Loss Champions League Round of 16: FC Porto 1 - 0 Arsenal | Wednesday 21st February | KO: 20:00 GMT | TNT Sports

Prediction

Porto 0-2 Arsenal

 

[ragnarock]

Grown man with a wife uno.

I hate the world today.
Is he getting payed for reacting to stuff on camera.
I’m 36.
Feel like 86.

 

[HollandGooner]

Also Jesus and Zinchenko were missing harmed us tbf. hopefully they will be back soon.

 

[Tom Mix]

Poor performance. No player has covered himself with glory but Arteta at fault here. Not sure what he saw on the pitch for 95 minutes which persuaded him to make just the one change very late on, but I didn't see it.

Tactically unadventurous, we kept taking the same corner, no-one willing to find spaces and dribble past players and very lo-energy. Pass the ball quicker and this Porto team will not live with that.

Rice with a first-minute yellow set the tone. A bigger keeper than Raya (Ramsdale) saves that goal. When you have 28 seconds of injury time left your desire to win must be outweighed by your imperative not to lose. You do not give away a ball under no pressure by hoiking it hopefully towards a forward who's already thinking of the shower.

We will win the tie but we've done today exactly what we did last season - tire our first team out before an important league game in three days whilst contriving to lose a European game at the same time. Squad. Bench. They are there for a purpose - use them.

 

[Black Noir]

Can not name a single player that played better that average at all. Hope Arteta can fix this in time for Newcastle. Newcastle will obviously be aggressive as well as park the bus. A couple changes have to happen for that match.

 

[Artemis]

Calm down.

This is exaclty how small teams play against a better opponent. Not playing at all, and looking to get any advantage by any means.

You dont like the manager, we get it. But rather say you want him gone instead of this nonsense.

Porto would get smashed by decent side though. You're completely wrong on this. They were playing a high line tonight. They didn't drop deep.

They squeezed the middle of the play and our response to this was sideways pass, sideways pass, backwards pass, sideways pass.

Liverpool & City would have wrecked that backline with vertical play & wide play.

If Arteta can't figure this out & turn this around at the Emirates, we cannot expect to win a major trophy with him. It's that simple.

Whether he stays or goes is irrelevant. We are not winning anything big with this guy if he fails like this.

 

[Riou]

On australian tv, mark bosnich is going in on Raya big time. Not only this game, but the Lens game. Says he is not good enough for a title winning side.

This guy knows what he is talking about, tbf.

Was a titan in my Aberdeen Championship Manager 03-04 save, when I beat Rangers and Celtic to the title...you can sign him on a free transfer on that game, as Chelsea sacked him for doing coke in a London nightclub... legend in my books

 

[albakos]

You could see how well they came in against us, nullified everything. Top level coaching.

Yes, it was evident they were prepared on how to address our corners: feigning injury, dropping dead and whatnot. You can say that's not fair play, but it's within limits of the game and that is indicative of them preparing well to address one of our key tactics.

 

[Trilly]

Some Snack Media negativity bot, where was he all week?

Forget waiting, think he had it typed from like the 60th minute.

Had that bad boy sitting in the drafts.

 

[Fallout]

We were very poor, we've got to own that defeat.

But I really hope we get a ref for the home game that knows football is a contact sport. This guy was horrible. He didn't need to be blowing every time someone fell over.

We were crap but when you can't get any flow to the match and everything is stop start because of the ref it makes it even harder, plus the usual Portuguese gamesmanship you come up against.

Fully agree with this

Unfortunately we are still weak mentally and therefore we rely on the feeling of having momentum over the opponent to make us play better

The absence of momentum / inability to get into a rythym going because of stop-start refereeing makes us play far worse -- desperate almost

We get too frustrated when things aren't going to plan and the perception of failure builds on itself throughout the match

I don't expect that to get solved this season but it would definitely help if the standard of officiating reverts to what we are used to at the Emirates

 

[SA Gunner]

How is it nonsense to point out consistent cup exits against inferior opposition if it comes to that?

I don’t think it will but that is a more than fair enough reason. It would undeniably be a pattern at that point if it isn’t already.

Its nonsense because each knockout game is an individual story on its own. Last season's exit has nothing to do with this season's loss.

You could make an argument about it being a pressured situation, and the coach not being able to manage that. But looking at how we lost it in the end, I'd say even that is a stretch in this situation.

