I think that just about sums it up.

If Aubameyang had been playing for WH today he would have bagged a hat-trick.

Brilliant result, poor performance.

They were trying very hard to find a reason to rule the goal out. VAR and referees are not our friends. Friendlier to Pool, Spurs and MU.

A much needed 3 points. Clean sheet (phew!). Another win.

Arteta needs to sort out the midfield's defensive play.

Reiss is a better option to Pépé.

Lacazette looks ready to be back in the team.

Mystifying. It's as if he's boxing with one arm tied behind his back.

What are you talking about? Only one side was unlucky!

That was so stressful
Massive massive win.
VAR was excruciating but went for us this time. Needed that badly.
Just 3 off top 5 now.
How west ham don't score today I'll never know.
Thank God they didn't

I didn't think anyone played particularly badly ... more like a complete lack of cohesion.

Arteta needs to pick our best team. Maybe that was our best midfield ... but why Sokratis at right back, Mari just when Mustafi is finding form, or Ntekiah at center forward? Hard to fathom.

Happy to see Burnley go into halftime 1-0 down to the scum. I feel angry at myself for feeling some pity towards Mourinho. If he fails here, he may relegate himself to 2nd tier clubs. He'll be doing what Ancelotti is doing.

Amazed West Ham didn’t score today. Leno made the difference. Tipped the early shot on to the post, got the better of haller in the 1v1 and then the big hand to Antonio’s header. I know he’s made a couple of mistakes that have cost us this season but he’s saved us so many more points than he’s cost.

Arteta started by turning defeats in to draws, now draws in to wins....today may even have been turning a defeat in to a win. Through hard work, determination and a bit of luck we’ve improved the goals against significantly.

The players seem unable to play at a high tempo consistently. We had lots of pace up front but we’re unable to get in through to them quickly enough.

It is probably quite damning of the squad that Emery came in wanting to play high press, or at least having a reputation to on for playing high press and couldn’t implement it. Now Arteta has come in and the squad can’t reach his fitness levels, and he doesn’t have the players to play the 4-3-3 with 2 No.8 to help move ghat ball through midfield quicker.

The rest of this season is going to be a scrap, very unlikely to get the top 4 or even top 5 at the moment but either way the summer needs yet another big churn of players

Mourinho has pretty much said Ndombele has let the entire team down with his first half performance. He’s really gone hard on him. I think Jose is miles out of touch. That kind of ‘man management’ may have worked 15 years ago and with the likes of Terry etc, players who would have walked over hot coals for him. But players attitudes have changed, I think more and more players are now more sure of themselves and don’t respond to the head teacher routine.

On Ndombele anyway, £60m transfer who hasn’t shown anything. Have we heard about his performances in the press?

The good news is we have already started our epic journey to 50 plus unbeaten league matches to put that record out of reach for Liverpool to get near it.

60% of our toilet paper is produced in Australia. Some morons on social media suggested there may be shortages. There will not, well shouldn’t have been until people started panicking. What the f do these people think they will do with a hoard of toilet paper if they catch the virus.

Natural selection is not working. On your point of bringing people together. I predict it will have the opposite effect. Foreigners are and will be targeted. Tourist are not welcome, people want someone to blame and economies will tetter if not collapse if it continues to put people out of work and travel is already under the pump. The effects of Chinese production in shut down for a number of weeks if not months could have dire consequences in the months to come. To give you an example my son was in buying some electronic parts and bought the last 2 parts for a project. He was told that a pile of goods were stuck on the wharves in China but the factory was in close down. They were running out of a number of products and it would get messy even after the freight arrived because of demand.

I know kiwi says I moan about performance so I just watched the game. Dire

The league table of games since Arteta took over has us 3rd behind Liverpool and Man City.
It is a huge shame that in a season where so many of the other top 4 contenders have had awful seasons that we couldn’t get our act together to get back in the top 4....we still might but it’s unlikely.

Similar to when Leicester won the league. A better opportunity couldn’t have presented itself to us to win it

The comms I listened to had such a go at Özil for not just going for goal himself instead of setting up Lacazette. That’s ridiculous, Özil would have had to beat the gk with a header from a looping ball with no pace on from 8 yards. The sensible play was to nod it square to the guy who could leather it home on the volley. Smart assist

Agree

Or were they referring to another situation? There was another, not sure before or after the goal, when Özil had a good shooting opportunity (albeit a crowded penalty area), but opted to square to Lacazette. Ball was intercepted and a quick counter was launched. My first thought at that time was "shoot Özil, why pass?". But then I also thought if the pass did reach Lacazette, it would have been a good assist.

I am unsure what emergency health legislation you have available in the UK but I would expect that like most countries, in the event of a pandemic they have the right to ban mass gatherings . In Italy the football goes ahead in some areas but with no attendance at the matches. Concerts etc are suspended etc. Australia is currently grappling with the Formula 1 but I assume other sports will soon be considered.

