Like I said last season against Juve and some others. For as much as I love Poch, he’s a reactive manager, not a proactive one. He’s so close to being one of the truly elite managers but he never seems to anticipate potential problems, he just chooses to somewhat wait for them and then makes a decision. Toby on at HT and I highly doubt Arsenal would’ve finished the game with 4 goals.
My argument here is that if it’s a studs up shocker of a challenge, why wasn’t it a straight red? If mike dean has disregarded the blatant contact from vertonghen on the ball, and has deemed the challenge as outright dangerous, then fair enough. But he hasn’t. He’s booked him, and vertonghen certainly got plenty of the ball.
I keep saying it but Poch doesn’t seem to learn when it comes to in game management. Makes subs way too late.
We were **** for the entire second half and got what we deserved. Arsenal very good today. New manager, team with a new found belief, and on a very good run. Better team won. Just wish we wouldn’t handicap ourselves sometimes.
Its a stupid law anyhow. In the good old days if you played the ball first it was legal, whatever the outcome. There ware a few broken legs, but hey ho, that's life. They play in carpet slippers nowadays compared this to then anyway. Its in unnecessary law.
So am I, but we did the same thing to Chelsea last week. Can’t win ‘em all, and it’s been a tough week of fixtures. Arsenal very good today, and @Spurf hit the nail on the head with our midfield and attack. Pretty poor over 90 mins to be honest, so overall we didn’t deserve anything. I’m sure we’ll bounce back against saints on Wednesday. Spark one up mate, I’ll pop over and join ya!
Not going to rub it in too much, as I think your team's performance today will piss you off more than any goading from an Arsenal supporter. You could tell how determined our players were to win this game straight from minute one. Admittedly, I feared the worst when we went 2-1 down because we've got history of falling apart in situations like that. We had an incredible opening 30 minutes, and looked like we were ready to kill. Spurs, in contrast, seemed very jittery and nervous. I don't know how a player as experienced as Vertonghen thought he would get away with a handball in the penalty area, but his sending off pretty much epitomised his poor performance. Then the game turns on its head with a cheeky delivery by Eriksen and a glancing header by Dier. However, Leno's positioning was extremely poor, he shouldn't have been beaten at the near post. Then there was a huge fracas. At that point, Spurs kept their heads and Arsenal lost control of their emotions. I didn't think the challenge on Son was a penalty, but Holding was extremely naive sliding in like that. At first glance, I thought it was a penalty, but I was completely unimpressed with Son's reaction on second viewing. There was minimal contact, if any at all. But truth be told, apart from that 15 minute period you had in the first-half and right at the beginning of the second-half, I thought we completely dominated the game. We had the better chances, we were playing with higher intensity, we were monopolising possession and we were fairly solid at the back overall, apart from the kamikaze defending in the 30th-35th minute. Foyth looks like he can be a top player, but his inexperience was costly here. He'd given away 2 penalties against Wolves, and should have given one away against Chelsea. So he does have a tendency to panic under pressure, and Ramsey picked his pocket to play in Lacazette. Boom. We go 3-2 up. I was also expecting a lot more from Alli, who didn't really influence the game much. Eriksen seemed like your best player and is always an obvious threat with his set-pieces and incisive passing, but we defended pretty well. Kane, though he scored, wasn't really in the game and I think we deserve praise for keeping one of the best centre-forwards in Europe relatively quiet. Emery deserves a lot of credit for his substitutions - we have no good wingers in our team and our centre-half options aren't great. So taking off Iwobi for Lacazette and Mkhitaryan for Ramsey was very brave. I was hesitant about potentially losing width to our game, but these two subs actually made a huge difference. Ramsey's tenacity, aggression and energy was pivotal in us equalising and then going ahead. Lacazette was finding lots of space in behind Aurier, who I thought had a dreadful game for you as well. Overall, I don't think anyone can deny we won this game fairly and deservedly - I'm glad the bragging rights are with us, but as the saying goes; one swallow does not a Summer make. A long way to go for us.
I tend to agree. No one wants to see a player injured, but we’ve fallen into this mindset in modern football where the first thing people look for in a sliding tackle is the studs of the sliding player, in an attempt to appeal for a sending off. It’s slowly but surely going to eradicate the old school “tough tackle”.
1) we got what we deserved today. 2) need to pick ourselves up and start winning again. 3) they raised their game and we wilted in the heat of an away NLD...very poor all over for me 4) it is important that this is kept in perspective though...we are 5th... same points as 4th. We have more points game by game than last season ... have played 9 away games (Toon, United, Watford, West Ham, Arsenal, Palace, Wolves, Brighton and Huddersfield) and only 5 at Wembley ( city, pool, chelsea, fulham and cardiff). We have lost 4 but have won 10...we have played City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and United, losing 3 winning 2... last season we won 4 of those 10 matches which we can still match this season. Today may just be a blip...let's wait and see before being too harsh on Pochettino and the team.
Completely agree with all of that. I’m still baffled by the vertonghen handball, though. My stream wasn’t particularly high quality, but it looked more like vertonghen’s elbow smacked someone round the face, rather than it being a hand ball. Was the handball that obvious? Despite 3 replays, I still couldn’t tell.
Can't be too harsh on the lads after a good week but it hurts when they don't seem mentally prepared for such a game Doors open...see u soon
No game is easy. They’ve played all of the “big teams” except United and have 4 points from 12. We’ve played all of them and have 6 from 15. But other than that, we’ve only had 1 blip against a “lesser” side (away), dropping 3 further points. Arsenal have had 2 draws against these sorts of teams, dropping 4. Pretty similar right, hence us both being on 30 points. But we have to remember that arsenal haven’t played 9 games away from home! We should have a big advantage coming up later in the season. Arsenal are going to need to turn those draws into wins against the teams lower down the league, I feel.
Today is a day where we shouldn’t be having a blip though, mate. This is our cup final fixture, as it is for Arsenal and we crumbled like mugs. I’m of the opinion players and manager deserve praise and criticism so long as it’s justifed and explained. Today, Poch had an absolute stinker, I thought resting Toby for Foyth was brave but it turned out to be stupid. It then turned out to be criminal when he failed to address his mistake. 79 minutes first subs? Come off of it, Poch, that’s disgraceful. Emery made two at HT, one of those got a goal, the other two assists. Reverting back to what I said to Brian and what I’ve said in the past, that’s what a good proactive manager does, Emery didn’t want to chance trying the same tactic and hopefully see success, he switched tactics and personnel to change the game and it done just that. Unfortunately for us, for as good/ great Poch is, he’s never proactive enough, if it all, far too reactive and often by the time he’s reacted it’s too late - case in point, 79 minute subs at 4-2 down. It was obvious at 2-1 up at HT that Foyth and Vertonghen were having a mare, why on earth would he not change that to hopefully avoid what eventually happened?
