We’ve struggled against an aggressive man to man approach, I think this is where we then lack three key aspects in our team to combat this
1) real elite technical players to play one touch around a man to man - this is exceptionally hard, maybe only the great Barca team and City’s good team have been able to get this level against this tactic consistently
2) a lack of powerful runners/dribblers who can turn and burst away from a man marker
3) a slight inability to go longer - whether that is to a target man or to runners willing to run in to the channel

All of the above require you to move the ball quickly which we also don’t do enough, but when we do we look far better. It feels we are being coached to be too worried about conceding on transition - it’s like Arteta got too scarred by that first unexpected title challenge.

There is a lot of talk of whether the cycle of Pep style football (possession, short passing, control, dominance, death by a thousand cuts) is over and the aggressive high tempo, high press, transitions based game is taking over. Difficult to say but I’d love us to have a bit more of it in our game, it’s not like we don’t have two of the quickest and best 1v1 defenders in the league.

One thing is for sure is that the attackers in our team need to go up a level massively

It's the very definition of bias. Both in terms of refereeing and media coverage.

Van Dijk would have had three red cards this season minimum if he played for Arsenal.

Arteta needs to evolve the team. There is always a concern with any coach that hey have their favourites, or maybe not even favourites but players who they are desperate to come good because they put faith in them. Arteta hasn’t really had to make too many big decisions on phasing out his favourites when they’ve shown they weren’t good enough to take us to the next level - he looks like he has done with Zinchenko. Jesus was a bit more out because of injuries but I think it’s fair to say that Arteta hasn’t moved on from Jesus.
There are some players that Arteta needs to upgrade even if he doesn’t move them on

Are you referring to Merino? For me, he has been a big disappointment thus far.

Real Madrid wanting Saliba doing the rounds again. I want Saliba to sign a new deal but we have to be comfortable with the fact that we may have to sell him to Real Madrid at some point if that’s where he wants to go. The important thing is the timing, make sure he has years left on a deal so maximum value can be extracted - it has to be a world record fee for a defender.
Even if we win the prem and champions league soon the pull to Real Madrid may still be too strong. For far too long we stubbornly held on to players as we couldn’t see any way that selling for a huge fee and reinvesting that could even make us better.

On a separate note it’s about time we started making some money out of Saudi league transfers. Ridiculous that Liverpool took £60m from Fabinho and Henderson when they showed they were both well past it in the prem. we’d have ended up with both leaving for free

Yes. Merino, Havertz, Trossard, Tomiyasu….dare I say even Ødegaard. I’m not saying move them on after one dip in form or poor season but also don’t stubbornly keep pushing them to be something they can’t be.
We have players in the squad who are possibly not good enough to start 38 games a season for a title and champions league winning team, and in some cases there is no alternative or competition for them.

If for example you added Isak, Williams and Xavi Simons to our squad then you have Havertz, Martinelli as subs and a genuine alternative playmaker to Ødegaard. More options, more rotation, more players playing at their peak pushing each other on. The squad is incredibly thin in numbers and in quality after the best 13-14 players

Agree re Merino - not overwhelmed thus far.

Saliba is interesting, for me Gabriel is our best CB - Saliba is great, but Gabi is awesome - if Madrid want to pay some ridiculous fee then I'd take it in 2 to 3 years time, provided we can bring in a good young replacement, however I'd be happy to keep him, as he may have more than a decade at the top left, and unless its a ridiculous fee, sod off Madrid

got to remember than forwards don't last to the same age as centre backs, pace dependent players often best to move on at around age 26-29, while you can still get a good fee, just before the decline becomes obvious

Williams' stats are mediocre last two seasons, I'd be reluctant to pay huge fee and wages for him, if Cunha is available at release clause of 60mill then I'd go for that, as he's PL proven too

Cunha’s release clause from the summer is £62.5m.
Some people may feel like players like Cunha, Watkins, Mbeumo, Semenko are not the absolute elite level players we need to take the next step - but the next step in the last two years has been 1 or 2 results difference. If they add quality and depth it could easily get us over the line.

I think Cunha is excellent, good age, flexible in role and gives us options. Watkins less convinced as he's 29 and not as flexible in role. Mbuemo is good and would be great squad player.

