DJBOB

The thing is that in the big matchups between Arsenal/City/Liverpool - the first two have opted to make the game boring as possible to make sure neither side gets a win to pull away from the table. This does not work in the UCL where you have to try and win! All the time, City and Arsenal lack the players and the strategem to push forward quickly when the time comes and instead let the opponent sit deeper and deeper in the box. That might work against the Burnleys and Lowtons of the world but not Bayern and Madrid. Then you see how much damage Bayern or Madrid can do with 3/4 passes and some special players running quickly with the ball.

They can still come back - but both this Arsenal and City match is the same repudiation of the systems Pep and Arteta have created. It's all well good until you got a few players that can dribble and attack. In their pursuit of dominating possession, they have dampened the 1v1 creativity of special dribblers. That's why I appreciate Unai, no matter where he takes us, as he understands that you've got to give some of these Rogers/JJ/Bailey types a little bit of room to pick their spots to be creative instead of sticking them on the wing as expert ball recyclers.

Among the records Unai has broken, Villa have now had the most times catching the opponent offside in a season in the premier league era with 147 and counting. The previous high was Liverpool with 144 in the 21-22 season.

Relatively full strength from both City and Arsenal. Bayern may miss Gnabry but still a strong side. Arteta has put out his more defensive lineup on paper, certainly more respectful of Bayern than they were us. Same thing with Pep. May surprise us with two low scoring matches after yesterday's pandomonium.

Yeah, that's no joke lineup. Maybe if we had a cupcake path in the knockouts, it would lose a bit of luster, but we will most likely be taking the hardest route through.

Yeah I agree - I just find it odd that the discussion has somehow taken the vein of one or the other when the most probable outcome will be both!

UECL trophy and UCL qualification aren't mutually exclusive. We're on the 2nd leg of the QF, so it's a completely different scenario than MON sending the kids out. UCL qualification is undoubtedly good for the future, but a trophy will be remembered forever. We could do with both. Counterpoint, SHA won a trophy and are about to be relegated to League One so winning a trophy isn't the end all either.

It's an interesting contradiction for the GOP because no matter what, there's a strong contingent of warhawks and national defense types. With the resignations bringing the majority to a razor thin amount, it would only take a few defections for the discharge petition to go through. I think most of them are doing a wait and see approach with MAGA-Mike to see if the separate Ukraine funding bill is a trap or actually a good faith effort to pass it. It's genuinely hard to tell with the margins as thin as it is, but not only on the GOP side. Could see a few Dems taking umbridge with a combined discharge petition that would include Israel as well.

City and Villa to the finals…we win our end but coefficient FC have bottled it so much that City have to win as Villa have dropped to 5th. 94’ City tied with PSG, KDB crosses and at the back post, Grealish! Get sick, celebrate Bookmark this.

If you still don't think we're going to have to win in Athens to secure the 5th spot, whoever it ends up to, you haven't been paying attention to the plot.

I agree, both on supplying Ukraine and the effectiveness of Russian spies in the MAGA crew. The irony, for all the talk on immigration, is that the red scare has swept over the GOP and is doing Russia’s bidding to the detriment of the US and NATO.

There is a lot sense in holding onto multi-positional players. This is what Pep does so that they can be flexible despite injuries and form. Morgan has already played 2 positions and have no doubt he can play RM too depending on who the RB is. SJM has played every position except GK. Buendia can play everything but Ollie's position and the pivot. Youri has played 3 positions. Diaby in 3 positions as well as Bailey. JJ can play left or right. I'm not sure Zaniolo will stay for personal reasons - but his multi-positional ability is something we'll probably try to replicate in the summer if he goes.

I think it’s no surprise that Unai has turned to Morgan (and Zaniolo) despite his youth and out of possession learning. In January, teams started figuring out they could press us early into mistakes because we had no out ball. Diaby and Bailey were not consistent enough back to goal. Tielemans is better facing forward and not under the isolated pressure out left or out top. Watkins was often isolated and McGinn was not a constant duel winner up the pitch. So by turning to Morgan and Zaniolo, we now had much more physicality and ball carrying to drag us up the pitch against the press.

