Penalty to Arsenal as Malick Diouf fouls Timber. Lovely ball by Zubimendi to start that attack off. Saka takes the penalty and finishes clinically. 2-0. Why didn't Gyokeres take it, though? I thought it would have been good for his confidence.
West Ham now resorting to making late challenges on our players because they can't get near us. Thugs.
Gyokeres has hardly touched the ball and I wouldn't trust him because he looks woefully short at the moment - Saka is the pen taker and should remain so IMO. He's good at them.
Rice went on a bit gingerly, looks like he's got a back injury? Hopefully nothing serious. Wouldn't be opposed to him not going with England during the international break... Merino comes on and Eze comes off for Martinelli. Eze should have scored a couple of goals today, shame that he didn't.
Martinelli on for Eze - which means Nwaneri in the middle. Eze has been disappointing. Merino on for Rice - Rice has been good.
20 shots in this match and we've had 5 on target. That's really poor from an attacking standpoint IMO.
We've not played well - simple as that. There's no understanding across the front 3 and midfield...results in very little quick movement and passing. All laboured.
Disagree, we've controlled the game. Passing has been wayward at times and too slow but we've shut WHU out of the game.
Yeah, I'd agree with this. We weren't dazzling, but we controlled the tempo of the match and were well worth the 3 points. West Ham didn't really lay a glove on us. I am concerned about Gyokeres' lack of goals. I actually think he played well against Newcastle and Olympiacos, (though today he was anonymous). But the whole point of his signature was that he was going to bag goals for us and help us be more clinical. I haven't really seen that so far.
2-0. Should have been 3-4 and West Ham barely had sniff on goal. We didn't get out of 2nd gear but our off the ball work was really good.
2-0 FT Not a great performance BUT 2 goals against a low block and 3pts to put us top. I'll take it. Hope Odegaard and Rice are OK. I am genuinely feeling sorry for Gyokeres - he looks so far out of his depth at this level of football and has to live with high expectations.
FT. 2-0. Professional job by Arsenal and we (temporarily) go top of the league. A clean sheet and solid display against a team who have caused us issues the last two years isn't to be sniffed at. The main thing is that we won, we've done our job and we go into the international break on a high. I don't want to be too negative but, whilst I am pleased to see us create more chances, I am still worried that we're not being ruthless and really punishing teams. I do think this will end up costing us later on in the season if we don't start putting chances away.
We did shut them out of the game - we dominated. But our build up in possession was laboured and our front line and attacking play from midfielders is way too predictable. In a way , I don;t mind so much as the low block is hard to break down and we did it.
I think you're overdoing it, Jay. In the 6 games where he hasn't scored, he played well against Bilbao, Newcastle and Olympiacos. He wasn't great against City (though he had no service), today he was anonymous and against Port Vale, he only had a 15-20 minute cameo - though he should have scored that chance he had when Dowman put him through. I think part of the issue has been we've not really created enough for him in some of those matches. But I am worried about his lack of potency in front of goal in some of them, where he should have scored 1-2 good chances. But in general, I do think we need to do more to service him. Let's see how he does by the next international break in November. If there's no improvement at all, then questions need to be asked about why the club signed him.
Maybe. I do disagree with you, though, ref the games you say he was great in. I don't think he's been great in any of them and he's had 10 games now with 2 open play goals. He should have been there today to bury the chance he had from the Rice cross - that's what we need him to be doing. There are other players that are far better at the build up play, so if he is not scoring he's not really needed.
I didn't say he was 'great', as a great performance would be playing how he did but also scoring. His only great performance for me was against Forest. I said he'd played well - which I think he did in those games I mentioned IMO. The other games, he wasn't so good, including today, but as I said, it's not like we've been creating chances in abundance for him. I still have question marks about how he fits into the team, how he handles contact against good quality CBs and the types of runs he makes (sometimes he's too eager to drift out wide when we need him to be going through the centre). But I do have some of the concerns that you have - I just think we need a slightly larger sample size. Otherwise we need to reconsider what we do in January.
