Morning all.
There’s nothing quite like a hefty defeat for Arsenal in a NLD to waken the media, or the internet in general really. Sad that it might sound, I couldn’t sleep last night so I had a read of a few comment sections of the Arsenal blog world. There seemed to be a clear divide between opinion. On one side, it’s Mikel Arteta’s fault but on the other, it’s the referee to blame.
I think a lot of things were bad last night, Paul Tierney and VAR for sure but Rob Holding too. He should have known better than push his luck as far as he did bearing in might what was at stake. He fouled Son twice before he was booked and then he gave Tierney a decision to make and of course he was going to send him off.
Totts penalty was as soft as it gets but by the letter of the footballing rules, I think it was correct. The fact that a similar kind of foul in the box goes unpunished during a high percentage of other games doesn’t mean Tierney was wrong to award the one last night, but it does show, yet again, how inconsistent the officiating is in this league.
The Arsenal manager was asked about the decisions Tierney made during the game:
I cannot do it. I just want to say that I am really proud of my players but obviously we didn’t get the result that we wanted. I can’t wait to play on Monday. I want to be on the touchline on Monday night. No [I can’t talk] because I will be suspended. You can ask the referee if he wants to come and give an assessment of the match. I can do it but I have two options, I can lie to you, which I don’t do, or if not I will be suspended and I really want to be on the touchline against Newcastle.
In other words, he’s not happy with the decisions which went against us. He’s probably not happy about the elbow Son stuck in Holding’s face either.
I’m sure there will be debates all around the world about what Mikel Arteta could or should have done last night but the one disappointment I have is that not one Arsenal player had a word in Holding’s ear, telling him to calm down before he eventually got booked. Son was always going to win that battle yet had Arsenal been smarter, their focus would have been to put Davies under pressure after he was booked earlier in the game.
We lost, we move on to Monday but without Holding unless Arsenal successfully appeal the decision, and probably without Gabriel too.
This game is now history. We have to play on Monday, and we have to start to win the game now. – Mikel Arteta.
Top four is still in Arsenal’s hands but Totts certainly have easier fixtures than Arsenal. On paper at least but there’s hope in me that Burnley will show a bit of grit and determination to survive in this league when they play Conte’s team. I think we’ll need them to. Newcastle are beatable, but after losing two more players last night, that task has just got a whole lot more difficult.
See you in the comments.
Fractured but not broken. Lets heal the cracks in the final two matches. The humiliation, the dancing, the prancing around, the ole’s after 50mins, the jibes post match. Lets us use this energy to drive us over the finishing line.
We lost a big battle, a very big battle. But the war is still there to be won.
Come on Arsenal!!!
Good morning, Rico and all.
Following the discussion from the previous thread.
Agreed, Kev, our season is on the games against Newcatle and Everton.
Arsenal was expected to lose this game, so I can’t/don’t hold that against Arteta, but as you correctly pointed this out we should have adapted our line-up and tactics to Tottenham’s 3-4-3.
Funny, that Rico herself admitted (explained) in the last post that Conte’s tactics are something to be worried about, she still expected (advocated?) the ‘no change to a squad winning the previous 3-4 games’ policy. Anyway that’s water under the bridge now. Indeed we have to focus on the remaining 2 games.
I’m not too worried though; we have to defeat the strong, but not particularly motivated Newcastle side on Monday, and even though Everton might be fighting for their lives (top flight place) on next Sunday, Arsenal always win the ultimate game of the season.
Now it’s up to Mikel to fire up the boys, as both games are winnable – far easier than our matches against Chelsea, West Ham or United.
Morning Pbarany. I’m not sure a change of personnel would have made a difference last night. Arsenal were undone by individual mistakes. When I suggested it would be Conte’s tactics, I meant going in hard on our players along with hitting us on the break.
Good morning Rico, well that’s the NLD done and dusted for this season and we are still in fourth place with all to play for. What’s more we hold our fourth place fate in our own hands.
The look on Eddie Nketiah’s face when Arteta hooked him off, tells me that he won’t be signing any new contract.
Personally I thought it was a stupid decision! Three nil down, minutes to go and he brings on the most immobile striker we have and I don’t think Lacazette got a touch on the ball.
