Agree that we are headed in the right direction. The defeat is disappointing, but not a disastrous Arsenal performance, bar Aubameyang.
If Aubameyang would only start to play like Ronaldo does. Aubameyang is listless and not driven.

Partey and Lokonga will eventually gel well. Elneny, just hope he gets a transfer into a league where he will shine bright.

If you don’t get it watch the game again and look at fernandes. A *%^@*** nuisance of a player dropping into pockets of space all over the pitch. Pinging quick accurate passes and a massive goal threat. I like our midfielders but let’s be honest here smith Rowe was ineffective and Ødegaard still isn’t that level. Also elneny was technically lacking in possession.

We haven’t got a talisman of a player who has a killer final ball. We are depending far too much on wide players for our moments of insertion. That said the way the strikers are playing there’s no point anyway. Might be worth getting someone on loan. It’s pretty bad right now

Got busy, tired and fell asleep and watched it on a replay. I thought we were going to win it as I was watching it and winding it back to see key points of the game. How did we lose it? At worse a draw I thought.

No one likes to lose but losing to certain teams is worse. Man Utd is one of them. I hope I live long enough to see 1. Arsenal put 8 or 9 past them and 2. Have a favorable head to head record.

Loss aside, I still think we are going to get better. Good to see Ødegaard score. It will help his confidence immensely.

I find that our strikers often fail to just do the striker basics outside of judging their finishing ability. I watch various strikers in the league and they do these things. Aubameyang has more talent but he can’t contribute to games other than being on the end of a chance. That’s not enough.
The modern forward cannot be a finisher alone, they need to have much more in their locker AND be a deadly finisher. Liverpool set the bar for this with any of their 4 forwards. In our squad Aubameyang, Lacazette and Nketiah don’t really have any attributes suiting this modern style of forward. Martinelli certainly does and so I think does Balogun. In reality we need to ditch the first 3 and bring in 2 more. It’s seriously hampering us right now.

Your third sentence from last is my point. If Bruno Fernandez had played for us last night, we would NOT have scored any more goals than we did, nor create any more chances than we did. Your sentence “That said the way the strikers are playing there’s no point anyway.” shows that you know it as well as me. Any problems with our lack of creativity originate from further up the pitch than Saka, Smith Rowe and Ødegaard. If they played for Manchester United, let alone their near neighbours City, or Liverpool and Chelsea, their sides would have all the creativity they need.

Yep Rich, I agree. Martinelli and Balogun are hopefully part of Arsenal’s future, with at least one or preferably two others (I always try to remain realistic). I would be happy for Aubameyang, Lacazette and Nketiah to soon be part of the club’s past.

As an aside to your post Rich about being a goal scorer or great chance taker not being enough in the modern game, perhaps the best examples of that type of striker are Gerd Muller and Jimmy Greaves. To have the reputations they both deservedly do, I suspect each would have had to develop their respective games if they played now rather than around fifty years ago.

I've had a full day to seethe on that failure against that scummy club. I am a poor loser and the more I think about performances of Partey & Aubameyang the more annoyed I am getting. I accuse both of them of not giving their best. I think both need to go. Partey, at his price has been a failure. I can think of maybe 2-3 games he has been good and one dominant performance early on. Against Liverpool he was spotted strolling around after we gave the ball away. Again in this game I noted him just taking his time strolling back after we had lost possession. The number of totally hopeless passes was large. We need experienced players to step up.

A lot of other players were just plain sloppy with passing and trying to retain possession. Is Arteta capable of sorting this out?

Everton is now a major game. Anything other than a win is not good enough.

You missed the united goal then. One midfielder setting up another midfielder to score.

Both areas are still problem areas for me. Midfield obviously slightly less right now. That said I do kind of agree with what Henry said after the game that the solution isn’t as easy as just dropping aubameyang who despite his poor form is probably the best finisher at the club. I don’t think there’s much of an internal solution here that’s being ignored.

Worth also pointing out to all the “agenda” supporters who say everything and everyone is not good enough that our 2nd goal came from parteys incisive pass to martinelli wide who had found space. Not everything is black and white.

He had a bad first half but the people lambasting him tend to be bullied at school types. I don’t think we have a Midfield pair capable enough of dominating these tough away games to the top 4. Needs someone alongside him to take the load a bit more.

