By Walter Broeckx
A few changes compared to the team that started last week. Hector Bellerin came in at right back and Debuchy went back to the bench. Alexis started up front and Oxlade-Chamberlain dropped to the bench.
Team in full: Cech, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Cazorla, Ramsey, Ozil, Alexis, Giroud.
On the bench: Ospina, Debuchy, Gibbs, Gabriel, Arteta, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain.
After some 4 minutes a nice combination on the left flank but the final shot was blocked by a defender. A counter then from Arsenal and Özil feeding Alexis who rounded the keeper but then shot straight at the defender and the rebound was saved on the line. Arsenal with the better of the play in the opening minutes. Alexis with a steel but Alexis has his shot blocked again by a defender. Cech with a good interception on a low cross when Palace was on the counter. But at the other side again Arsenal with a good combination. Alexis who send the ball to Özil on the left and his cross was expertly finished by Giroud with a half volley. GOAL!!! 0-1 to The Arsenal after 16 minutes.
Arsenal controlling the match and Alexis with a fierce low shot that is fumbled by the keeper but no Arsenal player on hand to put the ball over the line. The next chance was again for Alexis but he headed the cross from Monreal over. And then out of nothing a cross from Palace and the ball was played back to Ward who beat Cech with a low shot. 1-1 after 30 minutes. That came out of nothing.
That lifted the spirit of Palace and the even claimed (wrongly as Zaha ran in to Monreal his back) a penalty. At the other end Giroud almost with a copy of his goal but he couldn’t wrap his foot around the ball enough this time. Cazorla couldn’t capitalise on a forunate bounce in the Palace penalty area and shot over the crossbar. Ramsey with a delightul chip after a cross from Özil but the keeper saved it and then Mason put an end to the Arsenal attack with Alexis in a promising position by inventing a foul. Palace then at the other end with a few dangerous crosses. But Arsenal then again bombarding the Palace goal but each time a defender in the way of a shot or a cross.
Coquelin with a yellow card after a late challenge on a Palace player. McArthur also going in the book for a foul on Coquelin and that was the last fact of the first half. Arsenal had enough chances to be comfortably in front but had to be satisfied with a 1-1 at half time. Too many chances missed at first and Palace scored from what not even looked like a chance with a shot from distance. Alexis the man who cathed the eye most with great all round game but his finishing not up to the required standard yet.
Arsenal Lucky at the start of the first half when Wickham puts a cross against the post. Arsenal react with a flowing combination but a defender can put his foot in and prevent the final pass. Özil with a fine piece of skill only to see him being hacked down. Free kick but the card is not given. Arsenal with a few corners but Giroud on the turn cannot make proper contact and the keeper kan pick up the ball. Bellerin with a cross and Alexis with a firm header that might have gone in but defender Delaney puts its over the goal line. GOAL!!!! 1-2 to the Arsenal after 55 minutes.
Puncheon with a good run that gives him some room but Cech stops his low shot. Coquelin getting a warning from Mason but that was more to him being a bit theatrical after having made a foul. If on a yellow just accept the foul and stay low profile is my lesson. Wenger takes Coquelin off and Oxlade-Chamberlain comes on after 64 minutes. Özil with a delightful pass to Ramsey but his left foot shot goes over.
Cech being blocked but the ref lets it go and then Mason blows a foul after Arsenal win the ball back. Puncheon shoots wide. Arteta comes in the place of Alexis after 74 minutes. After 82 minutes Gibbs came in the place of Özil. Delaney pushes Giroud in the back and that should have been a penalty but Mason has non of it. Mason then gives a corner to Palace when it was a goalkick. Cech is being blocked by a Palace striker and again Mason ignores it but luckily the ball goes over. Arteta with a last second block and Cech with the save from the resulting corner.
But Arsenal also with a chance when Ramsey gives it to Cazorla but the keeper can save with his foot and a defender can clear. Arsenal counter in the last minute but the keeper saves the effort from Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Arsenal win with 1-2 at Crystal Palace. The first half Arsenal should have been home and dry before the half hour but didn’t take their chances. The second half was more about hard work, grit and determination and we showed great character and not unimportantly in each PL we had the luck on our side when it mattered.
