(The not-so-temporary quite-official) Gooner Thread (Part 3)

Starting lineup:

                       Leno

          Mustafi-Sokratis-Holding

Bellerin-Torreira-Guendouzi-Kolasinac

                Iwobi-Ramsey

                 Aubameyang

Man goal rush is such dog shark

A terrible game neither team deserved to win.

Crap tackles from both teams and lots of very concerning injuries.Shark goals caused by mistakes. Just a bad game all round. Man Utd were there for the taking if we played 1/2 as good as we could've.

Emery needed to make more changes from the team that beat Spurs; we were out on our feet for the last 30 mins.

In better news; Chelsea lost.

Well I'll take that I guess. ManU actually played with some desire there, they wanted it, unlike some of the other stuff I've seen from them recently. With the effort we put in 3 days ago against Spurs it was always going to be a tough trip, we've not had good days against ManU much of late, and it was made harder with our injury issues in the first half, so I'll take that, and we keep the unbeaten run going. 

Chelsea have lost which is great, we're equal on points with them (behind on GD). We go behind Spurs again but they had Soton at home, so that was always going to happen if we didn't win today. 

With the dropped points Liverpool have opened up a gap on the rest, so it's looking like a 4 goes into 2 situation between us, Chelsea, Spurs and ManU for those Champs league spots. 

We've got a nothing fixture against Qarabag next week for the kids to play in, and a League Cup tie against Spurs in a couple of weeks. Outside of that, these are our next few league fixtures;

Huddersfield at home

Southampton away

Burnley at home

Brighton away

We really want 12 points from that lot to prepare us for the next 4, which are tougher;

Liverpool away

Fulham at home

Westham away

Chelsea at home

That's a tough run. Obviously Chelsea and Liverpool are difficult but Fulham and Westham are looking a bit resurgent now, and might well be in good form by the time those games come around. 

Also, as predicted; Guendouzi was bullied off the ball on countless occasions. He isn't ready to start these games. Needs to bulk up a bit. Has the passion but not the execution.

disappointed not to take the 3 points but 4 points vs spurs and united over 5 days i'll take that. 

those injuries didnt help, Rambo staying on for longer would have been nice 

Anyone know what's going on with Ozil

Yea agreed.

The good news is that's something that he should easily improve, and fairly quickly. I would expect that to be out of his game within a year. He has the frame for it, and he does seem to have awareness in terms of protecting the ball with your body, he just needs to do the gym work and some specific training on it, which I'm sure Emery and co will be doing. 

Thing is he's clearly our third best deep midfielder after Torreira and Xhaka now, so I think he probably will continue starting these games whenever one of them isn't available. Even with that issue he still brings more to our team than anyone else in that position apart from the two starters. Lets just hope we have our main two available for the big games moving forward. 

I think sh*t is going down with Ozil. 

Not sure how it's going to end up because if he wants to go elsewhere he probably isn't going to get that money, and there's a good 2 years left on his contract I think?

Sounds like Holding has done his knee quite badly. Could be out for a while.

Koscielny's return very timely then...

Anyone else notice that Chambers has been playing DM for Fulham??? Doesn't look to bad there either. 

Disappointing to drop points to mid table rubbish tbh.

While our goals were average from United at least they wern't off side. Between that and the 2 good chances for Mhiki and Auba at the end I do think we should be disappointed not to take 3 points. Essentially away to both Chelsea and United it's been our finishing costing us the most.

Hopefully none of these injuries are major but we could be in for a busy run without some key players.

Per previous posts on Ozil I'm convinced the guys thrown his toys. Emery's responses don't fill me with confidence when he's training alone and he doesn't know where he is on match day. It's a new era now and I maintain that if the chance arose to lose Ozil and Mhiki but keep Ramsey and buy a winger we'd be better off.

Kos limped off at 45 mins with bad cramp in his comeback game with the kids. Don't expect him to be starting in the prem any time soon.

Not a bad result in the end. We very rarely get anything from Old Trafford or against Mourinho, so happy enough to get away from there with a point and without the buzz from the weekend totally taken away. 

Best part about being in the Europa is the schedule making sure we're usually not playing the same time as everyone else.

