• The Arsenal

  • Arsenal v Newcastle 7 January 8pm Carabao Cup Semi Final 1st Leg

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.

      • MistaT

      • Post #168

      JazzG -- I'm struggling to see how anyone thinks this team could score 4-5, yet alone, 2+ based on our current form and players. I don't care what our xGF is game to game, nor do I care it thinks we could have scored 4 goals when those chances were Martinelli breakaway, Timber's header, and Havertz's header....none of those players are regular/confident goal scorers and they're snatching at chances.

        • Qwiss

        • Post #169

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

          Academic now, but curious as to what people made of the atmosphere last night. I know it's kind of governed by what happens on the pitch, but it seemed really flat and the Ashburton Army boys were conspicuous by their absence - especially compared to the last round where they seemed to have been moved, but were still present.

            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.

                • JazzG

                • Post #173

                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

                    • JazzG

                    • Post #176

                    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.

                            QuincyAbeyie We're averaging 2 points per game, despite having played everyone in top 10 of the Premier League apart from Nottingham Forest and Liverpool away from home, despite the sendings off, despite the way the team has been decimated by injury.

                            I don't discount the possibility that things are not going to get any better from here, it's obviously a possibility, but given the strength of our home form generally and the fact that we still have the bottom 5 teams to play away, it doesn't seem a stretch to think we might improve that average over the back half of the season.

                                RocktheCasbah I'd be very surprised if it doesn't improve at all. It'd be a massive disappointment if our points per game when the season is over is even worse than it's been so far.

                                It's just that I'd be even more surprised if it improves to the point where we win the league.

                                  • Qwiss

                                  • Post #180

                                  awooga83 thats always been the way with CC games and it usually has the opposite effect on atmosphere with people who don't usually get to go being excited, families going more, etc

                                      • Qwiss

                                      • Post #181
                                      • Edited

                                      RocktheCasbah apart from Nottingham Forest and Liverpool away from home

                                      TBF they are the 2 strongest teams in the top 10 based on the season so far.

                                      We all knew we underperformed in the first half of the season. The question from there was can we do better and improve enough to catch Liverpool. Without Saka that poor first half of the season is starting to look extremely costly as its hard to predict a level of consistency needed to catch Liverpool without our talisman.

                                        Qwiss I think, specifically on Tuesday, there were tonnes of people late into the ground. The turnstile we went in on was really slow going as there were loads of people with bags using the wrong queue, but we were still in 20 minutes before kick off. I don't know how you can be late for an 8pm kick off really.

                                        The main contributor though, was definitely the absence of the Ashburton crew - I mean, obviously the result didn't help but it's not like Newcastle were on top of us from minute 1.

                                            Qwiss not sure - not really on top of socials now so no idea what's being said online. But I was at the Palace game in the previous round and although they were obviously not in the Clock End, they were still creating an atmosphere down the other end of the ground. So I don't know whether people just weren't there.

                                            I don't remember them not being at the Ipswich game, but I wasn't feeling great (and was also up the other end anyway), so it's possible they weren't there and I just didn't notice.