I wouldn’t argue with that.

Lol

Also the classic pass where he’s close to the box and another player in possession tries to play a give and go but Xhaka instantly returns the ball to him before he can start his run.

It’s not so much a lack of effort he’s just limited

We had four shots on target and their keeper didn't have a difficult save to make. "Average" is being kind.

Oh for the days when were enjoyable to watch, exciting even.

We are just so dull, so lacking in collective cohesion and individual inspiration.

What does it tell you when our left back is rested and 80% of our attacking threat disappears.

Indeed, one of the few players looking to play an incisive pass.

Do you not think that a lot of the tackles, albeit excellent tackles he put in were as a result of his own mistake anyway. There were still quite a few miss placed passes and meddles free kicks.
He is the second best CM we have and will stay in the team until we sign someone better

Fair. Not a lot came off for Smith Rowe or Saka apart from some great dead balls into the box that no one got on the end of. Green shoots? So long as we’re solid and on a marginally upward trajectory when Özil et al saunter off we’ve got a chance of improving this squad.

Can see you having quite a long wait Rich. Xhaka’s contract expires in June 2023 when he’ll still be 30. My guess is Arteta will want his contract extended rather than for him to be sold.

I mean this is it in a nutshell. Half the team that were on the pitch at the final whistle had come from our youngsters at Hale end. One game they will do well the next it might not come off. They aren’t experienced and are doing their best.

Let’s see the season out with these guys and get to a point we can properly restructure because we need new blood

Xhaka is, and always will be, a mixed bag. In any given game you will see some good and some very good but offset by those momentary lapses where he plays a ball straight to an opponent or those moments where his man gets wrong side and he is forced to pull his shirt or trip him because he just doesn't have the pace to get back the right side of him.

Players just didn't bother. A waste of a game.

Who?

I heard a Republican party member say "That's not who we are" when asked about his party's members invading the Capital building.

But isn't the fact his members did it makes them exactly that?

To be fair to Palace, they were well organized in defense. They came for a point and got that point. With our current form, I can't blame the tactic.

That said, we should have done better. Even if our form was good all season, we are going to have matches like last night. We are simply not going to win every game we should. The trick is to limit those types of matches. I'm still encouraged because we were positive for the most part and the players wanted to get that win. Not with as much urgency as I'd have liked or seen recently but we didn't phone it in either. Somewhere in between.

We are so risk averse. I lost track of the number of times that a developing situation was killed stone dead by a reverse pass. It must be so frustrating to be a front runner with that happening repeatedly. It’s certainly frustrating watching it.

Hi ltg,

Spot-on, its just painful viewing.

The players should be fitted with one of those gadgets so that every time they make a backwards pass they get an electric shock

I still cannot put my finger on why we are so awful.

We don't have the greatest set of players we've ever had but at the same time most of them do possess some quality, they just cannot seem to put it together in a cohesive team performance.

People say Pépé was useless last night and he was, but at the same time Palace seemed to double up on him every time he had the ball so he had nowhere to go and didn't that open up space elsewhere for us to capitalise on?

Aubameyang out wide is a waste of time because teams know that if they stop him cutting inside to bend one in at the far post his threat is pretty much nullified.

Sad times when the absence of a left back makes such a massive dent in our attacking threat.

In my view there are problems in each part of the pitch which stem from tempo of play and pace and mobility of players.
Far too often I see us have to defend in 4v3 or 2v2 situations, it never feels as though we have enough defenders back - Palace last night was a good example. Conversely a lot of time we attack we face 10 man defences, and not necessarily because the opposition is set up to just sit in their box, its because we don't progress the ball forward quickly enough so we allow them to all filter back with ease. Even when we're horseshoe passing around the box too many of our players are too comfortable in that zone 15 yards outside the penalty area, often we funnel it wide and put in the cross to find only 1 Arsenal player in the box.

