So much for Everton doing us a favour......

Ffs
2 goals in 2 minutes

Everton actually started ok.
Game over.
Really want us to shrug these *%^@ers off our coat tails.
Game at their place is massive.

So much for hoping Everton can do us a favour tonight. A calamitous own goal and a Pickford howler has Spurs 2-0 up early on.

It is Man U v Spurs on saturday, logic would say a draw is the best result but if not then I think I'd prefer a Man U victory. I think Spurs will likely be our main challengers for 4th place come the end of the season.

It seems every week there is some sort of pivotal game. If Man U and Spurs draw and we can beat Leicester on the same weekend then the Liverpool home game in midweek has a sense of a free hit game

Useless scousers that’s just pathetic

I'm not sure our goal difference over spurs is worth the 'extra point' yet. Currently we are +6 goal difference on them with their second half v Everton to go. For goal difference to even come in to play Spurs need to beat us and then we lose another game. A couple of 2-0 defeats in those two games and the goal difference would be level.

Spurs 5 now...that Goal Difference is disappearing pretty quickly.

You’re the very last person I’d look to for a fair assessment of Xhaka, so it’s almost comforting to see this.

With around half an hour left, Tottenham could even have a better goal difference by the end of the game.

You’re hardly rational about him yourself. You don’t have to look far to find people who thought he was pony yesterday

He divides opinion. Plenty of people think he played well. I don’t actually like or dislike him. I try to make my views dependent on how he actually played. I strongly suspect you allow your opinions to be driven by personal dislike. You presumably enjoy moaning about him.

Nope. When he doesn’t put a foot wrong I give him credit.

It’s a rare occasion. He doesn’t bring much quality

Do you give him credit when “he doesn’t put a foot wrong”? I must have missed it. Perhaps you should think about what expectations are reasonable? If not putting a foot wrong are yours, how often has any player achieved that? Perhaps the likes of Beckenbauer, Maradona and Zidane occasionally did? Perhaps?

But it doesn’t seem a reasonable expectation for nearly all players. Ødegaard and Saka had blinders yesterday. Neither had a perfect game.

Many players have games where they don’t make mistakes xhaka less so. I’m sure I gave him credit after the spurs game this year. Anyways enough about the guy you always want to talk about him.

I think it’s so rare for players to not make mistakes it barely ever happens. As I said, Saka and Ødegaard both had blinders yesterday. I didn’t think either was perfect. I was tempted to mention Xhaka’s Tottenham game. I don’t remember you praising him. What I think happened is you didn’t mention him. For me that isn’t praise. It’s simply realising to moan would look idiotic.

The primary reason I discuss him so much is reacting to your unfair and over the top criticisms. I don’t think he’s that interesting as a player or person really. Apparently Xhaka spoke very well at some AST do recently but I couldn’t comment on it, like I did with the AST Mertesacker talk, because I didn’t bother watching it. Surely that shows I don’t always want to talk about him.

When we rate players for individual performances in games defensive players are always treated or viewed more harshly than forward players I think.
Take the Man City game, we probably look at the silly penalty conceded by Xhaka and the silly second booking by Gabriel and can rightly point to both contributing massively to us losing that game, but what about the open goal miss by Martinelli at 1-1, that’s just as important but we focus more on defensive mistakes.

I can’t think of an Arsenal example but say you win a game 3-1, you’re 3 forwards score one each but miss countless other chances and in the last minute a defender lunges in and gives away a penalty having had an otherwise faultless game. People will likely put more of a black mark against the defender than the strikers.

Kane overtook Henry in the all time prem scoring lousy last night as he moved to 176 prem goals (Henry got his at a better goals/games ratio), Shearer is on 260 prem goals so Kane needs another 85 to go ahead. In the last 4 seasons before this Kane is averaging 20 goals a season, it may be unlikely for him to keep that rate up in to his 30’s so I would say Kane needs the rest of this season and a further 5 seasons at 17+ goals to overtake Shearer. At the start of that 5th season Kane will be 33. I think it is a record that massively motivated Kane, the guy went on rb to swear on his daughters life that he touched the ball so he could take a goal off his team mate, I think he will do it but it will depend on injuries.

Everton we’re woeful last night but they played directly in to Spurs strength. Everton tried to press high (and didn’t do it well) and played a high defensive line with a set of defenders who have very little pace or athleticism. Absolute tactical suicide. Arteta needs to be very careful how we set up against them. Thankfully we have much quicker and better 1v1 defenders.
Spurs have Man U away next and I think the arrogance of Man U at home will lead them to try to attack and adopt a unstructured high press and Spurs will hit on the counter at tear slow Maguire apart. If I was Man U I’d play deeper, keep the full backs compact and have Fred and McTominey sitting in front, then use the individual skill and pace of Bruno, Sancho, elanga, rashford on their own counter attack

I'm sure Southgate will stick with Pickford as in truth he hasn't ever really let England down but for me Ramsdale is the better GK despite not being up to the standards he set earlier in the season. Saka should be an absolute shoe in for one of the attacking positions in the England team despite the wealth of talent England has in those positions. I also think there should be a serious discussion about Ben White not just being in the squad but in the starting 11 - particularly if Southgate goes with his bnack 3 formation. What English CB is playing better than Ben White right now? Stones? Maguire? Coady? Mings? not sure which others have been in recent squads.

