Sheaf Saint

And look at that. Smallbone puts in a better FK than JWP has managed all season.

He literally dived the wrong way!

Oh fuck off Caballero. Even McCarthy would have saved that at the near post.

I worry about Tino up against Zaha though. Has Ralph ripped up the playbook and gone with a 433 or is Smallbone playing as a 10 I wonder?

I take it you never watched Tommy Forecast play then.

Watching Palace v Everton and both teams have been dire.

I thought we were looking much better in the early part of the season, with a defence that was working and making us hard to beat. But that today was as bad as anything that we served up during our bad spell after last xmas. It was painful to watch. Pedestrian is the only word I can think of to describe it. We improved our squad depth in the summer, but with the inuries piling up all of a sudden our options really don't look that great. I didn't expect us to win today, but some fight at least would have been nice. We took it to them for the first 15 mins but didn't create any real chances, and after that we basically just rolled over and handed the points to them. It's time for Ralph to accept that his gung-ho approach of going all out and trying to steamroller the opposition in the opening stages just doesn't work when our strike force is as ineffective as it is.

The only positive I can take from today is that at least other results are (currently) going in our favour. That's about it though.

Are they? They lost to a very poor and out of form Everton last weekend. We're making them look so much better than they actually are.

That was an awful passage of play all round. Mistake after mistake just gifting possession back to them.

No marking. Free header. Should have been 4.

This is just painful to watch now.

Well if there ever was any hope of us getting back into this it's all disappeared now.

It really wasn't.

Tella never gonna score from that.

You mean they let us have plenty of possession in full knowledge that we wouldn't actually lay a glove on them and would only leave ourselves open to the counter. That's not having the better of the play.

Well, I've been supportive of Ralph through thick and thin up until now, but I'm finally reaching the stage where I really wouldn't be bothered if he was replaced, as long as we do our due dilligence on a suitable replacement and don't just sack him for the sake of it. We know Arsenal have better players than us, but this performance shows such poor coaching and naivety. It's not his fault personally that our strikers are so profligate, of course, but we need to be defending much better than we are if the strikers aren't doing the biz. Yes we're missing Salisu and Romeu today, but if Ralph genuinely thinks we can still get away with our kamikaze pressing when we have Stephens and Bednarek as our CB pairing then that is worrying. He needs to be smarter than that and make us more solid. JWP has reverted to his old self and is never, ever captain material. He's also been found out as a set piece taker. I don't think I can bring myself to watch the second half. This is a shitshow that isn't going to get any better.

Enough now. Time to take JWP off dead ball duties (and, you could argue, off the pitch) He's really not as good as he thinks he is and we never actually threaten from them. Piss poor delivery every time.

They're racking up again now aren't they. We have better depth than we had this time last season, but our bench still looks woefully inadequate today.

Another JWP corner straight onto the head of a defender. What a surprise.

Just look at those stats FFS. Everything in our favour; Arsenal: 2 shots on target, 2 goals. So fucking predictable.

Oh fuck you Saints. Seriously, fuck the lot of you. That's one too many times you've ruined my saturday now. I'm outta here. Absolute shitshow in defence, gifting the opposition soft goals once again having utterly failed to convert early dominance into goals.

Nobody marking anyone. At all.

Decent enough effort from Arma but not going to beat Ramsdale at the near post.

Needed a better shot than that but Arse left him plenty of room there.