In defence too often the opposition strikers are able to hold the ball up too easily or run in to the channels and space and move their team 60 yards up the pitch. In brining the ball out of defence the passes aren't quick or incisive enough.
The worst area is midfield where typically the two central midfielders are sitting far too deep, almost collecting the ball off the CB toes, again too many touches and too slow in moving the ball forward, and really not enough mobility to get around the pitch and cover space in bursts of short sprints. I dare say Xhaka and someone like Kante or Hojberg cover very similar toal distances on the pitch but Xhaka's lack of mobility and poor positional play defensively mean he's often in trouble in games and resorts to the foul or pull back.
Attacking midfield positions have been a massive problem all season, this is simply a player who is able to find those pockets of space between the lines and accept the ball on the half turn to then be running at the back 4 before the midfield can regroup. Those pockets of space are always there because there is always a gap between midfield and defensive lines. Against packed defences - because we're too slow progressing the ball - that space condenses and your attacking mid needs to be unbelievably good to create from those very tight spaces.
Strikers - all season there has been a lack of movement. This could be a chicken + egg thing, ie: strikers don't run because they know the midfield won't/can't get it to them and midfielders don't try the passes because strikers aren't running. There is a reluctance to flip balls in to the channels which is a percentage ball that immediately turns a defence back towards their own goal. As a defender running towards your own goal it is a lot more difficult to mark your man than just standing on the edge of the box and keeping your man in front of you within touching distance. Our forward players are also not willing to try to run at a defender and beat him with skill or pace. Again it is making a defender make a decision that is something other than 'just stay in my shape'. You are committing him, you may lose it a lot of the time, but on the occasions you beat him or at least move him out of position you've taken a brick out of the defensive wall and space opens up for others.

I would caveat all of the above by saying I don't think we have the quality in the squad to correct all those problems so they will be with us until there is a large scale change in players.

Slightly unfair. The effort and industry were there just that we don’t have enough inspiration, Vision and intelligence.

We are missing players and in dire need of new blood. Emile Smith Rowe, Tierney and Saka have performed miracles this season.

Was the return of David Luis a factor in our performance?

Unfortunately this is it. Arteta is reliant on the young players because the huge financial investment made in certain players has been a disaster. Also the senior pros haven’t delivered. I read a stat that Pépé hasn’t created a single chance in the premier league this season. I mean it’s an absolute disaster for arsenal considering the huge outlay on the transfer (you could have signed the 3 most promising wingers in the country for this type of cash or Griezman or someone)

I thought Ceballos had a good game yesterday but it’s frustrating that he doesn’t follow his run into the box and take a man with him. Xhaka did his usual which is a couple of good things in a game to convince our fans he’s the business but then largely stroll around the pitch passing sideways and back to his centre back. The senior guys flatter to deceive and the youngsters have to bail us out.

Need to see this season out to get to the summer and then the rebuild project can start, 2 new midfielders and a new winger are desperately required but the biggest dilemma will be what to do with Willian and Pépé who are on major money and adding zero value to the club at all.

I don’t think so. It was a failure of our midfield and wide players to fashion anything

Also Tierneys absence had me thinking about Bellerin on the other flank yesterday. Not much comes creatively down that side, not many crosses get fired in, not many chances created and whenever we concede it nearly always comes from our right flank.

He’s been a decent servant but does anyone think zoolander isn’t up to it ?

Agreed, Luiz did his primary job of keeping the ball out of our net. He cant take responsibility for creating at the other end as well.
The biggest factor seemed to be missing Tierney who gives such natural balance on the left not to mention the quality of delivery and pace and incisiveness in his play.

If he's out for a period there may be the temptation to put Saka back there

After drawing with palace at home the Newcastle game because a must win. I don't think the Newcastle forwards offer as much as the likes of Zaha and Eze in terms of the counter attack.

If you'd offered any of us 13 points from 15 before the chelsea game we'd have definitely taken it.

This season teams are far more bunched together and evenly matched, almost from 4th all the way to 14th. There will be so many tight games and we need to find a way to get over the line in them. It isn't going to be a pretty season and there won't be many games where us fans can put our feet up with 20 minutes to go knowing the game is won.

If you were going through our 1st 11 and fixing the problems with the worst first then Bellerin for me certainly wouldn't be in the top 2-3 to fix. However, if a decent offer came in (£25-30m) in the summer I think we can upgrade him in that position.

With our team I find myself thinking, if only we had a right footed Tierney, if only we had a right footed Gabriel, if only we had 2 Partey's, 2 Saka's and 2 Martinelli's. That's the standard.

The biggest must win games have to be the cup ties. Winning either the Europa League or FA Cup is not only the single thing that will add to the club’s honours list, as we’re surely not going to win the title. It will get us into either (depending on which one is won) the Champions League (arguably the only realistic chance we still have) or the Europa League (arguably the best chance we have).