I think that's right, there is no single internal solution. Martinelli lacks the experience to play the no 9 role just yet, although you might have said that about Henry when he started out at Arsenal. The obvious difference being Henry was in a quality side creating chances and scoring for fun.

Its a real shame we've no european football, the europa league could have given Martinelli and Balogun valuable experience and room for a little bit of experimentation.

Maybe playing Martinelli alongside Lacazette, as others have suggested, is an option but not many teams play 4-4-2 these days.

You mean Xhaka

Partey and Aubameyang should be the players setting the standards in games like these, instead both were relatively poor. Not for the first time either.

Why does Arteta pick Nketiah when he has turned down a new contract and he has Pépé and Balogun.

The Pépé thing is a mystery, no one is saying he hasn't been a disappointment but, like Martinelli, the lack of game time even from the bench just makes little sense.

39McTominay
17Fred
10Rashford
18Bruno Fernandes
25Sancho
7Cristiano Ronaldo


I’d swap mctominay for Partey and maybe martinelli for rashford but that’s it. Simply better than us in midfield and attack.

We have a long way to go.

I thought partey was ok not great but ok. Aubameyang was poor again. However they tend to be easy targets for criticism as people don’t like criticising the youngsters for example Emile Smith Rowe being ineffective last night has barely been commented on.

The Pépé thing IS a mystery. I am guessing attitude might be a problem because Pépé on form, which granted isn't as often as one would like, is a good player.

Balogun showed at Brentford he’s totally put of his depth and you want to play him at old Trafford?

Very frustrated by the match. It was a massive test and opportunity to show how much progress we have made. Instead I thought it ended up highighting our deficiencies. That was not a game we should have lost. Our strikers have gone off the boil and our midfield still isnt where it needs to be. Elneny is the definition of an enthusiastic yet limited player. Perhaps in hindsight Lakonga would have been better but after his terrible 2nd half at Anfield, I can see why Arteta kept him out. Partey unfortunately is becoming an underwhelming signing given his pedigree. These are exactly the type of games where we need him to be 7/8 out of 10. Win at Everton and this loss becomes softened by three points, but a draw or a loss and it will feel like our true level is lower than our recent good run of form suggested.

I think Balogun probably needs to go on loan, but to be fair Martinelli was also poor against Brentford.

Sigh.....A draw would have been a really decent result....

I think its a little unfair to judge him on one game where half the team were victims of covid and we were pretty poor all round against ateam who were right at it in front of their own fans.

No one is saying start the kid but give him 15 mins in some games. he's possibly the future, Nketiah clearly isn't as he want to leave.

Pépé has been totally frozen out. Not the great player we all hoped for and incredibly frustrating at times but a reasonable goal threat when we dont have many.

It’s disappointing but worth remembering we only lost because a young player made a dumb challenge in the box.

If that hadn’t happened we would have a very valuable point. It doesn’t feel like a watershed moment for me and there’s not anything we learned last night that we didn’t know last week.

Time to shrug our shoulders and move on.

I've only seen Balogun a couple of times and he looked lost each time.

It shows how thin we are in midfield, because McTominay and Fred are both absolute pants. Rashford is miles better than Martinelli though, Man Utds most underrated player. On the flip side, Smith-Rowe is much better than Sancho has shown so far in the PL.

I agree socrates. Remember how bad White was at Brentford. One of the worst Arsenal debuts I remember seeing from an expensive signing. But look at the praise he’s getting now, despite not being that commanding in the air or being quite as good a passer as I was hoping he’d be.

No I didn’t miss that United goal. Nor did I miss a young wide player setting up a young midfielder to score for us. Fernandez obviously has talent but often doesn’t produce. Just as people can say of some of our players.

31 goals and 22 assists in the last 3 seasons for Fernandes in the league alone. We haven’t got a midfielder in our squad that can contribute like that right now. May as well be honest Bernard than pretending it’s all on our strikers.

Like i said, If it doesn’t come from our wingers or full backs we don’t create enough, hence the famous half circle of frustration graphic

If Fernandez played for us, with Arsenal’s forwards he would not have those types of stats. You said something along those lines earlier today. It is ludicrous to put a lack of creativity only down to midfielders. Forwards need to make themselves available for chances. You’ve either changed your mind or are arguing against something you implied yourself.

