Arsenal 3 - 3 Norwich City: Dreadful display, destiny no longer in our hands

Notoriously, Arsenal are bottlers. When the pressure is on them, they tend to buckle and not perform to their maximum capabilities. This season, we've had less of that by virtue of being the team playing catch-up - we always seem to be better chasing the other teams. Since we've been third, our form has dipped. We've dropped points against teams we should never be dropping points against and now look at the situation we're in...

Bad Habit
Arsenal have this habit of turning up for games against teams like Norwich (mid-table or lower half of the table) and not giving 100%. They turn up expecting to stroll through and win and I'm absolutely certain that when we took the lead after sixty-five seconds, the team thought this was going to be easy.

Then, when the other team inevitably get themselves back into the game, Arsenal are shocked. Every single time, they look shocked. They don't know how it happened or what to do afterwards.

In other words, they're complacent. And how anyone can be complacent in a game this important is beyond me.

It's this complacency that results in us not reaching our goals. We want to win titles, but constantly blow them due to bottling it. We want to finish third this season, but in all likelihood we're going to blow it because of some poor results against teams we should have beat, but didn't due to not giving a shit until the last thirty minutes of the game. It's an awful habit that happens far too often.

This team will never move forward if they cannot get over that habit. It wouldn't matter how many great players we have, if they're going to turn up against these sides and not take them seriously, they're not going to get the right results.

Europa League, here we come?
It looked like thrid would be ours, but then we lost to QPR. And then we lost to Wigan, then dropped points against Chelsea and Stoke... and now more dropped points against Norwich. The worst of it? Three of those games were at home.

We can't even say the other teams have been better. They haven't. Through complacency, we have well and truly screwed this up. Destiny was in our own hands - win our last two games and there would be no problems - but now it isn't. And who do we blame? Ourselves.

If Spurs and Newcastle win their remaining two games (Villa and Fulham for Spurs, City and Everton for Newcastle), they'll finish third and fourth respectively. Even if we did manage to sneak into fourth place, Chelsea could end up winning the Champions League anyway.

I hate to be all doom and gloom, but having to rely on external factors is a horrible position to be in. And we might not even beat West Brom next week with the way we're playing right now.

Dreadful performance all round in the first half cost us, Europa league here we come. This is prob the biggest piece of bottling i have ever seen.

gunnerlistick wrote:Dreadful performance all round in the first half cost us, Europa league here we come. This is prob the biggest piece of bottling i have ever seen.

We have to beat City at home and Everton away, cant see it tbh so i would'nt say that yet.

here we come 5th place and Europa League

Wowwwwwwwwww

Defence and SZCZ were in asbolute shambles today.

And Ramsey Theres a reason why we were much better when he was taken off

This is a horrible position to be in now...got to pray City can get at least a draw and Villa can get a result against Spuds. 7

We only have ourselves to blame, and if we don't get a CL spot, and lose Van Persie, this game will be the reason for it.

If we only make the Europa League ... I'm going to eat someone :vagi:.

Dont worry guys, I am sure Villa and City will help us out.

I cant believe how we missed so many easy chances and how when were up we kept giving the ball away.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

gunnerlistick wrote:Dreadful performance all round in the first half cost us, Europa league here we come. This is prob the biggest piece of bottling i have ever seen.

We have to beat City at home and Everton away, cant see it tbh so i would'nt say that yet.

I am pissed off at how we bottled third place

If chelsea beat scousers today then they have a great chance of beating bayern munich. Say what you want to say about them but when it comes to finals...they know how to win them.

Chances were created because everyone was pushing up. Also, Gervinho had an awesome, awesome game.

The lack of creativity is due to lack of Arteta. No Arteta means you have to drop deeper to pass more and more creative guys are forced to focus less on goals and more on keeping the ball.

halamadrid2 wrote:Arsenal should think about playing RVP and Chamack(or another striker) forever, so many chances created when Chamack was subbed in

The first half was just dull from Arsenals POV, then a striekr is subbed on in the 2nd half and you start creating all kinds of goal scoring chances

I agree Wenger took ages to make the changes, he waited til the 60th minute why does he always wait so long, Chamack and Ox changed the game tbf

gunnerlistick wrote:

halamadrid2 wrote:Arsenal should think about playing RVP and Chamack(or another striker) forever, so many chances created when Chamack was subbed in

The first half was just dull from Arsenals POV, then a striekr is subbed on in the 2nd half and you start creating all kinds of goal scoring chances

I agree Wenger took ages to make the changes, he waited til the 60th minute why does he always wait so long, Chamack and Ox changed the game tbf

Not CL final's they dont

I can't believe how many chances we screwed up today, although tbf Norwich could probably say the same thing. Ref also had a bad game I felt, which hurt both sides at various times.

