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

I'm just going to put it out there, Ox's goal was fantastic. 

Absolutely disgraceful. 3-0 up and absolutely battering them at home. Sadly not the first time we have surrendered such a lead and certainly won't be the last.

Flamini is just not a Premiership level footballer. Never has been other than the one season he was going to be out of contract and playing for his big move. Said at the time it was a looked in the bottom of the barrel and couldn't find anything so looked underneath the barrel and found him sort of signing. 

Just putting it out there, but aside from the Galatasaray game and the good finish for the equaliser against Hull, Welbeck has been pretty woeful. Giroud goes straight back in for me. Or put Walcott in there now.

Agree about Welbeck. Lovely bloke but not up to it in the EPL.

Legend Leggy, well done...............

I was being honest, you are  being stupid.

http://paininthearsenal.com/2014/11/02/arsenal-must-drop-performers-danny-welbeck-cazorla/

I finally had a chance to catch the game late last night.

On our goals, bra-f*cking-oh. The penalty was fairly awarded and well taken. The Alexis thunderbolt volley was sublime. And the Ox came back to show his speed & great finishing with his goal.

On their goals. We should never have conceded the first given just how far off side he was. This was not a 'tight' decision. It was a disgrace. How can I linesman allow someone in front of all of the outfield defenders & the ball by 2-3 yards allow the goal. Their second was a fair penalty, regardless of Monreal's appeals. Their finally goal was a calamity of errors, a 50/50 ball into the box that wasn't shut down out wide, followed by Per, our tall BFG, getting bullied out of position before a cracking diving header.

There were a few key observations last night that didn't seem to make a lot of sense:

1) Why did we continue to push for goals at 3-0, 3-1, 3-2? Surely that's the time you settle things down, you bring on extra midfielders & drop your striking outlets.

2) Why are our set pieces so awful? We never look like a threat, mostly because Cazorla continues to hit the first defenders on most occasions.

3) Why are our wide players not tracking back? We lamented Podolski last season for not tracking back enough, however I think he was made to look bad by the fact that anyone playing out wide was running their bollox off. This season it appears that if you're in that front diamond 4 you're entitled to do bugger all work coming back (Sanchez excluded).

Yes we coughed up a 3-0 lead, but don't forget we played some bloody nice football in there, and we were utterly screwed by the officials.

Oh, and how much does this result really change things? We have 2 games left to secure 2 points, winning the group was always out of reach given Dortmund's form and their early win over us.

Leggy, while I think the squad needs mixing up I think it's a bit premature to be writing Welbeck off. He's got 5 goals in all competitions so far, something neither Rooney, RvP, or Falcao have achieved.

However I agree with the notion that they need rotating. Welbeck's started up front a helluva lot lately, I've been suggesting Podolski get's a start there too rather than flogging a dead horse. Additionally Santi does look tired, but the Ox hasn't been offering a lot, nor has Rosicky and Gnabry & Walcott have been out injured.

I think the rotation will come, just give it a few more weeks.

Why does Leggy use the This button for the opposite reason it is intended?

12.

Leggy when we signed Welbeck;

"Just had another great laugh looking at the Woolwich thread. What a sad bunch of guys. If Welbeck does not score every game and have a blinder they will bag him"

Still can't get over how lucky we are to have Sanchez. It's rare for a player to sign and instantly go into your top 5 all time Arsenal players within a handful of games but he's certainly done that. Arsenal.com may aswell stop doing the player of the month polls every month, not like it's ever going to be anyone else. Just give him all of them and player of the season now and save the bother. Sadly, like various others before him it's hard to imagine him settling for 4th place scraps for too many seasons.

He really does remind me of Suarez at Liverpool. Head and shoulders above anyone else in the team in terms of work ethic on the pitch and genuine skill.

Sanchez is absolutely carrying us at the moment and to be honest he deserves a lot better support from the others than what he has getting. No settle in period required, he's fitted in from game 1 - extremely lucky to have picked him up.

I'll admit if things carry on as they are I'm worried how he will do next year, Wenger (who shouldn't be there next year) doesn't have the best track record improving or maintaining the form of better players that arrive - Ozil, Arshavin, Vermaalen and Reyes.

