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

Giroud and Wilshere love combining fur the spectacular don't they? Maybe another Puskas nomination there.

The kind of cojones where you vilify Liverpool for winning the Mickey Mouse treble only to go after it yourself?

Can we fudge Xhaka off and get Jack in there? At least he seems to give a shark.

Well that was just delightful.

agree, but it was sprinkled with moments of absolute sh*te. 

Yes, Everton played their part.

Finally, finally we showed some 'cajones' away from home. Great response from the team after going behind.

My takeaways

1) Cech looked like an old man. Slow, languine, almost like the old bugger you stick in defence who could fall over the moment he takes possesion. We really need a long term replacement plan having sold our best option before the start of the season.

2) Xhaka is in season 2 and hasn't worked out you don't get time on the ball in the EPL. First season you get a bit of grace, but season 2 he should know better - especially just outside our own penalty area.

3) Sanchez threw his toys a number of times today but I could understand why, players not making simple passes into feet at this level is inexcusable.

4) Pickford - should we take a look next summer? 

5) Anyone else noticed we nearly bottled the kick off? What happened there?!

Here's hoping we can get a bit of momentum up with some wins at home against Norwich in the cup on Tuesday and Swansea in the league on Saturday.

good points brumby. At this point i dont think either Cech or Ospina have enough quality to start in goal next season... but I feel we will still see one of them there.  

I heard the commentators saying how well xhaka was playing and how well suited he was to the EPL, and i just scratched my head. i thought he made a few good runs and 1 dipping longe range shot, but by in large was slow to react and had a few too many heavy touches. and that sums up his time in the gunners shirt for me really. 

Good to see rambo back, i think the connection he has with ozil and sanchez is really something that enables him to be much more dangerous in the box (and the other two as well). it also looks like that connection will grow with lacazette in time.

Sanchez... yea players didn't play him when they could have, but he was sulking around missing runners or making poor runs as well, so I think he needs to look at his own play before going off he tree at others.

The other note i took out of the match is how much bellerins development seemed to have stalled. Hes still a star, dont get me wrong, but i feel like he has levelled off lately. I wonder if the move to a wingback has been behind that though.  

my match summary:

Letting Ozil go would be a catastrophic error. 

Giroud won the puskas award...

Continues to live up to his billing as a bum average striker...

GoldenBowl Koeman shown the door

Pleased for Giroud with the Puskas award, makes Andy Carrol's goal even better. 

We best beat Norwich and Swansea this week. 

Despite not playing well a win over Swansea should get us into the top 4. 

It looks like only Sp*rs and City have the unbeatable look to them. Chelsea, United, Liverpool all looking vulnerable - and of course us ;-)

As long as they don't equal our Unbeaten record

1-0 down to Norwich right now.

Really important that we stay in these comps so we can keep giving minutes to guys like Wilshere, Giroud, Walcott, Iwobi, Ospina, Elneny etc etc. 

CYOG. 

1-1

Nketiah with his first (?) senior goal, age-grade England rep, decent prospect apparently. 

Into extra time now. 

Nketiah again! Up 2-1. 

He does the Mbappe celebration. Not sure if I love that or hate it. 

What a night for the boy. He'll be walking around with a constant high for the next year. Just read he's the first player to score a competitive goal for Arsenal who wasn't born when Wenger took charge!

well happy to win that

Come on Wolves!

Dont make yourself look silly. There is no comparisom to what i had said. 

I did not vilify Liverpool for winning trophies. Thats why you play the game. However, Liverpool won the trophy when it didnt mean champions league qualification. Hence why it had less meaning.

The cojones comment clearly relates to the lack of bite and determination that most Arsenal players have lacked in recent times. And if you cant see that as an issue then there is really no hope. 

I think it's a bit early in the season mate. We've just pumped Everton and are now only 4 points behind your lot (who lost to Huddersfield this weekend), we're 3/3 in Europa, and still going through cup comps playing 2nd string sides. This lack of Cojones bullsh*t is the same narrative played out every season. I don't think we have players out there who aren't competitive and don't want to win, I think we have tactical issues that need addressing.

Come on now brumbys, we gotta bow down to the ManU fans now they've got their mojo back. Remember they finished a mighty 6th last season, and qualified for the Champs league, so they're a major powerhouse with the biggest cojones of all now. 

Well they did win the league before Christmas don't forget...

I see Spurs experienced a serious loss of cojones this morning too ;)

2-0 up by half time...vintage sp*rs.

West Ham visit us for quarter-final League Cup. 

Looks like sweet FA happened at the AGM.

