Manchester City vs Arsenal - Sunday, 31 March, 4:30 pm: Page 20 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Manchester City vs Arsenal - Sunday, 31 March, 4:30 pm

goon

I don’t think it’s about risk, it’s about composure and belief.

Raya’s distribution was not good, Saliba was a little nervy on the ball too and Jorginho was swallowed up. Supporting runs were slow too.

When Partey came on things improved, but the the final pass was off.

Clrnc

We definitely didn't play for a draw. Even in the dying minutes Saliba was running to get the ball back and restart play

Claudius

Clrnc it’s not so much playing for a draw. It’s managing the opponent in front of you. City played like they had just consumed a kilo of cocaine. They pressed and closed down quickly and pushed us deep with the ball. We picked an offensive team. We just had to manage a much more offensive opponent, and be organized for 90 minutes.

Qwiss

MistaT Kiwiors passing was terrible in the first half.

Claudius

Qwiss was easily the toughest game Kiwior has been in. And you can see that City targeted him. They pushed play towards him, and they crowded him when he had the ball. Was hard for him to get out.
There were times I wanted Zinchenko there to give us more control. But on the other hand, whenever we had set pieces, Kiwior was really good. City have some robust players and Kiwior threw himself about. So that was valuable.

SimplyThePest

Claudius It was exactly the kind of performance against a top team, home or away, that many of us pined for Wenger to deliver when he had teams that could have won the title.

Clrnc

SimplyThePest one of the only time I have seen Wenger intentionally make us play so defensively was the fa cup which we won against United and... Paris... which we were robbed by the ref

awooga83

JazzG I meant more this season they have been more vulnerable defensively. Liverpool made them look very shaky at times. It's not that they don't have some decent players still but they are unquestionably not their top players in those positions so that makes it a better prospect then if they had those.

JazzG

awooga83 True, Liverpool though have this unique ability to turn football matches into basketball games and they'll usually beat teams doing that. Unreal how well Liverpool are doing considering the number of chances they give away.

They were unable to do that in the games against us but I am surprised they were able to do it so easily against City.

daredevil

awooga83

Yet, despite Pool's tactics, they drew as well.

A defence first approach away to title rivals and in Europe, whilst playing on the front foot at home is exactly how I want to see our team setup. It's one of the few positive impacts Mourinho had on the game. Hell, even Guardiola adopted it last season with City ceding possession to us and Bayern away from home.

naz

Performances be damned. I'd have taken the draw at the start of the game and was happy with the draw at the end. We're not talking about chumps here, City are incredible at home. We snuffed everything they sent our way and made them look ordinary. Gabriel and Saliba were outstanding. Any other team would've conceded a couple.

Let's win the rest and hope for the worst for Liverpool and City

Coombs

Claudius only one way for him to get more experience. He'll either take it and move forward or we'll learn he doesn't have what it takes. I think he'll go from strength to strength.

Claudius

Coombs he’s also primarily a centre back, filling in at left back. Team is performing well, and he is outdoing himself. If anything happens to our centre backs, he can slot in more than adequately

Coombs

Claudius well, I always thought he would play left back, even when the signing was first mentioned. I don't consider him to be playing out of position.

JazzG

We had our chances, we just didn’t execute as well as we should have.

invisibleman18

Would have taken the draw beforehand. Bit of a shame we couldn't threaten more but we've been getting humiliated up there for years so was important to finally come away with something.

Claudius

invisibleman18 that and we gave them nothing. Raya didn’t spend the afternoon being bombarded the way Onana was in the Brentford game. So they dominated possession but they didn’t really threaten our goal.

JazzG

Just had a quick look and these are our last 6 results at their ground.

3-1
3-1
3-0
1-0
5-0
4-1

That is 19 goals against and scored 3 in our last 6 games against them. It was important we put in a performance and make sure we didn't lose.

Tam

Clrnc Liverpool are extremely good against teams outside of the top 6. If I am not mistaken they only dropped points against Luton. Flat track bully

That's what wins the league. It's nice to take points off the top teams but it's not necessarily determinative of your league winners. The mini table with Arsenal on 8 pts ahead of City and Liverpool shows that. We're by far the best amongst the top teams, but we're still sitting behind in the league table because we throw too many points away elsewhere. This is what I was saying after the Liverpool games when Arteta's tactical genius was being hailed - I'm not wanting to be down on Arteta but he's shown he can deliver in big games, he's yet to show we can get to a level where we can consistently bag the points we should expect to. We're having to beat the rivals in individual games just to keep pace over the season. The bigger issue has to be in preparing and executing better against the rest of the league.

Claudius Ben White: our one reliable outlet. City’s press tried to force the ball to our left. Plus Saka was clearly unfit. So Ben had his work cut out. But he constantly got us out, and created some threat down the right.

There was a move down our right that I think might have ended with White crossing to Kiwior and then on to the Jesus shot? In any case, we played around their press like they were amateurs and White was at the heart of it. Love him.

Don Pacifico

Tam I'm not wanting to be down on Arteta but he's shown he can deliver in big games, he's yet to show we can get to a level where we can consistently bag the points we should expect to.

Do wonder whether this comes down to squad rotation.

Clrnc

Don Pacifico I am of the opinion that we thrown away the league last season by Arteta's inexperience at rotation and many wrong decisions in the run-in, but at GW 30 now this season, no matter where we finish I don't begrudge Arteta at all for this season.

Sure many of us won't be able to take it if we lost the league by throwing points away to Fulham (ffs as Sicario's meltdown in Aug predicted), but in terms of personnel changes, lineups, decision making (ever since Partey got injured to force Arteta end the RB experiment) I think we have been pretty spot on. No matter where we finish I think we have tried our best this season.

Let's just hope things fall into places. We need little more than luck from now on.

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