those comments, I just don't see how they're anything more than standard athlete cliche responses.
Here's what Ramsey said (from the link you provided): "We’re very disappointed with the way we performed but we have to accept it. We’re sorry to the fans that came up - it’s not good enough and we have to do something about it" "I don’t know, we’ll have to review it and hopefully move on." "We’re going to have to change something if we’re to compete this year. That wasn’t good enough. Liverpool showed what it’s going to have to take to compete for the Premier League and we’re going to have to do something about it if we’re going to do that." "...so when we get back we’ll have to review that and hopefully we can move on and sort it out." OK, there's some honesty there. But what did we actually learn from what he said? And compare that to the specific details that Per talked about, and the specific constructive self-criticism. What I said in my original post about this, is what I meant. Per's interview wins hands-down over Aaron's if you compare them. And I wasn't even citing any specific interview by Ramsey, just his full oeuvre, that I've been privileged to listen to over the years. I'm no Ramsey basher. All I said was that Per gives a better interview. If you don't agree. So be it. Let's move on.