Arsenal v Schalke 04

Elisabeth Studentschnig wrote:can't even say i'm surprised. fuck.

Also very agreed.....

Subs with 8 mins to....really....what is the fucking point should have been made half hour ago....

what i really don't get- as Jason already mentioned earlier- why the fuck did we wait so long to make a substition? we looked rubbish throughout the whole game, and yet we wait till the 75th minute to do so, and then only bring on giroud?? what the hell?

Once again we bring on a 17 year old to save our ass when we're losing. My fuck we're gonna destroy his confidence before he's even played properly in the 1st team.

What the fuck was that freekick....everyone up field ffs!!!

Goodnight people......I will pick this up another day.....

ok. yeah. that's that.

Christ almighty, just when I thought we had our worst performance of the season on Saturday, this Arsenal team trumps that...

This isn't kneejerk.

This is simply dreadfull.

Just to add......looks like we Will need anther forward....

How utterly predictable. Don't worry though guys, we've just got to go to Old Trafford in two weeks time or whatever, I'm sure we can make up for this there right? Fuck this.

Fuck this shit. Verm needs to sort his stuff out and soon. No spark at all. Ramsey continues to give the ball away, very little movement. Only positive this entire game was Per's performance. Really solid.

Sort it the fuck out, Arsene.

Typical unfortunately , and I see more to come.
We are good enough to control possession ,but not good enough to score.
Toothless in possession.
We don't have any- or many gamewinners in this squad

We've spent the last few years selling off our world class talent and replacing them with..Gervinho.

I'm not sure what this team is about. They are drilled to play a style that takes the highest level of skill to work effectively, yet they don't have the players to succeed anymore.
Pedestrian squad. Competent but that's it.
Hopefully things will pick up when all the injured are back, but I can't see it.

The worst Arsenal performance I've ever seen. Even worse than Saturday. One shot on target in the 93rd minute? Fuck that! Gervinho, Ramsey, and Santos were just dreadful, the rest of the team were uninspiring, Mannone is still the clown he was, Cazorla started off brilliantly then faded, what the fuck can a man do while playing with utter garbage? Vermaelen has to be one of the most uninspiring captains at the club, he isn't even our best or even second best center back, how can he be captain? I don't like to see Santos again, ever. He used to be good going forward, but that seems to have gone away as well. What the fuck did I just watch? My eyes are bleeding. This might sound doom mongering and knee jerking, but someone explain to me what he/she could take as a single positive from our last two games? Gnabry, that's what! The kid's got talent, but we will destroy his confidence before he completes 90 minutes of senior football.

Cannot fucking wait til this meeting tomorrow.......oh shit will fly....what's the betting Stan fucks off back home......

Kieran Gibbs is looking pretty important right now.

Well, my pre-season optimism drained away after the comic manner of our defeat to Chelsea. I guess we're just having our usual dip.

There's not much personality in this team, which is no surprise as the squad is always changing, there's such a high turnover of players, including some who hang around despite being clearly short on quality - Mannone, Santos.

Schalke have caused lots of teams problems before, but the abysmal nature of our performance should be the focus here.

Imo, all these lows in a season are pointers to the fact that we'll never really progress with this manager and with this strategy. Some may argue that it's the best we can do with the current constraints on the club but it's pretty much groundhog day. All that crap about Steve Bould's impact on the squad, I doubt he's allowed to have much impact. This is Arsene's baby and if he wants to let them play as if they were in the park, then that's his prerogative. But, we'll never improve enough to genuinely challenge. Areas of the squad needing improvement are not improved and there's a clear lack of nous. If only all our signings were as good as Cazorla.

What a bag of shite. I was ill but still went to this game, should've just stayed home and saved 45 quid. Absolutely no drive, didn't look like scoring for one second.

I gotta say though, those Schalke fans were absolutely phenomenal! They didn't shut up for one second!

That was bad. Really, really bad.

I didn't think we'd win, I thought draw, but I expected a better performance than Saturday but we have very little right now. Shut down Cazorla = shut down Arsenal and the midfield and forwards don't seem to have any real relationship or understanding.

