We were a poor side who lost to the Seagulls 1-2, and they certainly deserved their win.
They beat us both halves. In a game of fine margins we were off the edge of the page. Per Baff’s preview we couldn’t get going absent Partey in the engine room and with Xhaka at left back. Add a strangely subdued Mø and an ineffective ESR/Saka and you have the makings of a cold, sandy pile of chips.
We would have been proud of both their goals. Mø hit the bar from a late freekick, then Eddie did the same on the rebound just before Mø’s deflected strike beat Sanchez. The VAR-killed Gabi goal just before halftime was a farce, but again, fine margins. Four_minutes.neq.Clear_and_Obvious.
And that was the game. We had 4th in our own hands, now suddenly we look rudderless and thinner than ever. If we manage to get into Europe at all from now it will be by the thinnest of…margins.
Mikel has some serious work to do, and the team need to look to the last eight minutes of this game and ask themselves why they didn’t play with that vigor from the off. Our season now threatens to end in an ugly way. We have a week to contemplate that and figure out a solution before we travel to next week’s game on the South coast. Hopefully we won’t leave ourselves abandoned on the sand.
Eddie has done more than enough to warrant a start instead of Laca next time out.
Xhaka has gotta start in midfield. Sambi alongside him doesn’t look like a bad prospect for the rest of the season, he had a decent game today.
Shame to lose but the first half cost us. Well, so too have injuries/small squad.
Odegaard is no CM – he lets Trossard run free to score the first.
The second Brighton goal is really good. Excellent stuff. Ramsdale a little unlucky though – he is so close to a save.
David Coote was absolutely woeful today. His decisions were scattergun and he lost control of a pretty innocuous game. Still, I suppose we all celebrate ‘Kick Saka Out Of Football Day’ in different ways. Then again, we all call it different things too… the PGMOL call it ‘Saturday.’
Other teams will drop points, and we have to play the teams we are fighting with. Obviously it was a bad result today, but there is plenty to play for and we aren’t suddenly a terrible side. I’m still optimistic (as ever!)
Pithy stuff Scruz
Another extremely disappointing performance. The team looked unbalanced throughout. We were too slow, too unadventurous and too goal-shy for almost the whole match. A ten minute flurry at the end was the classic ‘too little too late’. We are reaping the consequences of inexperienced youth, a thin squad accumulating serious injuries to key players, knocks and lethargy amongst the rest and the absence of a 20-goals a season striker. We have thrown away fourth place and in truth, may struggle to achieve fifth. I hope that we can cobble together some confidence, some drive and a strategy to make that happen.
Sadly we have joined that short list of teams who were suckered at home by Brighton’s entirely predictable game plan. All the others are fighting relegation.
Plenty of games left but realistically 4 from 6 from Palarse and Brighton was an absolute minimum. Zero from 6 is won’t see us in top 4. But we would get battered in the Champions League with this squad.
Worry about the results once we get back to the CL, SanPan.
Six points off Palace and Brighton were really what should have been expected of a team able to get fourth.
That was our margin of error. Now it is gone.
Hugely disappointing.
Well there’s nothing to worry about because we ain’t going to be in it and worse still the shower up the road probably will be. Huge gamble in January has completely backfired.
And look at Brighton’s recent record leading up to this game, as noted in the preview. It was appalling.
Thanks Scruz! It is cruel writing report about this game. I don’t know for years now it has became our habit screw-up the chance when it came.
Too bad.
I thought this could be the game when MA8 would try a new structure like 3-4-3 with an unorthodox attacking trio without a classic striker. But it was not to be. Sooner or later he has to come up something new wich gives us a chance.
I expected more.
Very appropriate type and length of report Scruz .Nobody wanted a blow by blow account of that tepid display . We started slowly and never picked up any tempo until injury time .I think GSD has described the key takeaways . The referee was awful but almost all Premier League referees are .
Xhaka at leftback is a car crash .Why deploy probably the slowest player in the Premier League in a position usually occupied by the quickest? They got in on the right many times and the goal came from a break there .We lose our best midfielder and take the other one out when we had much better options .They ran midfield today although they were very nightly and often downright dirty . Nketiah needs to start the next four games with Laca on the bench . Goodbye Laca and thanks for the fish .
