Over celebrate
Over emotional when we lose
Only score from set pieces
….need own goals to win

The narrative that will run for this week. People will just keep finding something new. It could be

Celebrate the big wins brings a team together
Devastation at losing shows how serious we are and the high standards we set
Set pieces are a skill and we’re the best at them
The best teams win any way they can even when they didn’t play well

Depends if you want a positive or negative stance.

Here is a very well respected journalist pouring effusive praise on Slot and Liverpool despite where they are in the league. I just can’t see us getting that treatment, if we were down in 6th/7th, lost 6 games and 10 points off the top any win would still have massive caveats and questions over manager and players.

Leeds are a far better team than Wolves, which is reflected in the 13 point gap between them in the table. This Wolves team is as bad as PL sides get. 2 points after 16 games is dire. They have conceded 35 goals yet we only managed 2 shots on target and need a freak of an OG to win the game.

Our performances in the league recently are not great. I think it is worrying.

That was a horrible performance yesterday, at home against one of the poorest sides in PL history.

In the end we got lucky because Wolves deserved a point.

Saka was excellent but everything was going down his side which meant we had zero attacking threat from the left. No balance whatsoever and it made things far easier for Wolves than it should have been.

Rice upped his game in the 2nd half and it felt like him and Saka virtually dragged us kicking and screaming over the line.

It's not quite Christmas but we looked washed up, particularly attacking-wise.

Le Grove made the point that at the current time or top scorers (Saka, Gyökeres, Eze and Trossard) have 4 goals a piece after 16 games and are thus on track to score about 10 goals this season.

Can you realistically win the league if your top scorer scores 10 goals, even if the goals are shared around. It's a massive ask.

This 100% - it's lazy and biased journalism, typical of w*nkers like Winter

Liverpool were very very fortunate and Brighton outperformed them, just didn't take their chances - classic media analysis but scoreline and not performance

Sure Arsenal performance was average, but Wolves massively outperformed their Xg, in context it was no way worse than Liverpool's

I agree but in terms of a big team expected to win comfortably at home and slipping up and needing a late winner there isn’t that much difference between the two results.

City are clicking and we’re stuttering but we’re 5 points clear a d faced far more adversity than them so far.

Yesterday was easily our worst performance of the season and we still found a way to win. Last season that kind of performance would have been a draw last season.

We spoke earlier in the season about our most irreplaceable players, Gabriel is rising up that list rapidly! Everyone outside of Arsenal has forgotten about Havertz as well. He definitely takes our game up a level

I don't think you need a high top scorer to win the league - for me the concern is how reliant we are on the right hand side of the attack - the left side is not as good on every level

Saka is awesome and Madueke is amazing as depth - on the other side Trossard has been great, but Martinelli really struggles at home against deep blocks - he's far better with space on the counter, particularly away from home

For me the left side of our attack is the area we need to recruit in summer time, there's a big gain there for us in upgrading from what we have.

S....E.....M.....E.....N....Y.....O......

The problem with yesterday is the legacy that follows. As we go deeper into the season those teams in the bottom half of the table will have to make team selections when playing us. If we had blown wolves away then other teams will look at games against us and either pick a weak team to play us or almost give the game up for lost. But they now know they have a chance. We haven’t played that well in a number of home games and are incapable of breaking down the block.

Rich has this theory that we haven’t played played a lot of top teams away and second half of the season we will pick up easy points at home. But there is some concern with me it won’t flow that way. Other teams like City are not at their best and we have the best chance of a title in a long time. We should have won a couple of years ago but weren’t up to it. We have the best squad but we have no fluidity or plan B.

Fundamentally you look at the other big PL clubs (Chelsea, Liverpool, City, United) then they have spent far far more on their forward line than we have in recent years

The media are strangely quiet on Chelsea for example - Pedro cost more than Gyökeres........

The end result is that on average you'll sneak a few results by outperforming your Xg if you have the top quality forwards, and often you get what you pay for (not always as United have shown us)

On forwards, I know few on here are waiting for the return of Havertz as if he is a saviour. I don’t rate him any better than our current forwards. I feel he lacks movement. The worry for me is a very ordinary City side could continue to challenge just because they possess a very good forward.

On the other hand, it is not bad if your fourth highest scorer has 10 goals, and we have been without key attacking players for long periods this season.

The player I really like elsewhere is Etikike - fast, great movement, dribbles and good finisher

Mass shooting - 12 dead at Sydneys Bondi beach : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-14/ ... /106141580

12 people are dead, including one gunman, after a shooting at Bondi Beach this afternoon.
A second shooter remains in police custody.
Twelve people were injured and have been taken to various hospitals.
Two police officers were also injured.

I don’t think Hwang’s tackle was a red yesterday, but these are the kind of things we’ve been harshly sent off for. We never seem to benefit the other way of getting a dodgy or outlier decision our way.

Obviously there is some luck with two own goals but less so the Saka corner as he damn nearly scored himself, had the gk beaten and panicking.

Yes he looks like a great fit for the prem league, very tall as well.

I think Havertz improves us. He improves our front line press, he’s better at holding the ball up and whilst he’s not a high goalscorer his record is still ok.
4 goals in 6 CL starts last year
9 prem goals in 21 starts last year
He’s been injured with 2 separate injuries for an entire calendar year now

The screenshot below is Havertz record in the 23/24 run in when he first started to be used consistently as a centre forward. 9 goals and 8 assists in 14 games. I’d snap anyone’s hands off for that right now

Awful.

