Arsenal v/s Southampton, EFL Cup Quarter-Final, Wednesday, 30th November, 19:45: Page 15 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal v/s Southampton, EFL Cup Quarter-Final, Wednesday, 30th November, 19:45

Klaus

Even if we had played Walcott today (good idea, by the way) there's no guarantee he would have been up to much. The bloke has been dirt poor recently. It's not like he's cut out to play up front either.

The big miss in this game was Giroud. I reckon he would have scored one or two against this lot, but what are you gonna do. That injury against Swansea was very untimely.

Tactics

Oh and I'll make a prediction: West Ham will look like the team that had just had the week off whilst we'll look like the team that travelled all the way up North and played a tense match against Man United 3 days earlier

Tactics

Klaus wrote:
Even if we had played Walcott today (good idea, by the way) there's no guarantee he would have been up to much. The bloke has been dirt poor recently. It's not like he's cut out to play up front either.

The big miss in this game was Giroud. I reckon he would have scored one or two against this lot, but what are you gonna do. That injury against Swansea was very untimely.

How about not only starting Walcott , but also Ospina , Ox, Xhaka, Mustafi etc and Ozil on the bech ? That would have given us a much better chance of making the semis IMO.

Deliberately threw away a quarter final match for competitions we are unlikely to win anyway. This loss has pissed me off no end

Klaus

I don't agree with starting most of our regular players three days before an important league game. Not if I can avoid it anyway. The league cup is just not that important. We should have had a little more experience on the field for this one but we were unfortunate with some of the injuries recently.

Ultimately the league cup is a gamble, not the main focus of a season. Anyone who thinks it is should get their priorities straight.

Jed

Wenger doesn't give a fuck about this competition. That's why he's never won it.

Nothing to see here guys move along.

FEBravo

I'm more worried about the mental state of these players. This is a lot that should try and push to have more game time, and break through the first team. Other than Iwobi, no one seemed to be interested. Either they knew it didn't matter cause the first 11 was set, or they're just happy being in the squad. Either way it's a problem. Ramsey of all people you would think would have taken this chance to stake his claim for more game time.

banduan

Poor performance all around. Ramsey had a great game vs PSG and I was hoping he'd build on it. Perez was awful and was basically not a striker, but he has an excuse. Iwobi had energy but no composure or final ball.

Jenko was a complete disaster. Targetted time and again. Gibbs was actually good in defence, stymied going forward. Xhaka too was so disappointing. How many failed dribbles / runs from him? He's not helped by PErez basically not making runs.

General

Ramsey had anything but a great game against PSG.

Jed

Both goals came from Jenkinson's side.

Non-league footballer.

goon

Tactics wrote:
goon wrote:
There's plenty of hunger for trophies, just not this one. I want to win the league and am more than happy to sacrifice this competition to try and achieve it.

Sacrifice the cup for the league ? Why not go for both ? City did it recently, the Chavs (with a much smaller squad) did too.

Also, deep down, do you really believe we'll win the league this season ?

Because I really don't care about the competition, whether we win the league or not. I don't know welhether we will win the league or not, I do know that going all out to win this one will hamper our efforts quite significantly.

Going after 3 trophies is more than enough of a challenge, going after 4 is folly.

HomeSteak

Look at that "pressing system" 😆 😆 . And that's when we are chasing a game and need to get the ball back fast

Clrnc

Qwiss! wrote:
Rohit wrote:
I find the attempt to lean on tactics after every match boring. They sat back and hit us on the counter like all teams coming to the Emirates do and executed that very well. We played right into their hands by being unable to keep the ball in their half because we just didn't have the quality to do so. The best teams in the world will not find it easy opening up a packed defense and we had our best attacking players out. Wenger's insistence on trying to play the game we love to play or whatever that means is baffling. He has a vision of his players playing that football but they aren't good enough for it.

But thats exactly the problem. No matter who is fit, no matter who is selected we always try to play the same way and it mostly fails. We had a handful of good performances this season, one outstanding one and everyone wet themselves about Wengerball being back and title challenges etc when it was plain as day as soon as we had an injury it'd fall apart and Wenger wouldn't be able to fix it.

Thats where we are now, its where we've been in the last few years. Nothing has changed. Groundhog season.

Yep. Tactically we are too inflexible. We can't play a different shape. We knew Southampton would sit deep like 2 months before yet we played exactly the same toothless way. No change in shape, no change in solutions at all.

This defeat has lesser to do with the lack of quality backup players than that IMO. Southampton made so many changes as well and had 3 or 4 young players without much experience. Liverpool made 11 changes as well in their game. Wenger is lesser to blame in this aspect as it's the rules of the game. Furthermore, this team has acquitted themselves well the past 2 games against tough Championship opponents.

goon wrote:
I'm quite relieved about avoiding two games against Liverpool in Jan. Our league fixtures all look very winaable and we could do without the distraction.

These fringe players would have no impact on our league fixtures. Giving them more game time can only be good.

Irishgunner

Iwobi was the only player who was really up for it last night. Xhaka and Gabriel were pretty decent. Lucas was way off the pace, understandable in his case though. Both full backs were shite.

goon

Clrnc wrote:
goon wrote:
I'm quite relieved about avoiding two games against Liverpool in Jan. Our league fixtures all look very winaable and we could do without the distraction.

These fringe players would have no impact on our league fixtures. Giving them more game time can only be good.

