I cant believe Arteta's last words to the team before they go out are to make sure we play plenty of slow sideways and backwards passes, don't worry about pace or penetration and just float some hopeful crosses at their giant CB pair. Sometimes the players just don't play well enough and firing up the sort of energy they did for City at home after playing 3 days ago and a number of this team having come back from niggles and knocks isn't easy.
I'm not defending the fact we couldn't beat Burnley, we should always beat Burnley no matter the circumstances but today I don't think it is tactical, it was poor performances and a complete lack of options to bring in to change things up

Wot a div

To be honest, I wouldn't put money on any team getting 4th this season... All the teams fighting for it are flawed in different ways.

It seems like we only get up for tough games. Had we played the first 15 minutes with same sense of urgency of the last 15 minutes we might have gotten something out of it.

Burnley sat back and we were lackadaisical for most of the first half. We had the same game from Burnley last year and lost. I like Tierney a lot but if the same type of crosses aren't working, you gotta improvise and change things up my friend. We kept doing the definition of insanity in some cases: doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Burnley have tall powerful players in the middle. Even Gabriel looks average among them. We weren't going to head many in with them. When we pulled balls back or were in the middle at the top of their box we could have gotten them in trouble with short Lundbergh-esque 2 and 3 meter runs there.

Very, very disappointing considering everything. Burnley are the bottom of the league, we have them at home, it should be a 3 point banker.

We gotta shake this squad up Nketiah caused problems. Maybe he needs a run out? Not sure what use Lokonga was out there.

I think Partey would not have made a difference today. He would be too fatigued. He should not have had to play against Pool. Should have been given time to rest for this game.

If we hadn’t loaned out AMN early in the window we wouldn’t have had to play Partey v Liverpool and he’s at least be an option for today.

Ok, I over reacted because I am so disappointed. Easy 3 points on paper, but we dropped 2. I still think we could have played with urgency from the onset, or at the very least, from start of 2nd half.

Lokonga was our only CM, he had to play, just because you play a weaker team at home doesn’t mean you just play 4 attacking mids and 2 strikers.

Also when Liverpool played Burnley earlier in the season Jota scored a header dead centre of the penalty area between their two CB, height is one thing but delivery, speed and movement are far far more important

How many of our attacks came through the centre?
Are we over reliant on the wing play?
Does that make it easier to set up defensively against us?
Our tactics too easy to read?

Was saying the same to my son. Why do we always go wide. Why not a sidestep or swerve and shoot?

https://www.football365.com/news/early- ... aubameyang

Key points:
Burnley should have had a man sent off
Arsenal shouldn’t need a man sent off to win at home to Burnley
Arsenal desperate for a striker!

You can say that again. Pay Vlahovic’s agent another couple of million if he joins.

Any striker right now will do. Broja on loan at Southampton from Chelsea is better than what we have. There are probably 20 strikers in the Prem alone I’d rather have

https://twitter.com/wowcancelo/status/1 ... 74178?s=21

Another weekend and another interfering var ref. Seems to happen quite often where the onfield ref calls it as he sees it and then var gets involved and wants to try to find something in any incident. As soon as var tells the onfield ref to view the monitor the initial decision is going to get over turned every time.

At least Spurs were convincingly beaten by Chelsea 2-0. Keeps spurs behind us on goal difference but with a game in hand.

Wolves up next after the winter break and they’d go above us if they beat us! Could they drag themselves in to the top 4 race?

That's a good point. What is disappointing is that both Spuds and Man U have been so poor that they sacked their managers yet we are still probably an outside bet for 4th.

Totally crazy to play him midweek. You could have given him 2 days off and come into this game fresh and it could have been the difference between winning or drawing trust me.

You just don’t have the players to compete so eventually you are simply pretending you can.

I’d take Shane long on loan right now. Honestly Lacazette misses a chance every week that your most bog average striker puts away. It’s simply crazy, he slashes wildly at everything. Ffs Lacazette take a breath

Artetas comments on transfers kind of indicate to me the club are afraid of creating a long term problem with a short term fix like we’ve done in the past.

All in all 4th is still on but the summer and next season are the big moment for the manager and the current regime. After that the honeymoon period will be over. Next seasons squad has to be built to compete

I think our inability to win when playing poorly is going to cost us 4th.
If I was to put all our league games in categories this season you could have:

Lost and played poorly: Brentford, Chelsea, City(a), Everton, Liverpool
Lost and played average: Man U
Lost and played well: City(h)

Drew and played poorly: Palace, Brighton, Burnley (h)

Won and played well: Spurs, Villa, Leicester, Southampton, West Ham, Leeds, Norwich (a)
Won and played average: Burnley (a), Norwich (h), Watford (h), Newcastle (h)
Win and played poorly:

I think that is 13 out of 21 games where we've been average or poor and we've only won 4 of them.

Read that Tammy Abraham has 12 goals in his last 12 games for Roma. We went for him and I think for sure he'd have joined us over Roma but we couldn't get Aubameyang/Lacazette/Nketiah off the books. That has cost us this year. Even if it wasn't Abraham, another forward was surely on the wish list but only if we move those guys on.

