Arsenal suffered a three-one defeat at the hands of their fin de siècle nemesis Manchester United. It’s a new manager at United but in some ways same old Arsenal in North London.
Arsenal have been struck by the injury bug again, no top six club has suffered more injuries than Unai Emery’s Arsenal, who have missed a combined 91 matches this season through injury. And much like the middle-era Arsenal under Arsene Wenger, those injuries have largely struck the defense.
The injuries are a mitigating factor. No team can lose all of their defenders to injury at various times of the season and expect the back line to function as a unit. That disarray at back was exactly the reason for the first goal.
Lukaku isn’t a visionary playmaker but even he picked out the fact that all three of Arsenal’s central defenders had collapsed on him at the exact moment that Alexis Sanchez made a run into the box. Mustafi, Koscielny, and Torreira all sprinted at Lukaku, vacating the middle of the 18 yard box and leaving Maitland-Niles and Kolasinac dangling.
A less generous writer might suggest that it looked like Mustafi ran at Lukaku in order to make sure that he didn’t have to defend Alexis. A more generous writer (lol, me) says that Mustafi’s step up was him trying to catch Alexis offside.
But individual errors aside Arsenal weren’t up for this match from the off. You can tell when Arsenal are going to beat a big team because they start on the front foot, pressing, getting chances, and causing the other team problems right from the start. And they sustain this pressure, this work, for more than just the first 5 minutes. Against, United, they let off that pressure, conceded first and then sort of fell to pieces.
I know that we have a lot of injuries to the back line but it is still odd to watch Arsenal’s midfielders repeat performances we have seen in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 – Unai has been in the job at Arsenal for six months and the Gunners still struggle to defend counter attacks and kill opposition transition play.
After the match, Emery admitted that the team knew about United’s threat on transitions but simply failed to stop them: “today for example we worked to stop their counter-attack. They have very big players to do the transitions and they gave us problems with that. We worked well, the second goal was in the transition, but the first was our positioning. In the second half, we took some risks and that’s what we needed to do. They scored [a third]. We need to keep improving. I think the matches against West Ham United and Chelsea we played and worked well defensively. Today was more difficult to stop their transition. We need to work on attacking [too] because we wanted to win. Our idea was to go in with a good balance. I think we have a good balance in a lot of moments but they have big players with big qualities who can make the difference.”
The big problem for Emery is that Arsenal supporters have a form of PTSD. We have watched a succession of Arsenal midfielders who were talented enough in possession, who could collect under pressure, who can pick out a pass that bypasses 6 defenders, but who can’t sense a threat when the opponents have the ball and don’t seem to have the that bit of nasty MFer needed to commit a cynical foul and stop play.
Emery is playing with two MFers, one of which is ostensibly an outright defensive midfielder and yet time and again that midfield is caught ball-watching, unaware of the danger of a counter, pressing too high, and lacking a little bit in the cynical fouls department. Any team that concedes possession and who has a fast front line can post two or three players high up the pitch and catch Arsenal’s midfielders out.
Guendouzi has been particularly culpable this season and once again pulled a Denilson in midfield, the above image is from the third goal. Guendouzi is standing and watching as Paul Pogba ran around Ozil and strode into Arsenal’s makeshift back line. I don’t understand how Emery is dropping Ozil for his lack of defense and yet Guendouzi is getting away with this type of play in every match. I don’t hate Matteo, I think he’s a fantastic footballer, but at some point, Emery has to say “hey bud, you can’t do that – go foul Pogba” or he has to drop him.
Matteo is put into this danger situation because the Arsenal fullbacks are pushed too high up the pitch, the photo shows that as well: Auba is the furthest up front but Kolasinac is literally doing nothing all the way up there (bottom of the screen) and Maitland-Niles (top) is also crazy out of position. The result is that Ramsey and Torreirs are covering for them and both of those players got beat for pace and power.
Arsenal created chances in this match. Three big chances, in fact. Auba scored one, Ramsey had one saved, and Lacazette missed one wide. The difference in the game was that United created the same number of chances and scored all three. That is a function of counter attacking football, any time the opposition concedes that much space and lets you run into it, they are going to get some joy.
