Qwiss didn't Arteta say something similar I thought I saw on arseblog. That's the really frustrating thing and why I've said Arteta sets the team up to go for those marginal outcomes. Shut the team out get our goal and we hold it.

But it's such a risky strategy if your not quite on it or the opposition create a quality moment then you can be undone and I think that's a real risk of happening enough to sink you. You can potentially have a season where everything goes perfect and maybe you come out with a title but that is a very small outcome possibility that requires a near perfect set up and not pragmatic enough in my view to maximise your chances to win the title.

awooga83 our xG against was really low. Jimenez got one chance and managed a perfect finish. Thats football. That we created as little as they did from open play is what really hurt us.

Qwiss totally get that my point was you can have an opponent pull out a wonder moment but if you're game is set up to not create many chances then that will cost you. To mitigate it you want to score a few goals and create the chances to allow you to execute that so that you are somewhat protected from those moments in so much as possible. Whereas we put a lot of faith in the 1-0 shut out to get us home but that leaves you vulnerable to lots of the variance in a match, bad form, wonder goal, poor ref etc.

Saying Fulham is organised so we can't beat them does not really make sense to me. We can draw against teams sometimes, freak result, it happens. But creating like 0.1xG or something in open play just does not make sense to me. It's more of our fault for not even creating much in many matches this season than the opponent being organised. Every opponent will try to defend well against us, especially for such a small club like Fulham. As a big club we have more than enough ability and talent to win matches like this by employing the right tactics. If we peppered their goal but still came away with a draw, we can only blame luck but that's not the case. Bayern is not a lesser team than us by the way. We just often lack creativity and the right freedom in attack to hurt teams.

There were many instances where Fulham was launch half hearted attempts to attack and by default (with Arteta shouting animated at the sidelines) to all go back and defend deep. When their cross inevitably get cleared by Saliba or Kiwior, we have 0 outlets to launch a counter attack because everyone is so deep. When Saka receives the ball and we try to pass our way out, by that time Fulham is back in their shape defending. We are so bloody slow and deep which meant its often easy for opponents and we create nothing. Compare that to Liverpool who often have Diaz, Nunez and Salah up front waiting for balls to be cleared and run into open space to score easily. What we need is that kind of freedom. Saka also said as much in one of the interview.

awooga83