Can Kane stop taking our free-kicks now, please? Should've left that one for Reguilon and that's the game done.
Yep The penalty and red card will give him all the excuses he needs to hide from the truth of another abysmal performance.
2-1 FT. Absolutely awful from start to finish, barring the bit at the end after Lamela went off. Nobody comes out of that with any credit and it puts them right back up our arses, too. Shameful performance and Michael Oliver is a massive, useless ****, too.
Losing this is bad enough but losing in that manner with such a limp performance from players and manager is just an extra ****ter to take. Pick an attacking side but instruct them to sit back until we go 2-1 down and a man sent off. Bizarre. NLD and they treated it like a ****ing friendly.
Well that's the end of that. Might be another few years before we win here again. Thought we were going to blitz this today Tune into Sky Sports today, Proper match commentary, for a change, so at least I wasn't forced to listen to the Harry Kane man-love man.
Today was never going to be about the performance. It was about WINNING the game, HOWEVER DONE. Everything was there to be gained. We end with the job not done, and a key attacking player possibly out for the rest of the business end of this season.
I'm not going to come on here to gloat, but I was reading the comments and I don't agree with how a lot of you saw some of these incidents. But I guess that's natural given our allegiances. In terms of performance, for 75 minutes, I thought we were easily the better side. For the final 15 minutes, when you went down to 10 men, you started to play. We were a bit lucky that you didn't score truth be told, and I was raging at how defensive we went when Lamela was red carded. However, it was too little too late. You should have played like that against us from minute 1, instead of waiting until you had no choice to come at us. I should be thrilled that we won, and maybe I will be later, but I was screaming and throwing cushions around for the final 15-20 minutes. Still quite angry at how badly we managed the game. On we go.
No one will convince me he’s a better option than Tanganga if Aurier’s out/ not selected. Dog awful player, a 10 on the Winks scale.
No chance. Probably both up for Thursday's match. I don't blame Doherty for this at all, though. He had two or three players on him for the whole first half. That's on Bale doing absolutely nothing until he was subbed and the midfield not tracking runners. Hojbjerg was trying to cover about four positions and he ended up covering none. Ndombele, Son (until he got hurt) and Bale may as well not have been on the pitch.
Stupid subs and tactics from Arteta. He decided to sit back and play without a striker. All you had to do was keep the ball and we wouldn't have had a sniff. No idea what he was thinking.
For the NLD earlier this season you could see our players getting stuck in to their midfield, taking advantage of how Tierney and Saka seem to be the only players of theirs who actually move during games by throttling anyone who could get the ball out to them So what did we do today? Easy: none of the above, which brought back memories of that second half against West Scam
It's not the first time he's done this, either. His substitutions and strategy when attempting to see a game out seldom works. Or if it does, it happens in spite of his changes, rather than because of. I'm concerned he's been in the job for as long as he has, yet still hasn't found a solution in these circumstances. What do you feel went wrong for you guys today? Wrong tactics? Personnel? Approach?
No idea, honestly. Loads of the players didn't look remotely interested, for some reason. Probably out on the piss or something. Son's been knackered recently, so he's got an excuse, but the likes of Ndombele and Bale looked disinterested. They looked like they were expecting someone else to do the hard work and we were playing with players missing, basically. Looking back with hindsight, we'd have been a lot better off playing Sissoko in the middle, where he could cover Doherty. Push Bale up, leave Moura out and win the midfield. There's no way that any of us would've suggested that at the start though and you'd have had an uproar if Mourinho selected it. His real error was running some players into the ground and it caught up with one of them today.
The tragedy of this season is that we are **** to watch. 2 attempts in 88 mins and 5 in total. I am genuinely livid that our club resembles a piss poor Stoke side. 5 attempts in any game is shockingly bad but in a NLD it's unacceptable. The woodwork and a sent off sub were our best players. We were second best to the worst Arsenal team of a generation. We again screwed up when we could have placed ourselves in a great position for top 4. We again show we are rubbish against any team on a par with us. That is the worst NLD performance since Redknapps 2nd one at their place when we lost 3 nil. City will humiliate us...we made Arsensl look good without their best player ffs...can only imagine what damage City will inflict. WTF is Levy doing ffs. End the experiment cos it is killing football at our club. No way will I pay to watch us have 2 attempts on goal ffs
This is a managers loss today, a tactical mess. I simply refuse to believe that the eleven players out there today are so inferior to Arsenal's squad.
I was also shocked at how vulnerable you looked facing 10 men. Giving simple passes away, failing to clear your lines and players generally miles out of position. It was all a bit odd. What happened to us? Probably shouldn't have included Son or Doherty in the team. The former is knackered (and now injured) and the latter just isn't good enough to play on the same flank as Bale (who we know does very little defensively) against players with the pace and quality as Smith-Rowe and Tierney. Aside from that, our tactics were reminiscent of the steaming pile of turd we had to endure over the new year through to a our recent winning run. Why play so many attacking players but then sit back? Our defense was all over the place. Toby had an awful game and failed to hold the line at all. Reguilon was unusually poor and Doherty was badly exposed. I actually think Sanchez had the best game of them and was unlucky to have been penalised after Lacazette had already kicked the ball. Negative tactics and far too many passengers. It is a huge concern that Ndombele has a knack of going missing against teams with a busy, high pressing midfield. Lucas and Lamela the only players who can emerge from that with pride intact. Lucas especially worked his socks off and caused you all sorts of problems. All in all, it was a game between two teams who are destined to finish mid table, perhaps scraping 6th or 7th place. One team's manager is too inexperienced to expect more. The other team's manager is too myopic to expect more.
