I did note above that Arteta needs to take a fair chunk of the blame tonight. We need a different approach to these home games. We need pace and tempo and pressing right from the off. If Arteta sets the team up for generally tight games then you have nowhere to turn when it goes wrong.
The Aubameyang one is difficult because he had so much success with him wide left, but right now it isn’t working so he needs to change it.
4-3-3 and use Aubameyang central and use wide players who are extra midfielders, work in tandem with their full back, can drift inside our out and give an attacking threat. In midfield play 3 who can play vertically, get between the lines. Play a team with tempo and pace

Arteta: I didn't see the spirit for the first time that I see every day in training.

And the annoying bit is it is international break now so we have to suffer this defeat for 2 weeks, fans and players and having it in the papers as the latest crisis club all that time. It’s not a good look

The biggest worry is that we sit something like 3rd worst team in the league for chances created, shots at goal and obviously have very few shots at goal - but the difference between us and those teams down there with us is we have an awful lot of the ball. So we literally have no idea at the moment how to create chances and shots in football matches.

We’ve built a squad that can’t play percentages and lump the ball long or just sling crosses in to the box.
We’ve built a squad that can’t play on the pace of our attackers running behind because we don’t have the movement, mobility or pace
We’ve built a squad that isn’t technically creative enough to pick holes in tight defences.

We’ve basically build a squad where the first few holes we had to plug were to somehow make us more solid, or less easy to score goals against (bar tonight). But that’s it for now

I look at the players we have though Rich and whilst not being anywhere near the level of City or Liverpool they shouldn't be getting schooled by Villa at home FFS!"

Why are Lacazette and Willian still starting?

I feel a little sorry for Lacazette because he is clearly trying but he is nowhere near the player he was a couple of seasons ago. His sharpness, mobility and finishing have gone. I don't know whether injuries have taken their toll or he is just in a natural decline but he should not be starting.

Willian, likewise, is a shadow of the player he was at Chelsea.

I actually recall Arteta not picking Martinelli before his injury and it seemed he just didn't fancy him. He seems to have his favorites.

I think the truth is our team and squad is average. It’s not the coach

Which of our lot gets in a top 4 side? Based on our previous title winners qualities I’d suggest possibly 6 players Leno, Bellerin, Aubameyang, partey, Gabriel and Tierney.

Some of our players are so over rated by our fans. Xhaka and ceballos look bog average to me yet people defend them to the hilt, lacazette once good but a spent force now and Nketiah should be playing for a side in the championship not Arsenal. Willian looks a retirement home signing to me

I long for players from our recent past and even ones that divided opinion like Ramsey, Ox and Wilshere. They would look like gods compared to the midfield of our current side.

This won’t be a quick turnaround but it’s not the manager

If Pépé and Nketiah our in the performance of willian and Lacazette they’d be dropped immediately for the next game. The problem is I’m not sure anyone has any faith that Pépé and Nketiah will do any different.

Feels like Willock deserves a chance. No other player like him in the squad

Arteta's tactics at home are pretty negative.

Yes I am concerned about his favouritism. As for Lacazette, Arteta wants him to play a role which no player at the club is built to play. People carry on about missed chances. Every striker misses chances. Look at Liverpool players they get 4-5 good clear chances every game and maybe score 1 or 2. Our team does not create many chances and most of them are not clear cut. I put it down as one clear cut chance today and maybe 1-2 against Leicester. We are the home team and have no game plan.

There is no creativity in the squad, Arteta can’t magic that up. What he can do is make us more offensive by pushing more men forward, playing at a higher tempo and with greater pace, movement and risk!

I long for the days, many moons ago under Wenger, when we had a soft centre but our biggest concern was the number of chances we squandered not how many we created and according to many just needed that fox-in-the-box. Those were the days

Games like tonight also show what a long way back we still have. Still plenty of players need to leave the club and we won’t be generating any funds for most of those players. Then we have very little funds to keep building a new exciting team. So you are then looking at selling some of our more prized assets which can set you back as well.

