Good morning Positive friends,
The roar was truly ripped in last night’s contest. If Friday night football is like this then I want more of it. I cannot remember opening league game that has had as much action, so much DRAMA, as we endured enjoyed in the course of collecting our three points against the Foxes. Much is often made in the Mainstream media of players somehow not being quite fit or ready for the start of the PL season. Last night I thought the game started at 100 miles and hour and rarely slackened off. A real ‘edge-of-the-seat’ performance the moment Lacazette headed his tidy opener after a minute to the final shrill of Deano’s whistle 94 minutes later.
Why was the action so electric ? Did anyone here really expect quite such a struggle against a Leicester side who last season scuffled away from relegation only in the final weeks of the season ? Not me.
Let me examine what happened.
- After the hour had passed, and when we were 2-3 behind, we tore the arse out of Leicester ( to use the technical coaching term). From the 60th minute on we passed with precision and moved with speed. The visitors finally could not cope and cracked, twice in the final eight minutes. Ignominiously falling behind for the second time in the evening we needed to switch to Wengerball and my goodness when the lever was pulled we had the players to put it into action. I thought until that point Mesut had been peripheral. In the final 20-30 minutes the German moved from the edge of the engagement to the pivot of all that decisive in our play. Aaron’s swift control and accurate finish levelled it, Larry’s strength finished the battle off. That final half hour was very, very good and no team in the PL, perhaps none but two or three in Europe, could have lived with us. It was not just that substitutions were made. The power was turned up, in my opinion. The performance bodes well.
- Leicester were a dangerous opponent. Fair play to them and the sharpness of Vardy and Okazaki stood out every time during that first hour. What possession they had going forward they used well and forced Cech to save and our defenders to scurry. Four chances, three goals. I salute Leicester for their contribution to the evening’s entertainment.
- Much has been made, by me among others, about the strength of our squad this season which is the best for many years, and I stand by the analysis. Nevertheless fate had conspired to forced us to take our first PL steps with not quote the first 11 we would have chosen, and with a back three made up of our new Bosnian tank, Nacho in the middle, and young Rob on the right side. To lose three goals at home is more than misfortune. Their lack of experience of playing together I am afraid caused the first Leicester goal. The second Vardy goal I thought was taken well so I will accept that. The third Leicester goal the defending was execrable ( a much under-used word I am trying to push back into circulation). Vardy had a free header, not an red shirt in five paces of him. Now I do not blame only the three central defenders for that abomination as I saw almost the same against West Brom in February. But if we want challenge for the PLM then ‘it’ needs sorting out.
That will do me nicely this Saturday morning. Enjoy your weekend one and all.
Positively Arsenal 
Huddersweat giving the smEagles a run for there money today. Not so glad all over at the moment! Amazing game at the Bridge…I bet Conte has gone extra potty in the dressing room!
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passenal we have for a few years now had the problem that when we concede one we concede again, actually more often than not. Its an odd one.
the changes to the 3 cb’s last night should have nothing to do with our midfielders and attackers not blocking runners at corners etc,
also would point out that we switched to 3 at the back last season cos we conceded 3 goals in 3 games in a row.
for me there is a laziness from our players to do the nitty gritty defensive work at set plays, and in open play there is too much passing the buck, where you see a player notice his man in behind and instead of busting a gut to get back and mark him, they shout at someone else to cover him.
I have called our defending as that of optimistic players, “it will be all right in the end” type of attitude, “he is unlikely to score” or “the ball will not reach him” or most likely, “someone else will stop him”, while I prefer the pessimistic defender, where they are expecting the worst and working to stop it.
we let in 44 goals in 38 games last season. All teams above us conceded less, spurs only 26. They all scored more than us too. The season before we conceded 36, which was in and around all the other top sides.
We seldom fail to score, yet lost 9 games last season, in fact only 2 of those 9 losses we failed to score, and we only had two 0-0 games, if we can keep more clean sheets we are likely to win more games
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“how much longer do we have to wait for it to be sorted”
I shall not be holding my breath. As Pass points out we have had a dozen good defensive performances in a row ( just about) before last night. Suddenly a bulb blew – I can’t explain it and I am sure Arsene can’t.
I would not say it is even the dirty work, it is the bloody obvious things like sticking with Vardy, having a tall static, player blocking the corner in to the near post. These players having been drilled into “defending a corner 101” since they were 8 years old, haven’t they!! And wtf cant some of our little attackers/strikers take up a position on the posts ?