 

[2Smokeyy]

We tried to play tho and win we just faced the same problems we always do a well organized team that lock us up you have to give credit to them also our players sucked so bad today our Frontline couldn't even enter the opposition box and every pass was so bad.

I don't think we did tbh. This was a textbook "we're happy to move the ball around and nick one from a set piece" performance. I get it's a cup competition and we have to be cautious but that's the kind of the thing that was holding Pep back for many years at City...he was overthinking things.

The second leg will be completely different, we'll have to go out all guns blazing and leave a lot more gaps.

 

[Trilly]

This guy knows what he is talking about, tbf.

Was a titan in my Aberdeen Championship Manager 03-04 save, when I beat Rangers and Celtic to the title...you can sign him on a free transfer on that game, as Chelsea sacked him for doing coke... legend in my books

In a game? This can’t be real

 

[Tir Na Nog]

WELL WELL WELL purple match against sh1t teams over. Coneboy exposed as a fraud once AGAIN. CL is far above his level, please resign tonight
0 shots on target what a disgrace

Might be one of the all time best posts on here.

 

[Rasmi]

Isn't it funny how after a disappointing result how many on here crawl out of the woodwork to two-foot the team. Porto are no mugs in Europe and we have a team where only a couple have ever played at this level in Europe before. It takes a few knocks to learn how to win in Europe. The travel, the environment, the different officiating, the different tactics, the different ****-housing.

Porto knew we were great at corners, so had clearly practiced obstructing and diving at every single corner (unless their keeper caught it). This clearly got to our players, as did some of the interesting officiating in open play. All part of the learning curve.

If we turn up properly at home we'll do them. If we don't that's on us as we'll have no excuses having 'tasted' this lot once now.

As an aside, mad that none of the ****-housery included Pepe, who was REALLY good for them tonight at the back.

This is seen as the weakest porto team in over 2 decades. It’s a club who has civil war inside with Villas Boas trying to become president. They are miles behind sporting and Benfica

 

[MartiSaka]

I really think Raya is at fault here. Watch the goal again and you will see that he jumps too early. By the time to ball is approaching the goal he is already falling down, even then he almost gets to it.. Looks to me he would have got there if he didn't jump so early.

Wasnt anywhere near the corner. It how you would attempt to save a reasonable shot if you wanted to make it look world class imo

 

[HollandGooner]

I dont care but Partey Zinchenko Jesus gonna be back soon.

 

[North5]

I don't think we did tbh. This was a textbook "we're happy to move the ball around and nick one from a set piece" performance. I get it's a cup competition and we have to be cautious but that's the kind of the thing that was holding Pep back for many years at City...he was overthinking things.

The second leg will be completely different, we'll have to go out all guns blazing and leave a lot more gaps.

Jorgie better be up to speed by then because we are going to need him to start in this sort of game.

 

[teamsoutheast]

I cannot believe what I just saw. Porto isn't even a good team and we hardly created anything upfront!

Porto will get smashed by any decent side!

This team. Are they ALWAYS going to be bottlers? We were not going to score so they only had ONE JOB. Just see the game out.

Then Martinelli does a brain-dead pass.

If Arteta doesn't turn this around, I'm done with him. Sick of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No they are not a rubbish team. They have been playing in the UCL for a good while now much longer than we have recently. They were actually unlucky to go out to Inter last season with both games being tight over the 2 legs.

 

[SA Gunner]

Porto would get smashed by decent side though. You're completely wrong on this. They were playing a high line tonight. They didn't drop deep.

They squeezed the middle of the play and our response to this was sideways pass, sideways pass, backwards pass, sideways pass.

Liverpool & City would have wrecked that backline with vertical play & wide play.

If Arteta can't figure this out & turn this around at the Emirates, we cannot expect to win a major trophy with him. It's that simple.

Whether he stays or goes is irrelevant. We are not winning anything big with this guy if he fails like this.

You making too many assumptions on what Arteta will do in future.

Arteta got it wrong tonight yes, just like Klopp got his tactics wrong when coming to the Emirates as few weeks ago. These things happen.

We were playing for a draw, and we were punished for that. But its only halftime.

 

[hydrofluoric acid]

Damn even at 2-0 up i the home game it will be suffering and lot of burned nerves.