[Archived] Arsenal Preview

[ABBEY]

just seen ince's interview...OMG...He said we played well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Im not one of the grammar police on here ,far from it...BUT SOMEONE SHOULD TELL HIM THAT "THINK AND THINGS " ARE NOT PRONOUNCED FINK AND FINGS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does he honestly believe we didnt play bad ?if so were doomed.

[bubblerrovers]

Very bad result our defence was a sham, we're in big trouble already and as many fans are starting to realise we're in for a relegation fight no doubts about it. Look at the premiership this year, teams like Wigan, Sunderland, have more quality than us. How did this happen?? has the board finally given up the fight and accepted we're too small a club to survive in this league.

[Blackpool_Rover]

just seen ince's interview...OMG...He said we played well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Im not one of the grammar police on here ,far from it...BUT SOMEONE SHOULD TELL HIM THAT "THINK AND THINGS " ARE NOT PRONOUNCED FINK AND FINGS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does he honestly believe we didnt play bad ?if so were doomed.

Apart from our dire defending we did ok. We went forward well. Wenger also commented on us playing well. Im not disalusioned but i read your post after the game abbey and you overreacted. Yes it was bad defending but we gave it a go and played them at their own game, we looked good doing this at times but got punished when we lost posession. Hughes would have put 10 behind the ball, which, and its probably inces mistake, would have been more effective. However we saw some glimpses of nice attacking football and that will prepare us well for normal games like next week against fulham where we can play this football and not get instantly punished by world class players. Im not for one minute praising our defence as it was bad and needs shuffling. Samba is crap and Nelsen isnt playing well. We will give it a few more games before we lose the plot though dont you think?

[John]

Mark Hughes’ Blackburn prided themselves in their ability to rattle Arsenal. Paul Ince’s Rovers stood off. In central midfield, Keith Andrews has gone from facing Accrington to taking on Arsenal within a few months. And it showed.

[Blackpool_Rover]

Also lets not forget Hughes start here. We had the honeymoon game vs portsmouth which we can compare to everton this year. Followed by a home defeat to bournemouth, then charlton, a less than convincing draw with villa at home, then 2 of the worst displays from any premier league team ever...as we lost 4-0 at HOME to BORO and followed it up with a 4-0 defeat to chelsea. So while Hughes inherited a much worse team, it was a bad start. I remember being in the toilets against boro that day and hearing so much crap about Hughes out. Much like im hearing now. YOU ARE ALL SO FICKLE. If we win the next few games you will be kissing inces arse. Its stupid to talk about relegation. Granted, we dont look like a top 8 side, but relegation, give me a break.

[thenodrog]

If we win the next few games you will be kissing inces arse. Its stupid to talk about relegation. Granted, we dont look like a top 8 side, but relegation, give me a break.

I can assure you he'll have to do a lot more than win a few football matches for me to do that matey.

[joey_big_nose]

Well I watched the whole game. It was wierd. THey scored early but we were actually quite good going forward, we could have had three or four if Andrews, Cruz and Emerton could have finished. Emerton in paritcualr looked decent and the quality from wide areas was better than it has been recently. We looked well into the game until the end of the secondhalf.

The defence on the other hand was an utter shambles. Warnock was obviously told to push up, inexplicably when we had no defensive midfielder on the pitch and Arsenal had extraordinary pace on the counter. It was defensive suicide. The tactics were so bad in the game , it was Keegan style all out attack. Mental.

We need to get compact. 451, provide lots of protection for the back four. Samba is obviously out of confidence and needs to be dropped - he was extraordinarily bad. The priority should be not to concede. If that means playing a bit of dull football so be it.

THe sensible thing to have done was to play Treacy and Cruz out wide from the start and take on the space behind the full backs with Roberts up front. Much as we did against Man Utd last year. We were committing too many people forward. It wsa like Wenger picked our tactics for us! We gave them so much room it was bizarre. We were pushing up for God's sakes!

Still behind Ince and won't make any concrete judgement till Novemeber. But Ince has to learn that the quality of strikers in the Prem means if you are too offensive you will be punished. Thats against West Ham. Against Arsenal - who have some of the quickest and most creative players in the world and a team that is entirely built around the counter attack - it is lunacy. You build your base first and then work from there.

No point in a house without any foundations.

[RovertheHill]

I can assure you that I think there were things yesterday that were very worrying and need sorting out soon. However, that performance was no worse than the pathetic effort we made against an already relegated Birmingham and with a Uefa cup spot to play for, and I don't recall anyone particularly calling for Hughes's head after that. Still, now Ince knows the size of the job he will have no excuses if he doesn't sort us out in the next few games

[brfcs5359]

This was in the main typical of Hughes team with one exception. We tried to play football instead of trying to defend for 90 minutes. And Arsenal took advantage. The flip side is we should attacking wise do a lot better this season. However defensively Ince has made one big mistake. Admiral as the undroppable captain. Warnock should have gone too for Shorey. He had an X cert yesterday and didn't seem bothered at times.

Andrews - he showed a lot of potential. patience in possession, a good touch and I think he will be a good player for Rovers when he gets with the pace of things. Tactically he was aware too. He needs a period to settle in.

