Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [15 - 17th December 2012]

We did our best to let them back into the game during those moments of madness but still, lolReading. They tried to out-Arsenal us and ended up out-Arsenaling us... :p
 
Overall it was a hilarious game, Quinn was rubbish as usual, Cazorla was good, but not great, his second goal was very well hit the other two it was nice for a change to see him actually make runs into the box rather than stay outside and shoot poorly, and he was rewarded instantly with two goals doing the thing he's all but refused to do since we signed him. But a lot of his general play wasn't particularly good, giving it away needlessly breaking up good attacks, his passing hasn't been up to scratch for the last couple months but at least he was very dangerous in the box.

Arsenal have lacked that extra attacker in the box making up the numbers. You have a couple guys make their runs, defenders go with them, and your "lampard-style" late runner into the box goes un noticed and runs into the space. Podolski was excellent in the first, dissappeared for most of the second. AOC once again flattered to deceive, made some powerful runs, particularly early in the game, but couldn't get the final ball and got less and less involved.

Gibbs, shocking defending, and Sagna heavily responsible for the second, if you watch Mert's position and lack of awareness is poor... but he didn't mark the player or get close to someone he couldn't see. Sagna was behind them, he could clearly see the Reading player and did absolutely nothing to close the gap, mark the obvious run/pass to him, or do anything... default Sagna and was MIA for several other key attacks they had.

Walcott, fluffed his easy chance, fluffed another, did very little, didn't fight very hard and got a simple goal when it came, not badly taken but also taken when the pressure was mostly off. He misses those chances where he gets played in behind and has time and space and has to take several touches, yet that is the position/role he thinks he'll be best in.


Reading, lol, much like Newcastle against City, and Athletico against Barca, panic football. Get the ball, lump it down the field.... this worked absolutely not at all at any stage for them. The few short spells they actually decided to stop, think and pass... they created chances, goals and looked an absolutely different team.

Newcastle in that first half did much the same, panic lumping of the ball forward like it will help somehow, when they started passing and playing actual football in the second they also were like a completely different team. This game felt the same, like City it was like we had no opposition in the first half but actually finished our chances, the second how dodgy we and City look lately was clear to see when Newcastle and Reading were more than a match for City and us respectively in the second halfs.

I really don't know what to make of the game, a "thrashing", much like against Spurs, but the few spells Reading actually played real football..... they looked the more dangerous team and made our defence look completely retarded. Their defence, well Neville highlighted it and it was ruddy obvious during the game, they always had men back, but they kind of got to a certain point and all stopped. particularly the central midfielders on the edge of the box, you can see in replays they get just inside the box, watch the ball and pay zero attention to those making runs around them. its rare you see a defence so static and so unaware in any league let alone the prem league. Its like they all have a designated point to go to then make no attempt to see where the danger is or close gaps, just sit there and hope thats where the ball goes, most passive/useless defending I've seen in ages.

So should I be happy we thrashed a team that didn't try to play any football for 45mins, or worried as hell that they "won" the second half with more Arsenal defensive mistakes and that the bottom of the league team, when they actually passed, put us under so much pressure?

Ultimately, a win, 3 points but the press "out of their slump/crisis" type stuff is already grating, I see no change, no improvements, no fixes, just a vastly easier game, when a tougher game comes around like maybe playing Grimsby, I can't see where a top performance will come from.


Please, for the love of god Wenger/Arsenal, buy some ******** fullbacks.... please. If some idiot wants to buy Sagna, or Gibbs, drive them to the airport and shove them on the plane.
 
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Only DM will slate arsenal's result and performance yesterday.

For me we played decently. not amazing but good. Carzola was great and i cant believe you are critising him from his shots ouside the box when the majority of them are always on target.

he is great outside the box and his long range shots are pretty accurate and works the goalie every time.

Walcott did ok. nothing special but its too early to make a judgement. let him play in that position for 4-5 games in a row to make a fair judgement on whether he is ready for that position..

Gibbs and Sagna was awful defensively.But i have seen worse from man united yet everytime arsenal let a goal in, we get labeled as the most awful defensive team in the world.

Diddnt ManU let in 3 against Reading not too long ago?

Point is DM, every club makes poor defensive errors. everyone does and the way to judge how bad a defense is is to look at how many they have conceded.

the more u conceded the weaker your defence is at "defending" a goal.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
Le Fondre looked okay when he had his chance, not sure about the Russian dude though.
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Le Fondre is still useless, just a poacher who relies on defenders mistakes to get goals, the distinct lack in quality from anyone in the team pretty much means he isn't going to be effective in this league at all (then again most teams can't really set up to have a striker than only scores when the keeper just drops it onto his feet).

Reading have a squad of champ players, on the way back from when we played them we couldn't think of a single player in their squad that could have even challenged for a place in (what was till last night I think) the leakiest defence in the prem. Not a single Reading player would have gotten a chance at Southampton....

Pretty much summed up whats gone wrong there over the summer (£2m for Marriappa I think).
 
Isn't Southamptons team full of Championship players? Norwich too for that matter, some make the step up, Reading are great attacking but their defence is just setup wrong.
 
