A classy manager would have quickly realised his side should not benefitted from us putting the ball out - and instructed his team to let a goal in. It’s happened before. Says a lot about Arteta that he was trying to defend it at the end.
Was a foul on Tufan in the build to the throw. Looked a straight red, two footed and out of control. Lokonga was already on a yellow as well. Still, what do you expect?
I thought we looked organised and showed good effort. NK a definite upgrade. Friend has always been a pathetic excuse for a ref. Nice of Arsenal Fan TV to show the match on $ky for us. Are Alan Smith the former Arsenal forward and Alan Smith the co commentator related?! King has to pass that to Sarr surely?
I don't agree I'm afraid and neither did the ref nor VAR nor the commentators. I think Sarr fell over instead of showing strength (again) and was lazily looking for the foul. He does get clattered fairly regularly, but he also drops like a stone at the slightest touch and half the time doesn't get the decision. I also think, when the whistle didn't go for a foul, he stayed down rather than jumping up and helping defend - thereby causing a distraction for the rest of the team. He might well have been 'winded' by getting barged, but even so, it hardly seemed to merit a couple of minutes laying lifeless while the game carried on around him.
I don’t think we purposely sat back and played for a draw at all. But it’s clear that Ranieri wants us to start from a stable defence and go from there. In doing that today, we looked blunt in attack and it seems we can’t be both defensively sound and bright going forward and can only stretch to one of the other at present. I imagine being able to do both is top of Ranieri’s priorities.
I have watched it several times and I can't see any way that the goal should stand, from both a moral and a technical perspective. Lacazette needs a good kicking for that next time. Where's Britos when you need him.
Yes it was weird to see wasn’t it. Actual thought out planned attacking intent that isn’t just reactionary instinct.
Just got back from game, and I have no idea on what it looked like on TV but that was one of the most one sided refereeing performances I ve seen in the modern era.
Just want to say that I think Ranieri is doing a good job and I'm glad he is our manager. There have been a couple of 'experiments' that have not paid off but he seems to not be blind to how crap our squad is and is trying his hardest to polish this huge turd the pozzos have served up.
Key to that is getting some communication in midfield to attack. We do have decent midfielders and king/Pedro/Cucho (even Fletcher) could score if a good chance is presented to them. What was lacking most today was the attacking intent, but when Arsenal sit deep for the rest of the game and we shut up shop to protect our GD - you have to accept it I guess.
Sorry, Clive, but watch it again; he couldn't help but fall over as he was smashed in the back by a player who had run 15 yards at full speed to do it. In the context of what the 'ref' considered was a yellow card, it was such a deliberate & cynical foul that it should have been a cast-iron yellow. And that's not even mentioning the earlier challenge on Tufan that led to Rose kicking the ball out so he could get treatment. The commentators didn't think it was a foul as they were totally pro-Ar5e...in Alan Smith's case, literally & transparently so. Jamie Redknapp, certainly no lover of Watford, said he'd be angry at both the way the Ar5e didn't give the ball back at the throw & also at the fact the foul was not given immediately it happened. That is a more considered & neutral view.
Not as pissed of as normal after a loss. We never created much and midfield support when we did break was to slow. I don’t blame the gooners for playing on after rose put it out for tufan injury, tufan got up never received treatment and rose had time to put it out further up the field not in the final third. Thought overall our effort levels were a lot better harsh second yellow for the tractor. Some positives Kiko played the full 90. Nkulou and Cathcart done ok together Sissoko sat in front of them and done a decent job. Foster deserved a clean sheet. Saka smith Rowe and taveres (lb) had good games. Worrying that Sarr keeps diving waving his arms around asking for cards Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I missed the start of the game but that loss is hard to take. Generally though Ranieri has us going in the right direction. We showed much more fight and we’ve improved since Liverpool. Rose doesn’t look to be turning the corner I thought he might. He’s arguably still better than Masina but he was all over the place for chunks today. Shoutout to the midfielders who I thought were better including Kucka getting stuck in. Unlucky to be sent off but also I’d prefer that to our total submission against Liverpool. Main issue is the fact our only chances come from capitalising on opposition mistakes or we get fouled in the final third. There is almost zero link up play or chances created from built up attacks. It’s pathetic.
I did think that as I typed it. But I think we could have drawn Arsenal into a game they didnt want to play. It's also just come to me that having been a bit afraid to get stuck in and take it to them (physically and nigglingly, rather than footballing wise) might be because we dont quite have the cajones...
Arsenal were awful. The ref won them that one. Every time that bloody ref blew the whistle was a foul to them. We limited them to few chances. The penalty save and goal were probably their best chances
Play like that against Liverpool/Chelsea/United and we get smacked 5-0. Only let off by Arsenal's wastefulness in front of goal, while we created next to nothing against a good-not-great Arsenal midfield/defence. Foster/Cathcart/Nkoulou/Kucka/Sissoko/ Femenia played okay/good. Everyone else was anonymous/crap. As mentioned, Friend was horrendous. Worst performance from an official since the Jared Gillett experiment. Gillett at least was awful for both teams, Friend was very clearly leaning towards Arsenal in his decisions.