Love to have started the season with those three in the squad!

https://x.com/mktirb/status/18879252145 ... -j6VVZXEoA

I feel like this season has seen us collect a lot of haters, but the people who like to think a bit deeper and challenge the status quo and not just believe everything they are fed are starting to move to our defence on so many matters

Martinelli out for at least a month.

This season just needs to end. A fight to get top 4. Most games are going to be pretty horrible to watch as well have zero attacking ability and if we go behind in games the feeling that we can get back in it or change something will be nil

It puts us at the mercy of any more injuries.

No ability to rotate. We will fatigue with the fixtures coming up.

With a squad that always felt 2-3 short, emphasised by us scrambling for loan transfers has had the worst season for injuries I’ve ever known for us.

Sterling is our only attacking back up now. I don’t think any of the young players are close enough but they’ll be on the bench.
Now you’re looking through our midfield and defence and wondering if there is anyone who can do a job on the wing. Zinchenko on the left wing?

It’s not even if we have attacking midfielders who can do a job on the wing. Tierney left wing swinging in those left foot crosses?!

MLS could play left mid. Califiori playing LB.

Can we recall Nelsen? We need him

Ironically he is out with a hanstring too.....sigh

I think MLS could play in midfield with his ball carrying, not sure about left wing - but with his enthusiasm and willingness to drive with the ball it might not be the worst thing.
At some point Arteta is going to have to decide to use a natural attacker from the youth team or a senior pro in a very uncomfortable position

So there is the biggest reason var has to stay. No var in the fa cup in this round and Maguire knocks Leicester out in the last second of the game when he’s standing a yard and a half offside from a free kick. Quite poor from a linesman to not spot it from a stationary ball.

Also nonsense decision to exclude all var from this round just because some lower league clubs don’t have the technology at their ground. The reasoning must be through some kind of fairness but how does having var at prem grounds ensuring more correct decisions are given in THAT game make it less fair for a couple of league 2 sides playing each other without var?

I feel like if you actually sat down and had a proper debate with the rule makers I’d struggle to find any way they can logically defend these types of decisions against rational arguments

On the other hand is it good to have a lesser competition that doesn't have var ... just so that people can see that the grass isn't greener on the other side.

All of our other fullbacks are actually converted centre-backs, so Tierney and Zinchenko is about it as far as possible emergency wingers. Zinchenko could play as an emergency attacking midfielder if we were desperate.

CF? After Trossard and Sterling, Rice is the only one I can see even vaguely fitting the bill, given that all of our other non-forward players are either natural centre backs or DCMs!

It's pretty worrying and you'd think we'll do well to hang on to 4th.

Actually being able to celebrate a goal as it hits the back of the net, rather than waiting three-and-a-half minutes for the Liverpool fan at Stockley Park to adjudicate? Yes, I always hated that about the the pre-VAR era.

VAR doesn't do what it's supposed to, and probably (due to the subjectivity of decision-making, as much discussed on this forum) never will. Just ask that Lewis-Skelly chap. I guess I'm in the minority, but I'd quite like to bin it.

The problem with binning var is we’d still have all the awful decisions that var fails to correct currently and then on top of that we’d have to deal with all the shockers like the Maguire one.
https://x.com/therefsview/status/188793 ... -j6VVZXEoA
On that note take a look at this unbelievably arrogant ref in Scotland, lots of talk of anti-rangers bias up there - this is pretty damning evidence in this game

I was looking at what it might take to get top 4….it will almost certainly top 5 this season as England is odds on to get one of the extra places.
Over the past few seasons 70 points guarantees it quite comfortably. Newcastle in 6th are on 41 points, they’d need 10 wins and 4 defeats to get to 70+ points which would be a very good run in. We’re currently on 50 so we’re looking at 20 points or say 7 wins…..leicester(a), West Ham (h), Fulham (h), Brentford (h), ipswich (a), palace (h), Southampton (a) are 7 games we should win irrespective of our injury crisis. Saka and Martinelli should be back for the last 5 of these.

It does feel like for us to finish 6th would take an awful collapse AND great run ins from 4 teams currently below us

https://x.com/mo_afc49/status/188798050 ... -j6VVZXEoA

This is why there has to be a citation committee after games for things missed in the game. The first one on Gordon is awful. It’s a cheap blindside shot to the head with his shoulder, if anyone is willing to give him mitigation that it might be accidental as it’s just where he was running then ask yourself if that was his own team mate he was running in to rather than Gordon would he have done something more to not shoulder charge his head?
In any other contact sport this would get a ban.

