Match Day Thread Newcastle United vs Arsenal - Matchday Thread

Ozil has been ****

 

Good play

 

ha.. i say that and he scores.

Team is playing well now.

 

Not bad.

3 wins in a row. Defence still needs alot of work.

 

Not a top performance but we did enough. Onwards and upwards. Now level with the spuds.

 

3 league wins on the bounce, can't remember the last time we did that.

Much, much better second half performance, but I am a bit peeved we conceded in injury time as Newcastle's attack was very blunt for most of the game. Bellerin was way out of position. Still no clean sheet yet.

Ah well, we lost there last season and this season we won. Slowly building momentum.

Level on points with Spurs who were apparently title contenders after their win at OT (as the media would have had you believe).

 

Next up a home game vs Everton. Win that and we'll be well and truly over that dodgy start. Games against Watford (H) and Fulham (A) to follow. Am I being optimistic by hoping we can win all three?

 

No

 

If we are serious about finishing in the top 4, we need to get 9 points from those games. Can't afford to be slipping up at this stage, especially after the two opening losses.

 

We played better in second half and could and should have had 3 and a clean sheet, but our defence switched off with 2 minutes to go ffs.

We need to start keeping a clean sheet as goals conceded late like that make a panic situation when we should be seeing out the game

 

18pts from 8 games would be very impressive given how brittle and inconsistent we are generally.

 

Only just back. Good to see us get another 3pts away and building a bit of momentum now.

Will watch MOTD later and comment again on what I see.

 

Wanted to give a massive shoutout to Sokratis, who I thought was superb today.

Xhaka will probably steal the headlines for his belting free-kick, but Sokratis was our MOTM, in my opinion.

I was very skeptical when we signed him and was even less impressed after witnessing him getting schooled by Boreham Wood players in pre-season.

However, he has proven me wrong thus far.

Today he made some excellent recovery challenges and won a lot of duels. He's comfortable playing it out from the back. Positionally, he's sound as well.

He also bailed out Mustafi on a few occasions.

He's deceptively quite fast too, which helped us in a lot of situations today.

Very strong performance from the Greek

 

Agree about Sokratis. He was top class.

..Mustafi however was typically calamitous.

 

Our defense is so dodgy though. I expect our season to be very up and down. So 3 out of 3 would be very nice.

 

Wasn't he up there as one of the fastest players in that training stat that Aubameyang shared ?

 

Was a half decent performance. I think we can see improvements week in week out.
The negatives - Ramseys role. Personally think we should go with a 3 man midfield. Don't see a lot of positives by playing Ramsey as a support striker. Has a negative effect on Auba and Ozil too. Play Ramsey deeper, where his late runs have more of an affect.
- Guendouzi was great in the games against the big boys, but in these games where we dominate his inexperience is highlighted. I think he has a lot of talent, and a great future. But for now Torreira should come in and start.
- Bellerin exposed. For the goal, when the keeper launched it, Xhaka and Torreira had the men who would end the move free in the box. Bellerin had his man out wide. Both CMs let their man run past them, leaving Bellerin basically with 3 men. This also happened with a chance just before. Mustafi tried to pass Joselu to Bellerin, but Bellerin already had Torreira's man running into the box to cover.


3 wins in a row, with the last 2 away, is a good improvement on last season. Interesting to see what Emery's team is on Thursday, as he said he will go strong. I hope we will see Emile, Eddie as well as Torreira, Leno, Holding, Mavropanos and expect Elneny to start.

 

Should say, also, that Monreal gets the same lack of protection on his side.

 

Welcome to the forum

 

I kind of agree about Guendouzi but I feel he is still offering more than Xhaka or Ramsey. I also feel that Guendouzi is naturally more a deep box to box in that he likes to drift forward. Torreira would give him alot more protection to play his natural game. I also think we would be ALOT more defenisvely stable without Xhaka.

In the EPL personally I would go with.....


--------------------------Leno-----------------------------
Bellerin---Sokratis-----------Must/Kos---Monreal
---------------Torreira-------Guendouzi--------------
Mkhi--------------------Ozil-------------------Aubama
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