Arsenal match thread 2/09

[Rafiagra]

Allen is superb but we need him higher up the pitch. It's time our team played through him and no longer Gerrard.

[Whelan]

 

We will need to stick by Rodgers - five managers in three years would be unthinkable.

 

It isn't just unthinkable Xerxes, I think it would be completely wrong. He will make mistakes, he will buy poor players and he will make stupid tactical decisions. But a young manager needs time, or you don't appoint a young manager.

 

He has, a bit like Rafa, been handed a few problems that need managing, because a solution is not available.

[therevivalist]

Allen is superb but we need him higher up the pitch. It's time our team played through him and no longer Gerrard.

 

Agreed. Gerrard reserved for England alone.

[corro]

Well that was fucking depressing!

 

After the positive response to last weeks performance, we manage to fuck up a mundane transfer of a fairly average, but increasing important player and then top it off with that abject performance today. If FSG (who I still don't blame), Ayre (who I do) and Rodgers have took most of the shit over the debacle on Friday, It was the players turn today.

 

The same players, have made the same mistakes since the start of this season, Suarez is careless and selfish, Skrtel looks anxious, Gerrard looks lost and Pepe looks like a busted flush.

 

It seems to me that Rodgers has tinkered with 433 to provide Gerrard with a free role, which involves Borini doing a lot more work than Sterling, but Gerrard isn't (certainly not at the moment) offering anything, and has in my opinion been responsible for 3 goals so far. He annoyed me today, it always seems to be him trying to push it and losing possession and it always seems to be him failing to get back. I think something needs to be done about accomodating him, he for once, has to fit in with the team. He does it for England and is happy to do so, and he has to start doing it for us. This isn't criticising the decision to accomodate him, he was our best player and we did the right thing building the team around him. But I don't think we can afford to do this anymore.

 

Pepe needs to be told ship up or fuck off. I am getting fed up with shit from him, shit clearances, shit catching and now fucking shit goals conceded because he can't even manage the basics, we are not talking about positioning any more we are talking about basic fucking shot stopping and he is becomming a liability.

 

In a nutshell, that has been our problem for a few years now, always thinking a little change will help us. We are either relying upon an inury prone Gerrard and a moody Torress, or we are waiting for Caroll, Downing, Adam and Henderson to show us something and now experienced players are fucking up on a weekly basis. Gerrard, Reina, Skrtel and Suarez should be leading but they are not, and Allen and Sterling apart nobody stood up today.

 

I think it is now safe to add Enrique to the failures of 2011 summer transfers, meaning that Downing, Henderson, Adam and Enrique on top of Caroll have cost the club £80-90m and offered fuck all in return.

 

Say all you want about FSG, but a benefactor aside, no owners can subsidise that spending for so little return and be expected to not only sanction another spending spree but also absorb a loss of £30m within a year. Their mistake has been in hiring Commoli, and in hindsight allowing so much to be spent by a manager they never wanted.

 

It is going to take time, but if our main players don't step up and don't stop making basic errors we won't get better. I like Rodgers, I like the way we are trying to play and in Allen I see the type of player I want to watch, Sahin will get better, Sterling and Shelvey could become very good players this season and I hope Borini can improve. We are going to need something we have not had a lot of this past couple of years which is luck. But if we start with the basics I think we can do well.

 

They have to back Rodgers in January.

 

Spot on.

[ZonkoVille77]

Well that was fucking depressing!

 

After the positive response to last weeks performance, we manage to fuck up a mundane transfer of a fairly average, but increasing important player and then top it off with that abject performance today. If FSG (who I still don't blame), Ayre (who I do) and Rodgers have took most of the shit over the debacle on Friday, It was the players turn today.

 

The same players, have made the same mistakes since the start of this season, Suarez is careless and selfish, Skrtel looks anxious, Gerrard looks lost and Pepe looks like a busted flush.