We need a really positive performance at a side who were wiped out by a side who had been wiped out twice in the games before . We have tough games coming and Arteta has to step up .He got his selection and tactics wrong and his subs were not very creative .
Not only were they nightly. They were niggly!
The way we are playing we could easily lose the next 4 matches: Soton A, Chelsea A, Manure H (even as bad as they are playing lately), and West Ham A. Arteta needs to sort it out over the next week.
Great day out, shit football. Will take a miracle to finish fourth.
Still baffled that we (well, Arteta) elected to play Xhaka at left-back.
Speaking of elections…round one today.
And I have seen this match (urgency suddenly found in the last five minutes, far too late) too many times, perhaps at the end of Wenger tenure or was it Emery days?
We got what we deserved from the game yesterday, I’m afraid. However yet again the standard of officiating was below that of the local pub league. Arsenal players being booked for the first foul when Brighton players are allowed multiple offences and, in the case of that cockroach at left back for Brighton, no card at all. A 4 minute VAR check is just a joke. And it appears that the default setting for an outcome is to ensure the decision is disadvantageous for Arsenal. There are plenty of examples of VAR not being able to give a firm view of an incident, in which case they stay with the referees decision. Yesterday we saw yet again that Arsenal are officiated to a different standard. I am so, so sick of this.
I don’t like blaming refs when the team is an ineffective as it is.
This is by no means an “I hate him” comment and I’ve been saying for ages anyway but here goes. Saka is very one dimensional and needs a rest. I’m no fan of Pepe, but get him in on the right and let’s have a break from Saka’s routine of cutting inside and laying it off, because his right foot is almost non existent. That’s what he does on the vast majority of occasions he gets the ball and any full back who hasn’t got him sussed by now shouldn’t be playing in this league.
Fourth should have been a stroll, but they’ve almost blown that and we’re now relying on the Spursy factor to kick in again. In a way I’m not all that disappointed as this team requires about five players to function in the Champions League, but without being in it in the first place, we’re unlikely to find them.
That first line should obviously say AS, not AN
Cynic @16 I don’t know Cynic. Maybe that is the correct description however painfull it is. Arsenal is an ineffective team.
Well done, scruz.
Just when we seemed to have found some consistency we fall apart again. Very poor performance – odd selections, no drive, no pace and no fluidity to our play.
The squad is terribly thin and we have long term, potentially season ending injuries to both full backs and our best central midfielder. The captain and main striker doesn’t score goals any more and looks a completely spent force.
Add to that the weekly dose of laughable, ridiculous inconsistency (in case anyone objects to “bias”) we get served up by the referees and we’ll, this is Arsenal as we have come to know it. I would absolutely love us to make fourth, but this week has made that extremely difficult now, especially with squad, fitness and officiating mountains to climb to get there.
Oh, and VAR ? The whole project has been a very Clear and Obvious Error.
It is worth revisiting the debate on here at the end of February when we failed to sign a striker and jettisoned several squad players .I was feeling very pessimistic and took a little bit of friendly stick because of it but it was folly to go into such a long run of games with such a thin and poorly balanced squad . This weekend has been a dream come true for Tottnumb. All their rivals for fourth lost and they strolled up at Villa. They are a very average side but they have two world-class strikers ( ours aren’t even Premier League average ) and in January while they dispensed with Dele Alli and several others they signed two decent players to fill holes in the squad . January was tough because we can’t just throw money at the situation but intelligent loans might have been possible . The ideal striker might not have been available but Laca can’t score in a brothel. I’m an Arteta fan but if you ditch Auba ( rightly ) you have to find a replacement – surely a loan for Jovic, Morata , Dybala or even the ghastly Diego Costa would have made us more formidable than the very pedestrian strike force we have . I’ve expressed doubts about Edu before . We needed to find some sort of solution…and we didn’t .
That error will have repercussions for several years and may severely affect the financial potential of the club .There are good reasons why we are behind Citeh, the Dippers and Chavski but there should be no reason why we are behind a club as average as Tottnumb .
