SWLondon Saint

Come on, this team is clearly better than anything in the Championship right now. You can argue it's one of the worst PL teams, sure, but it would piss all over the Championship. Even our relegation team from 2 years ago was a level above the best Championship teams.

I think Downes is a decent player who can play as a single pivot in the Championship, but let's be honest - he is being asked to do the same in probably the hardest league in the world, against some of the best managers in the world, by a manager who is giving him (and the rest of the back 6/7) absolutely zero help out there. There's a reason it's pretty much just Rodri who does that for Man City. It needs a world class player. The closest comparison for Downes is Declan Rice - both of them are more an aggressive pressing, ball-winning 8 than a solo pivot 6, and need someone alongside them in a double pivot at this level. They can't shield the defense adequately on their own, and they can't play that crucial link role just getting, giving, retaining on the half turn. It's just not their game.

I mean, sometimes you just need to whack it to your #9 and hope he holds it up. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that and Arsenal did it plenty. You could see when the ball went into Stewart or Tall Paul and it stuck everything gets easier, you're further up the pitch with more space and options.

What is incredibly frustrating about all this is I think there is a decent side in there somewhere, but the manager is actually making them perform worse than they probably could. It's just bloody vanity. Even Pep's teams don't try and pass it around their own area after just getting it back off the opposition, they're perfectly happy to move quickly onto the counter. But we don't! On the counter, on transition is the best way to score for ANY team. Yes, we are seeing a lot of individual mistakes. But when it's costing us an average of 2 goals a game, and coming from nearly every single member of the back 4+2 midfielders, it's very clear the problem is either the system or how it's being communicated. Too much scrambled thinking, too much 'extreme possession' indoctrination has the players doubting their instincts to sometimes get rid of the ball long or medium distance.

Archer was actually playing wide left when Tall Paul came on and looked perfectly fine.

Just put your foot through it 😑😑😑😑

It's ridiculous how much better we look with a proper centre forward on and pace on the flanks. Just makes TPs long exile before this seem all the more ridiculous.

Sorry, but that VAR is complete bollocks. The player in the centre is clearly involved in play.

To be fair to RM, he has set up to try not to get beat. A low block with KWP as a 2nd left back when it's with Saka, then he has a kind of free defensive role when it goes left and KWP has actually mopped up quite a lot of potential danger. The problem right now is we have literally 0 threat. Stewart was clearly on to try to hold up the ball which he was doing OK at up against 2 class CBs. So why the heck replace him with Archer, who is clearly a channel runner / ball in behind type?! Would make more sense to have BBD or Tall Paul in surely?

The Arsenal line up clearly says they don't believe we have any threat in behind so they're going to be a 3-3-4 and press hard onto our back 4. Unless we're going to play mid length passes into Stewart be prepared to see us lose the ball a LOT in the danger zone.

I can only assume he wants Manning and KWP to double up on Saka or he is actually trying to lose by double figures and get the boot.

Absolutely, who wouldn't enjoy watching the opposition cough up the ball for some easy goals!! 😂 The way they pressed with 5/6 against PSG, they could pretty much score at will if Russ does his usual amount of homework / prep as evidenced so far. If they're serious about the title they ought to be thinking they have a huge chance for a cricket score and then hopefully the manager gets changed before we play their title rivals.

Interestingly, the thing that turned Spain from possession kings who never won anything into the title winning juggernaut they are now was actually adding what you've just described to their traditional PB game. The work out of possession is arguably Pep's hallmark, I don't get why everyone focuses on the tiki taka bit when actually they probably score more in transition than after long periods in possession. The whole point of the 'counter press' thing is kind of choosing the areas where you take risks and lose possession, then winning it back in those danger areas and scoring very soon after. It's basic stuff and I just don't get why someone with a UEFA Pro license like Russ is getting flat-out schooled in it by all the other PL managers so far.

Honestly, with world-class players I'm sure Martin would still be shipping goals. That's a question of defensive organisation and he just can't do it, he never has. What I don't get is what bloody metric anyone involved in the hiring process was looking at? The fact his teams concede so many surely should have been a red flag?

'Mikel Merino says he is seeing football in a different way after his first month or so under Mikel Arteta at Arsenal.' https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/oct/02/mikel-merino-arsenal-training-methods-mikel-arteta Call it a hunch, but given RM's teams long history of shambolic defending, I'm guessing our training isn't at that level...

Watching the PSG game, Arsenal are actually quite direct a lot of the time. They are quite happy to send it long then win the 2nd ball or counter-press to win it back high. It's kind of the Ralf Rangnick Red Bull template. Several times Arsenal smacked it into the corner then had 5 players press. That would basically destroy Russball if they just did it all match....

I think the reason we always seem to concede a 2nd after the first is that after conceding, the other team tends to press as hard as they can to try and secure the advantage. Because we try to keep possession rather than playing direct / positional (the traditional ' get and keep the ball up their end') we actually invited pressure instead of exploiting the old 'teams are vulnerable after going ahead' truism. So it's a double or triple whammy of the more passive style adding to pressure/ increased confidence for the other team.

