Big Willy@Salibasexual02
Dust settling time.
Arteta got it wrong but no one will admit it because that’s the game they wanted him to play so have to own their opinion, I didn’t, said it many times so I’ll say it.
We didn’t need to win, they did.
We didn’t need to entertain the TV public.
We didn’t need to treat it like a life of death game with 5 games to go.
We didn’t need to go toe to toe.
We didn’t need to over commit.
The media made so much noise about boring Arsenal & it being a ‘must win status match’ that he got sucked into giving them it & gave them what they wanted, even our fans got sucked into by it & that’s why no one will call him out for it, I expect to see all the YouTube mugs back the performance when the reality is, they’ll ignore they wanted this type of game.
Mikel is more Jose than Pep but I tell you now, Jose would not have been influenced by the noise, he would have gone there & doubled down & left with a point.
Some of the play (while being much better) was making my head hot, you could see it was the game City wanted and you could see us falling into the trap, said to my mate at HT that it was good but we really need to lock it down a bit and dull up because we were leaving them so much space in MF but what do we do? We throw the kitchen sink at it, we only needed a point.
We looked much better with Odegaard & Havertz but Havertz comes at a price, we play more fluidly but he cant finish, cost us a lot over the years, cost us v Bournemouth & cost us yesterday, Odegaard did well, good he back.
Raya was a bag of nerves, from his first kick, it was unsettling, Saliba clearing it off the line from a corner he missed saved him.
First goal was poor, Eze was ball watching, Gabriel just flicked his leg out & Saliba could have been sharper but they allowed Cherki to dance his way through, class for him but we are stopping that earlier in the season.
Second goal shouldn’t have stood, Haaland literally pulls him back, if that’s up the other end, it’s not given.
Don’t think that’s red card on Kai btw, he seemed to go down looking for it & they balanced it up by not sending Gabriel off (which should have been a red)
Overall, glorious failure, it was like being time warped back into the Wenger days, this is the Arsenal rivals and pundits wanted & with the help of some of our own fans (including Ian Wright) we made enough noise to get into Arteta’s head to give them it, this was set up to be prime Jose/Simeone & he went the other way to people & TV company please.
Agree or not, it’s not over, it is still in our hands, worst case is we lose it on goal difference which again, will be on the managers head and ironic when we’ve wasted so many games this year passing it around doing nothing and only springing into action when teams score, the reason why there’s doubt and a problem with it being in our hands it’s because it’s Arteta’s hands they are in, we now have to go on a goal scoring mission, we have the nicer fix, only West Ham have anything to play for while City have a lot of teams chasing Europe, we should outscore them easily but he’s going to have to take the handbrake off, now is not the time to grind out results because unless City ‘bottle it’ we need goals with those points.
Still a lot to play for but we’ve put it back in City’s hands & they don’t usually drop it from here, only going goal crazy can stop them now.
Disappointed in Mikel, it was mentally weak from him to buckle from his beliefs which was the right way to go about yesterday, next week you open up when you come out of there with the point, he went a week early and opened the door for Pep, only he can shut it now.
