Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert thought Martinelli was one of the few bright spots last night. Played well and was really unlucky not to score. I thought Trossard played well too. I think you are right about Odegaard and add the rest of midfield too, especially last night where even Partey shat the bed. There is just no real creativity coming through the middle. No one even really occupies space in that hole behind the striker when we attack and it makes us easier to defend.

I think Odegaards dip in form is really showing us how lacking in imagination and guile the rest of the midfielders are. Jorginho was a breath of fresh air when he came on last night because he's actually unpredictable and inventive with some of his passing.

HomeSteak He's not wrong though is he? Another day we'd have scored 4 or 5 goals, we just seem to have a lot of these games where we create enough to win the game twice over and not score!

JazzG I assume HomeSteak's point is that if something happens a lot it makes sense to consider the possibility that we aren't just perpetually unlucky.

Qwiss Didn't think he was good at all but refrained from commenting as it would appear driven by bias against him. Also thought he was poor in the last game, especially in the last few minutes of stoppage time where he played a ridiculously overhit pass to gift it back to their keeper, launched a cross straight out for a thrown in on the opposite side, and played a poor pass into Odegaard which was someone turned into a freekick.

daredevil yeah I agree. I think he probably held some players back for it too instead of playing against Brighton.

JazzG

I think the only two games that I've missed out on entirely the past two years were this game and the West Ham home game last season. My bad, guys. I'll try to do better moving forward.

daredevil
Who are we to put our noses up at a trophy given we haven’t won anything in 5 years.

The metric for Artera this season is not to ‘challenge’ or to ‘push’ whoever eventually wins it close. It’s to win some silverware.

Yes winning the Carling Cup would hardly be open bus parade stuff but it’s a start and would at least mean this team, that hasn’t won anything, had something against their name on paper.

All good managers (Jose, Pep) have won the league cup before dominating. It’s important for our ‘winning mentality’ and to lose the bottle/hasn’t won a trophy in x amount of years tag.

Getting knocked out of this simply means more pressure and scrutiny in our FA Cup and CL campaigns.

It was a low hanging fruit silverware to win. I hope we prioritise the second leg, most important game of our season.

I don't particularly care about the League Cup or even the FA Cup. If the FA Cup meant something, Wenger wouldn't have had airplane banners demanding his resignation. If the two trophies meant something, Ten Hag would still be in a job.

It's a nice to have, not a must have. Competing for and winning the PL and CL is what I care about and deep down even the domestic trophy hunters care about. If we're competing for the two and we're getting close or winning it, then I'm happy. If we fall off for more than 1 or 2 seasons and end up no longer competing for the two prizes, no amount of FA Cups and League Cups will change that he might not be the right man to get us over the line.

daredevil
We need to walk before we can run.

Winning the carling cup would massively, massively help us win the big two. Taking pressure off in March (by winning league cup) when going into a CL semi final in early
May is a different ball game.

Going into a CL final not having won a trophy in 5 years v going into a final having won a trophy 3 months prior is a game changer.

I think you get my message.

daredevil the FA cup still matters. The league cup isn't on the same level as it.

Cold weather a factor in that too

RocktheCasbah I know it wasn't included in season tickets allowance so maybe there was more churn in who went. I know I didn't purchase my seat for this match. Also going to be impacted by how the game goes.

DiabyKungFu I think the only two games that I've missed out on entirely the past two years were this game and the West Ham home game last season. My bad, guys. I'll try to do better moving forward.

We are nearing the business end of the season man, can't have you slacking like this!

QuincyAbeyie this is only the second game where we have hit 3.5xG and failed to score. It was an outlier event.
Just look at our results last few weeks. We scored 5 off about 2 xG. Didn’t score off similar. Sometimes it be like that.

What is true is what we all know. That we need to get our mean xG up and volatility down.

I still think we’ll get to the final. We could get at Newcastle often - it’s just guys like Odegaard, Trossard, and Havertz all had stinkers

QuincyAbeyie I'm not sure I agree, I firmly believe that the main factor is the performance and the wins and goals will follow from that. Against Brighton second half we hardly created anything but we had more than enough good chances to win this game. We need to be more clinical and need to sign an attacking player but this game is an anomaly, if we had stats and chances like this game we'd win 99 times out of a 100.

Look at our last 13 games in all competitions, we've won 9, drawn 3 and lost 1. Is that now classed as bad form or our team is suddenly not very good?

JazzG It's not all of a sudden. We're tracking for 76 points after more than half the season played. It's closer point-wise to what you expect to need for top 4 than for league trophy.

To look at our form, for me, it's not logical to do what you're doing, which is to choose the number of games that makes us look the best. You're going the wrong way, i.e. checking how long our "good" streak is -> choosing that number of games as your data.

If you choose 16, it looks worse. If you choose 10, it looks worse.

"Not very good" depends on your benchmark. It's certainly not very good if winning the league is our target. It's very good if top 4 is.