My note from 1st February
TTG
on 1st Feb 2022 at 7:30PM
One of the many estimable things about this bar is the commonsense displayed and the degree of balance and proportion notwithstanding the great passion most of the drinkers here obviously have for the team
But I do have a concern alluded to above and in one or two things that I have written recently that Arsenal have haemorrhaged money in a way that good businesses just don’t. No way on Earth was that anything other than a massively disappointing window . The idea that there isn’t a striker we could buy that would represent an immediate enhancement to the side is simply not true . There are solutions but we simply haven’t got good enough people looking for them . A failure to get Champions League football, isn’t simply a one year deferral of the good times . It brings pressure to keep your best players and an inability to sign improvements . Other clubs will overtake us . Football always require a degree of immediacy in dealing with problems . We’ve signally failed to improve the side but we’ve improved our bank balance . But if we hadn’t pissed money away on deals with players like Sanchez, Ozil, Ramsey, Kolasinac , Mkhitaryan, Aubameyang , Mustafi , Luiz, Willian , Mavropanos, Cedric etc we would have been in a much stronger position . Almost every big player decision we’ve made has blown up in our face .
Building a team is an iterative process and it needs to be continuous and coherent . Despite great inconsistency we’ve got a promising position based on a good summer window . I may be wrong but I think we’ve lost any chance of a successful season . I will be utterly delighted if I’m proved wrong but my football intuition suggests to me that we could be doing very much better and yesterday was not a day to congratulate ourselves on tidy housekeeping .
I was away all weekend and had planned on watching the highlights last night. In the end, quite understandably, I didn’t bother.
I very much agree with TTG about our dealings in January, and as a whole. I know we have to blame officials when it all goes wrong, that’s a given. But we do need to look at ourselves. Like many, more had major reservations about the strength and depth of the squad. Some took the approach that effectively we had one game a week for the rest of the season. If we can just keep everyone fit? We might have hoped for that but did we honestly expect that to happen?
I think that January was poorly managed. I don’t know what PEA did to make is position at the club untenable, but how we can let a player of that quality leave with no replacement coming up in was just ridiculous for me. We have struggled all year in central midfield, but we still have the likes of Torreira and Guendouzi out on loan. The latter is apparently enjoying a good season in France and I keep reading nothing but praise for him. However, this is someone else where apparently there is no way back for? As I said in the preview, why with such a paper thin squad we let both Chambers and AMN leave is also just beyond me.
We took a massive gamble. A gamble that in my opinion, we didn’t have to take. It has looked okay for a period, but we all knew this could come back to haunt us. KT and Thomas I hear are both unlikely to feature again this season. No one can seem to suggest when Tomi will be back. We have strikers that can’t buy a goal and a tough run in. We can blame officials as much as we want, but the truth is that in January, as well as several other windows, we have got it very wrong. As TTG alludes to above, the knock on effects of this could be felt for several seasons to come.
To play devil’s advocate here, we’ve complained for seasons that we don’t clear out the deadwood, and once we do, we complain we’ve cleared out the deadwood.
Even if everyone who left in January had stayed, we would still have struggled with the loss of Partey. We don’t have a one-for-one replacement. Tavares has unexpectedly imploded as an understudy for KT; he looked like a different player before January.
The big failing currently is at striker. Laca looks, as Trev put it, a completely spent force. I can understand not bringing in any old striker, who we would have been stuck with for next season, too, but a finger may have to be pointed at Arteta for persisting with Laca for so long and not giving Nketiah a chance to play himself into form.
That’s a very useful and relevant discussion you’ve initiated, TTG. I think our January stance on not bringing anyone in was a calculated gamble, as indeed was the shedding of dead wood. None of the players out on loan could be argued to be key players for the future of the club but AMN and Chambers would both be very useful now – we gambled we could live without them and we lost. That’s what happens when you gamble! I don’t see Torreira (too ineffective in the PL midfield) or Guendouzi (talented but allegedly disruptive and indisciplined) as relevant.
The striker situation is another gamble. As SteveT says you can’t lose the quality that Auba offers (even if he hadn’t shown it for weeks) and not replace it. We clearly expected more from Laca and Nketiah but I wouldn’t bet my shirt on either scoring a barrowload. The rumour was they bid for Vlahovic because their other targets were unavailable and didn’t want to buy any of the B-grade options available. Apparently none of the loans they fancied were for less than 18 months or came with a must-buy clause or a silly price tag. Again we gambled and lost.
