April is the cruellest month: Page 7 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

April is the cruellest month

HomeSteak

Win the next 2 and see how we do in the City game. City will not lose points until then, as they only play Leicester at home (they will win that 5-0) but after they will. They have Bayern, FA Cup Semi Final, Bayern and us. And again, I really think if they go past Bayern and have to play Real twice, in a CL semi...they will drop points in the league.
Now the question is, we need to win one of City or Newcastle away, can we do it?

Burnwinter

HomeSteak I feel like we don't worry about it. Best thing to do is accept a point is a better return than we've had at Anfield for a while, and go back to thinking about beating West Ham. The momentum is probably back with us if we steady with two more wins prior to facing City.

goon

City have a lot of tough games after the Etihad. If they win all of those then there isn’t really much you can say. But I don’t think they will.

If City draw 2 more games in the run in, it will put them on 90 points. We could lose 2 more or draw 3 and still get to 91 points. Plenty of room, but we need some sort of result at the Etihad.

Qwiss

Claudius I’m still not sold on Xhaka as villain. This isn’t like last season when Arteta went crazy on the sidelines and the crowd reacted. Man just stood up for himself. He didn’t raise his hands or anything after being kicked multiple times by Konate and accosted by Trent.

We were 2-0 up, he should have laughed at him and had a word with the ref. What he did wasn't sticking up for himself, this isn't Sunday League, what he did was lose his head and drag the rest of our players into it too. The Anfield crowd is only a little bit of it tbh, IMO the incident made us drop our focus and thats why we were caught out right after it. He should also realise his own reputation, he's gone head to head with an England player there and I wouldn't have been shocked if he'd been sent off given those dynamics.

At the end of the day there is really no defence of his antics and I do believe it cost us that first goal. However they got to half time still ahead and should have done a better job of seeing the game out. In the second half he's only responsible for his own poor performance.

QuincyAbeyie

Qwiss We were 2-0 up, he should have laughed at him and had a word with the ref. What he did wasn't sticking up for himself, this isn't Sunday League, what he did was lose his head and drag the rest of our players into it too.

Exactly. Why the fuck would you "stick up for yourself" if it helps the opposition and hurts your own team? For your own personal honor or some shit? Either way, it's either losing your head or putting yourself ahead of the team.

awooga83

That's exactly why xhaka it's flawed, he had always had these moments where he ignores what night be good for the team in context and just does what he believes looks good with a tough tackle or these kind of antics.

As you said Qwiss his reaction should have been to laugh and jog away, if the opposition are starting to whack you like that then you know they are done for and they aren't playing football anymore.

I agree it creates a moment that is a distraction at that point and certainly contributes to what happend after in terms of disrupting the focus.

Don Pacifico

Not even thinking about the matches ahead, I just can't see this going our way and that's based on how we've been since the World Cup. I feel like I'm seeing us slowly lose our mojo; we've increasingly shown an inability to control games in our own favour and have had to draw on a degree of fortune in some instances. Yesterday felt like a moment where at 2-0, we should have seen that match out comfortably but yet we let them back in to the extent we were lucky to get a point. If we continue to fail to exert this control, we're going to drop more points and whilst City are fallible, their run is definitely smoother than ours (and they have more experience to cope).

I'm not saying there's no hope and we obviously need to take it game-by-game but what I've seen so far this year hasn't assured me. We don't have that unerring confidence we did at the start of the season (or at least we've seen that confidence come under increasing strain).

AAStyle

Don Pacifico that is a reasonable view but yesterday we played at Anfield. This is a hard place even for an on-fire team and still we own it for half of the match. I dont think there is a harder field to play at in the EPL.

Clrnc

AAStyle Wait till you visit St James mate. With their current form they are unstoppable.

And we won't fare well with their intense press, given that we can't even deal with Liverpool half press.

If we does fall short, the league have a lot to answer with the Brentford match. If we fall by more than 2 points then dropping points to bottom teams Everton/Soton will hurt as much as that 95th min chance at Anfield

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Clrnc it feels so wrong but I'm petrified of the Newcastle game. As Don pointed out we haven't convincingly controlled many games for quite a while. And I'm assuming Holding will be starting in that game too.

