Totally abject from start to finish
formation, starting XI, defensive set up, movement, passing, shooting
usual garbage, resigned to it being ever thus and I may not live long enough to see it turn around
Dogshit defending once again. Collectively just a poor performance.
Ramsey-Xhaka aren’t able to control a game even against Soton, first touches are so poor.
Koscielny once again great in possession but defending was woeful.
Laca looked injured, wasnt making his usual darts.
Ozexis just couldnt be arsed but can you blame them.
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Ozil was good, Alexis not though.
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In a fixture like this any decent Arsenal team of the past stamps their authority in the first half an hour. A team like Southampton would be pegged back in their own third early on.
Not just late 90’s and Invincibles, even the teams in 2008, 2010, 2013 would have controlled that. We’ve been used to awful defending for years but we’re still quite new to being poor on the ball.
Even if the league is getting harder we shouldn’t have ended up in a kamikaze slug fest against a midtable side with the squad at our disposal.
We look like we’re just improvising with no gameplan in place and no idea what to do with possession. It always points to a manager sticking around for no good reason.
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Good job I bet on a draw as well.
Shame I didn’t bet on Austin to score.
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This, we’ve had bad defending/defenders for a long time. We’ve gone a long time without a reliable goal scorer but i’ve never seen an Arsenal side with such poor technical ability.
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Giroud Poldi Theo Santi attack in 2013 was more organized and structured and effective than the 2017-18 team
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At the start of the match it looked like we didn’t have any on the pitch either lol
We can’t afford to start matches this poorly, we aren’t good enough going forward to get away with it. We were lucky to get a draw, they could easily have been a few up after the first 20 minutes.
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The thought that we had a Giroud, Theo, Santi, Podolski attack once is depressing, AOL is much better and just needs a run of games. They thrashed Spurs etc
Pretty sure it’s the only season where we had 4 players hit double figures for goals. It was a shit season but it was one of our best seasons for goals scored
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I remember Andre Santos…
The first NLD this attacking combo played, was a 5-1 (or 5-2??)win.
Thrashing Spuds doesn’t mean much.
Aw I miss 
and his smile. Cult hero.
He won me a lot of money during Euro 2008.
They didn’t win anything as an attack, meh. It’s not an attack that puts fear into opposition. Ozil carried them when he joined. AOL should win us something
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Ozil effect, we were trophyless in 12/13
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How many goals Arsenal have conceded because of a failed control or a misplaced pass in the first 25/30 meters? I remember two against Everton, two against United, one today against Soton, one against Swansea, one against Manchester City and one against Leicester.
I don’t know if this is a tactical problem or the players/plan studied by the manager to take the ball out of our third side deserve criticisms.
First of all, our CBs are in terrible form. Koscielny is tired and not fully focused (the achilles injury is knocking the door), Kolasinac and Bellerìn have the batteries at low levels, Monreal is suffering so much the body check with the other strikers, Mustafi - exactly like Koscielny - now is injured but as Lolo has made an huge mistake against United.
This is why I think our CBs are very poor and the manager underrated so much this problem. Mustafi and Koscielny have the same problem who Koscielny and Veramelen suffered: lack of stature and physical presence. In my humble opinion this problem forced the manager - but honestly I think the players decided that - to switch from the back 4 to the back three. Now the back three system doesn’t offer the same support than last season. The number e stats posted since the change of tactic were right: Arsenal started to perform because the players “recovered” the confidence. The defensive system was a false pretest to justify their failure until that moment.
Xhaka is another big problem. We paid over 40M for a player “sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit” as Gattuso did in Greece during a press conference. It’s easy to scherme him and create problems to our build up. The opponents scherme Xhaka and force the CBs to pass the ball on the WBs, marked or hardly pressed by their players.
The third, and the most important problem, is the chilean cunt [we have this problem because the lack of balls of our manager to sell him and find a player great enough to accept to play for an Europe League team receiving a normal wage]. He plays for himself and not for the team. He moans the others but doesn’t judge himself when is toxic like today. I would like to see something different. I hope we will fix this problem as soon as possible, even in January. lost the count of how many passes he misplaced this season.
Talking about today, Giroud saved Arsenal from a deserved defeat. No one player on the pitch has been good enough to escape from the criticisms, including a manager who doesn’t see how that team is bad with this 3-4-2-1. Massive changes are needed.
My view to react:
- Back to the 4-2-3-1 / 4-3-3
- Players like Wilshere, Iwobi, Giroud, Debuchy, Chambers, Holding and Walcott deserve to be involved.
- Find three top players on the january transfer market [physical and technical CB + deeplying playmaker] + AS7’s replacement.
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Reading through this post I was not expecting that 
Let’s be fair and honest… I’m pretty sick to hear that we didnt win anything (won FA Cup actually) because Giroud Poldi Theo Santi were not good enough, Poldi and Theo did not defend.
Looking back for all these years… The problem is far more than that.
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