Again, I don’t think we purposely ‘shut up shop’ at all. But we had spent so long trying to get a sound defensive effort built up in the game, that we had allowed Arsenal to get comfortable themselves in what they wanted to do. So when the time came for us to try and break them down, they were well set defensively too. We got the ball to Sarr and Dennis a fair bit - but the former seemed terrified of trying to beat his man so just got woeful crosses in all day…and the latter increasingly disappeared from the game as he was getting less and less joy against their impressive RB. Lastly, if even we did attempt to shut up shop, I’m not that mad about it. Goal difference could be key to a team down the bottom and Arsenal clearly have players to put 4 or 5 in had we gone totally gung-ho. I agree that our midfield and attack need to link far far better though. I think we need a sound defensive midfielder to achieve that though as our current CM’s don’t look like they know if they are coming or going a lot of the time.
If you’re ignoring two golden chances that were rightly disallowed, Odegaard putting one just past the post and Gabriel’s header, then yeah….
11 games, 0 clean sheets and 0 goals scored in 7 of them with 4 of the top 6 still to play in our next 8 games. Gulp. By far the biggest positive this season is that there are other teams we could potentially finish above, if we get our $h1te together. Seeing Brentford getting sucked in to the relegation battle is really good news and it looks like Norwich and Burnley will struggle too. Leeds and Villa also look wobbly. The problem is this is all academic if we can't get our $h1te together. So far this season we've only really hurt teams that have left their back door wide open. Despite having 5 exciting attacking players two thirds of the teams we've played have stopped us scoring. We need to address that fast. We lack an effective creative midfielder and Giaretta's argument that teams with expensive defenders let in goals so we don't need to invest in our defence seems both counter productive and counter intuitive. The frustrating thing is that we could stay up if we get these things right but it's just not happening at the moment. Despite what Giaretta may say for the cameras, 0 clean sheets and 7 without scoring is a weak start to the season. I hope we can find ways to score goals and keep clean sheets but to fail to do either in 7 out of 11 games is a huge cause for concern.
Arsenal have form for this. 1999 Cup tie against Sheff Utd. This time no chance of match replayed. Arsenal have cry-babyism and cheating in their DNA. Hence when we do beat them it's so very sweet.
It’s not about how quick Tufan got up though, that’s confusing the issue. It’s about sportsmanship and if we put the ball out purposely in the belief that a player needed treatment - which make no mistake, Arsenal players and staff alike absolutely knew - then it’s wrong to take advantage of that. Perhaps more understandable if it was done in the last 10 mins it they were chasing the game as at least then they could front up and admit their gamesmanship for a reason. But with not long gone in the half and the score being level, nah…no excuse for straightforward sh1tty judgment. When the ref allows one team to kick the ball back to the other etc from a drop ball etc it’s clearly accepted and probably directed by the referee. As the opposition would have a claim to say ‘no, we want to contest the dropped ball’ but never do - what Rose did should fall under the same kind of agreement really. Officials can’t direct a team to be more sporting than Arsenal were - but it should be a matter where the referee highlights the scenario to the team and heavily suggests what they should do. There’s no reason beyond laziness and terrible attitudes to refereeing standards as to why this doesn’t happen.
I can see what Ranieri was trying to do with the shape and, I felt we looked a little more solid than we have done in previous games. I think Ranieri is rightly focusing his efforts on making us tougher to play against, even if that means sacrificing our attacking threat. We are still making defensive errors though and Foster had to make one or two saves but when you consider the attacking players that we were up against I think we did okay. We will likely lose our next lot of fixtures but we should use it to try and implement what Claudio Ranieri wants to do and hopefully we will be more organised when this run of fixtures comes to an end. It is easy to get on our lad's backs however, in reality, we should be losing away against the club with the highest net spend in European football, who are the most in-form team in the league and have not been beaten since August. Especially when you consider our very limited budget.
Friend has history with us going all the way back to the Play-Off semi v Hull. Disallowing a perfectly good Shittu goal and then sending off John Eustace which was later overturned. Dreadful, incompetent, biased "ref".
Arsenal should of won by 4 and screwed up 3 gilt edged chances. We didn't deserve a point, but should of got one as their goal should not of stood. We were better than in previous games and should be glad it was only 1-0.
That might be down to Ranieri building from the back, in fairness. Back when Sannino came in he said in one of his first interviews the the focus was going to be on making us a tight defensive unit first, and that the offensive play would initially suffer as a result. It seems reasonable that the same thing could apply to us under CR. On a more general note, overall I think he has us moving in the right direction. We really should have got a point today in the grand scheme of things, but no sense dwelling on that. And finally, a note on the ref. I've seen refs make worse mistakes in our games (Reading's ghost goal being the obvious example), but I can't recall a performance by a ref that was so abysmally one-sided for the totality of the game. An absolutely rancid performance of the utmost incompetence. He's either atrocious or crooked, and in neither case should he be allowed to officiate professional football games.
