Good day one and all.
Arsenal is at the Molineux this evening wanting to get their top-four quest back on track against the Wolves pack of Nuno Espírito Santo.
The Gunners suffered a setback on Sunday as they slumped to a 3-2 home defeat at the hands of Crystal Palace – ending a 16 match Emirates unbeaten run. The challenge now though is to get back to winning ways as a statement of intent that we haven’t given up hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League.
However, we will have our work cut out against Wolves who, for a promoted side, are playing with extraordinary competence and proven themselves worthy to compete against the league best – and they got a good home record to boot. They are unbeaten in their last nine games at the Molineux (all competitions). That is a run that include seven wins, some of which are fine victories over Liverpool, Leicester and United twice. Their last home defeat was against Crystal Palace on the 2nd January – imagine that. They especially seem to enjoy playing against the top-six sides as some of their earlier games this season include excellent wins against Chelsea (h) and Spurs (a), and credible draws against City (h) and Arsenal (a).
What all this mean is that Wolves will play the good stuff, something that usually will suit us but we have been struggling recently against Everton, Watford and Palace who all had a good go at us. And if you add Arsenal only having won two of our last ten away league games… there indeed is cause for concern.
We shouldn’t be too apprehensive though because the gulf between a decent team in form and a truly top class team is still quite significant. Defensive issues aside Arsenal always give themselves chances to put games to bed, our finishing just had been lacking even in games we got results in recent months.
Team news: Monreal, Torreira, Maitland-Niles and Sokratis (back from suspension) are all line to return to the matchday XI tonight, with doubts of Xhaka’s fitness Guendouzi could continue in the centre of midfield.
Going from seven changes to the line-up in one game to at least four in the next at the business end of the season with so much at stake can’t be good for team chemistry. Now I’m not taking anything away from Emery here because he deserves the benefit of the doubt for having us battling for top-four and in the last four in Europa while in transition. However, he needs to get the team settled because his tendency to tinker on a week to week basis could be a worry in the long run.
Wolves got some tricky players that has the potential to trouble and break down shaky defenses but we have to throw caution to the wind and just back our attack, because any dropped points now could inflict some serious damage to our top-four bid.
A win would see Arsenal back in 4th, above Chelsea and one point behind Spurs, with three league to go. Time to step up Gunners AND Gooners.
@LaboGoon
***
Positively Arsenal 
Thanks Labo, great stuff.
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Thanks Labo
COYG!
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Cheers Labo.
Wolves one of most interesting teams in a long time for me, and lead very well into thinking about modern game, esp : defend and counter football; relationship between size of club and tactics/style; and the future of our very own Arsenal.
Too lazy to look up stats but believe Wolves have a remarkable looking set of results, with a great record against best clubs and an ordinary or even poor one against worst clubs.
Not looked at reaction to that in much detail but have feeling that much of it is close to ‘huh, well that’s odd,ey’, instead of ‘yep, that makes perfect sense. They like to defend resolutely in numbers, and are very good on break, with an excellent front two, including one who can dribble, and two extremely accomplished, disciplined passers in mid. That’s a good recipe against top six teams who will play ball and come onto them, but not an especially good one against lower teams who will mostly do no such thing’
Gets even more interesting for me when related to our club ; would that be a good way of playing for us? What if we did the same, but with a higher quality, though not enormously so, set of players?
I’m hugely sceptical about it, on all counts. It would take quite a while to try move towards such a set of players; our fans would have no patience for it, especially as it generally requires total commitment to that style to maximise ability to play that way; there are no certainties that if we got the right players for it, and could get through the period of them getting good at it, that we’d actually be better off overall (against big, medium and smaller teams) than we are with a different, * more attacking style.
No credit away from Wolves, who can look a good and even exciting team, with serious attacking threat against top sides; just think they are incredibly relevant to the modern era, an almost too perfect example of the pro’s and con’s of defend and counter, and a fascinating team to consider as we think about what the future holds for us.
Organised, heavily manned defence, plus good attacking threat, and into space, glorious space, can sound and look like someone only an idiot, a dreamer or a free-sending billionaire would not pursue, but it’s not the full story and maybe it’s not much more than half of it.
