Arsenal 2023/24 - Born to be runner up

FootballHQ said:
Garnacho is very very good aswell and the one bright spot (along with Mainoo) in your season so not sure why you're trying to downplay Martinelli compared to him.

Martinelli was electric for 2/3 of last season before he got an injury in the run in. Hasn't hit the same heights but neither has Saka. 22 though and what he's produced already, that's incredibly exciting for the next few years but they need to get the CF right.
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I don't know, right now, last season looks more of an anomaly than anything. I feel he's a very erratic player who blows hot and cold. Garnacho is definitely a talent, but Martinelli really should be well ahead of him, but he isn't.
 
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Dumbstar said:
I've been saying this since your City draw with 100% confidence. You need to be braver next season.
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We need to learn to dispatch teams at home with more ease. We’ve dropped points at home against Fulham, Spurs, West Ham, and Villa now and needed late winners vs Utd and Brentford. That’s 1/3 of our home games where we could easily have dropped points. That’s where my issue lies.

It’s very difficult to maintain a title challenge if your home form isn’t nearly flawless. Weirdly, I’m more confident in this team going away from home and getting a result than I am at home currently.
 
Have some of the flakiest fans in the world. Left in their droves after Watkins goal.
Still injury time to play and their team hadn't lost this calender year, must be so disheartening for the players.
 
Frank Grimes said:
Have some of the flakiest fans in the world. Left in their droves after Watkins goal.
Still injury time to play and their team hadn't lost this calender year, must be so disheartening for the players.
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Yeah that was so weird. Having 2 best seasons after being mostly average for 20 years and leave the stadium like that.
 
BorisManUtd said:
Yeah that was so weird. Having 2 best seasons after being mostly average for 20 years and leave the stadium like that.
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Even their atmosphere against Bayern in CL was pretty ordinary. For a club with so much tradition and 2 very good seasons , their fans have been such a disappointment
 
I overreacted yesterday but they have had an extremely good run of form up to this loss. They had a bit of teething issues bedding in Havertz and Rice, but that means they need to be perfect/near perfect from now to stand a chance of winning.

They need a long term replacement for Jorginho and Jesus. That, with Timber coming back, should leave them in good standing for next season, assuming they can't do it this one.
 
AshRK said:
Even their atmosphere against Bayern in CL was pretty ordinary. For a club with so much tradition and 2 very good seasons , their fans have been such a disappointment
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I don’t know how people can really comment on atmospheres without being there. Match going fans seemed to think the Bayern atmosphere was very good. I get the comments on the crowd leaving early as that’s really visual, but atmosphere is surely best judged by being there.

Its not just Arsenal games or even football games in general, even in things like concerts there’s always comments about how the crowd looks or sounds shit etc viewing from the comfort of their tv, yet people at these events often experience it differently.
 
That second half performance was a total bottle job. We were playing like we were 4-0 up. I was actually reasonably confident coming out of the first half we would get the breakthrough but that was just terrible all round in the second. Are they tired or something? Villa did better for sure but we did ourselves in there.

We could be done this coming week if we have more performances like that.
 
AshRK said:
Even their atmosphere against Bayern in CL was pretty ordinary. For a club with so much tradition and 2 very good seasons , their fans have been such a disappointment
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The Emirates has historically been a very very quiet stadium. They have been markedly better this season and last season though. There has been a pretty noticeable improvement in noise levels at their home games.
 
adexkola said:
I overreacted yesterday but they have had an extremely good run of form up to this loss. They had a bit of teething issues bedding in Havertz and Rice, but that means they need to be perfect/near perfect from now to stand a chance of winning.

They need a long term replacement for Jorginho and Jesus. That, with Timber coming back, should leave them in good standing for next season, assuming they can't do it this one.
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I think this was the season for them, as City and Liverpool were quite injury hit, while Arsenal had 95% of their best players available. I think Saliba hasn't missed a game, Gabriel maybe 1 or 2 at the beginning of the season, White has been available for all the games. Same with Rice, Odegaard, Saka. Not sure how Arsenal would fare with injuries, as having two seasons without major injuries is very rare.
 
Vidooq said:
I think this was the season for them, as City and Liverpool were quite injury hit, while Arsenal had 95% of their best players available. I think Saliba hasn't missed a game, Gabriel maybe 1 or 2 at the beginning of the season, White has been available for all the games. Same with Rice, Odegaard, Saka. Not sure how Arsenal would fare with injuries, as having two seasons without major injuries is very rare.
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Liverpool definitely, City less so, but agreed.

Plus with the Euros, the increased load on players will result in some significant injuries come early next season, open question as to who will be impacted the most.
 
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Liverpool or Arsenal win them all and they might have a chance, but very unlikely.
 
I do think City will likely drop points once but we will not go through the remainder of our games with all wins. Hope they scrape past Bayern, because the season picture isnt going to look good in a week from now if they don't.

I don't understand that second half performance. We took the foot off the gas...while we didn't even have a lead. I give some credit to Villa but we stopped fighting for 50-50s and started hoofing the ball.
 
awop said:
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Liverpool or Arsenal win them all and they might have a chance, but very unlikely.
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I don't see either of us winning all of our games. We have our next three away from home all within the space of 7 days I think. Fulham, Everton and West Ham. I don't see us picking up 9 points there.
 
The way they're scheduling the games is actually still giving Arsenal a decent chance still.

Man. City don't play a league game until Brighton on 25th April. Arsenal play two more league games before then at Wolves who have a hundred injuries and Chelsea at home.

I think all they can do at this point is win those games and they'd be 4 points clear with Man. City having two games in hand. Any dropped points from Man. City and then Arsenal wouldn't be far from winning the league again e.g. win their last 3-4 games.

