am i the only one surprised that our goal - at old trafford - wasn't waved off by having fred foul de gea? and that they won on an actual legitimate penalty instead of the usual manchester united variety? i wonder how pissy fernandez is that his easy goal total from penalty have been taken from him by ronaldo. it makes me smile.
Im more annoyed than bothered if that makes sense. Partey is not really good, Lokonga is better on the eyes to me I gotta look at the data
Confirmed. Not rotation, chose El Neny based on one match a year ago. Ignoring the 9 starts Sambi has made this year vs the zero league starts for El Neny before today. Arteta on Elneny over Sambi:I think we need a player with the experience that has played here in that arena, that was incredibly good last year when he played. The way he’s been training, the way he plays and because I believe sometimes we have to do tough things for the game.— Kaya Kaynak (@kayakaynak97) December 2, 2021
Didn't watch live and caught up via the replay. Partey and Auba have been bad all season, does Arteta have the stones to bench them? If Partey had signed under Emery, or if Arteta hadn't given the contract extension to Auba, I feel like both would be as in the doghouse as Pepe is right now. Martinelli deserves to start. Lacazette's fitness is awful and should probably only be a bench option going forward.
There was a moment in the second half when Auba got a through ball on the right inside channel. Two years ago it’s one v. one with De Gea. This match he couldn’t get past through the defender and had to take a 20 yarder. The man is finished and should be in the Turkish Super Liga at this point. Also, this Odegaard fella don’t have it.
He's toast. And as a fellow man of speed I feel for him but dude can't get behind the defence anymore. We should have let him leave on a free after the FA Cup. Eddie isn't great, and hasn't shown a nose for goal at this level, but at least he can accelerate.
it seems like nketiah has really improved this season and become much more than he was. i'm still okay with him leaving, only sad that we aren't getting much for him.
The biggest issues for me partey, apart from his pass in the second goal build up was poor Tavares is taking a lot of risks Auba is a ghost when we go 1-0 up we shit ourselves
Game management is one of the hardest competencies. It isn't only experience. You need players who are good enough to control the structure of the game, and have the systems they can rely on. So while the interwebz think Arsenal should have continued to attack a poor Utd who were there for the taking, Arsenal are also a poor attacking side, so I get why Arteta favours defending.
Giant Gooner and co will need to adjust their XG cherrypick to include this game now Most of that has been given up in four games against last season's top 4.xGa is 12.33 in those four games and Arsenal have actually conceded 14— Orbinho (@Orbinho) December 3, 2021
Arteta has a tendency to overthink things. He probably also factored in Sambi second half meltdown in front of a similar environment at Liverpool, but he’s being too clever by half.
I'll have to watch again (if I can stomach it) but I thought both of the non-penalty goals involved a lot of ball watching and not tracking runs. Even after the giveaway on both, we allowed United to cut us up with several passes, making them look like City. I suppose it's possible to chalk those up to two brief defensive breakdowns and overall we weren't bad. I dunno.
Our midfield tracking was bad. Does anyone know why we, on kick offs, play the ball back to the keeper for him to blindly kick it as hard as he can down the field? For a team that wants to retain possession - even in tight situations - we give up the ball this way very cheaply. It doesn't make sense to me.
The lead came too early in the game to switch to a defensive-minded approach. If we took the lead in the second half, I would agree with this logic, but that wasn't the case.
This is what the twitter anorak debate is all about (from last week) XGA suggests Arsenal are just bad at defending, and Man Utd are worse. However some argue that you can cherry pick out the first 3 games, or games vs the big 3 or now games vs the big 4 (14 goals conceded)
Nah - the xGA wasn't bad. IMO, the xGA "cherry pick" needs to exclude August games (COVID hit, backup CBs playing), and leave the Liverpool game in.
IMO its the only potentially valid cherry pick because you have a significantly different team after that Excluding the top 3/4 isn't valid because all teams have to play them across the season
Well, rotation may have had some part in that decision. I just read his comments on Arsenal.com: https://www.arsenal.com/mikel-arteta-press-conference-transcript-arsenal-man-united-premier-league And they print that clause differently than how Kaya Kaynak wrote it (whoever they are): "... and because I believe that sometimes we have to rotate things for the game" But TBF, when I went to watch the actual presser, his mic audio was quite poor (Amazon?!) so it's really hard to hear whether he says "rotate things", "adjust things" or "do tough things". Nonetheless, when I listened to him in both video clips above, I'm left with a few feelings: 1. He's still upbeat and positive, and not too depressed, disgusted or emotional. I appreciate that. 2. In his explanation of why we couldn't hold on to the game or press on to cement our lead, he highlighted that we had too many cheap giveaways and couldn't retain possession. Also he said a few times that we had good structure in the counter press. Sure our giveaways have been crucial in both of our last 2 away matches, at "big 6" teams. And sure we we struggled to retain or regain possession. But after our first goal, were we really doing a good job of counter pressing? Or just pressing in general? Because my eyes didn't notice that. It sure felt and looked to me as if we eased up and sat off them. (I haven't rewatched it... I rarely if ever do that) And lastly, I'm still left with this feeling of disconnect between what the manager is saying and what the players are doing. And that concerns me.
The guest on today's Arsecast said the same, except described our reaction to going 1-0 up as "NOW WHAT?" For me the only answer to that question, unless it's after 80', is to say "OK, now let's go equally aggressively for 2-0". We clearly didn't (or couldn't?) do that yesterday.
I really don't like PEA as a lone ST. Spends too much on the left and leaves the middle of the field wide open. Little different if you are playing a 4-4-2 where there is another ST to fill that void but when we are running a 4-2-3-1 no one is occupying the ST lane.