mike23

It did look offside but you just know there wouldn't have been a check of that length had it happened at the other end. It was a lot closer to being onside than the second goal United got against us earlier this season.

Really good first half. Second half wasn't great but fortunately Alisson was in top form once more. It should have been 4-1 anyway. Complete joke that the ref didn't initially give the penalty. Even bigger joke that VAR didn't intervene and tell him to look at it again. They almost scored moments later and the incompetence of the officials almost turned a comfortable win into a nervy final 20 minutes. A few minutes before that the ref had pulled Salah up for an absolutely nothing foul on the halfway line. You seriously have to question how exactly these officials come to some of these decisions. So at least we go into the international break on the back of a couple of wins and with some positivity. Hopefully we have some of the injured players back after the world cup and bring in some much needed reinforcements in January.

After we've twice missed out with points totals that would have seen us walk the league in any other era, I'd be seriously pissed off if Arsenal won the league with a points total in the mid 80s or even low 90s. I hope Arsenal have an exceptional season and still finish short. It needs other fans to wake up to the fact that competing with City is in no way equivalent to trying to compete with the dominant clubs from other periods. It also might put to bed some of the ridiculous claims you hear from Arsenal fans that their Invincibles team would have finished ahead of City.

Fuck this season. Absolutely fucking pathetic performance and result yet again. Never seen such a dramatic regression like this from any team in any sport. This was a team we beat 6-0 about 5 months ago without breaking a sweat.

I'm still not convinced from the replays that all of the ball was over the line for the equalizer. A draw was probably the best result for our top 4 prospects though. I'm struggling to really care again after our game today. I really hate it when we play early and lose as it means either not bothering watching any other games all weekend or just watching them with complete disinterest.

Completely undone all the good work of last week against City. No point playing like that against the best team in the league if you're going to play like that against the worst. Even with all the players missing there was no excuse for an absolute shit show like that. This was a team who conceded 4 against Leicester and 3 against Bournemouth and Fulham, and we couldn't score 1 against them - even with them seemingly begging us to every single time we got a set piece. Van Dijk should have scored at the end, and that first half chance where he chose to head it across goal with a completely free header in the box has got to be one of the biggest wtf moments I've ever seen in football. Mo just a complete nonentity again. Gomez having his usual dozy moment that gave them the freekick that led to the goal. Fabinho utter garbage again. Alisson and Milner were fine. The rest of the senior players out there today need to take a long hard look at themselves after the way they played today. Silly me for thinking we were turning this season around. A nice run of fixtures before the world cup to put a run of wins together and then the world cup gave us an opportunity to regroup for the rest of the season. And then they go and give a performance that was as bad as anything we've seen in the past 30 years.

A lot nervier than it should have been because we couldn't get the second goal to finish it off. Great block from Milner at the end to deny what looked a certain equalizer. Another game where our players only seemed to have breathe on the opposition for them to get a free kick whilst in contrast nothing seemed to be getting given the other way. There was a clear foul on Elliot at the start of one of their attacks towards the end and the same happened at the start of several of their other attacks. A good win to keep us moving in the right direction.

Great save from Ali to keep us in front. A reminder that we need to get a second goal and finish them off. Would have been really deflating to go in all square after being so much on top.

I think we ended up having 3 players booked whilst they didn't have any. He was booking our players for challenges he wasn't even giving as fouls the other way. He wasn't letting the game flow, he was showing a clear bias to 1 team throughout the game. The pundits were talking so much nonsense about the disallowed goal afterwards that I just had to turn over. Trying to make out that it only looked a foul because it was slowed down. It looked absolutely blatant even in real time, and it was 1 of at least 3 clear fouls that weren't given during the game. The 2 that weren't given on Mo have got to be 2 of the worst decisions I've ever seen. The first one again could easily have led to a goal (or as others have said, a corner that may have then led to a goal with no recourse for then going back to disallow it). It's staggering that some people in the media have actually praised Taylor for his performance yesterday. No wonder the standards are so low if refs are being praised rather than being called out for displays like that. There was a moment near the end as well that also really did my head in. He waved play on after a City foul near the touchline because we still had the ball. However, as the foul had completely taken out one of our players it left our player on the ball with absolutely no support up against a crowd of City players, and it ended up going out for a City throw in. It showed an absolutely staggering lack of common sense to wave play on in that situation and we ended up losing the ball so quickly afterwards that he even could have gone back and given the freekick.

