Guendouzi the symptom to Arsenal’s bigger problems

“I’m a young player, so I have a lot of energy. I run for my teammates, I fight for my team and I play with my heart and give 150 per cent in every match – I give everything.” – Matteo Guendouzi.

I spent most of the afternoon laughing about this quote. But it’s really not that funny. I’m sure he does give what he thinks is 150%. UEFA used to put out distance run stats and I bet his jogs numbers per minute were epic against Rennes.

But running around, making good passes, and being part of attacking moves are only one part of the game. If you let the opponent have the ball with time and space to cross at will, or if you let your man run right past you and score then all of that hard work you put in has just been undone.

And I like Guendouzi (it is now mandatory for all Arsenal supporters to say “I like ___” before criticizing them). I think he’s a huge talent. What I don’t like is watching that talent wasted because he is too casual in key moments.

Against Rennes he did it twice, once for the second goal and once for the third.

Here’s the start of the 2nd Rennes goal. What I want you to notice is the clock. 64:06. Now here’s the start of the cross.

It took six seconds to move into a sort of position to pretend to block the cross. And don’t let that 4 yards between Guendouzi and Zeffane fool you: the Rennes player dribbles toward Guendouzi, Guendouzi isn’t closing down.

But ok, that’s maybe a bit harsh. After all, Monreal scores the own goal when he sticks a leg out. Fair enough. Let’s look at the third.

We have a throw in, in their half. We are down 2-1 in the 87th minute and really just need to see this out. I’m looking at Guendouzi and Xhaka and I’m not in love with their body language and fact that neither are showing to collect the ball and help their teammates but they are being defensive, so I’m not too bothered:

Monreal gives the ball away and tries to win it back, but gets beat. At this point all Arsenal need to do is be alert that there is a danger here:

Ramsey sort of sees the danger developing and chases the ball but dude passes to the open guy in the middle. Sarr makes a run and this is the first point that Guendouzi doesn’t know what to do.

He lets Sarr past him probably because he has Xhaka behind him. Then Matteo makes a half move to pressure the pass, but it’s already too late for that. Now he’s caught no where doing nothing and here is where – when I say “Arsenal need to be more organized” – they should be able to rely on the structure of the defense to help tell them where to be, who is behind, beside, who needs to get back and cover or who needs to pressure the ball. But ok, coverage is blown, things are a mess, so what do you do now?

Not this: he lets Sarr run past him. Sarr is a quick player. Maybe Guen can’t keep up. Maybe he thinks “those other four have got him” but frankly from here on in, this is just going to be one mess after another.

This screen grab is wild. No one is even thinking about Sarr at the top. Guendouzi is kind of jogging and looks at Sarr. Meanwhile, the guy on the far right is Ramsey. I think he senses what’s up. And he’s now making a huge move to get back. The red line in the middle is Xhaka, who I think does the right thing and tries to stop ball.

Rennes didn’t do anything extraordinarily well here. They just moved the ball from right to left and ran forward. This pass wide to Siliki isn’t the best use of the ball because Xhaka bombed in and left the midfield open, a simple pass right gives their uncovered midfielder a beautiful throughball for Sarr to run on to. Siliki has to slow down his run and then do a long-range cross to reach Sarr.

But Arsenal have actually created so many spaces for Rennes that they can play bad football and still score a goal. And one last thing about this frame.. Ramsey isn’t even in the picture. Guendouzi has seen Sarr is ahead of him and quit on the run. Here’s an alternate view of the same moment:

Look at how far he has to hit that cross! And here you can see Ramsey still behind Guendouzi.

Now, this is the moment right before the header goes in. That’s Ramsey very nearly there to block the shot. That’s Guendouzi at the top of the 18 yard box (right):

I warned earlier this season when he did this same thing and just let a player run past him that Arsenal supporters judge this lack of effort very harshly. It’s called a “Denilson” and fans on social media are already making the comparison.

And hey, you can even get away with this when you’re young. I think most Arsenal supporters are forgiving. Many didn’t like Aaron Ramsey – even this year they said “good riddance” when Arsenal pulled the contract offer – and now he’s treated like a club legend and more than a few of the people who wished him gone would admit that they would like to see more players give the effort he put in on this play.

But this isn’t the first time this season and honestly, Guendouzi, cannot just keep doing this.