Lukazan

Agree entirely on the thoughts on Xhaka. He's done amazingly well to come back from being booed off the pitch by a large amount of the Emirates stadium to where he is now in the view of the fans (or before
that moment yesterday I should say) and when he's good for us he's often very good. But I guess ultimately Xhaka is always gonna Xhaka. It was without doubt the turning point in the match. I feel if the league slips now, particularly in disasterous fashion, that moment will be looked back on and it will undo a lot of, if not all, the good-will Xhaka has clawed back.

Don Pacifico

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert I'm not even sure Holding is the biggest issue. We need more from our midfield to control the game (Ode went missing for long periods of the match). Felt like they were getting bypassed yesterday.

Qwiss

I'm not that worried about Newcastle, their forms good but unless we fall apart completely I think we will play them off the park. They got a draw from us earlier this season but they didn't really deserve it and we completely stopped them from playing their usual game. I'd be surprised if they can suddenly impose themselves on us now.

Clrnc

Qwiss It's like Anfield. We should theoretically play them off the park but the opposite happened. Last year still scarred me. We were completed dominated

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

It's more the atmosphere and the major oomph that will give to their already high-intensity team. If we weather that early storm we can do them.

Odegaard, Saka and White will need to be a million times better though. Really disappointing yesterday.

Claudius

Clrnc we sent a shit team out there.
After the loss to Everton, we reeled out 7 straight wins. We reacted well to the losses of players, particularly Jesus. This team is much more resilient than we give it credit for. We will be fine.

City have to play games too. Let’s see them win every game for the rest of the season.

Lukazan

Won't be an easy game for sure and will take a great performance to come away with 3 points but personally I'm trying not to look or think beyond West Ham away next, which for me could now be tricky. Absolutely vital not to slip up in, must win. It's a fixture that had we won yesterday I'd have been confident of rolling into and putting away West Ham with ease.. but I felt would be a stumbling block had we lost. We didn't, of course, but I dunno how everyone else here and the players are feeling but it's really knocked the stuffing out of me, feels like a loss. Usually rewatch the highlights of all our games but I've got no desire to do so with this one. Sounds crazy but my feelings aren't that far off from what they were after we lost the CL final, or after the Birmingham away/Anfield game in the CL 08.

I'm probably being OTT and too emotional about it but it was a massive, massive opportunity lost yesterday. Really thought after Jesus got the second the game was in the bag and we'd probably score 1 or 2 more.

awooga83

Lukazan yep this is my feeling too. Getting to the Liverpool match was a big milestone and I thought we needed the win to be able to get to the title with the psychology etc. A draw in isolation isn't a disaster but in the context of this season I feel we've stumbled at the first hurdle and it's probably going to impact the next matches. Like your I hope it's not the case but I worry it could all fall apart very quickly.

Big Willie

awooga83 A draw in isolation isn't a disaster but in the context of this season I feel we've stumbled at the first hurdle and it's probably going to impact the next matches.

We've gone through 30 hurdles mate. I get that you're worried but each time we've suffered a set back thus season we've come back and gone on to win an extended number of games.

We won our first 5 games in a row then lost to Umited away. After the United loss we went on another 4 game winning streak before drawing with Southampton which included wins away to Brentford as well as home to Spurs and Liverpool.

We then went on another 5 game winning streak which included wins away to Chelsea, Brighton and Wolves before drawing with Newcastle. This was followed by wins against United and Spurs before we had a little wobble where we lost to Everton, were robbed Brentford and fell short against City. We've since gone on to win another 7 on the bounce before drawing with Liverpool.

Like @Claudius said, this team is very resilient. I wouldn't be surprised to see us win another 7 out of our last 8 games.

awooga83

I get that, I just think this moment is bigger, before we could pretend it wasn't the title we were just fighting to get back to the top 4. Now there is no doubt there is no other challenger to city it's us or nothing. I think that does make a difference, now it's title, we know we've secured are minimum. It's very busy so it have the quality to see through that top outcome

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