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

If Bellerin is out, Jenko is a better crosser so he may actually suit playing with Giroud rather than Alexis.

Hey Jaume, sounds like a good idea but tbh I'd probably sit out for now, I'm comfortable with just the arsenal ones at the moment. 

If you were to do one start of next season or something I'd almost definitely join though.

Edit: SNAP just seen that you have started it and got good take-up on it, awesome. Don't mind me ;)

Sanchez banged two in a 3-1 win over Uruguay. Apparently Hammy is good. Or it's bionic after crazy Chilean medicine magic.

Well that was a drama with Alexis.

Still think he won't start this weekend. But really happy it looks like he's not going to be out for a while.

Anyone see Iwobi's trick in the Nigeria game going around on twitter? It's awesome

https://twitter.com/BigSportGB/status/797482367678...

So this weekend... yikes nervous already, hate playing these clowns, we hardly ever play well against them. The game at home last season was fantastic but not much else to crow about of late. The last defeat at OT was particularly damaging, perhaps the moment where our title challenge faltered the worst. We were just so complacent that day.

With Cazorla still out, I'd be going with much of the same, but Giroud in for Alexis, and Jenkinson for Bellerin;

                       Cech

Jenkinson-Mustafi-Koscielny-Monreal

               Coquelin-Xhaka

              Walcott-Ozil-Iwobi

                      Giroud

yea whats the go with Sanchez? i saw him running around like a bull for Chile. did he re-injure himself or is he good to go for the weekend? if so, id swap him for Iwobi.

also, apparently Wally will miss the match to be there at the birth of his child. if hes out, then Ox comes in. 

Damn. We could be pretty weakened up front then. Still a lot of depth there but Sanchez/Walcott/Ozil/Iwobi have been clicking well this season. 

Hmm, always dread playing them, especially up there.

Old Trafford? Check.

Mourinho? Check.

Saturday away 12.45 KO? Check.

November? Check.

Post international break? Check.

Injuries/absences? Check.

Missed anything? Any good omens? No Mike Dean I guess.

We're almost certain to lose this one, lets be honest with ourselves.

Cazorla, and things might be different..

/reversejinx

Mourinho being the big factor here.

And November.

Positive reports on Sanchez. Been in full training, in the squad. 

Hard to find much info about it but looks like Walcott is expected to play, and will leave if wife giving birth?

In that case we should now be at full strength aside from Bellerin and Cazorla?

Must win game

I would love to see Walcott score a hat-trick in the first 15 minutes and then sprint off the pitch to see his wife.

Perhaps Arsenal should supply the hospital facilities and the wife can give birth on-site.

Bellerin and Cazorla missing completely changes how we can play imo. I think we should start Giroud with Sanchez on left, with Jenko firing in those crosses to his big handsome head.

I agree. Giroud needs to start at #9 and we need Granit at CDM.

no Giroud no Xhaka

poor first half

Shocking dive

Mou's a prick

Ramsey going to cost us a goal

Ref couldn't bring himself to send off CBC's LB

Mou's a prick

Bring on Giroud 

Sanchez has amazing presence

Mou's a prick etc...

Shark half. Never a pen.

Come on lads!!!

Genuine lack of end product. Come on...

Cheers Ox

worst we have played and actually got something out of the game in years.

Lucky point in some ways.

Defo a lucky point. In a way, great that we played shark and got something out of it though.

United are dogshark.

Wow, ingenious swear filter. Shark.

Fantastic contribution there you Chelsea scum.

Worst we've played since the last game!

We've made a habit out of playing shark but still picking up points this season. I don't think we've truly played well since the game against Chelsea. 

We are not the same team without Cazorla. Elneny and Coquelin had no idea going forward; Elneny especially was very disappointing.

We do not have a Cazorla replacement in the squad. Wilshere would've been that man, but he fudgeed off to Bournemouth. If Santi doesn't get better soon (doesn't look like he will), I can see our aspirations falling by the wayside very quickly.

Xhaka needs to step up, but I think he looks a bit cautious lately.

Elneny was pretty bad this morning. That was his big chance, I feel like he was given that start in a big game for his performances this season, as a bit of a reward, but he definitely failed. 

On the flipside Coquelin was excellent, so many huge tackles. 

Some kudos for Jenkinson. They had a right go at him, and he did make a few errors, that one right at the start gave me kittens, but overall he settled down and had a pretty good game. On the other hand the game this morning does show exactly why Bellerin is so important to us now. I'd  have him at probably the equal importance to us as Cazorla, Cech and Koscielny now, just marginally behind Ozil and Sanchez. 

