More Answers Than Questions After Anfield Debacle

Well Liverpool were after some sort of revenge after 3 drubbings from Arsenal already this season with a 3-0 win at the Emirates, and the two cup wins in the FA and Carling Cups. Unfortunately we obliged and Liverpool beat us convincingly 4-1.

To be fair, Adebayor hit the post twice when it was 3-1 and on another day it could have been 3-3 at that stage. Totally undeserved of course but I wouldn’t have complained about it! But as the clock ticked down man of the moment Peter Crouch sealed the game and scored a hattrick.

How embarassing.

Arsenal were just not at the races and you can’t face a team like Liverpool and put in a performance like that. The only players who had a decent game were Gallas, Lehmann and Adebayor – the others were just not interested.

But without Henry, Van Persie, Gilberto (and Freddie & Rosicky starting on the bench) than your always looking at an uphill struggle.

During the game I questioned whether this Arsenal team has enough winners but I suppose it’s hard to motivate yourself when there’s nothing to play for. But then again there’s enough reasons to be motivated, including playing for the fans and the fat wage packet.

And after the match there were more answers than questions.

The fact is that Julio Baptista is not good enough. With Arsenal trailing 1-0 he had a fantastic chance to equalise but got his shot closer to the corner flag than the goal. When you see his form in the Carling Cup and in the Premiership it’s like seeing two completely different players – or maybe it’s because the Carling Cup is an easier competition.

We also know that Cesc is completely burnt out. He had the ball in good positions today but only succeeded in losing the ball and looking sloppy all afternoon. Give the boy a rest!

And with Arsene looking to start Diaby for the remaining fixtures this season it looks like he has a lack of faith in his low-scoring wide men. Arsenal have missed goalscoring midfielders such as Overmars, Pires and Freddie in his prime and playing Diaby there instead of Hleb, Rosicky and Freddie shows that Wenger’s not happy.

William Gallas is a warrior in defence and thank god we’ve got him next season. Toure can at times look lost and Gallas should hopefully help our inexperienced defence.

And finally, the drubbing at Anfield has shown us what we already knew – you can’t have injuries to several key men and still fight for honours.

Let’s hope we show more fight in our next match!

 

10 thoughts on “More Answers Than Questions After Anfield Debacle

  1. Will you”Arsene Knows” fans now admit that this squad of players that AW keeps saying are great prospects, just aren’t good enough….

    Before I continue I will say I am and will always be a gunners fan….I support the club….not Wenger…I have done this since I first stood on the terraces as a 5 year old 40+ years ago….so I speak with experience and true love for our club not just 5 mins of fame support!

    Yesterdays game against Liverpool wasn’t just an “odd’ bad game…. these matchs have been the norm all season apart from the rare good games…..and this has been going on now since November 2004….just think about it and look back and you’ll see what I mean. Sure we have loads of possession but what does that mean…well nothing actually all it means is that you have the ball a lot but it means nothing unless you create something i.e. a goal or 3 …..and you stop the other team from scoring when theyhave the ball as we see week in week out, all the possession in the world wins you nothing!

    Our problem is we have a squad full of AVERAGE players who are all similar tip tap passing players, none of whom are direct, quick, or physical enough to cope with the requirements to win the EPL and other competitions!

    And when I say AVERAGE I mean players who are not good enough to perform at top level consistantly as in :
    Almunia, Eboue, Hoyte, Hleb, Aliadiere, Baptista, Ljubgberg(who is now passed his best),Senderos,Walcott(I don’t believe he has shown he has anything special to offer!) and Song!

    Add to this Gilberto who can be good and bad, Gallas who has not shown his so called class, Clichy who is inconsistant, Lehmann who is a nightmare, plus for most of the time when he played this season Henry looked like he regretted not leaving last summer.

    Our only hopes revole around the nucleaus of Van Persie, Denilson, Adebeyor, Rosicky, Diaby, Toure & Fabregas (if his form returns and please look). On top of this we need to buy big and add quality experienced players i.e. Goalkeeper, Center back, wide natural midfielders/wingers and a top class striker who is strong and can battle for the ball as well as ball play.

