By Walter Broeckx
Some changes in the starting line up to cover for the injury of Monreal and Lichtsteiner coming in at what looks to be a 4 at the back starting line up. Our beach showing we are rather thin now on first team players…
Arsenal starting with : Leno, Lichtsteiner, Sokratis, Koscielny, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Guendouzi, Torreira, Ozil, Lacazette, Aubameyang.
On the beach: Cech, Nketiah, Ramsey, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Elneny, Willock.
Brighton leaning back and letting Arsenal have the ball. A long ball to Aubameyang who lobs the keeper but a super save from the keeper claws it under his crossbar before it can cross the line. Arsenal attacking the Brighton goal and high pressure from Torreira wins the ball back just outside the penalty area. Lacazette wins it back again and twists and turns and then gives it to Aubamyeang on the left who puts it in the far corner. GOAL! 0-1 to The Arsenal after 7 minutes. A cool finish!
Taylor then giving an advantage when a Brighton player is offside?????? What is the advantage when you are under pressure, Anthony? Luckily only a corner comes from it that is cleared. Taylor letting a clear body block on Özil go? The tone is set it seems. Arsenal still 0-1 in front after 15 minutes.
Lichtsteiner with some good offensive movements but he can’t find a team mate on two promising occassions. Arsenal dominating proceedings having 70% of the ball so far. Brighton then with an attack that ends up in the hands of Leno but a Brighton player kicks the ball out of his hands and think he scored. That is even too much for Taylor who cancels it for a foul on the keeper. Leno had him in both hands. Taylor trying to make up by giving Brighton a corner when the ball clearly came from their player… luckily nothing comes from it. Guendouzi and Özil will not get a foul when they go down it seems. Arsenal losing the ball results in a counter but Leno saves the shot with ease. Torreira with a great ball to Aubameyang but the keeper with an excellent save to the low shot. Still 0-1 after 30 minutes.
Özil with a back header to Aubameyang but a defender can just put enough pressure on him to miss the control. Arsenal get a corner and when it goes past the goal Brighton launch a counter. Lichtsteiner trying to head the ball away makes it a perfect pass to Locadia who is one on one with Leno and simply taps it in. In stead of being 2 or 3 up we find ourselves with a 1-1 score after 36 minutes.
A dangerous looking free kick from Xhaka only results in a corner. A tacjke with studs showing towards Guendouzi results in a yellow card against Montoya. After completely dominating the first half we have a 1-1 sore at the interval because we gave away a cheap goal and let in a very, very stupid goal after having had a corner at the other end.
Iwobi came on at the start of the second half in the place of Özil. Lacazette with a shot that is blocked and then Lichtsteiner with a cross but a defender first on the ball. At the other end Leno turns a low shot in to a corner. Leno catches it but also clashes with the head of Murray. But he can continue. Without Özil we are not as dominant however as in the first half and we certainly can’t find our attacker not as good in the opening 10 minutes. A cynical foul from Murray on Guendouzi earns the first a yellow card. A lucky bounce almosts brings a chance for Brighton but the striker shoots wide. Still 1-1 after 60 minutes.
After 60 minutes Ramsey comes on for Lacazette. Aubameyang almost at the end of a long ball but the keeper was first on the ball. Arsenal still with most of the ball but no real open chances as a result. After 69 minutes Maitland-Niles comes on for Koscielny. Xhaka dropping back it seems with Lichtsteiner and Sokratis? Maitland-Niles and Kolasinac on the flanks. Ramseys to Maitland-Niles in a promising position but the control lets him down and the cross is cut out. And then a combination between Ramsey and Aubameyang is cleared at the last second. Still 1-1 after 75 minutes.
Maitland-Niles having trouble with his control a few times. Brighton almost with a chance after a long ball but the lob goes over. Taylor gives no foul for Arsenal and Brighton can counter but the shot from Locadia goes wide. Kolasinac gets a yellow card for protesting the decision. A attempted clearane from Brightong is blocked by Iwobi and the ball goes just wide. 3 minutes of extra time.
A dominant first half performance and lots of possession after the break but nothing to show for it. I cannot understand why we took off Özil unless he was injured because without him we looked without ideas and could create as good as nothing.
Drat, they scored.
Come on Gunners, get that lead back!
Is this yellow to Montoya about the Guendouzi treatment?
If bitter Smith alludes to it being redworthy then it’s worth two, Taylor can only be bent.
Come on Arsenal, let’s get a goal or two.
We all know Taylor is a cheat but hats off, he’s screwing us over even more than usual
We all know Taylor is a cheat but hats off, he’s screwing us over even more than usual
Very poor performance in the 2nd half
We were lucky to get a draw.
Anthony Taylor. If I did my job as badly as he does his, I’d be unemployed AF.
