Palace look like they are playing straight after eating a full Xmas dinner and pudding with all the trimmings. How the hell did they beat Chelsea???
For what it's worth, our players were well up for it in that opening 45 minutes. All our players were pressing and getting back to defend. That's the most desire I've seen Sanchez play with since the NLD, for example. For whatever reason, we're in the mood tonight. Only downside is we have a slender lead. If we don't score quite early in the second half, Palace will grow into the game.
As a neutral (kind of) there is no way palace are gonna grow into this game .... it's like like the spurs Burnley match last Saturday...men against boys!
Townsend with a goal and assist today. Arsenal got lucky tbh. 4 goals, plenty of subs and Xhaka's injury, 4th official messed up giving only 4 minutes.
In the final 10 minutes or so, perhaps, but for most of that game, we were all over them. You can't say we were lucky. Really and truly, on the balance of play, that game should have been done and dusted in the first-half.
Did you think that was convincing performance from Arsenal? I could see some more aggressive pressing as you used against us but I thought your defence looked ready to conceed every time Palace went forward.
First half, yes. Second half, we did well in patches but not so well in others. Defensively we are a shambles though, so if you're asking me if our defence is any good, I will obviously say no. We can't defend for toffee and it is a massive worry (see my comments on the Arsenal board match thread). In the first half, Palace barely threatened us and gave us ample space in midfield. When you make Xhaka look like Xabi Alonso, you know you're doing something wrong. We had plenty of chances to score a few goals and improve our mediocre goal difference. Yet, although we only scored just the once, we were well on top. Hodgson and Tomkins' post-match interviews will confirm this. Second half, Palace scored from their first real attack (and shot on target). We were under the cosh for a few minutes, but the two quick goals we scored stemmed the tide. Then the game turned on its head when Lacazette came off and Coquelin came on (idiotic sub, it never works so I don't know why Wenger keeps doing it). They started to pressurise us and we were resting on the 2 goal lead, which meant we were dealing with wave after wave of attack. Towards the end of the game, we were hobbling over the line, but did enough to get the 3 pts. Apart from a 10-15 minute spell over the entirety of that game where Palace were in the ascendancy, no-one can really begrudge us the win. Hodgson himself literally said we were the better team over 90 minutes.
I think you did deserve to win but obviously you know your team much better than I do so I was interested to hear your take.
Our team overall is not that balanced and, in my opinion, isn't even that good. We have a few excellent players, some decent squad players and some players that seriously wouldn't look out of place in the Championship. If we are looking to compete with the big boys, there is some urgent surgery needed to our squad. Because unless we get some serious reinforcements in January, I expect us to finish 5th/6th this season. How we are somehow level on points with you is baffling.
Not really. Selling Walker + Wembley + Wanyama and Toby out for months on end = poor first half of the season. But Wanyama is back next week, we're now unbeaten in 9 matches at Wembley and Aurier may or may not be as good as Walker in the next few months. Or years. Or never. But ho hum, there you have it. If we can bring in a couple of additions in January I predict a VERY strong second half of the season for us, as we did last year.
We lost Wanyama and Toby to long term injuries at the same time and have found it very difficult to play against decent opposition without both...we lost to United, City, Arsenal and Leicester without both of them.
