I'm puzzled why this continue to happen as well. We even had a decent pre-season, but we looked like a team out of form and out of ideas. We had that rabbit stuck in the headlights, kind of reaction. How does a newbie manager come to our ground with no noticeable special players and be allowed to boss us?
I've noticed that quite a few young managers with fresh ideas seem to have got the better of Wenger recently. Garry Monk, Pocchetino, Roberto Martinez, Laudrup, Koeman (relatively young for a manager), now Bilic...this shouldn't be happening.
It does seem like a growing trend. Problem with some older people, they get a little set in their ways....
Honestly though, at this point in time, we can't say that any of the aforementioned managers are better than Wenger. Some of them I believe have the potential to be, but aren't right now.
I don't think you need to call the Samaritans just yet. You could watch Cech for the next hundred hours and he won't let in two soft goals like that. Possesion was all Arsenal. It was just one of those results that happen every couple of months or so that make you scratch your head. We came to your place and played a well disciplined diamond and you played right into our hands by sending every effort up the middle of the pitch for some reason. On a genuinely positive note for us, Oxford looks the business.
Honestly, each time I've seen Debuchy play for us, he has looked better as a centre-back than a full-back. I'm hoping we don't regret loaning out Jenkinson to West Ham again because, whilst he isn't the most technically gifted, his energy and pace would have been useful. Debuchy is very solid at defending, but isn't useful going forward.
Debuchy is a good defender, but Bellerin is better going forward. He is the complete package and is reminiscent of a young Ashley Cole.
TBH even if Bellerin was on, would it make much difference? The whole attack on Sunday was dogshit, barely putting much effort, if Bellerin made any run there probably wouldnt be anyone in the box running onto the ball, they'd just all be standing static outside the box waiting for something to happen. Walcott was brought on with quite sometime in the game, he's basically like Bellerin with pace and even in a more forward role, and did that make any substantial changes?
The lack of movement up front was so bad; we were insanely easy to defend against. WHU cleared pretty much every single cross and long ball lobbed in. Why we didn't take advantage of the flanks more, particularly when they had a centre-half playing at full-back, will remain a mystery to me. Either way, we need to stop this obsession of playing it through the middle all the time because it was all so comfortable for them to deal with and the only time we looked threatening was when we were forced to put on a half-fit Alexis Sanchez. Hopefully they won't be feeling sorry for themselves when we play Palace on Sunday.
Personally I'd play them both with Sanchez as the three behind Giroud or play Walcott up front with Sanchez, Chamberlain and Ramsey as the three. I know Arsenal fans like Ozil and they obviously see him more than I do but I still don't see what he does most of the time.
Sanchez is not ready, you could even see that in the game, and what's more pathetic is even though it was clear he wasn't fit, he put more effort than the other players and had a good shot on target! He's only 10 days into his pre-season fitness training,
Even if you can only get an hour out of him I'd expect he'd be more effective for that hour than any of the others.
