A disappointing 0-0 draw today saw the winning streak come an end, but we lacked the ability to break down an obdurate Boro side. Nevertheless, it was enough to put us top of the table (for now).
Here’s how the players rated.
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Friday, December 20, 2024
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Too many players being praised at the moment, could they be trying to show off how good Cech is?
This could be the match where we win from Xanka long range ‘SHOOT’.
Unfortunately he is still serving his red card
We are top of the league. Helps a little with the meh-ness .
Can’t get over the chance Bossscielny missed bundling in. Where were his arms when we needed them most?
I highly rate Elneny. Never seems to fuck it
And he never seems to make things happen either. Great player to come into play when you’re leading.
You’re getting downvotes because people cry about any criticism here but you’re spot on. Elneny is a good player, really solid 6-7/10 everytime and will rarely let you down. The difference between having him or Santi/Xhaka is pretty obvious really. Was today.
I’m a bit appalled by all this slating of Elneny going on. For me he was our best outfield player yesterday. I think the idea that Coqelny didn’t work is a valid one, but as someone who has been cheerleading for Coq to an almost absurd extent this season I think it’s pretty clear he was the weaker of the two. He produced maybe 4 of the game’s 5 best passes, and in terms of the less flashy stuff he was mostly inch perfect (apart from two misplaced passes in succession right before he came off). He probably could have… Read more »
See Tim Stillman’s latest column about our midfielders, he sums up Elneny perfectly in that he is a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’.
In essence, he’s a very good squad player who adds quality depth for when we need to rotate and is a great option from the bench when his attributes are needed, but the ‘squad player’ role suits him more than a ‘first choice’ role.
I like Elneny, but the Coqneny partership wasn’t what we needed today.
it was one of those days that we failed to win by mere inches, alexis to kos and walcott to ozil, inches away from open goals, another day they will go in, but our overall game was a little slow and the passing lacked the zip needed to open a packed defense. Coq and Elneny were a little too sideways in their passing, alexis took too many touches, and iwobi had little impact. we move on to the next game with confidence and lots of hope,
We are not the only team to get held to a draw by a team that puts 9-10 behind the ball the whole match relying on counter attacks. What was worrying though is until midway through the second half they had the far better chances and we really only had one shot on goal in the first half. Might have been a game for Chamberlin to start from the beginning in the middle with his ability to penetrate and create chances. Frustrating for sure not to take all 3 points at home, but did keep a shut out and got… Read more »
Can’t get over the chance Bossscielny missed bundling in. Where were his arms when I needed them most? *gets coat
How badly we missed Cazorla today..
Yes, but 1. He played when we struggled just as much to break Burnley and Leicester down. 2. It’s really f*ckin hard to break a team down who’s well organized and decides they want to camp out in their own area and park the bus. Especially when our team collectively looks a little jaded from playing midweek and the opposition has had a week to prepare for us. 3. We missed Giroud more than Santi today, I think (plus Welbs, to a lesser degree). We have no one to lead the line and attack crosses late in a game when… Read more »
We look collectively drained. All credit to Karaka (Maureeno light) for setting up very defensively and getting the point. I know people will defend, even admire, that way of playing, but I would like to point out that Bournemouth can get points without playing that way.
I thought Ox made another fine run today and he barged through their defence with an unfortunate end in Özil being way offside.
Apologies for double post. It’s not easy typing on one hand and gulping vodka on the other. We’re doing better than many past seasons and here we are getting all negative because our team failed to collect 3 points for the seventh successive match – even if they’ve played 3 games in 9 days. Let’s fucking cheer up! GTID!
Very true. Top of the table. Be happy. 🙂
We only lost one game in 7months I think.
This.
This seemed almost inevitable after the last game. A pity we couldn’t have rotated a little more …
I blame Stan Kroenke for showing up and ruining everything.
I blame Arseblogger for the final words of his pre-match blog:
“…today should be a good day come 4:55pm”.
Also known as the “Ice Cube jinx”.
Cazorla is still our key man. You can only see how important he is when he isn’t playing.
Coq and Elneny are a wrong choice against a deep team like Boro. Our biggest fault is as ever the slow passing and moves against defending teams. We need high speed runs from the midfielders starting well outside the box to tie up the defensive knot. Ox did it once and created a big chance immediately. And we must learn to defend against passes behind our defence!
With Xhaka suspended, Cazorla and Ramsey and Jack busy denying the spuds, these were the only real options available
Hoping that Jack can be our natural successor for Cazorla in the next 2 seasons
Classic ‘post Champions league’ match unfortunately. Not worried, we’ll bounce right back. Come on you Gunners…
Loving our team but is this a case of Wenger not rotating enough? Sanchez definitely can’t keep this up all season. Clearly post champions league hangover. Need to find the right balance to keep things fresh.
No, it’s a case of a team doing an impressive job of parking the bus, and Giroud and Welbeck being injured.
yep its hard to rotate if the players you need are injured!