* not now, folks
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Rich @ 12.31
Wolves played defensive counter attacking football without parking the bus or require pantomime levels of game management from Mike’s Rep to try and compete. Their manager is part of the Portugeezah network I guess.
If it makes you feel better you can blame the cheque book manager extradordinaire/agent’s well paid patsy for the increase in what the venerable Marquis accurately described as:
“Shit on a stick”.
Wolves will put on better fair tonight (relative to quality of squad) then any Mourinho team ever did or will.
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Thanks Labo for setting it up nicely. Who knows? Could be any of the three option available. Cheque book-Wolves? How they lost to Twatford I dont know in the semi, one thing for sure they are a tough side and the will smell ze blood let with the Smeagles and be hungry for us.
But the lads will be angry and know what to do. Bloody hope we win after the other day. Wednesday soon crept up. Sure is a turd Rambo out/leaving.
Amazing and good to know that Sammy Chung is still going strong.
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cheers LG, certainley would be good to see wolves on the beach tonight with ARSENAL playing Brazilian football.
The lessons from the weekend need to be learnt but the game forgotten as confidence ans well as resilience will be needed tonight. COYG.
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https://www.arsenal.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/SQUARE_Insta%20Lineup_final_11.jpg?itok=SYrArhze
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Team
Leno
Maitland-Niles, Sokratis, Koscielny, Monreal
Torreira, Xhaka
Mkhitaryan, Ozil, Iwobi
Lacazette
subs: Cech, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Elneny, Guendouzi, Willock, Nketiah
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Good team.
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Lacking Ramsey, this is the most talented 11 we can field.
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here we go again, 1-0 down after starting brightly even if we did not trouble their keeper
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FFS wake up Arsenal.
Don’t have stats to hand, but my over riding impression is that we don’t tend to win games when go behind this season , let’s hope we can change that.
How have we allowed a player leaving to become so vital?
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the fucking gobshites 2-0, defense and keeper all at sea, and no Mustafi to blame tonight
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Oh well, there is always the Europa league, which I have for a while suspected may be Emerys preference.
Very very poor again
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this Arsenal team is going to inherit the Earth, well they are the meekest of the meek, 3-0 and we really can’t say we don’t deserve it, awful would be an understatement, and we don’t even have Mustafi to blame, no we have the mighty Sokratis back in the team tonight,
imagine we rested players from the Crystal Palace game so they would be fresh to this, tactical genius my arse
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Shouldn’t have been a free for the first goal. Mikhi was fouled to get the ball.
2nd and 3rd goals down to shit defending though. We really need to take shots from outside the box instead of trying to repeatedly thread balls into a tight box.
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Mandy preference my arse, this team can’t pick and choose which games they will win, they aren’t good enough for that, sadly they seem to think they are. That was a disgraceful first half performance, did we have a shot on target, we are being brushed aside by them, no fight in our lot, and its all no after you stuff,
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Throw on Willock and Nketiah, maybe the kids will have some backbone
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Well that was a poor turn of events.
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I think emery has got his season schedule wrong, this team looks to have become fatigued, injury ridden, and run out of steam. Maybe the players claims are right, he has upped the training, but to the detriment. We traditionally finish the season strongly.
We are back in the bad old days of Dec 2018, injuries, shit defending, no creativity, giving away stupid goals on HT.
If Rambo doesn’t return sharpish, this team will not be in the ECL next season. Perhaps the powers that be should have thought things over in Jan just a little bit more
Cannot blame Mustafi for this shit show against a team who are effectively on the beach.
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We thought Unai had sorted the defence….
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Balls. Not watching but is it a case of them managing to have loads back in defensive phase and lots of space when they break with 2-3?
Don’t know lay of land with points and fixtures but must be a close thing with whether to save players now for Europa and can give time to some of the talented youngsters in process, maybe starting with Eddie and Willock for 2nd half.
