In this podcast we dissect the hugely disappointing performance and result in Manchester and look at what attacking Arteta at this point will achieve. I conclude that nothing good will come from a campaign against him, we are “all in” and have to let it play out.
Please listen to the podcast if you have the time and give us feedback. If you could like , subscribe and promote, that would be a big help. I have no skin in this game really, but Shotta works really hard to produce and promote the channel and he deserves a bit of support. Thanks.
Today in the podcast Shotta and me discuss what I think was a decent performance against a team that tried everything to stop a game of football breaking out.
I defend Arteta, Odegaard, Aubameyang and I’m about as cheerful as I have been for years about the direction we are going in. Have a listen if you have the time and see if you feel we are being fair minded.
The dust has settled and emotions are not running so high now following our sober spanking at Anfield.
That we lost up there is no surprise and certainly nothing new. We have gone up their with better teams, better managers and in better form and come away with our tails between our legs. Liverpool are a great team and Anfield is the most intimidating of gounds, even for battle hardened teams, let alone a young inexperienced team. But, and you knew there was a “but” coming, the manner of the defeat was gross.
People say we were in the game until the 37th minute, I strongly disagree. We were never “in the game”! We just managed to hold them off until then. There was nothing about our game in that 37 minutes that suggested we could hold out for 90+ minutes, let alone somehow fluke a win. We were comprehensively outclassed and the underlying stats (the ones I wont stop papping on about) came home to roost. 93 minutes and and xG of 0.3 with just 5 touches in their box, suggest we were exactly what the stats suggest, a bunt powder puff force.
Apart from Ramsdale and perhaps Gabriel, every player looked below par for even an average PL side, never mind a top side hoping to be in the race for top 4. so let me pose a question, what is more likely, a failure of our system, or a coincidence that 10 players( plus subs) all have a bad day at the same time? The 4411 system that Arteta stumbled across was exposed. Our mid-field was non-existent, our defence overrun and our attack toothless. It was horrible to watch.
What surprises me is that this performance surprised a lot of fans. If they had been watching all season, looking even slightly beyone the results, they would have seen that it was almost inevitable.
We have somehow managed to find ourselves in 5th place, a great platform from which to build an assault on the European places, but an improvement , way beyond any improvement we have so far seen, will be needed for this assault to become a reality.
Anywho, here is the latest Youtube ramblings if you want to delve a little deeper into my analysis of the game and where we might go from here.
The Arsenal make the trip up the M6 to Anfield with our fan base brim full of confidence that not having lost since game day 3 has bestowed upon them. There is a genuine feeling that a corner has been turned and the future, and present, is a big paradise full of points and goals. If we win today, we go above Liverpool and in all likelihood, into the top 4. Seriously, if you have watched both teams play this season, that would be a miraculous outcome. But miracle or not, them is the facts, and no matter how unlikely, or how we have managed it, that would be a great platform to go forward from.
For me there is no doubt we have improved of late. We have a very good squad of mainly young players, Arteta seems to be making more right decisions and luck is favouring us, so why not be excited about it? Why not make hay while the sun shines? I believe this young team will improve, gel and develop a more pleasing playing style, when Xhaka returns it will give us more control and ball progression, every addition we made in the summer looks like a good buy. At this moment in time it does look a lot more positive.
It appears that we will be (excluding Xhaka) at full strength and Liverpool will be considerably weakened by injuries, good, it’s about time, for years it was us missing big players at important times. I hope we can take advantage of this today and come away with a positive result. We all want a win, but a draw would be a tremendous result also.
The club has been running a tremendous top class PR campaign recently, we can swallow it and be happy, for the next few hours at least.
Here is the Youtube game review for anyone interested,
Here is the latest guff from Shotta and I with a difference, we have the insightful young lady Byso with her matching hair and Arsenal top, it’s worth a watch for this alone, although I can’t say the same about my miserable face and incoherent ramblings.
Arsenal defeated a very good Leicester team 2-nil on Saturday. Ramsdale deserves high praise for making 8 saves including at least two worldies. Arteta gets credit for putting out a team that was high energy, high press for the first 18 minutes. But the record shows for the next 70 plus minutes Arsenal were outplayed in almost all categories; out-passed, outshot and out-hustled. In a word, battered.
But hardly anyone in both mainstream and social media seem concerned about the underlying statistic. To the contrary the dominant narrative is either about Arteta’s Arsenal going nine games unbeaten, as if Emery didn’t go 22 games unbeaten just under 2 years ago or to gush uncritically about how brilliant Ramsdale was, without questioning why our keeper had to be so busy despite having new and improved defenders in front of him.
Seemingly me and Blackburn George are the only podcasters-YouTubers willing to challenge the prevailing narrative and to express our concern that performances like those at Leicester are unsustainable. Two years ago we were among a lonely few to go on record and proclaim that Emery’s 22-game unbeaten run would end in tears. By December 2019 we were proven right after Emery had taken us down to 14th and was summarily run out of town. We may be wrong this time but I, for one, doubt it. As George said, unlike Emery, Arteta has a much younger team with a much higher ceiling. But if his team continues to perform in the current manner, sooner or later our luck will run out.
Below is more of our opinions in our latest YouTube VIDEO. As always we invite you to support our uncensored, unfiltered point of view without the hype and false narratives that now dominate mainstream and social media. We are confident in our point of view because time after time we have been proven right.
Last night saw us playing good entertaining football for the first time in Donkey’s years. It was fantastic.
Great performances from Arsenal lads all over the pitch.
In todays Youtube we muse on why it was so good, why we don’t play like tis more often and did Mikel come up with 442 by accident or design. Then will it work as well if we use it going forward.
Positively Arsenal 