 

It seems to me that Rodgers has tinkered with 433 to provide Gerrard with a free role, which involves Borini doing a lot more work than Sterling, but Gerrard isn't (certainly not at the moment) offering anything, and has in my opinion been responsible for 3 goals so far. He annoyed me today, it always seems to be him trying to push it and losing possession and it always seems to be him failing to get back. I think something needs to be done about accomodating him, he for once, has to fit in with the team. He does it for England and is happy to do so, and he has to start doing it for us. This isn't criticising the decision to accomodate him, he was our best player and we did the right thing building the team around him. But I don't think we can afford to do this anymore.

 

Pepe needs to be told ship up or fuck off. I am getting fed up with shit from him, shit clearances, shit catching and now fucking shit goals conceded because he can't even manage the basics, we are not talking about positioning any more we are talking about basic fucking shot stopping and he is becomming a liability.

 

In a nutshell, that has been our problem for a few years now, always thinking a little change will help us. We are either relying upon an inury prone Gerrard and a moody Torress, or we are waiting for Caroll, Downing, Adam and Henderson to show us something and now experienced players are fucking up on a weekly basis. Gerrard, Reina, Skrtel and Suarez should be leading but they are not, and Allen and Sterling apart nobody stood up today.

 

I think it is now safe to add Enrique to the failures of 2011 summer transfers, meaning that Downing, Henderson, Adam and Enrique on top of Caroll have cost the club £80-90m and offered fuck all in return.

 

Say all you want about FSG, but a benefactor aside, no owners can subsidise that spending for so little return and be expected to not only sanction another spending spree but also absorb a loss of £30m within a year. Their mistake has been in hiring Commoli, and in hindsight allowing so much to be spent by a manager they never wanted.

 

It is going to take time, but if our main players don't step up and don't stop making basic errors we won't get better. I like Rodgers, I like the way we are trying to play and in Allen I see the type of player I want to watch, Sahin will get better, Sterling and Shelvey could become very good players this season and I hope Borini can improve. We are going to need something we have not had a lot of this past couple of years which is luck. But if we start with the basics I think we can do well.

 

They have to back Rodgers in January.

 

On the money

[Saintslfc13]

I thought Borini was a passenger for most of the match. Didn't track back, but I guess that's not part of his role. Diaby pretty much ran the midfield, collecting all of Gerrard's mistimed or miscontrolled ball. When is Lucas back? Is it two or three months?

 

Agree, I thought Borini was outshone by Downing today, that's not an easy feat.

 

It's a shame Lucas is out because it looks like our best chance at regularly scoring goals right now is for Gerrard to play as one of the front three. Maybe try Borini through the middle up there and Suarez out wide instead but what we're doing isn't working at the moment. Sure overall we outplayed them for large portions of the game but if you can't score and are prone to getting caught out then we'll lose more than we'll win anyway.

 

Can't even blame Rodgers though, the fact that we've got no other options isn't completely his fault.

 

If you guys think the reaction towards FSG is bad now then you better up we get a few good results in a row because if this keeps up the number of our supporters carrying pitchforks and torches is only going to get larger.

[dickie mint]

Well that was fucking depressing!

 

After the positive response to last weeks performance, we manage to fuck up a mundane transfer of a fairly average, but increasing important player and then top it off with that abject performance today. If FSG (who I still don't blame), Ayre (who I do) and Rodgers have took most of the shit over the debacle on Friday, It was the players turn today.

 

The same players, have made the same mistakes since the start of this season, Suarez is careless and selfish, Skrtel looks anxious, Gerrard looks lost and Pepe looks like a busted flush.

 

It seems to me that Rodgers has tinkered with 433 to provide Gerrard with a free role, which involves Borini doing a lot more work than Sterling, but Gerrard isn't (certainly not at the moment) offering anything, and has in my opinion been responsible for 3 goals so far. He annoyed me today, it always seems to be him trying to push it and losing possession and it always seems to be him failing to get back. I think something needs to be done about accomodating him, he for once, has to fit in with the team. He does it for England and is happy to do so, and he has to start doing it for us. This isn't criticising the decision to accomodate him, he was our best player and we did the right thing building the team around him. But I don't think we can afford to do this anymore.

