PL: Arsenal vs Liverpool | 08/05/05

[kel varnsen]

AWFUL 2nd half. what the hell happened to vieira and gilberto at half time, becuase they sure as hell didn't perform out on the pitch.

cole and fabregas were arsenal's best players by far today!

 

[JazzG]

Great first half we should have put 4 or 5 past em as we were going through at will, they looked all over place with our quick passing and movement

Not a good 2nd half for us, yet again we have let complacency creep into our game and when you lose the momentum you had you're always going to struggle. Gilberto + Vieira who were great in the first half let their performance drop, they were both carrying injuries so that might be one of the reasons but still we can't play such a risky game like that and should of taken one off.

Cheating **** Alonso, how the **** did he go down for the free kick, ****** ruined our clean sheet run!

 

[OneProudGooner]

You mean Vieira was injured after that hack from Hamann? :roll:
I know we won but man with a bit more pace down the right we could of destroyed them in the first half.

 

[patrick42uk]

the second half was to be expected given that liverpool had to win and that gilberto and possibly vieira had knocks. for me, thos two have been the key to our recent run. there were times this season we would have conceded again, but we'v moved on from that and 3-1 is a fine result.

another good display from fabregas on the right, MOM in my opinion. a lot of people are against him there, but i find it odd that they'd rather see cesc on the bench than putting in performances like this and getting experience.

another interesting thing is that when rvp for instance comes off the bench and makes one or two mistakes its 'he needs time to adjust to the pace' but when bergkamp comes off the bench and makes one or two mistakes its 'hang your boots up time'. sometimes i feel in football you see only what you want to see rather than what is actually there.

 

[lee1001]

I think people are giving our midfield a hard time.

In the first half Gilberto and Vieira has **** loads of space. Pool were not pressing us at all.

In the 2nd half, Pool pressed us just like every other team who have played 4-5-1 against us and we had no space.

It was pools tactics not Gil + Vieira. I think the whole team were not keeping possesion and giving the ball away cheaply.

 

[galaxyheight]

whi is it we are so nervous and played badly in the second half??? when the whistle started blewing in the second half i can see the guys are so panicky. the liverpool players are so full of energy and were going for every ball and we look so tired. it's as if we were the ones who played the CL and not them. do we think we have won the match in the first half already??? it's the same old arsenal again. gave me heart attack once more.

 

[Dr. Alban]

Post match Wenger

He keeps on praising Senderos. Can't imagine Campbell being back for Wednesday's game..

 

[Gurgen]

When Pires dragged that shot just wide he had his cheeky smile on his face again, and I knew this was going to be Bobby's day. He was fantastic, well, until he got injured.
Was a great game today. We played really well in the first half, and Reyes improved on his West Brom performance. Now he dribbled past everyone AND scored
I thought Gilberto was pretty poor distribution wise, and it only got worse. Vieira didn't look interested in the second half, same goes for Gilberto. They'll have to improve on their performance today if we are going to stand any chance of beating Manure. Senderos was a rock again, not even Baros' pace really troubled him and he's no slouch either.
Cesc was great, but he's still a central midfielder and played like one today again.
This bringing on Dennis and Edu in the 70th minute thing seems to be working though, this is Dennis' second assist in a row in the last minute.

 

[KingReyes]

Another good result, we were excellent in the first half. Started rather slowly but picked up and dominated with some excellent football that hasn't been seen in a while. We dropped in the second though Vieira and Gilberto looked like they were carrying knocks with the latter hardly appearing. That goal gave Liverpool that added sense of belief and they picked their game up but I thought we handled it well. The full backs were solid and Kolo is back to his best

another good display from fabregas on the right, MOM in my opinion. a lot of people are against him there, but i find it odd that they'd rather see cesc on the bench than putting in performances like this and getting experience.

Agree with everything you said, a man of the match performance and hardly put a foot wrong. To think this kid is only 18 and plays with the confidence and determination he has is pretty scary. I am in full praise of Wenger as he's given Cesc his opportunities and the player has taken them well. Every game whether on the right or central has meant tons of experience and it will benefit us in the future.

 

[AFCG7]

Interestng thing about Cesc today.. he played more central in the first half as we cancelled out Liverpool's midfield..in fact Lauren was more our right winger today than anything else in the first 40 mins of the game. This changed in the second half when Kewell came on and Cesc then played more wide on the right.

