Eddie Eddie Eddie Eddie

Right decision to take Lacazette out. He has been ineffective.

I wish we could kill games off

Guendozi for Özil?

We just can't keep it out

AMN cant turn his back like that

AMN is not yet a matured player. Still very careless and casual with his play.

Disappointed ... again we failed to kill the game.

The reality is we’re just an average side right now

Were not good enough to finish off any team

So bloody frustrating. How many times do we see our defenders turn their backs whilst keeping their arms behind their backs.

Must give a shout out to Mustafi and Xhaka. Both played well. Xhaka was full of running.Saka was our best player. Torreira next best.

Yep couldn’t kill it off. When we had that spell where we were on top from about 60-75 minutes and didn’t work the keeper you knew it was going to be 1-1. Aubameyang red card costing us.

Sadly, you are right

We’ve scored30 goals in 23 games.

We’re simply not good enough to take a 2 goal lead againest anyone.

May as well just end the season now.

Awful decision (twice) to not award Pépé that penalty. It’s as bad as not sending off Joringho and ruling out Sokratis’ winner v palace. 8 points taken away.
People may say we shouldn’t need the help of officials and should have put the game to bed earlier. My two points on that would be 1) we aren’t asking for ‘help’ from officials just for them to do their job. I’ve seen us concede that penalty so many times. And 2) we are a team that are struggling, we’ve only won a game by more than 1 goal twice this season in the league, we will have 1-0 leads and not create much but need that penalty or seal the game.

Still plenty of work to do with the team, certainly conceding fewer chances now, I remember watching games earlier in the season where we’re giving 6-8 really good chances every game. Now we need to start creating more, only getting 1 goal a game at the moment

Not a consideration. How often do you see a striker poke the ball past the gk, easily going out for a goal kick but the gk wipes him out, it is a penalty every time.

If a defender is running towards the touchline and whacks the ball in to the stands to clear it and a striker follows through and cleans out the defender, free kick every time.

The man Pépé was dribbling past hung a leg out, didn’t win the ball and impeded Pépé’s progress and there was clear contact. What is Pépé expected to do? It is as clear a penalty as you’ll see

A very poor team that Arteta is doing a wonderful job to even get these results .

Luiz doesn't even jump off the ground defending a corner ; were better direction would have scored ..... bewildering ?

Maitland Niles sprays his attempted the ball sky high into the stands cross under zero pressure ... trots back not admonishing himself ?

Pépé , Özil , Martinelli , Maitland Niles over hit passes

Mustafi . Xhaka , Luiz . Torriera passes straight to the opposition ten yards away under no pressure ..?

Leno looks like the horrendous balls up v Chelsea is still haunting him .

Strange , bewildering mind set ...second half cruising around at 1 - 0 KAPOW in comes an equaliser and it's all urgency for five minutes .

They need to be told in no uncertain terms ...every "safe " back / sideways pass is an opportunity lost to attack .

What a shambolic response ...

" Listen to what Charlie George said about Mee " are you serious , that's a valid point ...... ?

That'd be like asking Joseph Stalin what he thought about Hitler .... a red herring

" Mancini saved us from relegation " I didn't say that ... I said "he helped " ... off the field you could say he filled the role they pay a sports psychologist mega bucks to do these days ..... red anchovy

Ahhh those really savvy season ticket holders come into play again .....

Let's take a cross section of views from this forum .... on say Xhaka , Mertesacker , Guendozi , Bellerin ,
Mustafi , Clichy , Giroud .........would that count for anything ...? red kipper

"Two years at the club etc etc " I'm only mentioned that one year ... red sardine

Okay ...checking the score here ..... that's one , two , three , four plus the previous two .....

Nouvelle- Zelande 6 Allermagne 0 .

Well said Gaz ..... as you say we will never know ; you'd like to think we'd have cobbled together a few results to avoid relegation if he hadn't arrived .......

but Terry was part of the team and results improved after he arrived ...... end of

I am sure this will not be a popular post as most are trying to see rainbows after Artetas appointment.

Not seeing any improvement in this team at all. Bit more enthusiasm, but I am not seeing the players getting into triangles, not seeing better passing, indeed it is much worse. And again we just didn’t turn up until 15 minutes had gone by. Poor decision making is a constant. We hardly created any chances at all and as the home side you needed to look at the fixture to realise it. Tactically I am not sure Arteta knew what to do to change this game.

Jury still out for me on Arteta. I just am not sure he is the manager to rebuild the club. No excuses he played Xhaka & Torreira as people keep calling for. But this was dismal. Thankfully I did not pay good hard money to watch that tripe.

So frustrating today.
We deserved to win that game but it's the inability to kill teams off which has seen us lose to Chelsea and draw with Palace and Sheffield utd. A second goal today and that game is over. We seemed to break a few times with opportunities to put a man through but wrong decision or a bad pass.
Can't speak for others but I can already see a difference in the way we are playing and the commitment we are showing.
We could have lost that game if 2 of our players hadn't literally thrown themselves in the way of shots at 1-1.
Dying for the shirt. It was great to see.
Rome was not built in a day.
Im soo frustrated with their late goal and the dropped 2 points but we have the right man in Arteta. I'm convinced.
Saka was superb. Martinelli and Pépé played well and Xhaka and Torreira were good.
Even Mustafi was decent.
We have to qualify for the europa league so top 7 is imperative as I'm sure the fa Cup and caraboa Cup will be won by top 6 teams which means europa qualification goes down to 7th.

In the heat of the moment, live I thought it could have been a penalty. The replay was shown and I reversed what I saw live.