No creativity comes from all over the pitch but in the centre of the park we are weak. It’s plain too see, not just the strikers . Vieira and cesc scored over 30 goals for us. I can’t see many of our midfielders like partey or lokonga doing those figures

Like I said our strikers poor form is only part of our overall issue.

Surely Balogun has had just 1 senior start at brentford - when the entire team was awful and we're pretty much playing with a brand new team. The only other time I've seen Balogun in the first team was a couple of sub appearances in Europa last year where he scored albeit against weak opposition.

I don't think Balogun is the answer to our problems as he is very raw but given time I think he has a skillset that much better suits what Arteta and most modern managers want from their forwards.

What we really miss upfront is someone with some strength so that they can ensure we play with 11 men when we have the ball.

A familiar issue from last night, playing well, score and then completely go in to our shells, we stop pressing, we sit deeper and cede control of the game. Arteta isn't telling the team to do this, he's said as much in interviews. I think it is a lack of experience and confidence in the team. This is still a young team and it is a great shame at the moment that the experienced heads in the team are not playing well or are not the sort to shout and organise.

Another thing was when Smith Rowe scored and it looked like the ref was going to give De Gea the free kick Arsenal players were just happily lining up in their positions ready for the free kick, we should have had someone right by the ref explaining why he had to give the goal. We're still too nice in certain situations, wanting to just play 100% football - but there is far more to a game of football than just kicking the ball. Go on other fans forums after they play City and look how they moan about City being so dirty with rotational fouling and stopping counters.

I think it mostly boils down to that the team doesn’t have any ruthless killers anymore. We have young triers who can run all day, provide great effort and through sheer desire beat teams. At the highest level that will only get you so far.

I look at the team and feel it needs a van Persie type clinical finisher and a player like Cazorla who can produce a moment of quality to cut a team open.

If you think back to the Valencia game where aubameyang was still in his pomp and destroyed them with some elite finishing. Cesc in the san siro. We just don’t have that talisman anymore who can win those tight games outright.

We bring effort, desire and despite what some of the wallys in our fanbase say organisation. We miss a bit of guile and experience

Might be good enough to get 4h or 5th but to take on the top 4 you need some sheer villains to win away from home and match winners. I just look at our team and don’t see ruthless match winners and to acquire one or two might be very expensive.

Ironically, Guendozi could have played that role

Annoyed to not get at least a point last night. It was easily there for the taking. Feels far worse than any of our other defeats where we were clearly second best in each.
Next 6 are:

Everton A
Southampton H
West Ham H
Leeds United A
Sunderland H (cup)
Norwich A

Need to be targeting 13 points from the 4 league games

On that one I agree with you gooner7. I realise people claim he’s a difficult character. But if his personality is genuinely that flawed, why is he the captain of the French Under 21 team, or is it the Under 23 team? I can’t remember but I know he’s been made the captain of one of them.

Also, why is Deschamps including Guendouzi in the squad for the full French team? He must know something about what makes a fine midfielder, including in terms of psychological make up, as that’s exactly what he was himself. Furthermore when Marseille’s regulator captain hasn’t played, their manager has made Guendouzi the captain.

As a player he’s got good ball control as well as being a fine passer over long and short distances. His work rate isn’t equaled by many, and he competes. I realise Guendouzi has very likely played his last game for us, but in my view (I’m absolutely aware that this opinion won’t be shared by many here, or even any), getting rid of him has so far been Arteta’s biggest mistake as manager.

You also mentioned Vieira earlier. I’m never sure about comparing current players with some of the best to have played for the club. It seems to me a bit like saying White and Gabriel aren’t as good as Campbell or Adams. If you’re going to talk of van Persie, you might as well go the whole way and mention Henry, for me the greatest Arsenal player over the 54 years I’ve been going. It would be brilliant to find another player at Henry’s level, but I suggest it’s extremely unlikely. What we should be aiming to do is find someone at Aubameyang’s former level. That’s more realistic than finding a forward who is comparable to Henry, or for midfielders Vieira.

But I didnt say Henry. I said van persie.

To be honest I don’t think you even you need to say the greats. I saw us linked with Calvert lewin this morning and whilst I don’t think he would be the most awe inspiring signing I think he would add structure to our attack and provide a threat. However my original point remains, I don’t think we have a player in the squad who really pulls it out the bag when we need something.

Exactly. Would've chimed in with that myself.

Wobble your head lads. Guendouzi a match winner my arse

Galatasaray ran rings round him the other week.