That's fair, I feel like we're being a bit harsh to both parties given he's a 22 yo in his first season at the club and hasn't started in the league since the Man United match.
Martinelli now goes down with a knee injury. At first it seemed to be embellishment but now it looks a bit worse. Crossing serious fingers.
67' HUGE MISS by Odegaard after great link-up passing. COME ON! You have to bury those. I hope we get a few more chances like that
20 minutes into the second half and we got here. More like a 3-4-1-2, but the fullbacks clearly weren't up for it. Don't think I would've anticipated Xhaka as the LCB today though.
86' Well, not much left to say at this point. The team clearly wasn't up for the match, physically or mentally. They got better in the second half but failed to produce anything meaningful in the final third. I expect FiveThirtyEight to now list S***s as favorites for 4th, and Arsenal will have to really do better if they want to avoid 7th. Simply too fragile a side, despite their abilities. Arteta has to find a way to improve his motivation. A bit too Wenger-like in his even keel demeanor, I feel, as in the absence of an effective on-field leader someone has to get the guys energized for stuff like this. And not just on match day but in the practices leading up. He has to get them to hustle from the first whistle. As a whole, Arsenal also need to learn to play within themselves. If you don't have the horses to play like Liverpool then sharpen up so you at least minimize mistakes and force the other team to earn it. Because while Arsenal is a free-flowing side we also see how they're not a truly strong attacking side. This means team defense has to be a priority going forward. Fingers crossed this is the wake up call needed and they respond accordingly.
Even ignoring the penalty, this has been Odegaard's worst showing in ages. Very poor from ESR as well.
FT CP 3-0 ARS A really really bad performance by us. With some shocking defensive blunders. And a terrible terrible result in which we all but gift 4th place to our archrival, at least for the coming week(s)... while worsening our GD defecit to them by another -3. And to top it all off we lose to injury our most vital midfielder in recent months. We may be lucky to see him back before season's end, and if we do, he's not the kind who tends to come back at tip top form. But as bad as we were, we have to give CP credit. This was a forced error on our part. And Paddy pads his CV for a possible job opportunity in N5 down the road?
Sambi was good off the bench. Martinelli was lively, so too Nketiah. Xhaka worked hard. Nothing positive to say about anyone else. Great performance by Palace. Well-deserved win for them. We can't run out Tavares and Cedric again. Arteta needs to come up with a new plan, and fast.
Poor performances all around, really. Hopefully this means everyone has gotten their dog out of the way at the same time and we can resume our run in. Hopefully. It would be great to get healthy and get our best XI on the pitch again, too. But apparently we made sure to distribute knocks throughout the side as well as sleeping pills. So, we'll see who's fit in a couple days. Major disappointment. And I still think Southampton is a trap game, so we really needed the three points today.
They gave us 69% possession and we did so very little with it. Arteta has a lot of things to solve in the next few weeks!
This result combined with the injuries makes me think CL is truly out of our grasp. Which is a shocking collapse in 24 hours.
Assuming Partey's injury is serious and Pepe gets over his illness, how do you build a starting XI out of these 14 names? Ramsdale, White, Holding, Gabriel, Xhaka, Sambi, Saka, Martinelli, ESR, Odegaard, Lacazette, Elneny, Nketiah, Pepe Pray Tomiyasu is fit.
We should have hired Vieria. He would have gotten us to top 4 as he wore that number on his back as a Gooner. Don't believe me? Look at Arteta's last two finishes in the league and what number he wore as a player for us. It's all linked.