Well goddamn, Jackie boy you musta drank that Throwback juice because the boy looked ready fi di war!! Bigup to him, great to see it man just fantastic. I think not having Rambo in there just allowed him to dominate the ball more and be himself. Again, beautiful to see. Thought he was at times a bit to biting in the tackle BUT Thats part of why we loved him coming thru so you gotta roll with that. No negatives for anyone, jus pure bloodclat hype fi di mon dem!! Hope we can make some moves and build upon this. Also Alexis?? CUE THE GIF CUE THE GIF!!
BTW one ball that Jack played to Alexis CUE THE GIF CUE THE GIF. Also that ball Ox played to Sanchez when they brukout pon dem CUE THE GIF CUE THE GIF. Not mad at anyone (Tupac voice)
Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said he was lazy. Just that he looks tired all the time. Maybe he's a night owl or has insomnia. I won't argue that he does his fair share of running.
Also, Arsene needs to stop playing Ozil out wide. It was for jokes earlier, but its no longer funny. He wasnt terrible today, but the mans wasted. I know its nominal and players pop up all over the pitch, but no Ozil in the center.
It really is unfortunate the game was as close as it was. Individually no one really had a bad performance at all. Just some bad luck with finishing. Ox and Ozil seemed a little out of the game at times but not bad.
Mesut Ozil plays wherever the hell he wants too. He was central for the assist. I think he's positioned on the left for defensive purposes more than anything else: it's a way to protect Monreal because Cazorla sucks as a defender.
He created so much today. Don't know what people are complaining about. Doesn't matter if he starts wide, he comes in enough to allow Monreal to overlap.
I just can't get over Alexis today. I can't remember the last time I saw an Arsenal player working as hard as he did on both sides. Arsenal guys seem to give up once they lose the ball, but ******** it, he goes and gets it right back.
That's the Barca mentality, give chase hard chase for 3-5 seconds after the ball is lost then drop off. It's systematic for their players. Not one at a time either. Closest 2 or 3 are harassing the ball.
Folks need to stop worry about Ozil starting position. It is nominal and him and Santi particularly have the freedom to interchange all day. (see their respective position on Alexis goal yesterday and Ramsey goal vs the Toffees). To be fair to both players, Santi defensive work was amazing yesterday.He tracked back all night and was really effective. Ozil did not offer much help to Nacho but will give him a pass, he is definitely not fully fit yet.
I saw a pretty good squad today that is clearly not quite gelling which is common when you add a few new players to a team that was missing a lot of players due to World Cup duty for most of the summer. Losing Giroud hurts. It will come down to whether Sanogo and Campbell can be useful up top for us as starters while Giroud is out to decide whether we bring someone else in. My guess is that Wenger believes they can be. I hope he is right. Wilshere needs more games and to stay healthy. Cazorla is depth for this squad right now but much needed depth. I thought Debuchy played well today but perhaps a bit too aggressively for Champion's League football. I don't believe he would have seen two yellows if these were Prem matches. But that could be probably be chalked up to him experiencing CL football for the first time. I think it was clear to me that BFG and Kos were not quite in sync tonight which isn't surprising. Ultimately what hurt us today was a lack of finishing which isn't uncommon in August. When it is all said and done, things are not nearly as bad as some seem to always think a week in. I do think that we will bring in another player but I have no idea what kind of player or what quality the player will be.
Heres the real question is this good enough to beat chelsea, city to the title or barca, bayern and real to the cl title?
To do so, we will need to have every one clicking with all cylinders, ie. Jack's repeating last night performing every week, TW back and scoring at will etc... iMHO though, we are still short of at least 2 players, particulary with OG's injury.
Last night' Cazorla is an automatic starter for me. On a related note, I know Debuchy had a lot of doubters on this board, but after 5 games this season, he has already showed why he is the starting RB for France : he is simply a better all around player than Bak. He is as good and as tenacious as a defender than Sagna and so much better and refined tham him in the offensive third. Top player.
Statsbomb min by min visualisation show that Ozil is pretty much playing on the wing but swapping into the centre at times. So I don't think we can say it is only a nominal position Game showed how much the team is now designed to counter - but the same old issues in the defensive transition
The team still has alarming issues on the defensive transition - that is why you saw red cards for Ramsey in the first leg and then Debuchy this time. Flamini is immobile. Then Wilshere bombs up to overload so you see these breakouts where the defence has not pushed up to dominate that space (Mertesacker is slow) and there is only Flam back in midfield Also in the low block - as we saw time and again last year, the central midfielders are not covering that space around the D and either fail to track runners in, or are too far from the shooter. The "penalty" shout against Wilshere was a classic example This system would make sense if there were 3 hardworking midfielders with Ozil left - but this 4-1-4-1 looks flimsy through the middle to me
I agree. That's why we need to get Carvalho, Rabiot, or Schneiderlin before the end of the window. We might be stuck with the scoring issues, but we can address defensive transitions, and need to.
I've said it before somewhere and that match has cemented my opinion that Jack and Aaron can't play together. They always seem to be more influential when the other guy is out. Watching them in the same line up its noticeable that they both want to occupy the same spaces. We lose a cutting edge when they play together centrally.
Come on mate, they were not "stolen" penalties. They were 50/ 50... Let's face it, you did not have a shot on target last night and even at 10, you did not create any chance and did not deserve to win. Anyway, you gave us a good game. All the best in your league this year and in Europa.
Statsbomb wrote an article on how Arsenal seem to be caught between two systems right now. http://statsbomb.com/2014/08/into-the-mixer-arsenals-issues-spurs-challenge-and-psvs-forgotten-man If you rock a standard high possession plan, you leave yourself vulnerable to counters. If you try to control more for counters, you generate fewer shots, and lower shot differential, and lower possession, which in turn gives your opponents more of the ball and more shots. Sound familiar? The best Wenger has been able to do while keeping his system is turn games to mud against good teams, or hope the good teams want to dominate possession, and then allow his team to counter-attack or nick a set piece or two. Can the system be fixed? Obviously better minds than mine have been working on this and haven’t solved it. One thing I would definitely do though is look at bigger, faster, better personnel in midfield, especially in the DM role. Arsenal’s potential selections here are Flamini (tiny), Arteta (older and tiny) and uh, Wilshere? I know Wenger wants top passers in that role, but there have to be guys who are both physical and capable distributors. This is even more true when Mertesacker is in the side. Mert is a great game reader, but him plus the DM selection, plus Monreal and Debuchy mean there is almost no pace in the back line. Compare that to what Arsenal once had in Sol Campbell, Kolo Toure, or even William Gallas before he totally lost his legs, and you can see the shift.