BBC web site says Ozil only misplaced one of 55 attempted passes. Pretty good, eh?
If these pundits go on about Coquelin, they should also note, as Walter has, that the referee twice ignored the fact that Cech was being blocked.
Pat
The match commentators ( Smith & Parry ) mentioned Cech being blocked, but the after match pundits hardly had a chance to mention anything before they cut away to Chelsea v city
I see lots of medja articles about who should be playing where. This comment from today’s game report is what I think the answer is:
> Perhaps of more significance was a positional tweak that saw Santi Cazorla return to central midfield to reprise his partnership with Francis Coquelin. Aaron Ramsey started on the right – although he would regularly drift inside in a fluid Arsenal formation.
I think this is true for most of the Arsenal midfield players, they will drift in and out of the centre. And for teams that play in channels (which is what the medja do, they write in a channel about 2 femtometers wide), this is a problem. What happens if a player you are marking goes out of channel?
Ozil easily MoTM for me – kept our offense calmly ticking, despite lots of poor touches from our other forward 3. Then I’d say either Mertescielny or Monreal, and then after that it’d have to be Giroud.
Good decisive finish from him to blow some wind in our sails again.
Ozil was a class act today. So much better than Cazorla but Cazorla is being used by commentators at the moment to undermine Ozils influence. Keep praising Cazorla and make him the main man even if he has a fairly average game, like today.
As for Coquelin. If you watch every foul made today, Coquelin should not have even been booked. The only reason for the red card debate is that the Palace players and crowd saw an opportunity to try and get him sent off. The commentary team lapped it up, whilst ignoring the other fouls.
@Jayramfootball
Yes Jayram I completely agree with you about Coquelin the Palace players kept going down just on the touch of a finger. Coquelin is now just victim of the media wanting him to be sent off.
On another note Arteta looks impressive when he filled in for the Coq, sniffing out dangers early and aggressively. Since we missed out on Shneiderlin I made a point that if Arteta can find his form in the 12/13 season when we always lose without him on the team sheet, then we’d be on good stead. Just to remind everyone the other DM in our team then was a certain Alex Song, who’s positioning was so poor without Arteta alongside he just gets found out so many times. He was excused in some ways due to a number of assists to Skunk, yet some of us today still think Song is the man to solve our defensive woes. Regardless, on today’s showing so far so positive with the DM back up position.
I thought Ozil deserves special mention too. One thing I’ve come to accept is our pundits will never praise Ozil; when you don’t hear them slating him (you know, the usual he’s looking disinterested stuff) then you know he’s quietly influencing the game. It’s like there’s a rule that says only mention Ozil when he’s not playing well. So remember, next time you don’t hear his name just know he’s having a good game 🙂
The nonsense about Coq getting a second yellow was, well, just that; nonsense. Thierry disappointed me by adding his voice to the ‘Wenger should sub him’ chorus at halftime. Of course with the kind of ref we had today and the palace crowd screaming for everything to the point it was comical (the funniest being an appeal for a penalty when Zaha clattered into Nacho’s back in the box) it was a possibility he could have been sent off. But the guy is a class act, there was a time when Koscielny ventured forward into the palace half, lost the ball, and Coq was last man in defence and made probably the best tackle of the game. Cleanly. Difficult for a man walking a ‘tight rope’.
I guess one of the ball boys for Palace showed some skill on the sidelines. Per apparently noticed. I don’t remember any of the commentaries saying anything.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/16/ball-boy-plucks-ball-out-of-nowhere-with-unreal-touch-during-crystal-palace-v-arsenal-5345752/
Chelsea bus being hammered left right and center…hahahahahahahaha
This is fun
Lets hope the Special Brew one has another meltdown tonight…
Yes Gord I saw it happening. A long ball that went out and the ball boy controlled it in one time. Per applauded for the ball boy. It happened deep in the second half
yeah down 3-0
will be interesting to hear him talk nonsense
he’ll probably have another pop at Wenger…showing who hes really afraid of…
We played some beautiful football today.
