UEFA Champions League QF L1 - 7/8 April ***Spoilers***

Pretty rubbish last night bar Rooney and Fletcher to an extent. Really need some fresh legs back to sharpen us up a bit. It'd be nice to have Rafael, Anderson, Ferdinand and Berbatov back ASAP.
 
Walcott's biggest problem last night was a huge lack of confidence, when he strings a few games together and gets a few performances behind him he will start to show more quality. You could tell that he was almost frightened to take the Villareal defence on when he had a couple of opportunities to do so.
 
drunkenmaster said:
yet again half the forum will call me some rude word or another, but Walcott is an utterly crap winger. Again any/all good work came when someone played him in behind, if he gets the ball with a defender to beat he's a timid little girl. He almost never uses his pace, his first touch was woeful throughout, he simply doesn't pass players, the few crosses he put in were all pathetic. Nasri didn't have a great game but his crosses were by and large high-ish and would dip into the box, Walcotts never beat the first man, ever. He's an utterly hopeless winger but could be a great striker, basically he spends the whole game making runs in behind hoping to get the ball but playing 1 upfront killed it as we rarely had enough people in the box/attacking.


ADebayor was utterly crap for 89.9minutes, again. We utterly dominated the second half yet had one real chance on goal, which he scored. He took one other shot that I can remember which was easier, and went about 30 yards wide. He constantly lost the ball, rarely challenged for anything, was on a yellow and still waves his arms around in peoples faces and fouled people needlessly. He also ignored some ridiculously easy paces, a one two with Nasri that would have put him through on goal, then later another one two with Eboue that would have put Eboue on the penalty spot with the ball and again he ignored the pass, lost the ball and threw himself to the floor with no contact, if it was in the box it would likely have been a second yellow, utter tit.

4-5-1 as per usual and we are a woeful attacking team with no movement and no chances being made.
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we don't normally agree DM but i'm at the point where i genuinely believe Walcott is going to be one of those "just needs time" players for the rest of his career. he has all the skills needed and has had them at his disposal for a couple of seasons but he still doesn't posess the smarts to use them......everytime he gets the ball he is off like a rocket straight into a defender and even when he does beat his man he makes the wrong decision when he gets to or inside the box 8 out of 10 times. i'm not sure about using him as a pure striker either :-
a)his finishing is by and large very inconsistent
b)physically he is nowhere near the athlete Henry was, i doubt Wenger will put up with a player on the pitch with the proviso he can make 1-2 runs per game behind the defense but do little else for the team.

i think you're wrong about Adebayor though, he had it hard the whole match playing off against 2 centre halfs and did a hell of a lot of running......in particular i thought he had a very good 2nd half and the goal speaks for itself. he & Cesc/RvP are the genuine world class talents we have right now, and you could probably add Arshavin into the mix now too.....Nasri is a smart little player but isn't near the level of the other 3.

everyone needs to cut the big man some slack imo.
 
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tripitaka said:
Not ITV's fault in this case - the production would have been done by the Spanish, so nothing they could do about that.
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Aye of course, as said it was slightly annoying, but meh, that's what replays are for. :p

On another note it's irksome but the stream itself didn't come over quickly enough. It's not the first time it's happened, I remember the same thing happening to one of the Roma matches and in the group stages as well. Fair play to them for streaming it legally, it's a pity that it doesn't seem to work up here. :confused:
 
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BaZ87 said:
Easy thing to say but you didn't/couldn't do it.

As for their home form, it means a lot. Arsenal took them apart over here (4-0) and lost in Portugal, we beat them last year 4-1 at Anfield but were lucky to come away with a 1-1 draw over there. They're very good at home and your sloppy play today may come back to haunt you. I still think you'll edge it but it's going to be far from easy.
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I cant remember your game at their place - but Arsenals was the last game in the group and was meaningless to Arsenal at least so there was no reason to be concerned

Completely different mentality to what we will be facing in a weeks time with double the amount of time betwen games than we just had

As stated previousely its not a forgone conclusion - either team are capable of having a real shocker or being sublime, but Utd SHOULD have enough to beat them even at home
 
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Manuel Almunia

Emmanuel Eboue
William Gallas
Johan Djourou
Mikael Silvestre

Denilson
Aaron Ramsey
Alex Song
Abou Diaby

Carlos Vela
Nicklas Bendtner

3 Subs used:
Jack Wilshere
Kieran Gibbs
Mark Randall
 
Aye, it was a pretty poor Arsenal team and they weren't particularly dominant even against that team, just a stale game really.
 
There was a time a few years back where from the starting whistle Arsenal were the most threatening team in Europe. Now it seems it takes us anywhere between 20 - 45 minutes to get into form.

I agree about Walcott - he's a good player, and he's gaining valuable experience on the wing but it is not where he belongs. He's got excellent pace but as soon as he gets challeneged outside the box, he freezes up. You're right about Arshavin too; now that he's injured you really notice what he brought back to the team. It'll be good for them to learn to not be so dependant again though. I do think though that if we had somehow lost Nasri or Fab, we'd have lost the game completely.

Pleasantly surprised by Fabianski too. The guy could easily be a starting keeper in most top clubs. This is the first time I've felt happy with our keeping since the days of Seaman.

Our top players are certainly (in roughly this order):

Fabregas
Nasri
Arshavin
Abe
RvP
Gallas
Song
Walcott

The club is plagued with injuries, people playing the wrong position and late signings which roughly explains why I see it that way. If we were on form, without injury there wouldn't (or shouldn't ideally) be anything to tell the players apart.

Arshavin will only get better in time - shame about the damn injury though!
Push Walcott into a supporting/attacking midfielder rather than a wing and I think we'll be getting somewhere.
 
I think the problem with Ade is simply he's not very good at the "Arsenal Game" I'm sure at a different club he would get heaps more praise and possibly more goals. But at arsenal we are used to a quick fluid passing and movement game with reasonably clinical finishing.

Bendtner has the passing and movement, but cant hit the broadside of a barn at 5 paces, Ade is also a bit inconsistent in front of the goal with the ball at his feet, In the air... Well last nights goal says it all really.
IMO RVP and Edwardo are our 2 preferred strikers however both are sick notes at the moment.

Walcott is still young and improving, although I do feel he could be better utilized as a striker (however we don't have a suitable replacement for him on the wings this season.

But in all honest I think we did quite well considering we had 10 players on the pitch, I have no Idea where Denilson was, I know he was on the team sheet but I couldn't for the life of me see him playing on the pitch (maybe he is camera shy).
 
Nix said:
There was a time a few years back where from the starting whistle Arsenal were the most threatening team in Europe.
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No there wasn't. :confused:

We had one run in the Champions League three seasons ago where we defended consistently brilliantly, and attacked really well for about 50% of the time, and that was it. Even at our best we rarely won by more than a single goal, and that was with a team that included the beloved Henry-Bergkamp strikeforce. Combined with our slightly above-average, but nothing special, record in Europe, we have never been close to being the "most threatening" team.
 
We were very good from the start at one point but not in Europe, at the height of our success with Vieira, Henry, Pires and Llungberg we quite often scored once or twice in the first 10 - 20 mins but only in the Prem.
 
Weebull said:
No there wasn't. :confused:
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I can't remember the year exactly (it was a while ago) but yes there was. No one could keep up with us for the first 10 minutes and many times we scored absolute belters with our pace off the line.

Wasn't there that time where we scored the fastet goal in CL ever?
 
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