Much better second half and now doing to them what we should have done last week. Mo looking like the Mo of old. Please can we have him back for the rest of the season?

Maybe I'm just getting paranoid but it always seems like if it's a tight call or a decision in our favour that they spend about 5 minutes reviewing it and if it's one against us then it takes about 10 seconds. There was a ridiculously lengthy wait for our first goal to be confirmed at home against Brighton last week. The stream I was watching showed the lines to confirm it was onside at least a good 30 seconds before they finally confirmed it was a goal. It's like they're looking for any possible reason not to give it. Yet they spent about 10 seconds looking at the handball in the first half and for the penalty that was awarded in the second. Maybe you make your own luck, but it does feel like the covid season where we just keep getting really shitty officiating going against us game after game to make things even harder. Fulham and Arsenal both had very soft penalties against us, and they made up some story about VAR decisions giving extra leeway to attackers this year to justify awarding United's second goal against us at Old Trafford (yet don't seem to have given this same extra leeway in a single game since). Not that there weren't enough self-inflicted wounds yesterday. For a team that has won everything the complete ineptitude of our game management was absolutely staggering. Keep it tight and quieten the crowd has been the mantra of pretty much any away team in a big game since football began, yet we just go charging forward and get caught out straight away. Pushing everyone forward for a hopeful punt into the box and getting caught like that for the second goal right on half time has got to be the stupidest goal we've conceded since we threw the game away at Palace chasing goal difference in that 3-3 draw under Rodgers. And whilst the penalty was soft, the Keystones Cops defending that led to it was perhaps even more infuriating. It was generally bordering on farcical how many chances we had to clear it away and just kept screwing it up.

Our players do seem to constantly miss making challenges that look pretty straightforward. They can't even foul effectively most of the time. A cynical foul at the start of the move could easily have prevented their second goal and seen us get to half time level. Our pressing seems to be very easy to play through at the moment as the timing always seems to be off. There were moments yesterday where we resembled a primary school team where all the kids just go charging blindly after the ball.

Not sure what happened there. Was trying to edit a previous post and ended up quoting the post instead. Never mind - it really wasn't very interesting anyway.

It does seem like everything that can go wrong will go wrong this season. We were producing our best football of the season with Diaz a big part of that and then he ends up going off injured. I felt there were 3 penalty incidents in the game that all could have gone one way or another. None of them were nailed on ones you'd definitely get but sometimes they get given and the ref ended up giving them 1 and turning down 2 for us. Maybe we'd have got at least a point otherwise. Having said that, we were clearly second best throughout the second half. It looked like a young, vibrant team on the rise up against an aging team in decline. I had the same impression watching Brighton slicing through us at will last week. So many of our players just looked slow and tired. We look as bad defensively as we did under Rodgers and at the start of Klopp's time here. It was farcical how many chances we had to clear the ball in the build up to the penalty, and even though it might have been soft van Dijk yet again gave the ref a decision to make with the sort of rash challenge he never seemed to need to resort to in the past. It felt like the big moment of the game was their goal just before half time as we really should have gone in level at worst, but we did get it back to 2-2 (completely against the run of play), but it was just all Arsenal after that. I'm not sure how we fix things. I have no idea how they've become so broken to begin with. The obvious answer is to strengthen the squad in January. The world cup halting the season for a month provides some hope at least that there would be enough games left in the new year to at least salvage a top 4 place. But we've all seen how unwilling the owners are when it comes to spending any money despite constantly raving about record sponsorship deals etc. They wouldn't even sanction any proper signings when we literally had none of our central defenders left a couple of seasons back. No doubt we can look forward to more stories of how January is always a difficult time to buy and how there's not a single player available who would improve us. It's hard to think of another example of a team having such a dramatic drop off from 1 season to the next. Everything fell apart in the covid season but there were so many extenuating factors that year. We arguably had our strongest 11 starting that game today. Maybe Chelsea when they went from winning the league to finishing about 10th one season? But there seemed to be all sorts going on behind the scenes that year with them. It's hard to know why so many players who have been top class in the last few seasons have all been so below par at the same time. Trent, van Dijk and Salah all look like they've been replaced with their far less talented twin brothers. It feels like things might get worse before they get better. It feels like the City game could get really ugly next week if they're really at it.

