We were always going to lose. It's a top 6 away match, it's a loss. So why stick with the stopper we play in midfield, Xhaka? By stopper I mean he stops our game. All well and good Willian getting forward, or Pepe making a run, or Auba making space, but you know Xhaka will slow it down and look for the easiest pass. Same with Bellerin on all but the rarest of occasions (when he shows he's still capable going forward). We spend 45 mill and then leave the player on the bench. I know he just flew in, but he flew in from a bunch of Internationals like everyone else didn't he?
Stupid not to play him and see if we could open up the midfield a bit and connect back with front in a more creative manner. Recent record said we lost before we set foot on the pitch, so what else dod we have to lose? Is our new guy so inept he can't do a basic job in there yet? Doubt it. Still learning our system is he? What? Tip, tap?
Or if you don't play the new guy, at least play AMN instead of Pepe. Or bring AMN early when it's plain Pepe is getting zero joy. AMN wouldn't have lost the ball every 2 minutes. That, along with Xhaka's one speed gearbox made it so much easier for the gypos.
Keeper cost us too. You need a solid keeper, not just in terms of the flash saves, but also command of the box, basic handling, distribution - Leno can't do any of that.
Gypos weren't that good either, except when it counted, and they had players missing. Doesn't mean we should have beaten them by default, but it means we should try to avoid beating ourselves by persisting with stuff that just doesn't work.
Any positives brought by Arteta need to be offset against the unbelievably poor record we have against our major rivals - not all his record of course, but let's not have too many more of these results because that will make him part of the ongoing problem. That record needs to start turning around, encounter by encounter. It's not good enough to come away having avoided humiliation - that shouldn't even be considered as any sort of a measure. So this encounter showed we can stay in a game against these rivals for a while (we knew that), maybe even gain the upper hand for a short while (we knew that already). And then get cut to pieces and serve up a stupid assist through some basic error - we definitely knew that. That hasn't changed, and so the results remain the same.
We should be playing this tighter and more restrictive style against the teams we expect to beat, using it to grind them down and take advantage of the fact they can't hit us like a city or Liverpool can. And against our so-called superior rivals, we need to be playing with more ambition and giving it a go. Breaking the habit. I think the fans will tolerate a loss if we've pushed the opposition, far more than another tick in the loss column where we never looked like reversing the norm.
Was more of a chess match than a football match and Pep has better pieces. So tip the board over and then see what he does.
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