By Walter Broeckx
Starting XI for Arsenal: Cech, Bellerin, Koscielny, Monreal, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Xhaka, Wilshere, Özil, Alexis, Giroud
On the beach: Ospina, Chambers, Kolasinac, Coquelin, Elneny, Welbeck, Lacazette.
A good start from Arsenal, very concentrated and making sure no silly mistakes costing us some goals in the opening minutes. A very closed match with the first shot after some 7 minutes from Alexis but the keeper made a good low save to his right. Iwobi being very lively early on but no real goal chances so far. Orlando with a nasty kick on Wilshere. A cross from West Ham finds Arnautovic who scored but he was clearly offside. Still 0-0 after 15 minutes.
Losing my stream for some 5-6 minutes and no score when I found a new one. Don’t know if I missed anything. Arsenal having the ball most of the time but no real penetration in the West Ham penalty area. I see Moss not giving many fouls in favour of Arsenal when players have collisions. Giroud being clearly pushed by a defender but Moss sees nothing. Özil with a clever ball to Alexis who gives it to Iwobi who takes a shot but it crashes back off the post. His next shot goes well off target. Still 0-0 after 30 minutes.
Giroud just not making contact with a cross from Maitland-Niles and the ball goes wide at the far post. Moss penalises the slightest of touch from Giroud in the West Ham penalty area. Typical Moss one could say. Maitland-Niles with a overhead kick that splashes against the hands of a West Ham defender who pretends to been hit in the face. Clever from him. The Arsenal attack is stopped after that of course. A deliberate foul in Wilshere by Lanzini sees him rightfully booked. Arsenal pressing near the end of the first half but can’t really get through the packed West Ham defence. Xhaka with two shots from distance but both times wide of the target. No score in the first 45 minutes. And as I don’t know for a period midway in the first half that might have had all the action a rather closed match.
Rain falling down heavily at the start of the second half. Arnautovic with an attempted lob at the start of the second half but over the Arsenal goal. A quick attack from Arsenal over Iwobi to Alexis but a defender just in time to block Giroud. A long attack is half cleared and the shot from Xhaka is stopped by the West Ham keeper. Maitlan-NIles with a cross but the header from Giroud goes just wide. Arsenal creating more but always a defender in the way at the last moment. Özil on the end of a loose ball but he shoots wide. Arsenal having all the ball and 15 shots to 2 but still 0-0 after 60 minutes.
Cech then almost with a mistake as he completely messes up a cross but a good stop on the line from Koscielny prevents the undeserved lead for West Ham. Again Maitland-Niles with a cross to Giroud who heads it to Wilshere but he blasts it over the crossbar from 7 meters out with his right foot. After 70 minutes Iwobi leaves the field and Welbeck comes on. Alexis with a free kick but the keeper pushes it out of his goal. Still 0-0 after 75 minutes.
Arsenal pressing more and more but West Ham defending in big numbers and having lots of body’s between the shooter and the goal line. After 82 minutes Lacazette enters the field in the place of Alexis. He can’t find Giroud with his first pass. The last pas almost everytime not finding the right speed on the wet pitch. Arsenal then giving the ball away close to their own penalty area and finally Westham have a shot that crashes off the crossbar bounces in font of the goalline and it then goes out for a goal kick. That would have been undeserved but that is how football sometimes goes.
A rather disapointing match ends with a 0-0 score after the final free kick from Özil hits the wall. Arsenal only take 2 points from a possible 6 from their two away games. But the good thing is we didn’t give the match away in the opening minutes this time.
The last three games have seen us have 66 shots resulting in two goals and two points. Our opponents have had just 20 against us and scored four goals and collected five points. Man City have had fewer shots than us and have collected maximum points. What does this say I wonder?
Turned off at the final whistle.There’s no need to listen to the same diatribe from pundits and manager.
20 plus shots 3 on target.
Not good enough.
I am normally very positive but tonight I am feeling the opposite. Our shooting is diabolical at the moment, I reckon I could do better and I am 75 years old!
Something is playing in our players back of mind, stopping them at critical moments.
At least the U28s won their third round FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday. Two one was the score, no further information as yet
Absolutely pathetic display…..not a single cross, no running behind the defense…..same style of play from start to finish. Everyone playing through the middle how many times did you se me acres of space on the wings, players standing free but no….we play through the middle. When we have best headers in the league. Great.
Not at our best, early goals and hand rakes maybe on minds, and lacking a locksmith of defensive teams, really miss Santi Caz at times, food for thought for Wenger if he wants to play wengerball more than they are doing this season.
