The Arsenal players made us wait until the dying minutes of the Community Shield before completing a fabulous comeback win against the Treble winners. But, BOY, was it worth the wait.
Mikel Arteta won this trophy for the second time, and of course he was in an excellent mood after the game: “It feels great. I don’t think it gets much better than winning a trophy in Wembley against the best team in the world, and to do it the way we’ve done it. It’s really encouraging, I think we had some great moments in the game, especially in the first half with three massive chances but unfortunately when you don’t put them away, you know what can happen.”
When talking about our “three massive chances” there were two of them that fell to our new signing Kai Havertx, and he was still pleased with the ex-Chelsea player’s performance. He was asked if Havertz was impressive in the match: “Yes I think so. He was superb, the way he pressed and how intelligent he is to try and understand certain spaces and the timing of it, he was great and got in great positions to score. He was unlucky not to score but he was very physical when he needed to be, so I was very pleased with him.”
The second player he was extra pleased with was Aaron Ramsdale, who did not let the rumours about Raya joining us to be masterful between the sticks, especially in the shootout. Arteta stated: “He was great and we practised penalties a lot on purpose in pre-season to be ready for this just in case. We went through disappointments against Manchester United where we didn’t stop any of that, and that was the learning curve that sometimes it’s needed to get the right result and I think he was superb.”
To be fair, there were some great performances all round, and it should certainly boost our confidence for the new season.
Bring on Forest next week!!
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Think the gaffer feels the need to motivate these two players who are at a delicate stage of their development, maybe he’s doing a little Management as well.
They are two Arsenal players under pressure born out of totally different circumstances.
I am more optimistic this season than ever before. Lack of CF apart, we have a very strong squad capable of challenging on all fronts.
It has been so long since our squad looking like that. As long as he keeps learning from his mistakes Arteta may reach or even surpass Pep’s level as a coach.
So there we are to all the anti Havertz brigade “he was superb”Time to get off the guy’s back or take issue with our Manager?
Grandad…I suspect that even if Havertz scored a hat trick in a game certain people on here will slag him down and say he should have scored 5. I thought he played well, yes, missed a couple of chances but all players do. I think he will fit in well.
Well OFC he was going to say he played well 😂
He just spent 67 million on him .
Did he play bad ?no
Did he play well ?no
He played like he has for the last 3 seasons in the prem ,anyone who as actually watched him over here knew what to expect and he didnt disappoint .
👍
Got to agree, he will be a good player IMO as a false 9 sort of player but more of a target man.. I’m trying to think how Berkamp used to play because I was checking he’s stats, and in 11 seasons with Arsenal he only beat Martin Odegarrd combined goal scoring and assists in a single domestic season twice🤔 which is why we should not be judging Kai this early in he’s Arsenal career, because some of the same negatives was said of Odegarrd at the beginning of last season (to slow, goes missing etc)….🤔
Odergaard has brilliant technique but he STILL has to prove he is a big game player. That is what wins you things. He went missing at the end both the last teo seasons when we needed him. That has not been proved. As for Haverz, he looked like he did at Chelsea, not a great finisher but shows glimses of talent.
I will bet Havertz to score two or more goals against Nottingham forest the way he played against a strong Man city team was so impressive so i expect him to get more chances to score against lesser teams.
Haverts is slogish he reminds me of Giroud, dude can’t finish to save his life it is frustrating and finds it difficult to press. Yes he just came in, but time will tell.
Giroud was an underrated player – look at his goal stats for club and country. He was unlucky playing in a bit of an average team at the time … I think if he had these players around him he would have got 20 per season….
So if Havertz is going to be compared to Giroud I think we can all agree thats the Plan B option we need based on Jesus / Trossard ahead of him in the 9 position
My MOTM was Ramsdale
Havertz played well as our main pivot, but I think he needs to improve his high-pressing effort
Saliba, and Timber were immense in defence, especially that pass from defence to Odegaard from Saliba, Timber’s trickery on the ball was great, I think we saw the best of Ramsdale and the worst when he nearly got caught on the ball, almost caught off his line and he ball to the City player in the second half, but his saves were fantastic, especially the one-handed save from the header, and he finally saved a penalty. Martinelli struggled a bit and I would have brought on Trossard sooner, such an intelligent player, but overall not bad. Pep may say it wasn’t an important match, but the look on his face when Trossard’s deflected goal went in was a peach. It was a good confidence booster, now to do it in the PL to them
Saliba completely nullified Haaland
I believe Timber won all his ground duels. He was great, but a smart manager of a big EPL team would likely exploit his aerial weakness in the future
I dont think Haarland got involved. He didn’t get many passes and didn’t look fully wound up.