Leaving on a full positive note, Lacazette was fun to watch in this match. He tackled, hustled, created, dropped deep to collect the ball, and even attempted to score a handball goal in the 99th minute. He never stopped working for the team. My only problem with Lacazette is that Arsene Wenger didn’t sign him in 2015/16.
Post Script:
Japanese Cheesecake (aka, Cream Cheese Souffle)
Recipe adapted from Tasty
So, this is just a souffle. I’m not sure why they call it a cheesecake but if you’ve made a souffle before you’ll recognize the technique.
First, turn the oven on to 320. Next, grease an 8″ by 3″ cake pan and put a parchment paper circle on the bottom and a 6 inch tall parchment paper collar on the inside. Dude, if you’re going to use a springform pan, you better wrap that rascal or it’s going to leak all over. Better yet, just buy the cake pan listed above. It’s $12 well spent. You will use that pan for the rest of your life.
Gather your ingredients:
-8 eggs (separated)
-6 oz of butter
-6 oz of cream cheese
-1/2 cup of milk
-1 cup of sugar (separated into thirds)
-zest of a lemon
-tablespoon of lemon juice
-1/4 cup of flour
-1/4 cup of corn starch
-pinch of kosher salt
Place the butter, cream cheese, salt, 1/3 cup of sugar and milk in a pan over low heat. Melt, whisking until smooth. Set aside and allow to cool to body temp. Whisk in lemon zest and juice. Incorporate egg yolks one at a time.
Whip egg whites to soft peaks. Add remaining 2/3 cup of sugar and whip to stiff peaks: the merengue will be glossy and you should be able to invert the bowl over Mary Berry’s head.
Slowly incorporate the cheese-yolks into the whites. You know how to do this… “lighten” the cheese mix with a little egg white and then fold in the remaining egg whites until there are no streaks.
SIFT.. I SAID SIFT the flour and corn starch over the batter and incorporate. I do all of this with a whisk because I am the bomb.
Pour into the prepared pan. Place the pan on a baking sheet. Pour in about an inch of boiling water.
Bake for 25 minutes, reduce the temp to 285F and bake for 50-55 more minutes.
There is a trick to getting the cake out: let the cake cool for a minute, have a cooling rack near (yes, you need one of those too) and tip the cake all the way over onto your filthy hand and the flop that thing onto the rack. Alternately, you can rig up a parchment paper lifting system by making two REALLY long parchment strips and placing them under the parchment paper round on the bottom of the pan. I don’t do all that because my hand adds flavor.
Serve with macerated fruits.
Guen is a 19 year old rookie plucked out of league two Lorient and asked to do a job in a faster and more talented league than he had been used to.
I don’t know of a single teenager playing in any top league tasked to play midfield and holding his own.
Best ever mid players didn’t hit their stride until their mid twenties.
His mistakes are one thing, it’s his reactions to goals conceded in part to his mistakes that are infuriating for me.
Had Arsenal had any true leaders in their squad they would’ve chewed his a$$ out for the arm waving and such.
Arsenal have too many defensive liabilities in their line up. Players too slow to recognize where the danger is coming from or simply not able to deal with it.
If I’m generous and I gloss over the first goal and chalk it up to United clever ball movement ( 8 passes in the area no Arsenal player getting even close to intercepting one), the second was a text book how not to defend a counter.
Torreira alows Shaw run by him with a little shimmy, Xhaka picks up the slack and follows him out wide while Kola is simply ball watching and let’s the play turn into 3v2.
By the time Shaw passes to Lukaku, Kola has taken himself totally out of position to effect the play.
Shambles.
” I don’t know of a single teenager playing in any top league tasked to play midfield and holding his own.”
Answer:
Declan Rice of west ham only 20 yo this year, the midfield destroyer and got a
goal against us.
Thanks, I haven’t watched much of WH this season.
Is he that good?
Also , not taking anything away from him as a player but getting a goal against us is hardly significant these days.
