Home Form

Alrighty, so from an outsider point of view, before last season...anytime Arsenal was hosting a other than top 4 team....I would have counted it as buying money in terms of betting. Cuz even before your end of the season bottling, or EVEN during that period, at least you'd always smash those mid table and lower teams at Emarites....It was something I always envied, cuz you seemed to beat them so effortlessly (not as effortless as United win @ OT, but that's another story).

Whay do you think changed last summer that even during your great months this year...you still had occasional problems against teams @ Emarites ?

I mean so many stupid dropped points

2-3 loss vs Brom
2-3 loss vs Spurs
1-2 loss vs Villa
0-1 loss vs Newcastle (I don't blame you for that one, cuz you were dealing with an all time great )
0-0 draws vs BBurn and Sunderland when both teams were on horrible losing runs
and even your wins there weren't as comfy
1-0 last min goal vs WHam
2-1 vs Birmingham in a game where it was very nervy in the end
2-1 vs Fulham
2-1 vs Everton


so unArsenal-esque. I remember you lot used to get at a lot of over 2+ margin victories at Emarites seasons before...what happened in Summer of 2010 that your home form dropped so badly ?

Was it lack of Gallas ? Cesc's dropped form ? matchgoing fans being not supportive enough? other teams read your style and neutralized you. ..?

what do you think the reason for your disappointing home form was and how do you think you should fix it for the upcoming campaign ?

The general consensus last year was that the team was simply too complacent at home. The sheer number of poor performances could probably be attributed to the team not putting in the required effort to beat the smaller teams, since they're so used to these teams just sitting back and letting Arsenal play them off the park.

When we lost a couple at home to teams we really should have been beating, it had this sort of knock on effect where similar teams no longer fear us; they know we're beatable.

This lack of work ethic had a negative effect on our play; passing became predictable, forwards weren't moving enough, finsihing wasn't clinical enough and the defence vunerable.

Then most of the players began to lose confidence and form, and it all just became one giant clusterfuck of problems.

Next season the team simply has to work harder at home and reinstill that fear factor by being more incisive with their passing and clinical with their finishing. I'm sure it'll improve once the confidence returns in the players. A few convincing home performances will surely get the crowd back on their side as well.

Simple answer. Those shite teams just got lucky.

Everyone has a bad day once in a while. We just had one to many.

COMPLACENCY!!!!!!!!

Denilson

Funnily enough, you can take a look at these results that happened in the Emirates as well:

Arsenal 1 - 0 United
Arsenal 3 - 1 Chelsea
Arsenal 2 - 1 Barcelona
Arsenal 6 - 0 Blackpool

So you see, its not that there is something that is "horribly wrong" with the squad or the players. We hadn't beaten United and Chelsea for like 3 years or something and we had never beaten Barcelona in our 125 years of history.

So to try and pin it on a single player leaving or another under-performing makes very little sense to me

ali8775 wrote:Denilson

He barely played during our awful run.

I think the boys sometimes feared losing too much in games they were expected to win, especially at the end of the season.

I think ali's just playing the scapegoat game again (:

Complacency, Cesc not being there, teams realising that we can't do shit when they park the bus.