I am more concerned about the PGMOL hating us - I watched the game back as i often do... the referee was a total disgrace. He gifted Utd the upper hand all through the game.
I don't think I will. Utd players had a free run to just go through the back of our forward players at will.
I felt a hint of Man U players being given the benefit of the doubt but I also saw Saka go down far too easily every time.
That was a shockingly bad performance from Arsenal, how we won is a mystery, it had it all, keystone cops defending, a non-existent midfield, zero creativity and zero attacking threat. But we walked away with a win at Old Toilet. I'm not sure its possible that we could be that bad let alone be that bad and win ! Lets start at the back, Raya was shaky as hell, but he grew into the game and was rightly MotM. White and Calafiori were terrible, both got ripped apart by the opposing attackers, Calafiori cannot defend for ****. Saliba and Gabriel defended like they just met each other, the way we got cut open time and time again was horrifying, but we'll come to the ultimate reason for that, but the same thing happened against Villarreal, we got cut open for fun. Our midfield was non-existent. Zubimendi had a torrid first 45 mins, Rice was everywhere but nowhere at the same time, his contribution to the first half was zip. Odegaard carried on his uselessness, his passing was off, often choosing the wrong option. How he is getting picked instead of Nwaneri to start is totally unfair. But we had Calafiori push into CM when we had the ball yet even still we didn't look like we had a midfield. The main reason we got cut open were turnovers, losing the ball while trying to advance, a simple single ball forward and Man U had a 2 vs 2. It was an awful watch. Every time Man U got in the box we looked like under 5s getting rid of the ball. That was one off the worst performances I have seen from Saka EVER, he was terrible, but Martinelli gets the prize for worst Arsenal starter yesterday, he was terrible. Madueke came on and I'm not sure how its possible but he was even worse than Martinelli !!! Gyokeres didn't get any service, he did the physical things well, running into channels, battling the CBs but the technical side with the ball was dreadful. Havertz came on and did well. Timber came on and showed why he must start, I was hoping MLS would shore up the left side and was quickly reminded that, he is not an LB and while he has had some good performances for us in that position he makes too many bad decisions that cost us. He is a CM and should be played there ! It was an abomination of a performance ... but we won LOL
Lol, it wasn't great at all, but that is a bit of an over exaggeration. I thought Calafiori and White did pretty well against Cunha and Mbuemo, who are clearly very dangerous players. Raya made a world class save against Cunha to keep them out. When the full backs tired, we were able to bring on Timber and MLS, and that shows how much more depth we've got this season Saliba and Gabriel were in the thick of it making blocks and defending our goal Overall, defensively I thought they were very good today under a lot of pressure. Going forward, we were gash. But we got all 3 points on a difficult opening day fixture at OT, so it's definitely a positive, albeit with work to do.
