Claudius wrote:

Lol. These players aren’t coming to Arsenal.  

Haaland: 18 UCL goals at 20
Mbappé: 19 UCL goals at 22

Alas no, these be mega stars 

GooneriC wrote:

Crazy good , just puts those chances away so easily. Need to find us a Haaland

Isak. He’s next up but we’ll be too slow to pounce as usual and moan about not signing him when he’s ripping shit up for a rival.

Haaland is a fucking beast. What a striker. There are very few things in football more satisfying than seeing him strike a ball with that left foot of his. There is this natural ease to it. Very aesthetically pleasing and also incredibly effective.

Am so glad United missed out on him when he left Salzburg.

Haaland is like a lab built terminator. No inherent weaknesses to his game.

it's funny the way he runs he looks like an absolute donkey. Then he strikes the ball with both power and finesse then you realise he's quite something else.

He runs like Crouch but shots like Ronaldo

5 days later

I thought Lazio might give Bayern a game tonight looking at their recent forms.

However, Musacchio just gifted Lewandowski a goal with a horrendous back pass.

2-0 now. Musiala with a tidy finish from the edge of the box.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Jamal Musiala another top English talent

Highly likely that he may end up playing for Germany though.

Maybe - he’ll look at the competition for places in the English set up and think “stuff that”

Inzaghi has had enough and subs January signing Musacchio (who has been dreadful) after 30 mins.

Lazio pull one back. Good work by Luis Alberto to setup Correa who scores a tidy finish.

Not so great defending by Alaba who was ball watching.

Giroud...fucking hell.

Giroud I fucking hate him from EL final but is he the most underrated striker in living memory?

Let me put it another way. He’s the biggest overachiever in football history.

this tidbit surprised me: "Chelsea are aiming to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time since 2013-14". it's funny how winning european competitions shape your opinions and cloud your memory. i would have never guessed chelsea were on a run like that, that's positively wenger-ish.

Chelsea’s bench tonight was acquired for over £250m. These are the teams whose squads we are allegedly better than

I'd actually like to go back to that season he failed to score in 15 straight games and see where the exact problem was. Was it Giroud or was it Aubameyang.

I say this just because there has been a lot of recent anxiety about how useless Aubameyang is but when you look at the raw numbers, Aubameyang's main problem is that he isn't getting enough chances. He's remained one of the most clinical strikers. Just gets less volume of chances than every other big name striker. Scoring is a volume game. It's that simple. Kane rose to the top by just shooting on sight.

goon wrote:

He was also part of the Montpellier team that won the French league. He's had an extremely good career all things considered.

Claudius wrote:

I'd actually like to go back to that season he failed to score in 15 straight games and see where the exact problem was. Was it Giroud or was it Aubameyang.

I say this just because there has been a lot of recent anxiety about how useless Aubameyang is but when you look at the raw numbers, Aubameyang's main problem is that he isn't getting enough chances. He's remained one of the most clinical strikers. Just gets less volume of chances than every other big name striker. Scoring is a volume game. It's that simple. Kane rose to the top by just shooting on sight.

Auba as a top striker has to be able to co trol the ball some of the time its played up to him. It was like watching mert up top against city. If we want a greater hold on the game for more chance creation we need the striker to make the ball stick at least sometimes. If you have forwards only interested in scoring your chance creation will plumet.

In the 2 years they've played together have auba and pepe had a single pice of nice combination play? Pepe is learning to play football just its hard work watching it. Auba has been completely disinterested in making thing happen most of the season. Especially through the dip he wasn't going into any 50:50s. Arteta gave him a little time off and he came back and played forcing things to happen against Leeds. Suddenly he's taking players on, Knocking people over in 50:50s he played like he did last season with responsibility for the performance not just the goals. 

If auba and pepe just play to get goals for themselves we naturally end up with really low chance creation in games. And its all just saka and Tierney down that left flank. 

There is an upset on the cards tonight as an injury/covid hit Real Madrid travel to Atalanta.

Madrid only have 12 first team players available tonight with rest of traveling party picked from their reserves.

I think Atalanta will do them too. Real's highest goalscorer after Benzema (who's missing tonight) is Casemiro...

speedy wrote:
Claudius wrote:

I'd actually like to go back to that season he failed to score in 15 straight games and see where the exact problem was. Was it Giroud or was it Aubameyang.

I say this just because there has been a lot of recent anxiety about how useless Aubameyang is but when you look at the raw numbers, Aubameyang's main problem is that he isn't getting enough chances. He's remained one of the most clinical strikers. Just gets less volume of chances than every other big name striker. Scoring is a volume game. It's that simple. Kane rose to the top by just shooting on sight.

