Match Day Thread Arsenal vs. Watford 2016/17 Official Match Thread

Wait a few days, we've got our annual 2-0 loss at Stamford Bridge on Saturday

 

We threw a great opportunity to gain some ground on Chelsea. This teams seems to suffer from inexplicable losses of concentration. Played a blinder against Southampton only to follow it up with an abject first half against Watford.

The Chelsea game has become a must win not only for us but for the chasing pack too.

 

Well, yes, hmm... it's not really inexplicable though is it?!

 

Thank you, as always, for softening the blow of our crappy performance in Sunderland.

Chelsea will win the league not through their own quality, but thanks to the inconsistency and mental weakness of the chasing pack.

 

You're welcome and you can **** right off

Agree about Chelsea. Nobody else looks like they are able to sustain any pressure on them.

 

Our win against them exposed some serious flaws in their personnel. Their line up and tactics are sound, but there are definitely weak links that Conte will no doubt look to address in the summer. They've done very well this window too, offloading high earning fringe players and selling Oscar for double the amount they paid for him. I pray daily that some Chinese club will offer us an obscene amount for Sissoko. I will carry him there personally.

The problem is no-one else seems able to get their ****e together to build a sustained head of steam. I reckon they'll win the league by over 10 points and that no more than 5 points will separate the teams finishing 2nd-6th.

 

You've hit it on the head with this and the other post. No one really can get their act together enough to grind out the results and focus. No one team is standout in the league, which was highlighted last season by Leicester, who dared to win it. Any of the top teams can beat each other on any given day but it's Chelsea this season who are the most focused. Arsenal have been the best it's been for many years and can win the league, but seem to fall asleep at random intervals. I'm not sure if it's down to arrogance of thinking they should win at home, or general poor concentration at the start of some games. Their form certainly isn't an issue!

If Arsenal don't beat Chelsea in the next game, then the league is lost. They certainly can beat them, and i have a feeling we might just do it.

 

To be honest i'm puzzled on how a team that is on good form, with a few of it's main players rested from last game, can somehow stuff it against Watford at home.

 

You are in the same situation as Spurs were 4 weeks ago.
Must win for title aspirations. Must not lose for top 4 aspirations.

The only difference is that for the two Spurs games, there was very little
difference in each game as to how both teams played. The Chelsky of
next week is a very different beast to the one you destroyed early season.

 

Looking at the remaining fixtures, it has to be said that you lot have a very, very tricky run-in. Even putting aside the annual Bayern game for a moment, you have away trips to Chelsea, Liverpool, WBA and us, plus home games against both Manchester clubs still to deal with. Chelsea have by far and away the easier run-in - especially with no CL football to worry about. The league is done n dusted - let's all get over it now so that it hurts less when it actually happens. The incredible thing is that apparently no-on bothered telling your players that Chelsea were quite likely to drop points at Anfield and that consequently a win against Watford plus a win against Chelsea themselves would've put you just 3 points away from them and made you the only viable title challengers. Oh well, good old Wenger eh?

 

Can you give Wenger a bell and tell him what those weaknesses are please. Because he's got a nasty habit of just rolling over for Chelsea.

Don't understand for a minute why poch bought sissoko. Especially for £30m ! When you already have dembele and wanyama.

 

Sissoko is very different to Dembele or Wanyama, principally in the sense that he is not a footballer.

Chelsea's main weakness is that they play a wing-back system without proper wing backs. Moses is great going forward but suspect in defence. Alonso looks quality but is still adapting to the pace of the PL. He'll be excellent next year. And Cahill/Azpilicueta/Luiz always have a mistake somewhere in them. Matic and Kante protect those chinks expertly but if you can beat them for pace in the wide areas - as we did through Walker & Rose - Matic in particular isn't mobile enough to compensate. We scored two near-identical goals against them due to this, stretching them down the flanks to create room in the middle for Alli to exploit.

 

Wenger needs to emphasise discipline, if you're going to get anything out of this game.
You simply can't afford to lose men against them, which seems to happen frequently.

I was completely against signing Sissoko, but we're not even using him centrally, when he does get on.
He's normally played on the right of our 3 in a 4-2-3-1, where's he's close to useless.
Total waste of money, so far. Had a few bright spots, then disappears again.

 

It' not over until the rest give up. If Arsenal beat Chelsea then it's cut to 6 points, and if Chelsea draw the subsequent game and Arsenal win again, it'll be 4...As highlighted by your earlier post Chelsea aren't overwhelmingly good like Real or Barca, they are just doing the small things right. They should drop points but the question comes back, will anyone dare to take advantage.

 

True, we also need to be completely prepared and ready for this game. The way we started against Watford was unforgivable, it looked like the players were half asleep. That has happened too many times this season, where we've totally switched off for the first 45 mins and then had to play out of our skins to try and rescue the game in the 2nd half. If we do that against Chelsea, then we'll be dead and buried by HT.

As for Sissoko, pretty much what Toon fans said all along. Good player when he can be bothered to turn up, but 80% of the time he just looks like he can't be arsed.

 

The fact that you face Chelsea next puts you in the driving seat for that question. But only theoretically. Looking at your remaining fixtures - and especially comparing them to our own - the irony of an Arsenal victory this weekend is that it might (might) do more favours for us than for you, as I personally can see you dropping more points between now and the end of the season than we will. What has changed for us this season is that even when we're playing absolutely ****e, we still don't seem to lose. We've lost 2 all season - one at Old Trafford, the other at Stamford Bridge. I believe that you remain better than us at turning draws into wins (cue Giroud in the 90th minute every bloody week), but we have the edge in turning defeats into draws.

 

For me, the league was as good as over as soon as we lost B2B away games to Everton and City. We needed to get at least 4 points from those two games. We took none. That to me was a sure sign that we simply were not mentally capable of challenging for the league title.

@C.Kane is spot on about our run in - we have got some very tough away fixtures, and then home fixtures to the likes of United and City. Our home form hasn't been good and although our away form has been better, it has still been iffy against the top 7 sides. On top of that, we have Europe to think about too.

Chelsea's record against the top 6 isn't amazing, but they've been blowing away every other team in the league and ironically, it was their defeat against us that led to them shaking things up tactically and it's worked amazingly for them ever since.

Spurs showed that you can beat them if you exploit their weaknesses and have the right personnel to take advantage of them, but I'm not so sure we do. Most teams don't to be honest and that's why they seem to win most of their games so comfortably.

I can't see us winning there sadly. Best we can hope for is top 4 and the FA Cup, in my opinion.