Not a disaster, no lack of effort, but pretty underwhelming in terms of match winning quality, associated over time with wengers teams
I thought Maitland Niles had a good game. Having said that, he has no left foot, so why play him at left back? We must be the worst team in the league at crossing the ball. Koscielny is fast becoming a liability. Could have given it away at the end. Good to see Jack
Watched the entire game in Florida on Hispanic TV.
The most exciting bit of the game was the commentary.
I was trying to follow the LiveScore commentary, but I had the Guardian commentary as well.
There were at least two times, when Guardian commentary mentioned how dreary the game was (or similar words).
I am guessing that they were looking for instances of:
_goals
_injuries
Being a scoreless draw, there were no goals. As far as this Arsenal fan was concerned, there didn’t appear to be any injuries.
So yes, it is entirely possible that the game could appear boring to some.
What fan of football, watches a game to see someone be injured? And I will guess that if such fans exist, what they really want are the complex bone fractures where at least one bone comes out through the skin. So there is bleeding and the possibility of infection, and possibly at some point amputation might be needed. Who needs this kind of fan at a football game? Why would medja people want to write to attract this kind of person?
So, on the surface, the medja types want goals to be scored. But they also want all the illegal contact (grabbing, ball not within playing distance, contact not shoulder to shoulder, tackling leg near knee height, and all the other crap which causes injuries). By and large what this comes from, is that the league is composed of too many players who have few skills. And the only way they can compete, is to CHEAT.
England has a dearth of qualified coaches, and so most people learning football get the pundit crap of fame coach. And when you get to late teens, it is unusual to find English players that have any skill that is legal. And so England usually get kicked out of tournaments early, because none of their players know how to play football. All they know is how to cheat at football.
So, when a skillful English (or Welsh) player comes along, what happens?
OppositionManager: You know that XXX is skillful?
OppositionPlayer: Yes
OppositionManager: You know that XXX has had broken bones in his right foot?
OppositionPlayer: Yes, I’ve read that.
OppositionManager: You make sure you stamp on his right foot as many times as you can in the game!
And that is English football. You’ve got too many players with not enough skills, and the only thing they can do is cheat. And they are backed up by a bunch of dinosaurs at PGMO and The (sweet) FA disciplinary committee who want to continue to have too many people that cannot play football, play football. Supporting alexanderhenry, Mark Mywurdz and other geniuses.
Yes, I would like to mark them. Can I use a D10 cat to do so, starting with your residence? Preferably when you are inside sleeping?
And then Arsenal are blessed to have a hugely skillful player come here (Santi Cazorla). But there are lots of other players here almost as skillful, and they get ragged on because they don’t kick players, they don’t elbow players in the head, they seen them for two seconds on TV and they weren’t running, so they must be lazy, and so one. But Santi is special, he is one of the few players who is happy whenever he is playing. He didn’t get hurt by an EPL player, but I will bet you that the player who got him, is a player with the same lack of mentality that is found almost everywhere in the English system. If the other team has a skillful player, you must injure him to get him off the pitch.
Managed to watch the second half on an internet stream. We should have won this one ,with all that possession ,but lacked the width and the speed to hit them.
At the same time we could have lost it at the death , so not too much complaints from me . Just hope we get back to winning ways soon .
Up the Gunners !
Gord – you are so right about the mode of fouling. Jack has had issues with his feet & he had no protection from Moss. The tackles he had to suffer were dire & aimed at injuring him. Usually Alexis is the player who is targetted, but Jack was certainly on the State Aid radar when it came to stamping.
When we lost on Saturday at WHU what struck me hour dour, how boring and how negative everything about the game was.
Yesterday those same feelings about the game manifested themselves. For one reason or another the arena lacks everything that football in the entertainment industry should provide.
Going back to Saturday our flair players just couldn’t create ok I know the TV angles at the stadium distort things but as we all know tight grounds where the players are close to the supporters feels different so in the case of what Tony calls the taxpayers stadium where the supporters are a fair distance away must create the polar opposite to the players.
There is no doubt we should have got something out of the game on Saturday. There is no doubt you should have won last night but for me I think the configuration of the stadium plays a significant part in what happens at WHU add that to how Moyles sets teams up then you have the perfect storm.
Several deliberate fouls on Jack and Sanchez. Gironde repeatedly held by one or two defenders and deliberately elbowed in the face.
No action from Moss.
Am I surprised? No. It’s just what I expected. At least he didn’t send Xhaka off.
I am surprised that UA, with its keen, observant eyes, hasn’t noticed 2 penalties that should have been awarded to Arsenal; or 3 blatant red cards to West Ham that were not shown.
@ Mike T
Apart from the fact that we didn’t play on Saturday (we played on Sunday); and the fact that we didn’t lose (we drew); and the fact we didn’t play WHU (we played Southampton), what on earth are you talking about?