They looked knackered. Ozil was, quite frankly, bloody awful (trigger 3000 thumbs down) but has played a lot of football ltely… should have played Ox from the start … fucking awful performance really considering how bad they are. Could have lost 1-0. Have a good week off Mesut and come back strong. We need you when the chips are down. PS: Fuck off Kroenke you are a jinx.
The birthday present equivalent of a pair shoes from Tu…
We need to tighten up our left hand side. Teams are targeting us in that area and Monreal’s lack of pace is being exposed in our current system.
This. Nacho was never a speedster, but it does seem lately that the inevitable aging process may be taking it’s toll and robbed him of the dreaded “half a yard” of pace. I hope I’m wrong and it’s only a blip in form. But Gibbs seems to have finally rediscovered some form after being mostly pants for 18 months, so I wonder if it won’t soon be time for a changing of the guard and to see if the younger, faster player can shore things up back there. We’re very lucky it hasn’t cost us any points in the last… Read more »
Someone on here or some journalist postulated that our supposed in interest in Ricardo Rodriguez meant that Nacho would move to central defence. Though this move likely would have meant Koscielny or Nacho being a bit uncomfortable in right central defence, I was a fan and thought it could be a natural transition for Nacho.
Now I’m of the mind that it makes sense to platoon with Gibbs, who has looked alright so far this season.
Alexis is not playing on the left flank. See the difference? May be time to promote Gibbs to first team.
I Liked Wengers press conference
I think Wenger made a small mistake playing two cdm’s against this championship anti-football team. When Ox entered he immediately created a chance for the Ozil offside goal.
Still, players are to blame for being so flat, especially the guys up front. Anyway, we can’t win every game can we? Let’s hope it’s much better against Sunerland!
Am I the only one who saw that one-v-one Sanchez missed? Am I?
It’s always obvious he’s gonna score many goals in a season, but is he clinical?
For once the commentator was right.. Should have had chambo on earlier.. It’s difficult to take this one in as it was a ‘struggling’ Boro side.. Def could have done with giroud today.. Let’s get on with the next one though!
This game have shown the limits of our pace when a team park a bus, no point to have fast players (tired for some) if you can’t get passed 10 mens inside the box, Giroud would have been more helpful with his style of play, it’s in this games that he will be important, the hard thing for the bos is, who is going to play like this against us? we know a few “top” teams won’t and manager who have the guts won’t either but for the the remanings, they will park the bus. That useless Middlesbrough manager said… Read more »
Apart from Cech, everyone else was garbage. Not much else to say.
-10 for BeIn Sports and their horrific in-game-from-another-game goal highlights.
Yeah I saw that, it was absolutely horrific! Especially the way the commentator feigned to not know the outcome of the replay and howled with fake surprised-sounding intonation when they scored. Fuck off!
Just curious…what would Cech have to do to get a 10?
Score?
Kick John Terry in the balls?
Games like this where coquelin’s limitations are just in your face. He was not need in the second half. On to the milk cup game
Has Perez even started a single league game yet?
Player ratings: all of them 4/10 except Chec 9/10 and Kos 7/10. Just not good enough and a lack of desire and creative ingenuity. Arsenal should know that this will be the game plan for 90% of the teams that come to the Emirates, so there has to be a more effective way of breaking them down. The Ox was the only player that seemed willing to take them on and create something. Build up was far too laborious. Maybe try 4-4-2 play Perez and Sanchez up top
Tedious, unimaginative cliches I’m oh so tired of hearing fans say: 1. “maybe try 4-4-2.” 2. “build up too slow”–this is true sometimes, but just as often the build up is too slow and too rushed/sloppy in equal measure (the key is in getting the pace appropriate for the moment, not just in speeding up as if there’s a fast forward button that can be pressed that suddenly makes scoring goals easy), and even when it is true, it’s usually because the opponents are doing a bloody good job getting numbers behind the ball and clogging up the spaces. Attacking… Read more »
It’s all good. Last year, we used to lose games like this when they score at the 87th minute. Not this year. Remember guys the season has long way to go. Shame our winning streak is over but heyyyy STILL FUCKING UNBEATEN since that incident against liverpewl
The issue is that our boys should learn to shoot from anywhere. It ‘s not in every match that you think you can walk the ball in.
Why does Iwobi have to be the first sub every time even if he looks dangerous and most likely to pry open the opposition. Like a seniority thing. Today that swap for Perez proved costly as we now had only runners on. Ox, Perez, Theo. I do think Iwobi works better than most in tight spaces. The first change should have been Elneny cos there was no need playing 2 defensive midfielders today, for so long. And somebody tell me why we don’t shoot in these circumstances. The 2 times we really worked the keeper were both from outside the… Read more »
Lucas Perez: “Had little to no impact”… Still gets a six. You do realise, that if you’re rating out of 10, five would be an average performance, don’t you?
