Arsenal vs Liverpool (16/17)

Xhaka and Cazorla were immaculate with their passing. Both on the bench

We were surprisingly more compact in the middle in the first half, before that soft FK that Coutinho put in. There was some decent shielding of the CBs till then.

Oh and let us not forget that Theo *bleep* up a penalty. What a soft shit take. Things could have been much different if he had scored that early on.

Even Everton are more ambitious than us these days.

They turned down nearly 70m pound offers for their star striker despite him actively saying he wants out multiple times.

Yet we rolled over an sold our star player to United for 20m and gifted them the league several years ago. We would never have stood our ground like that.

They are outspending us these days to. ****ing Everton.

Ramsey's injury was so predictable, too. We had Wilshere, Xhaka, Cazorla, Iwobi, Ox and Campbell as alternatives but we play the guy with only 60 minutes of pre-season in him. I mean, I can't even comprehend this. It's the one area of the field we have depth in but we rush a player back instead.

Coquelin was lucky not to be sent off with the amount he was fouling. He's good when you're parking it but when you to play out and get moves started he's useless. And I have to say that Elneny went totally missing in that second half as well.

To be fair, Lukaku isn't on the last year of his contract and there is shitloads of TV money now in the league. Nor has Lukaku publicly burned the club on his personal website.

Let's not paint that *bleep* RvP in a positive light here.

Wilshere wasnt going to make it for Liverpool but somehow on the bench over Joel who has been one of our best players in pre-season.

hilarious

Xhaka-Elneny-Cazorla would have won us this.

I really hope Joel hands in a transfer request.

Let's just hope for your sake this forces Venga do buy Lacazette before the window closes.

If Mustafi deal is done, full strength you will be very good this season.

These things don't have any impact on Wenger. He'll sweep it under the carpet saying short term blips.

Don't call me James wrote:Let's just hope for your sake this forces Venga do buy Lacazette before the window closes.

If Mustafi deal is done, full strength you will be very good this season.

Even if we sign him, he will need a few weeks to get his fitness up so we will still be stuck with the babies at centre half for a little while unless with rush Koscielny back. Judging by what happened Ramsey today i would be reluctant to do this.

Fwiw, I thought Chambers and Holding did reasonably well.

Wenger: "We paid for a lack of experience at the back and the fact some players are not ready physically to compete at this level."

https://i.imgur.com/N8QxsI9.gif

Well if they are not ready, why the *bleep* did you play them

What a clown

And why aren't they ready? What does he think pre-season is for?

How can we start a season with so many unfit players ffs.

Also, it's not a good thing that we look so shit when we take a couple of players out the team.

Who's not physically ready to compete at this level ? if he is talking about Ramsey and Sanchez then they should have been on as subs. Robbo and Chambers did well but their inexperience showed during the goals we conceded like the free kick Holding gave away for Coutinho's first goal and Chambers not being Cynical enough when he had the chance to foul Mane. Little things like these, experienced defenders are better at dealing with these things.

Life was so much better before PL started lol

RealGunner wrote:Life was so much better before PL started lol

Amen

I really wasn't looking forward to this season. A couple of the pre-season games weren't bad but I felt zero excitement about this team. I was more excited by the kids.

Might as well just find a DVD review of last year or the year before and watch that instead.

Well damn that game was quite the rollercoaster. First 40 minutes was Arsenal passing about and making a wanker out of Moreno and aside from their goal not doing much else. Coutinho scored a screamer of a freekick to kind of turn the game on its head just before half time. Second half started with a boom, a nice pass from Coutinho it Wijlnadum and another good pass to Lallana, which he finished well. Then Clyne played a very good cross in to Coutinho who guided it home very well and finally before I started to shit myself for the rest of the game Mane rounded off a very good debut for him.

Then the worst thing possible happened and Arsenal scored straight away to make it 2-4 while Liverpool were still bouncing from their earlier assault. Then the dreaded 3-4 and the rest of the match being watched behind a cushion while praying to all 700,000 gods or whatever number there is now.

Aside from all that I am very happy to come away with a win in the opening game of the season away to Arsenal. Scored some very good goals, the only concern as usual is our defense as usual.

Well your defense looks better than ours, if that is some solace.

Sri wrote:Well your defense looks better than ours, if that is some solace.

Even if you conceded 4, it didn't look like anybody in that defense specifically was a liability. Runners from midfield is what was your undoing, so you could blame the protection provided to the defense.

In our case, we literally are carrying multiple liabilities in defense.

Our issue is definitely personnel, for you I'd say it's more systemic.

Don't call me James wrote:

Sri wrote:Well your defense looks better than ours, if that is some solace.

Even if you conceded 4, it didn't look like anybody in that defense specifically was a liability. Runners from midfield is what was your undoing, so you could blame the protection provided to the defense.

In our case, we literally are carrying multiple liabilities in defense.

Our issue is definitely personnel, for you I'd say it's more systemic.

I agree with that. Thought you meant defense overall, and not purely personnel.

Apparently everyone but Arsène predicted a loss today.

It's fair to say that the Alexis as striker experiment has backfired in the most spectactular way, put him in his best position and sign a real striker.

I'm repeating myself but we need two experienced CB's, not only one. Send Chambers and Holding on loan where they belong. Really embarrassing to see Arsène put these young players under the bus, very un-Arsène like and very Mourinho-esque.

Once again we start the season unprepared and once again Arsène fails to see his faults. Nothing new here, I didn't expect better from him.

On to the next match.

Guess I'm glad, in retrospect, that I wasn't able to watch the match.

The fitness/injury issues just seem like an Arsenal algorithm at this point.

Well this certainly was a better start to the season than I expected. I really hope we can continue this sort of attacking threat while we steady up our defence.

Also the talk is Milner is going to be our first choice LB, not sure how I feel about this but he should at least be better than Moreno.