 

Pepe needs to be told ship up or fuck off. I am getting fed up with shit from him, shit clearances, shit catching and now fucking shit goals conceded because he can't even manage the basics, we are not talking about positioning any more we are talking about basic fucking shot stopping and he is becomming a liability.

 

In a nutshell, that has been our problem for a few years now, always thinking a little change will help us. We are either relying upon an inury prone Gerrard and a moody Torress, or we are waiting for Caroll, Downing, Adam and Henderson to show us something and now experienced players are fucking up on a weekly basis. Gerrard, Reina, Skrtel and Suarez should be leading but they are not, and Allen and Sterling apart nobody stood up today.

 

I think it is now safe to add Enrique to the failures of 2011 summer transfers, meaning that Downing, Henderson, Adam and Enrique on top of Caroll have cost the club £80-90m and offered fuck all in return.

 

Say all you want about FSG, but a benefactor aside, no owners can subsidise that spending for so little return and be expected to not only sanction another spending spree but also absorb a loss of £30m within a year. Their mistake has been in hiring Commoli, and in hindsight allowing so much to be spent by a manager they never wanted.

 

It is going to take time, but if our main players don't step up and don't stop making basic errors we won't get better. I like Rodgers, I like the way we are trying to play and in Allen I see the type of player I want to watch, Sahin will get better, Sterling and Shelvey could become very good players this season and I hope Borini can improve. We are going to need something we have not had a lot of this past couple of years which is luck. But if we start with the basics I think we can do well.

 

They have to back Rodgers in January.

 

 

 

Why should they back Rodgers in January when he will be at Wolves back in the Championship where he belongs.

He looks more like the Championship manger he is as he fucks one thing up after another and he isn't good enough for this club and he never will be as long as he's got an hole in his Arse.

[Saintslfc13]

Why should they back Rodgers in January when he will be at Wolves back in the Championship where he belongs.

He looks more like the Championship manger he is as he fucks one thing up after another and he isn't good enough for this club and he never will be as long as he's got an hole in his Arse.

 

I don't think he's done that bad. We've been let down by our lack of scoring and defensive mistakes. The mistakes can be fixed, the scoring though may be another issue, although you would expect Suarez to pick up his finishing sooner or later. The other two are relative unknowns, Sterling has the talent, but he's young and putting too much pressure on him could be a bad thing (on the other hand it could be exactly what he needs, some people thrive off of that). Borini is starting to look like the Italian Kuyt with a bit more pace, Dirk would often come up with critical goals though and we haven't seen that from him yet.

 

Really it's just about the same as last season, except there is nothing even resembling a plan B on the bench. I'm not just talking about Carroll either, even fucking Maxi could come on and score, not to mention Bellamy.

[xerxes]

Why should they back Rodgers in January when he will be at Wolves back in the Championship where he belongs.

He looks more like the Championship manger he is as he fucks one thing up after another and he isn't good enough for this club and he never will be as long as he's got an hole in his Arse.

 

Harsh.

 

Rodgers is a gamble, but all appointments are. The alternatives, for what we were prepared to make available in the transfer market, offered no obvious better prospects. The hand he has picked up is a tricky one.

[Red Phoenix]

Still can't get my head around Suso not being given a chance? If Rodgers likes his style of football so much, isn't Suso the perfect type of player to be bringing through around now along with Sterling?

 

I want Rodgers to stay and hope he does well because I also think he has the right ideas and needs some time, (why FSG fucked him with getting another striker in I can't believe either.) but if he can't clearly see how good Suso is for the type of philosophy he's trying to put across then all it does is confuses me really. With some luck he'll be included in some cups matches this year and start getting some PL games later on too.

[sir roger]

Still can't get my head around Suso not being given a chance? If Rodgers likes his style of football so much, isn't Suso the perfect type of player to be bringing through around now along with Sterling?

 

I want Rodgers to stay and hope he does well because I also think he has the right ideas and needs some time, (why FSG fucked him with getting another striker in I can't believe either.) but if he can't clearly see how good Suso is for the type of philosophy he's trying to put across then all it does is confuses me really. With some luck he'll be included in some cups matches this year and start getting some PL games later on too.

