Ha! Claudio our savior??! Anyway, he just started a new job at Samp trying to save them from the drop.
Whoever steps up likely gets a 1-2 match run. We go to Anfield on 10/30... sure it's just the League Cup and Klopp will rotate, but it's still Klopp, Liverpool and Anfield. Kiss that one bye bye. Nice reverse jinx deployed there huh?
Oh well. I wonder how Rafael Benitez likes China? (There's something I though I'd never say, along with the fact that Brendan Rodgers at Leicester is at least a bit better than anybody we'd likely get.) In any event, the top four thing makes it more complicated than it otherwise would be. I'd like to think the four fixation is a stupid fetish, and to some extent I do, but given that we've gone a few years without it, I don't think we'll be able to get the players we want in without it. And more importantly, I don't think we'll be able to keep the squad we have even. For that reason, it's harder to get one of the sexier young managers out of Germany, France or Spain and roll with punches. I'd like to have somebody who knows what the EPL is all about, or has done credibly well enough with a club bigger than us.
I'm not sure about that. Emery is managing us like he's shooting for mid-table. More than possible for someone to have us playing like relegation fodder. But given the circumstances, might as well take a high-risk high-reward approach rather than the current mediocrity.
This team could probably have no manager and do about the same. They've gotten worse, on the field, in every area since wenger left. It's like pulling teeth to watch. Should have gone with Arteta
Makes sense to me. I.e. they're not quite physically ready yet to start in the league and play 90... especially Hector. Sure I would've loved to have Tierney in our XI tonight, and was a bit surprised not to see him. But it still makes some sense. Plus he may have played for Scotland over the break... I dunno. Furthermore, I don't really think our FB's were a big issue tonight. OK I wasn't watching as closely as I could/should have, but I didn't see them troubled too much defensively. At the same time I saw them both on quite a few offensive forays. In short, that might just be Elliot being Elliot during/after a game. He gets a little hysterical.
I think PSG gave Emery top dog ptsd. Brother is terrified of being the aggressor. Probably why he's scared of Ozil.
Random question... What was up with Freddie and his yellow? I've never seen an asst off the bench and do anything to warrant a yellow. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but could he be trying to show up Emery by showing more heart/fight then the head man?
https://streamable.com/q596f We would probably be better with no manager, given what he asks this team to do.
Well it's clear why we lost it's because of Ozil oh never mind the blame falls on Mustafi! oh about that yea.. Well I've been saying this Emery is clueless not only does he have us playing poor, boring football he also has no idea what to do. The starting lineup he trotted out there was the first mistake. Luiz and Sokartis are a joke as a CB pairing and Kolsanic still on the left cmon. Don't even get me started on his undying need to always select Xhaka no questions asked. Why do we play a strong lineup in the EL and the same crap mistake prone incompetent lineup in the PL? The wins we accumulated earlier in the year were not sustainable. We played in a dire way and the only reason we won is because Aubameyang individual brilliance saved us. Without that we are literally no better than Sheffield United a championship level squad. We have no creativity, no speed, no identity and no coherent system. Emery needs to go asap. If not the losses will pile up quickly especially away from home.
Yikes that is shit. Why is Guen so deep when he's the player who can turn with the ball? I'm glad we got rid of Iwobi and Miki way more use of the half spaces now, you can see the edge it's given us going forward and retaining the ball.
I asked Unai Emery if he thinks he knows his best side. He answered by talking about corners... It could be an issue with the language barrier, but it was a bizarre answer and not the first time he'd talked about corners either #SHUARS pic.twitter.com/dYDmR1MTlm— Dan Mountney (@JournoDanM) October 21, 2019 this man should not manage Arsenal
Exactly. Everything is done so badly. First the players fail to make the pitch big, or create proper depth/triangles - but then they also don't make the pitch small, by coming close together to overload the defender Combined with bobbins tempo That is why i find it laughable Ozil is completely out of the squad - he is miles better at this stuff than the dross you see there
It seems like almost every other pass is to a guy who is already or immediately under pressure, which results in a bad pass or a turn over. In the second half Arsenal were in their own half, I think pepe dribbled around a guy or 2 , passed to Xhaka who immediately passed back to Willock who already had 2 guys on him. So he had to hoof it down field and turned it over.There's little to no progression or movement or forward thinking. It's insanity.
Unforgivable, really. I had a 7th grade girl make a similar miss tonight. It's pretty basic. If the ball is coming to you from the left, you hit it with your right foot. Or you risk whiffing. Just like 12 year old Daphne.
One minor quibble, Willock was substituted at half time, so the incident you are talking about occurred in the first half, or it wasn't Willock, either way you make a good point.
Ozil is irrelevant. There's a lot of sturm und drang, but it wouldn't be any better if he were playing. For the most part, I don't have a side in the whole hipster vs traditionalist thing, but in Ozil's case there can't be any doubt at this point that the hipsters sold us a bill of goods. And if even if I thought Ozil was being mistreated, at least it makes sense from Emery's point of view, wrt being able to maintain control of the squad given his experience with Neymar at PSG. Of course, even there Emery is wrong on the merits. Neymar has been one the best say, half dozen players in the world for at least five years and he swings a lot of weight that Ozil simply doesn't. Politically speaking Emery doesn't have much to fear about getting crosswise with Ozil. He _ought_ to be afraid of putting out teams that consistently play crap football and mediocre results. _That's_ what's going to get him sacked. And as far as selection goes, Xhaka is ten times the problem that Ozil is. I don't think Xhaka has a big constituency among the fan base. I don't think he has a constituency among the suits upstairs. At this point it has to be that we're playing Xhaka because Emery wants him and thinks he gives us the best chance to win. It's a weird thing, because Emery is clearly a low-status manager. Yet in this circumstance he insists on playing Xhaka and to my mind at least is putting a bulls-eye on his own back. I wonder if somehow Emery is oblivious to the vulnerability he's creating for himself.
I wrote this as a matter of frustration and exasperation but the more I think of it the more I like it. And in fact, if somehow Edu is exposed to the idea I actually think there's a decent chance it could happen. Besides Allegri (and Jose I guess, who I can't actually believe is viable here though he might be), there's not that many "name" managers available. But even if there were, you can't really hire a big name with conceding them a significant amount of control. Given that we might finally be settling into a management structure that works that's going to be a hard issue to handle. Edu, with his experience as technical director for Brazil, might have a very good complementary skillset to Freddie and together we could be positioning ourself for success on the pitch as well as the development of the club as a whole, especially compared to sticking with Emery.
Respectfully, I think your decision to spend 65 million on Daphne and another 12 mil on her agent fees warrants more scrutiny than it's received.
I heard there's the master tactician who gets his players to play with a "system" called Greg Berhalter... you guys might want to have a serious look at him and please, please take....