April is the cruellest month: Page 14 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

April is the cruellest month

awooga83

Yeah I think there are lots of time we should review, zinchenko is a bad defender and has contributed to lots of problems in the last matches we need to figure out another way to play. But Arteta has just reverted to the same tactics whenever those players are available when some is those players have been struggling.

goon

Burnwinter

And this is corporate fluff with nothing behind it.

It took Pep half a season to figure out how to fix his problems, not 1.5 games. Klopp still hasn’t figured it out. Artera on the other hand had 30 odd games of something that worked incredibly well to back up his decision not to change things. This seasons problems won’t be the same as next seasons ones. How do you learn from players having to cope with pressure? Whenever the lads start looking nervy I’m going to change to a system they don’t know?

It’s not false dilemma, and I’m not even arguing against looking at what went wrong. I’m all for incremental gains for this young team and manager. But there has to be some acceptance that perfection will not be achieved. We bottled it last season, we bottled it this season, and we may bottle it next season if we don’t improve the quality of the team enough to compensate.

Burnwinter

goon And this is corporate fluff with nothing behind it.

It took Pep half a season to figure out how to fix his problems, not 1.5 games.

We're one season down the track and suffering another ignominious collapse in morale and delivering shambolic, embarrassing performances far below our level, at the same (in relative terms) crunch moment as last time.

There's something behind it.

Talk about half a season. Well, it's been longer.

There was a lot of talk earlier this season about how this playing group in recording a couple of tenacious wins had turned the corner on grit and resilience. Well, they've turned right back round that same corner now—and it makes no sense to clap them into the Champions League pretending that's all good.

We've just suffered a predictable, deflating loss to one of the best football sides around. But we could be at least 4 points up on them if we'd been capable of steadying the ship during this challenging moment. The squad's got little to do with disposing of mediocre opposition.

If we were the league run would still be on. It takes 93 points or whatever to win it these days. Perfection isn't achievable, but near perfection is the minimum standard we have to reach. 83 points isn't good enough.

Those of us who both admire Arteta as a manager and have absorbed this reality will be hoping he finds his next gear.

Then there's people wringing their hands about "blame" as if the fair-minded observations necessary to any sort of collective improvement are some kind of personal attack.

Meatwad

invisibleman18
everton and brighton are two that stick out for me.

Gurgen

We have a very young team with various new guys or guys who have been asked to play a new role. It’s not our collapse that’s surprising, it’s the fact that we were in it for so long.

Claudius

Gurgen hood take.

Football isn’t that complex. You need to have better players, organized in the best possible way. We’ve lost our players and haven’t found a way to reorganise. This situation is possibly very different if we sign Fresneda as he can come in and plug right back. But we just haven’t adjusted, and it’s had knock on effects throughout the squad.

I’ve always maintained that our defenders had outsized influence on our game. That we needed the best total footballers in the back line to control the game. We see what the loss of these guys does. This is what it looks like to have a Kolasinac or Cedric in your defense. Kills the whole team.

The other thing I said earlier in this season is we would need luck due to our narrow squad. Our luck ran out against Lisbon. And that’s just a luck thing, not the manager risking players unnecessarily. We’ve suffered 4 longterm injuries this summer, only 2 in games, so it’s basically about a 1% chance that a player suffers a bad injury in a game.

Sell Holding in the summer. Get a Tapsoba in. Refresh that midfield. Build personnel resilience, and you’ll get better performances through the season.

QuincyAbeyie

Gurgen but us being in it for so long is something we'd already managed. If we did way better than expected for 29 games it won't be surprising that we drop to a more expected level for the last 11 games, but it will be surprising if we drop to a level far beneath where we should be. Which is what we're doing.

invisibleman18

What usually happens when we face a team in a slump or wretched form? Chelsea probably can't believe their luck that they have us next.

Coombs

QuincyAbeyie this logic is so flawed. We "already" dropped to a lower level, so it shouldn't be so surprising to you that we did.

