Kai Havertz: Page 69 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Kai Havertz

Big Willie

QuincyAbeyie I think it's a good point that "it's fine, we'll come good soon" doesn't necessarily work in this league unless by "it's fine" you're already referring to next season.

Don't think I said "it's fine, we'll come good soon" at all. Actually stated the opposite that whilst it will be easy to rectify the issues we had in the games we dropped points in, it will be much harder ensuring we grind out the wins like we were doing early on in the season and against the bigger more traditional rivals we had won against.

Overall we are in a good stage of the project and we will probably pick up less points in some games we picked up maxiumum whilst picking up more points in those we dropped them in. As long as we average out to around the same amount of points we have this season, hopefully on the slightly higher side, then we have every chance.

If I misread your initial point and it meant something else then my apologies in advance.

QuincyAbeyie

Big Willie I don't think you said that either. Other people did though.

Im just saying Sicario was right to make a crisis out of the results, if the goal is the league title. Because while we managed to rectify our issues, that doesn't give us back the points we already lost - it just makes us less likely to lose more of them going forward. And those points lost were enough that even our crazy good run-in couldn't win us the title.

RocktheCasbah

QuincyAbeyie Im just saying Sicario was right to make a crisis out of the results if the goal is the league title.

I don't think that can ever be the right approach, although I do understand the sentiment. We can't look at an entire football season and say "well, you can't lose any games". Well, you can, but that way madness lies. Every dropped point is a disaster, every loss the apocalypse... The truth is, City - as good as they are WILL drop points, so will we - at the risk of sounding obvious, we just have to drop less of them than they do.

Burnwinter

QuincyAbeyie Im just saying Sicario was right to make a crisis out of the results, if the goal is the league title.

Sort of. I think you're spot on in one sense, if you open a season 0–3 as we did a couple of seasons back, that's game over for winning the title.

I'm not so keen on "making a crisis" ... I like watching and following Arsenal, and I don't (and few do) have the energy to continually gnash and wail for 30+ league matches. I lose my suspension of disbelief when fellow fans make extreme claims as regularly as they reverse them.

We fans cook up these negative narratives for the catharsis and the enjoyment, the way liberals in the United States can't stop talking and even fantasising about Trump. There's plenty of other pleasurable fan personae to swap through a season. It's all good, it's half the fun.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah I don't think Sicario said you cant lose any games. That's being disingenuous. He said it was not acceptable to drop points at home to 10 man Fulham and it will come back to cost us at the end. It did.

QuincyAbeyie

RocktheCasbah Nobody said anything about not losing any games (nor about not dropping any points).

if you drop enough points so that you need an insane run-in where you win literally every game, those dropped points will have been a huge blow to your title chances. It's obviously not a crisis in terms of your chances to get 2nd place or third place, but if it's a title you're looking for then that's about all you can afford.

Coombs

RocktheCasbah exactly. Dropping 2 points to Fulham would have been meaningless if we had beat Villa, or even Fulham later on. Hindsight is being confused with insight.

RocktheCasbah

Clrnc it wasn't a crisis, is what I'm saying. Dropping points is not a crisis, it's part of league football.

I totally understand that when we look back at the season, that game - 2-1 up with five to play against ten men and at at home - is the obvious one that jumps out, but it's not just that result that cost us, it's anywhere we dropped points.

As for me being "disingenuous" (I'd say a poor choice of language, rather than disingenuous which implies I've wilfully misinterpreted what Sicario said to make my point - and that isn't what I did) if I substitute the phrase "can't lose any games" with "can't drop any points", maybe that makes you feel happier without substantially changing the point of what I was saying?

RocktheCasbah

QuincyAbeyie literally all I am saying is I don't think it's healthy to catastrophise after one bad result - and that I don't think that Sicario was right, as Clarence has suggested, to say drawing against Fulham cost us the league title.

That's it. I don't see that these should be controversial opinions.

Mirth

Don't know why everyone's fixated on the Fulham result when it's clear the run from 9 Dec to 20 Jan where we only managed 3 points is what really fucked us over. That run of form was well below average.

You're always going to drop stupid points over the course of the season, even Man City do, and a freak result can happen. Week after week of poor results however isn't acceptable for any manager never mind one challenging for the title.

Clrnc

Mirth You are right, but in an alternate reality someone could also easily say that if we had won on GW4 against 10 man Fulham, we could have afforded to go on a 5 weeks run with just 3 points in that entire period and still won the title.

Claudius

We catastrophize so much more as followers of an 89 point team than we ever did in the Mustafi era. The increase of online social engagement around football means that we go into a lot of micro-analysis of each game, and often ascribe much more value to each individual result than we normally should given the noisy nature of this low-scoring game. Add to that rival fans on every digital platform taunting and teasing over every little thing. It's a less relaxed enviroment than it was 10 years ago. That's why sometimes I take a break from online spaces, especially when I suspect there is a separation between discourse and reality.

Mirth

Clrnc that’s not a well thought out point though

May as well just say we need 114 points and be done with it

Qwiss

Mirth 114 to beat 115

CPM

Arteta needs to stop Havertz diving so much, he needs to always play his size and focus on beating players and progressing the ball instead of trying to win free kicks. When he lets that more 'passive' energy come into his game it spreads to his chance conversion, he needs to be assertive at all times.

Kel Varnsen

Played well up front. Good movement off the ball, and wins a surprisingly amount of headers.

Clrnc

Thought he had an excellent game and some of his layoffs were extreme smart.

Superb player

Claudius

Clrnc the guy is still developing and finding his place. His ceiling is unbelievable.

Kel Varnsen

Clrnc

Still too hesitant in front of goal. Got into some good positions yesterday, but was a bit too indecisive/slow to finish.

goon

Reckon he may quietly end up with 17-20 league goals. Will be tough because he’s not the type to score a hattrick or a brace against cannon fodder, but I do think he’ll consistently score goals.

Don Pacifico

goon agree. If he keeps playing regularly, the service he's getting alone should enable that. The brilliance of his goal yesterday is that I don't think we have any other attacker who does that. Fulfils Mikel 'Variety' Arteta's vision.

Qwiss

goon if he stays fit and doesn't get shunted back to midfield to cover some sort of crisis then I think he'll definitely score that much. He can easily score more too, that one yesterday where Martinelli found him free around 8 yards from goal and he managed to not even get it on target is an example of where he can improve a lot. I suspect at some point he'll have a spell where those ones start going in. I reckon he might even get himself on Emirates hat trick wall this season too.

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