Defence had to be sorted. Can't be concerning 3 goals to relegation fodder and call yourself a top 6 club. I would have like 1 point from last season's 1+2 but I'll be much more concerned about the rest of the games this season.
For all our lamentations about how anemic Arsenal looked they also put themselves in position to draw with a team projected by many to win the league and which has a more settled roster than Arsenal. If Arsenal play this way against lesser teams and struggle to win then I'll gripe, but if they beat the teams that they're "supposed to" and are playing the title challengers close then I'd consider that overall progress.
We had some good moments. It’s going to take awhile for us to jibe. I think the international break kinda didn’t give us lots of time to acclimate. With time, I think we’ll get better.
This. There was one moment where he tracked back like a bull dog, harassing Bernardo(?) so that he coughed it up. Clearly Arteta's pleas to Nicolas are having some positive effect, plus the coaching of his defensive side. But still, in terms of his overall contribution, he's not where most of us expected him to be when we signed him.
Saka showed also why I identified him as a lcm that goes wide for the future He worked that half space well ...........::auba Martinelli........Pepe .......saka......partey ............el neney Tierney.. gab..holding...bellerin ..........::....Leno could be worth trying
I like where you're going, but I would have Partey be the deepest because I think he'll be able connect those lines. ---saka------ceballos--- ----------partey------------ ceballos also excels in the half spaces. Those two together could potentially drag the oppositions center mids wide creating space for Partey to surge though.
I’m not gonna go into a Martinez/Leno wear again, but Martinez has stronger hands than Leno and commands that defense better. We all saw that. I don’t know or care which one is better because Martinez is gone, but Leno is not “easily superior.” No even close to that.
This is where I'm at. It's a long term project; Step one was making us hard to beat, and for the most part that's been done. We're a tougher, more disciplined team now. There's a lot of work yet to do, but at least this team isn't a porous pushover.
The game should’ve been 1-1 but we missed 2 easy chances we played well defensively but our attack wasn’t very fluid as we didn’t over commit I expect we better the smaller teams this year and challenge the big sides
A few people on Twitter have already started calling him Mikel Simeone. They're now blocked. An example of why we can't have nice things.
I have a feeling Willian is going to be a waste of money. I get the idea of having an experienced competitor like Perisic at Bayern - but on the other hand it feels quite a strange move
I was disappointed with our performance, we didn't really put them under much pressure and I think City could have gone up another couple of gears if they'd needed to. Leeds drew with them and Leicester battered them, I thought we could have done better.
Indeed the traditional way to win the premium league is to hold your own against the top 4 or some competitors and trash the bottom 15 sides. Recent 90-100 point hauls may not prove to be the norm
If they do have another gear they could have employed against Arsenal, where was it against Leeds and Leicester? Obviously they are a more fluid team when De Bruyne plays, but he did play in the Leeds and Leicester games. They may miss Silva. Pep is trying to blend in a lot of new parts and this may be who they are for a while. It’s unfortunate that Arsenal couldn’t take advantage of it.
Arteta took over without a preseason and had to deal with a pandemic. The people getting worked up need to learn patience.