JazzG You can call them a midtable team if it makes you feel better, let’s see how they do this season.
Has no bearing on my emotional state whatsoever. It’s a fact.
JazzG It would be negligence to not take full advantage of this.
Fully agree. The more the better. This sort of take has been suggested elsewhere. I’m not aware of anyone suggesting we don’t take advantage of it or try to score more goals.
JazzG You can keep talking about our over reliance on set piece thing but it has only been 9 games, at least wait until the half way stage of the season before you get too worried about it
If we’re not allowed to discuss concerns and thoughts we might as well wrap up the and open it in May to discuss the outcome of the league. The reason I’m raising it just now and not in 10 games time is because I’d like to see tangible signs of improvement in certain areas. We’re winning and top of the league. It’s great and I’m not suggesting otherwise, but you only need to look to Liverpool to see how quickly things can change. If Gabriel is out for a run and we can’t dominate set pieces in his absence, it doesn’t look as if we could consistently expect to score from other avenues. We have done - Atletico, Forest, Leeds all show we can score and I’m sure the commentator the other night said we had something like 10 different scorers this season - and those are positive aspects to hold, but your own concerns about deep blocks should surely make us take heed of potential stumbling blocks.
JazzG Because we suffered an unprecedented injury crisis last season with key players being out for long periods? Would you classify that as normal? You're more than welcome to use last season as an example but our form this season is more closely aligned to the two seasons before hence why I think last season is more an outlier.
Perhaps unprecedented but not unforeseeable. I, and many others, aired concerns about how we went into last season. We’ve learned that lesson the hard way, but here we are still saying part of the problem with our current goalscoring rate is down to injuries to key players. They’ll come back. What will the form be like? Will it take time to get up to speed? Will it be more disruption whilst they develop relationships and chemistry with new players around them? There are so many factors that mean it’s not as straightforward as it being an undoubted and immediate success. I’m not dismissing the two earlier seasons at all, but I’m not ignoring the pitfalls of last season either because it’s widely regarded as an outlier.
This links to your point about top quality players returning. Absolutely it will hopefully make a difference, but you’ve spend months raising your own concerns about Odegaard’s form and place in the team, and overlooking his form in the preceding two years. You’re having your cake and eating it here. Setting your own views on Odegaard aside, there were genuine questions about what level he’d return to. He seemed to answer them well this season, but will that keep up when he’s back? Madueke was a livewire but there’s still questions over his end product. Havertz, I agree with you on his potential impact, but will he play ahead of Gyokeres? We know how Arteta gets attached to playing certain players. Is there space for Havertz? Will spelling Gyokeres make a significant difference?
My point is not to be negative about it, it’s just there are no guarantees, and my view is that whilst we do have several players missing who could be effective, we’re not struggling for talent in terms of availability. Getting down to bare bones again right enough, but the talent levels available compared to last season are night and day.
We have Bukayo Saka. Saka! One of Europe’s most clinical strikers, arguably the best midfielder in the league in Zubimendi, Declan Rice, the flair and instinct of Eze, maverick Calafiori. There are goals in that lot without the need to turn to turn to our absentees. Up to Arteta to squeeze more of them out.