Of course, with PGMO and Arsenal, the the whole idea is to be so utterly tripe that our players get maimed, decisions don’t go our way, and we finish lower than we should by the end of the season. Then they’ll turn around and tell us it’s our fault.
The weird thing is that I still haven’t figured out why… I thought it was Arsene Wenger, but now I’m just absolutely befuddled.
Absolutely abysmal performance in the second half.It was the worst ive seen from Arsenal for a long while.We brought Niles and Iwobi to try and influence the game but they were both woeful.No doubt the usual will come on and blame the referee but the reality is that the players need to take a good hard look at them selves if they think that performance is good enough.
That was a bloody awful display, very little quality after the first 10 minutes and worse still very little effort. We passed the ball backwards more than a rugby team, played virtually the whole game at walking pace and showed no urgency or desire to win the game. I would fine them all a weeks wages, that display was just not acceptable.
Menace had asked for some specific details after I pushed a bunch of refereeing statistics onto Andrew’s last article on refereeing statistics.
https://untold-arsenal.com/archives/73490
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Pitty so few positive comments here.
in order to win that such a game, you choose to take your playmaker and your second best goalscorer out: there must be a rationale behind that sort of decision, but it sure is too subtle and clever for a simple football fan like me to understand it …
@ LE GALL
Quite right. That’s why highly qualified, experienced professionals are paid a lot of money. I wouldn’t question a surgeon just because I’d watched Casualty a few times so why would I question our manager?
No doubt that it was a poor overall performance today, after such a promising start. The goal we conceded was a ridiculous pantomime of errors and most of our team looked to be below-par and sluggish. However, I do not join in the harsh condemnation of our players, as they are human and cannot be expected to perform constantly like efficient machines.
Also, a sub-standard performance by the team does not disguise or justify yet another biased or incompetent show of refereeing. I wonder how much the realisation that they can be kicked and hacked down by an opposing team who are granted such impunity by the referee affects our players’ confidence and appetite for the game. We already have Holding and Mhkitaryan injured by deliberate fouls which went unpunished, and other players may naturally be deterred from performing at their best. Most of the present squad will have witnessed the repeated harm done to Jack Wilshere, who was mostly simply too good for inferior opponents, but paid the price by being constantly assaulted.
A fair referee today would have given Arsenal a number of additional free-kicks, would have booked more opponents and possibly deterred them from continuing to foul. Even a below-par Arsenal were different class than Brighton and might well have won, so as to fulfil the cliché that gaining points from poor performances and grinding out results is supposedly the mark of all successful teams and championship contenders. The award of a corner to Brighton instead of the goal-kick to Arsenal which was obvious was just one of the most garing examples of Taylor’s incompetence or bias.
Off topic did anyone see the fail which Luiz committed which wasn’t deemed a penalty by Chelsea supporting Mr Atkinson ? It was a stone wall penalty even the BBC rolling text of the game couldn’t believe it .
Arsenal garnering only 38 points out of the 57 points on offer to dropped 19 points in the process halfway through in the season’s campaign in the PL this season in comparison to the Totts who garnered 45 points during the same period to top Arsenal with 7 points in the table is tantamount to mediocre performance by the Gunners. What do the Gunners and Emery think they are doing? Get a top four place table finish like that this season on 72 points i.e. if the 36 points they managed to garnered in the first half of the season is doubled at the end of the season will enabled them to play in the Ucl next season? If that what Emery and the Gunners are thinking and have resigned themselves to achieve this season at Arsenal, I tell them that is mediocrity thinking by them. Emery should spare me or us Gooners any bullshit injury crisis talks already known to us Gooners to be reigning at the Gunners defence as of now. But will that be the Christmas gift of dropping 2 points at home to Wolves, 3 points at away to So’ton and 2 points to Brighton today at away (7points in total) be the Christmas gifts he has in his hand to give us Gooners? Well, I don’t know of other Gooners if they’ll collect them. But as for me, let him keep his gifts. I don’t want them neither do I need them. But if he cannot do the job properly and very successfully for Arsenal. Let him hand in his resignation letter to Stan Kroenke first thing tomorrow morning. So that Arsenal will appoint a caretaker manager with immediate effect before Arsenal play against Liverpool at away on Saturday in the PL.
My error calculation correction reads thus; I ment to type 76 points and not the 72 points that I erroneously typed in my last comment posting. For, 38 points times 2 is = 76 points.
Gloom, gloom and more gloom. And most of you are not even farmers.
Being low on my Caution table is similar to being top of The (sweet) FA’s Fair Play League. But, my point structure is a bit different (I haven’t tried optimising it), but Caution in my table involves the issuing of penalties and needed player treatments.
