Arsenal Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 12/13 MOD POST #232

Fuzzy_Dunlop · 18-12-2012 12:18AM

Delighted to have been at that game. Fantastic stuff from Santi!

Only shame that I was in the Reding section so couldn't join in with the fans. The away support were fantastic as usual.

Fuzzy_Dunlop · 18-12-2012 12:21AM

Frisbee wrote: »

Absolutely. Any of United, Chelsea or Pool will offer him more than 100k. And we didn't break our wage structure for Fabregas or van Persie, we're not going to do it for Walcott.

I don't really see why they would. apart from maybe Liverpool but who wants to go there?

18-12-2012 12:36AM

The two sides of Arsenal were on display tonight. The good and the bad. Attacking wise Arsenal were fluid albeit against a porous Reading whereas the flip side was the 2 shoddy goals conceded. Absolute school boy stuff and while Wenger continues to ignore that problem Arsenal will continue to be in the football wilderness

emergingstar · 18-12-2012 01:08AM

Lots of talk of David villa to us tonight

jordainius · 18-12-2012 01:32AM

passremarkable wrote: »

cazorla keeps playing this well he will get snapped up by a big club.

Troll rating; 2/10. You can do so much better.
Originality rating; 0/10. That one has been done to death.
Irony rating; off the scale! A Liverpool fan trying to troll fans of a bigger club than his own about not being a big club. Bravo!

Mickeroo · 18-12-2012 02:31AM

emergingstar wrote: »

Lots of talk of David villa to us tonight

Where? Google's not giving me anything more recent than last July and a rumour about him going to liverpool 17 hours ago.There's more chance of the world ending on Friday than him playing for either club.

gnfnrhead · 18-12-2012 06:27AM

Frisbee wrote: »

Absolutely. Any of United, Chelsea or Pool will offer him more than 100k. And we didn't break our wage structure for Fabregas or van Persie, we're not going to do it for Walcott.

I can't see United or Chelsea wanting him that badly. If he is going for a decent amount, sure. But he is far too inconsistent to be expecting more than what he has already been offered. Liverpool are trying to cut their wage bill so can't see them splashing out that amount either on a player that has never done it consistently.

greendom · 18-12-2012 08:30AM

Mickeroo wrote: »

Where? Google's not giving me anything more recent than last July and a rumour about him going to liverpool 17 hours ago.There's more chance of the world ending on Friday than him playing for either club.

Twitter's your man

Oranage2 · 18-12-2012 10:43AM

Maybe Walcott will end up at City, they'll probably need a replacement for Sinclair.

jmayo · 18-12-2012 11:02AM

.jacksparrow. wrote: »

Why does Gary Neville talk such sense!

It's quiet scary.

greendom wrote: »

Interesting quotes from AW tonight...

"After building new stadium we had restricted potential financially - hopefully now we can be a bit more convincing"

Signs that the financial shackles are now off ?

Just more spin ?

Fuzzy_Dunlop wrote: »

I don't really see why they would. apart from maybe Liverpool but who wants to go there?

It is looking like Carzola has been one of Wengers best buys over the last number of years.
I know he and Pod have had a few patchy performances but so has most of the team.
Also why does wenger continue to play guys out of position ?
First it was bendy boots and now it is Pod.

Donning my cynic/pessimist hat I must remind people that Reading are poor and are at the bottom.
Beating them should be seen as no real achievement.

Quazzie · 18-12-2012 11:35AM

The best, and most important thing about last nights game is that for the first time in a long time we had some genuine pace in our attack and we actually counter attacked at speed. Sure Reading are a poor side, but if we play with that intensity and pace against better teams we'll get the same result.

Oregano_State · 18-12-2012 11:36AM

jmayo wrote: »

It's quiet scary.

Just more spin ?

It is looking like Carzola has been one of Wengers best buys over the last number of years.
I know he and Pod have had a few patchy performances but so has most of the team.
Also why does wenger continue to play guys out of position ?
First it was bendy boots and now it is Pod.

Donning my cynic/pessimist hat I must remind people that Reading are poor and are at the bottom.
Beating them should be seen as no real achievement.

There's been a lot of pessimism surrounding Arsenal and consequently this thread lately, but winning in the manner ye did last night shouldn't be passed over as a formality, Reading gave United a good game recently and I expected Arsenel to have a lot more trouble with them that they did.

Obviously everything isn't perfect just on the back of this victory, but at least it wasn't another abject performance.