Quite right, I'd happily get dumped out of the FA Cup in the next round and finish in the bottom half of the table if it meant we won the Europa League.
We'd probably play 6 champions league matches and find ourselves back in the Europa League next season but the extra guaranteed CL money would do wonders for the turning over of our squad.

Arsenal often suffer from bad timing of things out of our control to some extent
2004/5 Abramovic arrives and catapults Chelsea in to the best team when we were comfortable in the top 2 and had committed to a period of austerity. City's money added to this. 2 teams stopping us getting top 4 and a bigger slice of the pie through no real merit of their own.
2012 (guess) TV money explodes and becomes far more important than match day revenue which now only forms a much smaller % of income, so the giant leap we took putting all our efforts in to those extra 22,000 seats wasn't quite as impactful as we'd have hoped
2019/20. Covid - just when we need a complete squad overhaul a virus strikes that grinds the transfer market to a snails pace.

Of course we've done far more damage to ourselves than these things out of our control

Tierney's calf injury not serious, no tear - could be in line to face Newcastle. Phew

I know I’ve mentioned it here before but in the good old days when Arsenal had more than one shareholder and AGMs were held that could be attended by others, Gazidis annually put up a chart during his presentation showing how year on year ticket sales were declining as a proportion of the club’s income. It’ll be exactly the same for every Premiership club, however big or small and however old or new their ground is.

But Tottenham still decided to spend a fortune on a new stadium. West Ham moved heaven and earth to move into the London Stadium (I can see the rationale if they were able to sell Upton Park but considering its size the running costs for ever and a day can only be much higher). And Fulham are currently building a new stand.

There must still be advantages in increasing ground size, or owners wouldn’t still be doing it?

Agreed, naturally an elite club needs an elite stadium in the +50k all seater. It feels that at the time we made the decision to move stadium we thought 'that' was the thing that would allow us to catch up Man U on all things money wise. I think the TV money being so large has allowed so much more competition from the traditional mid table sides. Of course every team benefits from TV money - but if you took away all the TV money and just relied on sponsorship and match day revenue I think you'd see a more divided league with a big 6 miles ahead of the rest and no real chance of the rest breaking through. The TV money is the only thing allowing al the rest of the prem to sign £30m+ players.

Arteta has said Mari will miss 'a few matches' - shame for him as he's been playing well and a really calming influence at the back. Gabriel will probably slot back in as long as he's match fit and has no long term covid effects.

So who fancies watching Monday’s match in VR then?

https://www.skysports.com/share/12188507

Not for the technophobes I suspect.

Thing is, we're still in 11th place. Newcastle is a must win as well as all other ucoming matches. I appreciate Emile Smith Rowe, Tierney, Saka, but need more strengthening and cohesion.

As one of the world’s biggest technophobes, I’m out the equation.

Your not gonna get it.

It will work in some games and others not because the players we are reliant on for inspiration and creativity are staggeringly 19 and 20 years old and aren’t experienced or polished enough to win games week in week out. Yet.

If their performances aren’t acceptable then the alternative is to bring in Pépé,Willian and Nketiah and I’m sure you will agree that it hasn’t worked out at all when we have done that.

The truth is that we aren’t better than an 8th to 11 the placed side at the moment and the harder truth is that in reality nothing much on the field should be unexpected from a group of players like we have with their limitations.

It’s gonna be painful and frustrating but we will need to see this out .

“Sky Worlds is a fantastic example of how technology can help replicate real-life experiences and create truly transformative viewing experiences, something that is so important right now given the limitations fans have attending live events in person," said Matt McCartney, Head of Immersive Technology at Sky. “ our viewers will be able to visually understand what’s going on inside Nicolas Pépé’s head and virtually interpret the sheer number of backpasses Granit Xhaka attempts in our truly virtual experience”

Dani Ceballos is now on 40 premier league appearances without a single goal for Arsenal in the league. It took john Jensen 71 appearances.

Wonder if he can make it.

Ah but there’s nobody there in the stadium shouting “Shoot!!!” like we did for Faxe.

Adding on to what ltg and soc were saying about back passes, etc, the one thing we used to have in the past are players who had a footballing brain and saw the whole pitch. Bergkamp, Fabregas, Rosicky, Özil, others as well who knew before they got the ball to whom it was going to go forward to.

Xhaka, Elneny, don't have that ability. Ceballos is the closest we have presently. The forward players are now starting to make runs when the ball gets into the midfield but before they weren't as much out of frustration.