A bonus blog from arse_or_brain
I’ve just watched the entirety of the game for the first time after I’ve heard all the comments from the twitteraty and uber bloggers, its a new and 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, Mesut was invisible, Cech was finished two years ago, Xhaka and Mo are the worst CM pairing ever and never play the ball forward, it’s 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.
Let’s 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 disappointed 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 launch 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 areas 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 halves he tried to play the ball from the centre of his own box, giving the ball away in a dangerous area, the second one led to the corner that we conceded 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 conceded 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.
Mesut was quite and struggled early on when leicester harassed us quickly. This may have been due to his knock in midweek and in hindsight (which managers don’t have) maybe Iwobi might 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 magic wand. invisible my arse.
Like Holding Cech didn’t 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 tendency 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, unfortunately 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 eliminated.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 occasions).
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 could well do to note. I say to them all watch the game not the result.
Positively Arsenal 
You are correct.
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Nice one.
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Outstanding analysis. Unfortunately, we don’t get much of that, even by ‘experts ‘.Twitterati? I love that 😁😂
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Perfect analysis A or B. You are so right about the initial emotional reaction and how much that colours judgement. The other factor that influences some people is that confirmation bias where they look for and only notice things that support their preconceptions. I experienced it at the game when a couple of WOB’s behind me who spent the whole match talking about each players weaknesses and shortcomings as they perceived them, and who was at fault for each Leicester goal. They also seem to think they have ESP as they were regaling everyone with how the last 15 minutes would go i.e. glorious failure after laying siege to Leicester’s goal and how Giroud would come on and miss a sitter etc. It’s funny how I didn’t hear a peep out of them when the match was over!
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They’d probably left with ten minutes to go Pass
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Newcastle gifting the game to Spurs.
Happens too often.
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confirmation bias, well I seen someone after the game say that bringing on Ramsey was totally the wrong thing to do, that we needed a DM on to stop LCFC running through us. Confirmation bias at its best, or is that its worst
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newcastle could do worse than to buy some of our unwanted players, Jenkinson, Debuchy, Campbell, Wilshere, Perez, Chambers, Akpom, would all improve their starting 11
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https://twitter.com/Blackburngeorge/status/896733346100903937 Hey
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Martin Keown just called Romelu Lukaku ‘A PUSSYcat’
Bruv…
Nah fam…
Wha!
I can’t..
Nah Rom what you gonna do?..
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Benitez could do worse than ensure JonJo Shelvey never wears a Newcastle shirt again – must be worth 10 points a season
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Eddy
A fit and focused Jack Wilshere would improve virtually any team, maybe with exception of Arsenal’s.
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And City DC
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just under 3 weeks left in this transfer window, so a little look at the state of our squad, re senior players, or to put it better, the players we have, who either have to be included in our 25 man BPL squad list or can not play league football for us this season, those left out can still play cup football, all 3 cups.
GK – Cech, Ospina, Macey, Iliev
CB – Koscielny, Mertesacker, Mustafi, Monreal, Gabriel, Holding, Chambers
WB – Bellerin, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Kolasinac, Gibbs, Bramal. Debuchy, Jenkinson
M – Xhaka, Ramsey, Coquelin, Wilshere, Elneny, Cazorla, Toral
F – Ozil, Walcott, Alexis, Campbell, Perez
S – Lacazette, Giroud, Welbeck, Akpom
I make that 34 players over the age of 21, which means 9 of them can not be included in our 25 man squad.
Of that 9, Cazorla and Campbell can be left out till the new year as they are very likely to remain on the unfit list till then.
then of the 7 left, we can probably dismiss the chances of Iliev, Toral and Akpom of being included. U23, loan or sale are the most likely options for all 3.
So that still leaves 4 players who although fit can not be included.
these are the most likely contenders for that list of 4 – Jenkinson, Debuchy, Gibbs, Bramal, Chambers, Wilshere and Perez.
I would expect Bramal, if not included in the squad, to be loaned out so he can gain first team experience, something he really needs having come from non league football six months ago
So that leaves 6 experienced players who 3 of which will need to be left off the squad list. Reports suggest that the club is willing to sell all six. But it may be that its first 3 out the door, rest get kept, unless we sign more players over the age of 21, meaning for everyone in and one of the list has to leave.
Jenkinson, Debuchy, Chambers and Gibbs seem to be the players the biggest distance from the first team, but Perez is the player whose agent is making the most noise about wanting/needing to leave.
So to sum up, anything from 4 to 9, as things stand(any incoming adds to the out going), will need to leave, loan or permanent. So a lot of activity in the transfer window for AFC in the next few weeks.
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Met. @AFCMet 20h20 hours ago
RVP: The little boy inside me was screaming for Man United
Giroud: There was something in my soul & heart which told me to stay at Arsenal
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SlovenianGooner @slovenianGooner 3h3 hours ago
Leicester were apparently well organised defensively, yet we carved them open with ease and they conceded 4 goals.
Their defence, despite conceding 4, is praised by the media, while our makeshift defence is vilified for conceding less.
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Thanks A or B for bigging me up in your post. Most times I am forced against my upbringing to be blunt and factual and to call a spade a spade. There is too much idiocy and stupidity in social media promoted by people who are either football virgins or trolls who have an anti-Arsenal agenda, i.e. the 10% I spoke about last week. Today while busy writing tomorrow’s blog I spent a lot of time fending off similar political idiocy on Twitter. Do people ever wonder why, as Bob Marley sang, we keep “treading the same winepress” for centuries and generations while the-powers-that-be misdirect and misguide us. We need to step off that winepress. That is why tomorrow I will provide some facts and data which give substance to much of the points A or B raised today.
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afcstuff @afcstuff 6h6 hours ago
On this day in 2008: Aaron Ramsey made his competitive debut for Arsenal in a 2-0 Champions League play-off win over FC Twente.
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Thanks for this. I didn’t see the game live, but good to read this, some positive, some warts and all review,as opposed to the anti arsenal media drivel.
Sounds like the attack is getting into gear nicely, which is important without Cazorla or a similar player,, the defence needs a little work, but then it would with so many missing and out of position.
Think we are going to see a lot of goals this season
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have not read the article but the headline made me smile
“jamie vardy punched wall after Arsenal defeat”
ha ha ha ha, that is four games – five goals – he has scored against arsenal and has lots all four games. He should tell someone if he has any regrets about not joining arsenal, it must be all of two minutes since he last spoke about it.
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Costa on Conte: “He is not a coach who is very close with his players. He is very distant. He doesn’t possess charisma.”
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New post up
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