Whoever he brought on was not going to make one iota of difference to the result, so why risk upsetting one of the best two Arsenal players on the night? Martinelli wasn’t too pleased when he was hooked either. Poor management skills by Arteta.
At least I won’t have to watch our final two games.
I think Arteta knew the game was over, so he took off the players who are more important to us in the next 2 final games of the season.
Well folks that is how a referee influences a game.
Spurs had offered very little up to the penalty award. It was never a penalty. Minimal contact followed by a dive from the biggest cheat in the Premier League. If it was at Arsenal VAR would be debating that for 5 minutes before rejecting.
The sending off was another simulation. At that point the ref has effectively given Spurs the game. Tierney is one of the worst.
I think Arteta was right to hold White for another day.
As written above ‘Lose the battle, win the war’
It could be he took them off to save them from injury .
It is easy to say that we were undone by a consumate cheat but the truth is that Son is an accomplished bender of rules , he is sly and he knows how to get what he wants . He has a technique of initiating contact and then making the most of it . He is not blatant like say Mane or Zaha going over at pace . He doesn’t dive as such, he backs in, he gets close , he makes sure that he is fouled and he winds players up and his elbow to Holding was designed to get a response and Holding done up like a kipper duly obliged .
Looking back at the penalty , soft doesn’t cover it but an exaggerated fall made it more obvious but it was early in the game and there was time to recover but the sending off put paid to that .However it’s gone as probably has 4th place but that’s no more than expected ten weeks ago .
Financially Champions league would have provided more cash to supplememt the squad but the Europa allows more time for the team to develop. It’s now down to Stan and Josh to stump up the shortfall to make sure that we don’t spend another season treading water because we certainly need players with more guts than those we have . We need players like Son that know how to play the officials and we need a definite leader on the pitch that would not have stood for the misplaced passes , the headless attitude and would have steadied the team at half time when we were still in it and not let in the third before most of us had sat down for the restart.
Good morning Rico and all.
Cicero…..I too would have hauled off Nketiah…..and explained to him that I needed him to be fit for the next two games. When Laca was bought on the game was already lost…..not even 11 v 11 it would have resulted otherwise. Deep down everyone knew that….the players, Arteta himself. And believe me….had 5 subs been allowed it would have meant that Arteta would have subbed them all….so he can rest certain players.
As Pete pointed out…..the first goal (penalty) was a soft one to be given…..that way two or three penalties would be given every game. secondly no way should Holding have been shown a yellow for the second foul…..Son ran into him. And even if we all say that Arteta should have subbed him after the first yellow, since he was not in the game, it was impossible because White only had one training session after his injury. To play him would mean a big risk because we could have lost him to another injury.
A lot of tweets or whatever on social media all say that Holding should be sold or this or that. Bollocks and a load of BS. Holding has always been a great servant and also a good defender who has done a great job in the past. I would still keep him even if Saliba and Ballard are to be at the club next year.
Come on Potter, Son is a cheat. He dives and simulates every game. He gets away with it, but he shouldn’t. He only got a red for the OTT challenge on Gomes when the ref realised he had shattered his leg.
On anorher note when is that dinosaur Martin Tyler going to be binned. He’s a sh!te commentator. Add in Neville and it’s like an episode of the chuckle brothers. Bring back my old favourite Brian Moore.
Pete that is my point , Son is clever , He knows how to cheat without getting caught , His baby face smile helps him too as he doesn’t look menacing . Yes he cheats but he has a way of doing it that makes him look like the offended against party.
People that play against him have to know that and they have to adapt to make sure that he doesn’t get away with it. It’s about being streetwise.
I think for the first time we saw and experienced how smart Tottenham and their planning team were in the design of their new stadium, it was the proverbial bear pit and makes the Wenger influenced Emirates seem very tame by comparison. That stadium is going to win Tottenham a lot of points because you could see how clearly it influenced the referee and gained the Scum an advantage.
When Arsenal revisit we have to be a lot more smarter and more cynical, every challenge has to be simulated on, every foul exaggerated, Holding for example should have rolled away holding his face when Son threw his arm our players need to be alert to every tiny opportunity to exact the maximum advantage. It’s going to be exactly the same the next time we visit so don’t go there and play poncy tippy tappy no shots football, match the Scum, go five at the back, four in midfield and play like them, be street wise and not Wenger-naive…
Potter, if the refs were of a decent standard and brave enough they should be carding for cheating.