Pretty poor performance overall  but was stoked with that point. So blimmin awesome to have this depth coming off the bench. Even though it was the 89th minute the equaliser didn't even surprise me. 

We're doing well to continue to gather points since Cazorla was injured and our form dropped. Now if we can pick it back up and get back on track quickly, these dropped points won't be so damaging.

How we got a point from that I don't know. We were absolutely abysmal. What a fudgeing gargantuan header from Giroud. We hadn't even scored a goal against Mourinho for several seasons, let alone got a point. Great to get out of the game with a point, but we've been playing poor for weeks now and performances need to step up again quickly. Cazorla can't come back soon enough.

Oh yea how good was Cech btw

Couple of good saves in there, the one down low to his right was a monster in particular

Agree, but in the mean time Wenger could stop playing Coquelin & Elneny together. With Ramsey starting wide left where he wasn't that useful & Xhaka on the bench we had better central options but the boss went for the two most uncreative midfielders we have.

I think he was haunted by what happened in his 1000th match when Mourinho had been having a go at him in the press as usual (was that the whole specialist in failure thing or was that another time?) and that got in his head so we went to Chelsea and he thought "right, I'm going to show you, I'm going beat you with real football the way it should be played...etc etc" and went gung ho about it  and we were 5-0 down after half an hour or whatever it was. Get the feeling this time he thought "I cannot lose to him again, 0-0 will do" and so went with a structure he thought could stay disciplined and not get destroyed on the break like that. And while in an attacking sense we were utterly awful, we managed to get out of a game both at Old Trafford and against Mourinho without being humiliated which is rare on both counts. 

Yea we played poorly for sure, but it's not like they missed a ton of gilt-edged chances, we still defended well overall, especially considering Bellerin was missing and Monreal struggled again to some degree. 

Mustafi was actually quite impressive for me, I worried about him beforehand, especially when they played Rashford and Martial - I expected them to try and get in behind as that seems to have been Mustafi's weakness so far - the aerial ball over his head. But he handled it well and I don't recall them ever getting behind our line in that way during the game at all. 

Can I just say how much I'm enjoying 'assistant to the senior intern' title? Carry on.

Yeah I'd say our defense was a positive, the goal excluded. Ramsey needed to offer Monreal a bit more help; perhaps that's where The Ox could have started and played two pure wingers to combat the Valencia threat. It was the lack of imagination up front; Walcott didn't seem to be making his usual runs, almost like he held back to help Jenko out more perhaps?

Wonder if we're due a bit of a "refresh" of our strongest starting eleven. We have depth, we're not playing as well as we were, lets use our options?

Wenger places a lot of importance on continuity and likes to keep that going in his teams a lot of the time, but I feel we should start to try something a bit different. 

If it were me, for PSG, I'd perhaps have a look at;

                      Cech

Jenkinson-Mustafi-Koscielny-Gibbs

              Xhaka-Ramsey

             Ox-Ozil-Sanchez

                      Giroud 

I’d really like to see Xhaka-Ramsey tried now. Think Xhaka could play next to Ramsey in a similar way Arteta did. Been frustrating so far that we have 5 good CM options and 10 possible pairings but there is no pairing without Cazorla in it that seems to work well. Time for the Xhaka-Ramsey pairing to be given a go IMO.

Yep agreed fully. 

Without Cazorla the other combos aren't quite clicking. 

Great point about Arteta. Ramsey was unstoppable with Arteta playing the distributor role next to him and Xhaka seems very well suited to it. He's younger and faster than Arteta was then, better defensively, and has got all sorts of distribution in his locker - short passes, cross-field switches, balls over the top, he has everything when it comes to his range of passing. 

The RamCoq combo hasn't really had much of a chance either has it? If for no other reason the name is an excellent reason to give it a whirl.

Paul are you dropping Wally for the Ox due to family guff or form? Because I'd say it's a harsh miss in a much win to top the group if he's available :)

And he knows how to hack the sh*t out of people when needed. Arteta was always a little too nice about this

Edit: I deeply appreciate his ability to hit a cross field ball with his weak foot too, couple in here off his right that are delightful.

is it just me or was that OX's greatest cross ever LOL he usually shanks it badly. I thought Theo was pretty decent considering he didnt have much ball. Was disappointed in Ozil considering he's had time off. Surely Giroud deserves a start now