I think we should sell Havertz.
That signing did take us back a little.
A midfielder and striker who isn’t good enough for either role.
These are positions we still need 2 years later.
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Underlying principles might largely remain the same but he will ask his players to do different things and occupy different spaces.
He found a solution to losing Kvara with Neres and then a solution to losing Neres to injury too. He will make his players believe in him and his ideas quicker than any other coach in my eyes. He just gets the most out of the least.
This Napoli team should not be top of the table
We definitely should sell him
He doesn’t present good value and his next contract would be around £300K a week
He should be offloaded
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I think I’m in agreement with this. I like Havertz but I’d be open to selling him and bringing in Delap + a starting striker.
But also happy to keep him providing we can find a role for him alternating in multiple positions.
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Its just so fucking obvious if you apply even a tiny bit of brainpower to the situation.
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A little!? That signing halted all the further progress.
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How much brain power does it take to know Nwaneri could’ve made a difference in a game where we were struggling to score
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Not much tbh.
This is speculative. We don’t real know if he makes any difference and he hasn’t looked dangerous in any of his recent performances. I also don’t think relying on the impact of 17 year olds is particularly wise.
We also weren’t struggling to score. You’re an xG man and you can see how high our xG was over the two legs. Donnarumma pulled off a master class in goalkeeping whilst Raya conceded anything that came at him.
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What was clear was we needed to score low xg chances that was only way we were going to breach them unless we were gifted a goal
So yeah I’m going to bring on one of the very few players capable of doing that, I’m going to be real I couldn’t give a shit about past form
We have nothing to lose because we were going out anyway
Arteta is a coward
And Raya conceded super low xg chances by the way not just anything
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Doesn’t seem clear to me, we had several chances that were not low xG. Rice’s wide header for one, then Saka’s open goal miss, which must have been 0.99xG lol. There’s also that early Martinelli chance where he put it right at Donaruma from a few yards out, that must have been quite a high xG chance.
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We had those chances and we weren’t scoring them
Ergo we needed to score from moments of brilliance not chances where you’d be reasonably expected to score
That’s my point I’m making
I trawled through this thread and it delivered exactly what I expected.
No manager is likely winning the PL or the CL with the squad we have had available this season.
Havertz - whilst I think we all agree he is replaceable, he was scoring like a goal every other game and has a nack for scoring in bigger games.
Odegaard - not looked a shadow of the player he was pre-injury and I think lack of squad depth meant he was rushed back
Declan Rice - played through injury in the middle of the season again because of lack of squad depth and you could see that in those performances.
Saka - is our game changer and his injury had massive impact
Jesus - serial injuries, but if available definitely adds to the “squad”
Gabriel - his injury impacts our defence and our attack at set pieces - neither he or Saliba look as assured without the other
Ben White - defensively solid prior to injurty and in attack there was a chemistry with him/Ode/Saka, we don’t see the same overlapping runs without him
Then others like Calafiori, Tomiyasu, etc.
We have been ravaged with injuries this season! Denying that is a major factor is disingenuous.
Add to the injuries some dubious officiating and momentum was disrupted almost throughout the season.
Nwaneri has emerged as a serious talent and as others, I think he was underutilised BUT he also went missing in games, he is clearly very talented but maybe the club/Arteta feel he needs protecting at this stage in his career.
MLS - last night felt too big for him but he has an incredible future and is supremely talented. He and Nwaneri are the only real positives from this season.
Football is fine margins, last night, we could just as easily won that game as we could have conceded another 2/3, similar story to the game at the Emirates. Arteta is right in that the main difference was their keeper. What last night however did show me is that the boys never gave up trying. I saw under late Wenger and under Unai where the team dropped their heads and just gave up.
Some fans have given up on Arteta, truthfully most of those were never on board with him in the first place. But for me, I can see the progress of this team and we are in a better position now than we were for at least the last decade before Arteta arrived, so for me, he has more than enough credit in the bank for him to get another roll of the dice.
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I’m confused here, are you arguing for or against Arteta here?
You’re saying we created enough chances where we should’ve scored, and that the only way we could’ve scored is from a moment of brilliance.
The first, I’m not sure what Arteta could do other than get in there and score himself, and the other, we don’t have enough players that could do that.
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We did create chances that we should have scored from, however, what was clear to me is that we were not going to score from them.
In the absence of being gifted goals we needed to score from low xg and cut against the heart of xg.
which is essentially what PSG did. So in that case we should be utilising one of the few players in Nwaneri who is capable of doing so especially at long range.
I don’t care for past form, you’ve to to throw the kitchen sink at it because those kind of opportunities don’t come around often
Yet still Nwaneri couldn’t touch pitch which is beyond pathetic
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Totally agree.
The noises coming out of the club, the appointment of Berta too, suggest the club knows we need more depth and will rectify it in the summer.
We’ve come a long way from the team of 6 years ago that was regularly being battered by Europe’s elite clubs and had been in a slow and painful decline since 2006. We’ve arrested the decline, we’re back at the top table now we have to act like a big club in the transfer window.
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I never thought in a million years I would be saying that the failure to properly replace Xhaka and Aubameyang would’ve cost us so so dearly…
Pretty much everyone recognises the fact we came across a cracked, cheating City side. We still choked and it was our own doing. It’s like not we’re playing City every week is it?
22/23: We folded against sides we should be beating comfortably. 35 mins vs. Liverpool at Anfield, I’m convinced this league is ours.. and then we discombobulate. 2-0 up and give away the lead, for like 4 games on the trot.
23/24: Absolute wild campaign, likely won’t see those string of wins again for a very long time. But again fold vs. Villa at home. The damage was actually done in the first half of the season.
24/25: Even if you give us all our PGMOL points, we still trail Liverpool. It’s the club’s fault for failing to build a squad that can handle injuries to their main men, other teams have managed it before. I know you’ll point to Rodri, but City have lost key players to injury in prior seasons and still did the business.
To be fair, this has been the case for Raya for several months now. He concedes some of the lowest xg goals I’ve ever seen… but he claims crosses and basically plays CB for 80 mins so I guess that’s considered good enough…
and this will likely happen again next season. So shouldn’t AFC plan for this eventuality?
We know PGMOL have an agenda, and we know we have injury-prone players - due in part, imo, the same players being flogged for 3 years straight and having nobody else in that crop of 25 who can step in.
But who brought them all in? Why is Vieira and Nelson on loan if we’re short on numbers and had no intention of replacing them in January?
Just some wild recruiting decisions from the club here.
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By doing what, copying Chelsea and signing 30 players just in case we have a similar amount of injuries next season?
Going 16-1-1 is folding. Fuck me.
Maybe if every fucking bitch team that faced city didn’t fold we could view that run for what it really is.
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Well, didn’t we know about Tomi, Jesus, Cala and some others’ injury proneness before they arrived here? Yet we still bought them.
Selective reading as usual.