I would move back to 4-5-1. I was very disappointed in some of the players attitudes in the last couple of matches. I don't care whether they think Emery is on his last legs - 100% is required every game. Aubameyang was one of the main culprits in the last match. Make them captain and they are on the way out of the club before you know it.

You made a post claiming I'd posted during half-time in the spanking at Old Trafford. I know this is a lie because at the time I was in the bloody ground drinking as much beer as I could in 15 minutes!

(I wouldn't have mentioned it but Decaf did say "People are having to find really petty issues to pick fights over" and I didn't want to let people down so soon after coming back)

I thought Lacazette was also very poor yesterday. With regards to the players’ attitudes I guess the issue is whether their performances were driven by a lack of effort or they simply played badly despite trying. I’ve no idea which one it was, although I hope it was the latter.

What has worried me most recently is that (to me) it does look like the players are trying but they don't seem to know what they're supposed to be doing. The biggest problem as I see it is there's no connections between different areas of the team. I may well be wrong but I can't help thinking that having different coaches for different parts of the team may be stopping them playing as a team rather than separate units.

btw thanks for sorting my avatar, Rog.

In 50 years supporting Arsenal I can't remember being as bored or disinterested as I am now. Saturday's defeat barely registered, apart from being surprised Leicester only scored 2.

Emery is clueless, an awful manager. And if Raul and Edu can't see that then they are as culpable as he is. But if it really boils down to Silent Stan not wanting to fork out £6m to pay off Emery then there is no hope for us. If we are stuck with him for the rest of the season I won't be watching, or caring.

Not sure if this will work but I've been tweeting 'on this day' stuff from my Arsenal collection and this is today's. If there is any interest I'll keep copying them here.

https://twitter.com/N5_1BU/status/1193829382743306241

edit - oh well, you'll have to follow the link.

editedit - if you want to see previous ones follow this link https://twitter.com/search?q=%40n5_1bu% ... ery&f=live

It's like the fag end days of George Graham's tenure. A team clearly not good enough in most departments, players lacking motivation, boring football being served up on a weekly basis, management losing the plot, a lack of ambition.Everything Emery says reeks of a lack of ambition.

You can add twitter feeds directly now.

I think your right and I think I owe you an apology as it was Lom posting that not you from a quick glance back. You’ve both got quite distinctive avatars and I probably confused you. Wasn’t intentional.

What nonsense Niall. Everything is going to plan, don't you know ?

Good ebening Rog, I respect a lot your intensity, the structure of your post, eeeeh, how you execute your posting game-plan, your hair and your hair colour. My message is clear but its very difficult.

You could be right. Just looking at the official handbook, in addition to the Head Coach Unai Emery there is a whole page listing the First Team Coaching Staff with nine names (and photos) on it. Freddie Ljungberg is the Assistant Head Coach & Transition Partner, Juan Carlos Carcedo is the Assistant Head Coach, Pablo Villanueva is the First Team Coach, Javi Garcia is the Goalkeeping Coach, Shad Forsyth is the Head of Performance, Gary O’Driscoll is the Medical Director, Chris Morgan in the First Team Senior Physiotherapist, Julen Masach is the Fitness Coach, and Edu is the Technical Director.

It seems obvious that O’Driscoll is the club doctor and Morgan is the physiotherapist, while Garcia coaches the keepers. Masach must presumably be some sort of supremo at getting and keeping players fit. But it doesn’t seem so clear to say what Edu does as the Technical Director. Nor what the division of responsibilities between the two Assistant Head Coaches Ljungberg (Transition Partner must mean something) and Carcedo are, as well as the First Team Coach Villanueva and the Head of Performance Forsyth. For example, who coaches the defenders, midfielders or forwards?

God be with the days when every club had a gaffer and he was in charge.

What I don’t really get is this thing where the new manager brings their whole staff with them every time they move. If you need to replace the
Manager then you have to replace the whole staff and start again. It’s loopy

This sounds proper Brexit but for example why couldn’t we appoint a British or Irish goalkeeping coach. You have a Spanish goalkeeping coach providing advices to a German keeper on playing out from the back. No advices on variation or whatever. This could be contributing to why we are getting nowhere with that tactic.

Should be The manager gets to appoint his assistant coach and that’s it and all the rest should be decided by the technical director.

When you take a step back and look at that huge list of coaches and consider how unorganised we look it’s remarkable.

Welcome back, Exiled. By the way, I'm sure Rog would have sorted it a bit more swiftly if your initial post hadn't required cryptanalysis via plugboard by a team of analysts conversant in Schreibmax and Fernlesegerät. Impenetrable. That's right - impenetrable.

Thing is though we have good players across the squad now. Could you honestly say that the day Arsene left.

We have a good goalkeeper, 2 good full backs, the most sought after winger in europe this summer, a strong defensive midfielder and promising energetic 19 year old French player and 2 world class strikers. Aside from that we have a few promising youngsters who can sporadically contribute well.

Surely there’s enough there for a manager to be able to build a competitive enough side to show a glimpse of form here and there.

The club have simply got to change it. It’s a spectacular and highly visible car crash.

What first got me thinking about this was last season there were a couple of clips of us defending free kicks/corners where you could see Emery go back to the dug out and one of the other coaches sent into the technical area to coach it. It was complimented by the commentator but I couldn't help thinking that when you get the ball from a corner you have to have some idea of how to attack with it but you've got a defensive coach on the touchline so how does that work?

Also I've read a few times that the team practices in separate units (attack/midfield/defence I'd guess) and whilst 2+2 often equals 5 when I read this and then see the lack of connections in the team I can't help wondering if the problems really is that simple because I firmly believe our players are one hell of a lot better than their performances would suggest.