 

[Pepe LeFrits]

another interesting thing is that when rvp for instance comes off the bench and makes one or two mistakes its 'he needs time to adjust to the pace' but when bergkamp comes off the bench and makes one or two mistakes its 'hang your boots up time'. sometimes i feel in football you see only what you want to see rather than what is actually there.

I think the difference is that while Robin is only going to get better with the more he plays, the opposite is of Bergkamp. His touch has been getting steadily worse all season and he looks less and less like the player we all know and love with each passing game.

 

[Mark]

Awesome first half display. Played them off the park, and to think this is the team playing in the CL final. :?

As has happened so many times before though, we don't kill games off while we're playing well. Liverpool were obviously going to have a good period of the game at some point, we make it so much harder than it has to be.

Should Pires take free kicks more often? This one was a beauty! He had a great game.

Reyes has no right foot. Great goal and some other good moves, but he can drive you mad because you never really know what you're going to get from him.

Our best players were Fabregas, Lauren and Senderos.

 

[Lukazan]

In the first half today we were simply amazing, there are fans everywhere commenting on how good we were! 8)

Second half got abit iffy after Liverpools lucky deflected free kick but our last goal was just class, a perfect touch from Bergkamp and a good finish from the brilliant youngster Fabregas.

And I've always thought Pires has a sweet strike of the ball, better than Henry from dead ball situations and maybe Henry should give him a few more...

 

[brianfrance]

It's a shame reyes lost too many balls. I believe he has to have his defender a bit on his right to past it, if the guy(s) are in front of him, then the ball is lost for sure.
Lauren was focused, and you could feel it defensively. Kolo and Phil showed again that Sol will have to wait for his place. LOL What a world we're living in! A few monthes ago we were crying for new centre backs, and now we cannot give sol, an established player at the international highest level, his place back!! How football changes quickly
I believe Jens had a good game, if riise had scored the match whould have been VERY different.
We showed today that a 5 man midfield, even from the CL finalist, should not affraid us. Even without thierry

 

[JGooner]

What Fabregas is doing for us is off the scale. I reckon he is the best all-round teenage footballer in the world. His composure and distribution are of the level that midfielders usually don't attain until their mid twenties, and he is playing out of position on the right for Christ's sake.

Vieira was brilliant today as well. He seems to be consistently dominating games now.

Pires - yet another goal. People in the media don't talk about his goal ratio enough. He gets 15-20 every season from midfield, while also racking up a similar number of assists. He is like the midfield version of Henry. His free kick was quality. The only concern is that he is making distributional mistakes which he never used to do, like passing the ball to someone surrounded by three defenders. But as long as we rest him regularly, he can play for two more seasons at least. I hope.

And that Liverpool free kick was a joke. Xabi Alonso dived, and he basically admitted it by consoling Reyes the way he did. If it wasn't for that, we would have yet another clean sheet.

 

[JazzG]

To think Alonso had the nerve to complain about Gudjohnson diving to get him a yellow card and make him miss the semi final 2nd leg and now he is doing it.

 

[OneProudGooner]

Vieira was good in the first half had loads more work to do in the second half cos Liverpool attacked our flanks and Pires and Cesc drifted infield sometimes plus he had a heavy knock thanks to Hamanns tackle which led to our first goal. We were alot more cautious in the second half too.

 

[patrick42uk]

with fabregas, i'd even argue against statments like 'he's out of position'. firstly, many people have sighted him playing centrally as one of our problems this year. secondly, the argument would be that he says he prefers center, but what does that mean? he's a footballer for gods sake, a 18 year old one at that. the manager knows better than the player where his qualities fits the system. thirdly, another gauge of the 'position' of a player, is the number of games he has played in that position. in his top flight career, which is all that should matter, how many games has fabrgeas played central compared to the right? by this time next year, i reckon he'd have had more games in his career as a whole on either side of midfield. effectively, playing him central will become 'playing him out of position' . add to that the fact that pires started central and zidane started central, but the best yhears of their career were as inside lefts/offensive midfielders.

i just think its getting to the stage where we should stop using 'he's out of position' as an excuse for any average performances he gives. as a young player, he's entitle to off days no matter where he plays.

 

[AFCG7]

Actually patrick i thought his movement into central areas was very intelligent and perfect for today's game. SInce Liverpool played 3 CMs and one striker up front he didnt really have to cover Lauren that much in the first half.
By dropping inside a more centre right position he also helped us dominate the Liverpool midfield trio.

 

[sabret00the]

his positioning was alot better today, he had a good game.