We play Wolves and Brentford in the month of February. That's it. 2 games between now and March 5th, that's 40 days. We'd better be a completely different team by then.
A thing that's very frustrating about this team is that they either play perfectly or look completely inept, and you can tell which kind of game it's going to be almost immediately. What's the last grind-it-out win we've had? Watford in November? We have 6 wins since then, all by multiple goals, and a smorgasbord of abysmal performances.
Said it for months, saying it again. Arteta is out of his depth and needs to go. Coming into this season this short was absolutely criminal and that's on him and Edu.
4 - Arsenal have failed to score in four consecutive matches in all competitions for the first time since December 2005. Uninspired. pic.twitter.com/RrZo7P8NBP— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 23, 2022
Fixed your post. Their right back fouled him at least four times w/o a yellow and there was one more that resulted in a play on because Saka stayed on his feet.
Agreed. Burnley was just clogging the middle until the ball went to Martinelli or Saka, and they doubled and tripled, not worried about Lacazette at all. Our kids are doing their best. The more senior players are the ones letting us down,
Ditto. It's also why I don't put all of this on Arteta. It's painfully obvious the side still has holes, as we've echoed for much of the past few weeks.
As frustrating as a sixth place finish may be, it is better than might have been expected, and, if things go the right way, could see Europa League as a point in favor of Arsenal as a destination for players looking to make a move.
Idk, there seemed to be a pretty broad consensus on here that Saka had a pretty bad day. Some even compared him to Pepe, i.e. the futility of his forays from out wide. Sure he gets fouled a lot. But that’s not the only reason for his performance today me thinks.
possibly that's a byproduct of arteta wanting to play manchester city-level of football with not-manchester city-level of players. like, you can hit that precision but you aren't at the tier to do it consistently so, when it does come off, it's glorious. and, then, there's . . . the rest of the time.
I don’t think he had a great game, but I do believe he had a better game than the consensus on this forum. Per WhoScored.com he had 4 shots, 1 on target, 1 key pass, he completed 5 dribbles, two more than the rest of the team combined, was fouled 4 times, dispossessed just once, and completed more than 90 percent of his passes. Burnley don’t provide much offensive threat, but they are a decent team defensively. They are effective enough at parking the bus, that they have allowed the eight fewest goals in league play and unless you have a striker that’s very good in the air, crosses aren’t a particularly effective tactic against their centerbacks.
I said pre-season we were short and an injury run away from being totally ********ed. Its funny that I mention this again on reddit yesterday, and the response was "we spent 150mil what more did you want" and honestly if we are about to flip another 70mil why didn't we spend that earlier.
Those 4 shots had a combined xG of 0.17 - they weren't good efforts. He completed a lot of dribbles, but wasn't generating anything dangerous at the end of them, and I think his "key pass" was a corner. He was very involved, but the end product was so minimal that it was a huge negative for the overall team performance. Burnley basically dared Saka to beat them, and he didn't.
Could easily go lower than 6th. Lose to Wolves in our next game and we are down to Arteta's familiar 8th, while still having 4 games against the "big six" and another Wolves + West Ham game to come.
Good one. Familiar 8 because he used to wear that number. We should have gone for Vieira as head coach if you know what I mean.
Sky is falling when our starting midfielders were out and Burnley created nothing of note. Performance wasn't ideal, but: xG map for Arsenal - Burnleya pure Burnleying, where they really did effectively deny breakthroughs but that's so many shots to not have one go in pic.twitter.com/lgLUfTcRcV— Caley Graphics (@Caley_graphics) January 23, 2022 We played well enough to win, and you have a couple of games like this every season.
Yeah it’s really the timing of it that has everybody in a lather. The fact these disappointing results came in three different competitions could be seen as a blessing in disguise, really. We’re still in a strong position in the league, and despite handwringing over potential fixture congestion with the rearranged games, we only have 17 matches to play between now and the end of May. We’ve got every opportunity to solidify our credentials.
We have made too many missteps already to afford games like we had against Burnley and still get top 4. The only big 6 team we didn't lose to was Nuno's spurs, and we still have 4 games against the big six, 2 against Wolves, and away games at both West Ham and Villa. That is half of our remaining fixture list.
538's odds (take with grain of salt, and so on), basically have it as a wash for top 4 between us and Sperz, with United and West Ham as outside shots. We've got work to do, obviously, but the sky is NOT falling.