Fakenews valeo... Kosc came thru with no issues,  played 85 mins. He is close. May not make huddersfield but expect him to travel with the first team very soon.

Targetting Qarabag I believe, would make the most sense to start him there if he's ready.

I think Emery will revert to a back 4 this weekend and rotate the team around a bit. Lichsteiner might get a start ahead of Bellerin, Xhaka definitely back. Elneny may even get a run to give Torreira a breather. Lacazette's due a start, and you'd think Huddersfield at home is the kind of game Ozil would shine in. But, I'm not expecting anything there any time soon.

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11670/1157...

This highlights the problem with the retro-active ban scenario. If the ref sees it and doesn't do anything about it they can't act. If it's missed they can act.

Yet here are the two tugs to compare;

Fellaini: https://streamable.com/4mak1

Huth: 

Huth got a 3 match ban for that, but Fellaini gets nothing.

Ozil still struggling to get fit in time - him actually having a chronic back problem and it not just being an excuse for being weak willed seems like an even worse scenario.

From twitter;

Mattias Karén‏Verified account@MattiasKaren

Holding's ACL is done. With both Mustafi & Sokratis 1 YC away from suspension, Koscielny only just returning from injury, and Mavropanos out for most of the season with an injury it's getting a bit difficult with the run of fixtures we've got. I expect we'll see a few more youth players involved, and/or Monreal/Lichsteiner involved in some rear guard action.

If we haven't got the money to make a statement CB purchase that the squad is crying out for I'd like to at least see us bring Chambers back. His time at Fulham hasn't seen him playing his best stuff, and I'd rather we had him back under Emery's coaching than bring in someone within our price range but not of the calibre needed.

great goal to win it. but we should have been out of sight by then. Auba and Laca wasting excellent chances. But still, our undefeated streak contiunes. 

That referee was atrocious. Surprised there wasn't a sending off. Cracking goal from Torreira, was a legend.

Looking ahead to our next EPL match both Mustafi and Papa are out suspended while Holding is injured. I'm guessing we'll be bringing Koscielny & Monreal together? You'd expect we'd be relatively dominant given SOTON's form/managerial situation.

Thank fark we won that. What a finish from Torreira.

We will struggle against SOTON without our 3 leading CB's. No question about that. No one can expect Kos to step in and be the Kos he was.

                        Lacazette

Aubamayang  Ramsey   Iwobi

                Xhaka     Torreira

Kola    Monreal    Koscielny Bellerin

                  Leno

Bench: Cech Lichsteiner Jenkinson Guendouzi Mhiki Ozil Nketiah

To me, that's a side that ought to score more than they concede away to SOTON who have so far won 1 match, have scored 13 goals but conceeded 30 and have recently replaced Sparky.

I'm actually more interested to see whom takes the field for our final Europa league game. Great chance for the youth to get another hit out, and Jenko to prove he's worth a contract extension haha!

Also, just look at this fixture list. We're playing every 2-3 days until the new year. Our Jan player investments will be heavily influenced by how the squads standing come the end of this:

13/12 - Qarabag (H) Europa League 1-0 Win 22 undefeated

16/12 - SOTON (A) EPL 3-2 Loss

19/12 - Sp*rs (H) Carabao Cup 2-0 Loss

22/2 - Burnely (H) EPL 3-1 Win

26/12 - Brighton (A) EPL 1-1 Draw

29/12 - Liverpool (A) EPL 5-1 Loss

1/1 - Fulham (H) EPL 4-1 Win

5/1 - Blackpool (A) FA Cup 3-0 Win

12/1 - West Ham (A)

That's 10 games in a little over 4 weeks.

Aubamayang 

Iwobi Ramsey Mkhi

Xhaka Torreira

Kola Monreal Koscielny Bellerin

Leno

The Spurs game in the Cup is a worry - there is no way we can put out the same XI without risking injuries/massive fatigue.

Luckily we can send the kids to Qarabag and not worry.

I thought Jenko actually looked semi decent at CB. I'd expect to see him there again.

Fixture list is mental. 

Feels like we have no choice but to play kids against Spurs in the League Cup. 

