Rice must be sick. He fails miserably at being a CDM whenever he plays there's. Always needs someone behind him to play well.

I'm exaggerating after such a poor match from him but something needs to change there tactically to fit him and Odegaard when Partey is shoved to RB

Our second half performance wasn’t great but that is an absolutely shocking decision to award the penalty against us, you will see these incidents again and again and I bet you not a single other team will get a penalty like that.

JazzG like the last match. We'll never see this decision given against anyone else ever. Letter of the law only used against us

Claudius I’d rather see positive moves to try and be creative than reverting to the same old shit we know doesn’t work.

Arteta is limited in options because he’s left us limited. His choice to run with the players we have. His choice to have all our hopes pinned on Saka and Odegaard being available. His choice to not have a clear style or personality without one, and now, both of them.

In isolation it’s not a terrible result - tough place to go. Just we need more chasing down Liverpool.

We desperately need more options for the attack

Penalty not given today as deemed accidental...they make it up as they go along and just excuse all mistakes. 0 accountability. Just get rid of them and start afresh.

I don't see any reason why we can't win the Champions League this season. Also, I generally agree with @Coombs that I didn't see much wrong with the lineup, subs, etc today. Given the players we had available, I think getting the win today would have necessitated riding our luck. It is what it is.

Partey and Jorginho out, Baleba in would be pretty cool, by the way. Maybe the only midfielder out there that can put power Declan Rice.

That's never a penalty in a million years , why didn't Var overrule it? Saliba makes contact with the ball before the heads clash. Just seen The post match , didn't notice that before , but Saliba makes contact with the ball first

Panda I don't think that's the same scenario personally. I think we were hard done by for the ref to give it in the moment but maybe just good positioning very close directly on it was bad luck.

When I was equally annoyed in it's awarding I was thinking through a challenge like an attacking player knocking the ball ahead of the defender trying to play it but instead contacting the attacking player and that made me think it's probably one that 'could' be given. I don't think they are going to occur very often we were just unlucky it got awarded.

Brighton are winless in 8 matches. They weren't even at their best. Oh well. We move on

naz yeah we haven't been nearly consistent enough in that tournament either particularly we are weak away from home.

naz Arteta goes into defensive mode in every away CL knock out match that I can remember.

To be clear, the sample size here is 2 and I also don't even agree with the framing.

awooga83 naz yeah we haven't been nearly consistent enough in that tournament either particularly we are weak away from home

I think there are only two teams in that competition that are even arguably better than us (Liverpool and Inter) and we've already played one of them away this season and I thought we generally played them off the park even without Odegaard. Unless we're decimated with injuries, there really isn't a single team in football that particularly scares me.

DiabyKungFu he has clown feet though

awooga83 It was a clash of heads in the box. How many times do you see a player head the ball and get hit by another player tryna head it and go down and get a penalty? Happens 5 times a game and penalties are never given.

I think your argument is that Pedro knocked the ball past Saliba with the head and then got taken down by Saliba with his head? But they were both just going for the ball and Saliba got a little nick on him and he went down like he'd been shot. Saliba didn't take him out like Kulu did Gordon and that contact was deemed accidental so why wasn't Saliba's???

I can’t be bothered by the penalty when we struggle to create enough chances to score two goals. Fuck all created in the second half and we’ve been incredibly lucky this season with so many goals coming from set pieces…..which was never going to be sustainable

Panda a player can be going for the ball and is late.. That's still often given as a penalty if someone caught them on the feet. I didn't really think it was the same type of challenge as the Newcastle one personally. It was harsh no doubt but I think it can be within the law around just being a late challenge.