Agreed 100%

Arsenal had between 9% and 14% possession in the second half and didn't manage a shot on target all game.

Agreed it is a straight red and the sort of foul we’d be screaming at for a red of it was against us. My main gripe with these is that not everyone gets a red for this but we always do. Doesn’t mean the decision against us is wrong but the consistency is terrible. We saw it in this game with the hand to the face of chambers.

Brentford is the only game you can fault the squad and Arteta over in my humble opinion. Chelsea and City are miles ahead of us. We are a mid table squad with a few new faces, injuries and are unsettled at the moment. Expecting results over teams who we would likely have gotten nothing better than a draw playing our best football is asking for a bit too much.

Nobody is expecting results, but you should expect at least half decent performances. Foul them, kick them around, do anything to disrupt their flow, at least try to put up a fight. Don't just back away and let them have a free run at it.

I don't think it's the results, it's the performances.

Every game the players make horrendous decisions. There no cohesive play, no inventive play. Everything in attack is so structured and rehearsed while in defence no one has a clue what is going on. Which is the exact opposite of how a good football team should work.

No shots on target again as it's not the first time and has happened against much worse opposition. Truly hopeless that not even 1 layoff and first time strike can be generated. Or a cutback to the edge of the area for someone to belt it.

Arteta has the wrong players for whatever game he's trying to play and the wrong plan for the players he does have. Such a mess.

Arsenal are still paying for keeping Wenger for 2-3 season to long. Having players like Xhaka, Mustafa, Özil, Kolasinac and Elnenny on big contracts completely hamstrung the club.

It's then been compounded by Sanelhi/Edu (who knows who is responsible for what between them) coming in and repeating the same mistakes with Pépé (good player but not 70m good), Mari, Willian, Cédric. There is so much money sunk into these players and the club can't move them on.

Compare that to the squads Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United have built. Many players on their benches would walk into the Arsenal team. It's going to be a long road back now. Liverpool managed it, so it is possible.

Not yet, but you'd think that anything less than 5 points by the end of September would make it hard to defend Arteta. In my view, that perfomance lost Arteta a month of grace.

But Liverpool did it when Chelsea and United (and Arsenal) were going through bad patches. City were the only really powerful team. Now the top 4 looks set and even the second tier of teams competing for the Europa league places looks tough. West Ham, Spurs, Leicester. The way back looks a lot bleaker.

The thing today is we conceded 3 goals to crosses when we’re playing 3 CB and the goals were scored by City players not over 6ft. That is just rank bad defending by players who are not good enough, and not good enough to be back ups either in my opinion.

Injuries right through the spine of the team and we put out what is a championship level defence at best.

Of course Arteta should be doing better but when you pick a back 5 and the first goal is scored as a back post header by Gundogan from a floated cross what can a coach do other than not pick those players- but who else is there.

From when wenger left and for every season since I’ve always said we needed to churn at least 2/3rds of the players in the squad. Until then you can’t totally judge a manager, you’re only able to judge him on how the players react to him - the old, ‘he’s lost the dressing room’ which is of course enough to sack a manager irrespective of the quality of the players.

I fail to understand why Kolasinac, a player we have been trying to offload for over 12 months, plays out of position ahead of Mari. Is Mari so bad that Kolasinac is a better choice? If so why the *%^@ is Mari still at the club? Cédric is *%^@ and will always be *%^@. For *%^@* sake just play AMN at RB.

Arteta will probably not last the season, but the truth is obvious. The majority of the squad are so poor that we are unable to give them away. The market does not lie.

Right now i would rather play players from the U23 than the likes of Cédric and Kolasinac.

I don’t think it would take that much money to buy some decent u21 championship level players and replace our 6-7 weakest players.

Do you make things worse getting rid of Arteta? Who will be the interim manager? If or when the club decides to get rid of Mikel they better have someone to come in right away. An interim manager from within won't be respected enough I fear by the senior players and we'll end up bottom half of the table. 12th to 15th is my guess.

While all this is going I guarantee you with no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Kroenke's main focus is the Rams preseason game tonight at Denver. Peel away everything and it starts at the top.

The goal at Brentford?

He doesn’t come through other players to get the ball aggressively enough. He’s more rooted to the spot at crosses than Stepanovs was.

Exactly.

Also the first goal today was the exact same goal Sterling scored against us last year. Holding missing his header for both.

Just too many defenders at Arsenal simply do not have the ability to play at this level.

If we sign a new RB we can put out RB, White, Gabriel, Tierney which feels passable. But then you’ve got Cédric, Chambers, Bellerin, holding, Mari, Kolasinac backing that up which is absolutely atrocious! I’m leaving Tavares off the list as we’ve not seen enough

People say this is Arteta’s team now but the team today only had Cédric and Ødegaard as Arteta signings I think.

Fair point.

But Arteta selected the players, and more than one selection today raises serious questions about his judgment.

I agree Decaf. As I said, before the game I believed Arteta had until Christmas. Now I’m not so sure. Indeed, if we lose our next league match, home to Norwich, I think he could find his P45 in his in-tray pretty soon after the game. I don’t expect us to lose against Norwich; I see them as very likely to go down. But if it happens, and it’s a long way from being impossible, that could be curtains for him.