None of them were ever this good. They had good periods but their Arsenal careers are mostly forgettable. This guy basically is the whole team. Only really Arshavin ever carried the team in a similar way when he came in January and almost single handedly dragged us to a 4th place that looked unlikely when he signed. Then he got a bit fat and unfit and was never played in his best position and seemed to lose interest. Was pictured pigging out at MacDonald's during games he wasn't in the matchday squad for etc. Although he still tended to rack up goals and assists even when playing pretty poorly. Reyes couldn't cope with the physicality and was home sick the whole time, and always dreamed of playing for Real Madrid. There's still hope for Ozil, although the physicality does seem an issue as he's spent a significant time injured in both seasons.

Don't have any of the same worries with Sanchez. The only worry really is that he'll not want to spend his peak years scrapping for 4th and when City or Chelsea come he'll be off, or he may fancy another crack back in Spain if Real Madrid come calling.

Taking the mick.

He's pulling ya legs

So if we get second in the group, looks like we'll be facing one of: 

Atletico 

Bayer Leverkusen 

Bayern Munich

Porto

PSG

Real Madrid

Certainly some more favourable draws in there than others...

Fuck it, got to beat the best to be the best.

Right?

And all that jazz.

Hahaha.

^ wow 

we are freakin due a lucky draw in the knockouts for once 

sanchez signing of the season

chambers up there too?

welbeck looks like a good pickup

debuchy looked good before injury

ospina unknown as yet

CB debacle aside our signings have been excellent this past window

We MUST sign the 2 players we still need in Jan

We'll get Bayern or Real... :(

Thankfully Man Citys match was a worse capitulation and all the papers are slagging them off instead of us. Thanks For being a soulless club city.

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20141106/...

Arteta out short term, Giroud back training, Jack is back, Kosc might be back after international break.

Based on what I've seen so far I'd like us to revert to:

                             Szy

Chambers Mertesacker Monreal Gibbs

                         Flamini

    Walcott Wilshere Ramsey Sanchez

                       Welbeck

However I would imagine the boss is likely to be aprehensive starting Theo still...

I'd go

                Back 5

        Ramsey Wilshere

Ox         Sanchez         Cazorla

               Walcott

Cazorla and Wilshere would switch at times, and Ox may swap wings.

Also 6 Arsenal players in the latest England squad - Chambers, Gibbs, Wilshere, Theo, Ox, Welbeck. Bit risky letting Hodgson get his hands on a recovering Theo although surely he needs games so if he plays in the friendly against Scotland it should do him some good. Assume he won't play in the qualifier just yet.

Must be very satisfying for Wenger after all those years of being blamed in the media for the death of English football etc. He always said "I will give you a strong national team one day" and it's starting to come true. Remember Pardew and that "made in Britain" bust up they had on the sideline? Look who has the French team now.

ajc28 do you think Rambo & Jack can play together and sit deep enough to protect the back 4? I'm just not sure they're both disciplined enough to make it happen, but would love to be proven wrong.

I haven't seen evidence that they can play well together consistently; certainly not disciplined enough to both sit in front of the back four.

Have they played alongisde each other in the formation that was successful last season consistently though? I see no reason not to at least try it if they are the two guys who are going to form the core of the team for the next decade. Any combination has got to better than having Flamini on the pitch for me. England seem to want to groom Wilshere for a Pirlo/Alonso type role too. And true he was playing pony opposition but nevertheless he was man of the match in both England games at the last international break. It's got to be worth at least a try because its not like what we're doing now is a big success.

They wouldn't both necessarily have to sit either. Ramsey played that position alongside Arteta (true he's different to Wilshere) and forgetting all the goals he scored which are the standout thing, up until the injury he topped virtually every other statistic for the whole of Europe. Passes, pass accuracy, tackles won, intercepts, everything. We have changed the role of our best player and now he's not playing that well. We have to get him back into that role, just don't see the sense in changing the system from what worked so well up until we lost Ramsey and Ozil last season. We were top for so long it may have even won us the league if we'd had a bit more luck with injuries to critical players.

Are they not able to be trained to play a certain way? I have seen dogs trained to drive a car, surely it would be easier to get some pros to both sit deeper?

This, exactly. It's tactics. Obviously there would be onus on the players, but really it comes down to that being worked through in training. It's the only way I can really see Wilshere and Ramsey being in the team in the long run, there are better #10's and they shouldn't be on the wing.

His Majesty. 

Flamini if you want run 4-1-4-1

At least he'll make a tackle or two

what's this now?

