Arsenal 3 Villa 1 post match thread

[BC Villain]

Smith's post match interview didn't fill me with confidence that he's planning to stop this 3 at the back nonsense anytime soon

[ldavfc4eva]

We could have been down more than 2 at half time, Arsenal did a job on us first half and no one looked to know where they were playing or who they needed to pick up.

Ings and Watkins just isn’t working, get back to 4-3-3 or 4-1-2-3 or whatever and play just one up top in the middle where they can actually play in the position they usually play in.

Plenty of effort from Ings but he is a finisher, so having him tracking back or out wide floating about is a total waste.

Defence, Mings needs a game out, play Hause and Konsa in the middle of a back 4.

McGinn needs a game out too, if Sanson is fit then he needs a game, I would be tempted to play Nakamba as a deep holding midfielder too with either Luiz/Sanson or Ramsey/Sanson in front.

Buendia needs to play wide right with Bailey on the opposite flank, as I say with Ings or Olly through the middle.

Get back to basics, play a formation that works and put players in their natural positions.

[ChicagoLion]

What a shit show, you do not solve a problem by repeating the same mistake. The players body language said it all. The system is not working, the last 3 games have shown that the Manager is failing the team.
He is picking the team to accommodate Tuanzabe and 2 up front and has now wasted 3 games and weeks of training and effort.

[AV82EC]

What a shit show, you do not solve a problem by repeating the same mistake. The players body language said it all. The system is not working, the last 3 games have shown that the Manager is failing the team.
He is picking the team to accommodate Tuanzabe and 2 up front and has now wasted 3 games and weeks of training and effort.

Yep, that’s how it looks. Accommodating Tuanzebe and Ings is the key mistake in my book. Tuanzebe is no way good enough to be the centre player in a back 3. It was no surprise Mings and Konsa looked back to their normal selves second half. Ings, good striker but doesn’t fit the preferred 4-3-3 for me and is more looking like a panic “quick Grealish is going” signing to me. No surprise Watkins looked more comfortable once he was back in his spearhead role. He should decide on his 4-3-3 format for next week then it’s up to the players to train hard for their place.

[Mister E]

Wow, worst performance in the first half that I can remember from the recent past. Last night was the first time that I came away thinking that we need a manager with more quality - I feel 'dirty' saying it but has Smith reached his ceiling?
I said at half-time that the players seemed to have zero confidence in the system, with  2 players leaving the ball to each other, 3 times in the first half.
Particularly poor:
Mings - really allowed the game to get inside his head and wasn't good.
Tuanzebe - getting worse as the games progress.
McGinn - poor ball retention (perhaps because he was getting the ball from the CB in poor places)
Buendia - too easily brushed aside: the middle of the park does not suit him
Watkins - slow of thought and action (don't understand why he wasn't subbed)

Arsenal played well, with energy and purpose: their new signings look like a snip (the 2 FB and CMF all played excellently).
We've lost the focus and direction, and MacPhee's influence at set pieces is already diminishing.

[Proposition Joe]

The players looked so unhappy in the first half, not knowing where to go, looking exasperated, Mings ar one point doing a "see, i told you that would happen" gesture when something went wrong. It looked like the type of performance that brings about a "crisis meeting" between players and manager.

[BC Villain]

The players looked so unhappy in the first half, not knowing where to go, looking exasperated, Mings ar one point doing a "see, i told you that would happen" gesture when something went wrong. It looked like the type of performance that brings about a "crisis meeting" between players and manager.

One of the most successful aspects of our play since project restart has been our huge defensive improvement (15 clean sheets last season)  yet changing it to accommodate players has buggered that up.

[Clampy]

I just can't get over how terrible that first half was. The midfield was just non existent. I personally would have shook the whole thing up and made three subs. I think he does need to sit down and make a few decisions, one of them being whether to play Watkins or Ings.

[Abbeyfealeavfc]

Martinez 6.5
Targett 4.5
Tuanzebe 5
Konsa 5
Mings 5.5
Cash 5
Luiz 6
McGinn 5
Targett 4.5
Buendia 5.5
Ings 6
Watkins 5.5

Subs
Bailey 7
Ramsey 7

So desperate to scapegoat Targett you've listed him twice! 😄

It isn't healthy the way you get an obsession with certain players.

Could be worse. At least he got the same mark.

