Except that's all bullshit, isn't it?
Except that's all bullshit, isn't it?
In other news:
Leakier than their defence.
Xhaka had some talent, decent passing stats, he actually in the end formed a decent partnership with Partey. But he was a massive liability, he was so completely one footed that he’d often give the ball away getting the ball set onto his left foot. He was often guilty of playing blind passes and square passes to no one. And he absolutely could be a red card magnet.
Whether he was a net benefit or detriment to Arsenal is debatable. What isn’t debatable is that we have not missed him one jot
No it isn't - and here I will once again call on the fact that I was at every home game, plus watching every away game on TV, seeing just how much of a liability he was on a game-by-game basis
Arteta only liked him because he was a teacher's pet and/or had some revealing photos
Wow - that was a nervous last 30 mins...but we won thank God.
We were nowhere near our best - and I was unhappy that by inviting them onto us and waiting for a mistake rather than trying to control the game we made them look better than they are. I understand that this is because we were wary of their threat in transition, but our forward and MF players looked like they thought they wouldnt need to get out of second gear to secure an easy win. It was always on the cards that Manure would react to their embarassment against Palace, and (as he has such a hard on for us) that Ten Hag would plan meticulously and raise his players for this home game.
The difference was our defence - and this was a game where our system was the winner. Being able to go away to OT and get the 3 points when we were below par shows how our team has progressed.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
The defence has been amazing this season. We were very nervy against Bournemouth but for all that they rarely laid a glove on us. Same at WHL - we conceded a lot of possession but Spurs couldn't do much of note with it.
Regarding Xhaka, my take is there was always a good player in there but he was being misused by managers until last season. Once he was playing in a system that highlighted his strengths and mitigated his weaknesses, he we started seeing the player we paid all that money for back in the day.
HCZ is right that we haven't missed him, though.
Yesterday was weird. There were a couple of times when they made decoy runs that completely opened us up, and a decent finisher would've punished us.
We were uncharacteristically shite in possession and Arteta keeping Partey on for as long as he did was really strange IMO. Seemed obvious to me that he was a disaster waiting to happen, especially given it was 1-0. He'd already let Hojland in 1 on 1, he was giving the ball away for fun and not tracking back at all. One of the worst individual performances I've seen from any player in a long time. Auba against Watford is the only one I can recall that was that irredeemable.
Still though, we won in the league at Old Trafford for the first time since 2006, that's worth a hell of a lot.
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting