Well he won't assemble the Arsenal squad bar a few additions but he'll add steel, tactics, discipline and organisation which we need to win a flamin trophy.

Any Wenger has until the end of the season to do that.

i'm not sold on Guardiola yet as a choice for Arsenal. I would like to see what he would do outside the comfort zone of Catalunya. I am not dismissing what he has achieved in the past 3 seasons, I'm just wondering how much his being an integral part of the eco-system and also having 4 of the world's top 10 players on one team have benefitted him.

kamikaze wrote:

Captain wrote:

implication being that it is easy if only we spent the money (that was a 200m+ team) and if Wenger was more tactically astute (mourinho is widely considered as the most tactically adept coach in the game). I could paint you a picture but my photoshp skills are shit.

whats your point, that we should just pack it in and concede every trophy to barca?

Are you being wilfully ridiculous?

We don't know if they came out for a defensive strategy.

At 2-0 he took off Ozil for Diarra. That's like getting battered by Chelsea and swapping Cesc for Denilson.

btw, how shit are pepe and ramos? they may look decent when their team is dominating, but when put under pressure they both crumble. pathetic defenders.

Silvestre conceded less goals against Barca than Pepe and Ramos

Captain wrote:

kamikaze wrote:

Captain wrote:

implication being that it is easy if only we spent the money (that was a 200m+ team) and if Wenger was more tactically astute (mourinho is widely considered as the most tactically adept coach in the game). I could paint you a picture but my photoshp skills are shit.

whats your point, that we should just pack it in and concede every trophy to barca?

Are you being wilfully ridiculous?

We don't know if they came out for a defensive strategy.

At 2-0 he took off Ozil for Diarra. That's like getting battered by Chelsea and swapping Cesc for Denilson.

But Ozil was crap and Real needed a hold on midfield just to spring an attack or two. They were getting battered in midfield as well. It's a bit weird to bring on another attacker when it's not the attack that was the real problem.

But you don't diminish your attack when you are already 2 goals down.

Mourinho is a good manager but he is overrated. Bringing on Diarra for Ozil is just another in a long line of crazy decisions Mourinho has made when things aren't going well. He loves to roll the dice, the odd time it works he's called a genius, when it doesn't work nobody seems to care. Anyone remember Huth playing as a striker against Barca

I was hoping Puyol and Ramos would break each other's nose, I hate Real, Barca and the clown that is Mourinho.

qs! wrote:

But you don't diminish your attack when you are already 2 goals down.

Mourinho is a good manager but he is overrated. Bringing on Diarra for Ozil is just another in a long line of crazy decisions Mourinho has made when things aren't going well. He loves to roll the dice, the odd time it works he's called a genius, when it doesn't work nobody seems to care. Anyone remember Huth playing as a striker against Barca

But sometimes you have to take one or two steps back to go forward.

You're kidding yourself if you think Barca were gonna fold with Real's impotent attack. They were gonna get battered no matter what. To do the impossible they needed to get a grip at least and that's why Diarra was brought on methinks.

Let me remind you that Liverpool were 3-0 down against Milan and they brought on Hamann. He made a massive difference.

qs! wrote:

But you don't diminish your attack when you are already 2 goals down.

Plus Ozil is one of the best players on the planet and you never, ever take off a player of his quality when you are chasing the game.

Ok fair play Pepe.

I take it you would be satisfied to see, say, Sagna taken off for Denilson or Song, when 3-0 down against Barca.

Anyway Mourinho made mistakes like the rest of us. Now he's really shit after getting battered by Barca, something no one else has gone through.

At least when we got battered we did it in style.

But in all seriousness, Madrid have the players to beat Barca, it just went horribly wrong; the Madrid players looked shell-shocked and unprepared for the quality that they were facing, partially down to tactics and partially because that just happens sometimes. Benzema is also no sort of replacement for Higuain and DiMaria was absolutely shocking. It wasn't just the midfield getting overrun, Benzema was taking up bad positions and the wide men were struggling badly with their passes.

At 2-0 it looked like a penalty to me when Valdes took out Ronaldo and that could have changed the game but obviously Barca were the better team and the result was justified given how the game went.

Gurgen wrote:

Silvestre conceded less goals against Barca than Pepe and Ramos

And we were only beaten by 3 goal over 2 games.

Zico wrote:

i'm not sold on Guardiola yet as a choice for Arsenal. I would like to see what he would do outside the comfort zone of Catalunya. I am not dismissing what he has achieved in the past 3 seasons, I'm just wondering how much his being an integral part of the eco-system and also having 4 of the world's top 10 players on one team have benefitted him.

I'm not sold on the idea that Guardiola would want to leave Barca to manage us.
Is there a particular reason why people think that he would?
Isn't he another one that has Barca blood in his veins?
:\

Football in Spain is alot different, he'll leave or get sacked in a couple of years.

Well, his contract runs out at the end of the season, and he only signed it last summer.

The fact that he only signed a 1 year deal would suggest he doesn't intend to stay there much longer.

Guardiola has only ever signed one year deals with Barca. Was great to see Madrid getting smashed, wasn't it?

Biggus wrote:

I hate both of these teams. A truly satisfactory result would've been both of them losing. Barca used to have some appeal, but I have not worn my Barca top since they started stirring shit with Fabregas. Real are unsavory in every fashion. Together, they have turned La Liga into a farce. I hope neither team is at Wembley at season's end

You had and wore a barca top; even after 2006? Oh dear.

Never got wearing another teams top, well maybe back in my school days I might have done (though I didn't), but now it just seems silly.

y va marquer wrote:

I'm not sold on the idea that Guardiola would want to leave Barca to manage us.
Is there a particular reason why people think that he would?
Isn't he another one that has Barca blood in his veins?
:\

I can't seem him at Arsenal any time soon, but his contract is out at the end of the season and it's looking likely he wont sign another one (the stress of the Barca job, problems with the new director). He'll likely be at a different club in a season or two.

Tony Montana wrote:

You had and wore a barca top; even after 2006? Oh dear.

indeed, how could you? or anyone for that matter....heresy i tells ya

Lol. I went to watch Barca once, and picked up their top at the stadium. I've had the top since. I was fine wearing it until that whole Fabregas nonsense. I don't even watch their games anymore. I'm tired of all the hype around them, but will admit that they are special (or at least they were last I watched them).

xavi completed something like 114 of 117 passes. absolutely absurd. that's what we need fabregas doing, instead of running around doing a riquelme impression.

totally agree with that, but as a CM, he can't just not defend. if he's going to give up his defensive duties as a CM in the pursuit of goals that aren't coming from the forward positions, then we're just plugging one hole and opening another. sometimes i feel he was a better defender when he was 19, at least he had the hunger then.

Fabregas was a good defender when he started for us. Just as Song was showing promise in this area. It's because Wenger asks them to go forward and leave defending to the defenders. We will be just fine with Song and Fabregas playing behind Nasri or van Persie if Wenger just tells them to be less adventurous and defend more.

There's no one to blame for Song's inept defending other than Song himself. If he can't cut it defensively when he's not sitting comfortably in front of the back, without really having to do much thinking or intelligent moving/pressing - then he's a poor player and not worth persisting with. He's been asked to play with a little more dynamism and energy, that's all. We're not asking him to re-invent the wheel - he simply doesn't have the game understanding to make the right decision consistently, that's where he's falling down, not because of Wenger or the fact that he's been asked to do something impossible.

I don't think Fabregas would offer any less defensively than what Song offered today.