You are right he was impeded. If the rules are impeded in the box, PK given so be it but as far as I know the player could have gotten to the ball if they weren't impeded. Close call. As the saying goes "I've seen those given"

What about getting Steve Cook to replace him ?

John-Jules scores on his loan debut fro Lincoln yesterday. Bangs them in for fun for the youth team

There is a stat going round about penalties and Mike Dean.
In 64 games he’s only given Arsenal 3 penalties, 1 every 21 odd games.
In a similar number of games he’s given Man U 1 pen every 4 games, and Chelsea, city and spurs 1 in every 5-6 games.
60 odd games must be getting on for 10 seasons worth of games.

I just don’t understand how the numbers are so consistent for the other top 4 but miles away for us. He can’t ref Liverpool games as he’s from that area.

Dean has always been a ref for me who isn’t afraid of giving a big decision, I’m sure he had one of, if not the, highest pen count in the league. I think he slightly revels in giving big decisions, like showing he’s brave enough. I remember him making Lampard take a penalty 3 times for encroachment when every other ref was just ignoring this rule weeke in week out. Why such an anomaly in the stats with us

Ticks a few boxes - reaction time excellent. Price reasonable.

Mike Dean has always been incredibly biased against Arsenal. Statistics prove it because they are so wildly skewed. The win loss percentage in the Wenger era with and without him as a ref is a similar one sided affair as the penalties. Celebrating for Spurs when they scored against us just one of countless examples along with sending our players off while turning a blind eye to the same infraction in the same match from the opposition.

Absolutely the last ref you'd want to see for an Arsenal match if you want it to be fair and balanced.

So rare to see such an obvious handball, especially in the 30th odd minute.
If Cook was a GK it would be one of the saves of the season

Grealish is a wonderful player. Surely destined for a big money move to a top team. His performances this season have probably priced us out. I think he’s better than Maddison

painful ... Evening Rich ...... if you honestly think Pépé's second effort was a genuine penalty you need either high bi focal glasses or counselling .

Our mincing *%^@ hung his legs out and dived

At least Charlie George played for Mee, so I’d say he would have more knowledge of the man than you or me. I was simply replying to Exiled’s claim that Charlie was as to blame for their relationship as Mee. That was not the impression Charlie gave at all in the Q&A. So I don’t see my post as remotely shambolic. Perhaps Charlie has changed his mind, but he did say at the Q&A that Mee was the reason he left.

When I’ve got the time I’ll go and look up the post by you that set this discussion going. It was a short one but it certainly gave me the impression you were giving Mancini the credit for keeping us up. In my opinion that is wholly undeserved. With him we finished 16th after finishing 10th the previous season. In his second season we finished even lower, 17th. Then he left and we improved to finish 8th. Sorry but I do not see that as a coincidence. So I do consider both seasons relevant.

We started his first season badly before he arrived. But it is not a fact that any short term upturn in results was down to his signing, which I think you claimed elsewhere. It’s an opinion. Just like mine that he did more harm than good to us over his two seasons at the club, despite his joke telling. The funniest thing about Mancini in my view was his performances as a player. Just a shame he joined Arsenal to show what a joke as a player he was, in my view at least.

Also, I think it’s better to look at things on a slightly longer term basis like two seasons, which were the ones when we were in a relegation struggle. You disagree, that’s fine. But I’m clearly not going to convince you what a shite player Mancini was, and you’re not going to convince me that you are right about him. As the saying goes, we’ll have to agree to disagree because his true impact is judgement, not fact. I’ll go with my opinion, you go with yours.

Bernard , Bernard , Bernard ..... honestly ; how much more candy floss can you throw into this debate .
History will show you lost ........ end of story

NZ 7 Germany 0

All 3 MOTD pundits said it was a certain penalty. Not seen a single journalist online suggest it was a dive.
I would be fascinated to see the view on here if that was Xhaka dangling a leg out in front of Salah, Vardy, Son, Kane, Zaha. Xhaka would get crucified for being so stupid and giving away such a soft penalty. For giving an opportunity for a striker to win the penalty.
To me and many others it is absolutely clear, the defender hangs a leg out and Pépé makes no attempt to hurdle it or go round it, (and not should he) and yes, he makes sure he goes over it - as 99% of players in that position would do. Did that leg being hung out impede the progress of Pépé? Yes. Did he win the ball? No. It is as cut and dry as it comes.

Well ...we obviously had different broadcasts ..

I thought he dived ; Bryan Robson thought he dived ; and his main commentator thought he could have stayed on his feet .
FFS he wasn't floored by the tackle ... he dragged his feet to enhance the " foul "
If that same set of circumstances had been the other way would you be screaming for a Sheffield penalty ...of course not ....flaky

We didn't deserve to win and didn't ...............end of story

Lost in your opinion. In my view you lost. I think Mancini was astonishingly dire as a central defender. Being good at telling jokes doesn’t mean he saved us from relegation.

This was the post that started it.

I think the game has changed with regards what gets given as penalties these days. In the 1970s kiwi would normally have been right and a penalty not given. These days I see Rich as right as I think most, or even the big majority of refs, would give that challenge as a penalty. At the game it was hard to tell. Seeing the replays on MOTD convinced me otherwise that to keep in line with modern decision making, a penalty should have been given.

If we can get our act together plenty of other teams are incredibly inconsistent as well. Spurs, Chelsea and Man U are scrapping for points and wildly inconsistent. The difference is the points they put on the board at the start of the season and their ability to click and win a game 4-0.
I’ve always thought it’s much easier to get out of trouble because those around you aren’t picking up wins, but this season (and last season) 4th will be the least bad of a pretty average bunch

1965. Branco Kubala, son of Ladaslao Kubala (google is your friend if you don't know the name) training at Highbury.