Yep, that certainly wasn’t the last few years under wenger but yeah back then it was annoying but it felt like we’d been naive or robbed in games we didn’t win - never thoroughly outplayed from start to finish and struggling to even have shots at goal.

Apparently we haven't scored a goal in open play for 5 games.

If we are not getting top 4 then I'd like to see the kids given PL games. Willock, Nelson, AMN.....give them some games.

No they don't. They barely escaped relegation last season. Grealish is brilliant. No question. But Villa would love to have what we have.

Hi Zed
The tempo just seems so methodical and slow.
Arteta has made us more solid but it seems to the detriment of our attacking play.
Grealish would do wonders for us and he was toying with us at times with the help of Barkley.
We have leeds away next then wolves at home then spurs. Where are the wins coming from???
We could be out of top 4 running before we hit 2021 if we carry on losing games.
Arteta has to shake and change things up . Add some guile and pace. He just seems so rigid in his approach. I'm still behind him but I really hope he has more strings to his bow. He came from city for goodness sake, surely this is not how he wants us to play permanently.
Willian and lacazette need to be dropped. The latter has been very poor. Huge investment which is not paying any sort of dividend at all.
He seems stifled. As if his natural game is suffering because he is being asked to play within a certain structure.

Do our training ground drills ever revolve around creating chances because it sure doesn't look like it. We get to the final third and our gameplan seems to be Tierney, Saka or Aubameyang throwing in a cross to virtually no one in the box.

Kroenke still here = Arsenal still *%^@.

Lucky I've 90% stopped caring now, that last 10% reaĺly pisses me off though.

Soon the manager merry-go-round I expect, can hardly wait for who next gets the job, perhaps Steve Bruce can save us from relegation in a couple of yrs...

Joke of a club thanks to the American clowns.

Indeed. We needed to sort out our defensive problems and Arteta has done that to a large extent. However, we are painfully slow and predictable as an attacking force. Lacazette starts every league game despite being in wretched form. Aubameyang is one of the best strikers in the league. He has to play as a centre forward. I don't buy the lack of creativity argument. This is on Arteta. We have enough attacking players of quality to be far more threatening than we currently are. Arteta needs to sort it out and I really hope he has the mindset to do it because so far he has been conservative, albeit there have been very good reasons to be so.

We used to lose to teams and I’d grumble ‘but they don’t have better players than us, they had better tactics or they just did the basics well and waited for our mistake’.....now it feels like teams just have better players than us.

I think you could pick the best 14 teams in the league and find at least half of the Arsenal team that would be replaced by their players in all of them.

Not going by names, going by what they are producing.
Watkins is better than Lacazette
Grealish better than Pépé and willian
Mginn And Barkley are better than xhaka, ceballos, Elneny
Mings is better than all Our CB bar Gabriel
I’ll Leave Martinez v Leno out of it
If you made a combined 11 it would be pretty even

Not with you on this at all. The fans wanted Emery out - they got it and at some financial cost no doubt. Arteta purchased Soares Mari Willian all on long contracts. He extended Luis and Aubameyang. Arteta is the manager as seems to have been his wish. They purchased Partey for him. It is not the Kroenkes who cannot integrate Özil and Guendouzi into the team or fail to play Saliba or Marinelli when he was fit. We are no longer a desired destination for players. I am not sure Arteta is improving that situation. I am not yet calling for Arteta to go but neither am I seeing any significant improvement. In my opinion Arteta’s hardline is stopping players from being creative. You can almost see them move to a position and think ‘this is the outside margin of my zone I can’t move forward from here’.

Why leave Leno out of it. Quick decisions by the keeper can make a difference. They did today.