All that said, for today, I’d like to take a bit more of a nuanced approach. This is Matteo’s fault at one level for not getting back. Blame fully leveled. Inexcusable.

But at another level this is just as much Emery’s faul, Wenger’s fault and Gazidis’ fault, and of course Kroenke’s fault.

Arsenal have been in decline for 10 years. We’ve traded in great midfielders for good, good for mediocre, and mediocre for whatever Granit Xhaka does.

In attack we went from caviar, to sausages, to:


And in defense we went from Tony to Sol to the BFG to Koz and now to Mustafi and Lichtsteiner.

It’s not a huge mystery why Arsenal’s away form is lamentable. We just don’t have a lot of great players any more. Arsenal’s lack of investment from 2005-2015, the loss of the Fabregas and others for cheap, and the constant rummaging around looking for a way to get a first class player in the second class bin have hurt.

And the years of inattention to organization and modernization have hurt just as much. I love me some Arsene Wenger (I’m obliged to say that whenever I criticize him) but come on, the players basically held a public revolt last year – spilling the beans to any reporter that cared to listen that there was little to no organization in defense and that the players felt like bottles floating in the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. Combined with the decline in talent, the opposition seem to know that we aren’t that good. They run right at our defenders now because they know that we are likely to get a card, make a mistake, or score an own goal.

So, yeah, man, I’m not a big fan of what Guendouzi did today. I think he may have cost Arsenal a chance at a trophy this year. But I can’t put all of the blame on him when we have the system in place that we do. A system which brings in a new manager, a system that hires two new midfielders, buys new defenders, and it’s those players (and manager) who are the ones making big mistakes in big games in the exact same way that the old players used to.

I don’t have any answers. “Give him more time!” people say. Sure. We couldn’t even bring back our own player on loan in January because it would have cost too much I don’t think Arsenal have the capital to afford to fire Emery anyway. So, he gets as much time as the clubs wants from me. So does Xhaka, Guendouzi, and heck why not Mustafi in there too. They all get as much time as the club wants to throw at them. I don’t think we have any choice.

Now watch, we will probably beat United and destroy Rennes. You know why? It’s a home game. That seems to be the only logic to anything over the last two years.

Qq

38 comments

  1. I’m glad you point out that our current problems are related to what happened in the years between 2005 and 2015. We basically accumulated a huge amount of capital in Wenger’s first 6-7 years in charge, and then spent it down pretending everything was OK because we kept making the top 4 by beating out the likes Aston Villa and Everton and Spurs, today’s version of Burnley and Wolves and Watford. We’ve spent down that capital now, and we are what we are today.

  2. Guendouzi is a teenager. So while he had a crap game and was at least partly at fault for the 3rd goal, we shouldn’t be in a position where we’re dependent on a teen in a critical role like that. This gets back to the poor buying and selling that has gone on for pretty much a decade.
    OToH, Sokratis should know better. Once he gets that first yellow that early in a game, he has to be very careful, especially since we’re already thin defensively. And he wasn’t.
    An Auba needs to get back to being clinical. That’s really the primary thing he’s good at. If he can’t convert at a pretty high rate, he doesn’t bring much else. Even Giroud had more other benefits.
    And that was frankly terrible coaching from Emery.
    Not feeling great about ManU or the return leg.

    1. Miss me please on the “he’s only a teenager” defence. Matteo Guendouzi is a first team player for Arsenal Football Club. One I like (very much) and one who I think will be a great player us. But not the “he’s only a teenager” defence, please mate.

      1. How many other top teams play teens in defensive midfield/ box to box positions? Not many, as it’s a hard and important position. The fact that he has to start or play frequently for us in that role isn’t an indictment of him, it’s an indictment of Arsenal’s situation.

    2. “He’s only a teenager” what does that even mean? Does that mean he takes no responsibility on the pitch? We have 11 players on the pitch. One isn’t allowed to coast just because he’s a teenager. There’s nothing wrong if a teenager saves their team.
      Fabregas was our main man in the midfield as a teenager.
      Guendouzi failed woefully yesterday. It’s simple as that.

      1. Please stop with the nonsense. People only care about Guendouzi’s lack of tracking back because we lost that game. It happens all the time to lots of different players. You only noticed it because the final score was 3-1. There were several, probably dozens of moments in that game that were far more significant than what Guen decided to do in those screen captures, like, say, the rebound from the free kick that fell kindly and was leathered into the postage stamp, or the perfect deflection off Monreal from the byline that was soft enough to loop past Cech inside the far post, the Torreira chance after 10 minutes that was saved from point blank range, the Auba offside call, either yellow card decision for Sokratis, and I could go on because that was based only on the HIGHLIGHTS.

