Thanks for your effort in fixing it

Next 3 league games are all at home because of the city fixture being postponed. We have to win all 3 to stay in with a chance of a europa league place. Newcastle, Everton, West Ham

Yeah lucky for the club because I am sure a few people wanted to vent after that performance. Very hard to see any improvement from Emery's time. Yep, I think we are now in a relegation battle. We needed a result in that game. The only thing to save us will be there are a number of really poor teams but if a few of them get off the carpet and put in a run we will be pushing it uphill big time.

Again thanks for your efforts

Can see lots saying we can't play Özil and Lacazette away from home because they haven't produced for over a year. My thoughts are that if you can't play a player away from home then they shouldn't be at the club. Maybe harsh on lacazette who certainly works hard and is starved of good service but if we can get say £40m for him in the summer I'd sell and go for a younger, dynamic, mobile, flexible striker.

The squad when Wenger left was atrocious, we needed a complete rebuild, and considering wenger left us with players like Ramsey running his deal down and older players like Özil on expensive long contracts and going nowhere there was always going to be a period when things actually got worse after he left. On top of that recruitment both in and out had to be perfect to get us anywhere near back challenging within an acceptable time period. It hasn't.

If you went through the first team squad ruthlessly and for each player gave a first 11, first team squad, not good enough mark against it would be interesting how many of the 25 or so players would fall in to each category. If you base the marks on achieving top 4 it might be more realistic than a title challenging squad.

Away form over the last 2.5 seasons
W 13 D 16 L 22

I was surprised it was even that good

There's an argument for saying not being in the Europa League would be beneficial to the rebuilding process.

We really are starting to lower our expectations. At the moment I just want to see us with 40 points and hopefully we will stay up

I’ve almost given up on Lacazette. I was hoping he’d get a sitter to score and it might get his confidence back. But that first minute chance was a sitter and he missed it. A free header a few yards out and he didn’t even get it that close. He shows little inclination to renew his contract so, along with Aubameyang, I reckon they will both be sold in the summer. I’ve read that Lacazette’s contract expires a year after Aubameyang’s which ends in 2021, but what’s the point in keeping either of them if it means losing them for nothing in the not too distant future?

The question is how much will we get for them. Aubameyang will be 31 in June and Lacazette is approaching his 29th birthday. They’re not spring chickens. I realise it’s the players with much of the control these days about when they’re sold. But their reputations should ensure the interest of clubs they wouldn’t mind joining, and on salaries that satisfy them.

I saw a stat saying Özil hasn’t produced an assist away in 2 years.

If that’s true that’s staggering. As I said last week I can’t see us progressing much whilst he’s still here. His wage is that of 3 other players and whilst he looks slick when he moves the ball about his play is increasingly ineffective. He was great in his first 2 seasons but since then just goes through the motions.

Our midfield needs a complete rebuild. It simply can’t provide any distribution at all. There was a moment yesterday when Xhaka took the initiative to his credit a chipped a ball through to Aubameyang it was a good idea but we see so little of that generally. We miss Ramsey running between the lines. Rip it up and start again. Get players in who are comfortable playing one touch football at a fast pace.

Also let’s be honest we have lost Ramsey, Sanchez and Kosielny all in the last couple of seasons. They just haven’t been replaced adequately, I don’t think anyone could pretend they have. Our team is just a hell of a lot weaker than before.

This a telling stat: between them all so far this season in the PL, Özil Guendouzi Torreira and Xhaka have produced just 4 assists and one goal.

They are just a complete non entity of a midfield. The worst we have had since the morrow, Selley and hillier combination.


If you nullify our full backs you know we won’t create anything. The midfield is too static, don’t have the speed of thought to move it quickly and most of our passing looks totally telegraphed.

For context, so far this season in the PL, Kevin De Bruyne has produced 15 assists and 7 goals on his own.

From Arseblog:

February 9th 2019 - the last time Lacazette scored an away goal.

January 30th 2018 - the last time Özil provided an assist away from home.

The trouble is there aren’t many De Buynes about. They’re not easy to find and unless the youth academy can bring one through we probably couldn’t afford one.

Indeed Bern. De Bruyne is No. 1 and miles ahead in the assists stats because he's head and shoulders above all other midfielders in the PL.

Our best placed player is Pépé with 3 assists - that places him equal 37th. Özil Xhaka Guendouzi and Torreira are all equal 111th.

I can see that but we'd be £40m worse off and it surely would affect recruitment of players

And also the Ox, who seems to be finding a rich vein of form right now.

Dead right. In fact none at all in the Premier League.

This is a good call. He would be one of the first names on the team sheet right now if he had stuck around

I wonder what the bookies have to say about the odds of Liverpool going 1 unbeaten and 2. without dropping points for the remainder of the season?

