Montpellier v Arsenal match thread

[tel]

I'm the 1st to slate Wenger, the club and the players but some of you don't seem to take any joy from winning at all. It's like a parody of a talkshite phone in. Fuck it, we won, we're doing ok and the early signs are good. Enjoy it, it might not last.

[Lee1]

I'm the 1st to slate Wenger, the club and the players but some of you don't seem to take any joy from winning at all. It's like a parody of a talkshite phone in. Fuck it, we won, we're doing ok and the early signs are good. Enjoy it, it might not last.

Well said that man

[OneBardGooner]

Ditto!

[clockender1]

yeah - five games unbeaten, only two goals conceded (one from open play) and our new striker is settling in and Santi looks awesome.

we could of slipped up tonight and gone home with a draw, as it is spiwits will be high although the lads will be tired. some lessons were learnt (hopefully) and we go into Sundays game with a definite chance of not giving them three points.

they'll be a lot more tired than us and pretty gutted - if wenger is smart, he starts the same team (maybe coq for diaby) and if we are ahead or level with twenty minutes to go, we sub Giroud and forehead for the kids to run them ragged in the last 20 and steal a result.

i'm basing that on City have too much talent not to score btw. they might not though eh ?

as long as diaby doesn't get sent off early for a foul on Ya Ya and we don't get tonked 2-0 or 3-0 i'll be happy to be fair

[Babatunde]

Arsenal won, that's good.
Giroud however dear Lord. I'm being proved right on him, his all round play was abysmal.
I called it on. Belhanda too, Tony Adams and Stelling raving about him, he's quality.
Good run for Arsenal but if they play anything like they did in the second half tonight, Citeh will pulverise Arsenal mercilessly. Coquelin was shockingly out of his depth when he came on, he can bugger off to West Ham if he wants a game, he's been at Arsenal how long? Where's the progress?

Cazorla once again looked excellent, putting to bed the myths of "settling in period"


Vermaelen defending is concerning, the lack of a serious goalkeeper at the club will come back to haunt Arsenal this season. Mannone and Chesney aren't good enough full stop.

Good win but the quite frankly awful Giroud has to be (and probably will be) dropped for Saturday. It's just not his lack of goals, it's his all round play, awful first touch, lack of awareness and inability to hold it up. Watches him a lot last year and he was like Michael Ricketts, a poor player who went on an insane streaky run.
I'd like him to prove me wrong and score 25 league goals this season, but I doubt he'll even get 5 tbh

[clockender1]

Arsenal won, that's good.
Giroud however dear Lord. I'm being proved right on him, his all round play was abysmal.
I called it on. Belhanda too,

yes you also said Podolski was unproven, and Montpelier were better than us on a smaller budget too...



...as i said, low self-esteem issues

[northbank123]

Obvious only a few games in so too early to make any real judgements but I am a bit concerned about Giroud fitting into the team rather than his ability. He's a real handful and even though he's hardly looking lethal in front of goal his movement is decent and he'll find some kind of goalscoring touch I'm sure, and he fed a few neat lay-offs into Pod today including the goal. What worries me though is that we don't seem (so far) to have been playing to his strengths. So many times in the Stoke game in particular he was not only winning headers against the two Orcs at centre-half but also directing them into the path of where somebody should have been supporting, only to find himself isolated. He is immense in aerial battles, but that's pretty futile if the only time we use that is hoofing long balls to him from the keeper with nobody else near him. Don't want Arsenal to start pumping high balls aimlessly upfield but look at the value it can yield with Ameobi's chest down to Ba yesterday for the second equaliser.

Saying that, if you turn it on its head he's played at Stoke and Anfield (two difficult places to go) where he put in real shifts for the team in what were very disciplined performances, and was admittedly poor tonight but wasn't offered much hope in a second-half performance that saw even Santi and Arteta throwing away possession. It'll likely be a similar story on Sunday but to be honest in a lot of ways he's well suited to the task because we'll likely be backs to the wall and will need somebody up top who'll get through a lot of running and not give the centre-halves an easy time. After all of course he is new to the league (and the team) and may well show what he can really do when he gets a start at home.

[QuartzGooner]

Arsenal won, that's good.

Good run for Arsenal but if they play anything like they did in the second half tonight, Citeh will pulverise Arsenal mercilessly. Coquelin was shockingly out of his depth when he came on, he can bugger off to West Ham if he wants a game, he's been at Arsenal how long? Where's the progress?

Cazorla once again looked excellent, putting to bed the myths of "settling in period"

Coquelin was on for three minutes?
How was he "shockingly out of his depth?"
Is he supposed to instantly fi tin to the ace of the game in three minutes?

A "Settling in period" is no myth.

Some players do not need it, but plenty do.
Ljungberg and Pires had OK first seasons but nothing special, then came to life after that.
Some players need time to adapt to the pace of the English game, and to do extra strength training to cope with the physicality (i.e. Koscielny).

