According to Wenger Sanchez will be back around January 10, bummer.....But if they don't want to rush him then I'm fine with that. On the plus side we're gonna have a fully fit and fresh Sanzhez for the second half of the season.
Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini on BBC Sport: "I am uncomfortable because we played better than Arsenal" We should have been out of sight 10 minutes into the second half. Having more of the ball doesn't mean you performed better, Pellegrini!
I guess he means they had a lot of the ball etc, I can understand their frustrations, in the first half we had 2 shots on target, and 2 goals, while City did look like the one most likely to score and much more dangerous. City basically did an Arsenal, or what Arsenal used to do, .
Possession is all very well and good but unless you get that ball in that net then it's ALL a waste of time and a wasted statistic.
First half other than the De Bruyne chance City were restricted to pot shots that wouldn't trouble the GK and we were clinical. Second half we should absolutely have pumped them with the chances we created and really it wasn't until we got tired and they got the 2nd wind from the Toure goal did they look threatening.
I the Wenger deserves credit for putting flamini on silva, and Kosc onto Aguero, they stayed tight and pushed onto them throughout the game and it meant they were totally isolated and unable to do anything when the ball came into them. It made City look clueless in attack and it was only after silva and Aguero got taken off and City changed the way they were playing that they got any luck. Was a clever move and City failed to deal with it. In comparison up the other end Ozil kept dropping into pockets of space between the midfield and back line and Giroud pulled the defense all over the place. They played Delph thinking our overlapping fullbacks would be the problem but didn't come up with any effective plan for dealing with Ozil. Wenger got it right while Pellegrini got it wrong.
Is it just me or does Wenger seem to have Pellegrini's number when it comes to head-to-head victories? We knocked out his Villarreal side in the 2006 CL semi-final (1 win + 1 draw), we beat his City side in the 2014 Community Shield match and also beat them twice in the league. We've then drawn once and lost once against them, too. I think altogether that's 4 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss overall. Pellegrini needs to do his homework more if he wants to outdo Wenger
Really impressed with Joel Campbell tonight. He's a little powerhouse. It's going to be hard to take him out of the team as he's barely put a foot wrong in recent matches. Also Bellerin is clearly the best RB in the league. Guy is an absolute BOSS.
Yep although.. I will say we would have been better off playing the whole 90 mins like we did in the first 45. In the first half we kept everything very tight and played on the counter. In the second we pushed up higher (when we were 2-0 up) and left a lot more space for them to come into. As a result of which they came back into the game and almost got a result.
Yup, it was impressive seeing not only all our midfielders drop back into a hardworking 5 man midfield but also how kos linked with Ozil whenever he had the ball, kos' charges forward always put us on the front foot and he consistently found Ozil in space between the citey back four and toure/ferdandino. I also loved that we nullified silva and Aguero, their two most dangerous players, while toure played just plain **** until his goal
Crazy, I just heard that not only did Ozil put in a MOTM performance yesterday and own the Citey midfield, but he also did it while recovering from a chest infection that had kept him bed bound most of the week! http://www.espn.co.uk/soccer/arsenal/story/2767081/mesut-ozil-arsenal-can-win-the-premier-league Who says he doesn't care...
Hopefully we'll learn from this because against Barca we will get punished. But i like us using the counter, we have the players to do it so why not? There are times we should use possession football and times when we should counter. But it's good seeing Wenger mixing it up and being more proactive.
Sanchez will be back by then, and so there will be much more closing down, especially from the wings, where City were finding space yesterday in the second half.
It's also worth mentioning the players were probably pretty tired by the end of the game when City started to find little bits of space. To put in such a high energy pressing, defensive display like that for a full 90 requires serious fitness. We see it happen to other teams who try and sit back and soak pressure against Arsenal. I was expecting the game to open up slightly as the legs started to get tired.