Yes it was good to see the gang of diving thugs managed by the Odious One coming to grief. Perhaps they missed their on field doctor – she really seems far too nice to have anything to do with that lot of retards.
Re our match – it was as expected a difficult away match, very competitive and badly refereed – the yellow for Coquelin followed a professional dive from Zaha (part of his education at the old Toilet?)
However, we played some superb football – which could easily have resulted in more goals and we seemed more cohesive than last week.
Well done the team & manager – good to bank our first three points!
Well done boys, high pressure high stakes game against a good opponent so three points is most welcome.
we attacked with much more intent today, if we had our shooting boots, could have won more comfortably, but that will come. once we get back to our old selves, I expect more of our attacking players to enter the fray in certain games.
Thought Palace played well at times, and as well as scoring, made for some worrying moments…..but as we never let them get ahead, they had no option but to go for us, making for a more entertaining game.
A terrible day for the AAA, Chelsea do not look themselves at all. They are too good not to improve from this, but don’t think we have heard the last of Jose and the medics, not sure who he will blame today, but JT could be in the firing line. Atkinson will not be on their Xmas card list with that result.
It’s great see Chelsea getting hammered, but Man City in this sort of early season form is something to be concerned about.
I think it was nice that Per acknowledged the young man.
—
Apparently Martinez had a good game in goal for Wolves, including one save from a shot of Akpom. The veteran Hull goaltender gave up a howler. The Express and Star also said this:
> Akpom, the Tigers’ best player by a distance, looked lively all game and continued to test Wolves in the closing stages, forcing Martinez into two smart saves from inside the box.
http://www.expressandstar.com/sport/wolverhampton-wanderers-fc/2015/08/16/wolves-1-hull-city-1-report/
the column inches tomorrow are going to be taken up by one team, and unlike last weekend, won’t be us. Fair to say Mr Terry is going to get a mention, but his removal at half timehardly improved things for them?
Wonder how they will report on a very poor performance fromman and team they seem so loath to criticise?
Gord
Most of our loan players are excelling (probably not Ya Ya), and we even have one who plays in goal.
I saw that ball boy piece of skill you mentioned. He just took the ball out of the air and had it under control in one movement. I thought the commentators ( Smith & Parry ) might have acknowledged it.
So much good football today.
Main thing to ponder for me is that if it had gone in for Palace towards the end, instead of bouncing off the guy’s head, we’d unanimously hear from the pundits- men who played the game for a long time at the highest level and are now employed to try make sense of it!- and elsewhere, that we had capitulated, are mentally weak, etc. It didn’t, so what we’re generally hearing is that we did well to grit it out.
For me that underlines emphatically how poor the logic and analysis of football routinely is. Had that ball bounced favourably, for them, off the guy’s head, we would obviously have played precisely the same game of football- with every one of the actions the same- until near the end, yet it would have been described as a completely different game of football.
That’s madness, and we all have a duty to ponder those things and fight against that unreasonable bullshit.
There’s only so much logic can do for you when passion is involved, and I would have been completely glum as opposed to completely happy as a result of one random, nobody’s-fault bounce of the ball… but still, trying is the thing; making sure you capitalise ,when the going is good and your head clear, so maybe emotions won’t make your judgements too severe when things do not go your way.
Happy days.
Gord – those who end up out of the channel usually end up on benefits in UK!!! (local humour – though it would be funnier if it were not true).
Go on then, another example of how shockingly poor the media/punditry class/twitterati routinely are at their job/hobby : why do they not challenge the foolishness which sees a booked player have to do less, apparently, to get a second booking?
Literally anything he does and it’s, oh, lucky, lucky boy. By that logic, every player on the pitch, carded or not, is lucky from the first minute to not be booked for any foul they make. But they let that narrative stand every time. They take their cue, typically, from a home crowd, as though a home crowd is reasonable? Nuts.
So we have this brouha over Coquelin today, when routinely people need to do more than he did, in total, to pick up a first yellow against us. Last year Mason, Milner, Oscar and Fellaini spring to mind; Ramires this time around.