Spurs two best players are clearly Son and Kane. I think their next two best are Kulusevski and Romero, both are technically on loan, Spurs paid £10m for the Kulusevski loan - and will have to pay a combined £75m to sign both permanently. I always think that is an interesting part to loan deals, because when you make them permanent you're spending a lot of money to not actually improve your squad - you just maintain it. Conte will pressure Levy for a big transfer outlay in the summer - if he even stays that long - I just can't see it happening for them.

See this is the stuff that makes me laugh. Someone says something, it’s gets repeated and repeated and accepted as standard. How has Ramsdale gone off the boil ? A misplaced goal kick on Sunday. The 2nd goal? What white losing it on the edge of his 6 yard box. How’s that his fault.

We’ve taken 25 points from our last 30. He can’t be doing that badly.

If Kane does eventually overtake Shearer in the Premier League scoring chart, I won’t actually begrudge his record even if he does it at Tottenham. Indeed, if it is at Tottenham I’ll give him even more credit for it.

To date every Premier League goal Kane has scored was for Tottenham. He played a few games for Norwich on loan in the Premier League but didn’t score for them. He got a few goals for Orient, Millwall and Leicester while on loan to them, but none were in the Premier League.

Shearer scored for both Southampton and Blackburn as well as Newcastle in the Premier League. If Kane stays at Tottenham and breaks Shearer’s record with them, as I say I’ll give him credit for that. Even though it’s Tottenham. A magnificent player in my view.

EDIT: To be technically correct, when Shearer played for Southampton it was before the top tier of English club football was known as the Premier League. It was Division One in Shearer’s Southampton days.

Ramsdale is still doing very well for us but in my opinion, and others on the forum, he’s not quite hitting the heights of earlier in the season.
And yes I do think he was partly at fault for the second goal, not the primary fault because the ball should never have got there but it should have been harder for sissoko to score than he made it for him. I’m talking about Ramsdale performing at 8/10 now compared to 9/10 earlier in the season, I’m clearly not saying he’s a poor player. But equally we can’t just judge every player as playing fantastic just because we’re winning games. Individual performances can be analysed within the team winning.

Blaming him for either goal Sunday is incredibly incredibly harsh. Micro analysis at its finest

We haven’t had a David De Gea moment from him yet at all. It might be a thing about the way people view goalkeepers these days that I don’t understand because when Linekers shot brushed through seaman’s hands in that semi it was an obvious mistake but forgivable yet these days Leno seemed unjustly criticised frequently and now Ramsdale

You are spot on about micro analysis. It is a product of multiple TV replays from various angles. It inevitably finds a guilty party to explain away any incident or goal. I prefer the old saying that the ball is round and can run anywhere, meaning the game will always hold surprises. Arguably the frailty shown by individual players is as important for entertainment as their strengths.

Absolutely

Every once in a while you just need to shrug your shoulders and say that didn’t run for us. You could lambast Ben white for letting sissoko in but he’s been a very good player for us this season and seemed to make an honest mistake of getting his legs in a mix so he kind of tumbled forward ahead of the ball.

2 players who have served us very well this season.

I don’t think Ramsdale or any keeper would survive making a mistake like David Seaman did in the semi v spurs that time or in Paris v Zaragoza. Benefit of the doubt doesn’t exist anymore

It seems like you’ve taken my comment that I don’t think Ramsdale is quite hitting the heights of performance he did earlier in the season and put words in my mouth and created your own argument from it.
If you like to look at goals we concede and just go ‘it’s one of those things’ then fair enough, I prefer to look at areas we can improve and will look at the goals we concede with a critical eye. Of course my opinion counts for nothing. I’m also pretty sure you wouldn’t give someone like Xhaka the benefit of the doubt for a perceived mistake he may make leading to a goal and potentially ignore the strong aspects of his play and importance to the current team that he still brings.

This is the opinion of Stan Collymore who is paid for his opinions on football. He says if Arsenal finish top 4 and Palace finish 10th, Arsenal should sack Arteta and hire Vieira!

Piffle from Collymore. Right down there with the sort of inane nonsense that Merson comes out with. It’s quite remarkable that they get paid for what they do.

No I understand what you are saying and my comments don’t entirely relate to the observations you made but I disagree there’s been a drop off fundamentally and I also disagree that he was at fault for the goal like you are suggesting. On xhaka no comment apart from his brain farts are frustratingly obvious to all men, women and animals

There was a time not so long ago when you looked through our squad and struggled to see much sell on value. We don’t want to sell our best players but we have to be realistic that top class players want to win things, hopefully that’s with us, but if not then we must have that value in the players.
Taking everything in to account I don’t think it is hyperbole to say that Saka is a £100m player right now.

He's paid to 'entertain', not for his football wisdom.

Sort of footballing versions of Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones. Only a windup merchant could talk such drivel.

Or a Gleiber forumite.

So the red kit shorts on Sunday against Watford, was a commercial marketing ploy by Addidas in partnership with the club, to test the waters to see if the all red kit would be a success.

Another champions league hat trick for that past it has been Lewandowki

*%^@ off Lewandowki stay away from our club

Really ?

Well it looked terrible and it didn’t look like an Arsenal kit. More like Bayern or someone. Just awful

Obviously people have short memories: let’s buy an ageing striker for silly money who does score and pay him absolutely silly wages. A player who in this case has won a number of medals already and is starting to think about a big payday in pre- retirement land. And when his form drops we can pay him to go away. Where have I heard that before.

[quote="TOP GUN"]
Really ?
Well it looked terrible and it didn’t look like an Arsenal kit. More like Bayern or someone. Just awful[/quote]

That's what the kit first looked like was a Bayern kit.