Watkins is better than Lacazette on current run of form only. Aubameyang is absolutely streets ahead of him. I can't believe I had to say that! Barkley is a player who produces 4 or 5 excellent performances every season. Over the course of a season he is not better than Xhaka or Ceballos or Willian. McGinn isn't either. And we also have Partey, who is a level above. Our fullbacks are miles ahead of theirs. We also have Saka. So far Gabriel has looked a fine player. Direct comparison with Mings...Holding is about there and Luiz is much better than him. As I said already, Grealish is brilliant and would walk into any team in the top 6. But we have a vastly superior team and squad to Villa. There is a reason they barely stayed in the division last season. The fact that we are 15th in the PL in terms of goals scored, while having one of the best strikers in the league, is largely down to the manager.

Sorry mate there is no way Xhaka and ceballos are better than Barkley and McGinn. They over ran Liverpool in midfield and us today. I won’t disagree we probably have a better squad but we have an absence of quality midfield players and it’s that that’s killing us right now.

There’s no creative hub for us and nothing that Arteta can do about it until he brings in new players.

Spot on dec. I agree with everything there. Arteta had to sort out the defence and has done well in that respect. I think you’re right about our alleged lack of creativity. As others have said we probably have more creativity in midfield than Liverpool. We just create fewer chances. Has pulling on an Arsenal shirt made Willian lose the creativity he had in a Chelsea shirt. No, he can’t have lost his ability to see the balls required to create chances, or his ability to provide them. We also have Saka, Pépé and Ceballos all of whom can create.

In short, I think we could sign Brady and Hoddle in their mid-twenties and we’d still lack creativity because of the way Arteta is shaping the team to play. I’ll go even further, we could sign Platini and Zidane at their peaks and we’d still lack creativity. The idea we simply lack creative players is a red herring, in my view. A myth that’s, understandably, come from getting fewer chances. But as you imply dec, we don’t. It’s the way we play, our set-up, our formation, or whatever way people want to put it. That’s down to Arteta. I’m not calling for his head, by the way. I want him given more time.

But this idea that we lack players capable of being creative is a nonsense. By the way, I was intending to leave any posts about the game until tomorrow. I think it’s too easy to get over emotional during and after poor performances which arguably makes some attach blame unfairly. Not everyone has done that today, but looking through the large number of posts on the Villa match, I do feel some have.

God that was awful.

Given how many goals Villa could have scored, I can't see Arteta becoming more attack minded for the next match either.

We created chances. Finishing let us down. Top of my head - Lacazette missed one. Willian missed two good ones - he needs to work on his finishing. Pépé came close. Holding too. Martinez made one good save - whose attempt was it? Can't remember now.

The road to top 6 or top 4 won't be a smooth one. Sperz better pray Kane doesn't get a long term injury. Aubameyang hasn't played well enough since that big contract. That sometimes happens.

Left Leno v Martinez out of it because that debate has been done to death on here. For every stat or argument that one is better than the other there is a similar counter stat or argument.

Where in my mail did I say Watkins was better than Aubameyang? He better than Lacazette on form and is a better all round striker. When was Lacazette even last on form? Lyon?
A best of midfield 3 would be mginn, partey, barkley
Likewise up top it would be grealish, Watkins, Aubameyang, and with mings in defence that is 50% of the outfield players as villa players.

You could do the same with Leicester, Vardy, Maddison, tielemans, Ndidi, soyuncu, periera all get in our best 11....And possibly others. Wolves, Everton, Southampton have all got a few players that get in our best 11

We are losing these games in the middle of the park. When Partey went off yesterday we all knew where this was going.

Grealish and Barkely have everything Arsenal don't have......desire, skill, flair, power, pace. The tempo is created by the midfielders and we just have nothing there. After partey went off they literally ran rings around our midfield.

Not really, We created one obvious chance for Lacazette and the rest were scraps really. We aren’t creating enough.

The strikers are working off scraps and as a result Lacazettes confidence is shot to pieces. He’s being asked to play with his back to goal all the time.

