tbh the arsenal players looked like they were scared to death of liverpool. panic set in every time liverpool had the ball. lots of work to do but this guy needs 2 seasons at least imo.

let's not forget @unique wanted Klopp sacked still in late 2017

ideal scenario we sneak in to top4 somehow and explore coaching options in the summer but its EL or bust and another season without CL football will be big blow

Emery is 2nd tier coach even if he wins EL i would still look for better coaches and upgrade ASAP

Agreed, the competition this year in the Europa League looks weak in comparison to last year, surely he can win it one more time with this squad.

After that, let's see who's available.

urbaNRoots wrote:Agreed, the competition this year in the Europa League looks weak in comparison to last year, surely he can win it one more time with this squad.

After that, let's see who's available.

give the guy a bit of time ffs.

Unique wrote:

urbaNRoots wrote:Agreed, the competition this year in the Europa League looks weak in comparison to last year, surely he can win it one more time with this squad.

After that, let's see who's available.

give the guy a bit of time ffs.

Yeap all this talk, c’mon give him time

This is also the very 1st time he has to deal with heavy schedule right on holiday period, he definitely mismanage the squad leading to all these injuries and fatigue.

Twoism wrote:

Unique wrote:

urbaNRoots wrote:Agreed, the competition this year in the Europa League looks weak in comparison to last year, surely he can win it one more time with this squad.

After that, let's see who's available.

give the guy a bit of time ffs.

Yeap all this talk, c’mon give him time

This is also the very 1st time he has to deal with heavy schedule right on holiday period, he definitely mismanage the squad leading to all these injuries and fatigue.

the prem lge is a hard lge for the best of managers and the guy has had 6 months in the job. give him at least 2 windows and a bit of cash before you hang him.

I think emery got his tactics wrong in this game. Arsenal should have tried to get men behind the ball and hit Liverpool on the counter. When they started to push up it exposed to much space and Liverpool capitalised on that. Of the 5 goals 2 were penalties which were wrong. 1 goal was lucky goal that doesn't happen every match. Only 2 goals were due to the defence.

Imo top 4 and europa league is still achievable. Emery at least knows which player to play in his preferred position. That is a great point.

The quality of a football team is of course heavily influenced by tactics and even a good team with poor tactics will lose 9/10 times to a well drilled side. In the past, often times we have been scored on so much because our midfield doesn't shield the defence, and it is still a matter that needs to be hammered out.

Having said that, you see a lot of the goals that we concede and you have to admit that it's often individual players screwing up under little pressure. For the first two goals Liverpool scored today: we had guys back and we had pressure on their players (even ball control on the 1st goal). Realistically the system wasn't the issue, it was just that our guys were incapable of dealing with simple situations. You can call it bad luck but it happens time and time again. We honestly concede some of the most embarrassing goals imaginable.

We need to sign better defenders, allow Emery to build a team of guys that he trusts so he doesn't burn everyone out with his pressing, and assess from there imo. The season isn't over and we can still finish it well with a strong January window plus players returning from injury. All is not lost but this game was obviously a serious reality check - hopefully it results in a positive turn of fortunes and not a spiral into horrendous form for weeks on end (as has so often been the case for us when we have suffered a bad loss in the past).

January doesn't get much easier:

Jan 1st - Fulham (H)
Jan 5th - Blackpool (A) (FA Cup)
Jan 12th - West Ham (A)
Jan 19th - Chelsea (H)
Jan 25th-28th - FA Cup 4th Round
Jan 29th - Cardiff (H)

Fulham at home is a good game to bounce back in, but I still expect it to be difficult due to our lack of creativity. Ranieiri will have them parking it hard.

Blackpool in the cup will be for the kids. Mavropanos, Medley, Willock, Saka, Smith Rowe, Nketiah, etc. Hopefully a chance to rest players and give minutes to those returning from injury (Bellerin and Monreal, specifically).

West Ham are in good form and have dangerous attackers. That looks tricky. Then Chelsea at home, which is winnable but still very difficult. Lose these two are we could be cut adrift from the top four.

You could have watched yesterday's match and last season's match at Anfield back to back and not notice much difference at all between them. That is added with the facts that two different managers faced the teams with very very similar performances and goals conceded in similar fashion. So where lies the issue? Is it the players? It can't be because only 2 players from yesterday's side started last season. Is it just the fact that Liverpool are that good? But we are the only team in the PL to have conceded 5 at Anfield this season in the league. And we are supposedly a top 6 side...