Kane got a talking to from the ref last night for a foul. Holding was not given that privilege. Kane never gets carded for continual diving and fouling. He is the England captain. The refs want his autograph for their collection.
Tierney is a poor ref. He let himself be influenced by a pair of cheats. He has form.
Hi Rico,
I might have mixed up the response to you and Kevin, but I wasn’t necessary referring to a Martinelli-ESR, an Elneny-Lokonga or a Nketiah-Lacazette change, but rather moving from the default 4-2-3-1 formation to a more defensive 5-4-1 or 5-2-2-1. I don’t know, it could have been worse, but intuitively I agree with Kevin that with 3 CBs we could have marked Spurs’ 3 attackers more effectively, and also we could have rotated them to prevent a second booking after a(n early) yellow card.
My sole point is that a home game against Leeds is vastly different from a NLD at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, therefore the ‘one hat fits all’ strategy was destined to fail from kick-off. There is a good chance that other countermeasures would have failed, too, but maybe in a less spectacular fashion.
And now, for something completely different: I must praise this blog – yourself first, but the community too – as most other places the focus points after the NLD are the cheating refereeing and the anti-Arsenal bias on every level. Even Mikel didn’t hold back from digging into Tierney (who is a wanker, but that’s not the point). And I really appreciate you preferring the soft but correct penalty and the responsibilities of Rob, Mikel, Martind – maybe even Granit – over the conspiracy narrative. (By the way, I can hardly imagine that the ‘bad cop strategy’ to intimidate Son early in the game was Rob’s own decision and not what the whole coaching team cooked together.)
Hi Kev. I read somewhere they amplify the crowd noise through the speakers at WHL. I suppose any club can do that these days and probably will start doing so. For all his faults I don’t think Wenger can take the blame for the atmosphere at Arsenal. It’s been pretty good this season in my opinion. The stadium is 16 years old now.
I went to the old WHL a number of times and the atmos wasn’t that impressive. Shows what a bit of technology can do.
If Arteta is going to play a back four (yes it does morph into a three but generally it’s a four) then we need to be like Man City and have big full backs, full backs that can play in a three like Tomiaysu. Guardiola is always rotating his defenders and yes I know he’s got the dough to collect them but he wouldn’t have full backs of the stature of Soares, who despite his best efforts was found wanting in the air yesterday.
We also need someone from central midfield who can take a shot when the opportunity is there and look like he means it, Odegaard had two presentable chances to score yesterday but his finishing was abject. Get on that training pitch Martin…
If that is right Pete re: speakers etc, then we really should look into it, but I believe that the design of the Toilet was built around amplifying and containing the sound, hence the bank behind one goal, whilst the Emirates was about sight lines.
Morning Cicero, I saw taking Eddie and Martinelli off was more about keeping them as fit as they can be for Monday.
Potter, if we had a player like Son, the officials would probably penalise his antics.
Morning Devil, my gripe is that no one had a word in Holding’s ear after he’d got away with two challenges and again after the booking. His decision making was naive imo. Just imagine if Xhaka had done that, the bloke would have lambasted..
I understand that Pbarany but until the penalty, the system we were playing was fine imo. We were on top but the penalty, the sending off, meant we were on a road to nowhere.
When the Emirates was first opened most of the people that were around my seat were of the opinion that was it lacked atmosphere. In comparison to Highbury . It was expansive, an amphitheatre rather than an intimidating football stadium . The fans were too far away from the pitch and the roof designed as we were told to allow ventilation to the pitch also let all the noise out .
Spurs learned from that and saw the influence that the kop has had on referees over the years and copied the idea of a solid wall of noise . It seems to have worked
Pete if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle , if refs were decent they would pick these things up but mostly they are not and they are led by a man that was embarrassed by Wenger and holds a grudge. There is little or nothing that we can do about it so you have to accept and play to the expectation that it is not a level playing field
. Kev is right Holding should have screamed loudly and should have rolled around clasping his face and Mike Dean then would have had no option but to look at it as it would have been replayed half a dozen times. It was and should have been a red card as it was a deliberate elbow to the face . Holding got up laughing at Son and the officials waved it on ” nothing to see here ” Son exaggerated his contacts with Holding and the ref fell for it and we had ten men and the league got their wish to keep the pot boiling until the last games of the season .
