It’s encouraging to have some communication from one of our owners. It makes a huge change from Silent Stan. Looking forward to more of that.

http://www.skysports.com/share/12460860

I see Ranieri is complaining we should have given them the ball back just before the goal. Of course I'm biased but if your tactic all afternoon is to foul and disrupt and feign injury to try to get play stopped all the time then I'm glad we didn't give it back to them. They should have been down to 10 men long before they were with a competent ref in charge.

West Ham lead Liverpool again, 2-1. They are a seriously good side and good for a top 4 challenge. Injuries will be key for them because they have so many players that I dont think they can get anywhere near replacing in that 11. Rice+Soucek as a CM partnership and Antonio up front. Hopefully they go deep in the Europe league and tiredness and injuries kick in.

With the way Man U are playing and the likes of Leicester and Spurs struggling to get their act together we have a good chance to steal a march on these teams right now as we're playing well

Hang on West Ham. I'm begging you, please.

I've never, ever felt the playing it to the corner and holding it there at the end of a game to run the time out was a good idea. Ever.

Moyes has punched way above his weight for the last couple years.

The final team to taste defeat. Ahhhh....now my annual angst is over. I can breathe now.

Radio here going on about Liverpool’s 26 game unbeaten run in the league. Ha….barely over halfway of the Invincibles 49 game run.

Great 3 points. Ok performance.

Can't help but feel we need more creativity because good teams will score against us and then our struggles to create will bite us on the bum.

The back four and keeper look solid now.

We need more goals and creativity from midfield.

Me too AG! I'm forever blowing bubbles...

Liverpool away after the international break will be very interesting. They schooled us twice last season we barely got out of our own half in both games!
Defeat isn’t a disaster (but don’t let the players feel like that) but irrespective of the result I want to see a performance where we have a plan for how to hurt Liverpool. They’ve conceded 5 goals in the last 2 games against teams who actually went after them and crucially were brave!
I think if you sit in your own box v Liverpool their pressure tells especially with the delivery of their full backs and movement of the front players.
For me there are two key areas to hurt Liverpool (or 3 after seeing the way they defended set pieces today), you go in behind Trent who is vulnerable defensively and you target their central midfield, over power them physically and dominate the second ball and make the most of their midfield failing to track runners.
I also think part of being brave is committing to trying to beat their high press with some quick smart passing out from the back.

I’m actually going to be going to the match at Anfield so looking forward to seeing how the team do and fingers crossed for a clean bill of health from the international break

Today highlighted the need for midfield reinforcements. Lokonga played safe sideways passes only and didn’t play on the half turn enough. Ainsley did ok but if partey isn’t fit for anfield we have issues. You could see arteta playing 5 at the back or white in midfield

What is working well though is the back 4 and keeper. They look stronger every game, their understanding grows and they all take conceding a goal personally. Honestly Gabriel and white are no pushovers and how white didn’t get an England call up I don’t know.

That was my thought today too. We could really do with putting all our transfer kitty towards a super-duper creative battler. Then we will need to turn our attention to getting a top striker.

Need someone who really demands the ball in the midfield areas and can play give and go type passes.

My season ticket is quite elevated in block 133 so I can see the circle of frustration forming and us not getting anywhere. There were moments in the first half where I found myself shouting *%^@* sake lads you have to get it forward at some point.

Lokonga bottled a couple of moments when really he should have played it forward. That said I’m delighted with the recent results and will be back for the game against Saudi Arabia after the scousers.

The wisdom was always there Decaf

. little bit of sound advice .... Slow up on the mopane fritter / Umqombothi consumption ; both your stomach and brain cells will thank you for it .

Thanks John ... yeah looking back on that incident mounting a skill saw blade on a weed eater .... seemed quite visionary at the time now seems a tad reckless if not downright stupid .

Didn't know they had played but watched a highlights package of the All Blacks giving your boyos a bit of a tickle up .

Time to give JPR , Gareth Edwards , Phil Bennet , Derek Quinell monkey gland injections

Very happy for him. Full of drive and effective too. I liked the way he shield the ball from opposing players. He did a few turns to get away from tight spots too. Hope he gets more regular first team playing time.

They play with confidence knowing their mates will be there to cover them. This defence is pro-active, they read the game well and position themselves for the ready. It helps to know Ramsdale is there, especially to pluck those crosses within his 6-yard box.

Really enjoying the front foot high aggression press, especially in the opposition half. It takes a lot of skill from the opposition to get away from it and usually the worst that happens is we give away a free kick in a non-dangerous area or the opponent shields the ball and we get back in position.
The Saka disallowed goal was from AMN aggressively pressing and nicking it, ditto Ben White for Emile Smith Rowe goal.

With Tierney back fit does he come straight back in for Liverpool? Tavares has done very well and in many ways deserves to keep his place. Whoever plays there is up against Salah….

I think both will play

If I had to pick one it’s Tierney. Just feel he would match up to him better.

I think I saw some pretty bubbles in the air.

Of course I want a good result and a loss is a loss but there are different ways to lose and if we are to lose, I want it be a very tough win for the Reds.

