Yes it was a let-down, but it certainly wasn’t the end of the world. We put out a bunch of youngsters, wallys and brittle-boned prima-donnas for a practise game against tough Championship side – and got taken apart. Ho Hum, so what….
One of those on the pitch was old-timer Matthieu Flamini, who, if I remember correctly, has only played about four games for Arsenal since last Christmas. The 31-year old said after the game: “It is one of the positive things, you can say, playing every three days, that we can make sure we rectify the direction,”
“We have another game in three days so we can make sure we win it, forget about this one and move forward in the Premier League.
“I think they played a good game. We started the game with two injuries in [the first 20] minutes which made it even worse.
“Today we faced a good team. There is not much to say. Bad result, bad day. Now we have to rest and focus on the Premier League.”
I suppose after a result like that you have to take any positives you can from the game, and Yes we can put it all behind us on Saturday, but someone needs to tell Matthieu he can rest and focus as much as he likes, but he certainly won’t be putting anything right against Swansea.
He will be back on the bench where he belongs….
Depth and summer signing helped City win tonight. I would urge Wenger to consider signing in January “IF” he can find anyone as January is notoriously difficult to find signings
Regardless, I would bring back Gnabry in January as we have more respect for his quality than Tom Pulis. Also bring back Chuba Akpom depending on our injury situation.
Easy… Theo and Ox are supposedly only out for a week or so. With an international break on the back of it before Ramsey is close as well.
Akpom and Hayden have both established themselves as first-team regulars for Hull City which is no easy feat considering the quality Hull have in their respective positions. At such a crucial stage in their development, there’s no point potentially halting what may be a big season in their development for the sake of couple of games before relegating them back to the u21’s…
Pulis didn’t disrespect Gnabry’s qualities but his readiness for the league. The handful of times I’ve seen him this season he hasn’t looked anywhere near as fit as previously. With all due respect to him, if he’s struggling to break into West Brom’s side, then no, he’s not yet ready for us…
Regardless, Iwobi and Campbell have only played a handful of games for us, one with our 2nd’s team who as a whole played poorly isn’t enough to go by. Personally, I think Iwobi is in the same level of prospects/first-team candidates as Akpom and Gnabry.
people kept undermine our young guns but we forgot our 1st team had to go to extra time against reading and won with a fluke goal last season….play away to a solid championship team….am very sure our 1st team would have struggled to beat them….and the basis of any arsenal team is the midfield which was good…..we can’t rate our attackers based on that match….Wenger was right, the stage was too big for some of them
I can guarantee you that if we were to play against a EPL side we would have put a better team in.
On the positive front, the future looks bright with krystian bielik! Coyg!
Bielik is pulling a Bellerin, he’ll be playing for the 1st team by next season
haha I don’t quite think an impressive 20minutes in a cup game against tired opposition is anywhere near the level of play Bellerin displayed last season… Also, he’d be competing against Coquelin, Ramsey, Arteta and Cazorla for the deeper positions. Not Chambers as a RB in his 3rd favoured position!
You can write off Arteta from those midfielders. Bielik could be a good back up for Coquelin or Rambo. Santi? No one at the team can run his DLP role as good as he is.
I often disregarded suggestions of playing Bellerin on the RW…
Against Swansea I still think that wouldn’t necessarily be the right move. But considering the trouble Bayern gave us when Bellerin was isolated in defence, and his weakness in the air, playing him in front of Debuchy may be a good move at Allianz..
With Giroud almost certainly leading the line and us likely to have >35% possession incisive counter-attacks with Ozil, Bellerin and Sanchez delivering to/playing off Giroud might be our most efficient game-plan while remaining relatively protected.
Bingo. Bellerin at RW seems the logical move.
It seems like new Gareth Bale in the making. Move from defender to attacker.
How can anyone think Debuchy can play against Costa is beyond me? Costa is hungry and way too fast for Debuchy. He will get much more service and Bayern will take advantage on home turf. Bellerin is right back.
Bellerin has cemented his place for the 1st choice R/B position, tough luck for debuchy!
Debuchy is a solid replacement but not in important games. Ox is inconsistent. Walcott is a big loss because of his recent form. Arlene has to use some youth because no one else is available to step up.
Isco this January. If we don’t get him Klopp will. He will be happy to leave in January
Just saying
If you have said Manure probably you’d be right but I don’t see anyone from the big 5 teams in Europe joining Liverpool or Spuds any time soon.
I met up with my friend, an Arsenal scout, last week.
I pointed out that Tottenham Hotspur’s summer recruit, Son Heung-min, is one of the most impressive players I’ve seen at White Hart Lane since Gareth Bale.
Immediately, the scout took his phone out of his pocket and showed me a scouting report from last season. This is how it read …
* Scares the life out of defences. Feet are scarily quick, can turn in any direction.
* Keeps his shape, good discipline, counters quickly, carries the ball a long way up the pitch, aware of team-mates in better positions.
* Scores goals from great positions in the box that others don’t take up (Ljungberg). Hard to pick up and track.
* Fit, doesn’t stop working.
* Different to anything that we have in the building.
* CAN PLAY FOR US ALL DAY LONG!!
That was one of several reports he showed me that got better and better.
Arsenal watched Son almost 30 times last season, with all the scouts in agreement that the player would be a fantastic addition.
So what happened?
‘It’s Arsene [Wenger],” the scout said. ‘He’s so indecisive it’s frightening. We had [Morgan] Schneiderlin done and dusted last January and, by the summer, the gaffer had changed his mind. Son was 100 per cent perfect for us.’
The above was leaked by the so called secret footballer
@fatboy gooney
Nice gimmick that secret footballer dude got goin…
That’s a smart joke was it dude? Don’t insult my IQ, because I can’t quite understand.
You talk gibberish. The tweets from Scheiderlin sorted out the issue for him joining Arsenal. He was never into it. Forced a big pay with Manure and it worked. He is not a 100k a week player anyway. Not missing Son to be honest.
Get Walcott nice and fit,then SELL IM ASAP..
Get real! This was a planned suicide mission. Wenger wanted out but he had to appear to be serious by playing a few first team players.. It came unstuck and he now has two injured players he could well do without. That`s life!
Actually it was not a suicide mission as you suggest. After losing Chamberlain which was appointed the No.10 role, we lost our creativity as we were left with wingers. If we hadn’t lose Chamberlain in the first place, maybe the scoreline would have been different. I mean we might have created some significant amount of chances instead of a very few in fact negligible.
Also, he mentioned that he didn’t expected such kind of defensive mistakes from the team(which were really kind of silly and atrocious if you watch them again).
Although it was quite obvious from the beginning, that in such type of games he give chances to his youngsters for monitoring their developments and to reserves to prove a point regarding first team oppurtunities.
In order not to tinker with the team that is already delivering, the way to go in the next three games, is to field Gabriel as right back and move Bellerin forward as a winger. Gabriel is very comfortable playing right back and Bellerin is very comfortable playing as a winger because that was how he started. This arrangement will bring defensive solidity, aggressiveness and maturity, especially in the bayern game that we must not lose.
@victor Kay, nice idea,