No established full backs in the side now. What's our formation now?

Toothless football it really is:

Thankfully we paid bugger all for him.

Is it me being bias, or is White losing almost every battle?

Going through that absolutely rotten combinations of opponents scoring with seemingly ever shot they have and ourselves missing any decent chance we have.
8 goals conceded from the last 14 on target
We’ve scored 2 from our last 65 efforts

MU just lost their 2 goal lead. It is 2-2 with Norwich now.

I'm sitting here in hope only, because it's hard to see us scoring.

Good 11, a top 4 quality first 11 but zero depth and it seems to fall apart when every component doesn’t click. Which aligns with not being able to win games when we don’t play well.

To be honest I’m not sure many of the players we jettisoned in January make much of a difference

We've only scored 2 goals in the last 5 games including this one.

Probably right but I can’t help thinking having Balogun and ainsley on the bench would be useful right now.

January window seems mental right now. We disarmed our manager

Our last 3 games were playing teams who were on a no win in 5 at home (palace) no win at all in 6 (Brighton) and something similar again for Saints. We couldn’t have asked for the teams to fall any better considering their form

Good thing our next game will be a walk in the park.

Feels like a while since we’ve come up against an average gk having their game of the season. Takes me back

Nketiah is useless, hopeless. And I had thought he is an upgrade on Lacazette, my bad.

All this is doing is bringing Man U and West Ham back in the mix for 4th.
People were saying whoever gets 4th will be a very flawed team and it’s kind of ringing true at the moment. Feels like whoever gets it won’t deserve it it will be that the 3 others won’t have done enough to deserve it

Abysmal. What can you say really.

Awful.

Wenger post 2012 re-incarnated. Boring, slow and just bloody depressing to watch.

3-4 top quality players needed in the summer as a minimum but after the last 3 weeks I'm not even sure that will be enough.

Huge, huge disappointment
Arteta, sort it out
Team is shot of confidence

Just not good enough unfortunately. In freefall right now.

It was downright crazy. The odds of getting away with it were rather small!

76% possession. 23 shots.

Sadly United have put themselves back in the mix for 4th. It reminds me of one of those races when everyone is shot. (memories of butterfly 50m at school). Anyone who can keep going will win

I wonder what our Xg was?

Spurs zero shots on target today, out of 5 shots overall.

2 goals from the last 73 attempts at goal.

Spurs didn’t have a shot on target today but 12 goals from previous 15 shots on target.

Man U bailed out with a Ronaldo hat trick today.

I thought our collective play and our defence would be a big benefit in the race for 4th, but injuries, mistakes, not taking easy chances and opponents having a high chance to goal ratio has completely flipped that on its head.

We desperately miss some kind of match winner.

When was the last time we scored a header from open play? We seem to put a lot of crosses in but it’s a flawed tactic when we don’t have a striker who is a threat in the air or we don’t load the box with players

I don’t think getting rid of the players we did in January is the reason we are where we are, it’s looks far more likely that not getting a CF and CM in is the main reason

Saints 0.65 Arsenal 1.72 on xG

The performance and chances created was probably not much different to the away wins v Wolves or Villa that we all praised. This is where we are, at our level we generally get embroiled in tight games for 75% of our games. Score 1st and we stand a good chance of winning, concede first and it’s likely a defeat.
That isn’t CL quality it’s 5-8th.

I think we’re very dependent on how Ødegaard plays. When he’s good the team are impressive. When he doesn’t perform well the side look poor. He can even have both effects in a single match. He had a dismal first half and the side looked hopelessly ordinary. He was much better in the second half and so were the team.

Didn't see the game but by all accounts it was another mentally fragile performance.

Losing three games on the bounce to Palace, Brighton and Southampton is not just not top four form, its relegation form.

No excuses for the players or manager I am afraid.

So much for Arteta changing the culture of the club, we are still basically a bunch of mental midgets who can't handle pressure and can't bring their A game to the party when it is needed.

If we go a goal down we are *%^@**.

Fully agree Rich.

I'd agree. I think Edu and Arteta were being too clever by half. Many of us thought the squad was too thin if we got injuries. It's no coincidence that we improved when Tierney and Tomiyasu starred at FBs and we are poorer without them. We surely could have found a CF in January.

One has to assume it was Arteta who wanted Edu to sign Vlahovic and as a result we wasted January chasing after a forward who didn’t fancy joining us.

Myself, I honestly believe Danny Welbeck would represent a significant upgrade on Lacazette and Nketiah. So I agree we surely could have found a striker from somewhere in January. Because I think that’s where we went wrong.

I agree partially. I thought he was our best player and it was a committed performance

What happens is he seems to get frustrated with our 2 midfielders not playing the ball forward enough then drops too deep to collect it and pass it himself which is not where we need him. We need him closer to the striker pulling the strings.

Xhaka and Lokonga were hopeless in the first half. Just recycled possession. 2nd half they were better so I wonder if Mikel had a word and told them to be more adventurous

There’s nothing wrong with the spirit or mentality, that’s not the problem. They honestly tried their best today, the team runs for each other and you can see that.

The real issue is we have a real absence of quality in 2 positions that’s desperately hurting us so badly and half our defence that looked so solid earlier this year is missing.

Season can’t end quick enough.

Sounds like yet another game I did well to miss. I followed the text updates on Sky Sports whilst watching an Isthmian League game complete with female referee.

I got excited when I saw that Tottenham lost in the last minute, but the text updates for our game made for grim reading. Not really looking forward to seeing the highlights although I have seen the Forster save from Saka.

I can understand the temptation of shedding aubameyangs huge wages but Balogun and AMN would be getting minutes right now without question but instead we have players like Azeez and Swanson on the bench because they are on loan. You can’t honestly say it makes sense with a straight face.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. For someone who we spent a lot of money because he is allegedly so comfortable on the ball, I’ve been disappointed by White’s passing. I was expecting his passing to be much better than it is.

What does ‘comfortable on the ball’ mean if it doesn’t mean quality passing? I’m not expecting him to pass it like Beckenbauer. That would be unrealistic. But he doesn’t even pass it as well as Ledley King.

I actually do feel White has been a good signing. But that’s more because of his defending than passing.

You are right Bernard, it was assumed we bought him to be the player who could play through or dribble through the lines when teams pressed us high. Thus starting attacks from the back.

White and Gabrielle just fiddle around at the back with slow sideways passes. Where are the progressive passes we bought White to produce. He looks scared to play.