http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/e...cazorlas-arsenal-debut-in-the-premier-league/ I thought we played great stuff at times against Sunderland and it's refreshing to hear an honest appraisal for once instead of moronic WUMs like Savage.
From where i was sitting it looked like we played some decent football.It has to be taken into account that a lot of our players only had 45 minutes together in pre-season friendlies.I'm certain we will improve as our players develope better understandings
Neville is spot on and to be honest I think he's one of the best pundits around. We looked a little short of fitness on Saturday but still played some good stuff and were unlucky not to have won. Carzorla is a class act.
Who is better then? Or as good? For me Neville is the only UK based pundit worth his salt. I'd add Shaka Hislop is very good as well but he isn't based here anymore and still doesn't have as much tactical nous nor experience of the English/Continental game as Neville
at the end of the day, a lot of people are saying many of our players had only 45 minutes of game time during pre season, well who's problem is that? i made several posts complaining about the fact that we had too little pre season games, compared to other teams, we went 12 days without a pre season game until we faced Cologne, and why is that? Why couldn't we have put in 1 to 2 pre season games in between that time to get these players up to more match fitness, and to make them more acquainted with each other? instead, a few **** heads on here said i was whinging and just complaining again, well, as usual, up your asses, because my complaining seemed to have some merit now didn't it?
Whilst I agree with the jist of what you are saying, I can't agree with the tone. I also feel that we should have had more pre-season games. Pod and Giroud especially would have benefitted. However, there are always reasons why the club may have chosen not to. They may have felt that training sessions were a better option or they didn't want to run the risk of injuries, who knows? We were a bit sluggish, but we still played very well. We were unlucky in not converting through Pod or especially Giroud. That with the near total dominance we had would have had everyone saying how good we are and how clever Arsene is. Many teams struggle in their opening games. Man C won, but not convincingly. Man U and Tottenham lost.
While it's true that a lot of other big teams struggled, if you look at our performance, our struggle wasn't down to us being bad, but mainly down to the fact that players were still trying to gel with each other. Would 2 more additional games in pre season have helped us out just that little more in gelling the new team together and gaining them a better understanding with each other? I think yes.
Maybe, maybe not. You have to bear in mind that had their been those 2 extra games, Cazorla would not have been playing and he was the main link with the strikers.
The only pundit that I can think of that is better than Neville is Clarence Seedorf, I will never forget him from the 2010 World Cup, absolutely magnificent.
It was always going to be a difficult year for pre-season with the Euros and then the Olympics. We could have played more pre-season games, but that alone would not have helped. The number of friendly games was an indication of the short pre-season, not the actual problem.
As a player i disliked Neville for many years as a regular player for the SCUM - he also cae across as a nob. I was annoyed when he became a SKY pundit as i thought - oh no, now i have to watch him on tele all the time! But i was happily suprised and since he first started he has been excellent. He has a fair approach, great understanding of the game and gets genuinely excited by good football. I actually enjoy hearing his views!
Neville is an excellent pundit but I do not rate him as a co-commentator. I might be in a minority of one, but I think Andy Gray was the best in the business when he was co-commentating alongside Martin Tyler.
I'd say it was bad planning too. We were supposed to have a game in Nigeria, but that got scuppered due to security issues. So we lost a pre-season game because of that, but I see no reason why we couldn't have simply set up another friendly at our training base, or somewhere else. We shouldn't have ever made a pre season game fro Nigeria, I never thought it was a good idea from the moment I heard it, because the security situation in the country was far from ideal, and in the end it proved to be the case.
