PL: Chelsea vs Arsenal | 21/08/05

[_scorpion_]

I fear the worst if from now on, the rest of the teams do the same and Arsenal still walk into the goal. I just hope that the other teams aren't as good in defending though.

What Chelsea did today requires great defensive concentration and discipline. I don't think there are many teams capeable of emulating that type of defensive effort.

We matched them but for 1 defensive mistake by the team....the sooner we learn to concentrate more on these finer aspects the better we will become.

This also goes for our attack in set pieces....more concentration will lead to better results and when you think about it, our defenders need to learn to attack the ball from set plays so that we are a greater threat for other teams and much more imposing when defending our line.

 

[MAK]

It started in Cardiff last May and has carried on. We have become rubbish.

First shot on target came after we were a goal down. TH not looking he will break WWW's record anytime soon. The forward line looks very unbalanced and the midfield has no shape. The defence is pants apart from Lehmann.

It's going to be a very long season. We musn't finish below Sp**s...

 

[Kum_Arsenal]

Arsenal played OK. I could not see the good old Arsenal.

The passing is not sharp no real tactics or strategy.

the passing and movement is clumsy.

In the end a fluke goal got them all 3 points for the russians.

I'm frustated and sad. I'd be happy if Arsenal had drawn. but that didn't happen.

But I will be patient. Arsenal can only get better from here.

Its a new team and the youngsters need time to settle with the team and really show their talents and team work.

No other way we just have to wait to see the "good old Arsenal".

 

[kamikaze80]

just got home, not much to add, but yea, pires is clearly past it. luckily hleb looks like he will be the heir apparent on the left wing. depending on how reyes is used, hleb seems like he could also play the dennis shadow striker role if reyes is on the left wing.

what we need to overtake chelsea:
1) pires must not play. sad to say, but his time has come. he offered no width, which forced our strikers to play wider, and we thus had no one in the box. we had a ot of possession, but i cant say much of it was threatening
2) reyes and/or rvp need to be integrated into the first team and start scoring goals. they need playing time to develop an understanding with henry, et al
3) henry needs to stop dropping back so deep b/c it nullifies his pace, which to me is his greatest asset; we were often left w/o a striker and no one was there to meet crosses (tho this is partly due to losing freddie)
4) we need a big, tall central midfielder cos as great as cesc is, i question his stamina over a grueling season and we could benefit from an additional physical presence.

our defence is ok so long as sol comes back ok. chelsea never looked likely to score, and if they did, you knew it would be lucky, and it was. im not as pessimistic as most on this board; with the exception of dropping pires, most of our flaws can be solved by blooding rvp and reyes. we need a MF and wenger knows this, he just needs to hone in on another target now.

 

[atalib]

Watch the game. I think wigan game with was much more exciting than this one. Our offense was reallly bad. Chelsea strategy was the same stragtegy that they used against us in community shield - defense and long balls. Henry does not look sharp at all. I think we need a different approach this season. It seems that ( from the last two games ) teams are putting 9 - 10 in defense and sending long balls. It seems to be to be frustrating us. What the long balls does it might caught your defense of guard. It is especially good if you have a striker that is physical like drogba who can muscle around a bit. We need to learn to shoot from outside the penalty box and also people who can head the ball. While the approach might be seen as not "pretty" but at least it gives us a little bit more dimension to our game. I think coaches have found a way to stop our ground game. They know that we will pass around until basically we can tap the ball into the goal. We will see a lot of teams that will put more bodies inside the penalty box this season and once they regain posession uses a long ball to their forwards and hope to get lucky. As for henry, he is totally uninspiring. If sol do come back, i think the captaincy should be given to him. We need a warrior not a diplomat.

 

[marhes26]

What a surprise...Kal Varneson disagrees with my Michael Owen comment!

Do you have a voodoo doll of him or what?

That Midget would get us goals and i dont really care what anyone says. How many more pass but not shoot games are you going to take without us getting a result?

