If Chelsea-sp*rs ends in a draw tomorrow, Arsenal and City will be the only two in the league with 6 points from their first 2 matches.
it's mike dean. can we send him to the gulag anyway? not gonna lie, in real-time (especially from his angle), i can't say i blame england for the call. you can see ramsdale pulling out and vardy trying to throw his body onto ramsdale in the reverse angle at slow-motion pretty clear, though.
i can see incidental in real-time and on first angle of replay. once you get 2nd angle, though, i thought it was pretty clear penalty. defender lifted his leg for a kick and snag gabriel jesus' leg instead.
that's one of the reasons i'm happy we got gabriel jesus in. unfortunately, in this lineup, he would have been the one to have followed into the backpost for that tap-in. otherwise, i think nketiah is the only other one who would have.
This match emphasizes why the focus on Jesus underperforming xG was misplaced—he creates such an insane volume of chances for himself and others that he can come out of a match having missed three big chances and still have two goals and two assists to his name
i missed the first half hour but did fofana look a bit like someone who's ready to pack his bag for a move to london?
After Elliott mentioned on the AV podcast this week how different it is to watch our matches without also tracking online (Twitter, etc.), I thought I’d try that out. I think this board tends to see things the same way I do, so that experiment just seems to prove some social sites/platforms are clearly better than others. Martinelli was MotM for me. Just a menace wherever he is on the pitch. Nobody noted it in the match comments so far, but his goal was started by him winning the ball near central midfield, then making a long sprint to the left wing to receive that pass and shot. Full credit to him. Our defense looked shaky the entire match. Lots of poor marking, easily getting dribbled past, Saliba finally succumbing to pressure on the OG, and Rammsdale with a subpar performance. Hopefully those are all addressed asap. Some credit to LCFC who remained stuck-in throughout when they could have folded. They were prepared and set up well to clog our passing lanes. Can’t remember the last time I saw a team intercept so many of our passes.
I thought Saliba was very good again despite the OG, which seemed like more of an unlucky miscommunication issue. Jesus is just ridiculous. So good.
Also, Partey was immense today. His ability to create space in tight situations, then quick outlet passing is jaw-dropping. Would have been nice if he had converted his two quick chances at then end of the match.
Agreed - but I attribute that largely to LCFC’s set-up and clogging our passing lanes. Everyone on our squad had a lot of passes picked off today. This wasn’t Partey’s best game, but his talents are spectacular even when they don’t always play out perfectly
The opinions I see on Twitter are mostly trash. I enjoy matches more when I'm able to watch live while following the game threads on this board and I miss it when I'm watching on a delay. It's a credit to everyone here, I just try to do my part by providing calm, rational, 100% accurate opinions that never, ever prove to be wrong.
Also, it’s kinda weird that Saka gets virtually no mention in these match comments. By his standards, this wasn’t a good game for him, but it’s also comforting that we can dominate a match when he is almost entirely ineffective.
By playing the ball down the left and having Xhaka run into the box all day, Arteta definitely showed Leicester and the rest of the Premier League today that we are no one trick pony this season.
Ramsdale really needs to sort his shit out. I don't think Turner is very good, so the #1 spot isn't under threat, but Ramsdale is going to cost us more points than he wins us if his level of play doesn't improve significantly, and soon. He's pretty clearly the worst of our first XI at this point, and I say this as a Certified Xhaka Hater.
He should have done better on Maddison's goal, I'd certainly agree. The OG looked to be a miscommunication, which you'd guess will improve. But then he hits some of those long passes that are spot on. The one when Jesus bullied Evans was spectacular --- should've resulted in an assist.
The og was probably just a little overly ambitious from Saliba, as well. Having said that, Ramsdale does have a bad habit of coming out for no reason and often gets caught in no man’s land because of it.
That’s fair but I’d rather my keeper save those shots and not go on walkabouts than hit one or two nice long passes.