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thats the point anicol, wenger has stated it many times, – “lack of concentration”, and “lack of focus”, so in clear terms, players not doing what they are supposed to do, trained to do, as I said above, its “optimistic” defending, “someone else will stop it”. type attitude that cause us this problem. We see them be so solid so often, that it really is so annoying when they let themselves down with a lack of focus.
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chelsea have scored, and have just had another ruled out, hope they don’t get anything out of this game.
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Martin Keown on Football Focus “Alberto Morata will be happy with that”
Chelsea 1-3 Burnley
Who ?
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football final score, just talked about AFC, its as clear as day that the line they are pedaling is “shaky arsenal”, and “lucky arsenal”
we will not see the same said of Liverpool and chelsea who both also let in 3, the difference – if I have not spoken too soon – is that Arsenal scored 4, while each of them did not.
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well I’m sure morata will be happy to have scored, to have got that out of the way, he has had another ruled out for offside, but I’m sure Keown was not suggesting that Morata will be happy that cfc are losing.
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I wonder what Diego Costa is up to this afternoon ?
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Snake off – 9 men
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cesc off, second yellow, that is two sending offs today, they had none last season.
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Cesc and Luiz have both pushed it in this game.
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“ten years ago that was not a sending off” — the fucking rules have changed you damn idiots, stop fucking suggesting that the Refs are wrong to send these dirty cunts off. Its ten, twenty, thirty or more years late coming to England, get the fuck over it and embrace it, and then maybe you will produce world class players, and not fucking thugs
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on the topic of Costa, reports today say that Chelsea are not even in contact with him, they are dumping him if they can get a decent fee, and they don’t care who to. You have to remember that Costa was informed by text from Conte that he was for sale. Now that is man management.
fuck Chelsea have scored again, 2-3 with only a few minutes left, Burnley in a panic.
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Chelsea have been really poor(I usually hate that football cliche) but rather than get their collective head down, they went for the ‘ref cheated us’ angle first.
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Come on Burnley dont let us down, park the bus will ya!
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is conte going the same way as mourinho, lose the CS to arsenal and its meltdown, blaming everyone else, club not signing enough expensive players, dumping players who won him the title, loaning out 35 players and saying squad not big enough, paying big for players and then saying they are not ready to play at this level, going off at match officials etc etc etc
and oh yes losing to lesser clubs Chelsea 2-3 Burnley
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I enjoyed that.
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Contes presser would be worth a look! Nice work Burnley!
I keep thinking of captions for your pic of the Ricky Tiks around Fabresweat A5.
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Can we play first and win every week please? It makes watching everybody else’s results so much fun!
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Merse’s chelski and big nose Thompson’s Liverpool both let in three after slagging us before the games this morning. Of course merse’s offered the excuse no top team can cope without 5 of their first choice players again forgetting that when he was commenting about us this morning. Shame some ex players are such complete knobs
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The old Seaweed are hanging in there. Going to be a tough one though…
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Looks like the tides in for the Seaweed.
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“Catalyst for change”?
Wengerball is back, you score, we score + 1.
Arsenal.com, slow on the uptake. Jens, not on the staff roster, nor is the new Aussie recruit!
Mr Wenger, can wait until the last month of his contract, to sign a new deal, why not the players?
It would seem to me, that Jens, is the go-between man, for the squad? Mr Bould, creates doubts in the minds of one or two players,.
There are now 3 analysts, who have been promoted to the staff identity board. StatDNA, must be producing masses of statistics and analytics.
The problem is, that most of the time, the players have their own lives to lead. Man management is all about the squad moral, as a team and as individuals. Most of the transfer talk, is plain nonsense. Too many of the players mentioned, will upset the squad harmony.
Jens, in my very humble opinion, is the proverbial 12th man. Steve Bould, can only do the one-to-one talks in English!
Back to, you score one, we score one + 1.
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We should have acquired Bernardo Silva….
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What a fucking boring match…BHA pulled off a few good slide tackles….
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CoralVerified account @Coral 35m35 minutes ago
Huddersfield have spent longer at the top of the Premier League in the last 2 years than Spurs.
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Notoverthehill
It would seem to me, that Jens, is the go-between man, for the squad? Mr Bould, creates doubts in the minds of one or two players,.
Is this percieved or do you have actual insight?
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Had to laugh at Martin Keown saying “Maguire looked impressive for LCFC last night, in the clips I seen” after admitting he had not seen the game as he was at the kilmarnock v celtic game, but that he had seen the goals. it shows how these pundits operate, Keown is a big fan of Maguire’s,(this is on record) and so bigs him up despite not actually seeing more than a few clips of the game, which in truth was more than likely the goals only, which begs the question how the view Maguire was good, is arrived at when its likely the goals only that is seen, had he anything to do with the lcfc goals, and AFC scored four, with Giroud using him as a rag doll while he scored the winner.