        1. A lot of people have mentioned this problem from Guendouzi a number of times in the past, myself included. In fact, I think we won the match, and if I remember correctly, you (and yes, I know I’m talking about you) even expressed surprise and thanked me for pointing it out.

          It is an illegitimate argument, however, to simply dismiss what happened by saying “people are pointing this out because we lost” even if I had never made that observation before. I wonder if you’ve read the post or just skimmed and made up your mind to be upset?

          Football hinges on singular moments, some of them great, some of them poor. If I’m just beat in the air because I’m smaller than my opponent, then fair play. If I’m beat on a defensive assignment, because I failed to put in any effort to get back, that’s the only thing any of my teammates would remember about my game. Have you played organized sports? Because that’s just how it is, dude.

          I thought of an analogy for your profession where a single, lazy mistake, could have catastrophic consequences. Imagine if a surgeon mounted the argument: “We wouldn’t be talking about those forceps inside the patient, if the patient had lived!” or “Why don’t we talk about the 99.999% other things the surgeon did right?”

          Now, let’s extend this analogy for a second. Guendouzi isn’t a surgeon out in the wild. He’s still in med school. Ok? Let’s address one of your other comments elsewhere on the same topic: as a med-student, someone, somewhere, has to have a counseling session with Guendouzi. In sports parlance, we like to say “grab him by the neck”, but really we don’t do that these days. But we do need to train him to not make these catastrophically lazy mistakes.

          It’s unbelievable that we are having this conversation. The dude, through two lazy defensive possessions, essentially knocked us out of this competition. Arsenal went from a 75% chance of making the next round to 35%. It doesn’t matter how many good things he did. This was a multi-million pound error.

          1. The dude, through two lazy defensive possessions, essentially knocked us out of this competition.

            Sorry Tim, never gonna agree with that type of reasoning. The goals were down to so many more things than just that one player, not to mention everything that happened at the other end. Clearly, I would not advocate for inertia or inaction. I am not completely dismissing this as a problem. I am pointing out that this is not the only or even close to the most significant root cause for our loss to Rennes.

            As for your surgeon analogy, the easiest and most apt reply is that football is nothing like surgery and individual players are nothing like surgeons. Still, to prolong the metaphor, a more apt comparison to medicine would be the team-based approach of rounding on hospitalized patients which is exactly what I do at my job. I can tell you it is not an environment where perfection exists (does it exist anywhere?), nor is it reasonable to require it. Mistakes, if identified, are used as learning points in a non-judgmental, inclusive fashion that makes the team member feel supported.

            There are certain “unforgivable” medical errors, usually involving procedural fields. Even these do not necessarily result in punishment for the “perpetrator” unless it can be proven a result of gross negligence, i.e. basic protocols weren’t observed. If someone gets drunk and tries to operate, that’s going to be punished by law. If someone makes an honest mistake despite doing their best, most often they are not because in that instance it is more of a failure of the system than of the individual. It would be counter-productive to exile a productive worker in that situation, wouldn’t it? What happens instead is that there are multiple redundancies built in to each step of preparing for a procedure that reduces the chances of such an error to near 0.0%, as in for example the aviation industry. That’s called quality improvement, and it’s the smart way of building structure and safeguards around fast paced, team based processes such as the care of the hospitalized patient or football. The answer is not to point the fingers at individuals. The answer is to analyze the major contributors to the adverse outcome and address the most significant ones that can be addressed. That is not what this article attempted to do, and that’s why I reacted to it the way I did.

          2. You’re still arguing this.

            Yes, creating structures to eliminate mistakes are the correct approach, which is what my article focuses on. Go ahead and read it again, especially the conclusion. Mistakes are one thing.

            The surgery analysis is apt because this wasn’t just a physical error by Guendouzi. This wasn’t just simple error. This was a mistake due to negligence and laziness. That is not acceptable in any profession.

            This is a surgeon in the operating theater, he’s on the phone to his mistress, alarms are going off that the patient is dying, his fellow doctors are scrambling to save the patient, the doctor looks up, sees the chaos and steps away from the table. Another doctor sees the danger and rushes in to try to save the patient, but the patient slips into a coma. Not quite dead yet, but certainly this isn’t just a simple mistake. This is negligence.