Your midfield is very strong when it gets into gear, the trouble seems to be getting the attitude and level of intensity right on a consistent basis. You could do with someone else that can play the Arteta role to give him a break now and again.

tayto lover · 18-12-2012 11:59AM

Good win last night but let's not get carried away too much --

1. Arsenal played some lovely passing football against a very poor team.
2. The team selection was good and players knew their jobs- a plus for Wenger.
3. We conceded 2 dreadfully awful goals and put ourselves under pressure and this needs to be eradicated. We will play much tougher opponents who will have noticed that we panicked a bit then.
4. Last night's team should start the next 4/5 games and be given time.
5. Jack is almost back to his best but needs to stop getting needless yellow cards.
6. Looking forward to the Christmas fixtures now with great expectations.

Frisbee · 18-12-2012 12:01PM

gnfnrhead wrote: »

I can't see United or Chelsea wanting him that badly. If he is going for a decent amount, sure. But he is far too inconsistent to be expecting more than what he has already been offered. Liverpool are trying to cut their wage bill so can't see them splashing out that amount either on a player that has never done it consistently.

Well he's not going to leave England.

The only clubs that will be able to afford him / he'd want to go to are:

United
City
Chelsea
Pool

Now United or Chelsea don't really need him.
Can't see him going to City just to take Sinclair's spot.
He'd improve Liverpool hugely.

Now regardless of whether they really want him or not, I can't see all 4 of those clubs turning down Walcott on a free and only paying him 100-120k a week which is mid-range for most of them.

18-12-2012 12:11PM

Frisbee wrote: »

Well he's not going to leave England.

The only clubs that will be able to afford him / he'd want to go to are:

United
City
Chelsea
Pool

Now United or Chelsea don't really need him.
Can't see him going to City just to take Sinclair's spot.
He'd improve Liverpool hugely.

Now regardless of whether they really want him or not, I can't see all 4 of those clubs turning down Walcott on a free and only paying him 100-120k a week which is mid-range for most of them.

I think he'd make the Chelsea team as hes better than Moses, he'd get more money there too.
City maybe, definitely more money there too.
United have loads of options, can't see it myself.
Pool won't pay him more than us and I'b be bewildered if he went there.

Fuzzy_Dunlop · 18-12-2012 12:29PM

Loved this from Santi

Frisbee · 18-12-2012 12:29PM

Liverpool would definitely give Walcott over 80k a week.

Pepe LeFrits · 18-12-2012 12:33PM

The only move that makes sense for Walcott from a footballing perspective might be Liverpool, but even then that'd be a retrograde step for him.

Pretty sure he'll go to one of the richer clubs, stall his development but earn a crapload and win trophies while doing so.

2ndcoming · 18-12-2012 12:37PM

In fairness you can only beat who you're playing. Some people won't be happy until we beat two teams at the same time I think.:rolleyes:

The midfield is getting more impressive every week as Wilshere slots in with his new team mates. The best aspect of last night's performance was the speed on the break and hunger to catch the opposition on the counter that has been missing for too long.

On the conceding 2 sloppy goals, personally I'd be quite happy if we won 5-2 every week, but the answer for me there is a strong, mobile DM to play alongside Arteta in front of the defence against stronger teams. There is one French player with a name of African origin that I definitely will not be the 1,000,000th person to mention in this thread that springs to mind.

I wouldn't be concerned about doubling up in front of the defence against bottom half teams, any team can concede a sloppy goal at 4-0 up, and I'd rather have a front 5 playing with all the freedom they want to get to 4-0 than two holding midfielders trying to eke out a marginal win against weaker opposition.

2ndcoming · 18-12-2012 12:42PM

On the flip side those knob heads with the Time To Go banner should get slapped if they produce it again. Bought it a year ago for unveiling at the Spurs match, it curiously went into hiding ever since.

Have to echo the words of one of Twitter's best Arsenal bloggers, Jonny O'Neill; feel free to disagree with Wenger, feel free to question him, we've all had frustrating times over the past couple of years as Arsenal fans. But disrespect him? F**k that.

farna_boy · 18-12-2012 12:44PM

Some interesting stats from Gary Neville's pre game analysis of Arsenal last night:

Goals Conceded: 3rd Best in League (Down to 4th after last night)
Average Possession: 59% -1st (Before game last night)
Pass Accuracy 87% - 2nd (Before game last night)
Average Crosses - 21 - 4th (Before game last night)

For a team with such a dodgy defence, we don't seem to be doing too bad!

Of course the stats that are causing us problems are:
Goals Scored 26 - 7th (Up to 31 - 3rd now)
Goals to Shots 15% - 5th (pre-game)

Looking at the goals scored. you can also see why using stats can be so deceiving. Before last night, the goals scored highlighted our main problem, but now that is being hidden by one large scoring game.

The goals conceded stat is the most interesting though. It is true that we do look shaky at the back but our defence is actually performing quite well.