Exactly. The premiership and other leagues have evolved in style. More and more teams are setting up now with players who can do real damage on the counter attack. Add in the explosion of TV money coming in to the prem and traditionally weaker teams can now afford £30m players, who are of course attracted to the league and who pose this genuine danger.
All the dangerous teams in the league have some form of this in their play.
Dominate possession and razor sharp press and speed: Liverpool
Dominate possession and quick mobile interplay: City and Chelsea
Quick counter attacking: Spurs, Man U
High tempo, high press, rapid counter attack: Leeds, Southampton, Villa
Solid defence, incisive midfield, rapid counter attack: Leicester
Wolves and Everton are a little bit less easy to place as are we.

It isn't just in midfield we struggle with those key attributes it is up front as well. When you see most other teams forward players there is movement, interplay, getting on the ball, dribbling, shift and shoot. Our front 3 are totally static. When was the last time you saw an Arsenal wide man dribble towards the full-back and beat him with pace and trickery? When was the last time we even attempted it?

The prem is absolutely awash with penalties this season, Leicester have 8 pens in 8 games. We dont get men in the box dribbling at pace to win them.

There really is no quick fix for this. We've built a squad totally ill suited to the league. virtually every area of the pitch needs addressing still. We made 2 decent moves in the summer but it cost us £75m. I'm concerned about some transfers not fitting the right profile, Cédric, Mari, Willian. On paper they seemed like logical moves because of the price. We don't have the money or the time to solve 6-7 other positions in the team that need solving. Edu and the rest need to recognise that we can't be signing established talent like Partey all the time we need to identify younger players with all those attributes you list above and getting them in the £20m and under price range. Just shifting some of the waste of space players at the club saves us £1m a week in wages

Enjoyable post Rich,

Games are won and lost in midfield, if you haven’t listened to the latest Tuesday club I would recommend it as Arsene speaks about Vieiras impact and the difference it made having a midfielder who was happy to receive the ball under pressure and ONLY ever looked to go forward.

Works the opposite for me LTG.....failing to shell out isn't working either.

I blame Marcus Rashford.

It is an interesting question as to whether the strikers are not getting the service or the strikers should be doing more to create their own chances/goals.
On the latter, the league has quite a few midfields that are relatively workmanlike, they close down, they run all day and are athletic and have a decent short and long passing range. A lot of the creativity is actually the front 3 creating something between them.
As talented as our front 3 are/were I still think they don't create enough for themselves or each other. Also, if Arteta is intent on imprinting his style on this team, and that is a modern style of football which involves relentless pressing and mobility of the front 3 and these players being multi faceted and flexible forward players not merely finishers of chances he'd potentially have more success doing it with a front 3 who don't have a combined age over 90.

I said last night but too often I see an Arsenal forward line just spread across the pitch in line with the i defence. There doesn't appear to be anyone dropping between the lines looking to pick it up in space on the half turn, no one seems to be making those in to out runs in behind for a lofted ball (the sort of pass barkley received last night for the 2nd goal). If no one makes the run no one is even going to try the pass.

I'm not convinced we can become a flexible and threatening attacking force until the players that are picked start to be a bit more different to each other, start playing between the lines and probably be a bit more youthful, athletic, pacey and malleable in what the coach wants from them

From F365
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has had 25 touches in the opposition box in his first eight league games of the season. He looks lost on the left wing, like using a Ming vase as a bookend.

One of those miserable Mondays where I avoid all football, be it radio, TV, or online. Apart from this forum. Where I can come and suffer with everyone else. When's Happy Hour?

Lacazette seemed to be doing alright until we sold all our creative midfielders and elected for guys who only pass sideways.

Lacazette is rubbish right ? Well he scored over 100 goals for Lyon in a 1 in 2 rate and one season netted 27 goals and was lique 1 player of the year. Then he was our player of the season in 2018.

Well he’s not getting the service from wide then? Well Willian netted over 70 caps for Brazil and didn’t seem to have an issue at chelsea.

So what’s changed since 2017/18 ? We sold cazorla, Ramsey and chamberlain and haven’t replaced them with anyone adequate. There is no brain in this football team and yesterday was embarrassing as Grealish roamed around with the freedom of the park.