Arsenal~Fanatic wrote:friedslice wrote:Arsenal~Fanatic wrote:Gervinho , offered nothing defensively today and was wasteful again in the final third . second bad game on the bounce for him..
No surprises you point it out.
He was still far better than Walcott, of whom is a far inferiour player yet you regularly praise whilst criticise Gervinho.
At the end of the day most were shit yesterday.
It's the same old story that i've repeated in nearly every post match analysis, a 5th placed team playing like a 5th placed team.
Sure, we have the talent and decent players to scrape through matches against the teams lower than us, and lets be frank, that's all we've managed against Stoke, Sunderland, Swansea, Villa etc etc. then we fall short when we face a decent side.
Quite simply we have a good team with a real lack of top quality stars that can take us to another level and a) ensure we finish teams off easier b) take us over the line in close games and c) get us challenging and beating the top teams regularly.
Frimpong and Ramsey were terrible yesterday and both have been for most of the season. I really can't see how either get such high praise on here.
Arteta playing as a DM?! why? He's left annonymous throughout most matches despite being quite a creative player and wearing the number 8
Walcott is annonymous for most matches, he gives away simple passes and falls over.
Gervinho is playing in his first 4 months of EPL football and over the course of the season has looked twice as threatening as Theo has - who we've been waiting very patiently for to have that 'breakthrough' year. He's still fitting in slowly and is making a few mistakes, he's looked threatening at least which is something I can't say about anyone else bar RVP.
Mertesacker is a donkey, he's slow to react and I've never seen him jump (something which had me screaming at the screen v Citeh).
Add to it we've got nothing on the bench to come on, no support for RVP and no depth.
We got a very very good win yesterday, but it was just the typical lacklustre performance, too many 'decent' players with not enough quality of any substance and then a defensive error costing us a goal....same old story.
Mate no offence but were you watching a different game ?
Were we so bad ? I have my issues against the team but to say the entire team barring RVP is trash is hollow .We are on a good run and several other teams would love to be in our shooes . Yeah we have holes in our squad and we need to fill them and that too in January cos United and Chelsea will spend for sure . Walcott had a good game yesterday and it reflects in his ratings in the ratings thread . Gervinho , did he look threatening yesterday ? I only stated facts . He had a poor game on the weekend and this one. So am i targeting him for the heck off it ? Lets not make a sweeping generalization out of everything . Mertescaker was fairly solid, nothing great but did his job. Arteta was decent and yeah i agree Ramsey was poor against city and yesterday as well . He has to stop his show-boating in critical areas of the pitch . The win wasn't lacklustre but a midweek fixture especially after the City game was expected to be like this . I have a couple of issues regarding a lack of an advanced play-maker and a Striker to cover RVP but other than that we are looking good . I repeat it would be criminal not to sign a couple of players in January but that's for another thread.
I've watched the game through twice, live, and then again on replay.
What did Walcott do other than turn the defender for the penalty? I've watched 180 minutes of it and still can't find how he deserves a decent rating for being completely annonymous throughout despite being one of 3 attackers.
Gervinho wasn't great, im not defending him, on the whole i just think he's been far better than theo.
I've not said our squad is trash, I was referring to this performance, and yes, we were bad. But my opinion of this squad has been the same throughout this season (and you can go back and read my comments in each match thread). It's the same old story, plenty of pretty football but little end product, due solely to us having a good squad without the added world class talent (RVP aside - no surprises we rely on him so much).
At the end of the day we have decent players, and that's it. Ramsey, Arteta, Song are all 'decent' players in my book.
Decent is 5th place, that's why we're sitting around there. Decent enough to beat most poor teams (just) but will struggle when
really tested, and i think that is EXACTLY what we've seen in most matches this season.
Throughout our good run we've scraped through against inferior sides, that's the sign of a decent team, but one several QUALITY players away from making the next much needed step forward.
This team is good enough to get 4th, it's also poor enough to not. It could go either way depending on whether we manage to keep scraping these important points. If we had some more quality in the squad we wouldn't need to be scraping through matches like this, i think we all agree on that.
Quite simply we need a better standard of player than Arteta, Ramsey, Song, Walcott, Santos, Frimpong etc if we really want to win titles. They're good players to have if we have 3-4 world class players mixed in (much like Henry/Bergy/Vieira mixed with Parlour/Ljungberg etc), but a team of 'decent' players as we have will struggle to get top 4, and that's exactly what we're doing.
Next week will be the same and so to will the one after that.