          3. I guarantee you Pep Guardiola would drop a player who did this. Every manager drops players who do this. Even Wenger dropped players who did this. I can’t believe I even have to say this. I’m actually furious that I have to say this. I’m done.

  3. As fans, we should stop being so mercurial about football results.

    That said, we completely lost our composure after the Sokratis red card. Rushed, panicky passes — including critical giveaways from the usual suspects Xhaka and Mustafi, with Xhaka’s pass in his own box leading to the 2nd goal.

    We criticise Emery for too many subs at halftime, but Im surprised that he didnt shore us up defensively at that point, when a man down.

    The Denilson trot by Guendouzi was unacceptable marking and defending, and I hope that he gets chewed out big time.

    Auba, you know, hasnt been playing well for about 2 weeks now. He was not having a good game when we were at full strength, but he was out of this world awful after the red. And he seemed oddly out of sorts, as if his mind was elsewhere. Hope he gets his mojo back soon, because we won’t have Laca for the 2nd leg.

    1. Apparently he had lack of options to shore up. Which, actually I think is true enough. Did we have Jenkinson on the bench? I’m not sure, but think we didn’t. Why not? And why did we leave out Mavropanos from the squad entirely just to include Suarez or Elneny? You know when that happens? When the manager doesn’t have a specific plan. Leaving out a defender was always going to be a problem.

      Given his options, I was ok with Miki at RB though. Attack, that’s what I wanted. I don’t usually criticise substitutions, but taking off Ozil made no sense to me. He was the one guy giving us some measure of ball control. Add Ramsey to that and you might even have a threat, while still keeping some stability. As it turned out, our MF brought on to make us defensively secure, pulled a Denilson again.

      I liked his starting line-up. I liked no subs at halftime even. But when the subs came, it seemed like he lost his nerve in having attack minded players on the pitch, and hoped we’d be more secure just by subbing them off.

  4. SLC Gooner it is Emery who is crap. We have Niles and Elneny who are way better than the Guendouzi kid in central midfield. Its Unai’s probblem not Arsenal

  5. I hate these sort of articles ! Picking on one player when the whole team lost??? And to say such words as Arsenal fans always start a sentence with i like the player but is disrespectful to the Arsenal fans….
    I think the game changed when Sokratis was sent off for in my opinion nothing!! The rennes players were committing foul after foul but not one booking ???? but Sokratis committed just two fouls and got a yellow for both??? Personally i think this game was fixed rigged whatever you want to say…. I was watching in shock when he got sent off. As no way should he have got a yellow for both no way at all !! If the game was ref’d properly and fairly they would have lost 2 players at least but the ref was wearing Rennes glasses… As for the rest of the game it was wrecked after the sending off… Seems Arsenal have been singled out in the last two games and we have no chance of winning this game. The ref will make sure of it !!

    1. We also had Auba wrongly called offside, and what I am convinced due to the lack of replay, was a foul on him inside the box late in the game.

      And still, I don’t get the sense the game was ‘fixed’. I’ve seen games I’d put that label to. This was more of what Uefa does to Arsenal more subtly. In the away game we’ll have a ref who is a ‘homer’, and in the home game we’ll get a ‘strong’ ref who takes pride in ignoring/contradicting the crowd.

    2. I’m not sure that it was as completely fixed by the ref as you suggest, but I did think he was allowing too much aggression from Rennes and was responding to the home crowd by awarding free kicks against us.
      The one thing that did make make me suspicious though was the offside (when at least yard on) given against Auba when clean through & one-on-one with the keeper. Doubt if he’d have scored though, the sort of form he’s in right now.

  6. In terms of lack of investment, I really feel the key was that 2007-08 season. We were robbed of the title that year. It’s the first time I was forced to accept the idea of outright corruption in football (I’d already seen it in cricket)

    Win that, and the whole narrative around the club would have changed. You can’t win anything with kids 2.0.. The idea that you need massive investments would have been severely damaged. Not by the propped up fantasy story of someone like Leicester (intl TV rights got a boost from that) but by a well run big club playing sensational football.

