Arsenal v Aston Villa Match Thread

[hilts_coolerking]

But we have. Lambert has been telling us for months he has us playing in a different way.
Problem is, it's producing the same fucking results.

Exactly.  Changing the way you go about creating nothing isn't really a change in any meaningful sense.

[Dave]

So yet another half  comes and goes without us scoring again ,has any manager/coach in our history ever gone so long without a goal,i certainly can not remember it this bad .

I think I read earlier in the week that we've never gone six full league games without scoring (and today would be the sixth).

[Tuscans]

Same as most of the season so not sure why people seem so shocked.  Arsenal are a good team, massive signings, they're on a different planet in terms of a football club.

So only 1 nil, still in it....never know....next goal is key. I think we will get 1

[Boz]

For all of the stick Cleverley gets, Sanchez has just turned in one of the worst 45 minutes that I've ever seen from a Villa midfielder. Slow, static and seemingly seeing an invisible player on the right-wing every 5 minutes or so. Needs to come-off for Westwood in the 2nd half.

At least Sanchez looks for the ball. Cleverley is invisible, he needs to come off and Westwood on

[joecrow]

Has Benteke got no professional pride. There's a big difference between getting no service and not giving a fuck.

[Toronto Villa]

Arsenal have spent a fortune on bringing in and developing incisive players to play in a very defined system. We look lost trying to play that way. For them it comes very naturally. Unless you go out to complete disrupt them (AKA The Pulis Theory) then you run the risk of not being able to compete. We at trying to pass it about and have been below average at that and in many cases our control has been very poor. It's giving them so much space to counter. We simply must not give them the ball in dangerous places because this could end up 2 or 3-0.

[Rudy65]

BBC more knowledgeable about Villa than I gave them credit for:

"Aston Villa are getting dominated in midfield. How they must pine for the days of Ian Taylor and Gordon Cowans? Paul McGrath would be quite useful to have at the back too. It's all too easy for Arsenal at the moment as another one-pass-too-many move ends with Theo Walcott being flagged offside."

I pine for the days of Mark Kinsella

[Nelly]

BBC also just posted that Benteke has had just 11 touches and just one was in the box - on the 18 yard line. Pretty un-talismanic.

[Goldie.7]

For all of the stick Cleverley gets, Sanchez has just turned in one of the worst 45 minutes that I've ever seen from a Villa midfielder. Slow, static and seemingly seeing an invisible player on the right-wing every 5 minutes or so. Needs to come-off for Westwood in the 2nd half.

At least Sanchez looks for the ball. Cleverley is invisible, he needs to come off and Westwood on

Give it a rest. Sanchez has been the worst by a clear mile.

[Rudy65]

So yet another half  comes and goes without us scoring again ,has any manager/coach in our history ever gone so long without a goal,i certainly can not remember it this bad .

I think I read earlier in the week that we've never gone six full league games without scoring (and today would be the sixth).

Yep another record if we dont score today

[Tuscans]

BBC also just posted that Benteke has had just 11 touches and just one was in the box - on the 18 yard line. Pretty un-talismanic.

He's not playing on his own

[PaulWinch again]

Benteke needs to pull his fucking finger out.

[hilts_coolerking]

The fact that we've gone nearly 6 league games without scoring suggests the problem isn't that we're playing Arsenal.

[Nelly]

For all of the stick Cleverley gets, Sanchez has just turned in one of the worst 45 minutes that I've ever seen from a Villa midfielder. Slow, static and seemingly seeing an invisible player on the right-wing every 5 minutes or so. Needs to come-off for Westwood in the 2nd half.

At least Sanchez looks for the ball. Cleverley is invisible, he needs to come off and Westwood on

Give it a rest. Sanchez has been the worst by a clear mile.

Not for me. I don't know what he was thinking about with those two balls to no one on the right but Sanchez is the only one keeping the ball moving and linking things. Take him out and I think we'd look a lot more open.

[pauliewalnuts]

There's no disgrace in not scoring against arsenal, that's not the issue. The problem is that this game was preceded by five other league games in all of which we failed to score.

I prefer us trying to pass the ball rather than aimless hoofing but two things bother me. One is that this switch had started to be used, by Lambert and others, as an excuse - "it's a new system" etc etc

The other concern is, passing the ball and trying to keep it is great but what the fuck has Lambert spent the last 2.5 years trying to do?