I didn’t think we were bad. We looked dangerous down their left all game and created good opportunities in possession, but they very intelligently attacked the space behind Kolasinac and we needed excellent rearguard defending on those occasions when they bypassed the press. We didn’t get it. Bless Ainsley, he’s no right back and got cooked in the offside trap for their opener and then they had a big burst of confidence and scored a different version of the same goal two minutes later. That was the ballgame. What if Hector and Sokratis were still in the game? I don’t think we concede those goals, but it doesn’t matter, they weren’t and we did.
What struck me most was how much worse we looked after Ozil was introduced. He and Ramsey got in each others’ way and our energy level and purpose noticeably dropped. It didn’t help that they brought on two killer forwards in the last 20 minutes against our makeshift rearguard which was stretched by necessity due to the numbers we had to commit forward. Emery’s changes didn’t work out in this match, but we also had rotten luck losing two more defenders to injury, and on balance of chances probably deserved another goal. The first goal is always crucial because it dictates which team has to come out of its shape and expose its defenders to counter-attacks. It was us vs. Chelsea and it was them today. The team that scores first usually wins.
Ozil, well, I know it was a tough spot for him coming into a game like that having hardly played but he hardly looked like he was playing on the same pitch as the others. With him on the pitch, Arsenal reverted to peak Wenger intricate passing in front the box (which has not been their calling card under Emery) instead of looking to combine on the left, which was working out well. And as usual he didn’t give consistent effort when we lost the ball. It was easy to see why Emery has dropped him.
I didn’t think we looked bad either. But all our attack came down the left, which becomes very easy to defend against. We will miss Bellerin greatly.
He’s a crushing loss to this team in so many ways.
So I was thinking to myself , what tactics would I use if I were Emery.
Keep it tight at the back and don’t let United hit us on a counter.
Kinda play like an away team against their quicker transition.
But when you concede the first goal the way we did, tactics don’t matter much.
9 Arsenal “ defenders “ outmaneuvered by 5 United attackers.
I mean, you can say that to your team but when your back 4 is AMN, Mustafi, Xhaka and Kolasinac, does it matter what you say? They might just about hold it together against Cardiff but with the team chasing goals at the other end they had little chance against the forwards they were facing.
Besides that, “don’t let them hit you on the counter” might as well mean “don’t attack.” At 0-0, that’s unconscionable for Arsenal. We might be many things but we are not going to set up to protect a 0-0 at home, thank goodness.
I don’t disagree,Doc.
My mental exercise wasn’t to second guess Emery or to point out he might’ve made a mistake in the team’s set up.
If you remember, you and I are kinda in agreement about expectations, injuries and other things as well re Arsenal these days.
My point , which I was kinda making to myself rather than anyone else, is that Arsenal don’t have the players to absorb much pressure without conceding to a talented offensive unit anyways.
We have the players. They are injured.
Going out wide and crossing it in is retro English football. (Quite fitting that we’re going to get a revamped bruised banana kit next year) I disagree that it was working well. I mean it was basically all we were doing so it obviously ‘worked’ at times. But even the goal we did get was a bit lucky. At least we had 3 players running onto the cross, which actually managed to get through. Most often that wasn’t the case.
I don’t know. Ozil did seem on a different wavelength to the team, but isn’t that kind of the point of Ozil? He played some good passes from deep, and played in players on the left. But our movement was lacking, and for some weird reason we were all camped on the left side. We miss Bellerin maybe a tad too much.
I’m not disappointed we lost. I kind of expected us to. I get the injuries were unfortunate and affected us. I think the Kos injury also mentally hurt us and the long delay upset our rhythm. I get all that and I think our energy in the game was generally good. I just didn’t like what I saw, especially in attack.
Fully agree that Lacazette, and also Torreira, were on a different level defensively and didn’t deserve to be on the losing side. They constantly tracked back and got stuck into tackles. Even if they didn’t win every duel, it was great to watch that level of commitment.
Pogba and Matic were pretty classy in this game. They were dominant physically but also very clever in their use of the ball. Forget about us not having the speed to contain Pogba, we didn’t even have the speed to contain Matic as he evaded a tackle and ferried the ball at a weird sprint towards Lukaku’s side of the pitch knowing the counter was on for their killer 2nd.
Which brings me onto Xhaka. Xhaka will never execute the move Matic made for that counter. It will never happen.