Good win coming from 1-0 down at half time against one of our bogey teams in recent seasons. Particularly liked how we didn't seem to panic and it always kind of felt like the goals would come. Wonder where that fits into the whole "cojones" thing. Loving Kolasinac so far and he already looks our best player.

On the "cojones" thing, I didn't get around to responding last week but it's absolute horeshark anyway. It was a comment by a thug who plays for Watford and if you look at his whole interview the other thing he said was something like "whenever I play them the first thing I always do is give someone a whack to see how much they want it." It's typical of the common view in the English game that the object of the game is to kick and foul and hurt and injure people. We don't have those sort of players and never really have under Wenger since probably the English core he inherited when he joined and his first 2 or 3 French signings in the 90s.Currently only really Kolasinac looks like someone you wouldn't want to get into a fight with, and even he is not really a payer who goes around the pitch kicking people for 90 minutes.

Whether you need more players like that or whether it's the way the game should be played is another debate, but it's something that won't be happening under the current regime. We certainly have some tactical issues, and some players who are inadequate for the roles they are playing and often display a lot of naivety in our play, but like Brumbys said the players don't appear as though they don't want to win. They are perhaps often poorly coached, but that;s not the same as lacking "cojones" whatever that even means. I note that Deeney and his Watford chums apparently didn't have theirs this morning against one of the other traditional teams of that sort of of style.

Kind of reminds me of when we had that period where Diaby, Eduardo and Ramsey had those horrific leg breaks all within a year or so of each other", the former 2 whose careers were never the same again, and the media came up with that excuse for the offenders that they were "nice boys and not that sort of player" and it happened because the victim was "too quick for them."

I don't think it's about other teams 'wanting' it more than us, but you can't argue that we have been psychologically brittle (that's me being kind) over the last decade. The proof is plain to see in the results - if it was just a year or two, you could put it down to bad luck - but there's been a clear pattern for a while now.

Big weekend coming up. At home to RS Belgrade, then away 3 days later to City.

That City game is our next major test to prove we're up for it this season. While City have been rampant their game on the weekend showed they can be succeptible defensively. This BS where we go 1-0 down from over confident offence and lax defence needs to stop. Need to come out of the blocks like we did against Everton to really have any show!

The opening sentence of your third paragraph is very good AJC. 

Red Star and MCFC

I'd lean to starting Giroud and Wilshire and play 4-2-3-1 v City

Cech

Kolasinac - Kos - Holding - Bellerin

Jack - GX

Sanchez Ozil Lacazetter

Giroud

what's everyone's thought on Xhaka? love his passing but defence leaves me worried at times.

Speed is what's killing him. When he dwells on the ball or gets easily beaten he's at his worst. When he's hitting thunderblasts across field perfectly onto Kolasnic's toes he's at his best. 

God I feel like I'm jinxing us for sure here but interesting little tidbit from an ESPNFC review of the weekend's football;

Are Arsenal back? Stop laughing, we're serious! They've looked pretty good recently. They've only lost once since the Anfield Incident, cruised through their Europa League group and have proved themselves of fighting back from a goal down on three occasions in six days. And they could be just six points off Manchester City next week. Assuming, of course, they can beat Manchester City.

Stop laughing! It might happen. No team goes through a whole season without losing a single game. Well, apart from Arsenal, but that's not going to happen again, is it? Are we on the verge of quite the plot twist?

I had been quietly pondering that. Given the penchant for English teams to slip up in Europa I thought we might be in a battle - but we're cruising and Wenger has rotated it beautifully. Same with the cup comps too. By Christmas, we'll likely have topped our group in Europa, be sitting 3rd/4th in EPL, and be in the semi's of the league cup.

If we hit January in that position with minimal injuries Wenger will have some tough decisions with Sanchez and Ozil. Sell them and sacrifice our chances of kicking on (I doubt we'd get replacements in Jan)? Or keep 'em, go hell for leather across all formats and lose them for free with at least 1 more trophy in the cabinet...

Against Swansea Ramsey became the 11th player to score 50 goals for Arsenal under Arsene Wenger. 

Fun game... name the other 10 without googling?

I got 9 straight off the bat but had about 4 more names I saw as possible, and couldn't guess which one it was... so googled ;)

Also note: Ian Wright is not included as he didn't score 50 specifically for Wenger

Also 9 and the 10th was between 3 options.

I can think of 5

Not sure on another 5 

Roma pumped Chelsea. We really should finish ahead of them in the EPL. 

Henry, Giroud, Theo, Em A, RVP for sure

Almost certainly Cesc and Freddie J

Denis and Pires probably

Kanu? Arshavin?

Sanchez might have 50 actually. 

Unlikely - Jeffers, Suker, Sanogo. 

Lord Bendtner