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

JazzG

I'm not sure if they were that vulnerable. They went into the match with Ake, Akanji, Dias and Gvardiol in their back line, that is a £200m defence they put out there. All three except Dias are also very comfortable playing as full backs.

goon

JazzG

Yeah, the poverty defence narrative is hilarious.

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.

goon

Sicario2 - Tier 1

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

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.

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