⚽️ Europa League | Arsenal vs Sporting | Thu, 20:00: Page 21 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

⚽️ Europa League | Arsenal vs Sporting | Thu, 20:00

Kel Varnsen

Sporting is a good team. Really fast on the break, and pressed (at times) really high up the pitch.

Vieira and Jorginho were simply not good enough to replace Ødegaard and Partey yesterday. Of course, Sporting tired as the game progressed, but we looked much better as soon as Partey came on. We improved even more when Ødegaard came on. I'm not too upset about being knocked out, but it is a little worrying how much worse we are when key players are out. The biggest worry for me was how disjointed we looked. At times there seemed to be a massive gap between our front four and the rest of the team.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Don Pacifico the only way we could rotate regularly and maintain our impressive form is by buying more Odegaard etc level players to rotate in.

It's clear Vieira is nowhere near that level, hence the lack of rotation.

Don Pacifico

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert I don't think the answer can always be that we need to buy players. I do think we need an upgrade on Xhaka (that's not new) but Vieira is clearly rated by Arteta, he just isn't able to contribute consistently. Jorginho is also brand new to the club and we haven't found a way to conclusively overcome the differences in his game with respect to Partey yet (which given he's been here for just over a month, isn't that surprising).

Long story short, I think we should be able to get more from the options available.

Qwiss

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert Trossard is not at Odegaards level but he's come in and been very good. We need more of that level in the team to rotate with the starters. The drop off doesn't need to be as big as it is from Ode to Vieira. TBF I can't imagine Arteta didn't expect more from Vieira by now given the fee we paid for him.

Kel Varnsen

Don Pacifico

Arteta seems to have a very particular set of ideas of what kind of patterns he wants to see on the pitch. Given how long it took for him to get the team to perform at this level, it probably takes some players a little bit longer to fully grasp those ideas and feel comfortable in his system. On the other hand, some players are probably not good enough. I thought Vieira had shown some promise earlier, but he was terrible yesterday..

goon

Kel Varnsen

Vieira is a good example of what you're talking about. Odegaard often makes certain runs to make space for Saka by dragging defenders away. Vieira was trying to do the same thing but his timing was off and all that he really achieved was to leave Nelson isolated without an option.

Burnwinter

goon Vieira was trying to do the same thing but his timing was off

Yeah, he's not quite there yet. Might be going a bit backwards in order to go forwards currently. I feel pretty confident that any young player with the quality and attitude will move ahead training with the crop we've got. Everything we hear about Vieira is that he has plenty of self belief, and he's not being asked to do anything the guys he eats breakfast with can't do.

QuincyAbeyie

Sporting are the fourth best team in Portugal while we're supposed to be the best in England. Saying that we went out to a good team sounds wrong to me - relatively to us they aren't.

Vieira was one of the most productive players in Portugal and now we're blaming our loss partly on him and Jorginho playing instead of our first choices. They'd walk into their team. It was simply not good enough from us, not that I massively mind being out of it.

goon

QuincyAbeyie 'not good enough' isn't really an explanation for why we lost though, so what's your theory?

I've always hated the 'no excuses' line of thinking because it basically shuts down any analytical view as to what went wrong.

Clrnc

Don Pacifico so now 2 players meant its understandable we couldn't match a a very young Sporting team missing also a bunch of key players at home?

I really disagree with that. It was a very strong team put out there, and also ended very strong

Don Pacifico

Clrnc
No, that's not what I was saying.

Simply put:

Our structure works on an inter-personal understanding of what teammates are doing and where they'll be on the pitch etc.
Two thirds of our midfield were not first XI regulars and therefore don't have that understanding yet.
Our midfield yesterday was subsequently dysfunctional and probably the main area of the pitch where we lost the game given how laboured we were in our build-up (not to mention shielding of the defence).

There were more nuances to our poor performance but from my perspective, the above was the core reason.

HomeSteak

Sporting got Juve, and then the winner of United and Sevilla. For our title bid, it's a blessing we went out, make no mistake about it. Thursday - weekend is a killer combo.

Clrnc

Don Pacifico I understand all that, in fact I was probably in the minority when there were many saying we don't miss Partey on Jorginho's first start and I thought there was a huge drop off when Jorginho was playing. I just disagree with the thought that we made too many changes yesterday and thus lost the match.

I think all of those are not valid given that

-we have performed way better even in the league with Jorginho playing (a signing most praised as raising the bottom)
-we are at home
-not the first time this happened in europe
-Sporting too is missing key players and has an even younger/inexperienced team out there
-Them being dominant was more due to their tactical setup and not any singular players of us. In fact many of the first teamers performed worse than those 2 you mentioned out there

We definitely didn't make too many changes yesterday. If anything we made too little. It was a very strong team, a team good enough to also beat most teams in the PL.

goon

Burnwinter it takes time to learn the role for sure. Ode himself had some doubters as recently as pre-season.

Only way to learn is through game time though.

QuincyAbeyie

goon I think it's the "we lost because Vieira and Jorginho started in midfield" train of thought that shuts down any analysis. It suggests that there wasn't anything we could've done with the players on the field, which obviously isn't the case. No matter who we'd fielded we'd field a better team than the opposition.

Don Pacifico

Clrnc

Jorginho can raise the floor conceptually AND we can look worse without Partey. And I think that's doubly true because we haven't yet figure how to accommodate the difference between him and Partey.

Yes, we've had some better performances with him in the team but I'd think we'd all agree they weren't comparable to to how we were performing prior to Everton with Partey in the side. So that fluency is not there yet.

Then when you swap out Ode and slot in Vieira, your midfield is even less cohesive because he's also not been in the first XI much.

Longer term, a reserve midfield like the one we put out against Lisbon should be able to win but the fluency isn't there yet and I'd attribute that to the fact Arteta hasn't figured out how to efficiently rotate.

Meatwad

i hate that in europe we're basically "it's the history of the tottenham."

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Meatwad 6 EL attempts and nothing to show for it.

Claudius

I think folks are underestimating two things when they say we should’ve easily defeated Sporting
1) the gap in quality between very good players and elite players. We started with Partey, Saka and Odegaard on the bench. Those are basically our POTY candidates
2) the benefits of familiarity. The players we had on the field didn’t know each other, an issue compounded by injury

There’s a lot of thought around this. That players end up either holding back for the important games, or there is wasted effort in these matches with mixed teams due to lack of familiarity. Eg., you make runs that are never spotted, etc.

Next season with Caicedo and Rice in, we will probably see more soft rotation, ie, 1-3 players swapped out every starting lineup.

Clrnc

Claudius You and the rest are totally not considering Sporting?

Best defender and captain Coates out (imagine us missing Gabriel) thus, their makeshift backline consists of 21 yo Inacio and 19 yo Diomande.

Morita, their Partey is injured for this match. Forced to start 21 yo Ugarte.

All these talks of because we rested 2 key players we couldn't win against them at home is way off the mark. They have a talented coach that outfoxed us, but we weren't facing peak Barcelona. This team is 15 points off Benfica languishing in 4th after losing Pedro Porro, Palhinha, Matheus Nunes.

Claudius

Clrnc
I’m sorry. This is the 4th placed team in the Superliga. If we fielded our regular team both legs it would be 3-5 goal aggregate victory. It wouldn’t even be a contest. There are a few good players on this team but our combination of skil and athleticism is at another level. You could just see that Saka, Odegaard and Partey - Sporting have nothing like that

« Previous Page Next Page »