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Referring more to what I suspect is the managers preference than the players Eduardo, but the EL looks a bloody long shot on the last 3 league performances
He really should play the kids, some of the players he is playing these days might not be here next year, and quite possibly know it
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GP, who thought that.
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the level of our performance against Everton, Watford, Crystal Palace and now that 45 v wolves has been woeful and as bad level as anything since the time of Terry Neill.
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What happened in the buildup to Monreal’s foul? Because we were on top until that FK and completely fell apart afterwards.
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no half time subs from our tactical genius
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Things seem to get sorted for a while, but too quickly revert to the worst type of recent years
Let’s see what Nzonzi/ Benega or whoever can do next season, hopefully better than Mr Suarez
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how the fuck was that not a penalty, oh thats right its the pgmol and its arsenal
kolasinac and guendouzi come on for mkhitaryan and torreira
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no More pens this season, got the negative penalty balance to maintain
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half an hour to go and as things stand we look like we wouldn’t score if this game went on this Sunday
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Blow wow!
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I know it’s the wrong day to show up, but I had some free time.
Hoping for a miracle at this point.
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nketiah on for iwobi with about twenty minutes to go, still not a sign of us scoring, in fact we are not even causing their backline problems
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No shots on target thus far!
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sokratis pulls one back, ten minutes to go
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5th spot is still in our own hands
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full time: Wolves 3-1 Sheep
much like the team tonight I can’t be arsed, we got exactly what we deserved, but 5th spot is still in our hands
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we have lost 3 of our last 4 BPL games, 9pts not so much thrown away, but gift wrapped and hand delivered,
this season now totally dependent on winning the EL, we have Valencia in the semi final, so not a given we will even make the final.
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Confidence shot it seems.
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2nd and 3rd goals were awful. Not sure I have seen a team be able to just pass the ball around like that from a corner. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
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Pretty depressing really, that’s the third season in a row where we have been, pretty shite in the league, in relative terms, especially our away form. Could argue that we have been crap in the league since we lost Cazorla in fact!
A new manager has yet to arrest this malady, when things go wrong, heads drop, and it takes a while to come back, bad injuries cost dearly, players lose confidence. And managers make mistakes it has to be said.
Not sure how they remedy this. Let’s face it, Stan is not the most reactionary of managers, he isn’t going to sack emery this season no matter what happens.
All the smoke signals suggest quite a big clear out this summer, trouble is, limited budget, a manager who seems wary of blooding too much youth, not sure how much he will recoup from sales, and we don’t even have a head scout of tech director….is it Raul who will be in charge of transfers? Might sign Paulinho.
Always the Europa league, but need to get out of this funk , or Valencia will dump us out double quick.
There are some mitigating factors, injuries, a manager new to the league, but the over riding sense of of a wasted opportunity, so far at least.
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at least man city won to give me hope that liverpool won’t win the bpl this season
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Couldn’t take Liverpool, and even worse, Spurs triumphs this season, wasn’t long ago we had both in our pockets, what’s happened!!
apart from maybe being somewhere on a downward curve of a cyclical decline without the means to buy our way out of it, that is
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away to Leicester City on Sunday, at high noon, man utd play chelsea on sunday too
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Drew P. Nobbs
@goonergrove
2h2 hours ago
Watching this games is like watching Chelsea or United when they wanted the coach out. IMO
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Today, I saw why Emery didn’t like playing Ozil in away games. When the space is tight and defenders are on top of him Ozil tends to drift to the wings or backward to find space leaving the forwards isolated.
The few times he pushed closer to Laca and played some one twos he got in behind their back line. However there was no one running into the box for the cut back. Something which Ramsey always does.
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I also felt Dhaka could have done a lot more. Considering our backline pushes up so high he is almost in the final third. If he comes a couple of metres forward he’s on the edge of the box and can easily shoot.
For some reason though he always hangs back and tries to play a pass even when it is so cramped.
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I thought Eddie did well when he came on.
But overall it looked like a team who is tired or saving their energy while wolves played at full capacity. Probably the result of more number of games without a fully fit and capable squad to be able to sufficiently rotate.
Hope we beat Leicester next weekend and Man U and Chelsea draw.
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