The Havertz one is terrible as well, clear red card. Would we have beaten 10 man Liverpool? Who knows but I reckon we would have. 3 point swing there. Add in the reds v Brighton and City is another 4 points. Even forgetting some of the other decisions that would have us a point ahead of Liverpool having played a game more

If Man City get away with their rule breaking then clubs like Arsenal, Liverpool and Man U should campaign to abolish equal distribution of TV money and instead follow the Spanish model where teams negotiate their own tv packages.

The outcry will be that’s unfair competition because those 3 clubs in particular would take a huge lions share of the collective tv money pot….of course the irony of those happy to let City (and others) break the rules on spending won’t be lost on them

You are right VAR must stay and the Maguire goal is an example of why. But every team must be on the same level with rules so I can see the logic of the decision regarding lower league clubs.

Fair enough, Rich. For me, an absolutely key aspect of the game is that, when the ball nestles in that net, it's immediately either a goal - or it isn't. In a low-scoring sport, that explosive moment is the most brilliant point of difference between football and ... the other footballs.

It's a good point, the elation (or the gut punch) is diluted. But it was always somewhat diluted by possibility of it being offside or the ref having seen something. Var taking so long and being so subjective is a separate question. There is no reason for them to be using the IT equivalent of a sharpened stone to draw the offside-lines.

I'm sure that with the way AI is going, it will soon be possible to have the entire review done in an instant. I don't like it either but there it is.

If Trent goes to Madrid Liverpool have a very good replacement in Conor Bradley. I’m always impressed whenever I see this kid. He doesn’t have Trent’s passing range and ability to do the spectacular but I think there is an argument that he has the potential to be a better all round full back.

Van Dijk and Salah would both be a far greater loss and I’m dying for both to leave. Liverpool will of course replace them but you just can’t replace what they’ve given them.

I still can’t understand any logic in the decision to have a blanket ban on var for the early rounds of the cup. The rules of the game are exactly the same for every game and are asked to be applied the same - why would we take away a level of additional accuracy in one game when it has zero affect on another?
It’s the equivalent of having 20 games in the cup but only having 10 elite level refs and 10 pub league refs, so we just put 20 pub league refs on games and have the elite refs sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. There is no one single reason to not use it where they can

I think there is definitely an element of losing the pure elevation of a goal going in, but when you’re right in the match you do celebrate and it’s only immediately after that you stop and think.
I would still much rather have a situation where I celebrate a goal and get the gut punch that it’s chalked off, or even tone down my celebrations for fear of var than the old system of the absolute horrendous decisions being let slide…..for example this call of offside v Aubameyang’s goal v Man U a few years back!

Ah, come on, the ref nearly always gets it right. I'm old enough to remember this excellent refereeing decision from Wales v. Scotland in 1977.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G8GsO8 ... cKallaster

That martinelli injury has absolutely screwed us.

We’re so lucky that Trossard didn’t get seriously injured when he got crunched otherwise we would literally be up a creek without a paddle.

Hamstrings are a tad unpredictable - Martinelli will be 3-6 weeks ish. Sometimes they rehab faster and the scan only tells you so much. If they're saying 1 month it's a low grade one.

Pedantically speaking, I'd suggest adding an 'almost' before that 'literally'. Unless there's a creek outside the Armoury these days.

I appreciate your optimism, Decaf, and I don't want to be too cynical. If it was done in an instant, and was correct 99.9 per cent of the time, I don't anyone would object. However, I just can't quite see how - for instance - whether a particular tackle passes the threshold for a red card can ever be anything other than slightly subjective. And that's even without wondering whether the VAR official in question ever had a poster of Kenny Dalglish on their bedroom wall as a kid.

I see Souness has had his say and a pop at MLS…. Young, black, confident footballer…has Souness found his new punchbag after Pogba

I know it might seem a bit churlish to decry the lack of quality in our youth teams when we’ve just developed MLS and Nwaneri but it’s a bit feast and famine - 2 wonderful players but where are the group of young players who whilst they may not be good enough for a title challenging team they should be on loan on lower prem and championship clubs - and therefore be able to step in to our team in an emergency and not look like a fish out of water. I don’t think we have it right now.

The academy needs a root and branch review as I think MLS and Nwaneri have succeeded despite it more than because of it. I think we only have 1 academy player out on loan currently - that’s drastically wrong