Oh well, neither were worthy of a booking, but I’m astounded Mason didn’t seize the chance to punish us anyway. Thank f***!
@Rich I agree.
There were one or two Palace players today that made worse fouls than Coquelin. The ONLY reason it is being discussed, ahead of the Palace fouls, is that Coq’s first two were made in quick succession and the Palace players and fans went on a crusade to get him sent off.
I then watched the City/Chelsea game and in the first 10 minutes Silva made two fouls worse than any of Coq’s yet the commentators did not even mention them. Just a free kick and get on with it.
It’s not even biased – it’s just that Sky try and hype the most ordinary of things. A sending off, a fight, and big drama is what they want. After the Chelsea/City game they turned the substituion of Terry, which Mourinho explained as just a tactical decision, as the end of Terry’s career (as if we would be that lucky) and a falling out bewteen Terry and Mourniho. Only Sky could talk for 15 minutes about a non event as if it were reporting on the break out of WWIII.
jayram
For good measure, I hate this thing of any sort of grab or shirt pull being an almost certain booking. And some sort of outrage if you get away with it while on a booking.
To me, they’re all judgement calls- was it deliberate, or a quick instinctive reaction as someone moves past you at speed? Did it last for a fraction of a second or for longer? Was the player really impeded, or was he away and then dived to try get the booking? etc.
I bet you there was the sort of contact Coquelin made in that incident about a hundred times between players today. Mostly it goes unnoticed because of where it occurs and because players get on with it unless they fancy there’s a chance to get someone booked.
Pundits could help a lot by challenging these things, but they all seem so happy to go along with whatever the consensus is.
Not wrong about SKY. We played some cracking football today, in a good tense game against threatening opponents, but the sense is that something like that doesn’t make as good a ‘talking point’ as a bit of juicy (fake) controversy.
Still fuming about that Chambers red at Stoke! Headlock, ok…any grab at an opponent, a yellow. Twice. Stupid.
Rich…..there is NO place in the Laws to either judge intent or forgive an instinctive, thoughtless foul like shirt pulling. The referee must decide whether the behaviour in question is a foul according to the Laws or not, whether the player intended it or it was accidental, is of little concern to the referee…if the player’s action(s) clearly infringe the Laws due to dangerous play, vicious play or over-aggressiveness etc., then the referee MUST call it. shirt-pulling is NEVER an accident….and IF by some weird conjunction of circumstances and positioning, it actually IS an accident then the referee can ignore it but he or she must always have a word with the guilty party to advise them that a repeat of that event or similar fouling will be punished regardless.
Our season starts now Gooners!!!
The DNA of phone hacking remains. Anything that Murdoch touched was foul & morally corrupt.
Do you expect truth or honesty from Sky?
Just a little thought all our pre season games were in a form of a competition very open games , today’s game was open as well and when Arsenal play like they did today moving the ball quickly will always create chances and win.
The West Ham game was the complete opposite to the previous 5 games very tight with WH set up not lose .
Hopefully after today’s game confidences will rise and be better equipped to play against sides who shall we say park the bus .
I’ll take the 3 points against a valiant Palace team. Not vintage Arsenal, but sometimes you have to be satisfied with winning ugly. From what I’ve seen, a lot of other teams will suffer at Selhurst Park. And congrats to the Palace fans, the atmosphere there is absolutely fantastic.
Absolutely a brilliant game to watch, though the end didn’t come soon enough. Another “form” team handled at home, as we did last year, but it really was only CP so take from that what one wants I guess. Caz was tv’s man of the match but for me it was Sanchez and Ozil as well. The team started soooo fast and I figured Sanchez wouldn’t last the game but he went beyond. His energy is infectious. Ozil though is different class as well. His passes are where a player is supposed to be more than anyone I’ve seen in a while. Hopefully they begin to trust him more and more as he is the link to the rest. I still see rust on our keeper and I hope he comes around a bit from this early season dip, a season on the bench can’t have helped him but expected more. Ospina must be wondering what he did to deserve to lose his place to this version of Cech that we see. He should come good I reckon
After the Man City / Chelsea match, the pundits in the studio returned to Coquelin. By then the back room boys had collected footage of every tackle and every piece of contact Coquelin had in the match to prove the case that he was lucky to stay on the pitch.
