M_Afro

Grow some balls and drop Axel and either Ings or Watkins. Go 4-3-3. Save our season or go back to the championship Dean.

Mate. Seriously how many good performances have we put in 2021? Less than 5. If you think it’s more than that then you are either clutching at straws or have very low standards. Arsenal have not done that to another PL team for at least 5 years. Woeful

I admire your optimism but why do you think that. He picked a terrible side and tactics today and did nothing to change it in a 50 minute first half that was the most one sided match I have seen all season. He did nothing mate. No tweaks even. Just let it happen. Totally lost me there I’m afraid.

Nick, his record without Grealish is terrible. Lost 5/9 this season after spending £350m. The owners will not be accepting of that. They just won’t. Lose to West Ham he is gone in my view. We have been awful this year so far (2021).

He’s been great this season but my goodness he was awful tonight. Maybe those cakes Deano was going on about (really annoyed me for some bizarre reason) we’re space cakes.

Is this clown in charge of defending set pieces?

People still think we didn’t need to sort the midfield out in the summer? Thought not!

Pleased for the kid. One highlight from an utterly dark night. Even though he is not ready to be playing as often as he is.

Nobody can defend Smith after that. Watching that first half unfold and do absolutely nothing is indefensible. Anybody who tries is blindly defending the blind. Dead man walking

I genuinely don’t think it is possible to over react to that. I really don’t.

This is the point. It was so bad and Smith did nothing. He just watched it unfold. Unforgivable

We will lose tonight obviously. We will lose or draw our next match. Pressure will be on then. I do really love Dean the man. I do and it hurts to say it but Dean the manager is proving to be out of his depth. Lost 5 of 9. Awful stat that.

I actually thought it was a 50:50 decision and thus the ref should not have changed his mind. Arsenal though should have been at least 3 or 4 up so it’s not that unjust

How do you know?

Need to go 4-3-3. Axel, Targett (worst performance I have ever seen) and Ollie off. Young to left back. Bailey left forward. Ramsey into midfield and Emi right forward. I am done with Smith. Love the man but I love my dad and he would also be a rubbish manager.

Worst I have seen for a while. What do we do all week? This game is over already. Smith and his bunch of morons looking on cluelessly doing absolutely nothing. Pathetic and utterly predictable. This man will be gone before Christmas

They will totally dominate the middle of the park with those selections. It’s looking likely to be a long evening. Lots of last ditch defending, isolated strikers and long balls straight to the Arsenal defence coming up! I suspect a regulation 2-0 home victory incoming!

Just over an hour away from the team announcement. Almost certainly going to be 5 at the back again but hoping for a 4-3-3.

Ollie really hurt Arsenal when he played against them last season. I would revert to 4-3-3 and have Ollie as the striker. Arsenal won’t be expecting that and we could really hurt them early doors.

They really are quite average now. I don’t think they could emphatically beat us unless we are utterly awful. I suspect a tight game probably settled by a single goal. Hopefully in our favour. One thing is certain. Lose our next two and Dean will be under massive pressure. I suspect he will be very cautious with this in mind and we won’t be anywhere near as charitable as we have been so far this season.

Is that bit still true? That was certainly the case in the first half of last season but it feels less so since the second half of last season.

I think the bold bit above is right. The thing is, if we lose at least one of the next two matches, we will have lost at least half of our first ten matches. That is a reasonable period to assess form and that is not a good stat. Lose both and Smith will be under massive pressure. I have said before that I love smith and desperately want him to succeed but he has never truly managed to convince me. I think our recruitment in the summer has unbalanced our team and I really think he is struggling to get to grips with it. I hope that he soon reverts to 4-3-3. I hope that he strengthens our midfield soon (although it may be worth waiting until the summer now). Even he acknowledges that we are a top half squad but we haven’t really played like that yet this season. Our losses to Watford, Wolves and Spurs were all really poor performances and although we played well in creating chances against Chelsea, our defending and finishing were awful and thus you can’t really call it a good performance. Much to ponder. Hopefully we will respond with a few wins on the bounce. I know we won the last two of last season but we have really struggled to get a run of wins together. Three or four wins on the bounce would make the world of difference.

Doucoure seems to be doing well for Lens, who are currently second in league 1. I wonder if we will renew our interest in him?

I have not seen that much of him but he seems to be a bit of a Hourihane midfield player to me. He seems to score a few but not offer much else. We need midfielders who can control a game. I have never seen that from him.

The defensive problems we’ve witnessed so far this season are not system related, they are individual errors. It’s been infuriating because it seems to have gone back to the way it was at the start of our first season back. Teams don’t need to build pressure or create chances through quality play, they just need to wait for the individual errors to occur. I do wonder whether we are missing JT. He used to spend lots of time working with each defender looking at their individual responsibilities. Until we cut out the multiple errors we won’t see the best of any formation.