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Watching the game from the Bridge
Cahill challenge deserved a 5 game ban – leg breaking lunge – at least he did not complain about his straight red
Chelsea totally loss of discipline – Luiz deserved about 4 yellows for constant dissent about nothing at all – azpilcueta equally stupid and Cesc made up the full hand
Conte standing about like a sulky teenager at a grown up party
Pathetic effort
Can’t see Roman putting up with this
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conte might just be working on the jose big money pay day escape plan that has proved so worthwhile for chelsea managers
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Chelski had a relatively easy ride last season, now the minute anything goes against them they totally lose it – are the plundits accusing them of lacking bottle, leadership etc? I suspect not. They’re probably lining up with the excuses for the poor ickle chavs.
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Shearer – high dangerous, endangering an opponent — but I don’t want to see a red card given for that
sums up the standard of muppet employed as pundits in england
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so Wenger revealed that Alexis returned to training on Friday, and did well, he was not included in the match day squad cos he had missed training earlier in the week with a muscle strain. Might we see him in the squad, as a sub, v Stoke next saturday
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Shearer delighted with himself to find faults with continental zonal marking systems
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nice of match of the day to show every single one of lcfc’s attacks in their analysis of the game, I’m sure they will show arsenal’s 27 shots in a moment
what, they’re not showing them, odd that
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match highlights, warning john lukic is co commentator and he is as dull as dishwater
https://player.arsenal.com/matches/first
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Chelsea clearly have problems. Not saying they won’t solve them, but. A very strong refereeing performance in that game, long may that continue.
Not a great weekend for the WOBbles so far, I am sure they will be hoping for Jose and the Spuds to improve things.
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Giroud “To be honest, there was something in my soul and in my heart which told me to stay,” he said.
“To be honest, I have been hesitating because I am the most happy man when I play and I am on the pitch. I keep the faith and I still believe I can have an important part to play this season in the club.
“I feel good in my head and also physically. So I am 100 per cent focused on the club project.
“I have been through five amazing years here, so I felt like the story had to continue.
“There are nice days to come for me in an Arsenal shirt.”
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John Lukic you say Eddy? Thanks for that, I was wondering who it was. He is fucking awful.
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Giroud shrugged off TWO LCFC players to score that goal. He is a beast….
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in fairness to maguire edu, giroud can actually do that to any defender in the world. he has done it on sevral occasions and i’m sure he’ll repeat it a few more times this season. wenger said he opened the door at some point for him to leave this summer, i dont know whether to be angry or praise him for such a decision. but i know it is not for footballing reason but that his humanity got the better of him. how many times have we allowed very good players to leave just because we felt they wont get to a lot and replace them with avarage players that we struggle to ship out latter.
one stupid reason some idiots give for many goals giroud score coming in from the bench is that the opposing defenders are tired. but the question is that why is it only giroud who comes in to score with such regularity?
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Layksite, It’s much better that Giroud closed the door than if he thought it was closed on him.
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Giroud is an outstanding striker who lacks the pace to be an all time great. He is not good enough to take us to the next level, but plenty good enough to keep us in the top 4, never quite threatening to win the Champions League. I absolutely love seeing him play for us but can see why Arsene feels Lacazette has the potential to be something special. The relationship Arsene has with his players is exemplified by his treatment of Giroud and it is good to see faith, trust and love rewarded.
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Foreverheady
Giroud is unfortunate for me in that nothing sticks out in footy, modern especially maybe, like a shortage of pace.
For instance does a smaller or less strong player (and they pretty much all are in comparison to Giroud) get slammed for what they lack relative to Giroud in the way he does relative to someone with pace? Hardly ever. Yet his strength allows him to do things they can’t for goals in same way their speed does in comparison to him.
The perfect thing, other than playing a system expressly designed for the strengths of his game and to minimise his weakness (speed), a great variety of attacking threats and options. Hurrah!
The options of Lacazette, Giroud, plus Welbeck and Walcott, plus Sanchez! has me very excited. Pretty phenomenal. Without having the cash and pull of Real/Barca to be able to get literally anyone, I don’t think we could ask for more.
Just need to get the blend right behind them and it could be a great year for us.
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jonny goal kick is from the leeds area and they’re all boring from there, just look at boycott.