    We had the prestige of being a big club in immediate memory (despite the trophy drought narrative started in 2007!), and winning the league would have meant it was harder for some of our players to want out. I know funds were the issue but we’d be arguing from a position of strength, and our own fans wouldn’t create such noise which I believe ultimately forced rash decisions when more funds did become available.

    Almost none of that matters now though. We had a plan post Wenger, which we threw out the window, so now it’s all on the incumbents. Monchi might be coming and I’ve been doing some digging around on his past work, and I’m less confident about him than I was before.

  7. Very interesting, those pictures.
    Guen actually gave up. “Not my man, not my job.”
    I find that strange. I remember that, at my abysmal, grotesque level, if I saw a gap, a threat, I would run as much as I could to plug it, like it was my sacred duty. I just couldn’t let things go. I think I just hated to let the others score. I hated to lose, I guess. So I ran, often arrived too late (I was a midfielder), often I was ineffective, sometimes I had an impact, but always I ran.
    It is beyond me why a professional, super-fit, hyper-competitive player can decide to just let go. Extreme tiredness? The young superstar “I’ll pick my fights” syndrome? Wrong tactical message?

  8. If the quote at the very top is really what Guen thinks then it only reinforces what I said about him earlier in the season.
    A young player with bags of potential who thinks he’s better than he really is, which is always a problem but especially on a team like Arsenal that’s devoid of any leadership.
    In his defense though, who is he gonna learn proper positioning or game management when veteran Arsenal players are just as clueless as he is.

    I’ve made this point already but it’s worth repeating: no 19 year old should ever be remonstrating and showing displeasure with his teammates publicly on the pitch, as he has done at times this season, let alone someone who is just as likely to cost you games as win one for you.

    Fabregas at 19 was twice the player Guen is and he didn’t show his frustration with his teammates until his latter Arsenal years when he was practically running the show.

    1. Totally true. But Fabregas was an exception. He came from Barca, where he learned with Messi, Iniesta and Xavi. Guendouzi came from Lorient. Not really a fair comparison.

    2. gotta agree with you Tom.
      Now what I’m about to say is far too late on a thread again, so may say similar on a future thread…

      I was always impressed with what players said about Bergkamp in training.
      They could tell he was better than any of them in most ways (control, passing etc). But he stayed training longer than most. It rubbed off (I could try and dig out Ray Parlour’s quotes) and I’m sure even though they couldn’t train longer/harder on things they couldn’t improve (control, passing) they could at least do what they did well, better (eg energy).
      What has Guen got around him?
      Who is he looking at in training to look up to and learn from?
      Who is putting in the extra minutes, doing things they’re already good at?
      Who can he hear advice from that isn’t doing the opposite in games themselves?

      That’s not to absolve Guen entirely – its now (unfortunately) up to him to either find a coach/ player/ someone outside Arsenal to get advice from (hell – even ask for a loan next season though that’d be mad it might warn the structure as to where his faith is).

      But, but… there is something telling in that he says he is willing to run (even aimlessly) but yet he does not run (on more than one occasion) when the running is there to be done.

      Its either Emery, the leadership of players, his ability to learn, or a combination of some or all.

      1. We are only (over) analyzing this performance by Guendouzi because Arsenal lost the game.

        1. Hi Dr Gooner – that may be true of some (perhaps many) and maybe me (though I’m trying to be alert to bias) but this is not the first time Guendouzi has not tracked runners.
          As everyone says – I like him and want him to be a great Arsenal player, but I think he needs leadership around him and I just don’t see where he’s getting it.

          This post from Tim used Guendouzi as a focus for issues which was a reason I didn’t mention the other players and their performances – and also why when I read a comment I agreed with (hm, confirmation bias) I thought I’d throw in my tuppence worth.
          But this wasn’t the first time while watching the TV I shouted at him when I saw him dawdle – I shouted out a few times at players, way before the final result.

          But I totally accept that good results can cause fewer comments online (from me).
          :¬)

          1. Thanks for this measured, intelligent response, I appreciate it. I agree with you insofar as to say that the whole team kind of looked past this fixture and Guen was probably more guilty of this than most. Consistency is the hardest part for a young player to learn.

            That said, I’m coming down a bit hard on this thread because it frustrates me to see all these shallow narratives take a life of their own after a loss, like a ‘lack of leadership’ or ‘lazy Guendouzi.’