If a player requires treatment, it is likely that a foul has happened. But, my recent examination of the treatment data shows that by and large 😈 Mike Riley’s clowns almost ignore treatments. It is clunky and error prone for me to try and guess if a foul was called in relation to a treatment (if someone knows of a source of foul data for teams which puts a time stamp on every foul, that would help).
So, a measure of how many fouls a team should be getting, comes from the inverse Treatment league table.
9
12 13 13 15 16
16 17 18 18
19
20 20 20 21
21 21 21 21 23
Median=19
10
7 6 6 4 3
3 2 1 1
0
1 1 1 2
2 2 2 2 4
0 1 1 1 1
1 2 2 2
2
2 2 3 3
4 4 6 6 7
MAD=2
The Top-6 teams with iTreatments less than 17 are Chel$ea (12) and Man$ity (15). Liverpool is at 18, Arsenal is at 20, ManU is at 21 andthe Spuds are at 23.
Liverpool basically inflicts as many treatments on opposition as any team in the league. Why do they have a Caution so low? The same works for the Spuds; except that instead of having an exceptionally low Caution – they have a low Caution and an excpetionally high iTreatments. Maybe Man$ity and Chel$ea are different by philosophy? But the output of my iTreatments is actually a 3 vector, and changing the sorting rule might show something else.
But looking at how many minutes teams have to play short-handed due to treatments, or how many substitutions are required because of treatments doesn’t mean anything; if 😈 Mike Riley’s clowns don’t care about the well being of the players on the field.
How many Arsenal player have picked up injuries, without a foul being called? Or if it was a foul, it’s only a yellow? But I think that we typically get hit by this injury without it even being called a foul.
So why doesn’t the disciplinary process not pick this up, as if it isn’t a foul; they should be allowed to look at it? To me, it that The (sweet) FA doesn’t care for the player’s well-being as well.
Or, both groups have a problem with Arsenal, or a combination of the two.
Can’t say that we played very well. The team looked like it was running in mud. I, too, thought it strange that Ozil was substituted. My impression was that no one was making runs for him to play the ball to. Then after he was substituted Emery put on Ramsay…who is known for clever runs…Ah well.
On another point, it is clear as the day is long that Guendouzi is being targeted by the other teams. Perhaps because of his youth…He is clearly NOT being afforded any protection by the referees. That is two matches in a row where he has been stamped on…on multiple occasions. Torreira, too, was manhandled without sanction…he just gets on with it, though.
It’s a learning curve, though, and my hope is that the team continues to grow and learn how UA wants them to play. Watching Liverpool play…they know where their teammates are supposed to be and move accordingly…they don’t react, they move as a unit…That is where we want to be… A big game on Saturday…
The fouling on Guendouzi deserved a red. The foul on Leno when he held the ball with both hands on the floor was also a red. In both cases Taylor bottled it.
There is no point in watching football when the officiating is so poor. In the Fulham game, Mitrovic backed into Siass while holding on to him on the ref’s blind side but in full vision of the assistant. Siass was given a yellow card for being fouled!! The resultant free kick advantage ended up in the net. It is that sort of PGMOL stupidity that clearly shows their state as ‘unfit for purpose’.
I am not surprised by our attitude in the light of the fouling. It is not what football should endure.
Our second half performance was quite below par , without much creative play. Hope we move on and go on to inflict on Liverpool , their first EPL defeat of the season.
Up the Gunners !
agree with gord, menace and john l. very disturbing and sad. I m affraid var will not solve this big big problem and I only hope that the supporters stand by manager and squad. that being said: COYG!
Menace the gift that keeps on giving..You really are turning into a Special Legend..
“I am not surprised by our attitude in the light of the fouling. It is not what football should endure.” Even halfwits would chuckle at that gem..It has to go down as one of your best todate.
nick the racist troll is back I see. Why don’t you toddle off to LeGrove where you belong.
ref this, ref that, …one of the poorest showing that i have witnessed from both the team and manager; Guendouzi was having a day off and should have been substituted quite early on in the second half.Bizarre substitutions beginning with Lacazette…Frankly this team does not need poor refs and other officials to screw its performance…it is quite capable of doing it alone !
We can’t afford to ‘play’ like this against L’Pool.
I hope that Unai really perseveres with Ozil on Saturday at Anfield. Otherwise I can see a heavy defeat from the League leaders.
For a change, when the German was subbed against Brighton, we seemed to lose our way. 😉
@mikey, youre not qualified to question the coach, but you’re qualified can question the ref. You would sound more believable if you didn’t question either or you questioned both. I can see the ref conspiracy theorists are still at it.
For me, I’m optimistic that Emery will eventually get this team to the promised land, on the way we will have some bad performances and be punished(like today) sometimes though we’ll escape with the points after a bad performance. But my hope is that such bad performances would be a rare occurrence.
As for the refs, I’m not one to cook up flimsy excuses for a team of well paid professionals