Anderlecht at home

[clockender1]

well the Mail didn't pull any punches - Neil Ashton :

After this, imagine what the big boys of European football are going to do to Arsenal if they make it to the next phase of the Champions League. They will chew them up and spit them out.

Three zip was the score, thanks to the brilliance of Alexis Sanchez, when Arsenal combusted. What a shambles this club can be at times.

Mikel Arteta scored their opener, Sanchez scored a beauty after 29 minutes and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain appeared to have sealed a routine victory in Group D.

But this is Arsenal, remember.

there you go - "shambles" in print.

[augie]

We need to keep this in pespective, Anderlecht are only the second worst side in the group stages.

And actually qualified as champions of their league!

I bet if we played in the Belgian league, we'd still come 4th every year.

With Wenger in charge we'd come 4th in the boat race,

[Mistical92]

can someone please elaborate on what the anderlecht fans got up to?

as for the game, who really cares anymore, we've all done it to death, we know whats wrong, we know nothing will change till he leaves. i cant get worked up about it anymore and no point going over it all again. we all spout the same after every crap but unsurprising result. groundhog day until he fucks off (and maybe till wiggy does too) and i dont mean as manager, i mean from the club completely. he will undoubtedly move upstairs at some stage and we all know will continue to have his out of touch influence on whoever replaces him. only when he is gone completely can things improve meaningfully.

I was above and to the right,a couple got thrown out and as that happened ~20 piled in and tried to take on some of the stewards. There were a good few rows of them in the East Upper, who went mental when they equalised. Some had club gear on so I don't know if they were officials, but seems a weird place to put them if they were. The away fans were kept in for 15 mins at the end but TBH they were celebrating like they won the World Cup, so they'll probably still be there at 9.00 tomorrow!

[northbank123]

well the Mail didn't pull any punches - Neil Ashton :

After this, imagine what the big boys of European football are going to do to Arsenal if they make it to the next phase of the Champions League. They will chew them up and spit them out.

Three zip was the score, thanks to the brilliance of Alexis Sanchez, when Arsenal combusted. What a shambles this club can be at times.

Mikel Arteta scored their opener, Sanchez scored a beauty after 29 minutes and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain appeared to have sealed a routine victory in Group D.

But this is Arsenal, remember.

there you go - "shambles" in print.

Lots of vague references to "the club" being this, "the club" doing that.

As much as people like Merson will now happily hammer "the club" or "the team", when it comes to making that obvious fucking link to shifting the blame to Wenger they are reticent.

[Chippy]

Let's be honest the whole footballing world knew what Merse was saying. It's like in commentary when they say "won the foul" = dived, "took a yellow for the team" = bad foul. "Tactically clueless" means the manager is a twat.

[Mistical92]

Oh btw, it should be said that an offside goal and a comeback for a draw is probably karma for what happened at their place. Ultimately we should've got three points out of the games versus them and we've got four. Still appalling though.

[Dodgyknee71]

what level of blame goes to bould with the defense?

None as he is assistant manager. His coaching input is zero.

Why do you think TA &PV Said no ...they knew

[Ikechukwu1]

‘At 3-0 you either say the game is over and let them score the fourth or fifth or you make changes.

‘At 3-1 we grew in confidence and I have to thank our fans tonight. Even at 3-0 down they gave confidence to the team. Our players got into the rhythm again.

‘Arsenal played the same way throughout: They tried to score a fourth and at 3-2 you see Arsenal start to have a bit of doubt.’

The Anderlecht manager speaks.
Wenker refused to shake his hand. What for I've no clue, maybe it's unfair his financially doped Belgians used tactics eh...

[SteveO 35]

‘At 3-0 you either say the game is over and let them score the fourth or fifth or you make changes.

‘At 3-1 we grew in confidence and I have to thank our fans tonight. Even at 3-0 down they gave confidence to the team. Our players got into the rhythm again.

‘Arsenal played the same way throughout: They tried to score a fourth and at 3-2 you see Arsenal start to have a bit of doubt.’

The Anderlecht manager speaks.
Wenker refused to shake his hand. What for I've no clue, maybe it's unfair his financially doped Belgians used tactics eh...

ONE ARSENE WENGER......THERE'S ONLY ONE ARSENE WENGER



Five games......five games undefeated....

[QuartzGooner]

what level of blame goes to bould with the defense?

None as he is assistant manager. His coaching input is zero.

Why do you think TA &PV Said no ...they knew

It seems more that neither Adams nor Vieira were asked to be coach.

[clockender1]

breaking news : for 8 million quid a year, here are tonights excuses :

we had a poor defensive performance from the first to the last minute today. We never felt comfortable and somewhere we got punished because of bad luck. The first goal was offside but defensively our performance was not good enough to do it. Secondly at 3-0 we thought the job was done and it was a combination of switching off and fatigue as well. You could see we couldn't win the challenges and they finished stronger and sharper - we got punished. It's very disappointing but overall over the two games we got four points. I think we are well paid for our two performances.

so there you go folks - it was just bad luck and fatigue. phew, i bet you all thought it was gross incompetance eh ?

but what's that you say - poor defending too ? never mind, Arsene PLC has the answer :

I think when we lost Mikel Arteta we lost out because he was one of the few who defended well. That didn't help. Apart from that maybe we underestimated subconsciously Anderlecht and got punished. In the Champions League you need to be at the mental level or you get punished and certainly we were not.

I think Anderlecht is a good team. Maybe we'll see in four or five years that this team was full of good players and they are much better than everybody thinks they are. Even in the first half, they had three or four good chances.

so an injury and underestimating an opponent you played three weeks ago.


isn't it amazing what 8 million quid a year can buy huh ? - the full range of excuses - bad luck, we were tired, yet another hamstring and we forgot they were any threat.

there was also another gem in there - when asked if he had underestimated anderlecht twice, he started his answer with "i don't know if you have played football"... which I can think we can all agree is FULL HOUSE !!!!!!!

[Ikechukwu1]

What I most like is the classic Wenker diversion tactic: "maybe in 4/5 years people will realise how good this Anderlecht team is"
Hilarious. So each time his clueless bollocks screws Arsenal, it's cos the other team is waaay more amazing than people realise!
So watch out lads, Hull, Spuds and errr Anderlecht will all be powerhouses in 4/5 years!
I mean wtf is that point about? On £8m a year, you go out and bloody beat Everyone. It's almost like he's saying "look do you expect me to beat really good teams?"
He's a joke and an embarrassment

[Herd]

Soooooooooo glad i didn't wake up and watch this one we needed to win if only to then field weakened teams in the last 2 dead rubbers ,we will lose at home to Dortmund and then could have a squeaky bum session away to the smirks .

[Ray C]

They should have realized how dodgy our defence was from the 1st leg. If they had played an attacking game from the start they may have won the game. Imagine if Hull, Burnley etc. had adopted some attacking intent instead of retreating we may have got done in those games. Swansea must be creaming themselves in anticipation !!. Not just the back 4 our midfield was gutless & lazy today. The only 3 to hold their heads up should be Danny Boy, Ox @ Sanchez.

[defleppardisking]

We have a manager who blame anything and everything except himself.