The US has had a long history of picking and choosing which battles to fight. Not usually for the "right" reasons but for other geopolitical aims. There are far reaching consequences of Israel/Iran getting into a deadly and most likely nuclear conflict - one that the Biden admin and I'm sure other admins, have weighed into their calculus when deciding to defend from the Iran missile barrage. That other ME countries decided to participate in the defense, in one way or another, is indicative of the potential firestorm should Israel and Iran finally go after each other. The US did not exercise their aerial defense capabilities to the same extent in the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, the still ongoing Yemeni conflict, and danced around the Balkan massacres in the 90s. Between two Iraqi wars and one Afghanistan war, it has been repeatedly shown that any extended conflict is a bottomless pit of funds, death, and with little defined objective successes. That they have thrown their resources at Israeli defenses vs Ukraine is more indicative of the risk calculation they are making. It is terrible for Ukraine that they are coming in 2nd to Israel because there will be eventual desperations (mass civilian casualties, dirty bombs/nuclear threats, mass famine and genocide) as either Ukraine loses ground or Russia tires out. This paradigm is being played out in Europe as many countries are increasing their military presence to levels unseen in 30-40 years since the Balkan conflicts. This idea that the US can defend Israel, defend Ukraine, and somehow placate the sedition occurring domestically is a fantasy. The US is a weakening power, as all empires go, and is having to choose from it's already overextended reach and unfortunately Ukraine is coming second to Israel.

One of the few Twitter tacticos worth a follow and not a blow hard - points out that Arsenal's predictability and imbalance in pressing structure meant that they didn't change their pressing structure to push us towards our right where we are weaker in the build up. This is what United did in their 2nd half away match up to isolate the weaker Diego/Konsa/Dendoncker distribution connection. Konsa - in particular - is very hit or miss when it comes to his distribution. So while it was still a great win against Arsenal, I would caution against extrapolating too much from our win against Arsenal in that "we can take it to anyone" or "they're just not trying hard enough if they were able to do it against Arsenal." Arsenal, for as good as they are, have some specific weaknesses that Unai must have spent countless hours reviewing. They lack lots of pace in behind on the wings. They don't have an elite finisher. It says a lot that their top scorer is Saka from the wing. Zinchenko has been torn apart by Arsenal fans. They press in a very specific way. They play in a very similar way except against Pep. So as good as we were, there are just some clubs we match up better against under Unai - Arsenal, and strangely enough City when we're near full strength. By contrast, we have won once under Unai against United and that had more to do with them still deploying the laziest forward combo in Ronaldo and Rashford. We have drawn once against Liverpool but they have generally had the better of us. Newcastle did the double over us this year. Brentford have given us a torrid time in each match no matter what strength we're at. Clubs with pace in behind and a willingness to sit back continue to give us a difficult time with a combination of our personnel and Unai's tactical style. So don't be surprised for as elite as we were against Arsenal, that we are somehow confused on how to face Chelsea and Liverpool - teams with dangerous runners in behind and a willingness to play that way.

I'm sure he has a game plan for Liverpool, but they are the type of the team that have the personnel to give us problems no matter how much Unai prepares. If they can deliver from deep (Trent or Mac Allister) and have pacey runners in behind (Salah/Diaz/Nunez) then they can punish the mid block and put us behind or launch quick attacks against us. Newcastle and United have very similar profiles. So despite our dominance against City and Arsenal, we have 0 points from Newcastle/United/Liverpool this year in the league precisely because of the personnel and style of play they have.