 

Didn't he get a 4 match ban - Is he still unavailable ?

[xerxes]

Johnson caught out of position again for Arsenal's first goal- didn't notice that at the game.

[sir roger]

Johnson caught out of position again for Arsenal's first goal- didn't notice that at the game.

 

True to an extent, and Enrique should have taken a yellow card for the team & chopped the runner like Arteta did with Sterling, but when all is said & done Stevie must take the majority of blame for stranding most of the team by giving the ball away with carelessness.

[thompsonsnose]

Been out crickting.

Watching game now.

Joe Allen and Sterling are ace and are the future of this club.

I was 100% wrong about Allen.

42 minutes gone and Luis and Gerrard have been dog shit, and theyre bickering like 2 old women to boot.

Borini, so far, is a passenger to my eyes.

 

When you see the impact Sterling is having on big games, it really highlights just how badly we have been doing things for so long. He was sat there last season, seriously considering fucking off back to London, being kept out of the side by Stewart Fucking Downing.

Utterly inept.

[Dundalis]

Why should they back Rodgers in January when he will be at Wolves back in the Championship where he belongs.

He looks more like the Championship manger he is as he fucks one thing up after another and he isn't good enough for this club and he never will be as long as he's got an hole in his Arse.

What exactly has he fucked up? Joe Allen is a better buy than anyone Dalglish bought. He gets a shoestring budget, unlike Dalglish and actually manages to get a really good young player in, as opposed to a whole stinking pile of crap, and he's at fault? Did you call Dalglish a Championship quality manager? This is still mostly a team that was just as shit last season as we've seen so far. Dumb cunt.

[Bobby Hundreds]

Play borini central his movement is his biggest strength outwide he's a poor dirk kuyt. Suarez shouldn't be central infront of goal he's like a teenage boy touching his first tit. In one window we seem to have shrunk our squad to tiny proportions. Next few transfer windows well have no one to sell on no where else to cut wages what then are fsg going to dip into their own funds, I doubt it. I think we are probably fucked in terms of being a competitive side under these owners.

[Nightcat]

Well that was fucking depressing!

 

After the positive response to last weeks performance, we manage to fuck up a mundane transfer of a fairly average, but increasing important player and then top it off with that abject performance today. If FSG (who I still don't blame), Ayre (who I do) and Rodgers have took most of the shit over the debacle on Friday, It was the players turn today.

 

The same players, have made the same mistakes since the start of this season, Suarez is careless and selfish, Skrtel looks anxious, Gerrard looks lost and Pepe looks like a busted flush.

 

It seems to me that Rodgers has tinkered with 433 to provide Gerrard with a free role, which involves Borini doing a lot more work than Sterling, but Gerrard isn't (certainly not at the moment) offering anything, and has in my opinion been responsible for 3 goals so far. He annoyed me today, it always seems to be him trying to push it and losing possession and it always seems to be him failing to get back. I think something needs to be done about accomodating him, he for once, has to fit in with the team. He does it for England and is happy to do so, and he has to start doing it for us. This isn't criticising the decision to accomodate him, he was our best player and we did the right thing building the team around him. But I don't think we can afford to do this anymore.

 

Pepe needs to be told ship up or fuck off. I am getting fed up with shit from him, shit clearances, shit catching and now fucking shit goals conceded because he can't even manage the basics, we are not talking about positioning any more we are talking about basic fucking shot stopping and he is becomming a liability.

 

In a nutshell, that has been our problem for a few years now, always thinking a little change will help us. We are either relying upon an inury prone Gerrard and a moody Torress, or we are waiting for Caroll, Downing, Adam and Henderson to show us something and now experienced players are fucking up on a weekly basis. Gerrard, Reina, Skrtel and Suarez should be leading but they are not, and Allen and Sterling apart nobody stood up today.

 

I think it is now safe to add Enrique to the failures of 2011 summer transfers, meaning that Downing, Henderson, Adam and Enrique on top of Caroll have cost the club £80-90m and offered fuck all in return.