To be fair, they should have done the same for every other player on the pitch. But this is the way the agenda for discussion is fixed. I bet this is a main topic of discussion on Match of the Day tonight.
Then next match the ref will be watching Coquelin like a hawk. Such a fix!
Almost spoils the fun of watching Mourinho beaten 3 – 0 and then telling us Chelsea were the better team in the second half. Almost, but not quite!
What does it take to prove corrupt FA, Media & PGMO? There is still evidence of a choke hold by Charlie Adams on Alexis that was totally ignored by all these cheating corrupt bastards.
An open game. My thoughts on Coquelin…he may have deserved a yellow when he took out that Palace guy on the break but he didn’t deserve his first yellow. He was late on the tackle missed the ball and the player…the Palace player eventually tripped on him but it wasn’t a yellow, IMO.
I like watching Oezil play. And as perverse as it sounds I don’t mind when he has a lower completion rate than 98% as it usually means he is trying the type of defence splitting pass that opens up defences. Other players don’t even see the opportunities.
Bellerin had some trying moments on the right but he is so quick that was usually able to make up for his errors…usually.
The CBs did great.
Mourinho’s hubris is exceptional…He tried so hard to explain how correct he was with his second half tactics vs. Man City and that Man City should have two sendings off. If you didn’t know better you would think Chelsea had won 0-3.
It would be interesting to see how Sky distort reality (i.e. place more emphasis on Coquelin than the troubles of the Odious One) tomorrow on the “Morning View”. Unfortunately I will be traveling and will miss it – but if anyone has time on their hands to watch & report it would be appreciated.
Agent Cesc!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33954640
Although we won, i have some issues with the team.
I really do not understand how the team functions sometimes. Again they caused problems for themselves. As soon as we scored, i saw the “visual stopping” of our team. We just decided to “let them have a go”, and we went “defensive”. Stupid. So much pressure on ourselves and the inevitable happened, they scored, so we had to do it all again. We scored again, and then went and did the exact same thing. When are we going to learn to be more ruthless and for one to KEEP clean sheets?
Coq should have been subbed, i must say the ref was good to us, he could have been sent off, another ref today and he would be gone. We cannot keep on depending on a little luck, we have to try to make the game bend to our wishes.
Besides that, i’m satisfied we won.
OMGARSENAL
My fault for not expressing myself too well. I don’t really mean shirt pulling to try haul a player back. More that players often, while battling for the ball or holding someone off, make some contact using their arms- particularly when just about to compete for headers- those are the ones I don’t think are always even fouls let alone bookings.
Among honest players you’ll see one get ahead of another, with the beaten man make half a grab, think better, let go immediately, and that’s the end of it; he lost the duel and hasn’t gained an advantage over the opponent. But, obviously, the game doesn’t take place among honest players.
It’s a strange sport , where one moment people can show great strength to stay on their feet and battle fairly- Ivanovic- Company today- and the next they throw themselves over at the merest touch.
I put the Coquelin one in that first category- my instant reaction was that he barely touched him, and after catching a replay on Motd I still felt the same. Zaha hadn’t been impeded; he just wanted to get Coquelin booked and sent off. Poor show
Apparently Sanogo did well coming on as a late substitute for Ajax against Willem II.
Even in my country the main football topic was the non sending off of Le Coq ,with comments from both the managers , while no comments on the Man City -Chelsea game – just the scoreline!
Had stayed up to listen to the Moaning one’s comments ,and was not surprised by his observances and utterances – true to form . Wasted my time for looking for some semblance of sportmanship and truth.
This Jose was funnier – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgQld_0vyEU
Killing two birds……
Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, ‘How old was your husband?’
’98,’ she replied: ‘Two years older than me’
‘So you’re 96,’ the undertaker commented.
She responded, ‘Hardly worth going home, is it?’