The latter being infinitely harder of the two but doable.

Sex after Death.

A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other if there is sex after death.
Their biggest fear was that there was no after-life at all.
After a long life together, the husband was the first to die.
True to his word, he made the first contact:
" Marion .... Marion.. "
"Is that you, Bob?"
"Yes, I've come back like we agreed."
"That's wonderful! What's it like?"
"Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have breakfast and then it's off to the golf course.
I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple of more times.
Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots of greens).
Another romp around the golf course, then pretty much have sex the rest of the afternoon.
After supper, it's back to the golf course again. Then it's more sex until late at night.
I catch some much needed sleep and then the next day it starts all over again".
"Oh, Bob! Are you in Heaven?"
"No -- I'm a rabbit somewhere near Minnesota”

Very easy ltg, just look in any phone book in Holland.

I think our attack is good. We just haven't come up with the system and support players to give them the best chances of success.
The team defense is looking better. We will look a different team once the injured players like Tierney and others, and new additions get in the team.

Özil is really the only person who can provide the skill and wide range of passes to attacking players from the midfield. Luiz is probably the second best person. He's better than Xhaka and the others in center midfield at finding attacking players it seems.

I long for Fabregas....hehehe....but that said, I think Ceballos may be useful. He's got the skill set to exploit the potential of the strikers.

When you consider our full backs have been missing most of the season it's no wonder we look so disjointed.

On the point of injuries, heard recently a stat about Liverpools front three, it's quite astonishing. Something like out of around 300 games over the last two seasons they've only been unable to field all three 12 times, I think it was, due to injury.

Both fullbacks and VVD rarely get injured. Milner is still running around like a 20 year old. I'd be a bit suspicious of it, to be honest.

I think I posted that Liverpool front 3 stat recently. It is remarkable. Staying fit is part of the game, part of the make up of a great player, how often do messi and Ronaldo get injured? How often was Henry injured?
The thing for Liverpool is they have had injuries but had stayed injury free in all the key positions and positions that massively influenced the way they play.
If I could choose 3 players to be missing when we played Liverpool it would be tempting to say salah/firminho/Mané but in reality if they lost VVD/Robertson/trent it could be far more damaging to the team not only for the defensive stability but so much of the play and attack comes from those full backs out wide. No other player in the Liverpool team is even close to having the same skill set as them. So origi can replace salah and it’s a down grade but they’ll still play the same way, totally different if you lose the two full backs

Astonishing. Seems to suggest if you have a good system you can cookie cutter put players in there and be very effective. Granted, Liverpool has a pretty good bench. You have have to some level of quality to keep the system effective.

Cheers Warrior.
Good to see Houston no longer has a problem.



You're always on top of it.

Apparently they've been available for every EPL game this season apart from one where Salah was injured, so might be accurate.

Just the one red card will have helped them too.

Leicester and Chelsea season after won the league when they didn't have European competitions to worry about... not expecting us to win the league next season but top 4 is a realistic target.

Just watching the Burnley game again. We had 20 good minutes. Improvement?

3 supposedly easy home games coming up. We need to take maximum points from these. I feel our confidence as a team is low right now. Arteta magic for 9 points?

Regressed

I only saw bits of match of the day/ the big match in the season when Mancini rescued us ( Bernard enters stage right expressing outrage) but I think we had a better midfield in that season. We can stay up because there are some really poor sides around.

In the Burnley game we reverted to type (enter Kiwi stage left reassured me it was over) could not play out, Luiz playing to others near the penalty area who were in a worse position, not poor passing but absolute terrible passing and many players hiding for at least half the game. Triangles were something they learnt about in school but they had no idea how it applied to the team. Burnley created numerous very high quality chances. We did not. I am starting to believe that no more than 4-5 players at the club should survive in the reorganisation. Plus a couple of the young ones would be okay as back ups for the transition but that is all.

Law of averages says we will win some games soon but I am not convinced of any real change. The downwards spiral since we sold Fabergas continues.

The main reason we could have gone down that season was Mancini. Our survival should not under any circumstances be put down to him, regardless of his joke telling. The funniest thing about Mancini wasn’t his sense of humour. It was his performances as a player.

We had Ball and Brady then and none of our current midfielders compare to them. Storey was around too, another fine player. We had also signed Cropley who was a good player but sadly he didn’t play much as he suffered a serious injury. No, midfield wasn’t the big problem. It was mainly Mancini.

Alex Cropley. I’d quite forgotten that name. I was very excited when he signed for us.

It was a leg break and then a repeat of that break that did for him wasn’t it?
Shades of Diaby there.