After scoring late to salvage a point in what was a very frustrating afternoon at St Mary’s, Arsenal travel cross town to the London Stadium tonight for what could be another tricky encounter.
This past Saturday West Ham caught Chelsea sleepwalking 5 minutes in, defended for their lives thereafter, reducing the Champions to a team taking potshots from distance, to give themselves a much needed victory and morale-boosting suppository after being win-less since September this PL campaign.
David Moyes’ team had a good practice run the week before that though, after scoring the opening goal they stretched Man City to the very end. So Moyzie can take a lot of heart from his last two matches, look at this one and tell his players, “let’s go out there and not get beat”.
However, this is a fixture Arsenal usually win, losing just one and drew one this past decade. It was seldom easy, so to pull this one over the line we will need to do much better in the opening stages, especially the first 10-20 minutes, than we did recently.
You can have the best attacking players man, but if there’s complacency at the back you’ll always be up against yourself.
Our opponents have defended well recently and for us to get any joy we will need to play through them, not around them, and with all forwards involved.
On team news: Ramsey and Mustafi are unavailable. One or two others may get a rest either tonight or this weekend vs Newcastle.
Alexis Sánchez’s form, or lack thereof has become bit of a talking point. the thing with him is that if he doesn’t score those goals that can come out of nowhere, he offers the team very little everywhere else and it impact negatively on our overall structure. Which could become an issue during this festive period. Brave decisions has to be made regarding his involvement.
Speaking of brave, good luck to those braving the freezing London temperatures and going to the game, make yourselves heard. We can expect West Ham fans to turn up the noise after the Chelsea victory lifted so much of their gloom.
Everyone else watching from home… stay warm and keep them fingers crossed.
Why does every game feel like “the most important game”?
By @LaboGoon
Positively Arsenal 
I hope we are not becoming a confidence team
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Never fear – I shall have it all worked out in the morning
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Good luck on that one!
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Ramsey. That’s all I have to add.
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we have dropped 18 pts away from home so far this season
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Think our away form has generally been pretty underwhelming for 2017
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The good thing is that our challenge is pretty damn specific : need to find a way of doing better against teams with majority of players in own half most of game, centre extremely congested at edge of box and in it. All while trying to cope well with rare counters and set pieces.
Says something about what a big challenge it is that even with the various attributes of Giroud, Lacazette, Welbeck, Walcott, Iwobi, Wilshere, Ozil, Sanchez, Ramsey, Xhaka it can still be so damn hard to carve out good openings.
Nonetheless we have to meet that challenge. The way forward seems to involve finding players who can be exceptionally good in that specific situation, and looking to move on a few who do not excel at it and whose strengths lie elsewhere. Those who can do lots of good work in space but are average without it, basically.
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rich its the lack of tempo that stunts our attack, that and poor crossing. Take Ramsey out of our team and we don’t have a midfielder who wants to get into the box and try and score. its all sideways, backways and safe passing, in fact its passing the buck.
Bellerin’s crossing is awful, and he rarely puts in a first time cross.
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Would like to see Maitland-Niles given a fairer chance, the lad is never going to perform at his best while playing on the left, as he is so restricted when having to use his left foot, he has done well at left back, but its so frustrating to see him have to cut back onto his right foot even when its set up for a left foot pass or cross.
I’d like to see what he can do in a CM role.
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so far this season arsenal home v away form
home P8 W7 D0 L1 PTS 21
away P9 W2 D3 L4 PTS 9
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Yes our away form against teams that park the bus on their own grounds is poor.
Well spotted everyone.
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every team parks the bus when the come to the emirates, but we generally play with more purpose and higher tempo in home games, there is no reason why our tempo and pace of play should be so much slower away from home. Are our players so timid that they can’t play at pace cos its an away game.
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We have always been up against those who would the bus park
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Know I Keep saying it, Santi Cazorla is one of the more effective antidotes to these tactics , as were others before him.
Sadly, bordering on tragically, his future in the shirt looks to be in serious doubt, but if Wenger wants to play his signature game, he needs to buy or develop a replacement, if this is indeed possible .
We have some very able players but as many have mentioned, we are lacking a technical lead MF upwards to link these talents together. I was at that Ludogorets Game and saw SC go off, think he took a kick, as he departed, little was I aware of the massive implications to the player and team of one of the finest I have personally seen wear the shirt
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Frustrating result that. I think Theo could have been useful in this game as our midfield kept playing balls in behind but no one was really running beyond Giroud who was completely marked out of the game by 2 massive guys in Ogbonna and Reid.
I thought Iwobi, Wilshere, Niles were quite good and the team in general played okay.
UTA
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The inability to swiftly switch from tikka-takka to wing play is the kryptonite to our style of play. Most of the EPL have figured us out. Even the timing of our substitutions is predictable.
That one skill of the Ox, sudden acceleration and cross from the wing to the head of OG/Welbeck would have won us the game yesterday. West Ham are not a great team at all. Ogbonna & Reid have no solution to quickness.
Arsene is too hopeful in his expectations.
On the positives, Jack looked very good. All his tackles were perfectly timed.
Long may it continue.
AMN is a really good prospect. His calmness & recovery are top notch.
Ozil needs a rest. He saved his best for the second half but had no clear outlets in the final 3rd.
The league is gone but we still have much to play for.
AW has to reach for all his gears.
Enough with the hope.
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May have over-reacted a bit right after game.
Not easy to separate my increasing loathing of the bus-parking tactics which define the league now and my frustration when we don’t succeed against it.
As the reactions and negativity pours forth after game I find myself almost wanting the next era and a new guy in charge just to prove to people there aren’t likely to be easy solutions to breaking down the bus better than we currently do.
But again that’s mostly just frustration. I don’t want that and when it happens I won’t want results which prove that point.
Oh well, a 0-0 at improving West Ham is not awful. The second half was a decent performance, and had we not nearly brought on late disaster we would have conceded almost no good chances while having two or three good ones to win it.
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New post up
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