I also think we missed a trick by not moving for Patson Daka in the summer. £20m, very young, has a good set of attributes for a CF. He's better than anything we currently have.

Vlahovic isn't coming is he. Why would he, apart from a big pay day. He'll have better options in the summer.

If he's watched the last 3 games he definitely isn't coming.

I admire our pluck in trying to sign him but lets move on to a more realistic target because let's face it we aint finishing top four without a topclass CF coming in.

And he doesn’t really want to play for us anyway does he? Simply ‘doing us a favour’ by picking up his paycheque.

Yep, and I don’t think you even need a top class one either

Highly unlikely he’s coming this type of transfer in January is very difficult

Alexandre Lacksathreat more like. That miss was appalling.

Playing Partey was a high stakes gamble. Definately a risky long shot but there was a chance of a Wembley final and a significant boost for the rest of the season if we prevailed. Clearly the decision bit Arteta on the arse today as we were desperate for a midfielder who could progess the ball rather than go back and sideways. Then again Partey may of only been setting up Lacazette or Nketiah to miss. Talking of hindsight, the decision to keep hold of Nketiah seems really daft.

They will most likely beat us so the answer is yes.

There’s one a week. Watch it again

https://twitter.com/pablosali/status/14 ... 36770?s=21

V Liverpool. Look at this one, after he misses he screams at the Lino for not calling him off , he was on !

https://twitter.com/messimx30ii/status/ ... 14632?s=21

Why do we have to move any of them on to sign a forward this window? Lacazette and Nketiah will both be leaving for nothing in the summer. I suppose we might be able to get some sort of fee for Aubameyang if he goes to Saudi Arabia, but I’ve little or no doubt we won’t see the back of him until the summer whether we get a transfer fee or not.

We surely have to sign a forward now whether or not Lacazette, Nketiah or Aubameyang remain on the books.

Gidday Bernard .... yeah that's much what I'm saying .

Seems to me when we had our great team Bergkamp , Henry , Vieira , Petit , Pires , Campbell etc it seemed we had a team packed with superstars whereas todays Liverpool seem a collection of tradesmen where the whole is greater than the sum of their parts'.

Oxlade Chamberlain ...... classic example . Pretty wayward with us and now knows where he fits the system .

Exceptions ... ? maybe Van Dyke ... maybe because he looks a lot cooler than Gabriel or White

I’m going to nominate Sakas goal against Man City as the goal of the month : there are no other nominations.

Must admit I’m not as convinced as you presumably are that Partey consistently progresses the ball forward.

Here we go ... we are on the same page Rich .

Picture me 3 AM ... perched om a swivel chair in front a computer monitor watching that schi****zer . I nearly went back to bed

Arteta raging about time wasting .... are you kidding ....you've let this collection of d**cks play the ball nonchantly back , sideways , back , sideways , sideways , sideways , back ........ which is a form of time wasting

Must admit, after hearing about what a great passer he was, I haven’t been that impressed with White’s passing so far. I think he’s done well overall, despite the nightmare he had on his debut at Brentford. But I’ve not seen much evidence of outstanding passing from him. There might have been one exceptional pass today, though I’m not certain it was him. But even if it was, I’ve actually been more impressed with his defending than his distribution. Not that that’s a bad thing. I’ve just found his passing usually safe but unspectacular. But from all the talk I was expecting a little more with his passing.

I’m not being unfair by comparing it with Franz Beckenbauer who was on another unrealistic level. Or Bobby Moore. But Ben White’s passing isn’t as good as Peter Simpson’s by a long way. Or using more modern examples, I certainly don’t think he passes it anything like as well as Rio Ferdinand or even Ledley King. Tommy Caton and Pascal Cygan were competent passers. I’d put White’s passing around that sort of level.

From what I’d read about White I don’t think I was expecting 60 yard defence splitting balls, it was more about his all round good technique and comfort with the ball at his feet meaning we can play out of the back and progress the ball accurately and quickly in to midfield breaking the lines. The other aspect was his ability to bring it out from the back with a dribble himself. I’m not sure I’ve seen much evidence of him being one of the best in the league at it but I think he’s been an improvement from what we had.

Perhaps my expectations of his passing were unrealistic then. He does have all round good technique. But I don’t think his dribbling out from the back is good enough to make me feel comfortable when he does it.

French midfielders this year. Bruno Guimaraes from Lyon is absolute stand out. Also interesting that Guendouzi seems to have his role changed to being almost a pure creator with little defensive responsibility

I have watched extended highlights of some of the games he has been involved in and you are correct. He is not a defensive midfielder

I didnt say he consistently progresses the ball forward. But given Liverpool boxed us in so comprehensively I could understand the thinking if he was brought on to at least try and get the ball forward.

The Chelsea first goal is an example of why simple yellow card offences matter early in games. Tanganga was booked and when Hudson-Odoi turned him and ran past him a lot of defenders would see the dangerous situation and take the booking for the team, Tanganga couldn’t do Hudson-Odoi advanced further and eventually found the pass to Ziyech who scored. This situation feels like it is what the yellow card was invented for.

I'd be interested in the stat for how many of those Red's (or 2nd yellows) were unfortunate or borderline vs those that were from outright stupidity. I recall a lot of them being the latter.