I do share TTG’s concerns about our “buyers and sellers”.
Bath@23: You summarise the striker acquisition situation in January well. We didn’t have a strong hand to play.
And we played the one we had conservatively to limit the downside of a losing hand.
Ned/ Bath
Absolutely agree we needed to shed deadwood . Barca probably struggle to see Auba as deadwood as he has helped transform their season but I think we are pretty unanimous that there was no way back for him at Arsenal.
Bath sums up the situation well. Either AMN or Chambers would be very useful now . AMN is an enigma but can play in three positions we need cover in . Chambers could arguably play in four . I understand AMN isn’t an Arteta favourite but Chambers have decent service and never rocked the boat .
Sometimes short-term signings have a very positive impact. Odegaard undoubtedly helped last year . Was there a striker we could have grabbed? I can’t believe somewhere there wasn’t a candidate .
I also agree Nketiah deserves a chance . Arteta has persevered with Lacazette when I think I’d have a better chance of notching a goal . The other alternative is the dreaded false nine It works for Citeh but that’s not a guarantee it would work for us. It was a disaster at Villarreal last season . I’m similarly disposed to the notion as Cynic is. It seems like football gobbledegook but we are in a bind and it might be worth a try
A false nine works for City because of Pep’s belief in packing his teams with world-class midfielders who also score goals. He’d play eleven of them of he could.
Well, I agree in part with Steve T, Ned, Bath and TTG.
Is that sitting on the fence ? I think it probably illustrates the position the club was in in January, and also that life is all about choices. Without wishing to be the slightest bit condescending, choice means you can’t have everything. People, we, were raving about Tomiyasu, Ramsdale, White, Tierney, Odegaard, Lakonga looked very good early on when he played more, and Tavares looked so good we were wondering whether he or Tierney would be first choice. Unfortunately the latter two made a couple of expensive mistakes but they are young and are bound to do that. Remember Tony Adams, Pires, Bergkamp and Henry all took a bit of time to become truly world class.
We can’t compete for the very best, ready made internationals because we don’t have a sheik or an oligarch – thank god. The alternative is to find the best young but unproven talent you can afford. But it takes time. Who knew Nketiah, who has banged in goals for fun at every level up to and including England U21, would come up short in the Premier League ? Answer, no-one until he was tried.
Yes, we gambled. No, it hasn’t all come off. How long did people complain we were still paying wages for Mustafi, Willian, Ozil, Kolasinac etc. Aubameyang has done very well at Barcelona in a different style of league but had become a frustrated and frustrating figure at Arsenal who had given us nothing for many weeks, or even months.
The window could have been better. It achieved more than some are giving credit for though, I think. Everyone said when Arteta took over that it would take several windows to get to where we want to be. A very important one is coming up. At least the decks are clear in readiness. Over to you, Stan and Josh.
Chavski players to be paid in rubles this week?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/11/kremlin-will-take-legal-action-if-russia-pushed-into-default-threatens-minister
Another glowing report on how Guendouzi is doing at Marseille: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/apr/11/matteo-guendouzi-marseille-emotional-ideological-leader-ligue-1
Ainsley and Calum would have been very useful options to have the last couple of weeks, and going forward to the end of the season.
Some interesting points above, but I look at where we are now and none of it surprises me. I like Laca, but he’s never been prolific. I have the same goal scoring record as Eddie does this season in the league. To even suggest that he’s the answer just tells you that it’s all a bit of a mess.
Guendouzi looked a good prospect to me. Full of attitude and petulance. Let’s not forget however that he was still a kid when he was with us. Since PEA left, we have scored 12 goals. He has 10 for Barcelona. I’m all for rules and discipline, but I’m also a big fan of man management. Players will all have their own needs and as a manager, you have to be able to deal with that. I have no idea what either have actually done so wrong so as such, will always ask if it could have been managed differently?
With a paper thin squad, letting AMN and Chambers leave I will never understand. Neither to my knowledge were either disruptive, or on big money. I’m all for shipping out the deadwood, but surely keeping both was not going to do us any harm?
