On a more positive note, I thought Ryan didn’t disappoint - looks a decent back-up. Also, I thought Gab was looking better and more assured as the game went on.

To balance that, Willian is a waste of space and and PEA just looks past it.

Partey muscle injury is a huge worry.
The guy missed 8 matches in 7 years at Atletico

It may be a ‘hard done by’ feeling but so often it feels like potential var decisions are over in seconds or not even looked at when it could possibly benefit us, whereas those ones that go against us get the full treatment, multiple angles long delays etc

I think you maybe right unfortunately. Willian looks a diabolical signing

What has happened to Aubameyang I don’t know. Compare his performance to Watkins. He was lethal last year.

Especially on already £400K a week.

We’ve missed him terribly I admit

Mike Dean milks giving a red card to Soucek in the Fulham v West Ham game.

God these refs are so *%^@** up..........

It is a horrible decision. Getting roundly slated by all ex pros, pundits and journalists on social media.
Var has given us more correct decisions but it has also highlighted a thing I’ve said for a long time about refs, they might understand the rules but they don’t understand the game.
Dean has watched that replay a fair few times and somehow decided what Soucek did was a deliberate act of violent conduct!
For me it’s clear that Soucek (the attacker at the set piece) is trying to free his arm from the close marking of the defender, as he raised his arm the point of his elbow accidentally catches Mitrovic’s face. Mitrovic himself was telling the ref there wasn’t anything in it. Lee Mason on var told him to go and look at it. He is so poor!

The level of incompetence is staggering. Dean shouldn’t even be reffing this week, he had a red card overturned last week he should be sitting out a week. There must be a sanction or else where is the incentive to improve. Dean is going to get another red card over turned on appeal here.

Watching the Man U Everton game shows the margins on getting punished for your mistakes. We made a mistake today and got punished with a goal. De gea and Lindelof contrive to give the ball to Richarlison, a difficult but open-ish goal chance and he misses. Both mistakes, one is punished the other isn't. Obviously stop making the mistakes and don't evrn give yourself the chance to be punished but the last two games feel far worse than anything from earlier in the season because it feels like we've only made 2 mistakes and we've conceded from both and from a once a season wonder goal. Then from ourselves we've had a couple of tough ref calls and great chances and hit the woodwork.
Perhaps in our run of 5 wins from 6 those little things were going for us and now they're not. The best teams end up being so on top that even punished mistakes, bad ref calls and near misses become irrelevant because you dominate and win. Unfortunately we're nowhere near that level so we need the right calls and that bit of luck occasionally in these tight games

Erling Haaland over the last 3 seasons for club and country has 72 goals in 69 games. I think he has a £63m release clause which kicks in in 2022. Normally the richest clubs would just bypass that release clause and get him this summer - but with covid I'm not sure the money is there. City will need a new striker in the summer, it wouldn't surprise me if they go for Kane, but Haaland is the better pick at 7 years younger

Hi Rich,

He looks like the one for teams to break the bank for.

Shame we couldn't throw our hat in the ring but we are also-rans now and no top, top player like him will want to join us without CL football.

We have lost 10 games already this season, almost 1 in 2.

People keeps saying our squad is poor but is it really as bad as that?

If it is then a couple of signings in the summer will hardly scratch the surface.

Arteta talks the talk but is he really walking the walk.............to me he could have put Ode on at half time and Martinelli when Partey came off. His philosophy and ideas sound good but his man management, substitutions and intra-game management seem pretty average.

Put it this way, he is not exactly overachieving with the players he has at his disposal.

I was impressed by Ryan....strong wrists and pushed everything away from the danger area.

Ramsey was a good player for Arsenal, not a great one in my view. He served us well with cup final goals. But I’d say he only had one truly outstanding season. Other than that, he was generally good although in some games could be fairly ordinary. I think it was DHD who said something along the lines that something which can add to a player’s reputation is missing games. I assume he meant that during poor spells their value to the team is often overestimated.

