West Brom at home sometime over Christmas I dunno

lorddulaarsenal

They'd better flippin work hard

Give Lucas a game

HomeSteak

WBA are good team this year. Very hard to break down. But I think we will do them, the team should be up for it after last week.

Team news from Wenger:

Ramsey might be in the squad, he is back in training with the team.
Ox is out for a few days and will miss this.
Mustafi is still out until the beginning of January
Welbeck is training with the first team, but it might be to soon for him this one.

Gazza M

Need 3 points to stay in the race

General

Potential banana skin and you can just see it. We just don't get out of these mini slumps easily.

General

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38417358

Wenger talking about how as a team we (try) to win the ball higher up the pitch. It would explain how Coquelin is being used. He said we suffered against City by not winning the ball in the middle of the park because we were immediately under pressure. Ozil's body language doesn't do him any favours also apparently.

Qwiss

Pushing Coq up to try and win the ball higher up is a mistake. The front 4 should be doing that. Coq ends up too far forward when he doesn't win it and when he does win it he doesn't have the skillset to really hurt the opposition often enough.

General

It's brought rewards though. First goal against West Ham and also freekick that led to goal against Everton. It would be a less risky strategy if we had another mobile midfielder to cover.

Qwiss

Wasn't that West Ham goal very lucky with where the ball happened to bounce after he won it? My point stands, if he can't play a consistently good final ball then its not worth what you lose in the rest of midfield.

Irishgunner

Think we'll lose this

MistaT

Qwiss! wrote:
Pushing Coq up to try and win the ball higher up is a mistake. The front 4 should be doing that. Coq ends up too far forward when he doesn't win it and when he does win it he doesn't have the skillset to really hurt the opposition often enough.

Wonder if Wenger knows its only Coquelin and Sanchez is who have the stamina and desire to win the ball high up the field. Certainly none of Giroud, Ozil, Ox, Xhaka or Iwobi have that in them, and only Theo showed it for a few games. Which would suggest its not a tactic fit for our team if we only have two of our midfield three and forwards who can pull it off.

goon

Qwiss! wrote:
Pushing Coq up to try and win the ball higher up is a mistake. The front 4 should be doing that. Coq ends up too far forward when he doesn't win it and when he does win it he doesn't have the skillset to really hurt the opposition often enough.

Nothing wrong with high risk, I think it's essential for both midfielders to press high up together rather. The issue is when he's the only one doing it, because it becomes easy to play around him.

Clrnc

Yep. Pressing is a team effort. Otherwise it's detrimental actually.

General

Pressing is not natural to a lot of our players and will never look coordinated until we get a proper disciplinarian who can drill it into them.

General

Irish gunner wrote:
Think we'll lose this

I fear you may be right.

flobaba

Easy win.

Irishgunner

Olly G is back

USArsenal

30 minutes before kickoff and no one is actually talking about this?

Klaus

Özil's 100th Premier League game today.

Klaus

We really need to sign a wide man.

y va marquer

USArsenal wrote:
30 minutes before kickoff and no one is actually talking about this?

Christmas stuff to do - like waiting in an airport for a flight delayed by 5 hours
Going to miss the game now because we're scheduled to board at 15.00 instead of the original time of 10.00

Please have some good news for me on landing Arsenal.