It is what it is , we got shafted and nobody but us cares.
I have many things to say but for now, I am just following and reading the comments, lest I become too emotional when expressing my thoughts ! I didn’t watch the match but after performances like last night’s, I still think that the emotional fragility old still persists.
Afternoon Rico all
Still have not seen the match but from what I have read Arteta blames the ref but the media blame Arteta and Holding, Either way lets hope that Arteta can use the lose to fire the players up for the last 2 matches. I said Son needed to be shut down, like him or not he is smart and knows when and how to hit a player and hide it from the ref and VAR.
At 3 nil down in the dying minutes taking off some of our good players makes sense, why risk any injury or red cards
Yes Pete, I forgot that in my answer to you regarding the merits of the Emirates and the Toilet, Potter reminded me, the fans are too far away from the pitch, we aren’t close enough to intimidate or influence officials, I’m sure you remember the Chicken Run at Upton Park and at Liverpool the fans are right in the players’ and officials ears even with the redevelopment of the ground.
If I recall Wenger had quite a lot of influence on certain aspects of the Emirates design, the roof and pitch for example was always an obsession for him, never mind if the fans got wet or the atmosphere dissipated upwards he also had if I recall some influence of the space between the pitch and the fans, Arsene never it seemed to me had much of a regard for the fans or what we added to the occasion, maybe if he was still coaching and experienced lockdown then he may have revised his feelings towards us plebs?
Hi Geoff, Holding tried to shut Son down, just too much.
Just the very fact that some of us believe Arsenal players need to make more of the challenges/fouls they receive, says a lot doesn’t it? A foul/elbow to the face etc should be spotted by the officials without the need of drama. But if that’s what it takes, then yes, I’m all for it. Not that it did Tomiyasu much good against Palace and he really was booted in the face.
@allezkev, is it possible to undertake structural modifications at the Emirates Stadium incorporating the awesome features at the Tottenham Stadium or Liverpool, or even the Old Trafford’s?, including the purely standing, zone like the Dortmund’s ground? I have always thought that Emirates Stadium is out of touch with fan reality.
The club recently sent out a survey to see how people felt about safe standing , it comprised of about 10 pages but at no point mentioned anything about restructionin fact all it said was that the existing seated areas would remain the same with some sort of barrier to stop people falling over the seat in front. However they did ask if my seat was affected would i mind moving to another part of the stadium to which i said possibly as long as the price did not go up and that I was not stuck in the first 5 rows and getting soaked every time it rained.
I doubt that anyone involved had ever stood on a terrace and experienced a surge . I completed it but mainly answered that until they gave more dertails of their plans it was impossible to make a considered answer. i doubt that I will hear anymore from them until they have made up their minds as I doubt that my answers were the ones they wanted.
Before we worry about a new stadium we need to concentrate on strengthening our squad first.
The one thing we have not done since the Wenger’s last few years up to now is find a real captain that will lead by example and lift the players when needed and calm down other players when needed.
Another box ticked though Potter.
To be honest, what does it really say about the architects and the design of the Emirates if after only 16 years it looks outdated, I mean Highbury looked fantastic even 70 years afterwards but then they knew how to design things to make them stand the test of time back in the 1930’s.
And don’t expect Stan to stump up any funds for a stadium uplift, for him it’s all about the LA Rams of which there’s no limit to what he’ll spend on them…
Safe standing is a waste of time as it’s envisaged by the club at present…
They might buy some new table mats for Diamond Club though Kev , or possibly wallpaper . I believe Carrie Johnsion could put them in touch with someone.
Does the stadium need any improvements for now? Can’t think why really, not yet anyway.
To be fair it is pretty run down looking
Already? I’m sure Josh has a refurb in hand. Lol
Rico is that refurb for us or his rams team. Maybe Josh might put a pair of heated recliners in for him and Stan to watch the match in comfort.
You get more cynical each day Geoff. Lol
Today’s short reading from The Bible: “and God promised that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the earth” and then he laughed and laughed and laughed. 😉
Correction, and then he made the earth round and laughed etc etc etc.
Risky Cicero 😂
New post up