Arsenal 62, please don’t go there…its really boring.
Mike T, I noticed the same, and agree with you, something was wrong with the stadium configuration, and the whole west ham team sitting back, taking away even more ground by placing their defenders on, made it hard to go for wings and cross.
They are a boring team under moyes.
@Yassine, yes they are a boring team but their main goal is to keep their top flight status. Having said that you would think they would show more ambition at home but of course they beat Chelsea and now they’ve got a draw against us so that’s 4 points more than most people anticipated.
Mike T , If it was just one game then I would accept your premise . However it isn’t , this has been the way to play Arsenal for years, your ex manager was a past master at it funneling our play to the brick wall of Terry and Ivanovic or Cahill . Wenger has had many years to come up with a method to beat it and hasn’t yet and is never likely too .
We need fresh ideas and different on field tactics to break these teams out of their comfort zone but we just keep playing the same way into their hands.
Never would have said it better.
Errrrm guys, goonermikey especially. Mike T is a Chelsea fan that regularly posts on untold, so when he says “we” he means Chelsea. Im always glad to see his posts though, always informative, unlike some
I did not see the game or any part of it.
I note, however, people commenting that we had no width and did not try to get to the byline enough.
However, if they played a backline of 6, as opposed to the usual 4, or even 5, does that not mean there was simply no room to do so?
As Chel$ki and Manure also park the bus when they are at home against us,then that seems to be the current level of ambition throughout the league.
I agree that AW has not been able to find a way or the players, to really get at these defences.
Pep has, but he does it by boring the opposition to a soporific state, by passing the ball around, so the gaps appear.
It seems that this year November is coming late.
“”Pep has, but he does it by boring the opposition to a soporific state, by passing the ball around, so the gaps appear””
What do you think we have been doing for the past few years . ?
Only when we do it not only do the players go to sleep but most of the crowd too.
City do it by moving the ball quickly to players that run into gaps created by the movement of other players.
We do it slowly in an attempt to keep possession and rarely risking a final ball to static players surrounded by defenders.
Last night Giroud was surrounded by 3 players but did anyone push forward to try and draw their defence and drag it around so that they faced their own goal ? No we just passed it around in front of them.
@Gord,
there is truth to what you say.
Hoewever, I am frustrated that now to beat or tie a game against Arsenal, parking the bus is the strategy that works quite well.
We’ve tied 3 games and lost 5, teams have figured out a way to disrupt Wengerball. They all know how refs are reacting and are putting it into their equation.
The one big positive I get out of the game is Jack. He is the one capable of a surge, of fighting a ball back and ripping through the defence. Hope he stays fit and gets more lethal, gets a better understanding with Ozil, Lacazette and Sanchez.
@Chris
Caching. Jack ,it appears, Is Back.
Sadly ,he is a Wengerboy. He just loves that centre channel too much.
BUT he plays with a pace more akin to citeh, and so does manage to fray defensive nerves. Hence he will get hacked to death.
Again
#SAVE JACK
Lol, what did jack do yesterday? I watched the entire match and I struggle to remember any move he made, worth all this hype.
I read someone post that man utd and Chelsea parked the bus against us at their home, really? I seem to remember Chelsea running roughshod over us last season, winning 3-1, man utd pressed us mainly, we managed to nick a 1-1 draw. This season the match at Stamford bridge was even. Maybe we need a bit of humility as fans. The way some arsenal fans behave, reminds me of the 2008 US elections, where Obama was leading Clinton in the democratic party primaries, yet in a feat of deluded arrogance, Clinton’s team was offering Obama the vice presidential slot.
Moyes seems to have a pretty abhorrent approach to management. Jack sustained that horrendous injury when one of moyes’s players was seemingly free to assault him for man u (how that didn’t merit a red card or at least a retrospective ban is a mystery) He basically tried to turn man u into a version of crazy gang era wimbeledon and now he’s doing the same thing at west ham with Arnautovic as a glorified john fashanu. It wont be long before he gets found out. I thought maitland-niles did well to be fair and no objections to his right footednees, Lauren was a pretty good left footed right back if I recall correctly. One odd thing though, has anyone else noticed that Iwobi often just stops still and seems to forget the games going on around him, really highlighted for me when he hit the post last night and could have been making himself available for hector who had collected the loose ball but seemed to be consumed by his thoughts instead!
@Amos
Humility may have a place in American politics. May even have a place in English football, amongst participants.
The Fans? I think there is very little room for that . Jack is both player and fan. I suggest you watch him again, and again, and again, until you find something to be positive about.
My humble opinion