Some players not good enough to be in the first XI, others who shouldn't play as much as they do (but would have been very good squad players alongside Cesc, RVP et al) but we do have a lot of players out. But we always have players out, what else is new? I think the saddest thing is that I'm not really surprised or too down about the last week (that may/will change should we lose to United and Spurs). Can we expect much more? I felt we would most likely be 4th this season with no trophies and although we had a quite decent start, we always needed to wait a bit to fully judge this side.

And unfortunately, it's looking like exactly like previous few seasons, except this time we don't have a world class striker to bail us out. I expect us to have dips like this throughout the season and then go on a bit of a run and come April/May we will be in the hunt for 4th and the cycle is repeated.

We need to find a settled side and keep it going. Constant rotation with the front 3 is not helping and the same substitutions at the same times is also frustrating. If we need to make a change after 45mins, let's do it, not wait until 65 then 75. And drop Santos even if it means playing Vermaelen or even me at left back. Liability.

Santos was so bad last night its almost funny, Farfan isnt world class by any stretch but he destroyed the Brazilian, thing is every time he made a mistake, nobody said anything to him, encourage or barrage? There was just an acceptance, I thought Vermaelen was poor as well, the other two Mertesacker and Jenkinson were solid I thought...why was Jenkinson subbed off? Why was Podolski? Hurrendous subs as well.

We aren't any better than Spurs and Everton anymore, thats our level.

Jenks1981 wrote:We aren't any better than Spurs and Everton anymore, thats our level.

Haha, hope it's just knee-jerk not your actual opinion.

I understand why Jenkinson was because Coquelin could fill in there I guess so Gnabry goes out wide. But Podolski is getting subbed every game, maybe fitness reasons as he arrived and Wenger said he wasn't fully up to the pace (we will burn out our new signings, especially Cazorla at this rate). Plus, he hasn't been on form in the last few games but maybe we try him at CF?

Bould admitted that the subs were pre-planned which we could all have predicted and far from me to tell Wenger how to do his job but maybe a bit of proactivity in that department when things are not going well wouldn't go amiss.

Also, something about the fans. European fans always put their English counterparts to shame when they visit these shores and especially at the Emirates but would it be a bit too much to ask for everyone to create some sort of atmosphere? The '12th man' is not a myth, players admit to being inspired when they hear the crowd roar and players love it when their names are chanted. Schalke showed us how to support a team and their players acknowledged them at full time by going into the away end and walking round.

"I understand why Jenkinson was because Coquelin could fill in there I guess so Gnabry goes out wide"

Mario I still dont get it, Jenks was solid as was Mertesacker next to him, if it was a choice between the two i'd have taken Coquelin off to keep our base for attacks, Jenks may have been in a better position on the far post for their second?

Further Coquelin was miles away even Arteta was closer to the man at the far post. Arteta was filling in for Mertesacker who'd been sent to up front, fuck me it was only just the 85th minute!!!! Fucking hurrendous!

Jenks1981 wrote:"I understand why Jenkinson was because Coquelin could fill in there I guess so Gnabry goes out wide"

Mario I still dont get it, Jenks was solid as was Mertesacker next to him, if it was a choice between the two i'd have taken Coquelin off to keep our base for attacks, Jenks may have been in a better position on the far post for their second?

I don't disagree, Jenkinson and Mertesacker have been our two best defenders these last two games and Jenkinson imo should keep his place even when Sagna returns, at least for another few games because he's earned it. But with 7mins to go you can kinda see why he did it and we've seen in the past on the odd occasion when Sagna comes off and Ramsey has gone RB so I guess it's the go-to move when things are desperate and we don't have that many options (when Chamakh makes the bench you know you have a serious lack of depth).

Unfortunately, the subs came too little, too late. Whatever we decided to do at that point it was too late and the game was over as far as I was concerned. We had such little creativity or cohesion and the subs were just a last throw of the dice. For once I'd like to see a change at half time or 55mins to at least give the players coming on a decent chance to change the game.

When Gervinho crossed the only player inside the box was Ramsey (not only he does nothing in his natural position imagine playing inside the box), if that doesnt show something i dont know what does