Capital One Cup - Fourth Round 30/31 October *** Spoilers ***

drunkenmaster said:
HIlarious game, defensively both teams were so atonishingly laughable I wouldn't even know where to start :p

Offensively, neither team were that good, the defenses were that damn bad, still some nice build up play and decent enough goals. Despite the pundit constantly having a go at Arshavin, in the first half he was the only one to find a quality throughball and he did it all game long. THe first ball for Walcott to fluff about 10 mins in was just epic, then Arsenal's movement upfront was horrendous till the first goal, every time there was a break, movement in attack and people making runs Arshavin was putting in quality throughball one after the other. He also worked much harder than most getting back even very late in the game. He looked shattered and got a bunch of simple passes wrong around the 70 min mark, as usual but this time he seemed to 10 mins later, get his energy back and ran and worked REALLY hard all through extra time.

Frimpong, well I never actually rated him, but while WIlshire came back looking almost as good as ever, Frimpong looked no where even remotely close to his best.

Chamakh, nice to see him play well, abysmal in the first 45, got better and better in the second half and was frankly brilliant in extra time. As usual, players are rusty, they have no confidence, they try and do everything in every touch to start and look retarded, even within one game his nerves settled down he got back in the swing and he looked actually very good. Sure Reading made it easy but his movement was excellent, his passing improved dramatically. That last goal, if that was a league game and he came on in the 89th minute, he'd have missed it due to the pressure of feeling like he had a single chance to ever play again under Wenger. He does this to too many players, kills their form then gives them no chance to get it back.


Ridiculously entertaining game to watch, feel a bit sorry for Gnabry as he looked brighter than most in the first 45 mins, but he wasn't really what was needed at that stage. Eisfeld also didn't do anything brilliant, but he looked assured, won the ball several times, made the right choice often and just looked solid considering that was his first game for us.

I hope we use him more and give him chances throughout the season, its when we get someone like him who looks great at first, after a year of barely playing he'll look half as good.

Giroud, again, its "only" Reading but that was the kind of domineering performance we need to see from him. Of course the second he started to show form and get goals, Wenger dropped him in the league for a guy who is woeful. Giroud needs a run of games, if he can play like that against better teams he might just work out for us.
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you actually know nothing about football.
 
drunkenmaster said:
The guys who "left" at 37 mins in, probably only went off to get to the food queue's early, if he actually left, hahahahahahahahahah.
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Just updated my account and paid for the draw, not too shabby though. Also with regards to the fans leaving, they were clearly leaving as a couple, wouldn't take 2 people to get some food! (I'm guessing)
 
That was the most entertaining game of football I've ever seen, lots of mistakes by both sides but that will go down as a classic and I don't think I will ever forget it.
 
Walcott did pretty well tonight, out performed Arshavin by a fair margin who i thought did ok up until his last touch virtually every time. Should be a starter for saturday as should Giroud who along with Walcott properly took the game to them. Mental game though, some truely horrendous defending throughout.
 
No idea what the complaints about the added on time are about, as I've explained previously "a minimum of four minutes" means anything from 04:00 to 04:59, plus whatever extra stoppages the ref wants to add on. I think the goal was scored around 95:18(?) which is well within reason considering there was a sub which probably took up around a further 30s or so, and that's assuming there were no other stoppages (I honestly can't remember) - the ref could easily justify anything up to around 95:30.

The trouble is people have this assumption that "minimum of four mins" means EXACTLY 4mins plus extra stoppages, which is completely nonsensical, the chances of stoppages adding up to a nice even multiple of 60s are very slim, even if in practice refs will make an approximation and not go down to the finest level of detail.

And before anyone thinks this is just bias to favour my team, you may recall I used the same argument AGAINST my own team in the past when people were moaning about Arsenal conceding a late goal.
 
CliffyG said:
Walcott did pretty well tonight, out performed Arshavin by a fair margin who i thought did ok up until his last touch virtually every time. Should be a starter for saturday as should Giroud who along with Walcott properly took the game to them. Mental game though, some truely horrendous defending throughout.
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He really didn't, at all. Arshavin played the throughball which got him in behind, Arshavin ran back and defended, A LOT, Arshavin created tonnes of chances for everyone on the team. Walcott due to Arshavin's pass, and for his third, Arshavins shot, got two essentially tap ins.

I did actually give him credit a couple times in the game, very near the beginning he actually ran hard to get on the end of a bad pass and nicked it off a defender on the edge of the box, then 5 minutes later he went after another bad pass, but jogged, the one where the keeper got it well out wide, outside the box and if Walcott had actually ran hard he could likely have put the keeper under real pressure. He did win the ball one other time, but he spent 3/4's of the game NOT putting in much effort. He did get the assist from the corner, but outside that I can't remember really any good play outside of his two shots.

Sorry but Arshavin massively, massively outplayed Walcott, start to finish. Arshavin created two of his goals, and I can't actually remember who created the one that equalised, no way is it Walcott's goal though, hilarious goal, it was good play/determination by Walcott, but ultimately his shot was saved, then their defender dragged it across the line with his hand, cleared it and Jenks did a great finish.

Hmm, was it a Walcott assist for the last goal as well, lol, I still can't work out why that defender ducked away from the ball and let Chamakh in behind. The only thing I can think of is the keeper called and told him to leave it, but he was freaking miles away from the ball.

Arshavin created the goal that turned the game around, Arshavin created most of the plays that resulted in out attack turning the game around, he created the pressure on their defence by creating so many chances, he created almost everything, while not shirking responsibility, and working hard getting back all game long. Walcott went missing for HUGE periods all game long, that isn't the sign of a great player, or performance.

Arshavin, even at Arsenal's worst, asked for the ball, tried to create, never hid, never went out of the game and was the fundamental reason behind the turn around. It wasn't his best performance, but he was by far our best player, at the heart of everything good offensively.
 
Lets be fair, the ref did give Reading an extra 2 mins in ET to equalise, not his fault if they couldnt lol. So Reading fans can hardly complain.

Saying that, i was beginning to think the ref just wanted to play some more lol as it was quite a match to watch.

Guess Wenger isnt as nuts as people make him out to be, definitely had some faith in our squad tonight to pull off a result.

Mental game absolutely mental.
 
Intratech said:
Actually he didn't leave. He tweeted a picture of himself during extra time at the stadium. Top fan.
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Yeah you get it every game where one team goes 3+ goals up in the first half, camera cuts to fans "leaving before halftime lolz", when many of them are probably just beating the queue for the loo/food/drink/whatever. I've literally never been to a football match where people aren't heading for the tunnels during the match.

Thought Coquelin was very good tonight, good distribution, some strong tackles and quite disciplined.

As for Arshavin it was a mixed bag, he did a couple of very good passes (especially one over the top early on), but he also did some horrendously misplaced ones. At least he was trying to be progressive and make things happen, just the execution was off at times.

Thought Wenger was going to throttle the keeper after he went for a quick Hollywood pass at the death rather than wasting time and keeping possession, lol :)
 
His second one you mean? I didn't think the Ref blew his whistle till Jenkinson put it in so i don't even think the dubious goals commitee (is that what they are called?) can change it.
 
Was it even over the line? I know Niall Quinn was super confident it was but whenever I saw it it was impossible to tell and the camera was bang on the line.

It's strange that it was awarded to Walcott seeing as how the linesman didn't appear to award the goal until Jenkinson had smashed it in.
 
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