Watched the whole 2nd half and saw highlights of the 1st. Nothing has changed from the long post I wrote a few matches back. RM is just out of his depth - there's nothing personal about that, he just doesn't have the knowledge or experience. It looks like what he needs is some time away when he finds a way to go observe, say, managers like Alonso, Gasperini, Simeone, Inzaghi. He has never played at that level or been managed by anyone that good. All the experienced PL managers have set traps for him and he's walked the team into them with absolutely no self awareness whatsoever, and you can see it in the players. They don't have confidence in the structure, the setup, so they simply can't perform. The biggest thing is that he seems completely clueless that teams are going to press the crap out of us because they know they will get goals out of it. You can't simply say 'Be brave and keep possession lads!!!', you have to have a plan about how to beat what you know is coming. He's shown absolutely no signs of adapting to the challenge of outsmarting the press he knows is coming. And let's not get started about the defensive shape and set pieces, we made exactly the same mistakes about leaving the top of the box totally unguarded several games ago now. When the only thing a manager can say is 'we need to play harder' that's usually a sign they're out of ideas.

Well, if I remember right we were warned about this by Swansea fans when he came, so not much reason to think a light's suddenly gonna switch on in his head... Just can't see the logic in Wood over ABK or Edwards.

Think that's a bit unfair on Yoshi, who while not on VVD / Fonte level was a 'lower-middle' class Premier league defender IMO. Also that season Fonte did seem to be increasingly and alarmingly error prone if I remember correctly. I feel Stephens has this uncanny knack of making whoever he's playing with look crap! It's something to do with the way he loses attention and drifts away from whoever he's meant to be marking and then the other CB is left desperately trying to cover...

Agree with pretty much everything here, watching JS since the Puel cup run season when he had a run in the team with VVD out I've always felt he was at best a back up. He somehow always makes his defensive partners look bad as well though when you look more closely you see the problem is often caused by Jack 1 or 2 phases back like with the pass to THB against Brentford - he moved forward into a cul-de-sac and forced himself to turn back. On the playing / coaching front I liked seeing 3CBs as a forward exactly due to that tendency for defenders to get in a mix up with zonal marking. I mean, you'd think professionals should know better but... For modern 3CB play though, have a watch of Leverkusen, I know it's a bit hipster with Alonso being flavour of the month/year, but they are really bloody good. Don't understand why if the plan was to play 3CBs the staff couldn't just analyse their play and just copy it, or adapt it at any rate.

Either he didn't establish penalty takers, or he chose Archer - doesn't matter which really, they both reflect badly on him, he knows that, that's why he's being mega-defensive and angry about it. Palace got criticised for sacking DeBoer after 4 games a few years back, but it was clearly absolutely the right decision in hindsight. The big question here is: do we think RM will actually improve? The biggest problem all his teams have, including us last season and this season, is conceding a ton of goals. There is clearly something not right with his approach to defensive transition as his teams get cut apart after losing the ball. He thinks he's Pep, but Pep teams are drilled to death in how to stop teams getting at them when they lose the ball. Sure, they have better players too, but we had players at the top of the league ability range last season and we still conceded a ton of goals. I hoped something would have clicked over the summer, or the club would've found a coach to deal with this issue, but neither has happened. Nothing in his career to date has indicated he knows how to fix his team's defensive issues, so why are people still hoping there'll be a change?

I mean... All other failings aside, this is just unforgivable. What this says is: the preparation and analysis just isn't there. The manager and his staff are quite simply not doing their homework. To be honest, Captain Shoehorn reflects the manager well with his amateur hour sending off. Just bloody do a Chiellini, it's cynical but professional and you don't get sent off. All the doomsayers here need to watch that first 30 minutes. We do have a good enough squad to at least compete. But the organisation is still not good enough, every defensive transition we get cut open in 2 or 3 passes, same as the last 3 games which says the work isn't being done. I honestly find it hard to believe RM was a defender as he loves Stephens who if you watch him over a game, seems to actually disorganise whoever he's near. There was one defensive transition in the highlights which saw poor Sugawara running between I think Zirkzee and Rashford, Stephens offering no communication. The defender further back can see the situation better than the one running back, it is his responsibility to give a shout who he's moving to. But nothing. I was in the camp that RM should get more time to adjust, but I'm just not seeing it. I don't think the formation change particularly improved things, it's actually that we got our best players onto the pitch and we could see their level. The organisation and preparation required isn't there. He seems to make his favoured players feel great, which is good, but it isn't enough at this level.

Yep, that was actually the root cause of the 2nd goal. Just taking it on the half turn, advancing a few strides to commit 1/2 of the pressers, then playing it back if you must makes a huge difference to getting up the pitch. But giving it straight backwards makes things a lot worse. Dunno if anyone coaches here, but I think the approach is different on the continent. Yes, 1 touch is good, but not always, sometimes it's better to take more! It's inherently more risky, so save the 1 touch for near their penalty area not your own.

Absolutely, there was one wall pass by Smallbone against Forest that was absolutely criminal, Sugawara played an excellent ball round the corner off the right touchline under pressure, Smallbone had no one behind him and gave it straight back to Sugawara putting him and the team under huge pressure. He has to be good enough to know he can turn and go and he just wasn't. Drove me nuts 🤯