They can't drop off like they did last season, that would be really poor from them considering how they've generally played in last three months.
 
Klopper76 said:
I don't see either of us winning all of our games. We have our next three away from home all within the space of 7 days I think. Fulham, Everton and West Ham. I don't see us picking up 9 points there.
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Yep, our PL game against Spurs is after they have a 12 days rest while we have to go to Bayern, Wolves and play future Ballon d'Or Cole Palmer's Chelsea. No news yet about Odegaard but even with him this is probably not happening.
 
Is anybody really surprised, though? Arsenal and Liverpool are professional bottlers. Liverpool probably wouldn't even win that one title in last 30 years, if it were not the weird covid season
 
GoonerBear said:
I’ve always thought it’s unlikely we would win the league despite this good run, mostly because we would probably have needed a 2nd half of the season where we win something like 17 out of 18 games, including going to City, Spurs & Utd. That’s just beyond us or most teams really.

We still have our obvious weaknesses. Zinchenko now being a big 1, I think Arteta already tried to address that last summer with Timber. We need to replace Partey / Jorginho and get that long term partner for Rice. And we need something else in the forward areas, ideal a more clinical striker but I’m not seeing a great deal out there at the minute.
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- Is Timber a LB? I always thought he was a CB / RB. I remember someone here said that Zinchenko was basically Scholes at Lb which still amuses me.
- Did Arteta explain the decision to play Havertz in midfield in such a crucial game? I don’t know why he went for Havertz instead of a CF signing this past summer but if he has and he’s doing pretty well at CF just keep him there. Feels like he got over excited by the CL.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
- Is Timber a LB? I always thought he was a CB / RB. I remember someone here said that Zinchenko was basically Scholes at Lb which still amuses me.
- Did Arteta explain the decision to play Havertz in midfield in such a crucial game? I don’t know why he went for Havertz instead of a CF signing this past summer but if he has and he’s doing pretty well at CF just keep him there. Feels like he got over excited by the CL.
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He’s a centre back by trade but started the Community Shield and the first game of the season at left back. Think under Pep and Arteta teams, we need to forget about the role of conventional full backs with their liking for playing centre backs across the back 4 and inverting them. He targeted Lisandro Martinez for that role initially because of his ball progression before signing Zinchenko, but he’s really struggled defensively at times.

As for Havertz, im still not sure he’s totally given up on this Havertz at 8 experiment, but it backfired at the weekend. My thinking is that after Jesus good cameo against Bayern he wanted to give him minutes up front, and also I think there’s a general feeling Jorginho sometimes struggles to play 2 games a week, week in week out.

Partey would have been the obvious replacement but he looked rusty as feck off the bench vs Bayern.

But yeah, it again showed against good teams we need a more traditional partner for Rice in midfield. In saying that, I thought we played well first half, we just were shockingly poor 2nd half for some reason.
 
Changeisgood said:
That second half performance was a total bottle job. We were playing like we were 4-0 up. I was actually reasonably confident coming out of the first half we would get the breakthrough but that was just terrible all round in the second. Are they tired or something? Villa did better for sure but we did ourselves in there.

We could be done this coming week if we have more performances like that.
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Liverpool have been in that mode for weeks now. The number of times we behaved like that (over confident) against Utd alone this season deserves another ICJ investigation.

I reckon it's mental tiredness. Something even the best sports psychologists have not been able to overcome yet. What you need are two world class XIs so you can just replace those mentally tired players for weeks or months. Basically, City.
 
I heard a statement this morning about Arsenal, that I can't take out from my head. When they were with Wenger, they were imploding around January every year. They improved under Arteta, and they are now imploding in April every year.
 
Vidooq said:
I heard a statement this morning about Arsenal, that I can't take out from my head. When they were with Wenger, they were imploding around January every year. They improved under Arteta, and they are now imploding in April every year.
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Falling short in a title race is not imploding.
If that is your definition then 17/18 teams imploded before Arsenal.
 
Interesting. One of the best teams in Europe struggled past Porto and then lost against the 2nd best team in the Bundesliga.
 
There was an Arsenal poster who said Arsenal were one of the best teams in Europe. Since that post Arsenal played 4 games in Europe, winning 1 (on penalties).
 
SilentWitness said:
Interesting. One of the best teams in Europe struggled past Porto and then lost against the 2nd best team in the Bundesliga.
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You could have put Ronaldo in an Arsenal shirt and he'd have found a way to be a bottler in the CL.
 
As shit as it is to be a United fan, I live comfortably in the knowledge that Arsenal, the club I grew up hating, won't ever win the Champions League in my lifetime.

They are just awful at it :lol:
 
We need a forward badly. Not enough of a threat out there. Very disappointing because Bayern were not that good. Well that's probably our season over and we went down rather softly again.
 
Skills said:
Their record in Europe is shocking
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Aye, which is why I never understood why we were supposedly favourites over Bayern. Yes they've had a poor season by their standards but they have an excellent team. When they went 1-0 up I knew that was it for us and they weren't going to give us a sniff. Elite game management which IMO comes with experience in these situations.
 
Changeisgood said:
We need a forward badly. Not enough of a threat out there. Very disappointing because Bayern were not that good. Well that's probably our season over and we went down rather softly again.
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Think CM is just as important as a CF. With Partey done I think, our CM options have really just been Rice and Jorginho this season and we have faded in the second half of our last 2 games. Albeit they've been tough games vs Villa and Bayern, but we are looking very leggy. I think we played fairly well esp in the first half, but I expected at least a goal tonight.
 
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