Sporting vs Arsenal on Tue at 8 PM: Page 16 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Sporting vs Arsenal on Tue at 8 PM

Sicario2

Klaus the Southampton loss is the biggest overreaction I’ve ever seen considering our position in the league and CL

Sicario2

Gunner89 Noni played alright today i felt. If Saka had a similar game there would be nothing said. Noni, for a deputy, that’s a good game.

Qwiss

Sicario2 if Saka had that first half the meltdown would've been huge. If Martinelli had that game you'd be trashing him.

Gazza M

Klaus I feel like our play was 10-15% sharper at that time.

this was a decent win though. sportings home form was strong, but on the flipside their record against English teams is awful.

swider

Qwiss
I am talking about quality of performances especially in the last few months, result based analysis doesn't interest me one bit tbh.

DiabyKungFu

I don't think there's been some huge difference.

RC8

Klaus Agreed.

Furthermore, we technically scored 2 great goals today. One of them was correctly ruled out due to offside, but the offsidedness of the player in question added nothing at all to the move.

We need a bit more sharpness, for sure, but it's just not true that we came nowhere near scoring before the excellent last minute goal.

Raya was fantastic and makes you wonder whether we might have won the cup games if he had played instead of Kepa. His contribution this season has been superb.

Qwiss

QuincyAbeyie did you watch the highlights of Bayern? They gave away a lot of soft opportunities. You think they're unbeatable? ThATs wiLD To mE.

QuincyAbeyie

Qwiss I did and they're very much beatable, but it's not really relevant to what I said.

invisibleman18

Tactics Some people have forgotten the Wenger days in the CL.

“We’ll just go out there and play our game”

And then "we're proud of the performance" after another QF exit where the tie was done in the 1st leg.

Away wins in the CL are always a big result. Hope it doesn't cost us too much this weekend in terms of fatigue or any more injuries. The struggle to create a chance remains the main concern.

awooga83

QuincyAbeyie I also think with this argument that these teams are open to being attacked, except that's not really how Arsenal play so I don't think we are suddenly going to be blowing these teams away and using that because we play too cautious.

banduan

We didn't even play bad this match. Like I said, professional performance.

Qwiss

awooga83 its a bit of a high bar to expect to blow teams away in a CL semi final. That's exactly the time I'd be happy to watch control-ball.

awooga83

Qwiss I meant I don't think the vulnerability of these teams defensively is something that helps us. But there are also much better attacking wise so would create more and based on our form since Decemberish I don't think we shut them out at the moment.

yuppa

The moment where Ode did 3 wall passes (with Zubi?) sticks in my mind...he was clearly being told "you can turn" but just would not. We need a midfielder who does.

JazzG

Great result, sporting are a very good team at home. They beat PSG at home and Atletico away in recent months so they are no mugs. The home fixture will be another tough game for us.

Fantastic performance by Raya, I think it was the right decision to play Kepa in the cup games, problem is when you have a reserve keeper you have to give them some game time. As fans we can be quite cut throat but as a coach you are dealing with humans and trying to balance getting the best team out there and keeping all of your squad happy and behind you. The difference in quality between the keepers is staggering though. Kepa unfortunately played a role in both our cup exits whereas Raya kept us in this game

Sicario2

JazzG so as humans why didn’t he play MLS or Nogaard in the final?

TambourineMan

Just seen the goal again and noticed Rice was asking Martinelli to play it safe and play a back pass. Good thing he ignored him and actually drove forward.

Our midfield is way to conservative and that's 100% on Arteta.

daredevil

TambourineMan

I don't know about that. We've seen Partey, Jorginho and even Eze both play with far more verticality than what we're seeing from our current midfield trio.

I think it's the nature of the players to be more conservative. Arteta has called out Odegaard in the past to be more direct and drive forward.

Meatwad

but if rice was drilled to be conservative by arteta then that means others were as well and martinelli went against orders and said fuck you arteta i'm going forward, YOLO. or maybe players default to who they are and arteta signs these conservative players who have these instincts. it's not like declan rice was some swashbuckling midfielder with west ham or now england. i've never watched declan rice outside of arsenal and thought, "where is that Declan for us?" in fact since he's been here it's more "wow, i didn't know you had that."

Qwiss

Meatwad we are also seeing more attacking returns from Zubi than he's shown before. I think its a bit about the make up of the midfield and the defence. We have 2 sitting mids and our fullbacks are defence first players. That would make most teams a bit conservative. Add to that we don't have an Auba or Sanchez type who will just go at the defence and try to score at all times and we always have the potential to be a bit stodgy.

That said I think at this stage of the CL that's not the worst thing. Look at City crashing out to Real or Liverpool giving so many chances to PSG. I think solidity and patience is a virtue when playing the top teams in Europe.

Big Willie

Sicario2 so as humans why didn’t he play MLS or Nogaard in the final?

MLS: 28 appearances this season
Norgaard: 19 appearances this season

Meanwhile Kepa has made 11 appearances this season including League Cup Final. If he doesn't play cup games he won't make it on the field at all. I don't agree with it or Arteta playing him in those situations, but I understand the reasoning behind it.

JazzG

Sicario2 Good point, probably should have done so. Personally I would have dropped Kepa in the semis.

Sicario2

Big Willie now compare the KM ran by Kepa v MLS/Nogaard?

Anyway we win the league then it doesn’t matter but I get why ppl are pissed we are essentially threw away the CC final. Southampton I’m less bothered with as he did play majority fringe players.

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