He would’ve passed it long, square or backwards. But some games call for a CM to do exactly what Matic did; run with the ball, attack open space and force defenders to make a choice between holding a high line or retreating. Emery made a point post-game of mentioning Utd’s “big players who can do the big transitions” – those transitions are the key to killer counter-attacks that are so often the difference when we face our rivals.
Yes we win or lose as a team, but we can’t dominate these hard-running contests with Xhaka playing his usual conservative passing game. It reminded me of that tragic Atletico Madrid home game and our sterile domination. God I miss Patrick Vieira.
first goal, awful for three defenders to all, step on the ball at the same time. the closest defender calls ball and develops the situation (channels the player either left or right). everyone else reads the situation and covers the first defender. that’s stuff these guys learned when they were twelve years old but have gotten away from it. why is torreira flying into a challenge on lukaku’s right foot, allowing the ball to be passed behind him? that’s second grade defending.
the lingard goal, that was good soccer from united. the players off the ball made the most difficult runs for arsenal’s defense to contend with. if i’m kolasinac, i’m stepping to the ball, forcing lukaku down the line to cross the ball in; no cut back. it was a tough situation to defend. cech was shuffling his feet when the shot came in, which is uncharacteristic for him but lingard’s shot wasn’t exactly rhythmic. good finish but cech will watch the film and want that one back.
the martial goal was awful from xhaka. he just backed up with no intent allowing pogba to simply carry the ball. i’ve seen cones put more pressure on a ball than xhaka did. he’s got to either delay pogba or make a tackle. once again, twelve year olds know this. i talked the other day about how arsenal defenders just allow players to tee off on cech from just outside the box while other defenders lack the hustle to anticipate a rebound. cech made a great save on pogba’s shot but only martial anticipated the rebound; no hustle.
arsenal players are just poor, tactically. please understand the difference between tactics and strategy where tactics are simply players making decisions on the field based on the situation where strategy is the plan on how the team is supposed to play against an opponent. arsenal players are poor tacticians and it’s difficult to be a top pro if you’re a poor tactician.
…also, i think emery should have taken ramsey off for ozil instead of iwobi. ramsey played well yesterday but faded pretty bad towards the end, where iwobi posed a constant threat.
Joshuad,
Xhaka is a weak and slow defender , I don’t think there can be questions about that, but there were at least four other players more guilty on that play than him , including Cech.
Pogba barreling down on Xhaka ,after he blew past our entire midfield as if their feet were stuck in quick sand , is less than ideal but forcing him to take a low percentage shot from outside the area is not a bad outcome.
Cech, whom you spared any criticism probably because you still believe he’s better than Leno( a big question), didn’t t cover himself in glory by pushing the ball out straight to Martial.
Likewise, he didn’t do too well letting Sanchez dance around him in such a close proximity to his own goal for United’s first.
I’m no fan of Xhaka but he wasn’t much at fault for any of the three goals conceded.
okay, tom. i’ll take your bait. i don’t blame xhaka for all of the goals, only partially for the last one; the goal where we’re down a single goal and are fighting for a replay and the team is taking some risks. in fairness to xhaka, he’s no central defender but most players learn at a fairly young age that in that situation, they have to influence the play somehow. i know you believe it was a low percentage shot pogba took, but from 18 yards out with ZERO pressure on the ball? that’s not low percentage at all, especially for a player like paul pogba. my problem with xhaka on that play is, like he’s done so often, he didn’t affect the play at all. no delay, no pressure, no tackle, no tactical foul, nothing. he was just on the field. my gripe is that he does that every single time he plays. it’s like there’s a game going on and he hasn’t a clue what’s going on.
as for cech, i just talked about this a week or so ago. arsenal players allow opponents to tee off on cech from the top of the box because they know cech can make that save. cech will make the save but he can’t take many of those balls cleanly, especially if they’re on the ground. textbook goalkeeping, he deflects the shot into a wide area, not the goal mouth. anyone who’s played goal keeper will tell you that cech’s technique is excellent. the problem with arsenal is what they don’t do after the save is made.