The more you watch the Hwang tackle in real time, it's a stonewall red, a shocking reckless lunge and the VAR interpretation is boll*x

Hackett and BBC called it out for the woeful decision it was

https://www.givemesport.com/arsenal-wol ... mol-chief/

We spent £170m on Gyökeres, Eze and Madueke in the summer, and none of the three are nailed on starters for the first 11. We cannot use money as an excuse.

And 29 people taken to hospital so far.

I see it's Jews targeted again. Shameful.

We’ve spent a fortune, but other clubs have spent more and yet you often hear Arsenal HAVE to win the title because we’ve spent £1b under Arteta.every big team has spent stupendous amounts and don’t face the same scrutiny or expectations of winning - perhaps it’s because we’re so close.
Also behind us are 155 charges Man City, Chelsea who sold their hotel and women’s team to themselves to game the system and let’s not forget Villa also sold their women’s team to themselves this summer at the last minute to avoid a points dedication.

If football had any credibility and wnforced the rules properly we’d be miles in front

City get away with one. Pino through 1v1 and hits the bar, should score.

He won the league last season and he was manager of the year. He has handled the Salah episode well of course he's being rightly praised.

Mikel will get flak if we end up trophy less. That's football. He picks the team as with all managers he will get the praise or the stick depending. generally speaking the media coverage of use is generally positive.

Surely Mikel could at least get a Peace Prize ?

This is where city scare me.
0.29 x G and Haaland and Foden score really low percentage chances, City with only 5 shots all game. Palace 1.7xG no goals but 11 shots

How do teams keep creating loads and missing loads v City but we concede barely a shot in so many games but opponents score from what limited scraps they feed on

And has peddled out bizarre excuse after bizarre excuse all season and comes out of it so far with barely a bad word in the press

Defender humiliated in goal of the season contender, English clubs on fire in Champions League

https://www.nine.com.au/sport/football/ ... 5nmqy.html

Nice ...

Bit of both re City

Palace squandering over 2Xg

Villa also lucky again. Villa will fold soon.

Both Villa and City were beaten on xG today, they conceded far more high quality chances than they made. Both reliant on individual moments of brilliance.
Both conceded more chances in their games than we have in 15 of our 16 league games.
Really frustrating to see them both in a groove at the moment, getting moments of luck when they need it as well.

The individual moments of quality show also how much injuries can have an effect. We’ve had so many, if you just have both those teams our injuries it would be very interesting. Pep is not rotating his squad, it’s the same 12 players starting every single week and they’re avoiding injury, we’re rotating and racking up injuries every week

Stop reading the beano and read a proper paper. There have multiple articles in multiple outlets slating Slot for the last month or more.

In their last 11 games all of these players have started 10 of them for City
Donnarumma, Nunes, Gvardiol, O’Reilly, Gonzalez, Silva, Foden, Haaland. Dias and Doku have started 9 of them. Reijnders and Cherki both always fit and have shared the remainder of the game time.

There are your 13 players Pep is picking every single game, 7 games in 22 days.

Let’s see them then?
And criticism of Isak? Of Wirtz? How about Mac Allister who has been terrible this season? I’ve shown examples of Sky Sports deciding they’d put up stats showing how Wirtz has made the most off the ball sprints in the final 1/3rd, and absolute bizarre stat clearly designed to make him look good when he was playing badly.
The media are falling over themselves to make excuses for Liverpool, they were talking about galacticos, quadruples and dynasties with the greatest transfer window ever. The fall should be as hard as they built them up.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... no-return/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... e-his-job/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... o-trouble/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... ue-update/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... p-last-16/

That's one paper.
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foo ... 83267.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foo ... 74142.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foo ... 73546.html

There was way more but you can check yourself.

I have a feeling come the end of next weekends fixtures we will be second. Nothing I saw yesterday made me think we are going to win the title. Our front line does not score enough goals. City will beat West Ham easily and the pressure will be on. I firmly believe if Arteta doesn't win a trophy he should go. Not because he's not a good coach but because he will have had 4 chances to win and not done enough to get over the line.

Dire dire performance last night.
Absolutely awful.
The expectancy was probably a comfortable thrashing to boost our goal difference but far far from what actually happened.
Even 1 0 why did we become so passive!!??? And let the bottom of the club team temporarily take control.
It was infuriating and could have cost 2 points which would have seen us off the top after today's results.
What a fantastic feeling to see that ball hit the back of the net when all seemed lost.
Yes!!!!!!
We got out of jail big time.
Next week the pressure is really on us.
By the time we play Everton city will be top after discarding of West ham at home and villa have got utd at home ffs.
Everton will make it tough but we simply have to respond and win that game.
Really concerned about Gyökeres now.
Hes so poor at the moment that even when he gets a shot off like he did in the second half we are lapping it up like yes hes actually done something!
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but why did we not even consider Ekitike. He looks the real deal and seems to have everything.

Gyökeres Just looks cumbersome lethargic and clumsy. Its worrying.

City are winning the league aren't they.

They may not be the City of old but they have the most prolific marksman in PL history and it is going to make the difference in tight games.

Only hope is if Haaland gets an injury that keeps him out for a few months.

Horrific.

Sadly I agree. That performance yesterday was utterly deflating.

Our next 6 league games are 6 games we failed to win last seasons, 5 draws and a defeat.