These two images are stats from both the seasons. Nearly identical in stats. Identical in performance too.




It could just be that the current crop of players are mostly inherited from Wenger so maybe his image is still present with them? But that doesn't explain how we are progressively getting worse with performances and actually defending far worse than we have in our last 20 years.

The biggest issue comes with the fact that there are so many problems in the current tactics and players that i don't know where to start fixing them. If it's Emery, then we really can't let him invest money in players who will be deadwood by the time a new manager comes in. But if it's the players, then we really can't revamp the entire defence for another 2-3 transfer windows anyways. The wage structure is a mess. There are more deadwood players from Wenger's era than there are good players. You see the starting 11 each week and think to yourself, what the fuck is this? Is Emery really the right person to fix all of this?

For someone who used to be known for tactical prowess, his tactics makes no sense these days. His substitutions make no sense. His starting 11 makes no sense. Of course we still need to give him time but it would help if he starts showing clear ideas of what exactly he wants from the team. It kind of feels like his effort to make us more of a pressing side has backfired because half the players are constantly injured while the other half are burnt out. So there is no pressing anymore and there are no players available anymore most of the time. Not sure how he is going to manage the 2nd half of the season. Top 4 is gone because never mind the top 6, there are at least 15 teams in the PL with better defence than us. We are not getting 4th ahead of Chelsea or United or Spurs. They are all better than us. EL? Chelsea, Napoli and Inter are all better than us as well. I'd be surprised if we win it unless some crazy draw helps us avoid all.

Right now, we need quality wide players. Iwobi is not good enough. There is no one else. Banega is actually a good player so I hope we do get him so that can mean Guendouzi doesn't play much. We need at least 2 new CBs and sell everyone else bar Sokratis. Can't believe what a massive miss Holding has been. We need a top quality LB and a RB. Don't even start me on Leno. German Almunia since day 1 lol. Absolutely mediocre. Need to replace him too soon.

It feels like this is a 2-3 year transition. Wish we had CL but we don't so no point dwelling on that. I just hope Emery knows what he is doing.

Great to see you back. We missed you. Hope you had a good time and a good christmas!

Funny thing about Holding, is that our defensive record wasn't great with him, but it's actually gotten worse since his injury. He really was playing well. Arguably better than his run in the team in 16/17.

Back to Liverpool: more than anything, I think they're just our antithesis. They're a team that controls space extremely well, and that's poison for us since our control of space is still such a long way behind the top teams. Liverpool under Klopp do well against sides who want a lot of the ball (i.e. City) because they seem to be easier to lure into traps. They set-up a mid-block and condense the centre so the ball has to be funnelled out wide where there's even less space. Then they pounce.

Our game management is also still terrible. Liverpool score in flurries, during periods when the opposition are unsettled and making mistakes. On Saturday, we went ahead, didn't regain our concentration quick enough, made a mess of clearing the ball and gave them an easy goal. Then the morons at the back lost their heads, started throwing themselves to the ground in desperation and were made fools of. But even then, 2-1 isn't that bad. You can come back from that. What an experienced team does in that situation is retreat and ensure that the damage doesn't get worse while Liverpool are on top. What Arsenal does is continue to play open in an attempt to get back into the game as soon as possible, leaving all that space in the process. We become so desperate to get back into games we surrender control in the process.

I guess that's just the culture we have at the club. A lot of this squad were brought up in Wenger's ideal and aren't necessarily the most resilient, and adding two vets like Lichtsteiner and Sokratis isn't going to change that right away. Then you have the rest of the team. Torreira (22), Iwobi (22) and Maitland-Niles (21) have a lot of learning still to do. Ramsey was playing up front with Auba and had no interest in dropping in to help his team out. Kolasinac only defends when he feels like it. Mustafi is just lol. Maybe XHAKA thought we needed to retreat a bit but I don't know if he has the influence or personality to dictate that to the whole team. Moreover, how many of these players can slow play down and dictate the tempo? Only XHAKA, but he's playing with five other mids who want to play the ball forward or take risks.