I think Footy’s being over-generous giving Targett 9 after that performance and result!
The thing that worries me about the Tuanzebe loan signing is whether there is a clause about his involvement in the 1st team. Smith brought him back when Hause should have retained his place. He also doesn’t think that he can drop Konsa or Mings, so we end up with 3 at the back to accommodate Tuanzebe, who isn’t good enough. If his loan has conditions we may not have seen the last of 3 at the back, sadly. A club in our position shouldn’t be loaning players especially from the likes of MU.

[cdbearsfan]

It would be incredibly stupid to have a clause that we have to pick Tuanzebe a certain number of times and not have one that Ipswich have to pick Barry. Seems entirely plausible, though.

[Clampy]

I doubt there is anything in that clause to be honest. That kind of question gets brought up all the time and there's no proof that we have to play him. I think it's just personal preference.

[The Edge]

Last night was an incoherent shit show. We've had the voodoo over Arsenal for the last two seasons but it vanished in the first ten minutes. We've lost Grealish and John Terry and it has weakened the whole set up. The owners have invested heavily but we are slowly going backwards. Something has to change quickly. They have spent upwards of £200 million and we look no better than a mid table team at best right now.

[Ads]

That was catastrophically poor. Beyond abysmal and the worst first half performance I can recall in years.

That we got bullied, out run, out pressed and physically dominated by a team as lightweight physically and mentally as Arsenal is an abomination. The blame, like Wolves, rests squarely with one man.

The abject disarray of 3 at the back. The obvious overloads of the wide areas to make it 5 at the back and totally starve the creativity of the side was clear from the the first few minutes. Do we change it? No.

The first goal comes from a corner where Konsa and Cash don't know who their man is and we give away a corner in panic.

A corner which we defend appalling as McGinn, like a coward, ducks. Ducks! Who ducks out the way of a header? Atrocious. 3 men around him and we conspire to concede a goal as bad as that. And the same nearly happens the other side a few minutes later.

The defence hack and slash at the ball as they're spending too much time trying to work out where they ought to be rather than picking up natural positions and concentrating on defending.

The lumping of the ball is abysmal. Mings, Beckenbauer you ain't, you just consistently recycle cheap ball.

Second half the change of system is far more effective. We're still wide open and too loose, but we lay a glove on them.

Buendia should score. But he should also play wide. Its like spending a fortune poaching a top accountant to join your firm and asking them to run your HR department. Full of willing for sure, but he crunches numbers not holiday requests.

McGinn does a hell of a lot of good, but gives the ball away with such maddening frequency.

You pick Ings or Watkins to play up front. You then pick two of Traore, Bailey, Buendia and El Ghazi to play wide of them. You can play Watkins wide, but you cannot keep shoehorning players into unnatural positions.

The game was gone by half time and we were lucky it was only 2.

That we didn't test the absolutely dire Ramsdale with any regularity is inexcusable. I wouldn't pick that mug in my 5 a side team. He has no clue how to control a box and is jittery as anything. We make it easy. Like we did against Spurs and like we did in the last 10 against Wolves.

We're easy to play against and have conceded 6 goals against mid-table dross in 2 games. 8 if we're being really unfair on Spurs. 5 defeats in 9. We're in a relegation scrap,  with a manager who is making the same mistakes he made in the Championship.

I wanted him gone last night and wondered if that was an emotional feeling as I'm sick and tired of wasting hours of time for utter trash, taking days off and driving about at half 2 to get home. And pondering doing it again in 2 weeks. But it's not. This has gone on too long.

[ChicagoLion]

Spot on Ads.

[Fred Crump]

The players looked so unhappy in the first half, not knowing where to go, looking exasperated, Mings ar one point doing a "see, i told you that would happen" gesture when something went wrong. It looked like the type of performance that brings about a "crisis meeting" between players and manager.

One of the most successful aspects of our play since project restart has been our huge defensive improvement (15 clean sheets last season)  yet changing it to accommodate players has buggered that up.

Couldn’t agree more. I just can’t understand why he chose to fix a defence that wasn’t broken. If we needed anything to strengthen it at all, it would have been a strong, quick attacking left back as an alternative to Cash. Instead we got the ghost of Ashley Young past, and Tuanzebe’s not so good twin.
He needs to ditch the 3 at the back straight away and sign a written affidavit in blood to that effect , which he should then personally hand to CDBWF for safekeeping.