 

[Gooner from Baku]

It was a pity we lost. There was a deep belief that we could win and at least draw the game after the first half. I hate that moment where Drogba scored a bizzare goal.

I had a feeling I was watching not my team. And it's not only about the way the were playing. I didn't feel the aura created by our players always they played again our big rivals in the past.

Nevertheless, I may be wrong. But puting away the emotional point, we all felt we have something missing. Our midfielders played well, but not as hard and athletic as required. We need a playmaker!!! Cesc is not a player of that type.


I think having a strong centre will allow us to score goals, because Henry and RVP are ready to pave the way for an efficient offence.


And a very very big problem is a player shortage. Did you see our bench? Only a couple of players at the start of the season. Freddie began to suffer. He's injury prone player whom I don't believe we will see full season definitely. Imagine (and this is real) 2-3 midfielder will be damaged during the season! What club owners are thinking about?


God save Arsenal! I'm afraid we gonna have a very hard season! :!:

 

[Tegh]

We will come good, eventually.

The state of the pitch was diabolical, they left the grass long so we couldn't play our regular - fast, passing game. The longer the grass, the slower the ball travels, and they know it. Dirty bastards. It suited their long ball game, and hindered ours. We were unlucky to lose, should of at least come away with a point, maybe three due to the penalties we could of and should of had.

Pires was poor, as was Henry, Reyes should of started, he scored 2 vs Chelsea last season, and they would of been wary of this. Senderos shat himself everytime Drogba was near, he just doesn't seem confident after the Community Shield, and he needs some time to regain that. Toure was awesome, Lehmann played well, Fabregas was near inexistent, Ljungberg was on form but came off injured. Hleb was great, very promising, and Gilberto and Lauren did well too. Lauren is very under-rated, he works extremely hard, and is a good physical presence amongst our defense. Cole seems a bit shaky too, even vs Newcastle, i believe he took a knock on his ankle not too long ago. He did well to stop two inital Denmark strikes, albeit the rest of the England defense were in no-mans land, and well, James..pfft.

****ing lucky Chelsea.

 

[whoztheman]

so much for those who said cesc-gil are better than vieira......i miss the henry - vieira partnership moving forward.....seems noone in the team presently understands henry......hope hleb and henry hop into bed.....

we should stop playing perfect football all the time.....stop CREATING chances and start TAKING chances...ironically this season looks like we'll be facing attacking problems rather than defensive....

we need to thrash whoever the next opponent is....

chelsea can be beaten...more concerned about united states.....

 

[bluey]

I am sick and tired of trying to match Chelsea. It was only a year ago that we were hailing the players as untouchables and we were 5 points clear of them. We shouldnt be playing catch up but should be able to more than match Chelsea, despite their £m. We have got this way because we have sold the family silver and have not replaced it (Vieira and Edu). It was a big gamble selling Vieira and it feels like the loss is similar to Brady leaving in the 80's. We never really replaced Brady and I fear it was too soon to have sold Vieira as we are unable to fill the void that has been left.

 

[champions04]

It's ironic that when our defence is crap, we tend to score more goals but when the defense is good we tend to be crap at scoring. Toure, Lehmann Cole and Hleb were the only real positives to take from the match. The negatives were Henry and Pires. Also think missing out on Bastista was more significant than I thought.

We seem to do better when we play catch up rather than remain at the top of the table. Probably because there is less pressure on us when playing catchup but for some reason I'm not feeling as optimistic about the season than I was when watching the amsterdam tournie.

 

[kel varnsen]

I fear the worst if from now on, the rest of the teams do the same and Arsenal still walk into the goal. I just hope that the other teams aren't as good in defending though.

having a laugh...? chelsea are without a doubt the best defensive side in the premiership. no one else is even close. we will tear down most teams without breaking a sweat. it is just that when we're facing chelsea we need to be on top of our game to really push them...

 

[AFCG7]

I think you will fins that Man City and Bolton were damned disciplined defending against us last season. And i am sure other teams will do the same.
Newcastle too looked comfortable enough even with 10 men, unil the penalty.

