Starting Line Up 19Leno 16Holding 5Papastathopoulos 18Monreal 12Lichtsteiner 4Elneny 29Guendouzi 31Kolasinac 55Smith-Rowe 23Welbeck 17Iwobi More first team/senior players than expected? Or does he ensure we win the group early (and when we play our last game(s) which is close to a derby with Spurs)?
Walk in the park. But the amount of chances we give our opponents is way too much. Am I the only one who feels we had a good portion of luck so far?
Defensively we are still weak at times. A better team would have punished us. But 0-3 tricky away tie is decent enough, and that's 8 wins on the bounce now. But yeah, we'v been riding our luck at times.
Havnt won 8 in a row since the 2013/2014 Season. Debut Goals for Smith Rowe and Guendouzi 9 changes from the weekend and we come out with a big win. Guendouzi and Iwobi were our main create outlets today. Defensively Leno looked excellent and Holding had another good game. I think Holding will be starting ahead of Mustafi if he keeps playing like this.Fullback areas still look like our weak links - too much space for the opposition to get behind. Good result!
If we can get a CB in january that would be good. winning ugly isn’t what we are used to, we’ll certainly not since George Graham days
One thing I noticed under Emery is it is seems players have more competition and are upping their game. Substitutions, starting line ups, etc are not all as predictable as they were under Wenger. Even the likes of Iwobi are starting to up their game to showcase what they can do. This alone is very positive.
Well the competition for places in real now. Over the last few years Wenger didnt seem to reward or punish good/bad performances. His team selections just were. Now Iwobi/Holding etc.. know if they play well enough and train well enough they will play.
I was getting a bit pissed off with Keown and Hoddle being overly critical about our performances and trying to denigrate our opponents after we've beaten them. For years, we've had so much stick for passing the ball around too much without doing enough to win games. Yet now we've adopted a more efficient style, with more solidity in midfield, and actually win games, we still get criticised. We've won 8 consecutive games in a row. You may have question marks about the quality of the opposition or whether we've performed well enough to warrant the victory in some matches, but a win is a win. Our record won't say whether we 'deserved' the victory or not, it will say 'W'. Since pundits want to be so lazy with their criticism of us, let's just remind them: Watford had won 4 games out of 6 when we played them, including beating the media's favourite lovechild Tottenham Hotspur. They are a strong, powerful side who, even in their loss to United, showed they can mix it with the big boys. Hoddle being dismissive of them isn't just insulting to us, it's insulting to them. Everton have spent over £80m in the last transfer window, including getting two decent loanees from Barcelona and Chelsea. Contrary to how they are perceived, they have the nucleus of a good team there and will give many teams a hard game once their players finally settle. We lost to Newcastle away last season, this season we won and we won fairly comfortably. Title contenders Chelsea also didn't have lots of joy against them either, yet no-one seems to mention this, in amongst all the romanticising over 'Sarriball'. Today's opponents, Qarabag, managed to get two draws against Atletico Madrid in their failed Champions League quest last year. They may have a funny sounding name and, because they play in Azerbaijan, no-one's really heard of them. But they are no mugs, as we saw in spells today. And even on our performance today, sure we had a few hairy moments at the back. But we were playing a brand new formation this season with a new goalkeeper, a left-back/winger who has been out injured for 3 months, a 19-year old in midfield and an 18-year old out wide. And we won 3-0 away from home, yet pundits are acting like we've got absolutely rinsed . No pleasing some people...
