Match Reaction v Bournemouth (away).

[Letters]

Seems all Xhaka has to do is not be entirely shit for 90 mins to earn some praise. Calamity of a player in this league

Or, he’d play brilliantly all game, misplace one pass and people would be slaying him

[Marc Overmars]

But saying it's a 'lot better' is exactly globalgunner's point - xhaka's set such a low bar he gets credit for stuff any PL player should do

I feel like you could apply that to the whole team. There are different levels but shit is still shit.

[Globalgunner]

Some sites saying Xhaka to Herta Berlin is a done deal. Hope so. Need to get better in there. Hope Arteta has his wishlist penned already

[Bumble]

Performance was ok. Think it will be a long road back. Its hard to tell if the team played better or bournemouth allowed us to plat better by continuously trying to play ball out of the back and losing it.

Chelsea next so its winnable as the rookie manager is having rookie results.

We are 11th. So not expecting trees to be pulled up rest of seadon.

[AFC Leveller]

Performance was ok. Think it will be a long road back. Its hard to tell if the team played better or bournemouth allowed us to plat better by continuously trying to play ball out of the back and losing it.

Chelsea next so its winnable as the rookie manager is having rookie results.

We are 11th. So not expecting trees to be pulled up rest of seadon.

Chelsea play much better away from home, it will be tough.

[Bumble]

Our next 5 league games
Chelsea
United
Palace
Sheff utd
Chelsea

Thats not easy.

[Niall_Quinn]

Proper first half. Forward passing. Players getting into the box. Some tempo to the play. Then drifted back into the shitty stuff in the second half.

Good to see Auba and Laca start though. They'll need a few games to get the understanding back.

Decent from Ozil, our most important player.

What we need in the middle is a battler. Which is Torreira. A battler who doesn't give the ball away and drift out of position. Which is not Torreira. Fortunately Xhaka was less suicidal today so between them they managed a very average performance, which is a huge improvement. I'd drop both and play AMN and Gwen in there.

Not horrific in defence, but so stupid on the goal we conceded. Might as well have kicked it in our own net.

BMouth pretty poor really. Howe gets a lot of credit for keeping a very average team competitive. Deserved, I suppose. But I can't see him taking that team anywhere significant. They play a very basic game, which suits them. But no indication they can step that up. Glad we didn't bring him in as manager.

Leno seemed to be a lot more vocal. Another good game for him.

If we can replicate that first half as a basic standard and get our fullbacks fit again I'd say we can push on to a top 10 finish.

Some positive signs. Not bad for Arteta's first outing, considering the long standing mess he's having to confront.

[Blink 1nce Quince 2wice]

Think he needs to really get hold of Pepe and make that money work for us. He had his arm around Nelson like he was his Dad......I hope that isn't a sign he's Arteta's man.

[Marc Overmars]

Nelson has looked very average, I really don’t see what he brings to the table. Too lightweight and doesn’t really have one particular strength to his game.

Maybe needs another loan to sharpen up.

On another note, 5 wins out of 19...
Let’s hope we sort our lives out for the second half of the season. Only the bottom 2 have won less games than us FFS.

[Chippy]

Performance was ok. Think it will be a long road back. Its hard to tell if the team played better or bournemouth allowed us to plat better by continuously trying to play ball out of the back and losing it.

Chelsea next so its winnable as the rookie manager is having rookie results.

We are 11th. So not expecting trees to be pulled up rest of seadon.

Six points off the relegation zone.
How are we getting 40 points? 🙄