THe problem is Welbeck, Walcott and Mertesacker are supposed to be the big boys.

Our first 11 is pretty good. Our squad is weak. Whoever replaces the manager has a lot of work to do. WE are finally approaching the point where he will be leaving the club in a worse state comparatively than when he came onboard.

Very few arguments can be made in his favour

Give him away. He won’t go though will he. Who else would be stupid enough to offer him £7.3 million a year so he can go and get a few more tatts and a stupid beard and haircut?

VAR would have certainly resolved that one in our favour.

Wenger can cling to that. Please can a reporter ask him some serious questions about the defence and what he does on the training pitch....oh what’s the point. Wenger thinks he can get by with a £2m bargain bucket CB from Bolton whilst our rivals actually look to improve their team by doing something radical like buying a player better than anyone they currently have!

Walcott has made 400 appearances for Arsenal and is still not a starter.

I don't care how they feel..I DO care about the kids that played...

When Sanchez and Özil go the comparison with what wenger took over and what he’ll leave us with is vast.
The back 5. Bergkamp, Wright, Merson. Ok the midfield wasn’t up to much but it was still better than coq and elneny

Is our first 11 that good? They still leak goals like a sieve and have no defensive clue and are awful without the ball. The front 3 are good but 2 of them are off.

This squad and first 11 will need £300m (conservative estimate) to bring it back to something not resembling an embarrassment

I thought he got to do a retake as the first one was a goal ?

Reminder:

Wenger thinks all those players are better than Lucas Perez

Nope. It becomes a free kick to us the moment that he plays it a second time.

Nothing wrong with buying players Like Holding as young back-ups. Its retaining has beens, never were's and never replacing the perennially injured that has done for us. The fact is, our second string is worse than half the reserve teams in the division.

Yes. That is screwed up

Wenger OUT!!!!!!!

.
No genuine Arsenal supporter should even mention the double hit or be screaming about the ref ... okay so it was wrong but he slipped it wasn't intentional ...smacks of sour grapes

We were in short totally outplayed ......not by a superior team ... but a better coached team .

Their manager was shouting instructions throughout ; Bould never even got off his fat arse .

It's in our DNA to f*** around , even down to ten men and 4 - 2 down we did the same


Our forward passing is WOEFUL . Mertesacker pass to gift them their 4th unbelievable , Holding worst game of his career totally rattled by the youngest kid on the pitch

Could we straight swap Walcott plus 20 million for Brereton .
Well done Forest .

Decent interview from Wenger at last.

You are correct sir. The commentators said it was a retake on a double hit but it isn't.

"The player taking the penalty kick may not play the ball a second time until it has touched another player. (Interpretation: he MAY play the ball and attempt to score if the goalkeeper or another player has touched it, but not if just bounces back off the post or crossbar; the kicker must not touch it unless another player has touched it).

If, after the penalty kick has been taken the kicker touches the ball a second time (except with his hands, which is a direct free kick penalty) before it has touched another player, an indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team, the kick to be taken from the place where the infringement occurred."

I haven’t spotted anyone on the forum suggesting that refs or double kicks affected the outcome of the game. We were, as you say, awful.

What did he say?

and for all that wonderful encyclopedic explanation ......I'd point out we still would have lost 3 - 2

In a nutshell Forest wanted it more - he gave them some credit at least rather than just moaning. Didn't give an opinion on the pens. He seemed genuinely saddened (not that I felt especially sorry for him over that as this is entirely his doing and has had every opportunity to avoid it).

His tone and manner was just better and he didn't snipe at the journo either which I also hate.

I didn't say effecting the outcome .... but Rich is doing his usual scream about the ref , with Lomekian moaning about the decision .

No -one has mentioned that Nelson dived .... oops sorry not dived " adapted to give us a better advantage " for the free kick that brought us back to 1 - 1 .

He got a different perspective sitting in the stand ... probably heard a few Forest comments .

If he'd been in the dugout , getting his rocks off with the fourth official he might have been his normal self .

