Dead right. In fact none at all in the Premier League.

This is a good call. He would be one of the first names on the team sheet right now if he had stuck around

I wonder what the bookies have to say about the odds of Liverpool going 1 unbeaten and 2. without dropping points for the remainder of the season?

The latter being infinitely harder of the two but doable.

Sex after Death.

A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other if there is sex after death.
Their biggest fear was that there was no after-life at all.
After a long life together, the husband was the first to die.
True to his word, he made the first contact:
" Marion .... Marion.. "
"Is that you, Bob?"
"Yes, I've come back like we agreed."
"That's wonderful! What's it like?"
"Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have breakfast and then it's off to the golf course.
I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple of more times.
Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots of greens).
Another romp around the golf course, then pretty much have sex the rest of the afternoon.
After supper, it's back to the golf course again. Then it's more sex until late at night.
I catch some much needed sleep and then the next day it starts all over again".
"Oh, Bob! Are you in Heaven?"
"No -- I'm a rabbit somewhere near Minnesota”

Very easy ltg, just look in any phone book in Holland.

I think our attack is good. We just haven't come up with the system and support players to give them the best chances of success.
The team defense is looking better. We will look a different team once the injured players like Tierney and others, and new additions get in the team.

Özil is really the only person who can provide the skill and wide range of passes to attacking players from the midfield. Luiz is probably the second best person. He's better than Xhaka and the others in center midfield at finding attacking players it seems.

I long for Fabregas....hehehe....but that said, I think Ceballos may be useful. He's got the skill set to exploit the potential of the strikers.

When you consider our full backs have been missing most of the season it's no wonder we look so disjointed.

On the point of injuries, heard recently a stat about Liverpools front three, it's quite astonishing. Something like out of around 300 games over the last two seasons they've only been unable to field all three 12 times, I think it was, due to injury.

Both fullbacks and VVD rarely get injured. Milner is still running around like a 20 year old. I'd be a bit suspicious of it, to be honest.

I think I posted that Liverpool front 3 stat recently. It is remarkable. Staying fit is part of the game, part of the make up of a great player, how often do messi and Ronaldo get injured? How often was Henry injured?
The thing for Liverpool is they have had injuries but had stayed injury free in all the key positions and positions that massively influenced the way they play.
If I could choose 3 players to be missing when we played Liverpool it would be tempting to say salah/firminho/Mané but in reality if they lost VVD/Robertson/trent it could be far more damaging to the team not only for the defensive stability but so much of the play and attack comes from those full backs out wide. No other player in the Liverpool team is even close to having the same skill set as them. So origi can replace salah and it’s a down grade but they’ll still play the same way, totally different if you lose the two full backs

Astonishing. Seems to suggest if you have a good system you can cookie cutter put players in there and be very effective. Granted, Liverpool has a pretty good bench. You have have to some level of quality to keep the system effective.

Cheers Warrior.
Good to see Houston no longer has a problem.



You're always on top of it.

Apparently they've been available for every EPL game this season apart from one where Salah was injured, so might be accurate.

Just the one red card will have helped them too.

Just watching the Burnley game again. We had 20 good minutes. Improvement?

3 supposedly easy home games coming up. We need to take maximum points from these. I feel our confidence as a team is low right now. Arteta magic for 9 points?

Regressed

I only saw bits of match of the day/ the big match in the season when Mancini rescued us ( Bernard enters stage right expressing outrage) but I think we had a better midfield in that season. We can stay up because there are some really poor sides around.

In the Burnley game we reverted to type (enter Kiwi stage left reassured me it was over) could not play out, Luiz playing to others near the penalty area who were in a worse position, not poor passing but absolute terrible passing and many players hiding for at least half the game. Triangles were something they learnt about in school but they had no idea how it applied to the team. Burnley created numerous very high quality chances. We did not. I am starting to believe that no more than 4-5 players at the club should survive in the reorganisation. Plus a couple of the young ones would be okay as back ups for the transition but that is all.

Law of averages says we will win some games soon but I am not convinced of any real change. The downwards spiral since we sold Fabergas continues.

The main reason we could have gone down that season was Mancini. Our survival should not under any circumstances be put down to him, regardless of his joke telling. The funniest thing about Mancini wasn’t his sense of humour. It was his performances as a player.

We had Ball and Brady then and none of our current midfielders compare to them. Storey was around too, another fine player. We had also signed Cropley who was a good player but sadly he didn’t play much as he suffered a serious injury. No, midfield wasn’t the big problem. It was mainly Mancini.

Alex Cropley. I’d quite forgotten that name. I was very excited when he signed for us.

It was a leg break and then a repeat of that break that did for him wasn’t it?
Shades of Diaby there.

Yes I think it was a leg break. Both of our signings from Hibernian, Cropley and earlier Marinello, seemed exciting at the time. Both had talent but it never quite worked out for them at Arsenal.

If only Marinello had put away that one on one in the European Cup semi final. Lives long in the memory.

Have you just returned from the future, Marty McFly-style, LTG? Don't spoil it by telling us what year this is going to happen. And throw away that sports almanac. No good can come of it.

I was puzzling over what you meant until I saw what a lash up I had made of entering the name Marinello.