Unai cooked Arsenal/Arteta precisely because he has a decade of experience at various levels. Arteta, for all of the dominance shown so far, does not vary his teams. Part of that is that most teams set up a certain way to stop Arsenal in a low block or they rely on their high pressure and counter-press schemes to force mistakes and pile on opponents. But all year - Arteta has only shown "respect" to Pep and to a much lesser extent Klopp - by not pressing too high and forming a formidable low/mid block. Arteta showed little respect for us, deploying Jesus and Havertz, and as a result - slowly losing the midfield battle as we danced around Havertz. Had he deployed a more defensive minded Jorginho or Partey, perhaps Morgan wouldn't have been so free to run around as he did in the middle. It was also little respect to keep chasing and pressing high as we did - even though it was soon becoming obvious that we had figured out how to play around them. But he reacted too late and his players were on toast in the second half from running too hard in the first. Unai knew what Arteta would try to do and anticipated it the entire 90 minute timeline. Whereas Arteta showed us little respect and played as if we were a bottom half team instead of 4th in the league.

Three things with the comp video below with some of our passages of play. The first clip shows the commitment we had to this idea of dragging Arsenal as far up the pitch as possible. Look how wide Diego and Pau split, making it difficult to trap us to one half without covering a lot of ground. Emi acts as the 3rd CB in this scenario because Arsenal press with a 442. Since we're 3 vs 2 in the build up - Emi, Diego, and Pau always had a free man. This exercise is simple in execution but is crucial to why Arsenal started flagging in the second half. Arteta must "dominate" and as a result, he instructs the team to press high and run hard. From :06 to :28 - Trossard has to traverse the entire 18 yard box from end to end chasing the ball around while we execute a training ground exercise. It is dangerous - particularly that Tielemans ball to Diego must be spot on - but key to why Arsenal tired as we forced them to chase. Now - most teams don't chase us this far back. They do not want to get pulled apart. But Arsenal "must" as part of their philosophy and a reason why we started tipping them over in the second half Starting at 3:17 we do it again, split the CB's wide from outside the 18 - have the fullbacks sideline to sideline and then occupy the middle with three stacks of 2 - McGinn/Tielemans - Rogers/Moreno - Watkins/Bailey - all at varying levels so that they occupy different passing lines to get into. We get the switch through Tielemans and then Bailey does a clever lay off to leave Zinchenko in the dust. Unfortunately, I've got no confidence in Konsa finishing off the move but still great execution And when the press was on or from a goal kick, freeze frame at 2:30 - we toyed with this idea away at City as practice but to evade the pressure - we used Zaniolo/Watkins and to a lesser extent Bailey's hold up play direct. Leaving 3 along the line there prevents us from getting pinned back as we started doing from about January onwards. Unai trusted Zaniolo to win his duels against Ben White and Morgan was there for any knockdowns or second balls. Squint and you'll see yet another layer of Unai's tactical plans - that's essentially a 433 or a 4231 (a formation we have only played for about 20 minutes this year) that we were playing at times. So just when you think he's shown all his cards, he saved a special one for Arsenal and Arteta.

City don't have nearly as easy of a run in as it looks. 4/6 are away and while City have still been excellent away, they have not been invincible. They have 3 losses away, have a 14 GD differential home and away and a +7 xGD home and away. On top of that, they play 3 of the top 5 teams in terms of being stronger at home vs away. Fulham, in particular, have an astounding +28 GD split home/away but Brighton (+16 GD) and Forest (+16 GD) have significant home/away splits as well. Their home matches (Wolves/West Ham) are both sides that can explicitly hurt City on the counter. Then they also have to play Spurs away, which is no easy match as well.

Would be nice if we could finally get a win over Liverpool at home to secure 4th and then play all the kids away at Palace on a sunny day to end the season.

The good thing about Diego is that he has so much experience that it doesn't matter that he played like James Collins last match, he ends up being Sergio Ramos the next one. In one ear and out the other.

Yeah and we have 2 players (Bailey and Diaby) who play best at RW as well as Zaniolo if he stays and then McGinn on occasion. On Bailey's form and Diaby's price, it doesn't make a lot of sense to then buy an attacking RB to occupy that sideline. Frimpong is a good player but if we were to be involved in trying to get those Leverkeusen players, Palacios is the one I'd be most interested in as a number 6/8 CM.

Wishlist remains: RB/CM/Forward that can play all 4 forward positions/LB

Even if we could, he doesn't fit the current personnel well enough for me