Clrnc

We are nothing without Saliba

Mirth

Clrnc If anything that stat over the season shows that we've been pretty average defensively even with Saliba.

awooga83

Even with Saliva we weren't always that great defensively and if taking one player out if the team means the whole team has no clue on defending that is not good. We might not be at our best but we should still be able to make it tough 2,2,3,4 goals conceded is not the stuff of a winning team.

I also think ramsdale has dropped his level. He's had some great saves but also many mistakes and goals conceded where I think he could do better.

goon

awooga83

The problem is we play high risk football. High line, requiring a high level of precision with the press, positioning etc. If it’s off or you’re giving the ball away in your own half, you’re in trouble.

You’re right too, we saw signs of it before Holding but he did make it considerably worse. But I think the quality of our press dropped off in several areas.

QuincyAbeyie

It's natural that the defensive level drops when Saliba is out - he's a great defender. It's how much it's dropped that's the problem. We're currently doing much worse than we should with the players at our disposal.

Clrnc

QuincyAbeyie Yep, we are literally underperforming. It's quite crazy, but also the energy levels and confidence has dropped massively and we did not do a single thing to tweak the team. Pretty insane.

I will give you guys this stat. We have conceded more than Chelsea and fecking United. The same United that shipped 8 goals, 4 goals, 3 goals etc in various matches. You are not winning the title with a defence like this

Qwiss

goon The problem is we play high risk football. High line, requiring a high level of precision with the press, positioning etc. If it’s off or you’re giving the ball away in your own half, you’re in trouble.

Yeah and once the nerves set in this became suicidal. We've seen it every one of the last 4 games. Things we've done well all season suddenly don't work. Mistakes that weren't happening became common place. And its not just down to Saliba being out. Holding being on the pitch doesn't make Partey play keepy ups in front of Rice, it doesn't make Ramsdale pass the ball straight to a forward. In fact Holding did his bit, he kept his passing safe and appropriate for the most part.

I think the players heads went in that Liverpool game and never fully recovered. Salibas fitness was a lot less important than that result IMO. If we get to half time at 2-0 there we probably win the next 2 at least. If we win 2-1 the same. But we didn't because the reality of our position set in and the nerves got the best of us. It is what it is, can't blame the players for those feelings. They just need to learn from it and come back stronger.

Burnwinter

Some of the mistakes we've been making have very little to do with the base level of tactical risk we're facing.

Mistakes are one thing, like Ødegaard's dumb turnover, or Ramsdale's dumb turnover, or Partey's flick, etc. Second balls and duels are a worse thing, really.

Lukazan

Agree completely on the importance of that Liverpool game. Had we won that I suspect we'd have blitzed West Ham and Southampton would have been a doddle and in turn, being able to afford a loss, we'd have put in a much better showing yesterday.

QuincyAbeyie

Coombs You're one to talk about flawed logics.

Let's say our "expected level" is 80 points then (2,1 pts per match).

If we overperformed for 30 matches (2,5 pts per match) then that's obviously surprising, nobody expected us to win the title before the season. However, that doesn't mean that the collapse was expected from our position - that's why every single bookmaker had us as the favorite before the Liverpool game.

What was expected for the last 8 games from our position wasn't a massive collapse, but rather a decline from 2,5 to 2,10 per match for the remaining 8 matches - or whatever our expected pace for the course of the season was.

Coombs

QuincyAbeyie you're missing the point here. Expectation is meaningless in the face of reality. What happened happened, not what should have happened. Saying that we've underperformed in the last 4 games adds nothing to the conversation, whether it was expected or not.

I'm not sure why you're so intent on calling people out for having been hopeful, optimistic, or even bullish about our title chances. What does it accomplish? So what if folks are using hindsight to rationalize this collapse? That's what hindsight is for. It's called coping.

QuincyAbeyie

Coombs I'm not sure why you're so intent on calling people out for having been hopeful, optimistic, or even bullish about our title chances

I'm not. I said myself before the Liverpool game that I agreed with those who said our chances of winning the title was probably around 60 %.

What I don't agree with is that us fucking up for four games straight after that somehow changes those odds in hindsight. We were favorites at that point due to the hard work we put down all season long. And saying otherwise after this streak is coping, that we can agree on. It seems to me like people don't want to think that we did this from a winning position.

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