Do you recall mentioning Huddersfield and I responded by pointing out that they had got stuffed 1-5 in their opening game.

Well they’re unbeaten since then and are 4-0 up now. The way things are going we’ll be swapping places with them at the end of season.

Jesus wept with those defenders in front of him bloody Seaman or Jennings would be in two minds whether to come for the ball or not. I said Leno had a decent game. In keeping the score down, he did.

I didn’t even say brilliant or a similar word. I said decent and how anyone could claim he wasn’t beats me. He’d get my vote for Arsenal’s player of the match. Who else deserves it?

All the criticism is completely justified - that was woeful. But, given that arguably our three biggest signings of the last 12 months - White, Gabriel and Partey: potential anchors of the team - were all out, have a look at the angle taken by The Guardian, painting poor old striker-less City as the depleted club. Is there even a mention of our Covid or injury issues? Nah.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... tch-report

Because at the level he’s playing, decent isn’t good enough.

My main point about him though is that he isn’t aggressive enough or, if you prefer, he’s too passive. I think he would make an excellent keeper if he had that in his character. Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

Mind you, you make a fair point about the quality of the defenders in front of him. I accept that issue makes Lenolook worse than he is.

Okay I think good is a more accurate word than decent today. I was being cautious in only using decent. He kept the score down today. For a goalkeeper to be, in my view, our man of the match in a 5-0 defeat suggests to me you’d be spending your time more fruitfully moaning about others today.

Couldn't be too much worse than bottom of the table and not a goal scored yet.

I think White has been quite lucky to have missed the Chelsea and City games. The overriding impression I got from the Brentford game, and from what I’ve read about him, is that his strength isn’t in the air. If that’s true, not playing the last two league games has avoided that being exposed further.

Lots of awful stats from today’s game but the one that stands out for me is Arsenal players contested 66 duels and lost 40 of them. Now in an evenly balanced game the duels in terms of whether you’re attacking or defending might be evenly split 50/50, but as City had most of the ball you would assume most of those 66 duels were Arsenal as the defensive side of more of the duels. If you lose 2/3rds of duels as a defensive team you’re massively lacking fight and skill. Woeful

Very good point. I doubt much would have changed from the result but I’d much rather our £50m CB wasn’t on the pitch for either game

Wishing, a CB we splashed out 50 million on, wasn't on the pitch is pretty damning.

After every defeat I look at the squad and despair. Xhaka has shown once again he cannot be trusted in central midfield and we have Partey, a rookie and then Xhaka and Elneny - neither of whom should be anywhere near our club.

At right back we have Bellerin, chambers, Cédric and AMN if he even wants to play there. Not one of them is good enough, and considering of the 4 only chambers and Cédric want to be here I don’t think either of those is good enough to even be a back up.

Then in to central defence and it feels a bit similar to central midfield. White we don’t know about yet, Gabriel we like but he had some dips in form last year then holding and mari are suitable back ups for a team content to finish mid table.

And before the season even started we were talking about our main problem being scoring goals and we’ve added nothing to that side of our game because we had Ødegaard last year we’ve just made it permanent.

So as well as the huge problems through the heart of the team and at right back we’re going to have (or do have) a striker issue which needs to get sorted in the next year or so.

£130m this summer which might bear fruit in a few years but if we spend £130m each year alone we might actually get to having a credible team in about 3-4 years time assuming I’d guess at least 4 out of every 5 signings be considered a success. So much work still to be done with this squad

Don’t give up. That squad should do well in the Championship.

Although they will have to learn to win individual duels.

Brentford was the only team I thought we should score against. If we had lost both the preceding 2 games by a scrappy 1-0, lucky goals, wed still be without a win in either.

There is no major indication from the end of last season through the preseason we'd improve our attack. If anything a little worse from players missing due to injury or needing a rest. The team is unsettled. We are playing players out of position and secondary players who are barely good enough for mid table sides. It wouldn't surprise me if City and Chelsea end up winners or runners up. The latter is good for 3rd or better as far as I can tell.

We were a mess going into the season. WBA played kids. Other than a confident boost, there wasn't much else to take from that game. To be fair, the squad started brightly. The goal took the wind out of our sails. Would probably have been a different game without that goal and that goal was given up having a weak back 3. Our first choice back 3 would have had problems with them. Expecting that back 3 to keep out City is...well, I'm laughing while writing this. The first two goals were from dead ball set pieces which is coachable. Were they from open play, it would be a tad bit worse for me.

My guess is after the transfer window closes, we have a settled XI, we will start to see some improvement slowly by slowly. We'll play badly for a little while still. Then its really about Arteta. The board may not see it that way but that's how I see things.

From top to bottom we have issues.

May stay that way with an interim manager.

Scoring goals I think is down to the forwards not getting any service. Or much at all. How many times did Aubameyang get a ball in a half way decent position for the first 30 minutes or so?

I like White. I think he and Gabriel will make a decent partnership given time.

Worst Arsenal set up that I have ever seen. We don’t look like a football team. We are a joke, and we’ve never been close to that. We might have had some poor players before but at least they played in a style that was recognisable as football.

Yeah - I was gonna go for the dart one but went with dice. ;-)