LOL Brickfields
It’s clear there’s now a campaign to taint Coq as a dirty player so the refs keep an ‘eye’ on him. Don’t be surprised to see Coq sent off for most innocuous of challenges next week. We’re talking of barging someone off the ball offences at worst here, but listening to the media one could be excused to think he was guilty of shawcrossque tackles. We saw ramires stamp on Santi and Ozil 3 times in the CS two weeks ago, but those tackles were never mentioned, during and after the match, by the pundits. Yet they could have resulted in the player on the receiving end in missing a few games. Last season we saw one of the worst tackles on a football pitch the WWE like choke on Alexis by that stoke thug, and not much was made of it. I’m pretty sure Coq’s tackles weren’t even the worst ones this weekend, but will we ever get to find out about the others? No. Coz all the focus is Coq. And yet when we say there’s an agenda against Arsenal some accuse us of being paranoid.
That’s why I voiced my disappointment at Mr Henry coming out with the Wenger need to sub Coq line at halftime analysis. I know he can’t change everything by himself but at least he could try to defend the boy. Keeping quiet might be a better option than to come out with that line. He should realise that as an Arsenal legend what he says will carry more weight in the media, like him saying Arsenal need to sign 4 world class players, we need to sign Benzema, etc. At the moment I feel he’s doing more harm than good to Arsenal with his comments. Even the manager was forced to respond to his comments directly regarding Benzema a couple of weeks ago. Of course he’s entitled to his opinion but as a self confessed Arsenal fan I feel he should know better. I respected him as a player, he was great for us, and I really wish he’d not sold his soul to sky.
n paper, this should be a squad poised and ready to make mince-meat of most if not all of the opposition. Speaking of the “if not all” category, a newly determined Man City disembowelled Chelsea, so we at least stand above the Chavs for now, but that’s a far-cry from the braggadocio with which we opened the season. If anything, Chelsea’s early-season struggles throw down a gauntlet of the transfer-variety.
There were a lot of signs of encouragement, with good creative play from Cazorla, Ozil and Alexis. But at times, things look far from tight at the back. It feels like a lot of tight games may not go Arsenal’s way unless they shape up a bit in terms of discipline, focus and being clinical.
However, three points were required yesterday, and that’s what the team got, at a place where it is traditionally hard to earn them. So credit to the side for that.
I was watching the game at Croatian Sport Klub. The commentator said:
-Coquelin was lucky not to be sent off,
-Arsenal were a much better side than their opponents and
-Giroud was fouled but the referee didn’t give it.
I agree with all three statements above.
Coquelin has to play risky in order to cover Cazorla. That may turn out to be a problem if Mason Of Old turns up for the next game.
When it comes to Oilers’ derby, whilst it was a pleasure to watch The Disgusting One being shredded to pieces, the referees did show that Fernandinho and Toure will have a licence to kill like they had in 2013-14. City are the flavour of the season, it seems. My guess is that’s because they spent 49 millions on an English youngster who is yet to reach 10-goal-mark.
With more quality down the league, closer results it might be harder to spot the PGMOBs anointed club but as Josif highlights above, perhaps not that hard!
The team from the United Emirates playing in the UK for all the millions or billions they have spent were light at CB last season with Kompany (and Toure in midfield) struggling for form and through injury, at AFC we understand how losing key players can impact but with that budget that was a club with no excuse. though you don’t hear much about that from the meedjah or the AAA sheeple. why they never played Sagna at CB is a mystery, perhaps they just wanted the hopelessly overpriced Mangala to settle down and start to catch up with the likes of Chambers 🙂
Meanwhile I wonder if any hack dwarves will capable of looking at Morinho’s squad building (don’t laugh!) attempts which appear to have been as successful as his first stint at Gazprom
Are the older more expensive replacements for Bertrand, Lukaku, Mata etc. really that good an investment for the club? Has Roman no self respect 😉
Kind of agree Para, we did seem vulnerable just after scoring, just after half time and at the end. Not sure if it is concentration levels or Palace playing well, but don’t think we have fully hit our stride yet, offensively or defensively.
There are refs who may have sent Coq off, I think Mason and Per/Wenger handled this one well, but have seen far worse perpetrated against us with no cards and no media onslaught.
