The commentators said Ramsey was taken of as a precaution because of slight tightness and wenger didn't want to risk anything with the game as it was. Seems a sensible decision there at half time to give zelalem a go. They also said flamini was taken off due to his yellow card to avoid the possibility of him being sent off. It meant we lost the ability to push through midfield but what was odd was that by 65-70 mins they looked knackered. Several players struggled to keep running in the last 20-25 mins. It was a game of beautiful goals and all of them were very good. It was a comfortable win and gave the youngsters a good run out so I'm pleased with the outcome. Hopefully we get a decent draw for the next round but I think we will get Real Madrid.
On another issue, Yaya Sanogo should not be playing for a club like Arsenal, how this kid manages to be a member of our squad I have no idea. He'd never get into any of the squads of any of the top teams in Europe, not even their B team...And at the end of the day this is what separates Arsenal from the elite teams, and what stops us from making it to the top, instead of having a proper quality 3rd choice striker, we have Yaya Sanogo.
So Ramsey was taken off because of a tight hamstring. Good decision from Wenger, not the 'unambitious' assumption not to go for 6
I dont wanna be critical of Wenger at moment because he is getting too much stick IMO but.. We consistently f**s up our last group game with weird selections and bad decisions. We were bypassing their midfield in the first half - We may not have won 6-0 but I think it would have been close to that. There was an obvious gap in quality. Ultimately Anderlecht 3-3 was the result that really screwed us over but I would have liked to see some more ambition today. (saying all that we played very well in the first half)
He is a ****ing donkey. Akpom is far more talented, massive shame that he did not get a chance tonight to show how good he is.
The Flamini yellow and Ramsey's tight hamstring should explain those decisions. Agree though that the Anderlecht capitulation now looks really bad.
All I want from the draw is for us to not draw ****ing Barca or Bayern. Tedious because we played so many times, and in the end we are not going to win anyway. Give me either the Madrid teams please. Real might batter us, but at least it would be different and not same **** from last season and the one before that.
Sanogo is a monster athlete - I think the reasoning is that if they can build his technical skill to a high level he will be a beast. I think he will probably end up at Adebayor/Demba Ba standard. Not top class but decent.
Monaco, Porto, psg, atletico, Real Madrid, bayern. That's my order of preference, bayern last as we have had them two years running.
No chance. BA is good technically. Adebayor is faster than Sanogo and much better in the air, even when he was the same age. Sanogo fails to do the basics time and time again. If you can't do the basics, not sure how they can build on anything.
It's not only his technical side that sucks, he is big, but not powerful, more than half the time he's getting outmuscled off the ball, it's not like he's using strength to keep the ball, he's always dangling and getting muscled off.
Just watching the highlights of the Dortmund game and they were very lucky not to concede a penalty against Anderlecht. Could easily have been 1-2 tonight and Dortmund would have finished 2nd.
Very good result but I wonder if having less pressure made all the difference, or that the loss on the weekend? If this team plays sh1t next game then they really have some major issues.
You'll never get the idiots to admit they were wrong Piskie. Week after week they attack Wenger no matter what he does or doesn't do Fuggin armchair experts! As some have said, not one of them would last 5 minutes running a Sunday pub team, yet feel qualified to tell us how a premiership club should be managed. Anyway, well done Wenger and the team
Yes we have to look at this in a positive light and well done the team, but Galatasary were the whipping boys of the group and ended up with one point and were probably not as good as Stoke City ! The big tests are still to come in the next round and Premier League.
It's true that Galatasaray weren't great opposition but as they say, you can only beat the team in front of you. My point was more about the unnecessary criticism that Wenger gets. True that some of it is justified, but some people immediately accused him of lacking ambition by taking Ramsey off last night, when in fact it was a good decision to take a precaution with him as he had a tight hamstring. Also some people were slating him even before the game for resting some first team players, but those players went and won 4-1, so where is the praise for that decision. If he's going to get slated when things don't work out, then he should also get the credit for when it does.
The problem with Arsenal is we have no balance, we will get good results, 2-0 Dortmund, 1-0 West Brom, 1-0 Southampton, and 4-1 Galatasaray and things seem to be going good and defence seems to finally be getting better, then we have a game like Stoke were our defence looks like a pub team conceding 3 against Stoke and lucky it wasn't 4. This was the same story last year which ultimately cost us, we kept lot's of clean sheets, looking good, but then in some big games we got totally annihilated. That's why the confidence is never that high, you know with Arsenal that trouble is brewing just around the corner and the ****'s ready to hit the fan.
It's frustrating, but I still maintain that we are a confidence team that can put a good run together when we manage to build a head of steam. I was pretty shocked about the Stoke result as we'd been building some confidence and form before that game. I guess the trouble is that you never know when we're going to have an absolute shocker of a day. I'm encouraged though to see Ramsey getting back some of his form from last season, because if we have him, Sanchez, Cazorla, Kos, Oxo playing well, with Debuchy and Walcott to come back, then we have a very solid base to this team who can go on and get us on a good run again.