Szczesny was easily flop of the match for me, and our defence was garbage. That 1st half performance was nothing short of atrocious. No way this should have been a difficult game for us, and I can fully understand Wenger's anger at the end.

Can't believe how long it took us to crank up the pressure and how quickly we conceded once we'd scored. We didn't even look good playing our usual possession game after it was 3-2

Still, Newcastle have City and Everton away

Tottanic have Villa away and then an in-form Fulham. We can still nab 4th and hope Chelsea lose the CL in case Tottanic win those games.

Since Ramsey came back to Starting line up we won once and that was a lucky win.

Ramsey please loan this guy out, we have loaned better players than him out.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

gunnerlistick wrote:

halamadrid2 wrote:Arsenal should think about playing RVP and Chamack(or another striker) forever, so many chances created when Chamack was subbed in

The first half was just dull from Arsenals POV, then a striekr is subbed on in the 2nd half and you start creating all kinds of goal scoring chances

I agree Wenger took ages to make the changes, he waited til the 60th minute why does he always wait so long, Chamack and Ox changed the game tbf

Not CL final's they dont

lol they have shitloads of experience, All they have to do is park the bus and lump it to Didier...no offence but he is up against Boateng and Basturber

tbf, van persie bottles easy chances, especially when it matters, for example the game vs AC Milan he should've scored the 4th, now today he had 2 easy chances, 1 can be written off as a push, but all he needed to do was put his leg upfront. 2nd one was the ball from rosicky and he shot at the keeper, one on one!

the real reason we lost though, is the Lays curse. You know, the potato chips, the same one that cursed Ronaldinho and Arshavin. Now they will hunt our keeper.

To be honest, you guys should've had a penalty for Lappin's handball before RVP's goal.

That notwithstanding, defense was terrible. Lambert smelled blood in the water early on and the pressure never really wore off for Arsenal's backline.

Considering how well Newcastle did against Chelsea away from home. I don't think it's a certainty that Citeh will do you any type of favors against them.

KMD wrote:tbf, van persie bottles easy chances, especially when it matters, for example the game vs AC Milan he should've scored the 4th, now today he had 2 easy chances, 1 can be written off as a push, but all he needed to do was put his leg upfront. 2nd one was the ball from rosicky and he shot at the keeper, one on one!

the real reason we lost though, is the Lays curse. You know, the potato chips, the same one that cursed Ronaldinho and Arshavin. Now they will hunt our keeper.

yeah RvP misses some chances but we should've been beaten by 2 or 3 goals today. we were awful

I dont get how every *bleep* goalie show up against us, the goalie had the game of his life.

I'm so fukcing pissed right now so excuse me for my *bleep* language.

Chesny is absolutely horrible all game, someone please reminds him a 19 years old kid does not have the right to be cocky when that *bleep* soft ball went in at similar pace of a doped up snail.

Gibbs where do i begin, you're right back not 2nd coming Iniesta, when defend, i know the ball could hit you like a *bleep* pain but please at least put your ass out instead of pedaling back every *bleep* time. Oh yeah, for a million and one times, you can not dribble.

TV5 and Kozz do not compute, cannot believe I would say this but I miss Per so dearly. Please come back and put your fragile giant body on the line for us, and slowly but surely move up 5 inches to set up offside trap. Cause the other sure can't do that.

The rest were ok and RVP is RVP but who give a damn now, we're about to get brick shat on by Spuds.

And Wenger, I noticed you threw bottle to the ground out of frustration quite often this year, not your fault man, smash the players with those bottles and ask them to harden the *bleep* up, stop playing with mentality of a 12 years old. 10 minutes to keep the ball but no *bleep* that, we pressed some more so Morrison who probably works at lumber mill part time, scored such goal of season that Ian Wright would applause.

I defend this team so many times but this one game, I'm sorry I simply can not. We were playing Norwich not Barcelona, at Emirate not Nou Camp, to protect the precious 3rd ( soon to be 4th) spot not to win CL final.

God & Podolski help us all

I'm done with the opening post. No talk on tactics or the specifics of the game. Just some waffle about complacency and what-have-you. I'm so disappointed right now.

Oh, well, at least we might be able to win the Europa League next season.

It's better if I comment tomorrow after Villa-Spurs Newcastle-City

Thomas Vermaelen and Alex Song both made a grand total of 0 successful tackles today.

GoonerJay29 wrote:Thomas Vermaelen and Alex Song both made a grand total of 0 tackles today.

Yeah, I noticed in the first half how Ramsey was doing more defensive work than Song, but Song's offensive contribution was good enough in the second half that I almost forgot about it. As for Vermaelen, that's surprising, although in fairness I felt the challenge he got a yellow for, although from behind, did get the ball first so maybe that statistic is unkind (not that 1 tackle would be good either). IMO Koscielny was our only player who defended well today.