The concerted attack on Coq is tragic. These corrupt biased bastards who broadcast the game & publish offal to the masses have an agenda to destabilise our defensive midfielder. They cannot stomach Arsenals success without ‘spending the fcuking money’.
There is no doubt that Coq will see red cards soon. It is time to make money on it. Bet the Coq to get 2 yellows in each match & just be glad if you lose. If you win, it will help drown the sorrow.
There is still the question of how corrupt the media is & how they collude with the FA & PGMO to mould results. ‘Mould’ is probably the apt term for this group.
Just a quick note to acknowledge that some of last week’s naysayers have returned with more positive comments this time. Excellent! I look forward to some constructive debates over the coming weeks. But, as ever, we shouldn’t read too much into one win or one defeat.
I always feel that Arsenal’s technically complex style is fairly high maintenance. We need some time to get into our stride, and are also disrupted by too many midweek fixtures which limits time on the training ground.
However, looking good for the Liverpool game. I wonder if they will have a go or will resort to bus parking?
Seeing the Pardew interview, makes me wonder why that is not bringing the game disrepute. He spoke to the referee at half time with a view to getting Coquelin sent off. It is certainly not a sporting act. The FA must act & nip it in the bud. A heavy fine & ban is in order.
A major topic of this thread is Coquelin. London24 sough to prove that Coquelin is better this year than last via “statistics”. Here is my rebuttal.
London24 has a headline, “Stats show Arsenal’s unsung hero is even better than last season despite Crystal Palace tightrope”. Which is about Coquelin.
http://www.london24.com/sport/football/clubs/arsenal/stats_show_arsenal_s_unsung_hero_is_even_better_than_last_season_despite_crystal_palace_tightrope_1_4197046
Stats? You are doing stats on 2 games? Are you nuts?
Early in the article is a graphic, which I will convert to a table:
Tackles Won______49 60
Aerial Duels Won_64 67
Total Duels Won__55 61
Pass Completion__86 89
The 3 latter pairs of numbers all look close, so lets start with the first pair of numbers, Tackles Won.
Last season, Coquelin won 3.17 tackles per 90 minutes and lost 3.28 tackles per 90 minutes (according to article), and 3.17/(3.17+3.28)=0.49. So that might agree with the graphic, but assumes that there are only 2 outcomes to a tackle (win or lose). You
can’t “tie” in a tackle?
Working with tackles per game is a natural thing to consider, as how many games are in a season is artificial. We want to consider each game as a Poisson trial (mean equals variance) with a mean number of tackles won of 3.17, subject to the total number of tackle won across 38 (or however 90 minute periods he played) trials being the same as Francis obtained last year. We are kind of expecting that the number of tackles won to mostly be 3 (integer closest 3.17), but it could be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and numbers higher than 6 becoming unlikely.
We need to go through the same for our 3.28 tackles lost per game.
We have 38 (or so) pairs of numbers, tackles won and tackles lost, each game gets one of each. The question we have to ask, is how unlikely is it that we can draw 2 games out of that set of 38, and find that the average (over the 2 games) tackles won is 4.5 and the average tackles lost is 3.
What we are going to find, is that it is actually quite easy to pick 2 games out of particular set of 38, to obtain averages of 4.5 and 3. Our conclusion has to be, that there is no statistical evidence that Coquelin is playing any better than last year on the basis of 2 games played this season.
And that analysis is to be repeated for the other 3 sets of numbers, all of which were much closer together than this tackles won analysis.
We found out 2 things: there is no statistical evidence showing Coquelin is any different from last year, and reporters don’t know how to do statistics.
I think it is too early to say whether there is a concerted effort to brand Coquelin one thing or another. In all likelihood,by next week, the story will have changed and the donkeys in the press will be braying about another thing. If memory serves, Vieira had a great deal of discipline related issues early on but he persevered by gaining the respect of his peers and the newspapers AND he scared the hell out of other players. Nothing is going to be handed to Coquelin; he will have to earn it over time. That said the first yellow shouldn’t have been and the crowd and the opposition players were certainly trying to get him sent off, yesterday.