And Joel Campbell

Yes you may be right there. Looked to me like the 4th pen was actually two footed rather than double hit not sure what the rules say about that!!! Don't really care much though. We are a club in deep crisis and no amount of nonsense about northern refs is going to change that.

Not quite sure what you mean by that but don't worry I've kind of stopped caring. Discussing individual refs or regional origins - and I thought (hoped) Hoy's tongue was a little way in his cheek here - given what is going on at the club seems fairly pointless.

It isn't. It has weaknesses but there are still decent players there. The problem is that they play the exact same way as the first 11 and the first 11 attempt to play like Barcelona. Our lack of a cohesive defensive set-up is depressing. We are an embarrassment without the ball.

Then you have a wonderful young player like AMN being played at left back when he should be getting a run in his natural position in midfield. Also, Mertesacker is finished. Fine player in his day but he is gone.

Hold on. I just made the point that the ref missed the double kick on the spot kick. Not once said that this single decision or any other ref decision cost us the game - that would be absurd.
Irrespective of how arsenal play or what we do or don’t deserve from the game I still think it is valid to discuss aspects of the game where someone thinks the ref made the wrong decision. The penalty double kick was an interesting one because it happens so rarely, that it would have gone to VAR if it were available and interestingly for me that the pundits and commentator on my feed initially said he might order a retake....showing they didn’t know the rules.
I think the ref and linesmen were unsure what happened, why have the discussion otherwise. Refs have a tough job but some decisions are easier than others, at penalties they have very few things to look at and officiate compared with open play.
Arsenal lost and deserved to lose. The double kick penalty felt like being kicked when we were down. I don’t understand some fans notion that because we played badly we shouldn’t complain or be annoyed if the ref makes a mistake against us. It doesn’t change the result but it adds to my disappointment that I feel there are far too many refs not up to the required standard.

A resignation speech?.

Today also shows how poor the opening rounds of the Europa League are!

Disgusting performance. Disgusting selection, by all means make changes but at least have some of the Calvary on the bench.

Taking out the youngsters from that team, how many of them should have been moved on some time ago?
Staggering that debuchy is still with us, and even if we couldn’t shift him that he’s second choice RB.
Walcott should have been moved on years ago - he reached his limit.
If elneny was signed by another top club he would have been seen as a cheap experiment that hasn’t worked and moved on to make way for a better player rather than flogging a dead horse.
Ospina. How is he here and Szczesny is with Juve for £10m!?
I know he’s had some good performances but I’m not yet convinced by holding, I’m always nervous by any defender who doesn’t have pace. Stick chambers in the same boat and add that he just doesn’t seem comfortable on the ball
Mertesacker should have been moved in to his coaching role sooner. Him and holding got dominated by an 18 year old! How often does a hard working but limited striker do that to our CBs?

I don’t think Wenger sees the state of the squad he has built, or the state of the squad he will leave us with when he goes (oh happy day!)

Imagine wenger does leave this summer, a new manager comes in and finds
No long term gk, and potentially no back up
A decent RB who needs coaching on the defensive side but no reserve RB
Two good LB but needing to buy another in a year or so
Two young CB not ready for this level
Two senior CB, 1 who doesn’t want to be here and one who is not young and has to nurse injuries
Two centre mids (coq, elneny) not up to standard
3 other CM all with their flaws and unlikely to be good enough for a title winning CM
One good striker and one good plan b striker
3 utility attacking forwards (iwobi, Theo, welbeck) who aren’t good enough for his first 11
A very promising young player AMN. One other youngster who is further behind but has promise Nelson

That is assuming Özil and Sanchez go. Wilshere stays. Ramsey and welbeck will be 12 months from leaving on a free.

What a rebuild! Pep just had to rebuild a defence and it took £150m
We need to rebuild an entire squad!

They look spectacularly stupid decisions and not in hindsight because it seemed wrong at the time. Especially letting campbell move whilst ox wasn't signing a new contract. A remarkable mess

I don't think Perez or Campbell have set the world light this season, though I haven't checked.