as a general rule, players, more notably strikers, are taught if you hit the ball near post, hit it high and far post, low. lacazette has scored several goals this season, including last week against chelsea, high at the near post. likewise, aguero against liverpool a few weeks ago. but i want to focus on the low shot at the far post, like pogba’s on friday. why are players taught that? because a keeper has to get on the ground to make that save and there’s a 90% chance that ball stays on the field after the save. meaning that if an attacking player follows that shot, the keeper is still likely to be on the ground or in the process of getting up when you they hit the rebound shot, increasing the likelihood of a goal, exponentially; you’re, essentially, hitting the ball into an open net.
people will call that an error on cech, saying “he deflected the ball directly to martial”. that’s not an error on cech. he made the save into the wide area like he’s supposed to. the arsenal defenders, continually, fail to react at all to the save until it’s too late. they don’t take up positions with respect to the opponents. they don’t anticipate the shot being saved. they do nothing and this has been an arsenal problem for the past couple of years. it’s on the defenders to react to those plays quicker than attackers.
for the record, i blamed cech more for the second goal as he was shuffling his feet when the ball came in. if his feet are set, that’s an easy save for cech. credit to lingard for taking the shot as quickly as he did but cech will be disappointed he hasn’t made that save.
professional goal keepers are so talented. most of the time, when they get beat, it’s because of an error they made or one their team mates have made. they can save mostly anything that’s not struck perfectly. the biggest error keepers make is their feet aren’t set when the shot comes in.
Hey Joshuad , I respect your opinion as a soccer coach and all, but I played professional football in Poland in the the first division and I can tell you Xhaka did influence the play by keeping Rashford’s run in check.
Take a look at Tim’s last pic above and you will see clearly than any attempt from Xhaka to challenge Pogba would’ve surely resulted in the Frenchman feeding the ball to Rashford either through the middle or the flank, which with Rashfords speed would’ve been a given.
Cech saving Pogba’s shot with relative ease proves that it wasn’t a high percentage play.
The fact Martial scores from a tap in doesn’t make Xhaka the guilty party.
Blown coverages on Arsenal’s right flank and lack of hustle diserve credit for that.
As an aside, Arsenal injuries notwithstanding, the last pic in Tim’s thread sums up the difference between the two clubs.
Three United players vs five Arsenal defenders and all three are waaaay faster , quicker and more athletic than our players.
ahhh, polska! i went to a game in germany between the u.s. and poland right before the ’06 world cup. crazy snow.
the fact that i’m a coach just happened to come up in a story that i told; it doesn’t make me some sort of authority. although i’ve been coaching since 2002, i still consider myself a student of the game and as i always like to learn new things. i learn from players i coach and the smart guys on this forum all the time.
one thing i’ve recently implemented in my training is every other week with my club kids and weekly with my college kids, we do numbers up/down scenarios ie. 2v1s or 3v2s. the idea is to get everyone comfortable with being in that situation and understanding that if you’re smart and communicate, you don’t have to lose out because you’re outnumbered.
what i would have coached xhaka is when pogba takes a touch in his dribble, that he simultaneously steps to pogba getting closer. this makes pogba’s passing angle to rashford more difficult while denying the direct ball to rashford (nutmeg). it also forces pogba to do something right now and not when he’s ready.
if he plays the ball wide to rashford, like you suggested, it delays the play, allowing the arsenal players behind pogba to get involved. if pogba plays the through ball, xhaka’s new angle makes that pass very narrow, allowing cech to get involved. that’s not to mention that rashford has to remain onsides.
i understand when you say that xhaka denied the through ball to rashford, but when you’re numbers down, you have to do more than just your textbook role. besides, there has to be pressure on the ball.
I think that’s harsh on Xhaka.