It further highlights how imbalanced the squad is. Young players will show immaturity, so they need experienced players around them to help them in these types of games. Yet our experienced players are either crap or lacking the game intelligence to do that. And the only way that's fixable is by signing new players.

I completely agree with all of that. To move on, let's just say that Liverpool are our worst nightmare and this wouldn't happen elsewhere (we do need to go to Etihad soon though...)

It's just weird that we have somehow resorted into playing the exact same we as we used to in Arsene's final years. How did that happen? Some of those matches in the recent unbeaten run were really difficult to watch. A team like us should be dominating possession in opponent's final third but somehow we end up playing in the middle where most of the passes are backwards or towards the channel where the ball ends up going back to...the middle.

It does make you think that it's definitely the lack of proper players. Banega really makes sense because he is a fantastic player to have for controlling the match. I am a big fan of XHAKA (one of our better players against Liverpool) so a midfield three of Banega-XHAKA-Torreira sounds great in theory. Specially since we can perhaps avoid conceding chances through higher possession control. Remains to be seen if it happens

I'd also say that i agree that our defenders are all a bunch of clowns but i think we also have a problem with our front 3-4. Might be unpopular but Aubameyang is a very very poor footballer. He is a great goalscorer but i don't think there has been a match where he has been MOTM through his performance. The ball never sticks to him. He has 0 link up play and his passing is mediocre. His best strength is running off the ball and finding space to shoot (he isn't clinical either). He barely wins aerial duels despite his size. Lacazette is 100 times the striker and nearly all of our best performances this season have come when he has started upfront. That brighton game, the moment lacazette was off, we lost control of final third. Forget that there was no creativity in the first place but the fact we barely had any of the ball going into the box made it far worse.

Combine that with rest of our attackers. There is very little technical quality everywhere. You compare this to Nasri-RVP-Arshavin-Wilshere(prime)-Fabregas attack we used to have. It's really obvious where we have fallen over the years.

We need better wide players and also better suited CAMs (Ozil is gone you would think). I don't think any of our current youth players are good enough for the first time (maybe ESR) either.

It further highlights how imbalanced the squad is. Young players will show immaturity, so they need experienced players around them to help them in these types of games. Yet our experienced players are either crap or lacking the game intelligence to do that. And the only way that's fixable is by signing new players.

Yea definitely agree with this conclusion too. We should get behind Emery and hope he fixes all these issues. Atm it's more evident that the players are just not good enough nor suited than him being a fraud. He is better to be judged next summer.

Also hopefully we start recruiting young hungry players than 28+ ones



@hans Thank you. I did, and i hope you did too.

RealGunner wrote: Might be unpopular but Aubameyang is a very very poor footballer. He is a great goalscorer but i don't think there has been a match where he has been MOTM through his performance. The ball never sticks to him. He has 0 link up play and his passing is mediocre. His best strength is running off the ball and finding space to shoot (he isn't clinical either). He barely wins aerial duels despite his size.

Not unpopular
4-2 NLD is his only good all round performance and i have been critical of his big game contribution
but no point criticizing his style,we knew what were getting when we signed him
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As Frustrating as Alexis could be,but we badly lack a player who takes responsibility in final 3rd and make things happen on regular basis(not once in a while @Özil)

If we could get one of Sarr, Pulisic, Sancho or Pepe that would be unreal.

RealGunner wrote:If we could get one of Sarr, Pulisic, Sancho or Pepe that would be unreal.

deal is done for him to go to chelsea

Hapless_Hans wrote:let's not forget @unique wanted Klopp sacked still in late 2017

2018 August.

That should be a testament to Arsenal fans of sticking to a manager if anything.

Toerria keeps running foward to join the attack whereas he should be sitting back protecting the defence.

Imo arsenal keep losing the mid field battle and that is partly due to so many injuries.

Auba linkup play is really a concern because whenever he gets the ball he rushes everything.

Arsenal need to control the midfield if they want to win any matches that means Torreira and XHAKA making themselves available to the defenders and linking attacking and defenders.

If i was controlling arsenal in fifa 19 i would put both these players on stay back while attacking. The max they can go is half of opposition pitch. AMN Kola Auba/Laca Iwobi etc can score the goals if the balls being retained properly.

Torreira was never going to keep up his insane level of fitness. It was just not sustainable. And specially not in the PL. He has dropped off massively in recent weeks due to that.