As always, we are the masters of our own destiny. I am happy to support the manager snd to see how it all unfolds. That said, I can’t help but think that out chances of making the signings we need in the summer would be considerably easier. The other potential problem is those clubs that will potentially come sniffing around all of our young talent. How easy will it be to hold on to those players that we all hope will be part of the club’s future, for years to come?
Yep, I would have kept Chambers and AMN too. Relatively easy to move on – presumably not on huge money and capable of filling a number of positions – reasonably well, if not brilliantly.
Aubameyang has been a great striker but those days are gone. In Spain he is playing for one of the top teams in what has always been a hugely skewed league in terms of wealth and quality. Effectively he plays maybe 6 competitive games a season in that league whereas every game in the Premier League is at least physically competitive. There are no games off in the PL. The player created an issue to move to Arsenal from Dortmund and did the same to get a move away from Arsenal. It’s a pattern of behaviour. No amount of wishing it was the old Auba will make it otherwise. His time had come. We went all in on Vlahovc who, was, as it turned out, leading us a merry dance. For sure things are not looking as rosy as they were a month ago but that hardly means we need to adopt the Private Frazer “we’re all doomed” approach. We need further investment over the summer and need to see further signs of improvement, as we have done this season, as a result.
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11670/12588003/alexandre-lacazettes-form-under-mounting-scrutiny-as-listless-arsenal-hand-top-four-initiative-to-tottenham
The football gods are cruel. If AMN had stayed, he would now likely be playing in his preferred position given Party’s injury and not not even making the bench at Roma.
Is bringing Guendouzi back an option? Would Arteta take him back? Would he want to come back?
Good balanced article providing a sensible opinion on our January stance .
My view of football life is always that you have to move imminently . Clubs that are always in significant transition never arrive and while you have to be realistic about timeframes I am firmly of the view that a striking loan situation was vital . You are seeing clubs circle our players now and those players would rather play in the Champions League than the Europa League or perish the thought the Europa Conference League
Edu gamble does not pay off
Well I just mustered up the courage to watch the second half of Saturday’s game, having not seen it at all so far.
Impressions are that Xhaka actually did well in midfield and when he plays quickly he can be very positive. Martinelli is a super, completely natural footballer who just loves to attack. Lakonga could be a very able replacement for Partey in the short term, and an excellent ball carrier in the long term when our eventual formation settles. Saka is going to go the way of Jack Wilshere unless he does get some protection from referees from illegal – that’s the important bit – challenges. And that Cockroachella bloke from Brighton will probably see us next Tuesday.
Steve, I know your views on referees and I agree with you that we need to blame poor performances when appropriate and not look for invalid excuses. We wasted the first half and never really got to dominate Brighton who were very well organised.
However, it was interesting watching this game how many times BOTH sets of players were furious at the referee’s decisions. He was very poor. And what can you say about VAR. Almost FIVE minutes to try to find a clear and obvious error. And I have read the new guidelines for VAR and they broke every one of them.
Oh, and Nketiah is much improved and should start instead of Lacazette who offers no goal threat at all.
And finally, commentators and pundits continue to endorse every decision against Arsenal and excuse every indiscretion by opponents as “ not much in it .”
8 games left so 24 points up for grabs. I’m glass half empty but I can only see 11 coming our way and a 6th place finish.
Hope I’m wrong.
Catching up this morning after a long drive south yesterday and enjoyed some good reading in the back drinks.
CER @34 succinctly and accurately summarises the situation with Auba. Water under the bridge now. The link by bt8 @35 is worth a read and nicely summarises Laca’s recent travailes. Time for change. Ned @36, they are indeed & @37, “No!” cubed. TTG @38, that is a very good and well balanced read from Keenos. When you gamble you must accept the possibility of losing. It does look like a poor punt at this point in time. Trev @39, I couldn’t agree more on every point you make.
In anticipating Arteta’s team selection for the Brighton game, I never considered the possibility of depleting the midfield of experience by moving Xhaka to left back thereby compounding the loss of Partey rather than compensating for it as well as possible by bringing in Lokonga or even Elneny. That should only ever be an in-game short term move to cover tactical change elsewhere in the team. It unbalanced the team when he tried it before and it did so again against Brighton. I hope we never see it again. I would rather see the uninspiring midfield pairing of Xhaka and Elneny which I had hoped never to see again.
