In all my years of watching the Arsenal I have never seen a game like this. 4-0 up after 25mins and looking world class.
But unfortunately for Arsenal a game of football lasts 90mins and we blew it. Early in the 2nd half Djourou came off with an injury and for me THAT was the turning point. Squillaci came on and all the panic came in.
Daiby was stupidly sent off for lashing out on Barton and it was the Alamo as newcastle bombarded us with everything. But 4-0 up we somehow managed to fck it up as the toon came back to draw 4-4.
Yes you can blame the ref Phip Dowd who was very poor and gifted Newcastle a soft pen. But Wenger and the team need to take this on the chin.
But why are you surprised ? Bolton 2003, Birmingham 2008, Wigan 2009, Spurs 2010.
All games we have been winning and looking in control and somehow managed to throw it away.
You can blame the ref all you want, sad fact is that a Championship winning side never loses a 4-0 lead.
A disgraceful show by the players and manager today
Ratings
Szczesny, 8.0 ( Made some fine saves, Not at fault for any of the goals. Let down by weak defending)
Sagna, 6.5 (Set up our 4th goal with a fine run and cross, defensively poor)
Koscielny, 6.0 (Great first half, very poor 2nd. Gave away a very sort pen and then he was all over the place)
Djourou, 7.5 (Scored a great header and was looking good, Limped off just after half time and our defense went to pot)
Clichy, 6.0 (Mr Panic, 2nd half he like the rest of the back 4 were all at sea)
Diaby, 4.0 ( Stupid red card for lashing out on Barton, Yes it was a back tackle by Barton, But you cant raise your hands like that. Down to 10men it was always going to be harder to handle the comeback)
Cesc, 5.5 ( Poor game and a poor show by our captain. You would of liked Cesc to grab a few people at 4-1 or 4-2 and shout at them and tell them to put there finger out. But he didnt. At times like this you need a leader of men. Tony Adams, Vieira.. Cesc was walking around feeling sorry for himself)
Wilshere, 7.0 ( Played well, His best game for a long time, Let down by players behind him)
Walcott, 8.0 (Unplayable for 25mins, Fantastic start to the game, But along with the rest of the team,didnt show for the 2nd half)
Arshavin, 7.5 (Set up the first 2 goals and looked to be playing well. But 2nd half was pretty weak)
Van Persie 7.5 (Scored 2 fine goals but 2nd half had no support)
Subs
Eboue, N/A
Squillaci, 4.0 (Came on and we looked a different side. isnt this guy a experienced international defender? to me he is no better then Senderos or Silvestre, Very poor defensive play)
Rosicky, 5.5 ( Came on and looked weak, But whats new?)
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Arsene knows
Yes Arsenal fans do have a lot to feel positive about – but they also have a lot to be frustrated about as well- because the team’s potential is frequently let down by in tight games by poor defending – a team that is good- but could be so much better if it had a defence that could handle simple high balls into the box. It is not as if this is a recent problem- we have had this problem for 3 years and despite being acknowledged as an issue by the club it remains a problem. We have one centre back in our squad who is strong in the air- and when he goes off injured we fall apart.
Your big noting your own business success and arrogant put down of other Arsenal fans frustrated by throwing away a big lead again does you no credit what so ever. I am tired of reading oppressive insulting comments by people like you slagging off other Arsenal fans denying them the right to express their views because they differ from yours.
The whining after another a poor defensive performance is far less concerning than your own inability to make an objective analysis of the clubs management and to allow any consideration of his failings as a manager or your attempts to discredit other fans by labeling any one who attempts to present constructive criticism as “doomers.”
If you want to disrespect other Arsenal fans you will find yourself more at home on a Spuds site.
sooo…We lost coz we got a player sent off???
whose fault is that???
Isn’t a manager supposed to make the required changes and adjust his team appropriately to mitigate the effects of the sending off?? We have seen teams, crap teams including Liverpool when under The Great Rafa Benitez go down to 9 men and yet come back from behind to win a match!! And our holy Wenger cannot do that?? All Wenger is good at is spotting an upcoming talent!! He then just asks his players to go play! his on-field tactics are worse than even Steve Bruce!!! His substitutions don’t make any sense!!
And now JD is out!! I am already dreading the Squizzer Kozzer partnership, but am just imagining one of them gets injured!
Then Hail Wenger: We gonna see Miquel make his professional debut in the champions League 2nd round match against Lionel Messi, David Villa and their likes!!
Imagine the backline against Barca in the home leg:
Eboue, Miquel, Squillaci, Clichy!!! Messi, Villa et al gonna get massive hard-ons seeing that!!
And God forbid, but what if Song fails to recover! Then we get to see the MIGHT of Denilson protecting them!!!
And who should we blame for that?? Chelski and Liverfools who destroyed the market with their over spending?? Some defender who disagreed to join us because we refused to pay an extra 500,000 pounds for him??