    Cuerrently we have an inadequate squad for top level competition and I am sick and tired of hearing Wengers pathetic excuses about tiredness and bad decisions by officials etc etc……. I know from experience that from a purely physological point of view, the more you talk about tiredness to players the more that it enters their mind and it does effect their performance, I firmly believe that you should play your best 11 and rotate in another squad player only when you NEED to, and when you do he must be good enough QUALITY, something we do not have! AW has also shown poor tactical awareness when making substitutions and by the positioning of players – Senderos to right back against Blackburn in the FACup for instance which lost us the game! I also do not agree that playing your strongest team in cup finals/semis is wrong….these are trophies that can be won, I would rather win the Carling cup than go out of the Champ Lge another round later, We should have the attitude “IF it’s there to win, then we try our best to win it”. Thats how Man U and Liverpool teams have won trebles in the past, thats how we won trophies in the past, not by whining and saying “we will only field weaker sides in the Carling Cup and probably in the FA Cup as in the past 2 weeks Wenger has been saying he will do in future …what a sh*t attitude!!

    No for me I do not see this “Great Future” that Wenger keeps on about, all I see is next season will be another failure (sorry for all you wenger fans you call it “transition or development”) while others pick up the trophies!!

    If I am wrong and we take the world by storm next year then I will glady come on here and beg for forgiveness……but I think that I am more likely to be writing to say to you wenger fans – I told you so!
    I hope I am wrong…but I wasn’t last year and I haven’t been this time either!

     
  2. Well Arsenal fans… it was a thrashing well deserved. Dont get me wrong… if Liverpool had gotten that result I too would have said that possible things would have been better had Babtista taken his chance. Yes, the team had nothing to play for but pride… but that alone should be enough… something Liverpool should have done in the two cups, well atleast the FA cup. In my opinion for what its worth your team can play well.. when the opponents let them, but when a oposition team really wants to the win, this season Arsenal dont seem to have the stomach for the match. Hard to really pinpoint the problem, you guys have some promising players in the squad but I think it just to much passing and not enough going. Anyways, I just wanted to gloat just a tat. Im sure you´ll still have a champions league spot at the end of the season and hopefully next season you get the second spot.. after Liverpool ofcourse!!

     
  3. One more input… I totally agree with you Matt.. Your squad desperately needs experience and if this whole youth club thing continues Wengere should go. He has done great thing for Arsenal but even the best men fall into ruts and if it continues the management should look for other options. As for Henry.. Liverpool might be an exciting challenge 🙂

     
  4. Where do I start with this abysmal performance??

    I don’t think we should be calling for Wengers head just yet but he does seem to have lost the plot recently!!

    My points to note after this match are:

    1) I have always said don’t start Diaby but have been criticised. Why Rosicky on the bench and Diaby starting?? That is a complete joke to me – I’ve always thought that Diaby thinks he’s better than he actually is which is why he loves to try and take on players and lose the ball.

    2) Fabregas IS tired – give him a rest.

    3) Baptista?? He’s RUBBISH. Why why WHY give him more chances? He’s had enough chances – send him back and give some of the other youths like Jay Simpson a chance to see if they can do better. They probably can because Baptista couldn’t hit a barn door from inside the barn standing 1 feet away from it. I’ll give a tenner to anyone that sees him in public and stamps on his feet damaging his foot for a couple of weeks.

    4) So we lost Cole and then sold Lauren as soon as he recovered from injury? That was a bloody good move wasn’t it? Lauren was possibly one of the best right backs ever. Eboue is good going forward but he’s a liability and as for Gay Clitshyte – he was a chump today as well, I’ve always hated him and rate even Traore above him! You can’t blame the centre halves for not being as tall as Crouch – he was always gonna beat them to the ball. Blame the full backs for letting the crosses get in! Terrible performance.

    5) Lehmann has got to go – he’s become a liability. I don’t care if he makes 2/3 fantastic saves a season as they don’t make up for the 20/30 stupid mistakes he makes! We need Craig Gordon because Almunia is also a chump (especially after his CL final performance!).

    6) Hleb has to go and people need to forget about Freddie Ljunberg; his time is up too. Hleb seems to be getting worse with every match that he plays and Ljunberg seems to be our bad luck charm. How many games have we lost that he’s had a part in recently after coming back from injury? Sell the black magic infested chump.

    7) Tactics are: pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, get close to the goal and then pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, get further from goal, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, oppertunity gone. Build ups are TOO slow and the team have everyone back by the time the gunners get there and then they always manage to work their way back to the half way line. No one seems to want to go forward. This is pathetic.

