Frankfurt (A) 19/9 5:55pm (!)

[mcdowell42]

Emery on returning players: "Rob Holding is getting closer to us now. Tomorrow, Hector Bellerin & Kieran Tierney will play with the under-23s" #Arsenal https://t.co/7KHuI3FehL

[GoonerMuzz]

There were some good performances tonight but still worrying that although we won 3-0 they still had 28 attempts, I dont want to take anything away because in the main we played well but as was said after the match we have the highest attempts against in the league by a large margin. What can UE do to change that trend?

Thankfully tonight Frankfurts shooting in the main was poor, mind you so was ours a few times, but against some of the strikers in the PL they wont miss. I feel quite often we defend far too narrowly and this allows players to get crosses in easily, this needs addressing if things are to improve.

Saka and Martinez were out best players and strangely Xhaka and Mustafi did well by their usual standards, Lucas still looks a little off the pace but is getting back to it, ESR looked out of position and Chambers was hit and miss, better going forward than defending, Sead was ok but Luiz is a calamity always waiting to happen, Joe was ok but he needs to be a bit less 'Wilshire', holding the ball to long or trying too much, on the plus side his ankles dont seem to be glass! Pepe still looks lost most of the time, Auba was Auba, Dani seemed to settle things down a bit when he came on trying to keep a measure of control and retention, AMN had next to nothing to do by the time he came on.

It's not a game to go down in European history but I'll take the result and improved performance over the Watford debacle any day

Are you on first name terms with many of the squad ?

Nope just lazy as fuck when it comes to spelling more than two syllables

[OneBardGooner]

There were some good performances tonight but still worrying that although we won 3-0 they still had 28 attempts, I dont want to take anything away because in the main we played well but as was said after the match we have the highest attempts against in the league by a large margin. What can UE do to change that trend?

Thankfully tonight Frankfurts shooting in the main was poor, mind you so was ours a few times, but against some of the strikers in the PL they wont miss. I feel quite often we defend far too narrowly and this allows players to get crosses in easily, this needs addressing if things are to improve.

Saka and Martinez were out best players and strangely Xhaka and Mustafi did well by their usual standards, Lucas still looks a little off the pace but is getting back to it, ESR looked out of position and Chambers was hit and miss, better going forward than defending, Sead was ok but Luiz is a calamity always waiting to happen, Joe was ok but he needs to be a bit less 'Wilshire', holding the ball to long or trying too much, on the plus side his ankles dont seem to be glass! Pepe still looks lost most of the time, Auba was Auba, Dani seemed to settle things down a bit when he came on trying to keep a measure of control and retention, AMN had next to nothing to do by the time he came on.

It's not a game to go down in European history but I'll take the result and improved performance over the Watford debacle any day

Are you on first name terms with many of the squad ?

Nope just lazy as fuck when it comes to spelling more than two syllables

But... but .... aren't you a Mod!???

[Eboue-Why?]

Get a decent defence in place and we might do something this season. Yep it could have been 4-2 but it wasn’t so hopefully a confidence boost.
Onwards and upwards.

[GTG]

I honestly think even with this team, a lot more could be done on the training pitch to make us a tighter unit. Thats one of the things thats getting me frustrated with the manager.

Part of the reason we're shipping so many shots is because the gap between the defence and midfield is often far too wide. This was highlighted yesterday in the analysis by Keown. The other thing as mentioned by someone else in the thread is that we defend very narrow and don't get out quick enough to stop the crosses or the shots across our own goal. There was plenty of instances of that again yesterday.

That said to win 3-0 in our toughest group fixture is a great result. I'll whisper this quietly but Xhaka was very good last night and looked like he had a point to prove. No real mistakes at the back and I thought the keeper actually looked more solid than leno does.

Saka looks an absolute star..... give him the europa league and league cup matches to get the experience he needs and then hopefully he will be first team ready very soon.

It's nice that we actually have players that can beat their man now. We've lacked that for a long time.

[Skooner]

Xhaka just seems more comfortable and less rash when Torreira is alongside him. Torreira wasn't even particularly good last night but maybe it's like a security blanket thing. I think we'd all agree we'd rather see Torreira and Guendouzi than Xhaka being in the team but if Emery is going to persist with Xhaka then I think Torreira needs to start as well.

Pepe desparately needs a goal, looks very low on confidence right now and making poor decisions on the ball.

[General]

I honestly think even with this team, a lot more could be done on the training pitch to make us a tighter unit. Thats one of the things thats getting me frustrated with the manager.

Part of the reason we're shipping so many shots is because the gap between the defence and midfield is often far too wide. This was highlighted yesterday in the analysis by Keown. The other thing as mentioned by someone else in the thread is that we defend very narrow and don't get out quick enough to stop the crosses or the shots across our own goal. There was plenty of instances of that again yesterday.

That said to win 3-0 in our toughest group fixture is a great result. I'll whisper this quietly but Xhaka was very good last night and looked like he had a point to prove. No real mistakes at the back and I thought the keeper actually looked more solid than leno does.

Saka looks an absolute star..... give him the europa league and league cup matches to get the experience he needs and then hopefully he will be first team ready very soon.

It's nice that we actually have players that can beat their man now. We've lacked that for a long time.

I agree and unfortunately we are witnessing the same structural issues that we saw under Wonga for years i.e. gaps between midfield and defence and the lack of control in transition. Time and time again we recover possession and attack too quickly leading to stretched lines and a ridiculously open end to end game. I thought Smith Rowe was guilty of this several times yesterday and kept turning over possession, immediately placing the team under the cosh. I would've liked to have seen Reiss Nelson who was loaned out to the Bundesliga last season start in his place.

My problem with Emery is that he was brought in to modernise this team and instil tactical discipline but we seem to have gone backwards after marginal improvements last season. It's akin to knocking down a partially complete building to rebuild the foundations and we are facing fundamental playing issues that should have ben addressed last season. He's gambling too much too early by changing the playing framework from game to game, leading to obvious instability. I'm not sure this manager knows the best formation to maximise their skillset and we've effectively gone from a manager who didn't do any tactics to a manager overdoing it.

He's also turned our best player at anticipating and reading danger in Torreira into an attacker like Sarri did with Kante and we've become too open. It is blindly obvious Xhaka does not have the mobility and anticipation to play the lone pivot. He played quite well yesterday but this was mostly down to the quality of an opposition who have had a massive turnover of players over the summer. Most teams in this competition lack quality and are generally poor tactically so we were in good company.

[Ray C]

Rode our luck & Martinez was our match saver in the first half. Loved what Saka did tonight.

[Jock Gooner]

I'll take the result given the Watford debacle. One or two solid performances which was encouraging.

The opposition, well they caused us enough problems and had they not cashed in on Jovic and Haller during the summer they would probably have put away a few of their chances last night and things might have been a whole lot different this morning. Let's see which Arsenal turn up for Villa.

[sk-gtfo]

Rode our luck & Martinez was our match saver in the first half. Loved what Saka did tonight.

Martinez looks like a good quality keeper, Leno has competition if he can keep that sort of form up, remember Xhaka AND Mustafi were playing, only a miracle worker could keep a clean sheet with those two muppets flying into tackles etc.

Saka reminds me a bit of Sterling, he looks a leeeetle bit special as SFB would say, lets just hope he can keep up his sharpness and deeeesire.