Just back from the game obviously disappointed, but I haven't caught up with anything anyone else has said I thought I would report on what I saw before reading what really happened. I thought that we played Ok at times, not the best we have played certainly not the worst, but you cannot gift good teams a goal in the opening period of the game. The game I thought it was even up to the goal, I have no idea what happened we were up the other end. Just after the goal Son had a good chance and the son of last season scores that chance but in keeping with his current form he hit at the keeper. Arsenal then dominated much the remainder of the first half and they are clearly well coached and well drilled and have a some fine players, but other than the shot for the 2nd goal they created very little and we created a half chance for Kane at the end of the half and had shouts for a penalty dismissed right on the HT whilstle (probably correctly) The 2nd half we were the better side (aren't we always), and had we taken one of the chances that we created, I think that we could easily have scored a 2nd, but we didn't and a tight game was lost 0-2. Craig Pawson had a terrible game seemed to fall for it every time one the snipers in the crowd hit one of their players, he had no control over time wasting and was generally poor. Mikel Arteta is a cock.
Recently I've thought that Conte had lost his way at Spurs. Maybe. But,then again,a workman with poor tools can't achieve much so........... By the way,are Arsenal that good or do we have another Leicester at the top?
Agreed. Sacking Conte won't change enough to make a difference. It'll just deliver the next chump, who will fail like the last few did. Unless we change the management above the coach, we'll just keep repeating the same mistakes.
There is some truth to this Spurf but Brentford and Brighton most certainly do not have anything close to the financial clout (or global pull) we do. The difference is both have progressive coaches who know how to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts and are therefore able to punch above other teams who just throw lots of very expensive parts onto the pitch and hope that the subsequent sum makes sense (Chelsea and Liverpool this season for example). Newcastle also haven't really begun flexing their new financial muscle. The only signing they've made since the takeover we'd struggle to compete with was Isak and he's hardly played for them this season. They've also got a progressive manager who knows how to weave a team together into a more effective whole. And in truth, that's really all there is to it in the top half of the PL. There are teams who will simply throw money at every problem, hoping enough of it sticks to deliver trophies (City, United, Chelsea, Liverpool) and then there are teams who have accepted that is not a solution given their financial means, and so have to find more pragmatic and indeed creative solutions instead. What all of Arsenal, Newcastle, Brighton, Brentford and Fulham have in common is: progressive managers who are under the age of 50, smart recruitment structure, solid pathways from youth to first team and a lack of fear to sell players at the right time for the right price. And then there is Tottenham Hotspur FC, caught firmly in no man's land between the two groups. Masquerading as a club who can throw money at problems to solve them with a DOF who clearly prefers to solve problems progressively and a manager who says he is one thing but does something else. The only other club currently more confused than us is Chelsea, but then again they've just spent £70m on a player with 12 senior goals under his belt. So the comparison ends there.
The Utd, Sporting and Newcastle games won't go down without a fight, and there's been a number of draws that'll have words to say too. This season has just been full of poor performances, today included, it's hard to differentiate and settle on what exactly has been our worst.
Poch near the end was just like Conte is now mentally beaten…almost checked out due to the realisation that he isn’t getting the new furniture required. (Tbh Pochs choice in furnishing was questionable anyway but that’s for a later convo) Poch wants to repeat that? what a guy
Ndombele at £55m or Richarlison at £60m… I dunno bro, both managers ****ed it with their personal choices there, lol.
We've been pretty poor in the cups too. Forest defeat was atrocious while our CL campaign has been iffy to say the least. We just haven't got going this season at all. I wasn't panicking 6 games in as it is normal to wait a bit for things to click into place but...20+ games on and it just feels like we still haven't clicked. I saw a comment online from a Brentford fan who was watching the game and asked as a total neutral what our tactical plan actually is, as we look like we make it up as we go along and just hope opposition sides will be careless enough to gift us goals. I have to say, I agree with him.
