GoonerKent

END THE SEASON (Arsenal-Brighton reaction)

It has been real, it has been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun. In the most embarrassing way possible, Arsenal bowed out of the title race at home by getting dogwalked by Brighton 3-0 . Completely outclassed, outworked, outthought, outfought by a superior Brighton team. Just embarrassing from start to finish by the supposed title challengers.

THOUGHTS ON THE MATCH:

Arteta might actually just be an idiot: He has done well to get us to this point but I am starting to think this guy might just be a clown. Arteta went out and played the same starting XI he did against Newcastle which is all fine and dandy when you look at it high-level, but when you are playing an up and running, physical Newcastle side where you might need a Jorginho to bring some control to a game. But when you are at home and are playing a Brighton side that plays similar to how Arsenal do with their high press – build from the back style, you might want to try something different than playing a Xhaka-Jorginho pivot. The Brighton midfield trio of Gilmour, Gross and Mac Allister absolutely took the piss out of the Arsenal midfield today by their inability to ever lose the ball, nip and tuck fouls to stagger the Arsenal play and pretty much overrunning the unathletic immobile duo of Xhaka and Jorginho. Arsenal could never get a grip in the center of the pitch and Arsenal paid the price. If only we had a more athletic, phyiscally imposing and simply better player on our bench that could help (We did, and his name is Thomas Partey).
We need to have a discussion on Saka: This has become really really bad. This man hasn’t turned up for what feels like a month now, essentially when we have needed him most, he has completely non-existent and nobody says or does anything about it. For example, you could make the argument that he was the worst player on the pitch but somehow he was the only one that didn’t get subbed off. This protection of Saka is strange and is definitely warrants questions that need to be asked of why he gets so much protection from the media and Arteta. Supposedly, our best player but doesn’t show up when we need him most, weird.
Arsenal bottled it, straight up: I don’t want to hear anything about City, Arsenal weren’t supposed to be here or anything like that. In a 7 game stretch where you play Liverpool, West Ham, Southampton, City, Chelsea Newcastle, and Brighton and you only win 2 of the games, nah, I’m not sorry, you choked. You want to win the title, how about you win some games, how about that? You want to win the title but get slapped up by your main rivals home and away? Nah, not how it works. Even the Klopp Liverpool sides that lost out to City, they at least defended their home fixture and gave City something to worry about, we just continually get cooked by City home and away, it doesn’t matter. So high level, of course you can say Arsenal didn’t choke cause we were never supposed to be here but that is now how this works. You perform the way we did in the last 7 games, win 2/7 games, dropping 12 points out of a 21 possible in the meat end of the season, nothing other than a chokejob.
Saliba about to be a very rich man: There are many reasons we are in the position we are in at the moment, dropping 12/21 points, embarrassing performances at the Emirates etc. and it all be attributed to when we lost William Saliba to injury. You can argue that since we lost to him to that Sporting tie, shit hasn’t been the same, you can make an argument that we replcaed him with a useless piece of life in Rob Holding but regardless, once the spine of our team fell apart, so did our title chances. Thomas Partey hasn’t quite been at his best without Saliba behind him. And with Saliba now fighting for a new contract with Arsenal, all he has to do is show the last 7 games and Arsenal can’t really do much else than to pay this guy.
If you think Jorginho is better than Thomas Partey, you are the problem.
I can’t even get mad at the ref for being incompetent at his job because we were so shit today: When Alexis stepped on Kiwior, how was that not looked at? Don’t get me started on the assistant referee trying to flag Trossard offside on an throw-in, can’t make this shit up.
END THE SEASON

7 POINTS CLEAR FOR THE FELLAS (Arsenal – Brighton reaction)

What can I say at this point? These guys won’t just stop winning games, just a relentless machine at the moment that looks scarily obsessed with grabbing the PL title. Arsenal finished off 2022 with a bang with a 4-2 win against Brighton on the South coast. With Newcastle and City dropping points today, Arsenal find themselves 7 points clear at the top of the PL standings with 16 games played. Still a lot of football left to play this season but Arsenal don’t look closer to dropping any points compared to their rivals for Top 4. Arsenal opened the match scoring 66 seconds in and then scored about 100 seconds into the 2nd half and didn’t look back. Things got eerie towards the end of the match, but we took all 3 points at a tough away ground and now have great momentum with our clash with Newcastle on 1/3/2023.

What went wrong this past week

It was just a week ago when we were flying high in pole position for the final Champions League spot. who knows, maybe we could have challenged Chelsea for that 3rd spot. In a span of two games where we lost 3-0 to Palace and 2-1 to Brighton at home, we have more than likely squandered Champions League football for next season with Spurs winning two games on the bounce against Newcastle and Aston Villa. In typical Arsenal fashion, we have choked away success, this in a different manner than how we usually did it with Wenger but regardless, we still had everything to play for and shat the bed. Let me go into the main issues that confronted and why our season is essentially over

We didn’t score more goals than the opponent: Doesn’t get simpler than this. To win games, you gotta score more goals than the other team and for some damn reason, we didn’t do that. Not sure if Arteta’s instructions to the team were to in fact not score goals, and if that was the case, they implemented that plan to perfection. Definitely an issue I’d like to be addressed going into the next games.

Arsenal’s April Outlook

Who would have thought as March comes to a close, that I would have to worry about Arsenal having a chance to compete for a Top 4 spot? For the past few years, I have been stuck hoping Arsenal win Europa League knockout rounds against Eastern European farmers such as Slavia Prague to make our season worthwhile. Usually at this point of the season, we are out of the running for Top 4 and I am just causing pain to myself by watching meaningless April games for absolutely no fucking reason. With the international break taking place coming to a close, our Top 4 hopes more than likely will rely on how we perform in these April fixtures outlined below:

I’ll go into what we can expect going into each match and the context that will be taking place around us and our opponents.

CRYSTAL PALACE: As long as Crystal Palace have Patrick Vieira as their manager, they will always be my 2nd favorite team. This game will be hard for me to watch as I’ve enjoyed watching Palace play this season but this is a must-win game for the Gunners. The game will be at Selhurst Park which has given us trouble in the past. Fortunately for us, their two wingers Wilfried Zaha and the talented Michael Olise both picked up knocks over the International break so Patty V needs to chill and let his stars recover after Monday. Even if we get lucky and Zaha and Olise are out, Palace still have an in-form Conor Gallagher who is in my current PL TOTY with how well he has played. Back when we played them in October, it was a back and forth 2-2 draw with Mikel playing Ødegaard in a deep playmaking role next to Thomas. Both teams have changed drastically so no point in delving too much into that game but as long as we somehow get revenge on James McCarthur if he touches the field, I’ll be happy. Such a fuckm that guy. PREDICTION Arsenal 1 – Crystal Palance 0, ESR to get our goal off the bench.