shooting. that is what i reckon everyone will say, but just thought i'd start a thread on what to do... to get on the winning track. you know who would solve this problem? jose antonio reyes.
Re: SO... what needs to change? Shooting is clear, but also we need more wide play when the box is packed. You have to stretch the play, yet we always seem content to try and slip through the middle. Thus, teams can pack all their players inside, and not worry about wide playing wingers.
Re: SO... what needs to change? True, he's not afraid to shoot, just seemingly incapable of shooting on target. Today really made me wish Lauren and Clichy were on the pitch.
Re: SO... what needs to change? Anyone willing to shoot will solve this problem. I don't are if they are a defender or even a goal keeper like chilavert, if you enjoy shooting, we have a spot for you.
Re: SO... what needs to change? i agree brush. why is walcott looking to be our best WINGER, yet see's 20 min. a game? hleb is right there too, so i wont knock him.. has been brillant. EDIT: c'mon... changing this thread title... if you are checking out this website and dont want to know what is going on with our team.. i pity you.
CLOSE THE GODDAMNTRANSFERWINDOW Reyes and Cole can not sit. Remember when Reyes can and beat Chelsea by himself in the FA Cup. Remember Cole being the best premiership player in the England team. We can not afford to sit them. Too many new players. With no position. We're starting to look like the Knicks with 8 mid-rate shooting guards, on we have about 6 players that really want the traditional #9 shirt's role.
Re: SO... what needs to change? What can Arsenal do? Henry was poor today but you can't expect him to win every game for you. Sell Cole and Reyes. Get Gallas, a new striker, or a good winger. PS: What happened to Lungeberg, did he retire?
Re: SO... what needs to change? okay.. but who is available to play.. he IS. ljungberg is certainly questionable. but even he creates goals by darting runs IN THE MIDDLE *NOT ON THE WING*
Re: SO... what needs to change? Freddy isn't the answer to our troubles either. I'd rather have hleb's great balls coming in, than ljunbgerg's runs which end up no where because he is out of form, and the the team isn't clicking to provide him any assistance.
Re: SO... what needs to change? Are you kidding? Ljungberg's presence on the wing is exactly who was missing on the pitch today. Eboue was sending crosses over everyone's heads, and he is a defender.
Re: SO... what needs to change? if henry finishes some of those clear opportunities we wouldnt be having this discussion right now.
Re: SO... what needs to change? Don't blame Henry when v. Persie and the midfield ****ed everything up.
Re: SO... what needs to change? yep, i can tell yer posts are pretty moronic. ahh bless.. at least you dont support the arsenal. h-town.....
phishy...just changed your title since I felt it gave away the result. People don't usually start "changes needed" threads after a good result. Anyone who thinks JAR is going to save our bacon has got to be ignoring his limited usefulness over the last 2.5 years. I'd start Theo over JAR at this point. The kid has looked good in limited minutes and he at least seems to have an upside. JAR would help us a bit on setpieces since I think his delivery on long freekicks and corners is better than Cesc or Henry. However, he certainly isn't going to score many goals and without a real LB JAR is going to be spending much of his time in our half like he did last season. I would like to see Wenger get him back integrated into the team if we aren't going to sell him but I'd like Theo to get a shot first. That brings us to one of our big problems. We need a real LB. Flamini can take over in the short term to at least make sure we have a better defense but our attack relies on the FBs for width. Without a real left side overlap threat, it isn't hard for the otherside to slide to our right and make it very difficult for Hleb and Eboue to work together. You saw some of that today (although by pulling everybody back behind the ball, Citeh covered both sides decently in the 2nd half) especially early. When that happens our guys tend to dribble up the center into the heart of their defense. That rarely leads to anything useful. A real LB would make a guy like Rosicky or Ljungberg much more useful too. Rosicky was isolated too often today and when he did pass it to Hoyte the kid was unable to do anything with the ball. We also need to do something with all of the corners and fks we get. This has been a longstanding problem and we're not close to being able to fix it but some obvious first steps is to have players on the pitch that can at least make us competitive on set pieces like Adebayor. Freddie when healthy is also good a making chances off of the chaos of a congested box during fk/corners. Senderos is good too but we've just got to wait for him to get back sometime late next month or early October. I've said for years that this issue is so important that I'd like Wenger to bring in some outside coaching help since his methods are obviously never going to work. I won't even get into the "shoot" issue as we've covered it a million time and I don't know if it will ever get fixed under Wenger. We've become less and less likely to shoot each season and Wenger doesn't even seem to see it as an issue. Havingh said that we've been really unlucky this season with at least 4 bar/posts hit and a couple of horrible offside decisions preventing are guys from good scoring chances. We need transfers. This team is simply not good enough as it is to consistently get results in the Prem especially away from home. The starting XI have obvious holes and our depth is limited at critical positions. Going into today's game we had the worst injury list of any Prem team and you can see that we don't have the depth to overcome it reliably with what we have left. Finally, we need Henry to score. The last few years have proved that if Henry doesn't score we're usually in trouble. I wish there was a way to just rest him until the Boro game but with the damn international break he is going to get even more tired and risks injury. I have no faith in any of our current players to pick up the goalscoring slack until he regains his form/fitness.
Our wingers provide zero width. Hleb and Rosicky are both narrow, more central players. Our crosses go to nobody, because neither Henry or RvP cut into the box. I think we are the only team I've seen that does this. In our first four games, we have had 31 corners and zero goals. That's pathetic. We miss Reyes's passing more than anyone can imagine. I will be disappointed if we sell him, we need him in this team. Our through balls have been non-existant so far, instead we just pass around the box trying to walk it into the goal. In short, we've been figured out, teams know how to play us now. If we don't get the first goal, there is no reason for them to open up. Hoyte isn't good enough to be a LB in the EPL. We're too young and we don't have enough experienced players. First impressions say that this is going to be a long year, hopefully reinforcements will be on the way but I doubt it. This is our worst start in 14 years. Blah. I disagree with starting Walcott over Reyes, JAR is 10 times the passer Theo is.
I think the off field distractions are playing more into factor then we think. I think once the Cole/Reyes drama is over we will start to gain focus again. Whether or not that will be too late we will have to wait and see. Oh and at least Sp*rs lost today
Maybe I can see where you are coming from, but todays effort was trademark 2005 Arsenal with them trying to pass the ball into the net every chance they had. The drama could be effecting them, but today I saw a side that looked frighteningly like last years side.
How can are answer to scoring come from someone who score 7 goals in 44appearances for the gunners last year. I agree with realwood, If anything were missing Reyes' passing attack. Not that we're short on passing
Hard to know where to start, especially with what can be done from a practical point of view, but I would trade Cole for Gallas straight up. If Cole plays for us again, it means that Cole has shit all over us and we are his bitches, playing him because he is good. It means that the individual player is more important than the team. And I don't accept that. I won't be watching Dallas this year for taking on TO and I won't accept Cole back. I'd rather sit through an entire year of Hoyte and Cygan than to have Cole play. Gallas is class, needs a fresh start, is hardly over the hill and could stabilize the back until Lauren, Phil and maybe Clichy can get healthy, all of whom are better than what we have lining up for us now.