these guys embarrassed themselves yesterday. to a man. only Welbeck, Bellers and Giroud would escape my switch if these boys were withing striking distance

These guys arent playing for Wenger at all, they may not say it to his face but it just does not look right on the pitch the last two games especially

Welbeck had better darn well start the next game.

So refreshing to see someone with genuine physical power and work rate up there

GooneriC wrote:

These guys arent playing for Wenger at all, they may not say it to his face but it just does not look right on the pitch the last two games especially

They are playing for Wenger alright. They can just abandon their duties without fear of punishment because Wenger is not a disciplinarian. They've shown at various periods during the season that they have the focus and hunger but to win championships you need to maintain this for longer than 3games without losing focus. It's ridiculous how Walcott et al were orchestrating a huddle at the start of the game yet went to sleep at the earliest opportunity. Our organisation unravels so easily at times it's astonishing. In the absence of a proper tactical manager, our only way of overcoming this malaise under Wenger is to go out and buy top quality.

Top quality...nah don't see that helping one bit.

Clrnc wrote:

I think it's a yellow. To be a red, you have to be extremely obvious to be an intentional elbow.

Essentially it's dangerous play by being reckless.

evoh_1 wrote:

It's a contact sport get over it. How about we ban arms coming up in a jump then? immediate yellow card offense.

Rugby Union is even more of a contact sport and has banned ANY contact above the shoulders based upon player safety.  Likewise they have banned any tackle on a player off the ground, as they are not in any position to protect / correct themselves from the contact or the subsequent fall from height.

This does not mean you automatically ban ALL tackles or contests for the ball, and a tackle is only penalised IF it goes wrong = you pays your money by going in for the tackle & you pays the price if you get it wrong.  I also thought that Alonso's arm makes contact with Bellerin before he makes the header, which is akin to both using the player to gain leverage whilst also preventing them from being able to gain height, and finally he effectively takes the player before the ball, which is also a foul.  In my book Alonso commits at least 3 different fouls.

As I said earlier I would like to see a similar system to the use of the 10 minute sin bin in addition to the use of red
 & yellow cards.  This also means that you can instigate 'team fouls' for repeated offending as in basketball - Mourinho teams would be losing players to the sin bin every game.

I agree with Conte. It's a foul but in England that's a goal every time. Case in point Giroud vs United.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Welbeck had better darn well start the next game.

So refreshing to see someone with genuine physical power and work rate up there

He has to start against Liverpool anyway. We need people who will put in a shift against them.

General wrote:

They say still photos never tell the full story. I think it's pretty conclusive here and once again exposes how poorly drilled and ill disciplined we are defensively.

I was observing it in real time throughout the game and it's incredible how often we end up ball watching. It's not an occasional mishap, it's constant. There was an occasion where we had 6 or 7 players back vs their 3 and all 3 of them were unmarked and in space. You look at our guys and they were all literally watching the ball (emphasis on watching, no attempt to win the ball either) and had no idea where the Chelsea players were. 

It's not limited to this game either, we've been doing it over the last few weeks. 

If Wenger can just resolve player behaviour and strengthen their hunger without the ball, we will be a fantastic team. We can create chances against any team but I fear this is also the root cause of our defensive problems. Most teams can create chances against us with relative ease due to our tendency to suddenly lose concentration. I've read from Keown and other ex Arsenal players that Wenger focuses a lot of his work in the final third which explains why this is such a longstanding problem despite the change in personnel over the years. It's impossible to win this league if you can't drill your players into a strong defensive shape and our weaknesses begin to emerge when we don't have the ball. Another observation in Chelsea's first goal is how easily both of our defenders got dragged out of position, leaving the hapless Bellerin to perform two leaps within quick succession against two of Chelsea's biggest aerial threats. As for Walcott, he did this against United when he failed to track Mata and has done it here again. What's his excuse?

Can't believe Hazard steamrolled Coquelin like that. Our players must be the weakest in the league physically.

If Xhaka had a brain, we wouldn't have had to endure poor Coq getting spinned like that. Man had him do a pirouette ffs.

Jed wrote:

If Xhaka had a brain, we wouldn't have had to endure poor Coq getting spinned like that. Man had him do a pirouette ffs.

Why not? The midfield would almost certainly have been Xhaka and Coq if the red card hadn't happened.

Coqs uselessness this week is all his own.

Jed wrote:

Can't believe Hazard steamrolled Coquelin like that. Our players must be the weakest in the league physically.

Work rate isn't up to it as well disappointingly.

9 consecutive matches is really peculiar.

The smaller games are not really a big deal, teams with more of the ball generally will run less. It's very disappointing to see us not only fail to outrun City and Chelsea, but to see that we didn't even raise our level in those games to match or beat our highs.

A lot of our players visibly lack endurance fitness and they cave in mentally. They get found out around the hour mark. We are regularly out worked by most teams, we get away with it because we can monopolise the ball better. Chelsea had 2-3 players pressing with real intensity for a sustained period whereas whenever we did it it was irregular and lacked cohesion to make it work. It comes back to my point about our weaknesses without the ball.

I'd like to see the stats on our distances run vs games won the entire season. But my first feeling is that that stat is neither here nor there.

It was very obvious that we were getting out-run in the middle of the park. Constantly outhustled. We just didn't have the pace against them as well. Happens all the time. Some folks yesterday suggested that all the other clubs are on drugs and we are the only honest team in England. I don't buy that theory. Wenger, the scammer, does not value work. First, we don't train the players to be able to run around like Liverpool or Chelsea. Second, we don't fill the teams with personnel who can do this as well.

goon wrote:

The smaller games are not really a big deal, teams with more of the ball generally will run less. It's very disappointing to see us not only fail to outrun City and Chelsea, but to see that we didn't even raise our level in those games to match or beat our highs.

We had more of the ball vs Chelsea too.

Its pretty obvious we've lacked a level of desire and fight recently though. Its very hard to watch players lose the ball and then just give up instead of trying to fight to win it back. Thats why I like Sanchez so much, even if he has a bad game at least he wont allow his head to drop.