    8) I can’t be bothered to rant anymore… this is depressing and will be even more depressing WHEN West Ham beat us next.

    Peace out.

     
  5. Reds4life, that wasn’t you calling for Benitez to go after Arsenal put twelve past your team in three games,was it? Now you have the gall to tell us what is wrong with our team. I guess your excuse was that your team didn’t really want to win those games, right. Now Benitez is a genius and Crouch is the next Pele? HEAVENS!

     
  6. fabregas is just as bad as the majority of them. Wonder how he can continuously evade criticism for not producing anything noteworthy aside from his brush in with other chracters in the game and his constant mouthing off to the press about the targets. This doesn’t amount to commitment or desire – dominating games and winning matches for your team does!

    Seriously guys, what has he done all season aside from the memorable assist at OT? No power, pace, directness, goals, defence-splitting passes(pls don’t use sideway passes as an excuse), set-piece ability(this one is just plain absurd how a fellow with such a weak delivery can continue to take our SPs), dribbling ability, defensive sense, tackling, heading, etc etc…

    And spare me the burnt out talk. PV4 at his age was playing with so much enthusiasm and energy in each match as well as contributing a lot throughout each of his earlier seasons. CF4 has not really set the world alight and after nearly 3 seasons at the club, where’s the major improvement in his game? Some wonderkids just don’t grow up to be world beaters in the game. Others may not have that talent at the age of 16 but they develop their game later on and surpass the previously mentioned players. Wenger has chose to build Arsenal’s game around a player who was the best player at the U-17 world cup. Let’s see if he’s realistic enough to realise that mr fabregas is just turning out to be an above average player and not a worldclass midfielder he promised to be when he was 16-17.

     
  7. I totally agree that Fabregas is over-rated and that indirectly, he’s to blame for a lot of our problems.
    Wenger’s persistence with him and Gilberto in midfield will never bring us the league. It’s quite horrible really how Wenger started to ship out players at the time Cesc did OK as a 16-17 year old. This sparked Wenger to think he wanted MORE kids in the team, since playing ONE (Cesc) alongside the invincibles, didn’t hamper our performances too much.

    It’s all quite ridiculous.

    And for those who have followed Arsenal CLOSELY for the last decade, you should know that Wenger used to always say that:

    “when players come through at such a young age as for instance Michael Owen, and play every week, they tend to get injury prone when they get older. That’s why I’m very careful about using young players too much.”

    I guess Wenger is lost at sea.

     
  8. yep we got a deserved beating against Liverpool & to be fair most the players didnt look interested which is unaceptable and we havent had the best of seasons apart from the odd spell…
    but the cristism of players such as fabrigas, clichy & diaby i dont get? people seem to forget they are still 19 years of age still learning the game, are still going to make mistakes have off days, i agree that we do need abit more experience in the team poss a striker & a midfileder but these guys have steped up and been fantastic for kids of there age, didnt they dominate chelseas midfield, ballack, lampard, essian etc only a few weeks ago.
    i do agree wenger has made mistakes in some of his team selections BUT to be fair the injuries we have had this season have forced his hand.
    I am still 100% behind wenger & altho i am dissapointed with this season i dont see the point of slating these young players we r still 4th in the league, got to a cup final, yes we unfortunatly got knocked out of the fa cup & CL but its not bad for abunch of overrated rubbish kids is it…. im still hopefull for next season anyway

     
  9. Agree Ed, the criticism is ridiculous. The criticism of Fabregas in general (not for his performance on Saturday which i agree was poor) is bordering on insanity. To claim that he has done nothing for us all season apart from the assist at OT is absurd.

    I can only assume that overratedcesc and TomFromNorway didn’t see his man of the match performances at Reading, Totteham, Blackburn to name but a few. They didn’t see the perfect tackle and defence splitting pass for Adebayor at Wigan that won us the three points. They must have missed all the assists he’s produced this season (the most in the league), how he almost single-handedly qualified us for the Champions League against Dinamo Kiev, his performance against Tunisia at the WC for Spain.

    It actually saddens me that people can not appreciate his vision, his ability to make space for himself, his composure under pressure, his ability to dictate the tempo of the game, the range of his passing (to claim he only ever passes sideways is a joke), how he can retain possession until he spots the next move. What a shame that such a wonderfully gifted player who gives everything for this club is so appallingly under-rated by some of that clubs own so-called fans.

     

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