Was atrocious first half, did his job in the second. Needed to dig in and I think he knows the crowd/atmosphere goes through the roof when he squares up to someone so he does it on purpose
I don’t think Diaz is the sort of player that thrives with competition for the place, it seems like lately he is trying to do far, far too much and essentially every time he gets the ball it’s just a case of hold on to it until it’s lost and it’s very frustrating. Goal return is still very good this season, just needs to get his head up again.
So far in our ‘horror run’ of fixtures liverpool 2-1 chelsea Leipzig 0-1 liverpool arsenal 2-2 liverpool Brighton 2-3 liverpool liverpool 2-1 brighton 4 wins 1 draw across 3 diff comps. Leverkusen home Villa home Saints away madrid home city home get through those 5 in same way we got through the first 5 and might start believing this team could do something brilliant.
The nice things about this new format of cl.is the Madrid game is utterly irrelevant now. We have done enough already to get by and we don't have to kill ourselves. Villa at home is Maldives and Southampton away is a must win with some rotation. After that 2 points from 6 would do in the cl even. In the end nothing is done now but the ground work for the run in is laid down. I think we can get top 8 in the cl with 15 points we have 9 so if we get to 11 with some easy games to finish up on we are golden.
He has to show far more intelligence and less indulgence. He stood there doing faff all while the others of the back 4 were stretched miles apart without a pass to make all first half. Just stand over on the wing and be a pass put wide. Suddenly there's.more options and space somewhere as someone has to go pick him up.
I agree, and if you are going to go inside you have to demand the ball and show for everything centrally, just isn’t there at the moment
It's the fact that anyone should see that the gap between tsimikas, vvd and konate was massive and they were more like 3 cbs than what we needed. What we needed was a back 3 of kelleher vvd and konate with a 4 of macca, gravenberch, trent at rb and tsimikas as lb. Then there's no way what Brighton were doing was going to close enough options down without leaving miles of space for a longer ball to gakpo and salah or nunez. As we basically sat trent at a quasi 6 with back to play, not moving as he hasn't a clue how to move we saw gravenberch surrounded and very little option but to be closed down. Brighton's press was intense, well constructed and closed the lanes we had left off. The issue is we also closed our own passing lanes.
I think MO Salah should be given 2 years contract extension if the wage demands is reasonable. He deserves it.
I was just as concerned with his poor passing. So many going astray, in the first half particularly. There's no doubt his long-range passing is superb, but short passing in a crowd is average at best. It's why I think he's wasted in a CM position and needs to stay out where his long passes are effective.
Blackburn is the only team that came to win the league after ten games in Arsenal position in 1994. Can Arsenal win the league this season ?.
That was an interesting season as it was 42 games not 38 and they lost 7 games and drew 8 according to Google. Utd ****ed that one up
One big difference between us and Arsenal is player mentality and attitude. They have a lot of petulant players who don't know what to do if they don't get their own way on the pitch; surrounding the referee and complaining instead of putting that energy and effort into playing and focusing on what they do have control over.
My view of arteta and arsenal is this. They were nowhere. Thry bought 2 city players and went in a massive run ala 2019/20 for us. Thry got a couple knocks and absolutely collapsed. A couple key injuries and thry were beaten twice by city. They came back and were not as good. They went and scrapped to a draw v city rather than try win. They lost by 2 points. They didn't try win at city and so lost thst league. This year they look very disrupted and out of sorts and have done the same. Led city, stupid red card then sat back and celebrated a draw at city's ground when thry could have won They seem to take a knock and react extremly negatively. They have 3 red cards and feel the world is against them despite getting them for cheating moves. They lost badly to bournemouth. They conceded v city to draw, they drew with Brighton after leading. Each time they've reacted like the red card ended any chance to play football and they sat back like a allardyce team. Contrast that to us winning after terrible red cards last year. We had a plan to go 441 and control the ball still and at least have a go. That's 5 points dropped with 4 from winning positions and 1 draw.
I think they have quite a young team. (I haven't checked, just what I've read). Is there a leader in amongst them? They need someone to set the tone. At the moment, that seems to be Arteta.
They are young yes. Best players have bright futures. Saliba, saka, martinelli. Plus the signings like caliafiori.