I think Richarlison is great you could tell in his cameo today that he would have been up their arses all game and that would have caused issues. He’s got the right energy to be part of a winning team imo…Ndombele on the other hand just has low negative hopeless frustrating energy dragging everyone down with himself. chalk n cheese imo Richie’s first season with us at a time when we are just a **** club with no direction. I expect him to deliver on par with the clubs ambitions…can’t expect him to surpass them.
Mate he’s been awful for us. Energy or no energy he’s done almost Jack ****, Emerson also has energy lol. I think it’s telling that prior to his move here, he played five years in England at Watford and Everton. Likeable guy but dogshit signing, huge waste of money at £60m.
Lloris is a fine captain and has been a great servant to the club for a decade. I for one am not joining the shouty “Lloris out!” gang. However, it’s time for a replacement GK and allow Lloris to leave with dignity and our support. Conte is a Jose Mourinho II. He arrived and purely relied on his motivational aspect of getting the team to perform. This has expired and whatever he’s doing, is no longer working. He simply doesn’t know how to set the team up to perform using their strengths. He’s trying to adapt the players to fit into his method when it’s clear they can’t do so. Losing 2-0 at home against Arsenal is not acceptable. No matter how good they are. Whoever said earlier that it’s no big deal, you’re wrong. We are feeling aggrieved! I simply can’t see how the club moves forward. Conte is clearly leaving by the end of the season at the latest. I really don’t think Poch is the right man for us the second time round. Hopefully the club are already looking at potential successors. Conte was always a short term solution. I think Ryan Mason is being groomed for a future coaching role but he’s not ready yet.
The biggest issue for me with Conte's tactics this season is people would at least begrudgingly accept them if they worked and we were at least keeping teams like Liverpool or The Sheikh Mansour Team in our pockets instead of rolling over for them, but that's simply not happening and instead we're keeping ourselves in our own pockets far too often Case in point, if you look at how we were set up yesterday, we were effectively playing 523 as both Doherty and Sessegnon were playing deeper than the midfield pivot every time Arsenal got the ball, as helpfully illustrated by somebody on Cartilage Free Captain please log in to view this image And this also illustrates the issue with our setup: it's not coordinated, as you can see Kane and Deki pressing their defenders as they try to pass it out of the back but you can also see we have five players sitting back, and as a result our midfield is in a perpetual No Man's Land of having to decide if they stick close to players and risk leaving gaps down the wings as the WBs are being told to sit deep, or whether they sit back and leave acres of space in midfield but (in theory...) can snuff out any attacks. As a result, somebody in the stands was more likely to get close to one of their players than our midfield (and did...) And that does seem to be a pattern of how we're one foot in but one foot out this season. In the above image you can see we've got one foot in pressing opponents but one foot out, but think of the other examples there are where we're half committed to concepts: playing 352 is the obvious one, given we were flirting with it as a fallback tactic around September/October (only for the system to get sandbagged against Man Utd) but it is a pattern at this point
I take on board all the comments here about the players, formation, management and just about everything else not being right. I even agree with a lot of it. Yet somehow with these poor players, poor formation and bad management we seem to have pinned back the runaway league leaders for extended periods of the second half and register quite a lot of shots. All I'm saying is not that everyone is wrong to make these claims (indeed it's quite understandable, particularly given who the opponents were), just that clearly we are capable of competing in matches against top opposition. Even given all the problems previously mentioned. So... the question is why can't the players start the game with the same aggression that we generally get after we've gone behind? I don't know if it's the players or the manger, or a bit of both probably, but the point is that while you may want to change a lot of things, even without changing a lot of things we could be doing a lot better. The idea of surrendering the initiative in a game is fundamentally wrong IMHO. If you give them the ball then quite obviously you have to defend well. If you have the ball (and a lot has been said against "pointless" possession) then they can't score. In fact, if you are going forward most of the time you also can cover up defensive deficiencies. For example, when it worked (and until this season it's worked for a long time), Liverpool have played with a back four, but used their full backs as if they were wing backs in a back five. They only had two central defenders but it didn't matter because they had the ball most of the time. We don't have the ball so need the extra defender (apparently) which means midfield have a harder time, often two against three, which means more defending. It's a self-creating problem. And most importantly, having the ball and going forward is much more *entertaining*!
