1) There is no denying it. Arsenal’s attack was much better when we had Robin van Persie. Olivier Giroud was on the bench (why???), and Arsene Wenger decided to start with Gervinho up front and Aaron Ramsey on the right wing. Gervinho was all over the place. He has pace, but when he get through on goal I am never sure that he will finish. There was nobody who I really felt would step-up in front of goal in the way that RvP did. The most natural finisher is probably Lukas Podolski, but he always starts on the left wing. Ramsey did ok, but we would have been a lot more effective with a bit of pace from The Ox or Walcott had they been fit.
2) You can’t afford to gift Klaas Jan Huntelaar so many chances; he missed the first two, but he was bound to score at some point. Unfortunately, Arsenal’s dodgy defending (especially Andre Santos on the left-hand-side) meant that Schalke were hitting us on the counter-attack and getting lots of balls into the box. There was too much time and too much space because Santos was always out of position. Either he was too far back and playing people onside, or he was at the wrong end of the pitch all-together. With 10 minutes left Steve Bould took Jenkinson off and replaced him with Serge Gnabry. 3 at the back against the pace of Schalke was always asking for trouble, and we duly conceded the second goal. Kieran Gibbs is still out for the time being, which is pretty worrying – I don’t want Santos to play against Rooney and Rvp!!
3) Arsenal are no longer in the driving seat in their Champions League group. The next Champions League game in 2 weeks time is Schalke away, which now has added importance. If we lose to them again then we will be 4 points off the top of the group with 2 games left. That said, although finishing second in the group is never ideal, last season we finished top in the group and got drawn against AC Milan. It’s as much luck-based as anything.
4) Despite the poor team performance, some of the younger players did pretty well. I thought that Carl Jenkinson had a good game, although there is a limit to how much you can do without the help of your teammates. Jenko kept Afellay relatively quiet, with most of Schalkes chances coming on the side that Santos was supposed to be dealing with. He also worked the ball forward really well; it’s not his fault that Gervinho was having a bit of an off-game. Coquelin also played well alongside Arteta and Cazorla, but I was most impressed with Serge Gnabry, who came on as a substitute. He made some good runs down the right-hand-side, used a bit of skill, and had arguably Arsenal’s best shot of the game. A pretty good cameo performance on his Champions League debut.
5) There needs to be a serious response this weekend against QPR. If we lose (or even draw) on Saturday then we have no hope at Old Trafford a week later. That would be more points dropped and even less of a chance that we will make next season’s Champions League.
Who tells them how to play? We are doing the same as we did last year. Pussyfooting around the box instead of aiming for goal. We need more players. A defender a forward and a back up goalie.Mannone and Fabianski are not good enough. Vermaelen and Mertesacker do not work well together. Vermaelens performances in the last few matches have been poor and not what you expect from a \’captain\’.
The thing i got from watching the game was how predictable they were every attack was the same any team who does their homework will know exactly how to prepare to negate Arsenal deny them space out wide force them though the middle wait for the missed pass and counter attack so we saw them allowing Arsenal plenty of passes across and back but not much forward everytime they tried it was cut out.Arsenal attack was toothless they could not even give them a nasty suck had to wait for 17year old to test the keeper but why when everyone watching could see what was happening did it take so long to make any kind of change it smack of a preset plan rather than reacting to what was going on thepitch.If i was QPR i would be looking forward to playing Arsenal as there will be no surprises they certainly have a good chance to pick up there first win.This game proved that the squad lacks quality until the injured players return we will see more of this i do dread the trip to united they may not score 8 but it could be half that ?
6) Schalke could have easily scored two more.
7) Farfan and Afellay are miles ahead of our \’wingers\’.
8) Any club with a disciplined and patient approach with one or two quality players
can now march into our home and get a solid and deserved win.
9) Post AGM – the thievery of the board will continue as long as the fans support it.
Wenger, Please, continue to sell our good players. I know how you will achieve good results without quality players. I missed RVP, Song, and Nasri.
I have said in several occasion on different gunners website. We totally struggle when Ramsey is in the team coz he slow can\’t pass, has no football intelligence, can\’t defend, has no speed….etc. He has never been in a winning team this season. If Coquelin would have played UCL we would had a beating to remember. Do away with Ramsey & Stanos then we can start winning.I would prefer either Miguel, Sagna,Varmintator play that full back position. Giroud should start playing more games plus bring Eisfield, Serge, Nico & Arshavin to play more. We will never win if Ramsey starts he is our achilles heel this season he does not fit in the present team. Just look at all of the games when he started. Schakle game he intercepted 2 goal opportunity which were meant for Podolski.
You spot on on all the points. What get me wondering is the fact that Wenger and the technical team prefer to use Santos as a back to Gibbs instead of Miquel. In my own opinion, i think Miquel is a better left full back than Santos. maybe we should recall Miquel and let him deputise for Gibbs. Jekinson is a perfect back up for Sangy as we can all see from the great work that the young star has been doing.
Another worrying factor is that we are becoming too predictable and lack plan B. I thought we suppose to study our opponents as much as they studying us and we should be able to say that this is plan B in case plan A fail.
Against Scahkle, we lacked pace, no coordination and we lack ambition. Imagine playing at the Emirates with only one shot at goal. The performance was not acceptable.