Should wait until the 70th minute to make subs... that's when the subs can make most impact with tiring opposition players.

Is it just me or do opposition players quite often take a dig at Arsenal in their post match comments when they have got a positive result? I just don’t see these sorts of quotes for other teams.

Below is the quote from one of Brighton’s players after last nights gane.

"When we put them under pressure in the right moments, there were a few frailties coming out in their style of play."

In some of the recent defeats for Man U, city and Chelsea I have never seen a post match quite saying anything other than positive things about their OWN style of play and the things their team had done well. There is never any ‘we knew they were weak at set pieces.....or we knew they faulted at the end of games and we could take advantage’

Maybe I’m being far too precious, this doesn’t keep me up at night, but I do think we are an easy target and still carry that from wenger’s time where we seemed to be completely fair game for any player to tell us exactly how they beat us and how they ran further, worked harder and tackled harder.

Yes you are being a bit "precious "
They say we are weak because we are weak . We have a mini pirahna in Torriera and Sokratis seems to have a bit of mettle but the rest are pretty flaky .

We have no spine a la Keown , Bould , Adams, Dixon, Parlour , Winterburn .... Pires , Henry , Petit , Vieira , Wiltord

Any old style front man gives us problems ..... Feeney , Long , Austin , Murray , Zamora , Ings

Most of our blokes wouldn't look out of place in the Luton Boys Choir .

No -one screams and yells when we let in these sloppy goals , there is nice polite clapping for every wayward overhit pass .

Surprisingly we haven't twigged the 'secret ' that undoes us on regular ocassions ...ATTACK AT PACE .

We have too many cruise o matic personal ; all hoping for something good when the stars re align in the right order

...... rather than like that Korean doodle for Spurs who busts a gut to make things happen .

The club need to find a way of getting some extra cash to invest in the team. If we only have around 50 million to spend per summer then Emery’s reign at arsenal will be dwarfed with problems he inherited from the previous regime.

Özil pissed me off yesterday, he simply doesn’t want to track back and whilst I think he probably has to start I can understand emery getting angry and hooking him.

If you are looking for a goal why would you take off Özil and Lacazette? Is it making subs for the sake of it just to do something?

I like this. I may buy it as a holiday gift to myself.

We are a stale club with a stale owner and stale ground, we've got rid of the stale manager but that alone isn't enough, watching Arsenal is a chore not a pleasure.

Arsenal - the corprate club that thinks of cash first - ironic really that being out of the CL long term (caused by our tight fisted approach), which seems assured now, unless we win the EL, is going to end up making us a loss making machine, at least until Kroenke forces the wage bill down to keep his investment solvent.

Emery will be the same Emery that was managing Valencia and Sevilla - working on a tight budget trying to get top 4, anyone who thinks he's here to win us the title etc. is having a giraffe, it's not happening in year 2, 3 or 5.

Can they seriously find enough dim-witted morons to fill those extra club level seats to watch us play FC Plyovdid in the Thursday night losers cup?, if they can we are truly f*cked.

We've got some pretty sharp cookies in this country ...... " I think I smell gas , hold on I'll confirm there is a leak somewhere ... let's light a match ............ KABOOM

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/arti ... d=12183146


NZ playing Sri Lanka in cricket .. Kiwi fast bowler Trent Boult was 0 wickets for 20 runs overnight .

Next day he comes out and gets 6 wickets for a further ten runs .

Not sure where the stale ground comes in ... the grass is still growing .
Biggest stumbling block for me is the old hangover from Wenger final years .... the need to throw in the unecessary pass in every build up

..... but doing the sea weed on the rock impression the last couple of results for Petro $$$$$$$$ Unlimited has shown losing to Palace at home and Leicester away shows that this is a very , very competetive league .

Another top display by Felipe Anderson.

Not sure how much we have spent this season but if we can continue to build the squad with players like Torreira, Guendouzi, Leno and Sokratis (plus Lichtsteiner), don't see why we cannot seriously challenge for the title in the next couple of years.

West Ham paid £40m for him. We couldn’t afford it. Fulham spent £100m this summer, we can’t afford that either.

