Fair enough - right rotation, wrong game for you then?
For me, I think he called it right - I’d focus on the league. We took the cup after a couple of shock results last year, but I don’t think we beat the likes of City this year, if we come up against them again (and we would have at some point). They’ve already sussed out that counter-attacking tactic we used against them last season, and we don’t have the options or the experience to take them on in open play yet. The league let’s you pick and choose your battles - with the cup, one mistake and you’re out.
These back up players are just not good enough unfortunately. Nothing more to say on the usual suspects.
We have to win Tuesday now. We should see a better performance with Tierney, Partey, Saka, ESR and Auba starting, but always that worry about momentum being lost with a defeat.
At least we’re (finally!) starting to chip away at it - we’ve got rid of some this window, and hopefully we’ll see more go in the summer. If Arteta and Edu do nothing else during their time here, it will have been worth it if they can ship out as much of the crap as possible.
Just so frustrating that we have to sit through at least another 5 months of it (and even then we probably won’t get it all done)...
In the summer we need to try our hardest to get rid of:
Willian (though i doubt we will)
Eddie
Pepe
Xhaka
Elneny
Mustafi (if he's not gone already, if not i think he might be out of contract anyway?)
Auba
Bellerin (we should get good money for him i'd hope and AMN and Cedric are as good as him)
I'd be tempted to hold onto Laca as he's proving useful and it was interesting to hear Keown say he's good with the younger players, though if we need to sell for contract reasons then so be it