I’ve just watched the entirity of the game and watching it for the first time after i’ve heard all the comments from the twitteraty and uber bloggers is a new an interesting experience for me. I was told the defending was comical, Holding was awful and is just not ready, Sead was perfect and can do no wrong, Nacho will never make a CB as long as he has a hole up his arse, Mezut was invisable, Cech was finished two years ago, Xhaka and Mo are the worst CM pairing ever and never play the ball forward, its a fact that the Ox is a better WB than Hector and basically we got out of jail and were very lucky.
Well all this and much more was Bollocks on a large scale.
Lets take these assumptions (taken on emotion from an a very emotional game) one by one,
There were errors in the build up two all three goals and the whole team and coaches will be very disapointed with aspects of all of them, however if you take the defending overall and put it in perspective for the 95 minutes the defending wasn’t that bad. Leicester win the ball back and lauch it forward supporting in numbers very quickly, maybe the quickest in the league at this and they won it using just that system beating everyone except us. For the most part we stopped them doing this winning the ball back as soon as we had lost it or intercepting the balls forward to eliminate danger. Many of the players highlighted for having bad games were actually very good at this. Leicester cross first time and we did struggle stopping them doing this however only for two crosses in the whole game did they cause trouble again hardly comical.
Young Holding didn’t have his best game but he did well in lots of area’s and is as good if not better than the young stones and cahill when their good performances also came with mistakes. Arsene has already said he accepts that playing young players will come with mistakes and that is part of their progress and will help them develop into brilliant players as he will take the gamble.
Sead had a great game, he is a beast aggressive, fast, direct and loves to be involved. However the uber bloggers need to watch the game again if they think he is untouchable. He made several errors (like Holding) and in both halfs he tried to play the ball from the centre on his own box, giving the ball away in a dangerous area, the second one led to the corner that we conceeded the third goal from. Yes we should have defended the corner better but we also shouldn’t be giving away needless corners.
Like I said Leicester style means they will always do well away from home because of their lightning counters, this means the middle pin of the three CBs has to be on his game at all times. If you look at the way we conceeded the goals only the second could be possibly levelled at Nacho and overall I thought he had a good game. When you take this in conjunction with some of his other displays, saying he is not a CB is lunacy.
Mezut was quite and struggled early on when leicester harressed us quickly. This may have been due to his knock in midweek and in hindsight (which managers dont have) maybe Iwobi maight have been the better starter. As the game went on and the opposition tired and paid for their style and effort in the first half the mystro started waving his majic wand. invisable my arse.
Like Holding Cech didnt have one of his better games and thought he could of done better with the first two goals, however these mistakes were exaggerated by the fact that leicester only had three shots on target and he had no chance for redemption. Although sometimes I’am concerned about his distribution and his tendancy to be static on crosses how can anyone say he is finished when when at times last season he was simply outstanding. I think fans say players are finished because if they say it long enough eventually they will be correct, unfortunatly for these idiots it can take years.
The midfield pairing were very effective in this game, stopping endless counters, keeping the tempo up all game and I lost count of the amount of diagonal balls played to the wide front men or our wing backs. They did lose the ball sometimes when the understanding wasn’t quite there but this was the first game and that will be elimenated.Overall they took control of the game and limited leicester to small pickings.
The Ox is a very good player and going forward he can be devastating but he quite often loses concentration and lets players slip in behind (like the first goal). Like Shotts has highlighted many times people who present their opinions as facts are actually foolish.
Now for the getting out of jail bit. I have long said that pundits, journos and fans comment on the score and not on the game and this is the case for this game. Overall we played very well keeping the tempo up throughout and totally exhausting our opponents. The mistakes made by the whole side and not just the defence kept leicester in the game (who took their chances excellently by the way). If you look at the amount of times the ball bounced around their box falling to their players more by luck than judgement you can see they were hanging on by a thread and this was the first half not just the last twenty minutes. So they were lucky to come off at half time at 2-2 and although they again went to the lead they were retreating deeper and deeper and looking more and more exhausted. So in the end it wasn’t a matter of getting out of jail but Justice being served (as was the suspected handballs for both sides which ol mikey got correct on both occassions).
The errors can be cut out and when Arsene watches this back he will pleased with flow of play this early in the season a positive the uber bloggers coud well do to note. I say to them all watch the game not the result.
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Giroud is interesting.
His touch and technique when he came on against lcfc was noticeably top top quality.
Ibrahimovic was never the quickest, Young Pep attempted to use the player in his BBB squad in the Giroud role.
City haven’t won’t a title since they had varied and numerous support for Aguero, they’re nearly back there again just another cool half billion required.
Very happy he decided to stay at the Arsenal!
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