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 