Laughable Chimp

Missed the game but according ti the highlights and comments regarding how we played, seems like we finally got s preview of what its like to have a game where Martinez couldn't bail us out.

Yeah, been wondering about that myself too. Its bizaare how much they dislike him. Part of it may be because Lyon's standards, at least relative to their entire league is higher than ours. Even now we have some people on here who see Traore as a good backup instead of a starting player for where we want to be. Make no mistake, he can also be incredibly frustrating to watch. He's a highlights player in the sense his greatest moments are incredible but in between, he also has a lot of bad moments where he can be inconsistent and that's not going to be captured in a youtube video. Talking to some Lyon fans, it seems like this is their consensus of him. Great on his day, but far too inconsistent and frustrating otherwise and I can't say that's been much different to how he's played for us. He always looks like he's so casual which looks amazing when he's great but when you're losing a game, I can see it pissing some fans off. His defensive stats are actually pretty decent for them but some Lyon fans don't think he contributed enough defensively. That could again be, because he has such a casual play style and he got shoehorned as a luxury type player who didn't contribute defensively. I brought this up lastly, because I really don't want to bring up racism as a factor, but its entirely possible it was a factor. Combine all the above, I'd say he got scapegoated by their fanbase. He probably went through a rough patch at some point in his Lyon career, and due to a combination of factors above, he was never able to turn the narrative that he was terrible around with the fans before he left. Narratives can be persistent. When a narrative takes hold, it can suddenly colour everyone's perception of a player. People who already thought Traore was shit simply saw more of his negative traits than his positives. Maybe part of it was also because people don't like to admit that they were wrong too. People who had nailed their mast on the Traore is terrible narrative are probably unconciously or conciously looking for situations to criticize him over. If Traore were to suddenly become good, then it would make them look somewhat the fool. It would take some level of persistence to break that kind of narrative oncr itd set, and unfortuntately inconsistent players struggle more against it than others. I think most of us thought Trezeguet was not good enough for us last season, some were even saying he wouldn't even be good enough for the Championship. Then he started this season consistently playing well before the narrative of him started to turn. Someone like Traore isn't going likely to have a run of games where he plays well, its more likely they'll be intersparsed among matches.

Its because Watkins is one of Smith's "unsubbables". Alongside Grealish and Mcginn. These 3 pretty much almost never get subbed off, especially when we're losing so its hard for Davis to come in for him. In fact, I'm not sure Davis has ever subbed in for Watkin in the league. Maybe once, but I'm pretty sure Davis was subbed in for a winger instead of Watkins whenever he got on the pitch. Barkley, Traore, El Ghazi and Trez are the players who are at risk of getting subbed off and obviously Smith is going to favour wingers and attacking midfielders to sub in for other wingers and attacking midfielders. In summary, I think Smith rates Davis and sees him to be good enough as backup for us. The reason he hasn't played much is not that he doesn't rate him, its that he rates Watkins a lot more.

Every year, there usually is one or mofe teams down there that goes on one of those runs that make the relegation battle a lot more tight. There's plenty of the season left to go so I wouldn't be too hasty in calling the relegation battle essentially over now.

You know, I feel like people are always inherently optimistic of the quality of players we sign. I doubt most of us have watched Sanson play much if at all but people are already making claims implying his quality

He's good enough to be backup in our squad, I stand by it. Definitely shown more than Jacob Ramsey has for us. I don't know man, I always felt like Dean Smith has never been a fan of him since we got promoted. At one point he tried to force Drinkwater in place of him for several games before he realized that Drinkwater was just shite.

Reminds me a lot of Conor weirdly. I feel like he's kind of anonymous most of the time and then pops in with a goal out of nowhere. I didn't mention this back then but this was his performance during the Leicester game. Felt like he was anonymous for most of the game then scores a long shot in dying minutes and we win.

Heaton is weird tbh, He's one of those players where multiple stats sites say he's mediocre but we seem to rate him pretty highly. And I'm one of those people who do rate him pretty highly.