It's more like training a dog to be a cat. Wilshere started life as a number 10 and still sees himself like that. Ramsey seems to want to be the next Bale. Neither have the discipline to be good defensive player. Ramsey needs to learn how to do the basics right again.

there was an interesting discussion on the telebox in the build up to the game against Anderlecht about how this season Ramsey was forcing the goal scoring to the detriment of the team. The general gist of the discussion was that he is not a Lampard type player who will score 20 goals a season from midfield and last season's goal tally was more of an anomaly than the norm. This season, he has been trying to recreate that number of goals, pushing himself forward and leaving space that can be exploited where he should be.  He needs to realise that if he continues to just play his natural game, the goals will come.

There was also a big discussion after the game about how the team lacks leaders on the pitch - people who will pull the team together when it has gone to 3-1 and 3-2 and just say "right - no one bombs forward and we close this game out". This is a discussion that has been occurring for a long time about this Arsenal team.

FMac makes two excellent points.

Mertesacker, Arteta, Flamini, Cazorla, these are the guys that should be leading us on the pitch in those situations but they're not doing that job at the moment. Cazorla for me has been disappointing this season - in the absence of critical players he is an experienced playmaker that we should be leaning on right now, but he's just being carried. Arteta had left the pitch but the Sack was there and unusually he was less vocal than normal. No one was taking that side by the scruff of the neck and getting us home - even someone like Wilshere may have been a good head on the pitch. He can be reckless but he's tenacious and he knows when we need to sit tight and see it out. In fact most of the team know this given the 1-0's we had to grind out during the run-ins of the last few seasons, it is ridiculous that this implosion happened. 

The Ramsey point is huge. He is forcing things this season for sure. I do see him as a goalscorer but I'd rather see 10 per season than 20, with more emphasis on his engine and putting himself around a bit. Arseblog mentioned the role Ramsey played in our run-in in 2012/13, sitting a bit tighter with Arteta. We had looked defensively weak but we needed wins badly to keep Spurs at bay, and we managed that - showingh character we lacked in the Anderlecht game. Ramsey was excellent in the second half of that season - as good as he was last season for me. His finishing is good enough that he'll still get goals if he sticks to the basics and takes the chances when they come, rather than trying to create them out of nothing all the time. 

I feel like that lineup is a little defensively weak too with wilshere/ramsey sitting in as suggested above, however ajc makes some good points, as does bullion, and yes Wilshere has been playing there for England so wouldn't be the worst one to try. He is fast and strong, good in tight areas, loves a tackle, and he can obviously play a pass. Not sure if he's the answer there long term but would perhaps be worth a try given our recent form. 

I think it's more of a case of if they're both fit, Wenger seems determined to see them both in the starting line up. So what would be the best formation to try in that scenario, and at the expense of who? We've seen them both as central midfielders, advanced midfielders and on the wing in the last few years. 

I'm still all for a robust, dominant DMF player but if that doesn't happen, I think the double pivot of Ramsey and Wilshere would be worth the consideration, certainly tried against a lower team (maybe after a few more internationals of Wilshere learning the role).

Also not forgetting Wilshere's best season to date was his first full season when he played a deep CM role. That performance against Barcelona at home in particular remains the single greatest individual performance I've seen from an Arsenal player and that includes Henry or the likes of Arshavin at Anfield. Completely took Xavi out of the game.

I certainly understand the argument for not playing them alongside each other, but it's not like we're defensively solid now. If we're not going to splash out on a Bender or a Vidal or whoever, and if these are the 2 guys we already have who we're looking to lead the team for the next decade then give them a run alongside each other. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work but what we're doing now is not exactly setting the world on fire either. You lose their best attributes by sticking them out on the wing and Wilshere has never really convinced as a 10. They have both played their best seasons starting from the sort of role I posted in the lineup above. It's the position where you get the best out of both of them so it seems better to me than sticking one out on the wing and not getting the best of him.

If we are going to buy some monster player then Ramsey and Wilshere would probably be interchangeable/rotatable for the same position. But I don't think we will.

Well it's certainly time to try something different anyway if things are not working. I should mention though those are my hopes for Ramsey and Wilshere long term but for now I still like one of them playing deep alongside Arteta as per what worked so well last season. The lineup I posted that started this discussion was with the current absence of Arteta in mind. He is going to need replacing in the first 11 in the next season or so.

He needed replacing a whole season ago.

Top bloke, great passer but not what the squad needs to win the league. 

AJC what tennis do you do?