            Leadership is always questioned when we lose. The proper football man commentariat has indelibly ensconced that idea in our minds. But I look at the Arsenal team and it’s full of veterans. Who can ask for a more impeccable role model for professionalism and preparation than Laurent Koscielny and Petr Cech? Has Nacho Monreal ever done something to make us question his moral fibre or desire to win? How about Granit Xhaka, who, say what you want about his first step and his fouling but clearly is a passionate player with a fierce desire to win. How about having a world cup winner who played for Real Madrid in the team? How about a coach who’s been in top flight football since 2006, with Steve Bould sitting next to him on the bench? How much more leadership capital can a team have, honestly? I don’t think leadership even cracks the top 20 reasons we lost this game in my view. Yes, we’ve had issues with that in the past. Not so much in this group, even less so in the XI Emery put out there for this game.

            Follow up thought: for the folks calling for more leadership, what does that even mean to you? Should Xhaka have grabbed Guendouzi by the ear like a rotten child and remonstrated with him for the cameras to see? Should there have been more shouting and pointing? I’m all ears. The root of this question is, how do we even know how much leadership there is at any given time on a football pitch? (Hint: We DON’T!). Instead, for me the proof is in the pudding. How does the team respond to adversity? How does the team respond to going a goal behind, to losing a game they didn’t deserve to lose, to being questioned by the media? Fragility or lackthereof in such situations is the litmus test not just for football but in other sports and for individuals as well. I worry about Ozil and Auba’s fragility. I do not worry about Arsenal football club’s fragility in 2019 and that’s great credit to the work of the new coach. They could’ve crumbled after that patch of bad results in December. They could’ve capitulated to Man City and allowed 5-6 goals. They could’ve felt sorry for themselves after losing to BATE and put in a limp performance at home. They could’ve been content to draw 2-2 at home against Spurs. These are all signs of resiliency, which I view as a proxy for mettle, which arguably can be viewed as a proxy for inherent leadership in the club.

          2. Dear Doc,

            Nothing should be done, you’re right. We should just let him do that again and again. Also, no one should ever teach young players how to be good professionals and put in maximum effort for their team.

            Sincerely,
            The Proper Football Man Communitariat

      2. “But he stayed training longer than most. It rubbed off”

        There’s an anecdote in the Invincibles where RvP sits in a hot tub after practice and he’s watching Bergkamp. He’s watching DB at like 32 years old, and he’s practicing at full speed, everything, touches, dribbles, one touch passing, all at full speed. RvP decides he’s going to stay there in the hot tub as long as Dennis stays after practice. I can’t remember how long he said he stayed in the hot tub but it was a long time. I think he pruned up!

        Van Persie dedicated himself to that level of intensity in his training that day.

  9. Great piece, well argued meticulous analysis but….Objectivity injection. I know we want a 19 year-old to be perfect and never make any mistakes all season long. But I am sorry this is not realistic and whatever club you support, no player, especially a19 year-old will be perfect. I am sure after every defeat you can pick any player and anihilate them critically. I suspect the same thing happened to Mbappe this week. But this not healthy nor objective. We need to realise there is no crisis at Arsenal. This idea is promulgated because melodrama sells. We need to realise there is no crisis at Arsenal. If Arsenal are in crisis who isn’t in crisis.

    1. Let’s just set the record straight:
      -I’m not “annihilating” him.
      -I don’t expect him to be perfect. And this isn’t the first time he’s completely abandoned his defensive duties.
      -Mbappe? I don’t care what Mbappe does.

      -“Melodrama sells” – oh boy…

      I think you’ve been around here long enough to know that I’m going to bristle at this kind of personal attack. But just in case you don’t know who I am and what this site is about let me make it clear for you.
      This web site has zero advertisements
      I make no money (I actually pay money)
      I rarely promote myself on other web sites (twitter and Facebook) where I also don’t make money
      I steadfastly reject all advertising and partnerships
      Overall in my entire life have spent significantly more on this site than I will ever make.
      I spend two to three and sometimes four or more hours writing nearly every day, which you get for free.
      I have been doing this for over 10 years.

      If you really think I’m in this for some glory, money, more readers, some giant payoff in the end then you need to stop reading my blog. Full stop.

      -“there is no crisis” – I never said there was a crisis.

