Match Day Thread Newcastle United vs Arsenal - Matchday Thread

Well we've not played well for a while (except PSV) but I put that down to our two best offensive players Saka & Odegaard being out of form/fitness. Gabriel Jesus's injury problems just making it worse.

We are missing.. Partey, Odegaard, Timber, Smith Rowe, Jesus .. that makes changing the lineup pretty difficult .

For me the issue is Nketiah - he doesn't cut it against the better defences. Bring in Toney or Sesko this Jan.

 

Arteta is seriously embarrassing when things don't go his way. He's up there with Maureen and Co team.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the goal, ultimately it would have happened had Raya not misjudged the flight of the ball.
That's all on Arteta for dumping one of the top 2 or 3 top keeper in the country just to look clever

 

Newcastle fan in peace: I agree with all of this including the bit about Sesko, he's one of 2-3 players I've been hoping we'll get for a while.

Arsenal are a good team to watch and I hope you do well. We're actually a good team to watch most of the time but Howe seems to think we need to shut up shop against you lot so i get why some of your fans think we play anti-football or accuse us of long-ball football (as they clearly don't see any of our other games) and ignore that we were the top scorers in the league and had the highest EXG going into this weekend.

 

Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.

Ferguson, Klopp, Guardiola, Wenger, Mourinho.. all terrible at losing.

 

Also it should probably be stated..

PGMOL has acknowledged 10 failures regarding refereeing and VAR decisions - 3 of which are decisions which adversely affected Arsenal. (admitted wrong decisions)

I feel like we're going to see another one on the back of this game

 

TBF, we had half a dozen missing today as well. Isak, Tonali, Anderson, Barnes, Botman, and a few fringe players. Good fiesty game today, thrown it wide open.
Should have finished 10 a side.

 

**** off ****chops

 

Absolutely agree.
I said on another forum after the Sheff Utd match that Nketiah looked good due to the time and space given to him by a poor defence but when we play better teams he struggles.
Apparently with that hat trick last week he has now equalled his last seasons tally of five goals in the PL, not exactly prolific.

 

I’m annoyed with quite a few things from yesterday.

Let’s address the officiating first because that’s clearly the most contentious point that’s being discussed. Bruno Guimarares staying on the field was incredible. There were a couple of occasions he could and should have been sent off, and he didn’t even get booked. Just utter nonsense. VAR bottled it. The referee bottled it.

The goal - look, I get that from the still images we see, the angle is obscure, so it’s hard to tell if the entire ball did go out. There was some recreated footage from BeIN Sport that showed the ball was just kept in, so fair enough. I can accept that.

However, when the cross comes in, Joelinton literally shoves Gabriel with two hands to get the ball, he then handballs it and, to top it off, he’s offside. There are multiple reasons there why the goal should not have stood. Yet again, VAR bottled it.

Should Raya and White dealt with it better? 100%. And had Raya done his job, this wouldn’t even be a conversation. But that doesn’t give the officials a Carte Blanche to do whatever they want just because someone’s made a mistake.

On the performance - I’m starting to lose my patience with Arteta here because he’s ripped up the formula of what got us to almost winning the league and tried to do some galaxy brain **** that has totally unbalanced the team. There was no need for this innovation, so it’s incredibly frustrating that he’s done this and we’re looking worse off as a result. This week has been an absolute calamity.

My main issue is we never looked like scoring. We looked solid, in control and composed, but we didn’t look threatening or penetrating whatsoever. We had no central threat. It was too easy to defend against us. Like someone has said, it reminded me of watching us from 2-3 years ago.

And whilst having Odegaard, ESR, Jesus and Partey out were huge blows, as they all help us to break the lines and progress up the field quicker, we should still have a squad that is capable of filling in for those players where the drop off isn’t as large as it is. Arteta’s had 4 full years to build this squad and it still isn’t good enough.

Arteta has to take accountability for this. He spent £35m on Vieira, £65m on Havertz, £10m on Jorginho and none of them are at the level we require on a consistent basis.

A midfield of Rice, Havertz and Jorginho is not going to provide much impetus going forward and I knew we would struggle for creativity the moment I saw this starting XI. He then brought Trossard on too late and Nelson should have been on too, as Saka was struggling in that second half. He still doesn’t seem fully fit to me.

The lack of variety in our attack is so painfully obvious. Nketiah with another anonymous display. It’s all well and good scoring hat tricks against Sheffield United, but he’s come up short against the better sides in the division. Not signing a different centre forward in the Summer was a silly mistake.

As for Newcastle, I know they’re capable of performing better usually, but I wasn’t particularly impressed with their performance and don’t think they deserved to win. They were good value for the point, though. They got the rub of the green on a few game-changing decisions and they walk away with 3 points. It is what it is. Not their fault that the officials didn’t do their jobs.

For me personally, I am just hoping we can stay within touching distance of the top by January and then we actually make a couple of additions. The likes of Partey and Jesus are great when fit, but you cannot trust them to remain injury free over the span of the season. So we need reinforcements if we want to compete this season. Otherwise we’re going to end the season trophyless and potentially at risk of top 4.

 

I’m glad that he is calling the officiating out to be honest. He’s probably going to get a ban, but the standard of refereeing and officiating is absolutely garbage.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s made some huge errors of judgement this season, both on and off the pitch, and for the things that are in his control, he needs criticism. Especially because he’s undone a lot of the good work that had us performing so well last season.

But he isn’t wrong about the officiating and I’m happy he’s not letting them get away with it like he has done in previous interviews when there’s been contentious decisions.

 

People including your manager did not understand that the width of a ball is greater than the area that touches the turf.

It was the correct decision.

 

As I’ve said, this wasn’t my issue. My issue is with the foul on Gabriel from Joelinton, the handball and the offside for the opener. The goal should not have stood.

 

So now it's a foul ? Nothing in that Joelinton can compete for a header

 

It was always a foul. He's pushed Gabriel in the back with two hands. Last time I checked, you cannot do that according to the laws of the game. It's a shame the officials don't seem to be aware of this. If they were, maybe the goal would have been disallowed.

Not sure why it bothers you so much anyway, you got the win in a massive match.

 

Arteta, every non arsenal fan thinks he's a ****, normally you'd have to be successful to get that.

 

He's an arsehole

 

Look I work in 3D for the film industry. This is not an actual scan 3D mapped scan - it's just a recreation. You might as well post a drawing you did of the incident.

You're better off looking at the footage.

 

I ****ing loved the rant. He's spot on.

Not just because of yesterday - The whole idea that we can bring in this technology, they can make multiple ****s ups and managers arnt allowed to criticise?! Thats ****ed up. The PGOL needs to be held accountable.