Arsenal vs Fulham

Maybe we're getting all of our shit perfotmances out of the way now so that we can go on a run om February-March-April's side when we usually also play shit... Ahh, Wenger you sly ol' fox, you!

Well at least we're getting used to mediocrity now.

I wish that had ended without the penalty. That was just rubbing it in our faces, like getting spat on after taking a beating.

The positives are that Giroud looks really good now, and Podolski came out of his goal scoring slump, though I think that Poldi's best position is up front and that's where he played at the start of the season when he was playing consistently well.

Everyone knows the negatives. No need to dwell.

Could very well find ourselves down in 8th place when this week's round of matches is over with Newcastle and West Ham still to play.

Make no mistake about it, we will be lucky to finish above Everton, Spurs and Newcastle if we continue these lacklustre performances.

Something is very wrong in the dressing room if we start seeing sloppy performances from Sagna and Arteta.

All the same glaring mistakes about which we have talked about for quite sometime now.

16 points out of 33 and we thought start to last season was bad.

The worst part is that no number of new players is going to improve this team.

If Podolski doesn't offer the team enough on the wing then he's hardly going to help the side by being up front. Giroud is growing into the role and developing an understanding with the others.

I actually thought Podolski looked best when he had Gibbs in support down the left. He might be a good finisher but he's not a good enough players to play the fulcrum role up front. Perhaps for a change he could come on as an impact sub up front because he's offering too little as a starter imo.

Meshaal wrote:The worst part is that no number of new players is going to improve this team.

The worst part for me is that we look like an under 11 C team at our worst.

I'm pretty sure that we're the least well drilled and disciplined team in the league, a fact hammered in by the lesson given to us at Old Trafford.

I actually thought we made Ruiz and Berbatov, good players though they are, look like Zidane and Platini today. We lack any kind of muscularity in the side as well, but when we try to close these players down (they will of course have got possession of the ball in acres of space), we are so easy to pull out of position. Teams exploit our positioning so easily. Player A drops deep pulling our left/right/centre back (delete as appropriate) out of position, players B players a ball over the top to player C who crosses for unmarked player D (probably the only opposition player in the area, it just happens that all our players were ball watching/marking the space not the players/had slipped over/were Andre Santos.

It's a brilliant recipe for mediocrity.

Now of course the elephant in the room (this elephant has surely runs its course now and needs to be acknowledged) is that the only change left to make is the manager. Given that continually selling players seems to be a non-negotiable part of our business,sorry... errr... football model, then it is the only change left to make.)

Just so mediocre, surely after the pseudo-miracle last season the jammy manager/club are not going to magic us back into the CL this time.

I think the worst bit is having to listen to pundits/journalists criticising Arsenal fans for the sense of entitlement they attribute to us. Arsenal fans don't complain because they think they're entitled to success/CL football/great players etc, they complain because the record is broken and has been broken for a few years now. Arsene Wenger is just so lucky that he's regarded as a sort of demi-God, because on the footballing side it's become so average.

As much as he has done for us, I really do think he has run out of ideas now and lost some of the players too.

Well, last season we seemed to have reached this point already, and the situation was just about recovered. However, with an already weak squad we sold two first-choice players (Song's sale having no reasonable explanation - even if he wasn't the best player in the world he was still a good first-choice player who wasn't replaced), from what looked like the weakest squad of Wenger's time at Arsenal.

I'm not even sure he's lost the players, it's just a side without the kind of foundations (training, discipline, appropriate playing personnel and depth in the squad, a core group of players to help new players settle in etc) needed to maintain our position, let alone improve on it.

Added to the usual lack of defensive discipline etc, the side is becoming less and less muscular. A midfield three of Arteta, Cazorla and .... Francis Coquelin is going to give the opposition a headstart every week. To bring on Ramsey before Oxlade-Chamberlain when the former is in such bad form was hardly going to improve us either.

Went out to watch this game at a pub instead of huddled over a computer.
Meh.
Defensive shambles.
By the amount that he gets played, it's not a stretch to think that Wenger feels that Ramsey is integral to the side, whereas I'm not sure many others would agree .
You can see the quality in the side , but will it all come together and will we find an identity before it's too late in the season to finish 4rth ?
Fulham learned from Ferguson last week and just sat on Arteta, who had a very poor game any way.
But I guess that is the secret to nullifying our midfield for this year.

Not even worth talking about the January transfer window.

4th really will feel like a trophy this season.

I'm still surprised that people are talking about our midfield being nullified like it were the biggest problem the team has.

The biggest problem we have is that teams slice through our whole team like butter to score goals. Exploiting gaps in our team, faults in positioning, silly errors and pulling players out of position is candy to a baby at the moment. The worst part of that being that we were supposed to be benefiting from the Steve Bould effect. We should've known better, Arsene is king here. He won't have suddenly let Bould take training and arrange defensive discipline drills, he isn't Roy Hodgson.