Atsenal’s Budgets compared to some teams just never add up for me. I mean I know our wage bill must be a lot bigger than Fulham or West Ham but look at the incomings we’ve got compared to those two. Must be £25m more in shirt sponsor each season alone!

Emery charged by the FA for kicking a water bottle. Yet we see a Burnley player put his studs on Guendouzi’s chest, Fellaini pull Guendouzi by the hair (for which they already set a 3 game ban precedent) and outrageous diving by salah and others and nothing is done. FA - awful

Apparently there was a clause in Oxlade-chamberlain’s arsenal contract that meant we had to pay Southampton £10k every time Ox played 30 mins + in a game. No wonder frugal wenger made all those 71st minute subs

Pity we lost AOC. I guess he didn't fancy being second fiddle to Bellerin. Speaking of whom, our attack is sorely missing him.

Going back over the last 10 seasons Liverpool have a net transfer spend of £324m, Arsenal’s is £310m.

Liverpool have been able to spend big money because they sold sensibly as well. Torres £50m, Suarez £75m, Sterling £50m, Coutinho £140m. That is £315m alone. In that same time I think we have sold players of this calibre, Sanchez, Van Persie, Fabregas, (maybe Nasri at the time) and only received £80m for them.

Now throw in that for bang average players like benteke, Danny ward, ibe, Joe allen, borini that received £80m for those 5. This is a list of players Arsenal sold for £80m, Ramsey, Welbeck, szczesny, Sagna, clichy, Gervinho, Perez, gabriel, gnabry, Wilshere, Giroud, Gibbs, Fabianski, Campbell, chamakh, arshavin, denilson.....there were more low or free transfers like rosicky, diary, artery, podolski that I didn’t include because those players reached the end of their career with us. But the ones I did include went on to play a lot more football and even getting £10m for each of those players would double the amount we received in total. I estimate the true market value of that lot at around £260m minimum

The sales and contract management is far more to blame for our current restricted budget than the purchasing side of things. Every club are going to make a couple of bad purchases, but you can’t afford to have 75% of your sales being bad sales

Good post Rich, agree.

Before our loss recently, I was cautiously optimistic going to Anfield. Thinking draw possibly but we have been known to get good results at Anfield so I though, hmmm...we could sneak a win if not a draw. Now I'm praying for a draw.
One never knows. We may surprise ourselves but Liverpool have got to be thinking title and looking at the table midseason and thinking they would be chasing City at this stage not the other way around. They are out to win it, not draw, so they can maintain their lead over City. It's going to be very tough. If we score first, there is a chance. If we don't, it may be a matter of how bad we lose.

Hoping for the best as any gooner should but.....

Ask if arsenal and liverpool’s Net spend on transfers over the past 8 years has been relatively similar I am still left asking where our money has gone. The clubs wage bills have been similar over that time but arsenal have had far more of the champions league money than Liverpool and have had an extra 15k people for every home game paying more money per ticket. So how can Liverpool invest the same money as us, it doesn’t add up

I doubt we'll get fourth but I see no reason to think the long unbeaten run was a fluke. I didn't watch our last couple of league games so I stand to be corrected ... but it seems to me that its hardly surprising that we are struggling right now considering how thin our defensive resources are at the moment. Sure we don't always look fluid in attack but one cannot be too critical on that front. We score a decent number of goals. I'll be content if we come fifth with a decent point tally. Anything more would be a bonus. Next season is when we should judge. Emery may not have a huge transfer kitty but it will be interesting to how he reshuffles the pack.

They had better commercial deals which we have only closed the gap on recently, plus I don't know if true or not but didn't someone say that Henry put some money in?, you will never see that from Kroenke. Our conservative approach has hamstrung us and will continue to do so because instead of investing to try and get back in the CL we will tighten the purse strings and hope to sell enough players to finance any new ones, basically hoping for Emery to work miracles like Wenger used to (before he went a bit senile).

Tired of this bs now.

Hang on chaps i'm as pissed off as the next man but our defence has been decimated for weeks now and we have been lucky not to drop more points.

Get our defence up to par and we can change things as has been proven to a point.