Of course it would. For a start, you don't think it would make a difference if we had a whole week to prepare for West Ham on Saturday rather than just Friday?

You say fringe players, but there were at least 4 players who played yesterday who'll start on Saturday and the pressure to pick more senior players against Liverpool in a semi final will greater. It's not just about fatigue either, remember what happened to Ox and Theo in this competition last year?

The fringe players will have the FA Cup for game time, 7 games in a month is plenty to share about, you don't need 9.

It would have been nice to go through and we'd have dealt with it, but it's not difficult at all to imagine it all turning into a bit of a disaster with consequences in other competitions. Frankly I don't think we'd have beaten what would probably have been a strong Liverpool side in some half hearted attempt to reach the final.

Clrnc

Then what's the point of having a squad of 25? Or 30 in our situation. This is not the Europa League we are talking about. It's just 2 games made up of fringe players in a domestic cup. It has never curtailed any team's league chances and will hardly ever. Liverpool has been consistenly playing their youth and fringe players in the cup, and there's no need to worry about Wenger, he is even more stubborn in his philosophy. He hasn't even played a stronger team when faced with Mourinho's full team Chelsea, he won't risk his league chances for a semi.

HomeSteak wrote:
Look at that "pressing system" 😆 😆 . And that's when we are chasing a game and need to get the ball back fast

We need this.

General

Tactics wrote:
Klaus wrote:
Even if we had played Walcott today (good idea, by the way) there's no guarantee he would have been up to much. The bloke has been dirt poor recently. It's not like he's cut out to play up front either.

The big miss in this game was Giroud. I reckon he would have scored one or two against this lot, but what are you gonna do. That injury against Swansea was very untimely.

How about not only starting Walcott , but also Ospina , Ox, Xhaka, Mustafi etc and Ozil on the bech ? That would have given us a much better chance of making the semis IMO.

Deliberately threw away a quarter final match for competitions we are unlikely to win anyway. This loss has pissed me off no end

I think you are trying to rewrite history and ignoring years of precedence. Wenger has always treated this competition as second rate.

What really annoyed me about this loss is that you could see right from the start that the team was imbalanced. It seems to me Wenger picks the players he wants to play and then makes them fit into the same system and then wonders why they don't perform. The players weren't the problem, the system was because they couldn't execute it. Jeff for example has done well in this competition playing in the middle so why was he suddenly pushed to the wings where he doesn't have the pace or power to thrive? At some point Ramsey was the deepest dictating play, and Coq was the furthest midfielder forward. It was a mess at times and very much reflected Wenger's tactical personality. I don't think Southampton were particularly great either. The first goal came from nothing when half of the team was asleep.

Would a tactical and more pragmatic manager got a better reaction yesterday? Hell yeah. Inevitably the problem filters into other competitions and suddenly what started as a promising season starts looking like another fight for 4th position and nothing else. We haven't been playing well for some time now and West Ham will sure turn us over if Wenger goes there with the same approach.

Qwiss

y va marquer wrote:
I wouldn't classify not being too bothered at being knocked out of the EFL Cup as serious lack of hunger to win trophies, especially when the winning of two back to back FA Cups wasn't rated enough to stave off the very sour and angry mood that permeated the club from August last season.

I couldn't imagine that we'd have had many on here using "oh but we won the EFL Cup" as an argument in favour of Wenger if we fail to win anything else this season.

Summer signings are regarded more than the EFL Cup these days I reckon.

Its a lot easier to win the cups than the league. There was a lot of excitement after the back to back FA cup wins but one single signing that summer drained all that away from the support. We are not morons, we know that a cup win without improvement within the squad wont take us to the level of league champions. And ultimately thats what we all want.

Bold Tone

Tactics wrote:
Wenger's throwing away the game. Southampton have a strong team out

You should be the least upset out of all of us as you called it.

y va marquer

Qwiss! wrote:
y va marquer wrote:
I wouldn't classify not being too bothered at being knocked out of the EFL Cup as serious lack of hunger to win trophies, especially when the winning of two back to back FA Cups wasn't rated enough to stave off the very sour and angry mood that permeated the club from August last season.

I couldn't imagine that we'd have had many on here using "oh but we won the EFL Cup" as an argument in favour of Wenger if we fail to win anything else this season.

Summer signings are regarded more than the EFL Cup these days I reckon.

Its a lot easier to win the cups than the league. There was a lot of excitement after the back to back FA cup wins but one single signing that summer drained all that away from the support. We are not morons, we know that a cup win without improvement within the squad wont take us to the level of league champions. And ultimately thats what we all want.

So would you classify not being too bothered about being knocked out of the EFL Cup as a serious lack of hunger or would you say it's a pretty reasonable reaction to going out of a cup that's "a lot easier to win" (meaning I presume that even not so great teams can win it?)

If a cup win results in nothing other than short lived excitement that can be washed away by anger at the lack of either a multitude of signings, or a big signing, then I would suggest that for those who feel that way, and it's not all fans as you suggest (though it pretty much is everyone on here) then it's on the mark to say that player signings are regarded more highly than Cups by some fans.

Rex

I'd like to think that I'm more interested in improvement rather than signings. What I believe to be a signing which will improve us gets me giddy, of course. I don't really consider the Mickey Mouse cup to be anything, really. Of course winning it would be nice, but it doesn't really say much about the quality of our team, does it?

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