No…
the only one to blame is Wenger!!
and the guys from AKB…go screw yourselves!!
Arsene Knows (He knows feck all)
What have you actually achieved you di*k??
Yes Arsene achieved all that, but that was when we had a strong team! The moment that team starts disintegrating, we achieve feck all!!!
He goes out and buys Squillaci!! And thats not the first time He done that,,, we all remember Cygan, Stepanovs more recently Silvestre!! Why does he buy them?? coz they are cheap!! Bastard he is!!
and so are all the AKB guys!!!
Is very obvious that arsenal is not good on the defensive so I thing a world class team wouldn’t have lost that yesterday match even if they were two men down. I have never seen arsenal in that form before.
I did not know that Djourou was off at half time..that says it all to me…when he plays we have a defence, otherwise we are a Sunday morning park defence…FACT! “I have four CB’s why would I need another to sit on the bench” Arsene a few weeks ago and last year and the year before that!
Every game that Squillacci has played has been a disaster…..Kossy goes from confident to calamatas as soon as he loses Djourou. Again, Arsene feels that Diaby & Denilson are great cover for Song….WRONG! Facts are Facts..we have no defence without Djourou and no cover without Song.
Although Diaby was a pratt and deserved his card…Barton should not have been on the park anyway from an earlier dirty tackle.
THE FIX WAS MADE AT HALF TIME BY NEWCASTLE AND DOWD. Even the most unbiased anti AFC supporter could see that at every opportunity after that Dowd gave Newcastle 100% help….the red card, the attack on Chesney, the non penalty at 4-2…the constant free kicks on their behalf the 5 minutes extra time…..if the FA are not asked by Arsenal management to investigate this team of officials now then AFC should throw up the white flag!
Finally…I would like to see AW demand that Dowd and his bent crew never officiate one of our matches again.
rocky, what are you rambling on about…fans like you I dont understand, we aint going to win every game. We won our last 6 games and thats not enough for fans like you, we were four up at half time at St James Park, cruising and solid at the back. We lost djourou to injury and got reduced to 10 men..the one decision the ref got right was to send diaby off. We cant really say anything though about the penalties newcastle won yesterday though, how many points have we robbed off teams this season by conning the ref, loads. Sometimes we have to take our oil and stop looking for individuals to blame, we played 9 games in january and went out and gave 110% in that first half at St James park, we scared the shit out of the geordies, i’ll remember that when people slag us. we couldnt cope with 10 v 11, with song and denilson out, we were out muscled, they brought pace off the bench to exploit squilllachi lack of match fitness, their tactics worked because we had no plan B.
Back to your rant about squillachi, why do you want our club to spend multi millions on a defender, if gary cahill came to us in the summer for 22million(over priced lol) he would find it hard to get a game our defence has been solid this year, it’s been awhile since I saw us keep so many clean sheets, before the Newcastle game our defensive record was as on a par with Man Utd, Chelsea and dont forget Man City(the defensive unit). Vermaelan being injured, gave djourou and koscielney opportunity to shine, they compliment each other with power and speed, Koscielney looks like a class act in the making, earning his first call up to the french squad this week. Djourou, Vermaelan and now Koscielney we have quality at the back, and the emergance of ”The Wall” in goal looking the real deal it looks like Arsene does know, squillachi is at Arsenal because he has the defenders brain if not the legs, he doesnt make noise about not playing enough games because when Vermaelan comes back he’ll be a forthchoice benchwarmer, because the rest have excelled, wenger had not planned on playing him yesterday, koscielney had enough to do 2nd half filling in the gaps clichy left when he went absent again, why have fullbacks bombing forward, momentum was with newcastle at 4-2, we couldnt even relay on our skill of keepball, just a bad day at the office. But we’re a far better team than last year, stats dont lie. Its the first time in a long time ive had to defend arsenal from the Anti Arsene Arsenal Fans by replying to this, grow up and back your team for once.
almunia
(campbell, gallas, silvestre ) no were near good enough last season, not a sniff of trophy, getting spanked by Barca was as close as we came, this year we’ve a real chance to end the drought, still in all four, going to wembley. Arsenal to let the invincibles go, move stadium and survive on a small budget for ages, but wenger got us too europe every season, finacially were sound but you guys would want to break the bank to win things, Leeds Utd emploding was not that long ago…..I’d rather have our club now, debt free, ready for the 21st century. We may not have secured silverware over the 6 years, but our fan base is massive, playing the best football in the best stadium in england, all the rest have the transition and the building and moving to keep them occupied for the forseable future, modelling themselves on the way Arsenal went through transition and Arsene’s genius, why spend 25million on talent when you can grow it and teach it yourself, while we have been there and done that and came out the otherside finally ready to get back to trophy winning. Time for the others to catch up, and Arsenal fans to support their team, its shocking the negativity that you’s come out with on the forums. AFC for life
We still have not learned how to close out a game. Worse yet, we know not how to present a wall and keep steady heads when under fire.