I think maybe it has always been like that, it's just now there are far more people to move around so we notice it more. Having said that maybe with 'manager' responsibilities generally moving away from the 'head coach' it would certainly seem logical to have different departments within the set up run by club man rather than manager men.

(btw that misquote ain't nothing - if Decaf had only mentioned petty arguments rather than very petty ones I probably wouldn't have mentioned it!)

haha - cheers mate.

Didn't mean to cause confusion, I thought the Prince hat-tip was fairly obvious but we always see what we thought of ourselves as obvious.

I think we're at the stage where Cannon Balls could do a better job.

Yes, I really did say that.

Post match press conferences would be even more confusing though.

Very depressing watching us these days. I have been watching more non Arsenal football just to get some enjoyment out of the game and not have any emotions. I am hoping we turn the corner. Chelsea seemed to be on a very good run. Lamps had a slow start but seems to have turned the corner....for the time being. Fortunes change in football quickly as we all know.

Tottenham don't look like last season's Tottenham. They seem decent enough but haven't been able to kill teams off like they could. That has helped us in terms of CL hopes. Man Utd is playing a wee bit better as well and that is not good for us. Leicester may pull off another miracle and get a top 4. They lost their best players sans Varny and are still good. Especially for a club that is not one of the major clubs. Credit to Rodgers and their management.

There is something in the club, its the same intangibles. It's been there since Wenger and seems to be pervasive no matter who is running the squad.

What position(s) should we spending for in January and next summer?

G'Day Exiled.

Been in jug?

Dugout

Surely the Arsenal hierarchy don’t believe their quotes about Emery being the right man and the club is moving forward etc. I think I’m right in saying in every single measurable stat for on pitch displays we are worse than last year which was worse than the year before.

With the mess that wenger left us with I predicted 8 years to get us back challenging for the title. That was based on things getting worse before they got better due to the lack of money and big players going for knock down sums, players being impossible to shift and too many old players......it was also based on Arsenal making the right decision in terms of manager, recruitment etc a lot more times than they made a wrong one (you can’t expect every decision to be right but we need at least 75% success rate)
At the moment nothing I’ve seen betters that 8 year prediction, it only worsens it.
To think, of the board had pulled their finger out, realised what was going on and made the right calls in 2015 we could have enticed Klopp when we sacked Wenger.

For Leicester's first corner on Saturday all of our players were in the penalty box. The whole team. I've no idea what defensive coaching manual that came from but it's just mad. Whether that is down to separation of coaching or not, I don't know, but it is blatantly obvious that the coaching is a mess.

Welcome back, btw.

No wonder the board is backing Emery .... they'd have to dispense with that barrel of blow flies as well .

Reeks of a 1960s government department loads of paper shufflers producing f&^$** all .

That amount of supposed brain power and we still turn out cr*p performances .

They are either all incredibly stupid or Yes men .

Yes but we were the same under latter day Wenger Dec .

I've raved about that on numerous ocassions .

I was forever calling for Walcott to be positioned two yards inside our half to provide an outlet .
Aubameyang or Pépé on half way would keep at least two maybe three opposition defenders back .

This is what sh*ts me ; we replaced Wenger with a Wenger clone ...same *%^@** up defence , same slow build ups , same arsebackwards post match interviews .

Welcome back .... what's with the Uzbekistani name change ..?

Has anyone seen the Bournemouth training ground set piece goal at the weekend? Why don’t we see more goals like that, or at least attempts to do something different.
7 players involved but only 3 touch the ball.
A player makes a run along the byline for a short corner, it’s played to him and played immediately back to the corner taker. In the box the big men on the penalty spot make runs to open up a space near the penalty spot, 2 other attackers already stationed in the 6 yard box ensure no defenders can get out in to that space. All the while the guy at the back post makes a seemingly harmless run which actually arcs round in to the space and has a free shot at goal from 12 yards

Lovely

I just caught the end of Radio 5 (Monday Night Club) where they were talking about Arsenal in a pretty irritating way. They singled out the supporters saying they are too quick to turn against their players, as if not only is it unique to the Arsenal but the Xhaka thing is just a normal event at AFC. They talked about Arsenal Fan TV as evidence of our critical fan base. Also, Chris Sutton was saying Emery should be given more time.

Thanks for the heads up Rich. I just watched it on YouTube and I've never seen anything like it.

Chris Sutton is a monumental bellend.

Nah, Kiwi. This guy is far worse. It's one thing to have nobody on the half way line, but everyone inside the penalty area.....

He's also afraid of every opponent. We see Aston Villa but he sees peak Barca.

Any mention of “f*ck Sarriball” and the constant booing of Jorginho by Chelsea fans last year. Or the banners proclaiming the 3 rats as the Chelsea fans called them at the time (was it hazard, fabregas and costa)
Man U fans regularly booed fellaini
Every team at some point has booed their players

Taking the view that the fans turned on the players too quickly is incredibly naive from people paid to talk about football. The context of the clubs ownership, false promises, years of stagnation, failure to address reoccurring problems are all context.
In terms of players, xhaka has shown zero desire to correct any of his shortcomings, he is the most dribbled past defensive mid I’ve ever seen play the game, he fails to track runners, has no sense of danger or positioning and continues to dive in and foul players in the penalty box. I think the fans frustration that day was just as much at the club as it was Xhaka but to be honest he got off lightly

It’s been that way for years, wenger used to pull everyone back. I remember the great Barca teams leaving 3 players up front, the defence has to leave at least 4 back. When you add in cover for the edge of the box and the taker you only get 3 or so attackers in the box, easier for a GK to come and claim if your defence isn’t great at set pieces.
If you bring everyone back and you do clear it, it just comes straight back. So pointless.