Watford Vs Arsenal (PL)

Great. So how is simulation ever going to be stamped out?

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Seems fair enough to me. From some angles it looks like there might have been the slightest contact.

For anyone to get punished it is going to have to be 100% guaranteed no contact

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Contact in the box is not an invitation to go down! Sick of footballers going down in the penalty area with minimal contact that doesn’t amount to a foul

Simple test to decide if it dive or not: If the contact happened anywhere in the the pitch would it have been a foul?

In Richarlison’s case play would have likely continued, not a pen

Not surprised. They know diving is part of english football.

Just seen the highlights. Silly challenge from Bellerín, and a good dive from Richarlison. When I watched it the first time it looked liked a stonewall pen to me…can’t blame the referee, Bellerín creates that situation with a silly challenge. If you see his (Bellerín’s) reaction after the penalty decision you can see he knows he was guilty of a poor challenge. He lost the one on one battle and he knew it, and he made a poor challenge. That’s a penalty even if there isn’t contact and even if there was a dive. Without the use of VAR, in the current era of refereeing we are in, it’s absolutely impossible for a referee to see if there was no contact or not, and so he’s absolutely made the right decision, and the error is on Bellerín for that situation in the first place.

Such sour grapes from Wenger. From the highlights it looks like we totally lost control of the game after that penalty. If I’m right, it’s the same old story. We have no ability to impose some control on the game when needed.

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Weak mentality as usual.

First time in 2 years I went to a pub to watch an Arsenal game (and brought my cousin along), and what a stupid game it was.

The LA Gooners had a new venue to watch Arsenal game, and it was a pretty nice place… very comfortable and cozy, multiple big TVs, the breakfast was good (I ordered a Poldi ham sandwich)… they also had a raffle during half time… the only bad thing was the outcome of the game.

I did not follow Arsenal closely since Wenger renewed his contract but I knew he was falling in love of this 3-4-3 formation. I just had no clue why he did that and Saturday’s game really raised my concern.

Who controlled the tempo of the game in the middle?
Who was the setup man?
Who can efficient attack from the side and cross the ball out with some accuracy and consistency?
Kos and Kola like to push the ball up and we have Per as the last man?

I don’t like Wenger playing 4-2-3-1 for every single game, but this 3-4-3 is far worse.
To rely on Iwobi and Welbeck to create chances is like committing suicide.

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Did he not do that in Brazil. Im not sure its an English problem only
is it.

lol

Same old, same old. It will never change with Le Fraud at helm.

It was Keown’s comments that saddened me more than Deeney’s.

D: I’ll go up and think ‘let me whack the first one and see who wants it’.

K: It would have been perhaps the other way round. We’d have said if he’d come off the bench ‘let’s let him have it a little bit’ coz he’s going to let us have it


It’s this kind of shit that makes English football what it is. People praise the competitiveness of the league and coaches and players want to come here and be part of it, but it feels like Arsenal is just a club that wants to be in another league.

We’re never up for the fight and we can’t kill a game. These players clearly enjoy winning but they don’t seem too upset about losing. I thought hating to lose was a big part of being a top athlete. We were something like 8 points clear of United half way through 02/03, then we ended up fucking it up and finished 5 points behind. The next season we didn’t let up for the whole season and went unbeaten.

I guess you could argue the case for Alexis sometimes but I don’t see anyone in this team with that real hate-to-lose edge. I dunno, maybe Coquelin is the closest and he ends up fucking up and making us lose anyway. Maybe players aren’t bred like that anymore but I want some players that are raging, that can’t sleep that night and go home and kick the bin.

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I don’t want to take total importance away from this mentality/desire stuff, because, sure, there’s probably something there, but I honestly think this is stuff we wouldn’t even be talking about if we had better solutions to the more fundamental/systemic issues. Are City’s cojones the reason they beat Watford 0-6 at their ground just a month ago? Would anyone give a fuck about the fact that Troy Deeney can get his body in front of someone and block off Mertesacker a bit if we had any idea how to control a football match, or if we were good enough to put Watford to the sword before the 70th minute?

The problem isn’t the lack of cojones or will to win or lack of refuse to lose attitude, IMO–in general I think these things are more ex post facto explanations that don’t mean anything as such, and as a priori ones mean only a little bit more. The problem is we aren’t any good (or are just flat out bad) at our supposed style. I know comparing us to City is a bit unfair because aside from being actually well drilled and tactically coherent within their style, things that we are clearly not, they also have better players. But it’s pretty simple: poorly drilled team/team that has terrible execution of their intended style of play + not overwhelming talent = 5th or 6th placed team.

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I’ve watched more women’s college soccer so far this fall than I have PL football. No diving, no professional hack jobs, every team passes and plays to go forward regardless of match up. Super short shorts. Really enjoyable.

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Deeney and DT teaming up. Worst partnership since Titus Bramble and Jean-Alain Boumsong!

I agree with this totally

How has more not been made of Per saying that they wanted it more? Its astonishing that 2 players have come out and said that this year

Also fed up of hearing the same players after every game saying we need to learn from our mistakes and we will! No you fucking wont you useless bunch of cock wombles!

As i have said before, the whole attitude of the club needs changing from top to bottom. We have an owner who has openly said winning trophies isnt important, a manager who cant motivate/inspire the team, players who want out and players who simply aint good enough

Embarrasing way to run a football club

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No he didn’t. The quote deliberately lacked the appropriate context so indivduals like you could continuously trot it out as fact despite it being an obvious spin by the Standard to incite misplace anger amongst Arsenal fans in order to generate online ad revenue.

Ok what he said was if you want to win championships then you wouldn’t get involved

What sort of individual am I then out of interest?

After watching that match it was an illustration in what the club has become.

It’s unbelievable that both Walcott, and now Mertesacker as captain, have said the other team wanted it more.
What kind of flimsy excuse is that?
If they are going to learn from their mistakes they should start by not saying things like that more than once.

We were beaten and are below a club that has a new manager, and a fraction of the resources we have.

We also have the most experienced manager in Europe, with the most stable squad in the PL, who all earn more money than any Watford player, and we still have a manager and some supporters who think it’s the ref’s fault we lost to them.

@Tone, you are absolutely right.
The way this club is run is an embarrassment, and Wenger and the players should be ashamed.

Unfortunately the better players will just leave this shambles after this season, and the average ones will just carry on collecting their vastly inflated wages, knowing they wouldn’t be wanted anywhere else.

It’s the supporters that have to put up with this nonsense, and there is not much we can do about it.

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