Fair point Dragon. I thought Arsenal were very good today. I was at the Emirates and they were much, much better at the Liberty this afternoon. Gibbs had an outstanding match 2nd half and what a finish for his goal. The way the modern game is played and reffed it can be difficult to stop the momentum of very technical players and to me sometimes we disappointed WITH the ball in the second half. i think we all accept that good teams like Arsenal will have possession and a stake in the game, it's when we place ourselves under pressure by losing the ball so cheaply that it becomes galling. No middle ground with Pablo at present from sublime [WBA] to ridiculous for a 10 minute period today. In our defence ML was taking players off to try and make sure the backbone of our side is fresh for Wednesday so it was a difficult balancing act today. Terrific last 45 minutes, really exciting and enjoyable, with the noisiest away support I've heard and seen!
Well they wouldn't because in most areas of the pitch, we more than matched them, and should have gone for the jugular after Michu's goal, but Arsenal may not be the force they were when Thierry Henry played for them, but nevertheless they are a top 6 side in my view, trouble is their fans some times think struggling against minnows like Swansea, is not good enough, but as Jack cwm mentioned this was a much improved Arsenal performance today, that got us on the back foot on times, their intensity caused us some real problems, which I'm sure Laudrup will Address...........................
we never surrendered at all we fought to the end, both teams did...You don't score a last grasp goal if you surrendered do you. It was an entertaining match that could have gone either way and in the end we both get to fight it out again, That is why the players get such good wages for games like these. now on the 16th of jan we must do it all over again and we will have to play our best players if we are to get anything at arsenal as anything less wont do....All this pony of too many games is a smoke screen managers use its not what any player thinks, they would play each other tomorrow if they could.
Just noticed some interesting comments from Laudrup on the BBC page: Seems Michu has got some back issues? Hopefully our medical team will sort that out, but it looks very positive for Graham, Laudrup sees a change in Danny boy for the good!............
http://footballfunnys.lockerdome.com/articles/104496074 Michu's goal, very well taken under pressure ,can you imagine what was going on in Szczęsny's head when he sees who's running towards him with the ball
Arsenal fans are viewing this as a tough tie on their board, even though they recognise they should not have surrendered the lead once they got it. Definitely some concern about the replay. Both teams did well in some areas and badly in others in equal measure. That's football. We can't be great all the time.
That finish was the best of the game for me. Gibbs' goal looked pretty but how much space did he have to leather that ball that was sitting up and begging to be hit. Michu's finish was World class, didn't think he was favourite to get to it first never mind to hold the defender off whilst finding a way to steer it past the keeper. Accurate.
I think Yankee's point was that we surrendered the midfield to them, which we did. Indisputably! It's becoming a habit. Roughly midway through the second half we seem to stop playing. It was backs to the wall stuff again today as Arsenal probed at us non stop. What happened to our own possession game? We used to take the attitude that, as long as we had the ball, the oppo couldn't score. Not anymore. We start to drop deeper and deeper until the other lot are playing in and around our penalty area. At a certain point, in too many games for comfort, we have displayed an alarming lack of ability to maintain fluency, confidence and possession in midfield. This seems to kick in around the 60/70 minute mark, so are we running out of gas? Are our fitness levels below par? I'm asking the question because I don't know, yet it is glaringly obvious that this is a regular occurrence. Before this point, as in today's game, we usually hold our own and more, but then start being forced more and more onto the back foot. And the argument that, because we scored, we fought to the end is a fallacy. We hit them from one of a couple of isolated breaks that was totally against the run of play. Even the most one eyed Jack will surely concede that. It certainly wasn't the result of any sustained pressure from us. In the end we scrambled a draw but with our congested fixture list, I'm beginning to wonder if that was a good thing.
How else would you like to describe a situation where we back off, fail to chase back (Dyer), squander what little posession we have by making better passes to the feet of the opposition than they do themselves, and fail to win any tackles whatsoever. In the second half there was a spell of capitulation that cost us two goals and we were only spared from greater embarrassment by the efforts of Vorm, Bartley and Chico. Granted we came back and equalized, but if this Arsenal team had of had any creativity about them in the final third they would have hammered us during that spell. The crazy part of it for Wenger is that this was pretty much the best team they could put on the field and we gave them virtually 100% possession for a huge stretch of the second half and they still couldn't beat us. And thanks Ivor, I was referring to our "midfield" .... that line of players between the back four and Michu/DG that seemed to forget what they were about. It all really happened once Leon went off.
The league will sort its self we have enough points half way through the season to comfortably see the season through...the cup runs enhance our profile even further and the longer we can stay in them the better it will be towards us being recognized as a top ten club in the UK...people now put us on par with the likes of stoke but i think we are better than them and are on par with the likes of everton. we must take these cup runs for all they are worth and play our strongest available team in every game now and it wont be long before we will be kown as an established top half side and not a pretender...
Yes, Jager, but did the midfield do their job? Not in my book. They didn't win possession; they didn't keep possession and their tackles had all the bite of a frail Girl Guide. It's because of them that our back four was so hard pressed. We had no "out ball" because our midfielders were hustled off it so easily. Let's be honest, they were POOR, individually and as a unit. As Yankee said, it really became evident when Leon went off. He appears to be the glue that holds them together.
Midfield Lost - Totally concur Ivor Desperately need a midfield general....... Billy Bremner, Graeme Souness...... Who's out there ?
With our best on the bench we had the beating of that Arsenal team today. All we had to do was stand up in midfield in the second half. Whenever we got the ball into the final third we looked the team more likely to score .... We just couldn't get it to the half way line for a chunk of the second half. When Routledge went off instead of Dyer I thought that was an oh **** moment. When Rangel didn't come on for Dyer but Leon went off for Augustien that was an oh **** moment - shouldn't have been but it was. I realize that a large part of today's strategy was how do we compete but prepare for Chelsea. A very tough call with no easy options, but we're in for one roller coaster of a month if we keep mailing in spells like this in midfield. One last comment on Dyer ... He needs to ride a bike or do something, whatever, to get his stamina up. By minute 60 he was laboring, by 70 he was spent. On a very positive note, I thought Bartley was class; I really liked the look of him alongside Chico. Looked every bit an Arsenal product, looked better than the defenders they had on the field.
All right, campioni, just for you. Our midfield was brilliant. They won all the 50/60 challenges, passed the ball with unerring accuracy, created chance after chance and totally overran the Arsenal midfield who couldn't live with them. Nothing needs changing and we don't need new players because everything is rosy. And I'm lying through my teeth!!! It's not doom and gloom. We are merely discussing our team's performance and some aspects of it were pants..... in XXL size. There were some good things as well, which rightfully have been mentioned, but there is a trend developing with our midfield that doesn't bode well for the future. There are problems there and it's no use pretending they don't exist. We can't do anything about it in practical terms but we can debate things and offer personal opinions. That is not being negative in my book but if you see it differently, fair enough.........
