re: Arsenal 2014/15 Season Long Thread

Ornstein says we are no longer in for Sami. Honestly I'd rather go after Carvalho and Schneiderlin.

I'm annoyed that we are linked for him. I've liked him for a while. I'm skeptical we can actually get him.

I'm sure sporting will take 25 for him. According to one report we offered a structured payment deal which is maybe why Sporting rejected it.

me neither. i'll probably blow because i'm extremely superstitious, but when i said i thought our DM would be out of left field, i had pogba in mind (not that he's a DM, but hey, if we were pursuing khedira...).

The Jack-Aaron combo gets a bad rap because of the Villa game, but we won the next four games where both of them were paired together. They are different enough to they could actually complement each other. Jack likes the ball at his feet, driving from midfield, while Aaron's off the ball movement is pretty spectacular. I really wish Jack would develop the ability to move the ball to the wings consistently from deep positions, as I think he has that ability, but he chooses to dribble forward instead. The fact that Ramsey, Ox, and Jack are all so versatile will help each of them get time somewhere on the pitch. The only time the Arteta-Flamini pairing seemed to work was when Ramsey was wide right.

Taking turns, or choosing the right opportunity to go forward has been a thing every midfield partnership has had to deal with. The more Rambo and Jack play together the better they will be together.

I know they played together in a 2-0 loss to Chelsea in I think CC action, but they played well.

They played together in a 1-0 win over Tottenham where Theo was on the right. We looked really good that game. Santi was deadly narrow left, Rosicky was behind Giroud. We could've had four or five against Tottenham's high line, and they hardly threatened us.

That's the two I recall.

ETA: Start of last season.

3-0 win over Fenerbache.

3-1 win over Fulham we played Ramsey + Rosicky with Cazorla in front of them, Ramsey averaged the deepest positioning.

2-0 win over Fenerbache.

1-0 over Tottenham (mentioned above)

Next game Flamini came in, and Ramsey really pushed up and Jack moved to the left. We beat Sunderland 3-1 and Ramsey scored twice. Don't think we played them much together after that. Started playing Flamini there a lot with Ramsey, and Rambo really started to score a ton.

I think the bigger reason they got broke up as a pair was injuries on the wings and the relative timing of health. Early on, Arteta was hurt and Flamini and Ozil were catching up. We had depth on the wings.

Then, we had some injuries in the attack and Jack (and even Ramsey) moved wide left (or right), and Flamini/Arteta got more run, sometimes together. But what really ended it was how well Ramsey played with a more defensive minded player than Jack. Once that happened, it was hard to justify partnering Jack with Ramsey when others were bringing out more in Rambo.

I'd like to see Jack, Arteta, Diaby, Ox, Flamini, and new signing all get looks next to Ramsey (and with each other). Looking back at those box scores/chalkboards, though, and Ramsey was lethal scoring next to Flamini more than anyone else, who sat deep almost always and gave him free license. We sign a 6 and I think a healthy Ramsey explodes.

Serge was good for us, but he too likes the ball at his feet.

Here are the 5 seeded teams for the Champions League Playoff Round:

Arsenal (112 coefficient)
FC Porto (105)
Bayer Leverkusen (70)
Napoli (61)
Athletic Bilbao (54)

Arsenal will play one of these teams in the Champions League play-off round:

AEL Limassol (7) or Zenit (73)
Dnipro (32) or Copenhagen (45)
Feyenoord (13) or Besiktas (34)
Grasshoppers (9) or Lille (45)
Standard Liege (38) or Panathinakos (30)

If Zenit beats AEL Limassol, then Zenit becomes a seeded team and Atletic Bilbao drops to list of possible opponents.

Personally I would love to play the Grasshoppers! But then again lucky draws are never the Arsenal way.