please log in to view this image Venue: Stamford Bridge Date: Sunday 10th November 2024 KO time: 16:30 GMT Overall Record Wins: 84 Losses: 66 Draws: 59 Last six meetings Arsenal 5-0 Chelsea Chelsea 2-2 Arsenal Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea Chelsea 0-1 Arsenal Chelsea 2-4 Arsenal Arsenal 0-2 Chelsea please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
We must win this match today IMHO, anything less and we won't be winning the PL this year. Odegaard and Rice start, quite surprised about that, just hope they can last the distance. This pretty much our strongest line up IMO. COYG
Meh - feel like the ref has been ****ing useless. Games a little disjointed. Need to stop giving away silly fouls and move the ball quicker.
Wolves H 0 Villa A +3 Brighton H -2 Spurs A 0 City A 0 Leicester H 0 Southampton H 0 Bournemouth A -3 Liverpool H -2 Newcastle A 0 Chelsea A 0 Tough fixtures yes, but we’re still 4pts worse off than in the same fixtures last season. Urgh. 8pts lost from winning positions too this season.
Quality in depth still seems to be an issue. Midfield is better, Defensive is a lot better but in attacking positions.. Jesus comes on and just repeatedly gives the ball away. Don't know what's happened to this guy. Saka didn't look right and obviously Odegaard is not back 100% yet. I'm hoping we add a quality forward this January - Havertz is class as a false 9 but we need a different option. (and more quality in-depth)
Rice, Odegaard and Saka hopefully don’t go on international. We MIGHT just about have a first choice XI soon. Cala on the left. Timber on the right. Rice, Merino, Odegaard. Time to cook finally. Gyokeres to fire us to prem glory in January
As it stands, for me, we are out of the title race. 2 draws and 2 defeats since the last international break is honestly horrible. And whilst against Chelsea and Liverpool, we could have won with the chances we had, the cold hard reality is we didn't win either. And that puts us in a precarious position. We currently are closer to the bottom half of the table than we are to Liverpool. Which is insane to say after 11 games. A 9 point gap is pretty hefty, so we'll need to be pretty flawless over a sustained period of time to overturn that, whilst relying on other teams to do us a favour. I just don't trust us to get the results we need to get back on top. We leak too many goals and don't score enough. You simply cannot expect to win the title in these circumstances. The only thing I will say is we have had a pretty tough start to the season in terms of quality of opposition...Aston Villa, Man City, Spurs, Chelsea & Newcastle all away from home, whilst having to play Liverpool and Brighton at home. Hardly a dream set of fixtures. However, the counterargument to that is, if we are title challengers, surely we should be winning most of those even if they are hard games? You can't just write a game off because it's difficult. You need to earn the win. We haven't done that enough times and that's why we're in a top-4 battle, rather than a title race. Regarding the game today, we were decent and there were some promising signs, but it wasn't enough. I also didn't like how we made it too transition-based against a Chelsea side with loads of space eaters in their team. We shouldn't have been dragged to their level. And the balance/dynamics of the team weren't great because we didn't expose Chelsea's weaknesses when it comes to how passive they can be in their pressing sequences. A draw against Chelsea away is usually fine, but not with the context we have. And not if we're serious about competing for the title. My view is we can still have a good season, but it won't be by winning the league, unfortunately.
I don't think we're out of the race because I'm trusting Liverpool cant keep this up. We hav'nt seen them hit a bad patch yet. City without Rodri - don't look great at all.
My worry isn't that Liverpool won't drop points - because I think they will. My worry is I don't trust Arsenal to capitalise when they do. Like I said, we concede too many goals and we're not scoring enough. No-one wins a title when you're facing these issues. I don't see how we magically start improving on all these things. City have looked poor, but if they can stay within touching distance of the top by January, I think they sign 1 or 2 players in the winter transfer window. Their squad is very small and I think they're now realising they made a mistake with their recruitment.
Hmm you may be right but a repeat of last Seasons form Jan - May would win us the league this time IMO. I understand why we went tactically less offensive once Odegaard got injured but with him back I expect us to revert back to last Seasons style of play. Playing a more possession based game with Odegaard as a 10 - should yield better results. For me though: Trossard has been out of form and not worked as a 10. Sterling was a gamble, looks like he really is past it though. Fortunately Chelsea are still paying 65% of his wages. Jesus is infuriating. Soo much talent. Ability wise he could be a TOP TOP player but the guy has no composure at all. He's only been getting worse. Martinelli - he's starting to improve again but the guy needs to score 50% more goals than he does. He needs top class competition & experience to learn from. This is why a CF and another WF need to be brought in this January. Or perhaps a player like Isak or Sesko who can play LWF & CF. If I was Arteta though right now I would go Gyokeres and Leroy Sane.
We were equally as poor in the first half of last season. Do you not remember the dreadful and insipid football we played with Havertz in centre mid? We were scraping games here and there, drawing at home to Fulham and spurs, losing away to villa and Newcastle, losing at home to West Ham, away to Fulham. We didn’t really properly start playing consistently well until late January. We only had 38pts from 20games (1.9pt per game) and a GD of +12 (which was 28 behind Liverpool at that point). Right now we have 1.73pt per game but if we win our next two it will be 1.92ppg. And our remaining fixtures are easier than last season. But we need to start putting teams to the sword. Which means we need Odegaard back pulling the strings. If he actually plays for Norway for anything more than cameos for match fitness I’ll be so annoyed.
You just said yourself that we're several points worse off than last season, though. And the thing that helped last year was having that 2 week Dubai break where it allowed Arteta to refresh his thinking, give the players a chance to recharge and to tweak some tactical things. We don't have that luxury this year. Like I said. I know we've had a tricky opening 11 games overall, but if you're meant to be title challengers, you need to come through that period relatively unscathed. We haven't. We can talk about red cards costing us points (which is true), or some injuries, but this narrative lets the manager off the hook for his tinkering tactics, which have also unsettled the team. And the fact he doesn't use his squad as extensively as he should. We don't create enough quality chances, there's too much emphasis on wing play, we don't have enough threats in central areas and we're not as resolute defensively as we were last season. Let's just call it as it is - we have slightly regressed as a team. I really do think Arteta needs to be under more scrutiny than he currently is.
From the same fixtures, not the same time frame. It's not surprising we have little central threat when our only real central threat has spent half the season out injured. Which is Arteta's fault really when he got rid of Vieira and ESR. Either of those would have been an ideal Odegaard replacement really. And if he got rid of them thinking that Nwaneri was his first choice Odegaard replacement then he needed to have the balls to actually play him. If Odegaard comes back from international break unscathed, Calafiori comes back fit and we can start playing Merino as an #8 then I think we'll start putting a long run of points together. I don't think you can say we've regressed from last season. Calafiori is an objectively better natural LB than we had last year and Martinelli plays far better when he starts. Rice/Merino/Odegaard is a better midfield trio than Jorginho/Rice/Odegaard or Partey/Rice/Odegaard because Merino is the only proper #8 we have. Last season we just had almost no significant injuries apart from Timber and could play a first choice XI almost every single week and even that first choice XI were pretty rubbish until January.
I've just watched the post-match press conference. It is a little frustrating seeing Arteta talking about injuries as much as he is. According to the data that I've seen, we're ranked about 9th or 10th in the league for injuries this season. So it's hardly been the worst. Him saying it's been 'a nightmare to deal with' is a bit of a cop out because a) we've not had that many serious injuries relative to other teams, and b) the focus should be on his team selection and tactics, rather than injuries. If he'd set us up optimally, the injuries would have been less of a factor.
