Agreed. We know Ninny isn't good enough - that is why he is an emergency back up and rotational player for easy/meaningless games So Arse went into the season with a starting midfield consisting of a failed player, and guy who is always injured. Injury to Partey immediately exposes the fact that Xhaka can't play 6 or 8 properly
Whats worse is Xhaka is actually playing his role well, and we have had calls for him to take Parteys position, which won't do him any favours and likely leads to more cards because his poor defensive reactions lead to cards. The next EPL game against Everton will be telling. I hope we see either White or Zinc in Parteys role, Sambi is a leaky mid and will make Everton look good. And a loss to them like last year would be a ********ing disaster. Run Zinc in MF and put Tierney at LB.
I think Zinc has to play in midfield Xhaka annoys me because we know he isn't good enough for years now. Fair play to Arteta for finding a way to get the best out of him, but as soon as you don't have Partey with his beast mode - its back to same old because he cannot anchor the midfield
Took the labour Day weekend to let the feelings out. On Tuesday morning I think a lot of this is score board commentary. Short of the first 10 minutes of the match we dominated in all areas of the pitch except about 9 yards from goal. Odegaard normally put his chance away, and our passing into the box seemed to go into really poor positions for some reason. The first goal a frankly astonishing mistake by Gabriel, I don't think I've ever witnessed him slide tackle let alone run out to the top of the final third to do it. It was bizzare. In any match like this the first goal is going to be pretty determinate, especially against an ManU team that literally cannot possess the ball. I think we failed to press Erikson probably because it seem EtG gave him license to go wherever he wanted. Lokonga didn't really seem that bad to me while I was watching I though he had a pretty solid if unspectacular game. I think he can increase his tempo a bit and still be good. He's weakness being he isn't Thomas Partey but who else is in the world right now. I think Xhaka Dan out of steam before Odegaard and probably would have been a better first sub. I should expect the aggregious fouling after watching this fixture for the better part of 25 years but it's still shocking what they can get away with without a card. Only to see Saliba get a card for no contact at all. Oh well, we go again.
Disagree. I think Sambi was fine-to-really-good for most of the match. Yes, he got his spacing wrong on the first two goals, but even so, it's harsh to single him out, as all of the goals were due to a combination of factors and not just him. Martinelli doesn't track back quickly enough on the first one and OZ makes the wrong choice to come central to the ball (leaving Antony) when Saliba is there to handle. One the second, Saliba gets his positioning wrong on Rashford's run and thus can't shepherd him to a less dangerous area. At home against Everton is just the type of match to give Sambi more minutes in this position.
I don't understand the Lokonga criticism, but then there's very little I understand or have understood about Arsenal fans going back decades so there is that. El Nenny is actually another guy who gets scapegoated. In Arteta's Homeless Man's Pep system you need someone at the base of the midfield to do the simple stuff well. El Nenny does that, plus he doesn't turn the ball over which is the key. I don't know what happened to make fans think that every time a midfielder gets the ball he's gotta start moving upfield immediately and that somehow sideway passing is terrible. Partey being out of course is not optimal so you need to figure out the profiles in the middle without him.
Elneny is an adequate backup in this system. Sambi was fine on Saturday except for a bad moment on a goal - United are setup to counter and cause problems for good teams that try to attack them. It's the same thing we saw under Solskjaer - they were good against the good teams, and toothless against the bad teams.
Arteta denies it, but I think the substitutions and the required shift to a back 3 with the subs that came on is at least partially responsible for the third. They found space in the center of the midfield, before the subs sorted out their responsibilities and the spacing in the defense was wrong for three at the back, White looked like he was still playing as a fullback in a back four, if he’s closer to Saliba he probably runs Erickson down.
It started with Sambi getting caught between pressuring Eriksen and dropping in to cover. I think 9 times out of 10 Gabriel successfully brings Bruno down there and the ball doesn’t happen to squirt to Sancho in a perfect position for an advantage to be played. Then we’d look at it as a cynical but ‘professional’ yellow card and probably were praising him for it. Once it did break, with Gabriel out of it, Zinchenko is justified in thinking he needs to cover that space inside. Ramsdale should be out much quicker to close down Antony. He does this too often, for me: when there’s a situation where he is uncertain he neither stays in position nor comes far enough to effect the attacker and is caught in no man’s land.
I feel it was too aggressive of a substitution overall. We were fairly well dominating the game and had equalized without shaking things up once, and there was a lot of time left. Still, if that situation hadn’t played out immediately after the change, we probably would’ve been able to settle into that shape and it would’ve been fine. So it’s a little bit of bad luck also.
Whats worse is it appears the club knows about TP5s off field indiscretion, whats the plan if he comes back from injury in 2 or 3 weeks, and then is officially charged over what he is alleged to have done? I would hope we follow other clubs leads, and drop him until it goes to court, but then that means its either Sambi, another academy kid, or someone else on the list. We will be totally ********ed. Arteta is tactically inflexible atm, as we saw against United, so I would be worried about our season until the transfer window.
He threw three subs on at once, switching to a back three that arguably unsettled us and lead to the third goal, IMO. Worked against Fulham didn't against Yanited. But I don't think that's tactically inflexible.
Against United he went in and got hit on the same counters twice playing a suicide high line away from home. Half time we should have made adjustments because we were very open through the middle, we didn't, and so United scored 2 goals in similar fashion and even the Antony goal came from us being far far too narrow and high up. Dude had acres to run in.
christ. The other bad thing about this challenge, aside from being dangerous, is that odegaard is gonna get to this ball first in the box. He has to pull out of the challenge to avoid this contact. Otherwise he gets the ball and a pen and a broken leg. So Martinez is rewarded for this pic.twitter.com/gV7JYUwyTN— YankeeGunner (@YankeeGunner) September 8, 2022
That's arguably an accurate assessment of the match. It's not necessarily an example of tactical inflexibility. In fact, it's just as plausible that these were individual errors (contributing to the narrowness). Arteta played that rope-a-dope style you seem to be advocating to win us an FA Cup. But moost matches he doesn't need to play it now, including at Yanited. They were there for the taking, we just didn't finish chances.
I think the game is pretty easy to analyze. We played a team that counters well, that is quick enough to compete with our speed (something that gets overlooked and is the real reason we have looked so good attacking-wise lately) and that took their chances. It's a long season. There still is a lot to like and a few things to fix. No reason to over analyze any one game.