So assuming the virus starts causing issues in the UK here are a couple of scenarios I have considered

Arsenal games with no crowds allowed to attend - will the club have to refund ticket holders - can they afford the loss of revenue from this

Liverpool win the league but none of their fans can attend the match when they win the title

An FA Cup final in an empty stadium.

Moyes was borderline complaining about the right VAR decision. He basically said we have one of the items top refs and two top linesman/woman and so he would have been happy to go with their decisions. Haha, I bet you would, they gave it offside when it wasn’t, if we went with the officials it would have cost us 2 points. This is exactly why VAR was bought in

It was before the goal. Özil should have taken the shot. But for the goal, he did exactly the right thing. Anticipation, timing, and execution were spot on. Overall, I thought he was pretty good yesterday.

It's such a baffling thing to panic about. What happened to the outback spirit? You can use leaves (a rudimentary knowledge of botany is valuable of course), newpaper, water, etc. Kiwi is probably rigging up a bidet as we speak.

Yes that was silly criticism of a player who more often than not makes the right choice of pass. be it with head or foot. Cool thinking by Mesut.

I say well done to Arteta and his team. Despite being criticised constantly we have moved well away from relegation (which was a real threat when Emery was in charge) and are now pressing for a top 5 finish. All season only Liverpool have lost less league matches than us, and domestically we are unbeaten in 2020. Reasons to be cheerful I think.

Those are surprising statistics! Good times I guess, although I though we looked pretty shaky yesterday and at last had some luck.

My confusion atm along with others is where is Martinelli? Can only presume it’s to fit Pépé Aubameyang and Lacazette and Özil in the team. Bit surprising. Maybe it’s the Foden method at City where you can’t help but feel their underplaying him when he’s playing only a 10th of available league minutes, but they are both very young and have long careers ahead of them.

Also maybe want to get him tied down to a contract before he attracts the worlds attention any more.

Both of these apply to Saka you could rightly say, but really Arteta has no choice there atm.

Hi Rich, I think players are tired, not used to defending all the time but if we look at the stats then it is good, more points, far less shots on goal etc. We doing well considering.

Yep Mourinho is a self centered *%^@. Known for 10 years.

Moaning pineapple. B

Come on gaz, anything better than prior? Winning? Better shape?

On the other hand it is uncomfortably reminiscent of Emery's run at the beginning of last season. One felt something had to give and it did. We are completely reliant on Aubameyang and Leno performing heroics.

Interesting couple of games today.
Everton v Chelsea - would be good to draw Chelsea properly back in to the chasing group. Everton could draw level with us with a win. A draw would be perfect
Man U v Man City - desperate for city to smash Man U

Think it’s important that there’s no overreaction to the Coronavirus. Experts are saying the common flu is a bigger threat to life. I haven’t missed a competitive home game since 27th January 2002, over eighteen years ago, and I’ll be fuming if I have to miss one because of an overreaction to the Coronavirus.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.expres ... deaths/amp

Lampard is doing a much better job than I thought he would. It's probably only going to get better once they spend some money. They are going to spend big this summer.

Next season may look like Liverpool, City and Chelsea and everyone else.

I never thought we were ever going to be seriously in jeopardy of being in a relegation fight. Over dramatic. Even if we kept Emery. We were likely in the bottom half of the table but we'd be out of the relegation zone point was no matter what. No non gooners considered us relegation candidates as well.

That said, getting rid of Emery was the right decision. I thought we needed to give him more time but I was wrong in that assessment. Arteta is doing a good job.

We’re being linked with Willian on a free this summer, huge wages obviously. His agent is one of THE agents Raul likes to deal with.
I’ve always liked him as a player, seems to make things happen but know chelsea fans who find him really inconsistent.
Given his age and wages it would be a strange move for a team that is trying to rebuild but you never know

It’s going to be interesting in the summer when Chelsea can buy players again. They were criticised for years for not giving youth a chance, this season they were forced to and a lot of them have been very good, but also with some inconsistencies. Will Lampard stick with them or will they buy in and sideline the youth to give themselves a better chance at the title?

At the end of the day people are dying because of it.

*%^@ the football and your attendance record.

Just popped back from my local supermarket where I bought a joint of beef.

Zero toilet rolls on display, completely sold out. (not that I needed any)

People are sheep absolute sheep. You might be right about the effect being opposite.

I was about to stick this on Ebay, but I've decided to give the forum first dibs. Offers via pm please.

I've got some excellent face masks (actually dust masks but who'd know). How about a straight swap?

I wonder how Arteta will approach the City game on Wednesday? If anyone knows what city want to do and can do it should be Arteta. Clearly we aren’t going to have a lot of the ball. Can Arteta set the team up to be a threat on the counter or to press and force mistakes?