Some of them are still L1, (just left them to do well in the u21's league instead of get rid of them...) though most of team seems to be able to cope with things now, something fixed the back line and we no longer look like headless chickens. I speculate either a nerve tonic that will eventually cause giganticism or sacking off Hooiveld and Fox in favour of a Japanese fellow from a good Dutch side and sticking in a 17 year old at LB fixed it.

Norwich have bought in some decent prem players this season, and drilled them into the Stoke of East Anglia.

Reading have a dreadful problem attacking, they only have Kebe on the wing, Roberts in the middle and Le Fondre hanging about the goal line who can do anything. Generally attacks either go watch Kebe run and hope or lump it at Roberts and see what happens, maybe with Le Fondre to tap it in. There's no build up or movement, just an extension of the counter attack they played all of last season which doesn't work any more.
 
jonneymendoza said:
Only DM will slate arsenal's result and performance yesterday.

For me we played decently. not amazing but good. Carzola was great and i cant believe you are critising him from his shots ouside the box when the majority of them are always on target.

he is great outside the box and his long range shots are pretty accurate and works the goalie every time.

Walcott did ok. nothing special but its too early to make a judgement. let him play in that position for 4-5 games in a row to make a fair judgement on whether he is ready for that position..

Gibbs and Sagna was awful defensively.But i have seen worse from man united yet everytime arsenal let a goal in, we get labeled as the most awful defensive team in the world.

Diddnt ManU let in 3 against Reading not too long ago?

Point is DM, every club makes poor defensive errors. everyone does and the way to judge how bad a defense is is to look at how many they have conceded.

the more u conceded the weaker your defence is at "defending" a goal.
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Firstly the more goals you concede the weaker your defence is, in the last 3 season alone, 2 of them we conceded within a goal 50% more than Utd.... we have a worse defence. This season we haven't played a whole season, if Utd concede more than us and we concede the same as we have in previous seasons... it will because they got worse, not we got better.

As for Santi, over the season the MASSIVE majority of his long range shots have NOT been on target, I have no idea what player you're watching. He's taken 59 shots and had 22 on target, before last night that was 54 shots and 18 on target with 4 goals, or a pretty awful return.

He "always" works the keeper is, ridiculous to say the least. I can only off the top of my head remember one goal from a long range shot. Last night was about the only time he scored a high percentage of his shots, all deep inside the box, two in the 6 yard box.

AS for Walcott, it doesn't actually matter where he is supposed to be playing, 90% of any of the real work he does in most games is in the same position as he played last night. He frequently messes up those one on ones when through on goal. 90% of the time he has to do more than one touch then shoot he screws it up.

I also didn't slate them many players were vastly improved, I simply said I don't know if its only down to how awful Reading were, because its very hard to tell. We won the first half 3-0, reading didn't show up, Reading played SOME football in the second half and we drew the second 2-2.... even in their best spells Reading weren't very good at all.... you really don't find that worrying?

What has happened for YEARS, Arsenal suck for 5 games, Arsenal fans start to question Wenger, we thrash some POS team and everyone "believes" again. When you don't analyse your mistakes when you're winning, you'll continue to make mistakes, and those mistakes will cost you points. This is Arsenal, Wenger and Arsenal fans problem, when we win "nothing is wrong", then when we lose no one seems to understand why, least of all Wenger. Because people pretend the problems aren't there when we win. When you get a win, that is all that matters and you don't try to improve from there to win "better", well, that is why Arsenal have declined for 8 years.

Fergie repeatedly will win a game and say they played crap, say they made mistakes, say they need to work on problem X Y and Z, and their fans notice the mistakes and awful performances in wins, and that team wins title after title.

Arsenal fans/Wenger win a game and praise everyone, complain about nothing, ignore every mistake and don't try and improve, bad performances are ignored.... and we win nothing, after nothing, after nothing.

Fundamental difference, Utd as a club consistently tries to improve, Arsenal do not.
 
pingwing said:
Reading have a dreadful problem attacking, they only have Kebe on the wing, Roberts in the middle and Le Fondre hanging about the goal line who can do anything. Generally attacks either go watch Kebe run and hope or lump it at Roberts and see what happens, maybe with Le Fondre to tap it in. There's no build up or movement, just an extension of the counter attack they played all of last season which doesn't work any more.
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You do sometimes have some irrational opinions on teams pingwing :p

They've scored more than top half teams, I don't think there are issues with their attack but they were extremely naive thinking they could walk into the Premiership with players such as Ian Harte etc
 
Andybtsn said:
You do sometimes have some irrational opinions on teams pingwing :p

They've scored more than top half teams, I don't think there are issues with their attack but they were extremely naive thinking they could walk into the Premiership with players such as Ian Harte etc
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:D nothing wrong will a little ill thought out irrationalism :p (all based on seeing us play them then desperately watching them against sunderland instead of the comedy cup)

You're probably right but we had basically the same statistic earlier in the season, lots of goals but letting far too many in, I don't think they have the quality in their attack to make up for the horrific defence (6 draws and one win sort of speaks for that). They have been very naive with they players they have brought into the prem but they need improvement all over the park really to stay up at this rate.
 
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