In my view that’s what’s happened with Ramsey since he’s left. People claim we’ve lacked creativity. Well, for me Ramsey’s passing was less creative than Ceballos and Xhaka. Had Ramsey stayed at Arsenal I honestly don’t think we’d be better off. Posts have given links to stories associating him with both Arsenal and Tottenham. I’d prefer him not to return to us as I don’t think he’ll make much difference. If he goes to Tottenham, I won’t care much as I doubt he’d improve them either.

Yep. 10 defeats. Only 27 goals scored in 23 matches. It's rubbish really. We are at the level of Palace or Leeds, and with the players we have that is not good enough.

I think you both raise valid points. I know I’ve seen loads of claims that our players are rubbish. That is overdone. I’m not saying we have the players to win the league, but we have the players to be a damn site higher than we are. I’m certain there are plenty of managers who could get more out of the players on Arsenal’s books, both before and since the January window, than our current position suggests Arteta is.

I’m not calling for Arteta to be sacked. I want to see him given more time. But I do think we should be doing better with the players we have and that there are other managers who could get more out of them.

I agree with this. One thing we need to consider is the club went for Arteta knowing he had zero experience, he’s the equivalent of us starting an 17 year old striker every game and the fans getting disappointed when he misses presentable chances.
Also to play devil’s advocate- in terms of other managers getting more out of the team, if we subscribe to there being a ‘best manager’ in the league isn’t that statement true of 19 of the 20 premier league sides?

Imo fair review of refs stinkers against us
https://dailycannon.com/2021/02/referee ... s-arsenal/

Hi bubble,

I get the referee conspiracy bit I really do, but isn't the biggest issue that we can't score goals.

The stats from yesterday show we had 14 shots with just 3 on target. Villa had 12 and hit the target 8 times.

We had 66% of the possession and played nearly 600 passes, twice as many as Villa.

How many times did we pass our way up the pitch, get into a very promising position and then run out of ideas because we have no cutting edge.

We either hit a hopeful cross into a box with at best 1 Arsenal player in it or we go back the way we came and then across the pitch to find ourselves in yet another promising position but facing the same scenario and with no end product to show for it.

Fans can blame referees all they want but isn't that just masking the fact that we are piss poor attacking-wise and struggle to even score a goal a game.

MIOTD shows clearly imo that the goal we conceded was more Gabriel's fault than Cédric's?

I've said it before and I'll say it again for Soc's benefit amongst others, the way a game is reffed has a lot to do with how good a team plays.

Bad ref decisions have a negative effect on players efforts and attitudes. Always has and always will.

Isn't the game about what you do with the ball when you have it and what you do when you don't have it. If you have 66% of the possession and can't muster more than 3 shots on target whilst the opposition can hit the target 8 times with half your possession then maybe you don't deserve to win.

Even simpler...we don't deserve to win if we score less goals than the other team.

But there will be games when teams play poorly but get the correct decisions from the ref, win the game and a poor performance is either quickly forgotten or turned in to a good performance by the fans because the game was won.
Arsenal playing poorly and a ref getting big decisions wrong for us are not mutually exclusive. We can call both out.
If the villa defender gets sent off as Arsenal players have in the past and Lacazette gets the penalty I’d say it’s much more likely we win and have a lot more than 3 shots on target all game.
Of course we’d all love us to play so well that any ref blunder is rendered irrelevant but where we are that just isn’t feasible.

Ask a sheff Utd fan what their best performance of the season is and I bet most will say the 2-1 away win at old Trafford. In that game the sheff Utd first goal shouldn’t have stood for a clear push on the gk, then Man U had a goal ruled out for a non existent foul on their gk. so instead of being 1-0 down sheff Utd found themselves 1-0 up.

Leeds, Man City and Leicester to see February out.

But is he under achieving?

We’re 10th behind spurs. West Ham and Villa aside I think the teams above us are definitely better than us.

