re: Arsenal 2013/2014 Season Long Thread

We got arse whipped today. Forget it and move on.

Arteta has had 2-3 good performances but the rest have been somewhere between shite and below average (for our squad)

But yeah once we were about 15-20 min into the match I ffwd'd through the rest because frick that.

A huge, huge problem yesterday was how easily Liverpool could play a high line. It's because Giroud offers nothing behind the defense.

If Giroud is up there, he's got to have a Walcott next to him pushing the line back. Ox has the speed, but wants the ball at his feet and isn't a true winger.

Losing Theo kind of killed this title chase. He can play up top by himself and open up so much space for Ozil, Jack, Santi behind him, or play on the wing and give Giroud a ball at the front post or play off of him.

The farther back that line goes, the more time everyone has on the ball, but Liverpool knew they'd recover on any ball to Giroud, so they pressed enough to eat our midfield out of the game.

I only watched the first 25 minutes or so, then fast forwarded the rest, but that's what I saw early.

Not enough depth in our squad. Injuries are going to happen. You have to be able to recover.

I don't think Ramsey would have made a ton of difference yesterday, anyway. He'd have played next to Arteta and struggled as much as Jack did to get on the ball.

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Losing Theo kind of killed this title chase.

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Agreed. We lost our most important player, IMO, as his being on the field completely changed the way that our opponents were forced to play us, opening up space for our midfield to operate and stretching the defenders. We never stretched pool and Giroud going 1v3 against their back line was absolutely pointless.

If you watched Ozil with Madrid, he often didn't play with a pacy lone striker. He's okay to work with Giroud if and only if someone is making runs from the wing. And right now Monreal is the only guy doing that, which is why we're exposed on the counter down that side. He doesn't have the pace to recover.

On another note, how good was that ball from Coutinho on Sturridge's goal?

i haven't really been able to watch or read anything soccer related (well, except for inverting the pyramid, but that's just a history book) since I turned off the match at 3-0. this is the closest thing I'll probably ever feel to PTSD.

although I agree Giroud's presence is a governor on our offensive capabilities (especially since Ozil isn't maximized with Oli) and i agree that it is particularly harmful in more compact matches against top opposition, i still think (based solely on the 20 minutes i watched ) that the effort, concentration, and organization was not there at all on Saturday. i think it was a perfect storm of us sleep-walking and 'Pool being near the top of their game. though the egg laid saturday is certainly frustrating and depressing, i'm trying not to draw big conclusions from it because it is such an outlier to how we've played this season. even vs Man City, we could have easily gotten a point or won had a couple things gone differently.

i do think Serge needs to get back in the XI. he's our most winger-esque attacker at this point (not saying much) and the Ox at CM with Arteta is a must Wednesday. Also think Gibbs should be back starting.

this team has been flawed all year, but our effort and concentration defensively has been our saving grace. no question we need to buy in the summer though (and boy would I have loved to have Draxler). a true wide player, a striker, a CM, and a defender or two (depending if Sagna re-signs) are musts. i loooooove poldi off the field, and wouldn't be opposed to him as a super-sub only, but i have a feeling he and TV5 will move on in the summer. also, the longer baccy doesn't re-sign, the more i think it isn't going to happen.

The problem is we've found monreal a few times with good runs but he's just not a finisher and nobody is making a central run for him to center it to

We're missing a lot of things.

Also we don't need the pace of Walcott to win the title. What we need, and what Walcott providing was off the ball runs. We need people to make runs so our passers have somewhere to go. We haven't exactly struggled offensively, but we've looked much less creative lately.