We're within touching distance of the top 4 but one stat really stands out between them and us. the top 4 have scored 27, 22, 23 and 31 goals each, we've scored 13. We're winning games so completely merit our position in the league but the weakness of scoring goals is still there. Even taking out those first 3 games it is only 13 goals in 8 games. We're still playing on relatively small margins in games which leaves us 1 mistake away from having a tough time winning games.

As one of the traditional powerhouses of European football (which I’ve always seen as, in alphabetical order, Europe’s only World Cup winners England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), I’m surprised only two Italians have ever played competitive first team football for Arsenal.

Mannone played 23 games in goal between 2009 and 2012 of which 22 were starts. Lupoli played 9 games of which 6 were starts from 2004 to 2006, in which he scored 3 goals.

We’re all presumably aware that many more French, German and Spanish players have appeared for Arsenal. So why only two Italians, who between them only played a handful of games? Think of the number of appearances all the French, German and Spanish players must have made.

So why is this? I wouldn’t have thought Italians players cost more. So is it that Arsenal’s managers from Wenger onwards, who himself probably started focusing more on French players before buying Germans and Spaniards, simply haven’t fancied them for whatever reason?

I hear ya Rich, but we to put it all in it proper context. As you pointed out, those first 3 games, were horribly bad. Mentally, we were a complete mess. Turning around everything is akin to luxury liner or 767 turning, its not going to be on a dime as we say in the states. We are still learning how to win different types of games. I think asking for a huge increase in goals is a big ask right now.

We are possibly still fragile. I don't want to see a big loss but we've been winning and what happens when we slip up a game? Do we revert back to type? I still think we'll have wait till the holidays are over before we really get a firm sense of what this team can really do or be expected to do.

For now, I'm just enjoying this good run, long may it continue and we'll see if we can transition to the next level: top 4 quality football.

I think chance creation is still an issue, we have been unlucky in some games like villa where we should have had half a dozen.

Yesterday was a classic example really where we dominated possession in the first 45 but barely laid a glove on them in the period. Hanging on at the end felt ridiculous. There is too much dependency on Emile Smith Rowe and saka. If they don’t conjure up something we tend to struggle from other parts of the team

Smith-Rowe has been called into the England squad.

One consideration could be that the 4-4-2 with Lacazette worked very well against 3 man defences, meaning that 3 man defence had a lot more to think about than the usual lone striker, they were pressed more by a pair rather than being able to play piggy in the middle with a lone striker. But Watford played relatively deep and with a 4 man defence (4-1-4-1 formation) so perhaps the guile of Ødegaard would have been a better way to go for this game?

One other thing the very best have is strikers who score and assist and really get involved in the all round play. That isn't Aubameyang's game, I think he only made 15 passes v Watford. So there is more reliance on our midfield to create. A deeper lying playmaker would be a good addition to the squad to allow some of the creative burden to come from deep and central areas as well. Whisper it quietly but Xhaka does add this dimension better than most in the squad.

For many years it was rare for Italians to play anywhere outside of their own country. Serie A was very high quality and competitive, with three of the greatest clubs in the world. Until the Premiership took over the money was better than good. Also it might have been that the Italian FA rather frowned on those who did go abroad and preferred to give international caps to those who stayed at home. The clincher though must be living in Italy - what a place!

The only two Italians that come to mind, over the last 30 years who both were players in the PL and lower tiers and were managers, are Paolo di Canio and Gianfranco Zola.

Yeah , yeah ........ Soc .. you know damn well your stakes at your local plummeted when not being able to recycle my pearls of wisdom

For any newer forumites don't be fooled ....... the Socrates moniker suggests some cool , calculated , knowlegable doodle when in fact this little turnip is the polar opposite .

Many thanks to Bernard , Warrior , Brom , Long Time , Top Gun for the welcome back ; really really nice caring cultured people

.... unlike the nematode I'm replying to on this post .

Gianluca Vialli, he was a pretty serious striker before chelsea. Remember him smashing in a serious scissor kick at Highbury for sampdoria in a friendly and thinking wow I wish we could have him.

Peter Bonetti , Peter Marinello

Full of good ideas me ..... lock Aubameyang in a room with Socrates for three minutes pre match

.... that'd be enough to drive the Dalai Lama's rage levels off the scale

Watched the West Ham v Liverpool highlights, West Hame are a real threat from set-pieces, notice how Antonio is blocking the GK on most of them - he's very strong so is difficult for the GK to get him out of the way. We play them in december some time - a wily manager would get a piece in the media in the build up to the game with something along the lines of complimenting West Ham on their set piece strength but noting they try to foul the GK and would hope the officials are watching closely. It would go down like a lead balloon with Moyes and West Ham but anything like that to put the ref on alert and even under a bit of extra scrutiny is worth it. Ferguson wouldn't have thought twice about doing it

Welcome back Kiwi. Hope all is well with you. The forum was a poorer place without your DIY anecdotes and your comparisons to 1970’s Arsenal teams.

Welcome back, Kiwi. It's your love of Terry Mancini - another legendary Italian international - that I've missed the most.

And don't forget the TV commentator John Mozzarella...