Every time I watch us play a team above us I always think what players they have that simply would walk into our 11 and it’s nearly always higher.

I think yesterday Villa had 5 or 6 who in my opinion walk into our team. (Cash,grealish,Barkley,mings,McGinn) possibly Watkins but that’s on form. Doesn’t that simply demonstrate we simply don’t have enough talent.

The penny dropped for me when I watched us play Leicester under Emery and counted 6 outfield players who easily walk into our side. It’s too much. In addition to that we don’t have a playmaker with any quality in our entire squad. There’s nobody slick on the ball in this squad. No Fabregas no Özil no cazorla. I’m on the fence with the manager as time will tell but really I wouldn’t expect a much better performance with anyone else from this lot.

Hi Rich,

It just feels like we are creating some kind of persecution complex to paper over the fact that we just are not very good at attacking anymore.

We boast one of the world's best strikers (or at least he was until a few weeks ago), one of the world's most expensive wingers, one of the worlds most exciting young wingers, a £50m french international striker and yet we consistently create very few clear-cut chances, take very few shots on goal and rarely make opposing keepers work hard to earn their money.

You could argue that our central midfield is simply not creative enough and I wouldn't argue with that but surely we can do better than a paltry 27 goals in 23 games.

So in that case did Emery overachieve? You can't have it both ways.

Arteta arguably has a better squad than Emery had. Gabriel, Partey, a fit Tierney, a more experienced Saka.

The thing is Bernard Ramsey scored 65 goals for us and provided an assist every other game. His passing isn’t as slick as ceballos but his game was about energy, workrate and making runs from midfield between the lines into the penalty area. We’re missing that as his replacements aren’t prolific and just seen to want to operate deeper

I was never his biggest fan either but we’ve missed him since he’s gone it’s undeniable

Interesting point but I’m not sure it’s necessarily the case, at least all of the time and in all cases. I’m thinking different managers might be cut out better for teams in varying circumstances such as different expectations or player quality.

For example, my guess would be that Mr Allardyce will win more points for a team fighting relegation than Guardiola, with the exact opposite being the case for those two managers at a title challenger. Therefore, I reckon Mr Allardyce would do a better job at WBA than Guardiola would, but Guardiola would do a better job at City than Mr Allardyce would.

There will be other examples, but I’m sure you get my drift from the above example.

That’s fine but compare it to what other teams have not us if you think we should be higher.

wheres our grealish, Maddison or Fernandes?

Have a look at villas side yesterday and think what players you would swap with them. Surely it highlights the problem.

I don’t think it’s undeniable at all. You’re ignoring the type of players he had alongside him. If you put Ramsey into this current Arsenal set up playing Arteta’s style, I have genuine doubts he’d improve us. Also, hasn’t he been a disappointment at Juventus? I presume so if they’re trying to get rid of him.

By that argument then Arteta is doing just about what he should but no better? Certainly not overachieving.

Leeds, Crystal Palace and Southampton might even overtake us if they win their games in hand.

Do Villa, Everton, West Ham really have better players than us or are they just being better managed.

I think the West Ham thing is a weird anomaly but Everton have better players yes and there’s not much between us and Villa. If Leeds and saints finish above us at the end of the year I’d judge that then. I have a feeling we will finish around 9-10.

Our no 10 midfield position has been passed from Cesc to cazorla to Özil to Emile Smith Rowe. Let’s be honest everyone should see the problem here.

He’s started 14 games and is playing regularly.

Well Arteta has picked Xhaka for more games than that, and we know what you think of him.

Yeah he wouldn’t though if he still had Ramsey.

Your kidding yourself if you think Ramsey can get in the Juve team but wouldn’t at Arsenal right now. Absolutely kidding yourself

Well according to you Xhaka’s substitution against Liverpool spelled the end for him, and it didn’t.

I’m not saying Ramsey wouldn’t get in our side. What I think is highly debatable is whether he’d improve us if he did.