PS I have edited the original nonsense

It’s the spell checker. The first time I wrote Marinello this morning it changed it to Martinelli. I edited it before anyone noticed.

I was thinking back to spurs beating city and how they basically got smashed that day but somehow through grit and good fortune, and taking the two half chances that came their way managed to win.

I can’t recall the last time we had such a game, especially against a top team. Generally Liverpool and city dominate us from the first minute and everything seems so inevitable, we’re just waiting for the first goal which will signal our defeat, the only question is by how many.

The closest I can think off the top of my head is Leeds at home where we really should have been 3 or 4-0 down at half time. But we were quite dominant second half. I can’t think of a game where we’ve been dominated for 90 but still burgle a win. Sadly I can think of plenty examples the other way round.

Ah. Thanks for that. Just realised that it was a quarter final rather than a semi final. I really believed that we could win that cup at the time.

The more I look at our team the more I realise that we are now a million miles away from being contenders.

If you want to contend you need top players in almost every position and decent quality cover as well.

I would say the only top players we have are Leno (possibly) and Aubameyang. Saka, Martinelli and some of the other kids are very promising but still have a lot to learn.

Our midfield is a complete disaster. I don't think either Xhaka or Torreira are the level we need and I am not even convinced by Guendouzi anymore, he's good on the ball but lacks so much in terms of of his positional play, physicality and defensive awareness. He's still young with time to develop but he needs hours and hours of work on the training ground.

Pépé, for all his fancy footwork and drops of the shoulder appears to lack an end product.

The only way we get out of this mess is with some incredible scouting, picking up bright young things at the beginning of their careers, or through splurging on some of the top talents around who are not already at big clubs and hoping we get it right.

Relying on Raul Sanllelli's contact book does not seem to me to be the way to go.

Despite the arrival of Arteta I am probably as pessimistic about our situation as I have ever been because there is just so much work to do and it will take years to turn things around. It will also require some quite brutal decisions to me made about certain players who are simply not at the level we require and I am not sure we have the willingness to do that or even the nous or business acumen to be able to get rid of them for decent prices in the way other clubs seem to. I am not sure we have the ambition to spend what is required and I am not even sure if we fall out of european competition (which looks increasingly likely) what kind of transfer budget we will have in the summer anyway.

Who would have thought after building such a great new stadium with all the financial benefits it brings that we would find ourselves in such a mess.

this post resonates Soc.

Gaz said something earlier about us regressing since fabregas left. I kind of understood and agreed with it. Whilst we have more money to spend these days than that period our focus and drive seem to have long since left.

The only way out of this is exceptional recruitment not executive relationships. Look at the liverpool team, how many of those players would have been on the radar of the super agents. Their recruitment has been exceptional, they sought players with the right qualities and brought them in.

Imagine letting Cazorla, Ramsey, OX and Jack go and replacing them with Xhaka and Guendouzi. Just ludicrous. Imagine not exercising the buyback on Cesc because we had Özil then paying Özil more than twice the weekly 156k wage cesc was on at chelsea. I know who i would rather have chose.

I look at this now and think this is years of rebuilding in the making and I seriously doubt the credentials of the people being tasked to do it to. Imagine longing for Hillwood and Dein however you'd take them in a heartbeat right now.

Interesting analysis of the Torreira and Guendouzi situation

http://24sportshqip.com/arsenal/2020/02 ... eira-role/

You have to appreciate the honesty from Arteta, he makes no attempt to try and show the situations for anything apart from what they are


“I was very disappointed with how we started the second half,” Arteta said in his post-match press conference.

“The first 15-20 minutes we could not control any aspect of the game and we allowed a lot of crosses and second balls inside our box and some would say we were lucky not to concede a goal.”




He’s nothing if not honest, Arsene would have blamed the ref

Let’s hope that he has a plan to rectify the situation, and that he is enabled to effect the necessary changes.

Well there is that one EL away match to Olympiacos thrown in 4 days after we play Newcastle. The 2 week Winter break may ease any knackered players.

Since we've only won 6 league games all season, I think it's highly unlikely we'll win all three 'easy home games', whether our players are knackered or not.

3 in a row

It’s more likely the dinosaurs will Rule the earth again before that happens again.

Love the optimism though

At this point we’d literally be better off playing allardyce type long ball and bypassing the midfield. At least we would be able to win the second ball

Any sign of bubblechris? I gave him a bit of a lecture as I think he took his disagreement with Top Gun way too far. But I hope he returns to the forum soon.

I agree,

I don’t care about the death threats anyway. He’s about as intimidating as a packet of Tesco Everyday Value frozen Beef Burgers.

Happy to extend the hand of truce or parley. Increase the peace, that’s my motto.

When Wenger sold RVP to Man U I wrote on this forum I would never see a title again in my lifetime. I have seen nothing to change my views.

To give people some hope I am 63yo in good health so your guess is as good as mine as to when that could be.

Your wrote earlier something like Fabregas leaving was the downwards spiral.

I agree , for me that also seemed just so regressive. It was the poignant moment in our decline. I even recall the post match interview with Cesc when he’d given 100% and you could tell he’d had enough and wouldn’t take anymore. When Robin left it was just resignation for me at that point.

Ah, that dreaded name appears in the forum again He might be secretly "coaching" Arteta on tactics. After all, Arteta used to be his Captain.