      1. mate, mate, mate, I am 150% NOT talking about you when I say melodrama sells. I am talking about other media outlets. You know who I mean. Like remember that time the combined Arsenal-Tottenham 11 had no Arsenal players. Another time a prominent broadcaster said that “Sari had turned Chelsea into Arsenal” after Chelsea’s defeat to City. These things are just for clicks/attract attention. But Arsenal fans rise to bait. The thing, as well, is that this melodrama affects us and neutrals and we start to believe it. Even other clubs starting believing the Arsenal “chaos” narrative and our players go for £10 million and Sigurðsson for £50 million and we wonder why. Put him an Arsenal shirt for a season and see if he sells for £50million. He is a good player though – just saying ours are too.
        Mate the “annihilation” (thanks for the spelling correction) part is not so much a criticism of you as a complement. Your analysis of Guendouzi’s performance was insightful, flawless, unimpeachable and 100% correct. So you have this power where you can dismantle a goal/game and see the critical steps that led to it. But with this power comes great responsibility. It means that you can annihilate pretty much any player (and often do to Xhaka, who I love) in any given game. But this does not mean that you should. I don’t think it is always healthy nor objective. We just need to be more circumspect. I am just saying that Guendouzi, may have a subpar game, as you so lucidly and comprehensively point out…but this is not necessarily SYMPTOMATIC of anything other than he had a bad game, and we were down to 10 men and, commendably in my opinion, still trying to win the game.
        Great blog make. I have never questioned your motivation or intention.

  10. Just saw the highlights. A few things to consider…

    1. Away game. Packed stadium. Biggest game of the season for Rennes against a true “giant” (in their world). For Arsenal? A speed bump before Man United on Sunday. Easy to see who cared more about this fixture.

    2. Red cards change games. No further explanation needed, is there? Sokratis, after his man of the match display at Tottenham. let the team down with some bad decision making.

    3. Goals change games. Their opener and their second goal were quite improbable. It happens. Especially the second one, to deflect just so off of Monreal, what are the chances of that going in? It did.

    4. Mustafi and Mkhitaryan were two of the back 4 for the majority of this fixture. Let that sink in for a minute.

    5. Arsenal missed great chances, in fact despite losing 3-1 and playing a man down for nearly 60 minutes we had just as many shots and probably the better chances from open play. Tim, did you mean to say that Aubameyang a down grade from the proverbial “sausage” of Wengerian parlance? That would be shockingly harsh.

    1. Before anyone hits me with the “you’re making excuses” card, I’ll pre-empt them. It’s football, which means big results decided on small margins and it’s very often unfair and quite often doesn’t reflect who the better team was on the day. I never have and WILL NEVER believe in the idea that the better team is decided by the score. Rennes gave us their best shot and with a one man advantage they scored 3 goals on us at their place. Well done. Now let’s bring them on in the second leg and see who’s laughing at the end of 180 minutes.

  11. Great post. I love you Tim 😁😁😁 but you are missing the point. All this stuff is only the effect of greater causes. The only thing I’m blaming Arsenal for is the attitude of the players. Their attitude cost us the win against This homeless team called Sp*rs. The penalty miss is only the consequence of Auba not being in a good spirit because he was on the bench. Look his face on the picture you post. Did anyone notice when Guendouzi was coming in. Emery was furious because the player was not ready to enter the field when the coach called him. I can’t blame such a young player for mistakes he’s making on the pitch because he’s so young age and the pressure of a big club like Arsenal. I can’t blame a player for a red card, because this is part of the game. I can’t blame a player for a penalty miss because that is also part of the game. What is less acceptable is the attitude of professional players. You have to be professional and be ready for whatever the coach is asking you to do. If you do what the coach wants and you lose, that is not your fault. But when you are moaning all time you are on the bench, this is a real matter of concern for everyone.

  12. Let’s all take a moment to laugh at Spurs who just lost 2-1 to Southampton.

    Their RB Valery did a Mesut Ozil impression for the opener by probably unintentionally striking the ball into the ground to loop over Lloris after about three spurs defenders all let a slow cross roll between their legs, and then Ward-Prowse hit one of the sweetest free kicks you’ll ever see to win the match after Spurs had to foul a Saints player who was going to be through on goal otherwise. A deserved win for the home team and Tottenham are in big doodoo.

    It should be noted that Saints took the upper hand in the second half after two half-time subs and kept the upper hand after another tactical tweak to put Redmond at CF. Hasenhuttl won’t be managing Saints for too much longer if he keeps this up.

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