Yeeeesss c'mon. Guendouzi is the bravest player we have IMO. He always wants the ball and puts in the work. Also hopefully Pepe will find his confidence now.
Xhaka needs to be benched. I just don’t understand how he can start every game. Gendouzi/Torreira/Ceballos should be our midfield three. And it should be Pepe/Aubameyang/Ozil while Lacazette is out injured. And my god I can’t wait for Holding, Bellerin and Tierney to be available. Our defence are sooooo bad! Emery has been making ridiculous decisions and seems incapable of realising what he is doing wrong. If he hasn’t turned things around by Christmas he needs to go.
Agree totally Xhaka disappears in these games. We were better when he came off. Guendouzi is 20 years old and the guy is literally everywhere. Ok he makes a few too many mistakes but he plays with soo much passion. Willock adds more energy and Torreira is simply better defensively.
Well that was a total emotional rollercoaster. First half we were absolutely garbage. Pepe got his first goal. I thought Chambers was an improvement on AMN (cant wait for Bellerin and Tierney to be starting - Fullbacks are a real issues for us at the moment) Willock, Chambers and Torreira clearly improved things. So fair play to Emery on the subs. But ultimately it was the hardwork of Guendouzi and the quality of Aubameyang that won us this game. Tactically it was all over the shop.
I went to the Watford game last week and watching Xhaka in person he is even more useless. I was having a conversation with some people at work who thought maybe Emery communicates with Xhaka a lot and thinks he helps get his game plan across or something due to speaking multiple languages. He can’t be getting into the team based on performance so there has to be some other reason. Also Emery must hate Ozil. He gets such a lack of playing time regardless of what he does on the pitch when he plays. Both our goals against Watford were because of Ozil but he gets subbed in the 70th (every time he got the ball the Watford fans panicked!) and today doesn’t even make it onto the field when we are losing at home to Villa.... Wenger sometimes made odd tactical decisions but Emery seems to do so constantly!
Apart from the fact our defense is relegation quality... xhaka maitland-niles and David Luiz are our weakest links IMO. maitland niles is not a right back. Xhaka is too static and doesn’t add anything to the team and David Luiz is just awful defensively. I’m slightly unimpressed with Pepe as well. He seems to lose the ball even more than iwobi which sets up counter attacks against us. Im hoping Holding Tierney and Bellerin will massively improve the side when they come into it.
I'm still Emery Out, but I will credit him for the subs, as they did help us massively. Chambers did well when he came on and scored the crucial equaliser for 2-2. Then Aubameyang does what he's always so good at. However, I also feel this is where Emery has been lucky. We have got enough individual quality in the team to win games, but we are relying more on that than the manager's tactics to get through. Which, in the long run, is a huge concern. I know we were down to 10 men, but for me, there are still many structural problems that need to be sorted. We still give up too much territory. We don't start games quick enough. Our midfield gets bypassed too easily. We need more powerful, athletic and dynamic players in the middle than players like Xhaka. Our fullback options are liabilities. And we need to communicate better when we defend as a unit. Happy with a win as always. This win does nothing to veil our wider problems, though.
Honestly though - massive congratulations to the team for playing with 10 men (really 9 because xhaka was also on the pitch) for 50 minutes and fighting back to grab the win. it does take character.
What a comeback Some shocking defending again from us and we did so much wrong, but fair play for coming back from 1-2 down with 10 men to win it. Showed massive character. Guendouzi in particular carried the whole team in the 2nd half.
The problem is we make too many individual mistakes and rely too much on individual quality to save us. We don’t play like a team. There never seems to be much of a plan, our midfield with Xhaka in it doesn’t dictate play or assert ourselves on games. We look clueless half the time and Emery doesn’t seem to realise it!
Guendouzi was brilliant with his skilful and powerful runs, always asking for the ball and showing some real passion and desire to drive the team forward and turn the result around. He was absolutely all over the pitch!