The stat that I would most like to see would be our time to move the ball from defence to attack. Last night we seemed to do this quite quickly and seemed to pass the ball forward instead of sideways and backwards, which we had done a lot in previous games. I'm not entirely sure how we managed to do it last night, if it was the poor opposition or if it was a change in attitude, but I think we would do much better by getting the ball forward more quickly.

Galvasean · 18-12-2012 01:03PM

Walcott 11 (5)
Podolski 8 (5)
Cazorla 7 (7)
Giroud 7 (4)
Gervinho (5) (3)
Arteta 3 (3)
Chamakh 2 (0)
Koscielny 2 (1)
Mr. Owen Goal 2 (2)
Arshavin 1 (0)
Mertesacker 1 (1)
Miquel 1 (0)
Oxlade-Chamberlain 1 (0)
Ramsey 1 (0)
Rosicky 1 (0)
Vermaelen 1 (0)
Wilshere 1 (0)

Good to see Cazorla get his name on the wall so soon. Up there with great goalscorers like Ian Wright, Dennis Bergkamo, Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie and Ray Parlour.

18-12-2012 02:04PM

2ndcoming wrote: »

In fairness you can only beat who you're playing. Some people won't be happy until we beat two teams at the same time I think.:rolleyes:

The midfield is getting more impressive every week as Wilshere slots in with his new team mates. The best aspect of last night's performance was the speed on the break and hunger to catch the opposition on the counter that has been missing for too long.

On the conceding 2 sloppy goals, personally I'd be quite happy if we won 5-2 every week, but the answer for me there is a strong, mobile DM to play alongside Arteta in front of the defence against stronger teams. There is one French player with a name of African origin that I definitely will not be the 1,000,000th person to mention in this thread that springs to mind.

I wouldn't be concerned about doubling up in front of the defence against bottom half teams, any team can concede a sloppy goal at 4-0 up, and I'd rather have a front 5 playing with all the freedom they want to get to 4-0 than two holding midfielders trying to eke out a marginal win against weaker opposition.

We wont though. We wont get 5 against every team and quite frankly at times we're lucky to score 1. Reading are going straight back to the championship barring a miracle or an utter collapse of their rivals in fairness. They are the loosest team i have seen us play in yonks. A dream for Arsenal to play against. If only we could meet the likes every week is all I say and they offered very little in attack yet due to sloppy errors they came away with two goals

I mean Arsenal failed to break down Bradford the other night so how will they fare against City and Chelsea and especially after their display at Old Trafford?

Arsenals defence has been shaky probably since 2004-05, maybe further back apart from the Champions league run and Wenger has ignored the problems presented to him.
Cygan, Senderos, Djourou (for being injury prone), Silvestre, Squillachi, have all been disasters. Gallas who was club captain had a famous meltdown in 2008 and Mertesacker for a German international of over 80 caps seems to have problems on occasion getting his legs to react to situations.
Vermaelen probably not playing to the best of his abilities and while Koc has been a decent signing I think he has suffered from a lack of confidence this year.
But as a unit there seems to be no cohesion within our defence regardless of the individuals and that is very worrying indeed.

18-12-2012 02:15PM

emergingstar wrote: »

Lots of talk of David villa to us tonight

We dont need a striker. To be honest a clear out is probably more important then a recruitment drive at this stage. Get the likes of Santos, Arshavin, Fabianski, Djourou, Bendtner (though we'll have to wait til Summer now), Diaby and Squillachi off the wage bill.

As for a defensive midfielder i think either Coquelin or Frimpong could well do the job there.

HazDanz · 18-12-2012 02:47PM

Deleted User wrote: »

We dont need a striker. To be honest a clear out is probably more important then a recruitment drive at this stage. Get the likes of Santos, Arshavin, Fabianski, Djourou, Bendtner (though we'll have to wait til Summer now), Diaby and Squillachi off the wage bill.

As for a defensive midfielder i think either Coquelin or Frimpong could well do the job there.

We don't need a striker or a DM? We need both frankly. Diaby is gone and Giroud is our only proper striker, we need rotation and flexibilty, both of which we have not had in any meaningful way this season.

farna_boy · 18-12-2012 02:58PM

HazDanz wrote: »

We don't need a striker or a DM? We need both frankly. Diaby is gone and Giroud is our only proper striker, we need rotation and flexibilty, both of which we have not had in any meaningful way this season.

Would much prefer a right winger. At the moment our choices are:

Walcott: Wants to play up front and could be gone soon anyway
Arshavin: No thanks.
Gervinho: No thanks.
Ramsey: Not his position.
Any other player: Not their position.

To me, this is a slight concern.

