We can put on good attacking displays sporadically but when we all know what is going to inevitably happen with our defence and tactics it's no wonder our best player looks like he wants to leave.
Our defence is ****. We played really well in this game and with a decent defence we would have won it. But once again we are soft as **** at the back and it's cost us all 3 pts.
Ozil and Lacazette gave everything. Both were great. Ramsey - How can you accommodate player who's whole game is running forward out of position? Ramsey constantly just leaves a giant hole in our midfield. Xhaka - He's good technically but he's not a DM and not really a playmaker. He slows the ball down too often. Sanchez - Still a shadow of last Seasons player. Monreal - As a CB against Pogba and Lukaku??!! - What the **** are you smoking Wenger. I **** bigger than this guy. He's a good defensive LB though. Iwobi - Thought he had a good game. Bellerin - Put a good shift in. Made a few errors though. Kolasinac - Solid as always. Koscielny - Got bullied physically but never gave up. Mustafi - £30 Million?...really. Cech - Quality as always.
That was a great game and United took their chances and we didn’t, and United defenders did their job and ours didn’t
33 shots. 15 on target. 1 goal. Defensively, we were shambolic. But it is criminal to have as many shots as that and only score once.
The thing is we weren't outclassed by United at all. Going forward, I actually thought we caused them a lot of problems and were attacking with real intent. The two main issues today were careless mistakes at the back and lacking ruthlessness in front of goal. A toxic combination admittedly, particularly in a game of this magnitude. United's collective doggedness was very impressive. They defended tremendously well because there were periods of the game when they were faced by an onslaught of Arsenal players in their half, probing for a goal. You have to give them credit for how well they cleared their lines.
Yep, have to give Utd credit for the way that they absorbed our onslaught and then put the game to bed with another goal. So frustrating from us, because we basically pissed on them for 80% of that game and still managed to lose it 1-3.
Were we ever really in the title race though? I mean realistically from day one, I don't think many fans thought we were challengers. Top four is our realistic expectation this season, so I'm concentrating on that. It will be close with imo either us or Liverpool taking that last spot. Still hopeful we can win the Europa League. I would kill for the season united had last year tbh.
A goalkeeper doing his job well is just as worthy as a striker doing the same. Nobody says Ronaldo or Messi are lucky when they are ruthless in front of goal - but somehow when a goalkeeper is equally ruthless, the attacking side is unfortunate, unlucky, profligate etc. Utd did a classic job on you today. Exploited defensive weaknesses with surgical precision and repelled everything you threw at us. And you played very well.
He made 14 saves in one game, the highest amount of saves in one game since Opta statistics began. He was in phenomenal form and, even when we threw the kitchen sink at him, he still wouldn't concede any more. It was like there was a forcefield around your goal. It's all well and good saying "he was just doing his job", but if that was any other goalkeeper, the likelihood is the result would have been completely different. Which isn't saying that you were "lucky"; rather, it highlights the benefit of having a goalkeeper of such a high calibre in your team.
He was brilliant and the difference between that game ending up 1-3 to Utd, otherwise it could easily have been 5-3 to Arsenal. There's no excusing our defending though, in a game of this magnitude, that was utterly inexcusable. But yes, as I mentioned earlier, credit to Utd they did exactly what they needed to do in this game and despite our huffing and puffing, you held strong and got the three points. As for us going forward, although this result was really disappointing, the performance had a lot of positives and showed that if we can cut out the mistakes (how long have we been saying that ?) then we should have too much for most teams this season. We were on a decent run before this game, so hopefully we can get back to that.