CB's, yikes, some dramas there now. 

At least Sokratis is only a one-match ban. Mustafi is the same but I expect him to be out a few weeks - looks like he did his hammy? 

It's a real conundrum now for our defence. Also complicating matters is that Kolasinac looks great as a wingback, but struggles defensively in a back 4. If we go with a back 4 we can bench him and put Monreal at LB, but then that takes away Monreal as a CB option. If we play Kolasinac as a wingback then we need to find 3 fit CBs rather than 2. 

I'm not sure Lichtsteiner is a good CB option... got yanked at HT on the weekend... (although that might have just been to change the formation, I didn't actually watch him specifically to see how well he went at CB). 

Few head scratchers eh... 

Monreal and Jenko at CB lets go

Kolasinac can and has played well at LB before. The blokes just got to get his sh*t together. We can't hide an experienced player like him in situations like this.

Thankfully before that knock out match Sp*rs play Barca away in a must win to qualify for knock out champions league (unless they rely on PSV beating Inter) then Burnley away. How both teams line out for that EPL match will tell you a lot about the intent for that cup match.

Interesting mix of youth and experience in the lineup this morn. Ozil starting. Koscielny with his first start since the injury. 

                         Martinez

Jenkinson   Sokratis Koscielny Maitland-Niles

                    Elneny Willock

                Nketiah Ozil Saka

                        Lacazette

Bench: Iliev, Monreal, Mkhitaryan, Gilmour, Guendouzi, Medley, John-Jules

I love these games for the chance to see the young guns playing!

1-0, Lacazette, the man knows how to finish. Ozil assist, naturally. 

Some of the youngsters have played very well, but shown their age in front of goal, particularly Saka, who has missed a couple of sitters despite looking pretty decent. Nketiah has played well, had one chalked off for offside, made a lot of good intercepts high up the pitch, including for Laca's goal. 

I love seeing Jenkinson on the pitch. 

FT 1-0.

22 matches unbeaten now. 

He's made 4 appearances, Elneny has made 6.

Could see us keeping him on as a squadie for another year or two haha!

Jenko is obviously not good enough to start big games, but he's living every Arsenal fans dream. No problems with keeping him around the club for these sorts of games.

hmmm well that wasnt what we were after was it. 

tough with that many players out. A back 3 of a right back and CM and a CB returning from a major injury. we never looked settled. It didnt help that then our mid and wide forwards lets SOTON players run around freely. 

lets hope those defenders return quickly

Yea... 3 classic centre forward goals, headers from good crosses. Tells a story about our defensive issues today. That back 3 weren't up to it. Having Kolasinac also injured unexpectedly, forcing Emery into starting Monreal, didn't help either. Monreal didn't quite look ready, didn't get forward enough in the LB role. Bellerin getting a knock was the last thing we needed as well!

In fact Kola missing was actually a major, because I suspect Monreal would've played on the left of the 3 CBs and Xhaka would've joined Torreira in midfield had he been fit, which would've changed us quite a bit. 

Gutted to see the streak come to a close, but it had to happen I guess. Other results did not go our way either. 

Really crucial we pick up wins in our next two league games before the big xmas fixtures kick in. Some tough games ahead. 

When the alarm went off 5am I sat upright and said to myself 'we've lost'. No idea why, and obviously too late to put money on it, but when Leno flapped at that last one I was weirdly content.

I really think Emery got that back line wrong. Kosc and Monreal should have played through the middle with Bellerin and Lichsteiner either side. The Torreira/Xhaka axis is our best CM pairing, and sadly we broke it to cover a weakness, which lowered our quality in both areas not just defence.

Some great keeping from the Saints man, plus some great last ditch challenges. Credit to them though, when they got forward they put in good quality balls and Ings/Austin finished them well.

Leno will look at that flap with disgust, he really shouldn't have gone for that one.

Home to Sp*rs, Burnely, and then away to Brighton. Need to respond quickly with 3 W's.

Did anyone else feel like even though Mhiki got 2 goals it was another game that passed him by? With Ozil out he's had the chance to really take the creative reigns, but each game has missed that chance.