Awful start and then a really good first half, only for them to completely ruin it by giving away yet another ridiculously soft goal. Maybe we'll play well and boss the second half again but it's almost starting to seem irrelevant. Arsenal will at least do the basics and even if we get back into it again we'll probably just get caught out again as soon as they decide to attack. Genuinely cannot believe any more how easy we keep being to score against this season.

At least he was getting into the positions to miss chances. A bit concerning that he seemed on the verge of losing his head again in an early incident. I think Klopp might murder him if he ever gets sent off for something like that again.

Yeah, hopefully that will be the case. Trent certainly looked happier tonight and Mo and Diaz at least seemed to be getting into more dangerous areas. I'm glad that there seems to have been a recognition that things needed to change in terms of the system rather than doggedly persisting with something that wasn't working.

Hard to know what to make of it as Rangers just looked like a really poor team. Our finishing was really starting to do my head in and it felt like we'd have won by 6 or 7 had we really been at it. I was thinking we at least looked nice and solid defensively but then Rangers created several chances near the end. That clearance from Tsimikas was really impressive. I've no idea how he avoided scoring an own goal. But it would have been ridiculous had we managed to concede in a game where the opposition seemed to have very little interest in attacking for most of the night. Ajax getting absolutely stuffed by Napoli certainly helps us. I'm not sure if anything is really fixed after that but any sort of win can only help to improve confidence.

Let's be honest, they went for the cheapest option they could find. A player who hadn't played in months and we were supposed to believe he'd be ready to come straight in.

The game seemed to just completely pass Carvalho today. Surely even with all the travelling we could have started one of Diaz, Nunez or Jota and replaced them later on.

I'd have probably settled for 2-2 at half time, but to turn it around and then just throw it away again leaves it just feeling like yet another miserable result. The equalizer always looked like it was coming too. Season just seems to be a write off to me now. There's just so much wrong that I don't know how it all gets fixed. We look like a team that has come to the end of a cycle and needs a complete rebuild. I can see us missing out on top 4. We've picked a really shit year to do this. Last year Spurs, Arsenal, and United were all so flawed that the race for top 4 was like a bunch of bald men arguing over a comb. We could have dropped off massively and still probably made top 4 easily. This year Arsenal and Spurs look much better, and even United are starting to resemble a functioning football team. It's too large a sample size not to be worried now and none of the problems seem to be getting fixed. Time after time we just seem to get easily sliced open defensively, and the worrying thing is we've still not played anyone especially good in the league. I can see a few games against top 4 rivals ending up like the Napoli game if we don't sort things out quickly. We've been spoilt in the last few years so I'm going to try and keep some sort of perspective and tell myself it's just football and that there will always be ups and downs.

Just had a look at my goals accumulator and discovered it missed out by 1 game as well. Nil bloody nil between Sunderland and Preston. Football can be really shit at times.

I doubt we're even getting top 4. Turned it around but never looked even remotely secure defensively and the equalizer was no surprise at all. Trent was an absolute embarrassment defensively. Everything they created came from him failing to track runs or just getting skinned time after time. Utter crap from van Dijk yet again on the equalizer as well. A win would have just papered over the massive cracks.

Good to see the break really helped us to sort out all our problems. What an absolute shambles. Could have been an even worse scoreline after 20 minutes but for Alisson. Every single outfield player has varied between mediocre and utter shite. Trent wins the award for being the worst of the lot.

It is a bit of both in that the others are also looking a lot better than usual. Brentford and Palace away are the sort of fixtures that Arsenal seemed to regularly slip up in and yet it's looking like 6 points out of 6 for them from these fixtures this year. I agree that Jesus looks a good signing for them. Saliba looks like a decent signing too. If we sort ourselves out and find anything even close to the form of recent seasons then we still finish above them, but it no longer looks the formality it once did.