I like this guy, I think he was worth 16 million. Lyon fans can kiss my ass

First off, before anyone has a go at me because "sTaTs dOn'T tElL tHe wHoLe sToRy", I'm not the one bringing up his stats in the first place here. Secondly, those are just 2 defensive stats. There are a lot of defensive stats out there and saying he's not bad at these 2 defensive stats doesn't say much about his defensive work as a whole. Thirdly, you have to look at them in terms of a per90 basis. If you're looking at their total stats, they're going to be biased to the players who have played a lot of games. To which Luiz definitely benefits from having started and played the entire 90 minutes for a lot of our games. Fourthly, there are many different breeds of central midfielders, which is why comparing their stats can sometimes be tricky. A defensive midfielder can have decent defensive stats when compared to all central midfielders but be in the bottom end of the scale compared to just defensive midfielders. Fifth, there are certain defensive stats that really really need to be taken with a grain of salt. This because they are the result of a team's play style then the actual contribution of a player. Sixthly(is that a word), I do think he's defensively capable. I just don't think he's anywhere close to a rock in there so really, I agree with you. He simply isn't a CDM. I don't care what anyone says about all his defensive work people say he does that I never seen him do. Which conveniently isn't captured in any stats so I can't bring up any evidence to deny it. Reminds me of how people defended Wesley for always "dragging away defenders" or how Mings contributes with his "leadership" and you could never deny these factors even if you never saw them because they aren't captured in any metrics. So they become easy things to bring up in defence of these players because no one can deny them. Edit: Seventhly, not against you specifically but my god I do not understand what people see in Douglas Luiz. Which is why I usually avoid these thread nowadays, simply cannot understand what people are seeing in him and there's no point in really debating further. At least with Mings I see his work despite my criticisms of him, I am just **** annoyed at his once per game mistake that costs us or almost costs us that I don't see any other defender we have doing and the way people constantly excuse them despite them happening being debated over at least once every week. With Luiz its just, there's just not much there. He's capable defensively and offensively and doesn't drag the team down. Yet somehow people are going around making claims that he's the second most important player in the team and that he's a future barcelona/real madrid/Brazil captain.. How is he more important than our goalkeeper who's arguably the best keeper in the league and our topscorer in Watkins who's almost everything I want in a striker. Seriously, i think Watkins has all the potential to be a top striker in this league, he's just a bit raw and he's certainly contributes more than Luiz for us imo. To even stretch it a bit further, I think Mcginn has very similar attributes to Luiz tbh, but I do think atm he's definitely better. Around the same level defensively but I've noticed recently his long passing has been great, which if anything was something I expected Luiz to do more off.. Cash has been great in the right hand side. Then there's our wingers and attacking midfielders who despite being inconsistent or all match winners on their day, how many times could you say that about Douglas Luiz? I think Hause is sorely underrated as a CB and is more than capable of pushing or even replacing Mings(but that's a discussion for another day) and Konsa has been near faultless. Mings as much as I criticize him is aside from his tendency to switch off is a good, hell even a great defender. So when you boil it down, I think Douglas Luiz is far from the one of the best players in our starting 11. If anything, he'd be closer to the worst. I just don't see it, I don't think I'll ever see it, and quite frankly if I don't see it by the end of this season I think he'll probably turn out to be an overrated flop. The one largest benefit is his young age and his potential because I do see some raw qualities in there. But he really hasn't put them all together yet and if he doesn't, he's getting no where near the likes of Man City and Juventus.

Because everyone else in the thread had already been praising him for having a superb game. What was the point of me joining in that? I just felt like it'd be better to criticize him and give an opposite viewpoint then to the one prevailing. You could say that it's being contrarian for the sake of it, but its my own honest assessment of his performance. For the record, I thought he had a good game but I just didn't feel like saying that when everyone else was already saying that and more. If people here had come in and focused on only that backpass I would've come in here and praised the fact that otherwise he had a good game. However, since I usually find the praise of Mings to be a bit overkill and his mistakes often excused away its usually the other scenario that happens more often.

No, nowadays usually only the ones who I think usually get more praise than they deserve since I find people often get carried away whenever they have a good game. Which is usually Mings and Luiz in my book. Should I not criticize players for what I think are their mistakes just because we won?

I think its a combination of Leno being good for them last season and no longer wanting to keep Emi who had been a loyal servant for them at the club against his wishes. From what I can tell the arsenal fans all rated him even as their second keeper. Even then, I didn't think they expected him to be this good, I understand how sometimes its hard to drop your first team keeper who had been performing well and the one you invested lots of money in over an unproven one.

Did people miss the backpass he sent to Martinez that almost put Ings through or are we blaming that on Martinez? If Martinez hadn't gotten there, it would've been business as usual in this thread. That is a semi-serious question. My first intuition is that it was Mings's bad but I didn't really see the scenario enough.

Ah, yes. No mention of his individual defensive stats which you felt the need to mention to praise him this game but not for the course of the season. Our defense improving is far more than on Luiz. The man has been playing the same as he had last season and our defense was made of swiss cheese then.

Uh, yes. Luiz's defensive stats has never been great.

For once

Well I can't speak for everyone, I just find the incessant defending people do of him absurd. I think he quite clearly **** up and costs us at times yet to see people defend and excuse his mistakes time and time again is annoying. I do agree that it feels like the fan backlash has gotten worse this season. Personally, I think he's been about the same as last season, perhaps slightly better this season. If I had to guess, perhaps its due to the fact that the rest of the team has progressed so much since last season yet Mings is still making the same silly mistakes he was last season that its standing out a lot more. When people went on and on about how he was clearly the best defender at the club last season, at least it was somewhat justifiable considering the form of the other defenders around him. This season, Konsa, Hause and Targett have all improved considerably whilst Cash has been great. Yet Mings is still around the same as he was last season so he gets more flack for his mistakes that he would've been more easily excused for considering our other defensive options last srason. Like, now I think about it I think he really was worse last season. There was a stretch of games where pretty much every goal we were conceding were directly from his mistakes, and they were much more clearly his mistakes than this stretch. Yet the backlash was not as intense.

You can't just cut out games like that just because it suits your narrative. Somewhat hypocritically, pretty sure I did that with Wesley last season but I'll hold my hands up and say I was wrong to do that. Also, pretty sure the process of cutting out anomalies is more stringent than this, precisely to avoid people from excluding valid data so as to push their own agenda.

I think that's just the risk you run when making risky jokes. If it falls flat then people have the right to call them out on it. I also don't think someone specifically has to be hurt by a joke for it to be in bad taste.

Thought you wre saying he wa overweight for a second there.

Don't know if this has been mentioned in here before but he currently has the highest post shot xG minus Goals allowed out of any keeper in the Premier League. In other words, their model suggests he's the best shot-stopper in the league. https://fbref.com/en/comps/9/keepersadv/Premier-League-Stats Edit: Technically, I should be looking at it in terms of per90 but it tells pretty much the same story. Edit2: Top of the table last season too if you count the 8 matches in the PL he had with them in terms of per90 stats. Arsenal really were seating in a gem of a goalkeeper that they gave away to us on the cheap.

Wonder how much we're offering and how much they're asking

Do you need glasses?

Here's the rule apparently "A player in an offside position, receiving the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the ball, is not considered to have gained an advantage." Could argue that its a shit rule, but if its true, then there's some argument he's technically onside