Got to be said almost the entirety of that second string side should be binned; they just aren't good enough. Hold onto the younger guys (Nelson, Niles, Iwobi and Holding) even though they had stinkers today. Ospina also had a good game to be fair, nothing he could do about the goals.

But the rest of them...absolutely rubbish.

Walcott setting the early tone as usual with an appalling cross shot/pass (whatever!) in the opening minutes.

Agree with what you say, but bar perhaps spurs, we have a considerably worse 2nd string than all the teams above us, and more than half of the EPL has multiple players in their second string that are better than the equivalents in ours.

Beyond our first 11, only Jack when fit, Monreal, Giroud can claim to be clearly among the better back-ups in the division. Welbeck and Walcott can be effective in the right set up on form, but we've seen no form from either this season, and the rest are the likes of Iwobi, Holding, Chambers and AMN who aren't really ready yet despite talent, or people like Le Coq, Elneny or Debuchy, who are fine to be parachuted in individually, but as soon as you throw more than a couple in, you signifcantly weaken the side.

Even when we had no money at all, there was a better job at youth recruitment, so that Even if we wanted to rest our entire first 11 and first choice subs, we could still put out Bendtner, Vela, Denilson, Diaby, Djourou, Clichy, and others who I forget. None of them kicked on, but as u21 options they had the talent and attitude to perform well in these kind of games. Nelson, Willock & Nketiah have a lot of potential, but none are physically ready for this level really, and to have no one ahead of them aged older than 18, bar the established internationals is a massive failure of recruitment.

Lots of stills doing the rounds of Arsenal’s defending for the first forest goal. I will be amazed if anyone could show me a more amateur set up to defend a free kick from any team this season. There’s a long list but it is probably the worst piece of arsenal defending I’ve seen all season because we had all the time we wanted to set up exactly how we wanted and not one player spotted what was wrong.
There will be zero reprucussions for it as well. Every other manager in the league would have those same players doing set piece drills for a week until they got it in their thick skulls

Got exactly what we deserved.

Said it before but rather than find the current situation depressing, I honestly find it fascinating. For what it’s worth I honestly believe he’s gone in the summer. Have done for some time.

"It’s pretty easy. The manager made a lot of changes, gave a lot of trust to players who haven’t played a lot recently and I don’t think anybody justified their selection today. That sums it up I think." Mertesacker told the club's website.

"It’s difficult. In the first half we played in the park a little bit. We were not precise, especially in the final third. We couldn’t create a lot of chances. In the second half there was a little bit more spirit from ourselves, but in the duels you could see that they out-battled us and that little momentum never really changed.

"When we scored to make it 3-2 and when he mis-kicked the penalty, obviously we expressed it to the ref but he didn’t listen. It’s difficult to take because for those players who played today, that was probably a last chance to show up and show the manager that they’re ready to play more games. It’s not the case anymore."

"Yes [it was a double contact]. It would’ve been a free-kick for us. You could clearly see it, that’s why we shouted to the referee. He didn’t have any explanation and that’s on him. They obviously spoke to each other, and nobody saw the incident. David saw it and all the players did too."

Me too. Only way he can save his job is if he wins the Europa League, which looks unlikely.

After last summer's mess and him screwing the club around, Gazidis has been building the team to allow Arsenal to finally work in a modern way. Wenger's internal power has been cut, and his team are, the odd game apart, playing poorly.

Tick...tock...

You can pick the bones out of every goal concession and I've just watched it again below and of course he's been given a free run across the box there. Looks to me as if Debuchy should have been more aware of him. Sometimes you need to credit the opposition and for me that's also a great delivery and a clever run and finish. I've seen worse. In fact, for me the second goal is worse as despite the cracking finish we've made a huge number of errors there to concede from a throw in, culminating in a terrible header into danger from Walcott and the midfield completely MIA when the ball lands to yer forest man to hit the shot.
https://www.footbie.com/video/nottingha ... nal-is-out