[clockender1]

Girouds movement looks okay to me, and he's getting in the positions to score goals (on three occasions to my mind - two misses and a robbery from feo).

i think the difference between us now and with RvP is that we don't need a target man - we have three threats of which Giroud is one, rather like that after relying on wrighty for years , suddenly we had dennis and anelka and wrighty, and then we added overmars and we were unstoppable (and wrighty was on the bench).

we're not quite there yet, but once teams start picking up pod and santi then the space will be there for gerv and giroud, or even Ox or Jack coming from midfield.

early days but i like a lot of the pundits like our shape and team ethic.

[Gunnersaurus]

Arsenal won, that's good.
Giroud however dear Lord. I'm being proved right on him, his all round play was abysmal.
I called it on. Belhanda too, Tony Adams and Stelling raving about him, he's quality.
Good run for Arsenal but if they play anything like they did in the second half tonight, Citeh will pulverise Arsenal mercilessly. Coquelin was shockingly out of his depth when he came on, he can bugger off to West Ham if he wants a game, he's been at Arsenal how long? Where's the progress?

Cazorla once again looked excellent, putting to bed the myths of "settling in period"


Vermaelen defending is concerning, the lack of a serious goalkeeper at the club will come back to haunt Arsenal this season. Mannone and Chesney aren't good enough full stop.

Good win but the quite frankly awful Giroud has to be (and probably will be) dropped for Saturday. It's just not his lack of goals, it's his all round play, awful first touch, lack of awareness and inability to hold it up. Watches him a lot last year and he was like Michael Ricketts, a poor player who went on an insane streaky run.
I'd like him to prove me wrong and score 25 league goals this season, but I doubt he'll even get 5 tbh

Your obsession with Giroud is scary.

Have you seen the film Misery?

Said on another thread, what is happening to him is the same as what happened to Dzeko and he's turned out alright, 3 new attackers came, it would have been too good to be true for all of them to hit the ground running

[1989]

Arsenal won, that's good.
Giroud however dear Lord. I'm being proved right on him, his all round play was abysmal.
I called it on. Belhanda too, Tony Adams and Stelling raving about him, he's quality.
Good run for Arsenal but if they play anything like they did in the second half tonight, Citeh will pulverise Arsenal mercilessly. Coquelin was shockingly out of his depth when he came on, he can bugger off to West Ham if he wants a game, he's been at Arsenal how long? Where's the progress?

Cazorla once again looked excellent, putting to bed the myths of "settling in period"


Vermaelen defending is concerning, the lack of a serious goalkeeper at the club will come back to haunt Arsenal this season. Mannone and Chesney aren't good enough full stop.

Good win but the quite frankly awful Giroud has to be (and probably will be) dropped for Saturday. It's just not his lack of goals, it's his all round play, awful first touch, lack of awareness and inability to hold it up. Watches him a lot last year and he was like Michael Ricketts, a poor player who went on an insane streaky run.
I'd like him to prove me wrong and score 25 league goals this season, but I doubt he'll even get 5 tbh

Giroud had a good assist which Poldi acknowledged in his post match interview, that's more than Kalou has ever done in an Arsenal shirt..........oh wait he never signed for us

[flash gunner]

Arsenal won, that's good.
Giroud however dear Lord. I'm being proved right on him, his all round play was abysmal.
I called it on. Belhanda too,

yes you also said Podolski was unproven, and Montpelier were better than us on a smaller budget too...



...as i said, low self-esteem issues

Funny how Podolski wasnt mentioned even though he was shit 10 days ago

Wasnt the best game but good result. Up the Gunners

[1989]

Yeah I remember that too Flash, kept saying Poldi is shit because he failed at Bayern.





In your face Babatunde.

[Henry Norris 1913]

you go 1989

[LDB]

Arsenal won, that's good.
Giroud however dear Lord. I'm being proved right on him, his all round play was abysmal.
I called it on. Belhanda too, Tony Adams and Stelling raving about him, he's quality.
Good run for Arsenal but if they play anything like they did in the second half tonight, Citeh will pulverise Arsenal mercilessly. Coquelin was shockingly out of his depth when he came on, he can bugger off to West Ham if he wants a game, he's been at Arsenal how long? Where's the progress?

Cazorla once again looked excellent, putting to bed the myths of "settling in period"


Vermaelen defending is concerning, the lack of a serious goalkeeper at the club will come back to haunt Arsenal this season. Mannone and Chesney aren't good enough full stop.

Good win but the quite frankly awful Giroud has to be (and probably will be) dropped for Saturday. It's just not his lack of goals, it's his all round play, awful first touch, lack of awareness and inability to hold it up. Watches him a lot last year and he was like Michael Ricketts, a poor player who went on an insane streaky run.
I'd like him to prove me wrong and score 25 league goals this season, but I doubt he'll even get 5 tbh

I do love that the first thing that pops into your head when we have a player as classy as Cazorla playing for us is that it backs up one of your boring arguments about settling in periods.