 

[marco]

agree totally with allyboy and james. great atmosphere in the arsenal end yesterday especially first half.

great chant of
chelsea til you lose your chelsea til you lose!!

just wish we coudl generate atmosphere like that every away game

 

[SJ]

Just to let you know that i made it home in 1 piece, i had a very good seat,just a shame it was in the wrong part of the stadium, i was in the padded seating area just to the left of Roman A (not going to try and spell his surname).

 

[AFCG7]

Gil And Cesc wroked brilliantly last season when we played 4-4-2.

 

[kel varnsen]

I think you will fins that Man City and Bolton were damned disciplined defending against us last season. And i am sure other teams will do the same.
Newcastle too looked comfortable enough even with 10 men, unil the penalty.

we won didn't we...? sure, we will have the off day, but we will win most games this year. if sh*te teams like city or bolton shut us down, it is our fault, not theirs. we have the quality to win every single match. problem is when 3-4 of our attacking players are having an off day...

 

[sabret00the]

Less of the 'hook nose' crapola, please. If you're sad enough to want to visit a racist website, there are plenty out there. This isn't one of them.

great post.

Wenger’s game plan was destroyed when Freddie went off but what I can’t understand is why he plays RVP as a second striker, It’s just a waste of his talent. He did with Kanu for years as well and imo it destroyed his career at Arsenal. Just because Rvp happens to be Dutch it doesn’t mean he’s a new Dennis Bergkamp. Robin should be in or around the box, That’s where his qualities can really hurt the opponents.

Agree 100%

Why all this criticism on Henry’s performance. Ok, He wasn’t at his best but you also have to understand that Terry & Gallas (2 of the best defenders in The Premiership at the moment) watched every move he did and was determined not to give him any space. Henry worked really hard booth attacking and defending and anyone suggesting he should be droped should be droped himself as a Gooner imo.

Disagree 100% to the point i want to swear at you. he didn't attack that's what the problem was, if he attacked he could've caused Chelsea problems but instead he left Robin stranded and had the audacity to complain when Robin tried to score.

As for all the Senderos bashers, for 75 minutes he was great, then he got tired, i'm not even so sure to say he weren't trying to offside trap Drogba. I think we could've outplayed them if we played 4-4-2.

Main problem today was just too much passing at times, we keep trying to pass the ball into the net. Hleb was very good but he was doing the same at times and when he had a chance to pull the trigger he just passes the ball. RvP used to be a bit of a greedy f*r but now he is at it as well!

you're right, it's sad to say it, but in the name of perfect football we're ruining a super star-in-the-making.

I'm really looking forward to Reyes coming back soon. I can't believe Wenger keeps persisting with Pires. Henry and RVP also need more games under their belt because at the moment their useless together.

you're right, alot more could've been done to get that combination working in pre-season but he persisted with his golden oldies aka the favourites.

How people can say Chelsea weren't better than us, astounds me, atleast they tried to go forward.

 

[omega man]

I think its fair to say that for all of Chelskis dosh Arsenal showed they
are just as good as them. away from home on a dodgy surface,
some poor officials decisions and a very jammy goal proved the difference on the day. Everyone including AW knows we need an out
and out goal scorer and im sure he will wait to get the right man.
I am a bit concerned that Henry is possibly over concentrating on
his captains role and perhaps not focusing on his game. Big performance
is now due. Beware Fulham???

 

[Asterix]

First up, I admit to only watchingt he highlights, not the whole game, but we were unlucky not to score. on another day Henry and Freddie would have tucked away their chances, and at Highbury we might have got that penalty. I'm not too concerned here in August that our season is stuffed. The comeback against Fulham was exactly what was needed. Shame we're not playing this weekend.

btw - Jens was superb. He was quick thinking and he stayed big. I think he'll be well motivated this season. We still need another keeper brought in, but Jens will do the job if he's selected.