We use 6 as the baseline here.
that was the perfect match to send Giroud for plasn B,hope he comeback soon, he would at least headed one cross toward the goal, you could clearly see our wide player try finding one player to cross and passing sideway becuase they have no choice
really dont think we miss santi that much, we struggle too when he is here
We were a bit off and Boro had a good day – shit happens
Do t agree about WLcott I thought he worked his nuts off
Over passing was the problem tonight
Could have gone both ways that game with big chances for both teams. I think this was a game where someone like Giroud could come on and make the difference with his strenght and aerial threat. If you cant go through them you could allways try and go over them. But i think in general we could benefit from mixing it up more. It is not written in stone that we have to pass our way into the 6 yard box before finishing. Xhaka for me is the most refreshing signing in quite some time because he soothes a sometimes… Read more »
Do you really think Boro had better chances than us because they “took more risks”?? Of course not. They had better chances, and found them much easier to come by, because we were intent on attacking and thus left space to exploit at the back, whereas they were only intent on keeping a clean sheet, so packed everyone in and around their box, leaving us no space to exploit. This, incidentally, is why us “taking more risks” wouldn’t have worked today (what does this phrase even mean? shooting from distance when 3 and 4 Boro bodies were in the way… Read more »
I’m curious as to why, when we know the opposition is going to sit back and defend, why do we continue to play with 2 holding midfielders ? Especially at home, in my opinion, I don’t think there are any games at home, maybe against top 4 competition, but otherwise, there should not be any game at home where we play with 2 DM’s. I would rather have seen Ox in place of either Elneny or Coq, from the start. Or maybe Perez alongside Alexis, maybe in a 4 – 1 – 3 – 2 formation.
I did not think Elneny played particularly bad. He put in some excellent forward passes. That said, he doesn’t add anything extra going forward at the moment in tandem with Coquelin. To me, he is a decent squad player. I’m not sure I buy into all this hype about him by some fans. He may well develop into something better but at the moment, he is OK. If you talk about pass percentage/completion Flamini would have matched him for numbers. In tandem, Coquelin or Elneny without Santi were no more if less effective than Flamini and Ramsey (bar one or… Read more »
In the sum of it all though, it is a draw. NO big deal. We push on. Its just 9 games in. Plenty to play for and we weren’t expecting to win everything. Its going to be unlikely. But we need to take stock and get prepared for the derby and games ahead. Oddly enough some of these higher pressure games may actually be ‘easier’ for us these days (we were top of the mini league last season don’t forget). Where we struggle at times is breaking down entrenched teams. The teams who believe they are better tend to come… Read more »
I’m gonna make a very unpopular comment but the reality is that Coquelin isn’t good enough on the ball. He’s a fighter and a tackler but in games as today he stops the flow every time he gets the ball. He stops the ball, looks up and then passes it a couple of meters sideways, almost every time. The few time he delivers the ball forward he does so in a very crowded area where the recipient have no chance but to pass it back. He so depended to have Cazorla next to him that when Santi is unviable he… Read more »
I’m gonna say Elneny is the expendable one. He is utility at best. Coquelin covers us better. Elneny adds nothing going forward for us. To me, some people have it in their heads that he is more useful than he really is. Wenger had the Ox on next to Coquelin and we almost nicked it in the end. Where we are fundamentally lacking is we do not have the pin point precision of Granit or Santi today. PLus we don’t have GIroud who can break teams down seated deep. At the moment, Elneny is no better (or worse) than if… Read more »
This is somewhat overused rhetorically but: were we really watching the same game yesterday?! Elneny’s technical ability is incomparably better than Flamini’s. He made some passes yesterday that people would have been jizzing about if it were Xhaka. I agree with you on Coquelin though; he’s been excellent this season and has really improved his game with the ball at his feet in particular. I don’t know what the guy you replied to is on about. Honestly I think midfield is by far our strongest area and I’d be happy with literally any two of our CMs depending on the… Read more »
All this nonsense about not needing Coquelin, you want to take this chance? Borough could have walked away with 3 points today.
GIbberish
For months I’ve read your views and ratings on monreal and I am sure one of us is very bd at rating players, probably me. Monreal grand? Monreal is not a bad left-back, but not an outstanding left back either. He is just there and a club like arsenal needs more. He is pretty easy to take on in one-on-one situations, can hardly prevent a cross and end product going foward is way below average. C’mon…!
Agree with everyone that 2 DMs were wrong for this game but I don’t like the idea of playing the Ox in the middle. Like Walcott, Wenger needs to pick a position for him and let him master the position. He is not going to get many games in the middle. I would have preferred him on the left and maybe Iwobi in the middle in a 4 1 4 1 or a 442 with Coq & Ozil in the middle & Perez up top with Alexis. Giroud was definitely missed.
I think the assessment of the Ox is a bit harsh, “see Perez” i.e. “Had little or no impact off the bench”. He wasn’t outstanding but I think he brought a lot more forward drive and certainly had an impact.
I liked Ox at CM yesterday, he was assured but positive and dynamic which is what we needed. We were always going to struggle playing 2 DMs against a team that was only playing for a draw. In the absence of Carzola, Xhaka and Ramsey, Ox should have started
Easy to say that in hindsight, mind