I agree that problems up front is worrying, but at the very least it's comprehensible because we've got new players there who are taking time to gel or maybe just aren't good enough in some cases. In midfield we seem to have two players who could do a job as holding player, neither of whom are dedicated holding players - Arteta and Diaby. The first is seemingly getting overwhelmed at the moment and the second has chronic injury problems. And yet .... no holding midfield signing since 2008?

I've been saying for a long time that we are no better than Spurs or Everton, are we all starting to realise im right yet?

John Foxall wrote:I'm still surprised that people are talking about our midfield being nullified like it were the biggest problem the team has.

Nah, for me it's just one of the many problems.
In the last few weeks, we haven't attacked, defended or scored very well.
It was refreshing to see Giroud do well ,and maybe things will gel going forward eventually.
But besides the issue of squad quality, it is about tactical inflexibility or naivete. When teams find us out we hardly seem change how we go about things from week to week, let alone during the actual matches. That is down to Wenger. Perhaps he still feels our "quality " is insurmountable and if we only just go out and play our game...

Jenks1981 wrote:I've been saying for a long time that we are no better than Spurs or Everton, are we all starting to realise im right yet?

Looks that way on paper and in reality. We'll be fighting it out for 4th with those two and possibly Newcastle, imo.

How long is a long time? They've not been better than us during the last 2-4 years.

Everton have so far been better than us this season. Spurs have highs and lows but are mostly not as good as they think they are.

We have underachieved despite being the next best after Man Utd, Chelsea and now Man City. We are not only underachieving now, we are becoming average, mediocre and a bit of a joke.

Historically we are the third most successful club domestically, but we're doing all that we can at the moment to make ourselves into less of a big club.

On the one hand, we're constantly told that football is not a good business investment because teams generally don't make profit. Profit aside though the more professional a football team is both in the running of the club (the institution) and the playing staff, the better it will be. At the moment the non-playing staff of the club simply can't be doing all they can professionally for the good of the club. I'm not evoking the question of spending an oil billionaire's money, just the question of thinking about what's best for the famous club that is Arsenal.

Lord help us if we lose to Tottenham next week. Which is a very good possibility. Many fans will turn and the atmosphere around the ground is already nervy/annoyed/frustrated as it is.

As for the game... meh. Same old, same old. Can't defend, no composure in holding on to leads, on to possession, in closing down, in working harder than the opposition. I called a draw before the game so can't say it's a surprise. Although agree with John that I wish we didn't get that penalty, just makes me feel gutted when in reality the problem isn't that a normally reliable penalty taker missed, it's that we made Fulham look like Puskas' Real Madrid.

Very average. And we have no genuine superstar this season to rescue us in rubbish situations.

Mario Leontiou wrote:Lord help us if we lose to Tottenham next week. Which is a very good possibility. Many fans will turn and the atmosphere around the ground is already nervy/annoyed/frustrated as it is.

As for the game... meh. Same old, same old. Can't defend, no composure in holding on to leads, on to possession, in closing down, in working harder than the opposition. I called a draw before the game so can't say it's a surprise. Although agree with John that I wish we didn't get that penalty, just makes me feel gutted when in reality the problem isn't that a normally reliable penalty taker missed, it's that we made Fulham look like Puskas' Real Madrid.

Very average. And we have no genuine superstar this season to rescue us in rubbish situations.

It definitely is a worry we now rely on Walcott to inspire the team.

Giroud did well today but we could have had a couple of more. Definitely not a superstar.

Wenger will end up signing Gourcuff in January

We need a Fernando Llorente or Klaus van Huntelaar type striker to provide backup for Giroud, or even better, to start over him. We also need to sign a world-class creative midfielder instead of giving them away for once. I'm not even the slightest bit optimistic about our season right now.

Giroud and Chamakh proved at Reading that they work better when working with a partner. They feed off the partner's move and find the space created. Granted it was against a poor side, but still the movement and threat was there more in the last 30.
Everything seems so static, like we have to bludgeon the passing style and almost have to embarrass the opposition before Wenger will allow us to score, that way it defends his policy.
We look fantastic when we play quick, sharp football, get from front to back asap without using the long ball. When was the last time (last 30 at Reading excluded) we did that?

I expected a 1-1 draw, not sure if I should be happy to have seen more goals scored by us or sad to have more goals conceded. Meh. Well, at least I'm enjoying seeing Giroud score.

Yet a pot load of goals conceded....again....fed up with finding plus signs from the games...the bad is far outweighing the good in my opinion....

In a nutshell...need another forward...to many players going forward...defensive duties are almost redundant...BUY A DECENT BLOODY BACK UP KEEPER....even if you unsure with facing a penalty at least commit to one direction..never be kept looking an absolute fool rocking back on your heels slap bang in the middle!! We may have scored three today but to much is going wrong...yet another lead slips...and 3 from Fulham is a joke in my eyes...

This is not how our team should be playing....

I'm so glad I stopped watching at half-time. Just had a bad feeling when we lost a 2-0 lead again, even though I missed Fulham's second goal when I went for a piss. I think I would've thrown my laptop against the wall in frustration when Arteta missed the spot kick.