Man City v Arsenal: The Fans View

After another horrendous away up North I've decided to publish what the average Gooner thinks of our first loss of the season.

I think my last article titled 'For The Love Of God........SHOOT' gives a clear indication of what my thoughts were about the game, but lets see what the rest of our Vital Gooners have to say on the matter.

Super_Gooner seemed to agree with my sentiments but was also a little upset with Wenger's substitutions.

Let me be the first to say how awful Thierry was. Unfit maybe, but he was disgraceful. Thought Wenger was wrong to take off rosicky, thought he was brilliant. Toure and Djourou played well but were let down by eboue and especially hoyte. Hleb annoys me sooooooooooo much because he never shoots. To all Arsenal players, one word of advice: SHOOT!

nono predicts a bleak future ahead unles things change drastically.

I think that the problem that we've got is that almost all teams know that we would like to walk the ball into the net, but honestly does anyone play to let us do that. The issue here is that in as much as we want to play beautiful football we have got to take chances when ever they arise. I am afraid to say if we continue to play like that we are not going to play in champions league soon.surely the players have to change their mentality. I believe that wenger's continual use of hoyte on the left back posistion is unjustified considering that flamini was a better player in that postion last year. Surely wenger has to buy in order to strengthen the team as we seem to lack replacements/competition for positions and we are weak defensively.

Pankajs_21 keeps it plain and simple.

We didn't deserve to lose but we didn't deserve to win either

As usual The Prof has the calm, relaxed and more rational view we should all take note of.

I was at the match and it was fascinating for the wrong reasons, Arsenal's problem isn't anything serious, because they are a passing team, they will never resort to short term hit or miss tactics, but in order for their passing game to work, every player needs to be bang on form and understand and be allowed to play their role.

All we need is a physical player to mix it up with our skillful players, someone who can randomise our predictable pace. We lost but if we had taken our numerous chances then it would have been a comfortable win, which means that even on a bad day, the Wenger school of football can still produce clear goal scoring opportunities.

The players are reluctant to shoot because they are footballers who leave nothing to chance, Arsenal is not a hit and hope side, and this team is still trying to find it's form, in other words, shooting randomly and getting a deflected or one off goal will make us happy short term, but in the long term this will solve nothing because you can't maintain or advance with hit and hope, Arsenal are doing the groundwork first, once that has all clicked then they will start to shoot more.

This current Arsenal side do not bomb forward like they used to a few years back, I think this is beacuse they know that they don't have a huge physical presence in midfield who can help them out in both attack and defence, every player feels like they are having to do the jobs outside or their proper roles, and this makes the whole side uneasy. For example, Pires never tackled any player ever, ( apart from that Juventus game ) but when we had Vieira alongside Edu/Gilberto he really didn't have to, he knew his only role was to create space and support Henry. Hleb and Rosicky don't have that luxury.

Our team has all the right abilities we just have one missing ingredients, we need a physical midfielder to balance us and give the rest of the players their freedom back which will in turn make our attacks more intense and less predictable. I don't care if all teams put ten men behind the ball, the pace and accuracy with which Arsenal can pass and move is faster than any defender can deal with, our problem is that we lack that elusive intimidating midfielder to give us our movement and confident ballsy football back.

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