The lads showed signs of immaturity again today and not one decent defender on the bench to come on, when the game was changing. But the most disgusting performer was the Ref and his officials. What is the purpose of the 4th official? Time for cameras to be introduced in the English game. Dressed in black and sporting a whistle, pad and different colour cards do not make you a Ref:
IS THIS NOT ALL TOO FAMILIAR????
Ive discovered we never learn from our mistakes. last time we had a jan window to secure a striker merely due to the fact that we had a row of tough games in jan but oh no we decided to buy in the summer….. now we’ve discover our manager is against jan transfers they are unfair….he has alot to learn
its plain simple, the loss at newcastle is not cause we had a stupid ref, which he was. it simply highlighted the flaws in Arsene wengers thinking. honestly, how can you let the entire january window pass you by without resolving the center back issue, like some else has said ,regardless of who did not want to sell we could,should have ATLEAST secured a center back on loan. but oh no Arsene’c calculation once again have backfired for lack of common sense. he thought TV5 would recover on time but how do you make such a stupid assumption a that???? Squilacci is the worst defender in the entire league, guess who initiated the tackle on diable??yes he came on making stupid short passes and that my friends was just the beginning. if you watch every goal except the penalties he was the last man and he decided to watch or duck, we need our manager to be very realistic, we dont need his services , he is the weakest link in our team id put miquel before him.
common sense tells you need plan a,b,c. so now he knew we have a tight schedule this month-
12th(wolves),16th(barca),19th(FA),22(stoke),27(Carling cup). shouldnt that tell you you need a back up plan especially you intend to challenge on all 4 fronts? personally i think we might not see silver ware with this man cause he is too slow to learn. some of you might say carling cup for grabs but remember its one match and birmingham will be fresh and fired and we…on the other hand
Unless, Wenger addresses that SHOCKINGLY LACK OF WINNING MENTALITY, cause honestly we have broken the record to be the first team to give up a 4-0 lead.how????
we simply lack leaders on the pitch it was clear for all to see. Denilson for one was very right, cause the whole team simply disintegrated under pressure, Cesc was anonymous, no one to call on the team to hold their line and this seems to be the achilles heel and has been for a while. Answer> get rid of pat rice and please hire a proper defence coach(why we dumped keown i will never understand). we simply play pretty football and hence the taunting words of evra resound “united have more power but arsenal is simply a training ground”. the body language was pathetic, no tactics and if ever win the league this year it will be down to the simple fact that chelsea were disrupted by ray wilkinson’s departure, man utd failed to adequately replace tevez and valencia got injured……
What goonerrandy said. Spot on fella.
Goonerandy
Arsenal have lost 7 of the 8 games played this season when Squillacci partnered Koscielny in the centre of defence. Its got nothing to do with match fitness-the combination doesn’t work. The defence was transformed when Djourou has played but Djourou is injury prone unable to play more than one game per week until one month ago when he was forced to play more often- now he is injured again at a crucial time. What on earth is your assessment of Vermaelen based on? He is not fit,he has not played a game for months, he’s been out nearly all season with a serious injury- even if your best case scenario is true- how many games will it take him to get match fit and stay fit?
The fact is Arsenal’s defence is brittle- against determined opposition we have struggled to defend any lead. Squandering a 4 goal lead against a mid table side- coming on top of squandering a 2 goal lead at home against Spurs and Wigan-does not provide the evidence for being a better side than last year and being able to beat Barcelona.
Arsenal as a club are not debt free- we have over over 230m in debt. But the club makes an operating profit- a profit which it appears the club are not will to spend on strengthening the squad.
If the club was completely debt free it would be wide open to the kind of leveraged buy out that has almost destroyed Liverpool. Affordable debt is healthy. The club could afford to spend more on its players than it has and could trim its spending on kids players who are never likely to make the grade
The club makes a profit in the transfer market- by selling experienced players and buying kids- and that has worked very well – except when it comes to defenders. The kind of defenders we need will cost money-and the AKB need to realise that some of the profit made by charging some of the highest ticket prices to watch a match in the world needs to be spent on strengthening the squad- and that means on transfer fees not just on salaries for kids. People are not going to give you their best players and we cannot grow our own in every position- no successful club in England ever has.
Arsenals best players are hungry for success- they are not going to wait around indefinitely for Arsenal to eventually realise they have to strengthen the squad- and if Fabregas goes- we simply wont be able to replace him. Yes Wenger has done some wonderful things at Arsenal- hes also got some blind spots- which are capable of continuing to undermine all his good work.
Pete the True Gunner.
You are one hundred percent correct, the Dowd gang should face the squad of real Gunners.
Even the French news said the game was fixed. Not By The Gunners thats for sure.