The article linked by bt8 nicely summarises Laca’s recent failings. He has to be replaced as central attacker now. None of our options fill me with confidence but Laca’s form is in the toilet and his contributions are round the U-bend. Unlike others I don’t see Martinelli as a centre forward and sadly Nketiah has failed to convince in his albeit very brief appearances this season but either might be more productive than Laca has been of late. I would be astonished if we were to offer him an extension.
Everything contributed to this debate which I kicked off has been very constructive and balanced and Bath’s latest post sums things up very well. Trev also gives a ver6 realistic appraisal of Saturday’s match and I wouldn’t disagree with a word.
You may remember under Emery us coasting towards top four after beating Watford away and then two supremely poor performances against Brighton and Palace yielded only one point. This time after a fine win at Watford and further solid performances we have garnered nothing from Palace and Brighton. Poor team selection was to blame in Emery’s case ( plus Mustafi!) . Arteta can point to serious injury setbacks but as Bath points out he tried to solve them very eccentrically against Brighton and that has compounded our gamble in the winter window .Hindsight is easy and that’s why I posted my Feb 1st post above , not to prove myself a clever clogs but to emphasise I thought ( as did others) that the approach was flawed and would come back to bite us .
Sancho’s prediction is depressing but given our problems may not be too far from reality
Coquelin seems to be doing very well for the Champions League semifinalists. Emery too for that matter.
Should have said Villarreal are CL quarterfinalists. But I hope they knock out Bayern and March on to the semis.
Should temper my enthusiasm for Villarreal because it looks like they have three ex-Spuds on the pitch in Foyth, Capoue and Lo Celso
And Aurier is one of their substitutes. Maybe Bayern can blow them away, on second thought.
Now you can post your 44 again, bt8. 😀
Heh, Ollie. All the more impressive because the knocked out Bayern in Munich with a bunch of Spud and Arsenal rejects.
BBC report: “Emery has moulded [Villarreal] to thrive under the lights on big European nights, [and his side pulled] off another defensive masterclass [after dumping out Juventus already] and ruthlessly dispatch[ed] Bayern on the break.”
Dispatched meaning in this case achieving two shots on target over two legs but scoring two goals while conceding only one.
Congratulations meanwhile to Danny Ceballos who got a late cameo appearance for Real as they dumped out the Chavs in a great game.
Remembering the good times only.
https://www.google.com/search?q=danny+ceballos+arsenal+youtube&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:8590289b,vid:JxNj2bnPdvw,st:0
Well in for a virtuoso solo half-ton, bt8.
Barcelona eyeing Gabriel? Only silly money should be entertained.
https://www.sport.es/es/noticias/barca/central-gabriel-gusta-barca-13507994
Bath@54: A most interesting link. It speculates that Gabriel could be a bargaining chip for Neto, Memphis Depay or Riqui Puig. Trading one of the most promising centre-backs in the PL for a backup keeper doesn’t seem appealing. An exchange for Depay and Puig would be a different matter. If Arteta was to deem Saliba ready to replace Gabriel, swapping the Brazilian for one or both of Depay or Puig would be an intriguing roll of the dice.
One needs to understand the Sport is effectively a Barca fanzine and full of propaganda . As Ned says Neto is a completely irrelevant signing . Depay failed in the PL and Puig is not proven. But we do need to think about clever trading and iterative improvements with great scouting .
I well remember selling Overmars and Petit and replacing them with Pires and Edu and ultimately Gilberto . Anelka replaced by Henry was another example of how to generate funds and sign real talent for a very good price
Great points fellas.
Here’s a superb blog post from Keenos on She Wore that I can fully get behind:
https://shewore.com
TTG@56: I’d give Depay an unproven rather than failed in the PL. He had only 16 PL starts for Man U under van Gaal, who played him as a left-winger rather than a centre-forward, and none under Mourinho, for whom he got 20 minutes in total across four substitute appearances, before being shipped out. He has scored regularly pretty much everywhere else he has been and he has been prolific at centre-forward for the Dutch national team, 39 goals in 77 internationals.
>>>>>>>