Auba as a top striker has to be able to co trol the ball some of the time its played up to him. It was like watching mert up top against city. If we want a greater hold on the game for more chance creation we need the striker to make the ball stick at least sometimes. If you have forwards only interested in scoring your chance creation will plumet.

In the 2 years they've played together have auba and pepe had a single pice of nice combination play? Pepe is learning to play football just its hard work watching it. Auba has been completely disinterested in making thing happen most of the season. Especially through the dip he wasn't going into any 50:50s. Arteta gave him a little time off and he came back and played forcing things to happen against Leeds. Suddenly he's taking players on, Knocking people over in 50:50s he played like he did last season with responsibility for the performance not just the goals.

If auba and pepe just play to get goals for themselves we naturally end up with really low chance creation in games. And its all just saka and Tierney down that left flank.

Auba and Pepe have started 2 games together this season in the league. Kind of hard to build good combination play with each other. Also the idea that Pepe just plays for goals isn't true he had the highest xA in the team last year.

Qwiss! wrote:
speedy wrote:

Auba as a top striker has to be able to co trol the ball some of the time its played up to him. It was like watching mert up top against city. If we want a greater hold on the game for more chance creation we need the striker to make the ball stick at least sometimes. If you have forwards only interested in scoring your chance creation will plumet.

In the 2 years they've played together have auba and pepe had a single pice of nice combination play? Pepe is learning to play football just its hard work watching it. Auba has been completely disinterested in making thing happen most of the season. Especially through the dip he wasn't going into any 50:50s. Arteta gave him a little time off and he came back and played forcing things to happen against Leeds. Suddenly he's taking players on, Knocking people over in 50:50s he played like he did last season with responsibility for the performance not just the goals.

If auba and pepe just play to get goals for themselves we naturally end up with really low chance creation in games. And its all just saka and Tierney down that left flank.

Auba and Pepe have started 2 games together this season in the league. Kind of hard to build good combination play with each other. Also the idea that Pepe just plays for goals isn't true he had the highest xA in the team last year.

If they combined more they would be playing together more. And we've seen them play plently of times. Pepe plays for moments, certainly himself if he runs as much as 5 yards without getting the ball he sulks and stops playing. He'll just become static and stand palms open looking up. Often while were being killed on the counter.
And he has good delivery so lots of your Xa stats are corners and free kicks? Hes getting better like i said but he was such a head down player.

Atalanta is done. Harsh sending off in my opinion

UEFA refs at it again. Always favouring Real and Barcelona. Never a red card.

speedy wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:

Auba and Pepe have started 2 games together this season in the league. Kind of hard to build good combination play with each other. Also the idea that Pepe just plays for goals isn't true he had the highest xA in the team last year.

If they combined more they would be playing together more. And we've seen them play plently of times. Pepe plays for moments, certainly himself if he runs as much as 5 yards without getting the ball he sulks and stops playing. He'll just become static and stand palms open looking up. Often while were being killed on the counter.
And he has good delivery so lots of your Xa stats are corners and free kicks? Hes getting better like i said but he was such a head down player.

Pepe assisted Auba 5 last year, particularly with that in swinging cross from the right. You could see Auba make that run as soon as he would shape up to swing it in towards the back post. Ironically he's probably the one player he did form a connection with.

I think your general description of Pepe is more accurate of when he first joined. He's probably among the hardest workers these days.

I think a red could be justified there to be honest. It's one of those where you probably expect to get away with it, but he'd have undoubtedly been one on one with the keeper if he doesn't bring him down.

I thought the Madrid player's last touch was veering him significantly off the course of goal. I would have VARd it and thought about a yellow.

The touch is influenced by the foul imo.

KingslandBarge wrote:

I thought the Madrid player's last touch was veering him significantly off the course of goal. I would have VARd it and thought about a yellow.

That's what I thought. He was fully expecting the yellow you could see when the ref approached him. Then again, he did play with fire and allowed the ref to make that decision.

It's definitely the David Luiz school of defending.

City are all over Gladbach, so would be typical of their CL outings to let a goal in now.

Cancelo, KDB or Gundogan for their player of the season?
Can we have just one experienced player of this quality

Clear 2nd yellow card for diving for Casemiro not given. 😆

Hope folks can see that this is a tough team to break down. Even Gladbach only got 2 shots on target.
On to the JV league tomorrow night