He was “delaying “ but had he committed to a tackle Pogba could’ve slipped Rashford through on goal, who blew by Ramsey( I think) on the righ.
i’m not being hard on xhaka. on the third goal, he didn’t delay, he didn’t channel, and he didn’t make a tackle. what did he do? nothing, because he doesn’t know what to do. he was just on the field, posing as a footballer. he gives arsenal nothing. like i said earlier, football bat.
last spring, i shared with you guys what i would have done as a manager with the arsenal midfield but let me provide a refresher.
i would have sold ramsey for giovana lo celso. i would have sold xhaka for either steven n’zonzi or i would have exercised the one year option on santi cazorla. instead of buying torreira, i would have signed leandro paredes from zenit. i didn’t know anything about guendouzi but i like him.
lo celso is already as good as ramsey and he’s only 22 with a much higher ceiling. arsenal needed a senior guy in a holding role with top premier league experience. right now, that’s xhaka and while the story about his mommy giving him the key when he was little is cute, that dude is about as useful as a football bat. give me n’zonzi or keep cazorla to mentor the young bucks. preferably, keep santi and allow parades to be mentored and adapt to the league. folks, but that’s a much more solid midfield.
arsenal could have signed parades last summer but forget about it now; he’s too expensive. arsenal should have signed him before dortmund bought axel witsel from zenit. right now, chelsea, psg, and juventus are in a bit of a bidding war but he’s content at zenit.
MFer. To cynically stop a counter. I initially read that differently from how you intended 🙂
I have to disagree with you on this one. I thought the starting line up was wrong. Aubameyang on the right doesn’t work at all. I felt lacazete had a terrible game in which he lost procession a lot of times and his decision making didn’t come off which cumulatated in lazily losing procession that cost us the third goal.
…so what should arsenal have done? do you disrupt what iwobi and sead have working on the left? who do you play on the right? with mkhi out, i think aubameyang was arsenal’s best option on the right. lacazette’s a better center forward than aubameyang.
while lacazette was less than perfect, he did work hard for the team; kinda tough for you to say he “lazily” lost the ball.
I get that he worked hard . If you watch the replay , you would see he didn’t need to lose the procession there .as for disrupting iwobi and sead, it worked out last week with iwobi starting on the bench against Chelsea . Besides he was the first to be removed anyways.
I feel iwobi on the right would have been able to better form a partnership on the right with maitland niles than what happened with aubameyang there.
Due to having all our play go down the left it made us predictable thereby nullifying the usually excellent iwobi kolasinac partnership
Iwobi-Kolasinac has been an outstanding partnership all season. Maitland-Niles doesn’t have 1/10th of Kolasinac’s creativity or threat in the penalty box, so Iwobi or anyone else would’ve been wasted on the right flank. It was perfect for Auba because he doesn’t really want to combine, he wants to find space and run onto the ball. That’s exactly how it worked out for our one goal. No, the left flank overload wasn’t a problem, in fact I felt it was one of the few positives on the day.
Its all about balance and Kola as a full back or even a wing back is never a good balance. He is blind to goal threats. If he is viewed and used as a left sided winger which in fact is what he is, Emery’s set up would become different. Kola and Iwobi is like playing a orthodox winger and an inverted winger at the same time in the same position. Yes that’s an overload that can only be difficult for the opposition to deal with but one that also disrupts the balance of the team.
Moreal/Kola or Monreal/Iwobi for better balance.
You can’t create overloads without leaving your team short somewhere else. It’s a calculated risk that all good teams take. Kolasinac is a good player with positioning and concentration issues defensively. Those are fixable, but it will take time.
Maybe,
Kolasinac has winger’s instincts more than a true defender’s.
I think he’ll always be a defensive liability.
Strikes me that the same was true of Dani Alves or Cafu (or insert any fullback of note). They could also defend and they did what they were told to do positionally, but we remember them for what they did with the ball, not for the tackles or headers they won. Emery is exactly what Seo needs to develop the defensive side of his game because it’s those offensive winger’s instincts that you can’t coach (remember Clichy and Gibbs?). Positioning can be taught.
Our attack was horrible. I get that we were making some progress down the left but I hate the fact that we are praising Arsenal for being as one-dimensional as a low – mid table side. On top of that, the progress we did make was nowhere near as good as it needed to be. They double- or triple-teamed Iwobi and Kolasinac, who both looked ponderous, and for the most part had us under control, our goal needed a lucky deflection for the cross to get through. Kolasinac was nothing more than OK going forwards, and totally absent defensively. If that’s what overloading looks like, doing exactly the same thing over and over agin until you get lucky, then it’s pants and I hate it.