Indeed. Surely we want these two to play themselves into form? I dont see the plan with these cameo appearances. Im very confident Emery will fix our defence but not so sure about his attacking flair.

2nd half the defence looked flaky but so did the midfield and attack along with some ineffective and strange subs. That 2nd half was the worst I've seen from Arsenal this season and well back to Wengers final years.

I don't blame them. They play the plan a anti Arsenal blueprint over and over again and get results so it's not like they're giving the secret away by gloating about it. The biggest worry is that our results have really stalled in the last month and this way of playing against us is becoming a thing again.

Not to mention some tactical patterns that are emerging. Watch for the cross field balls from Liverpool on any counter and Salah and co could be having a field day waltzing in behind our strung out back 3.

Former Chairman Peter Hill-Wood died today, aged 82.

I think there would be lot more sympathy if he hadn't sold us down the river, as it stands.. whatever.

I'm not particularly confident that he will fix our defence. He has not improved it as yet. His PSG were no great shakes defensively. I thought it would be the first area where we would see an improvement but it hasn't happened.

The one thing he has brought is more grit. We certainly have the look of a team that works harder and fights more.

I agree with regard to the creativity. He has marginalised Özil and Ramsey while Iwobi and Guendouzi are regular starters. He seems to prefer playing an extra centre back over a creative midfielder.

The next two transfer windows will tell us a lot.

I see some reports Özil did not travel with the squad to Liverpool. I think replacing him the other day ended any creativity we had in the match. Just having him on the park requires him to be watched by the opposition & a few of Guendouzi’s good long balls were possible because people have to watch Özil.

He will never be what people want but he is still better than any alternative at the club. Emery might be trying to force him to move but he had better get a really class player in to replace him if the management force a move. Still the whole not travelling with the team may be an attempt to undermine Liverpool’s preparation.

Given the immediate and long term surgery that needs to happen to the squad it wouldn’t surprise me to see the next 3-4 transfer windows follow a very similar pattern in terms of recruitment.

There will be cheap older headsto fill out the squad in areas in dire need of cover and there will also be younger less well known players who Emery will look to build the future of the club around.
The older heads will often seem like questionable signings because we’ll pay £15m for a 30 year old but I think k it will be a case of needs must and not really being able to stash away that £15m for the younger player we really want because the squad needs the bodies. Look at Lichtsteiner and Sokratis for examples of this and we are rumoured to be in for Benega as well

Would be delighted to get Banega, an excellent player who has plenty left to offer.

So Özil has a ‘knee problem’.

Remarkable just how ‘injury prone’ he has become this season. Remarkable that the fans are expected to believe this stuff.

If he is prone to a back injury (which we don’t know one way or the other) then what often follows is everywhere else starts to suffer. How do I know- well 30 years of a similar problem leads to other complications when it plays up. No solution from doctors or specialist. I have a friend with a similar problem.

So all I am saying without a lot more info he may very well be suffering & suffering other injuries as a result. But it could be otherwise. Still let’s see if we play well or not. Özil won’t be the difference. Our defensive effort will determine the result. 0-0 and a point if we perform well defensively. On the other hand. The season is not determined by this game - it is Wolves Southampton & Brighton that are the crap results & all showed how far we are away from achieving a true change.

To be fair, Fiszman is the main reason we were taken over by Kroenke, not Hill-Wood.

Can't see us getting anything today. Our first choice defence is not good enough let alone the makeshift one we are being forced to put out at the moment.

Barring one of those games where we make four chances and score all four or a couple of players score worldies out of nothing it is hard to envisage us getting any kind of result.

The again football is a funny old game.

The Ever Banega rumours are growing in strength. Excellent technical player, a la Cesc, but 30 and not exactly one for the future. Is it really wise to splash £18m on him?

Surely a top quality CB is the priority, with a pacy and creative winger close behind.

We seem to buy what is available rather than what we need? I hope not.

Wolves ahead at Tottenham!

EDIT: Hope I haven't jinxed things. I always look at other people doing similar in a negative way.

Bliss. Wolves have just gone 3-1 up at Tottenham. Not long to go. Fingers crossed.

Excellent. It’s finished.

(Probably as good as it’s going to get for us today)