18-12-2012 03:19PM

HazDanz wrote: »

We don't need a striker or a DM? We need both frankly. Diaby is gone and Giroud is our only proper striker, we need rotation and flexibilty, both of which we have not had in any meaningful way this season.

Walcott, Giroud and Podolski are all capable of getting goals up front. Goals havent been the real problem.

As for Defensive Midfielder id like to see Coquelin or Frimpong at least get a run in the team. If we are going to push Arteta up then i think we should get rid of Ramsey as he will be surplus to requirements and we will have to many attacking midfielders. Jack, Santi, Rosicky, Arteta, Ox, Gervinho, Diaby and Ramsey as well as Gnarby and Eisfield. Some one will have to go

2ndcoming · 18-12-2012 03:32PM

Deleted User wrote: »

We wont though. We wont get 5 against every team and quite frankly at times we're lucky to score 1. Reading are going straight back to the championship barring a miracle or an utter collapse of their rivals in fairness. They are the loosest team i have seen us play in yonks. A dream for Arsenal to play against. If only we could meet the likes every week is all I say and they offered very little in attack yet due to sloppy errors they came away with two goals

I mean Arsenal failed to break down Bradford the other night so how will they fare against City and Chelsea and especially after their display at Old Trafford?

Arsenals defence has been shaky probably since 2004-05, maybe further back apart from the Champions league run and Wenger has ignored the problems presented to him.
Cygan, Senderos, Djourou (for being injury prone), Silvestre, Squillachi, have all been disasters. Gallas who was club captain had a famous meltdown in 2008 and Mertesacker for a German international of over 80 caps seems to have problems on occasion getting his legs to react to situations.
Vermaelen probably not playing to the best of his abilities and while Koc has been a decent signing I think he has suffered from a lack of confidence this year.
But as a unit there seems to be no cohesion within our defence regardless of the individuals and that is very worrying indeed.

You're aware we've already played City and Chelsea, drawing the first and narrowly losing the second, arguably thanks to Wenger dropping that often wrongly maligned German centre-half you speak of.

Of course we won't score 5 every match. But we have players good enough to break too quick for most teams in the league, when they have the hunger and are directed to do so. Far too many times this season we've conceded set-pieces and cleared with hoofs giving possession straight back to the other team, and very often we concede in this position. I'd nearly say that's when we've conceded more than any other situation. The break down of those set-pieces is the critical moment when we play most PL teams, as it's the only time we get them out of their half in numbers. We must capitalise quickly and that means having the calmness and confidence in the back four to get the ball to one of the middle three around the edge of our box who have the vision to set a Chamberlain,Gibbs or Walcott away at pace. I've left out Ramsey and Gervinho as their slowness and sideways passes kill breaks and frankly drive me mental.

I've already said I think a few quality re-inforcements are vitally needed, but a lot of this stuff is simple tactical errors that can be fixed with the players we already have.

Could talk about this all day, let's see how the next three league games go, and bear in mind one place we want be seeing City or Chelsea is the draw for the next round of the Champions League. A bit of positivity never killed anyone.

HazDanz · 18-12-2012 04:11PM

farna_boy wrote: »

Would much prefer a right winger. At the moment our choices are:

Walcott: Wants to play up front and could be gone soon anyway
Arshavin: No thanks.
Gervinho: No thanks.
Ramsey: Not his position.
Any other player: Not their position.

To me, this is a slight concern.

Keep Walcott amd use The Ox out there. I agree another right winger is needed, someone who can cross a ball would be great.

Deleted User wrote: »

Walcott, Giroud and Podolski are all capable of getting goals up front. Goals havent been the real problem.

As for Defensive Midfielder id like to see Coquelin or Frimpong at least get a run in the team. If we are going to push Arteta up then i think we should get rid of Ramsey as he will be surplus to requirements and we will have to many attacking midfielders. Jack, Santi, Rosicky, Arteta, Ox, Gervinho, Diaby and Ramsey as well as Gnarby and Eisfield. Some one will have to go

Walcott has to prove himself up top, i'm holding judgement until after a few games and wheter the club can hold onto him, hopefully we can. Giroud is great but I think he needs wingers who can cross better than we can do, it causes stagnant attacks with endless poor crosses flying into him.

Pod - Wenger won't play up front, he likes him out the wing too much.

It's about rotation at the end of the day, if we are in the FA cup, the Champions league and battling for top 4 we need an effective rotation system. We don't have that, it's consistently why we faulter in the second half of seasons because we go "that'll do" for a first team and don't bother build a bench which is unhappy to not be playing causing competition. We need direct like for like replacements rather than players who maybe could do a job out the wing or up top if put their when someone is having an off day.

gosplan · 18-12-2012 06:32PM

We need a striker so badly.

Arsenal Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 12/13 MOD POST #232

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