Brilliant goal by Nketiah for his second, such a natural finisher really hope he keeps this up now, I would say it might be tough for Jesus if Nketiah improves his build up play
Hopped on the Peloton as we made the subs. 3 goals by the end of the warmup. Lesson learned, I'll be riding for 2 hours on Sunday.
Marquinos on for Vieira and Benjamin White for Tomi come on as our last subs with ~10 mins or regulation left. No idea what our formation is now...
FT OXU 0-3 ARS Very happy for Eddie who picked up a brace. He's really been proving it since Jesus went down. Also nice to see ESR finally get some minutes. Honestly can't remember last time I saw him. Otherwise, I'm pretty unhappy with this match. How we were enemic for nearly an hour. How we started/risked more A-teamers than I wanted to see. And last but not least, how our star boy went down & out before Mikel got around to subbing him out to protect him. In the end we expended more effort and sacrificed more than the opposition/tournament demanded, considering we have a much much bigger fish to fry.
I really only saw the 15 minutes that encompassed the first 2 goals. I thought Vieira looked solid with those 2 assists. Was that all he contributed? Even if it was, he's a man of the match contender for me.
You saw the best 15 minutes of the match! I’m not sure Vieira stood out much other than those two assists (which were fantastic I’ll agree). But I also didn’t watch the game with 100% focus.
I have two complaints about refereeing. The first is a rules or enforcement complaint. If a player commits a foul and then kicks the ball away, it’s generally a yellow card. The same should apply to committing a foul and picking up the ball and running 15 yards back to get into position for the free kick before dropping the ball. Oxford did it at least twice today. The second is about the way todays game was refereed. There were two fouls today, one one Gabriel where an Oxford player had his hand on a players throat to prevent the Arsenal player from going by them. Those should be yellow cards.
The throat grab on Gabriel stood out too me, but not necessarily as a "THAT'S A YELLOW CARD!!" moment. The slow mo replay showed a very clear, but composed Gabriel sitting on the ground after the foul, staring at the ref like, "are you F'n kidding me??" While a spit second later, another Oxford player came into frame screaming at the ref and stomping like a child, as if to say to the ref, "are you F'n kidding me??!?!" Two sides to every story I guess.
I love power zone rides, did one 90 minute just to try it out. PZ reminds me the most of swimming workouts, so zoning out and just focusing on your breathing is something I like to do so the 90 minutes didn’t really bother me!
Yeah he won’t make it here, but should still be worth money so was a fine gamble. I don’t think any of these three midfielders is useless but you can’t play them all together against better competition than this.
I would loan him this window and fully evaluate him then because he is not helping Arsenal this season.
Just saw Mikel's post-match where he was asked about Saka and he said "he's fine!" very quickly, dismissively and moved on. Hmm... I sure hope that's the truth!!!
Personally, I like this Elneny ear worm far better than Saliba’s. Of course, I’m torn as I don’t really want Elneny on the pitch so Gooners need to sing it The new Mohamed Elneny chant, as sung by Arsenal fans at Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium tonight. 😍❤️ [@Stillmanator] #afc pic.twitter.com/vhWfuVtdsZ— afcstuff (@afcstuff) January 9, 2023
Think both Vieira and Sambi would be fine with Partey behind them (or Xhaka + Partey + one of them). Elneny's probably fine with Xhaka and Odegaard. But the three of them together become a ball progression nightmare.
I love PZ as well, though I've pretty much flatlined as far as FTP goes (having baby + no sleep will do that). I can handle 75 minute PZ rides, but the one time I did a 90 minute ride I was close to falling off at minute 80.
I'm pretty sure I saw your username on the leaderboard in a Sam Yo PZE class a couple of weeks ago lol, we must be right around the same FTP at the moment.
I always thought we sang Twist & Shout in a more generic sense. But maybe I just never heard that they substituted player names in the middle of it??
I just watched the last 30 minutes again with a little better focus this time but while on my indoor bike… not a friggin peloton So I watched in particular Saka and then his replacement ESR. Bukayo did surprisingly little in his last 15 minutes on the pitch. And I still contend that his injury may be a hammy, based on it being non-contact, how the Physio was working his right leg, and how he walked off the pitch super gingerly. Crossing serious fingers with him, regardless of what Mikel said. Emile came in on the left and then 5 to 10 minutes later he switched to the right. I’m guessing that has something to do with a favorable matchup as a result of some of Oxford‘s subs? In any case he had about 10 to 15 touches that I noticed, of which two were poor/rusty/turnover, and one was a SOG that got deflected wide of goal. The rest of his touches were just not very remarkable, but surely it’s a milestone for him to be playing and getting any sort of touches. So I remain optimistic. Slightly.
Been a long time since ESR has played in a competitive match. I'd more surprised if he wasn't a bit rusty.