Partey is so good, he exposes the mediocrity of the other midfield options. He covers ground, defends, recovers, picks out long passes, keeps the ball moving with short passes. You can pair him with an attacking #8 against weaker opponents or with a defending #6 when you need to sit deep and counter. Just keep him healthy!
Yeah, tell me about it! It was a hot topic the past few seasons. And Amy Lawrence was fairly enraged about it. She might've even created a Change.org petition about it. I so hate Sweet Caroline I can't tell you. Go back to Curtis Mayfield which is a perfect song for wins like today. Or basically any other uplifting song other than that Neil Diamond crap.
Fun second half after a pretty drab first half. I made a post half in jest here a couple of weeks ago about how one of the games (can't recall which) could be evidence that ESR is our most important player. I'm not sure I'm saying that in any sort of jest now. He completely changes the way our attack functions, and his chemistry with Saka is invaluable. He's a fantastic player who may just save our season.
Good win. They did what were supposed to do, which is to beat on these weaker teams. Partey is a player.
Didn't watch the game, was ESR given license to roam? Glad to see Auba bagging a couple -- and finally getting a 1v1 in space.
Yes ESR was free to roam I'd say! Hey, so what's the deal with this weekend, are we gonna get the weekend off because the Shrewsbury-Soton tie never got resolved so we don't really have an opponent? p.s. Shrewsbury is in bad shape... I just saw a Sky interview of their chairman who was talking about his manager being in ICU with Covid.
I’m pretty sure Soton will progress from a non-contested tie. Sad to hear about Shrewsbury and that this is how it’s going to go down.
So about a month ago los Gunners lost 1-0 to Burnley with a lineup that included Willian, Elneny, and Xhaka who picked up a red. Subs included Ceballos, AMN, and Nketiah with ESR staying on the bench. That seems like a hundred years ago now.
Well I just heard that the match is on! Tomorrow 3pm ET. Shrewsbury have a manager in the hospital and something like 10 players with Covid, and yet they’re going to put out a team?! Brave or desperate for cash, IDK. So I guess our match this weekend with the winner will be played? And we’ll have one more day of rest than our opponent.
They play like a championship side-throwing elbows, sitting back, use their size. Almiron looks out of place on that team-he's got nobody to play triangles with.
Almiron is a good player who doesn’t score very often think he’s better than Newcastle they miss saint maximum
Some random tidbits to come out of this result; First time in 11 years that we have kept 5 straight clean sheets (Feb 2009), ESR now equal for most Premier League assists since Xmas (3) (level with De Bruyne), Leno getting a late charge at the golden glove with 7 clean sheets, behind Emi (8) and Ederson (9), Holding is very quietly building a very strong season and probably isn't getting the credit he deserves, Auba with as many goals this match as he has in his last 14 PL matches.
It shows what happens when you have hungry players on the pitch instead of sideways, backwards negative boring garbage. It hs a knock on effect for other players. We need to build on this and play with directness, pace and positivity.
saint-maximin in there would have been scary. that dude can be impressive. even more so with carroll out there to be on the end of his deliveries.