I am a massive Saliba fan but i wouldn’t say he nullified Haarland.
If I’m not mistaken, Haaland couldn’t win any duel against Saliba
Gai, you will be surprised JTimber wouldn’t be that bad aerially considering he was formerly a CB too. May be he could jump well😁
I hope so, but he looks smaller than White
My MOTM was JTimber. His absence in my opinion led to City goal.
Agreed… i think if Zinch is fit then Tierney is getting sold as Tomi can also play LB (and RB)
Excited to see Timber grow as the season goes on and he understands the team and PL better
“needs to improve his high-pressing effort”
The way he pressed in this game might have been based on instruction from arteta. We were clearly trying to manipulate the way city built from the back to make it difficult for them to get the ball to rodri or kovacic in space, and I think they were successful at that in the first half – guardiola eventually changed their formation to help free up central midfielders, which led to their goal. We’ll see in future games if havertz’ approach changes.
Havertz did ok but Ramsdale was his usual terrifying self when in possession of the ball and Timber was the best player on the pitch by a country mile.
Timber was MOTM by far, not even close I agree with you. Probably the most impressive of all in the preseason, looks a real talent.
White and Zinchenko should feel a bit nervous, this lad may be hard to unseat for starts.
White was great all around, and if Timber can add a bit of offense Zinchenko might struggle to get in. So far I’d rather see Timber in than Zinchenko.
Rice adds to the midfield and Timber adds the defense, Zinchenko better up his defense if he wants to be a starter.
I know it’s early days, but Timber could have a Saliba type impact to our defense this year.
I can see Zinchenko occupying Xhaka’s old role in certain games where we can dominate possession and expect to do less defending. He is a creative midfielder really that can defend a little bit.
Before the game I was horrified at the lineup but I was proven wrong. Rice completely shut down Rodri, Saliba shut down Haaland and Ben White shut down Grealish. It was awesome.
Timber didn’t get forward much but he was up against Bernardo Silva, so on balance it’s hard to call him out because it’s being oblivious to those sorts of dangers that cost us last season with Zinchenko at LB.
Ben, in reality, while Timber was superb defensively, he was not productive going forward, which is not surprising, given that he has made his reputation as a centre back.It’s early days, but I think he could turn out to be one of the best buys we have made for some time.
I don’t disagree, but a full back should be a defender first and I think I prefer his balance of defensive skills / progressive skills to this of Zinchenko. Zinchenko gives us more going forward but he is suspect defensively IMO.
Agreed. I think in games we are likely to dominate I hope we see Zinchenko in the role that Rice played, which will allow either Rice or Partey some respite. Zinchenko can defend he’s just not great at it but he is excellent technically, so could do a similar job to what Xhaka did.
I believe having Timber and Zinny are 2 very good options for the LB situation. For big games like City, Pool, United, Newcastle etc we could go with Timber and bring in Zinny around the 70th minute while Zinny could start against the weaker teams and then we can solidify defence by bringing in Timber in the end if we aer already leading.
Why can’t Zinny play the Xhaka role. He is more than capable.
I think in certain games where we expect to dominate we will see Partey on the bench and Rice in midfield with Zinchenko alongside him. It will relieve Zinchenko of much of his defensive responsibility and allow him to do what he is best at which is create chances for other players.
Spot on …
Yes Ben your right
Smith-Rowe was faboulus and completely fault-free
Most underrated player in the whole squad.
Yeah
The FA has uploaded the full match and I had to rewatch from the moments Smith-Rowe came in – cos highlights don’t show those
I enjoyed his short moments in the game
Not only him but Fabio too
While watching the matching I saw those substitutions as Arteta just cluelessly throwing in what he has left on the bench
But the play before that last corner involved passes from Partey – Odergaard – Smith – Fabio & it was like we formed a Midfield Wall around Man City to keep them in & it looked beautiful