Iwobi also killed at least two counterattacks by not releasing the pass. In transition you could see United’s defenders relax as soon as he got the ball because they knew they could get back into position while he trundled 50 yards upfield.
Defensively – well any team that loses both CBs to injury will struggle. But. It was so simple for United to play balls into Lukaku behind Kolasinac, drag Kos over to the touchline and then play passes into our now vacant centre. As I type I am replaying in my mind’s eye about eight or nine goals from the last few seasons that were scored against us the same way.
And when Kos went off, Monreal had to come on. Playing Xhaka at CB guaranteed United would score again.
To be honest, I think that was the worst display I’ve seen for a while. Well, at least it’s left me the most frustrated – for all of the effort and hard work that’s obviously gone in we saw poor attack, poor defence, individual errors, poor game management and substitutions. And we are now injured up the wazoo.
“Kolasinac was nothing more than OK going forwards, and totally absent defensively. If that’s what overloading looks like, doing exactly the same thing over and over agin until you get lucky, then it’s pants and I hate it.”
How else do you propose breaking down a deep block in possession with the team we had out there? Putting a bunch of crosses in the box doesn’t favor either of our forwards. They took away the space behind them completely after the first goal, so those passes just weren’t on. Letting them have it to draw them on to you is not really an option 2-0 down. So you either overload the flanks and try to get a ball across the box or you overload the center and try a through ball. We did the former, not particularly well, but well enough to cause them problems and score one goal. We always overloaded the center under Wenger but that’s even easier to counter from than on the flank, so again, what do you do when you need a goal? You either limit the damage and see out the game or you try to score while simultaneously accepting the risk that the other team could score again. In a winner takes all cup game, there was no other option than to push on.
While it was 0-0, I though Arsenal was the better team. I understand frustrations with the loss but I to me this was in the category of good game, bad luck and bad result. If we play like that vs. Cardiff, we will win.
All good points Doc, but it feels like watching the limitations of the team being not only exposed but accentuated by the way that we play, rather than watching some clever decision-making for which players or manager should take credit.
At the same time Utd were playing an equally simple game which we should have been able to defend against. No credit to them. It was too easy for United to score and too easy for them to defend against us, and that’s all on us, not because United were brilliant.
Again, the injuries were mitigating factors and there were probably some passages where we were better than I am remembering. But I’m not watching that game again, life is too short.
“How else do you propose breaking down a deep block in possession with the team we had out there?”
You can’t. You need an excellent dribbler, like Sane or Sterling to do that. Or a great passer who can unlock teams with rapid ball movement. This Arsenal team don’t really have any players like that. Iwobi is the closest and (ironically) the supporters seem to despise him.
So that’s 2 cup competitions that Spurs have been booted out of in a matter of days.
Yeah, I’ll take this past week.
personally, i don’t care much about cup competitions. there’s too much luck involved. one bad play could mean your cup. the best team seldom wins.
the league is the true litmus test that determines how good you really are. luck plays less of a factor and to win the league requires consistency over the season. cups are cool but the league is where it’s at. that’s my take.
To hell with that.
I hugely enjoyed every one of last 3 FA Cup wins. The sight of Arsene in his champagne soaked shirt being held aloft by the players will log live in the memory. And killed a stupid media narrative stone cold. We were not good enough to win the league, but good enough to win the world’s most storied domestic cup competition. What’s not to go doolally over?
right on. trophies are good. i just prefer having the championship trophy.
I’m on tour but still managed to catch the action at Selhurst Park.👍
Unfortunately our injuries will consign us to a firm 6th place finish and we have little chance to beat any big opposition in the Europa League.
We will as I suspected, limp to a middling finish to the season. No rabbits out of the hat from Emery, no miracle finishes.
I will still love the club for a little longer (read: forever) and wait with eternal hope as so many of us do.
Hey Tim,
I wanted to say thank you for the recipe and for the detailed advice on how to do it. My wife and I will try to make it next weekend as a fun activity to do together.
Also, I LOL’d at the “my hand adds flavor” bit.
Cheers! There is a video on the Tasty website which shows you how to do all of the techniques. I prefer my recipe though because it uses less eggs (theirs tasted like a Japanese souffle omelet) and has a flavor profile that I think more closely suits American tastes.