 

Say all you want about FSG, but a benefactor aside, no owners can subsidise that spending for so little return and be expected to not only sanction another spending spree but also absorb a loss of £30m within a year. Their mistake has been in hiring Commoli, and in hindsight allowing so much to be spent by a manager they never wanted.

 

It is going to take time, but if our main players don't step up and don't stop making basic errors we won't get better. I like Rodgers, I like the way we are trying to play and in Allen I see the type of player I want to watch, Sahin will get better, Sterling and Shelvey could become very good players this season and I hope Borini can improve. We are going to need something we have not had a lot of this past couple of years which is luck. But if we start with the basics I think we can do well.

 

They have to back Rodgers in January.

 

They have to back Rodgers in January? No they don't. They should have done it in the summer. January is four months too late.

 

You said on the last day of the transfer window that our team is stronger than last year. You are wrong.

[Tony Moanero]

FSG will probably bin him in January.

[Dundalis]

They have to back Rodgers in January? No they don't. They should have done it in the summer. January is four months too late.

 

You said on the last day of the transfer window that our team is stronger than last year. You are wrong.

We'll see. I still think we have a better team than last year. Three games at the start of the season is never enough to properly judge. We aren't going to be losing every game.

[Guest ShoePiss]

FSG will probably bin him in January.

 

I doubt they could afford to.

[therevivalist]

Been out crickting.

Watching game now.

Joe Allen and Sterling are ace and are the future of this club.

I was 100% wrong about Allen.

42 minutes gone and Luis and Gerrard have been dog shit, and theyre bickering like 2 old women to boot.

Borini, so far, is a passenger to my eyes.

 

When you see the impact Sterling is having on big games, it really highlights just how badly we have been doing things for so long. He was sat there last season, seriously considering fucking off back to London, being kept out of the side by Stewart Fucking Downing.

Utterly inept.

 

A wonderful performance from the kid and in my opinion the league's revelation this season so far bar none. I'm wondering here why Suso hasn't been given the same chance. These are the future of this club and we should start phasing out players like Gerrard in favor these talented...and I might add... passionate young men.

[Saintslfc13]

We'll see. I still think we have a better team than last year. Three games at the start of the season is never enough to properly judge. We aren't going to be losing every game.

 

Better first 11 perhaps, better team as a whole I'm not so sure.

 

I agree three games isn't enough to judge the team or the manager (who I don't think has got much wrong to be honest), but we've had more time than that to judge FSG and they've looked downright diabolical at times. With some maybe it's the American thing, it's not with me as I'm American, it's more that I think they're in over there head and either need to start cramming or sell us to someone willing to do the job.

 

The FFP thing also annoys me, I can't believe they're naive enough to think that the clubs who would really be constricted by that aren't going to find the loopholes around it. At least Kraft admitted that without a salary cap he wouldn't be able to compete with the other teams, FSG seemed to have take a gamble on the back of a sports bureaucracy's ability to enforce something and for me it's not going to pay off.

[BringbackBiscan]

Glen Johnson - lazy fat over paid and. Over rated. £18m to downgrade at right still stings.

 

Pepe- just retire, you've been completely wank since telling us how grateful we should be for you staying. ££££££

 

Midfield loooked shit today and whenever the squads been weakened in every area for those players thats a very bad sign. Allen's reverted back to his Swansea form the last two games. A good player, not a great one, certainly not someone you spunk the majority of your transfer budget on when you can't score for shit.

 

It's sad watching Gerrard now. Diaby a better footballer than Steven Gerrard. :(

 

Suarez has been shit this year. Looks knackeered already. We should give him a rest, play ....oh that's right there's no one else

 

Borini as a winger. Fucking wank

[Dundalis]

Rodgers needs to use his other signings. I understand they weren't really bought for the first team, but he's in a position where it won't hurt to try them because being better than who they are replacing won't exactly be a difficult feat.

[Saintslfc13]

Rodgers needs to use his other signings. I understand they weren't really bought for the first team, but he's in a position where it won't hurt to try them because being better than who they are replacing won't exactly be a difficult feat.

 

Yea but should we really be in that position? That's the problem really...