[ABBEY]

Apart from our dire defending we did ok. We went forward well. Wenger also commented on us playing well. Im not disalusioned but i read your post after the game abbey and you overreacted. Yes it was bad defending but we gave it a go and played them at their own game, we looked good doing this at times but got punished when we lost posession. Hughes would have put 10 behind the ball, which, and its probably inces mistake, would have been more effective. However we saw some glimpses of nice attacking football and that will prepare us well for normal games like next week against fulham where we can play this football and not get instantly punished by world class players. Im not for one minute praising our defence as it was bad and needs shuffling. Samba is crap and Nelsen isnt playing well. We will give it a few more games before we lose the plot though dont you think?

well if you think we played well your in cuckoo land.when the finl whistle went i bet (not counting the gooners) there was around 10 thousand left in the ground.You must have watched on a dodgy feed or something because we were clueless ,leaderless and passionless yesterday.it wasnt/isnt overreacting its fact.

.we were lucky we didnt concede double figures yesterday.

[cn174]

28 consecutive passes Arsenal made before scoring the 2nd goal.

Rubbish!!

[thenodrog]

Andrews - he showed a lot of potential. patience in possession, a good touch and I think he will be a good player for Rovers when he gets with the pace of things. Tactically he was aware too. He needs a period to settle in.

He'll only be a good player for us if we go down a couple of divisions.

This was in the main typical of Hughes team with one exception. We tried to play football instead of trying to defend for 90 minutes. And Arsenal took advantage. The flip side is we should attacking wise do a lot better this season. However defensively Ince has made one big mistake. Admiral as the undroppable captain. Warnock should have gone too for Shorey. He had an X cert yesterday and didn't seem bothered at times.

Hansen quite rightly pointed out on MoTD that defence is the FIRST thing that any manager must get right. It's not just Arsenal that will take advantage if we continue as we are.

[Blackpool_Rover]

well if you think we played well your in cuckoo land.when the finl whistle went i bet (not counting the gooners) there was around 10 thousand left in the ground.You must have watched on a dodgy feed or something because we were clueless ,leaderless and passionless yesterday.it wasnt/isnt overreacting its fact.

.we were lucky we didnt concede double figures yesterday.

The game was live on normal tv but granted i couldnt quite grasp the atmosphere/goings on at ewood and if 10k were left then i can see their frustrations. Im not saying it was a good performance, it wasnt, im saying we showed some nice stuff going forward which can be seen as a good thing for when we play lesser oposition. But definately, the defence isnt good enough and it should be put as priority number 1 for ince.

[1864roverite]

Graham, if you thought that Andrews had a good game yesterday your clearly have no understanding of football at all.

Andrews was slow, inept, lumbersome and dangerous. I mean dangerous to his own team. His tackling was late and ineffective, his positioning and passing was off the mark, in fact, he was so bloody much out of his depth it was criminal putting him out there on that pitch.

It has to be one of the worst managerial decisions ever.

He may be a good box to box midfielder in div 2, but he is a player who failed at Hull, dipped at wolves and had a good season at MK Dons. You do not, at the age of 27, forget how to play football. You do not make the jump to the Premiership via 2 divisions, you work your way up. I cannot see what Ince and co see in him. I didnt see anything yesterday that made me think I will give him time to adjust.

Andrews is not and never will be a Premiership player. Thats why Hull and Wolves have both got rid of him.

Another thing whislt we are on, Ince said it wasnt long ago that Fowler was banging in goals for Liverpool, well Paul, it wasnt that long ago he couldnt even make the bench at Cardiff

Forgot about aht one didnt we mate

[Rovermatt]

Playing someone with Andrews's obvious limitations against Arsenal is the most laughable yet distressing things about yesterday.

[nowthen]

Graham, if you thought that Andrews had a good game yesterday your clearly have no understanding of football at all.

Andrews was slow, inept, lumbersome and dangerous. I mean dangerous to his own team. His tackling was late and ineffective, his positioning and passing was off the mark, in fact, he was so bloody much out of his depth it was criminal putting him out there on that pitch.

It has to be one of the worst managerial decisions ever.

He may be a good box to box midfielder in div 2, but he is a player who failed at Hull, dipped at wolves and had a good season at MK Dons. You do not, at the age of 27, forget how to play football. You do not make the jump to the Premiership via 2 divisions, you work your way up. I cannot see what Ince and co see in him. I didnt see anything yesterday that made me think I will give him time to adjust.

Andrews is not and never will be a Premiership player. Thats why Hull and Wolves have both got rid of him.

Another thing whislt we are on, Ince said it wasnt long ago that Fowler was banging in goals for Liverpool, well Paul, it wasnt that long ago he couldnt even make the bench at Cardiff

Forgot about aht one didnt we mate

Couldn't agree more. Also, those who thought Simpson showed promise must have been blinded by the desperately poor defending of the other three. He's another United youngsster who has been regularly farmed out on loan in the hope of improvement that doesn't seem to be there.

[modes98]

3. All Arsenals goals came from spaces exploited by Arsenals strikers between the centre halves and the full backs. I know that Warnock and Nelsen were having spats about who was to blame but the fact is that once RVP / Adebayor pulled back from Nelsen and Samba the players that should have seen the danger and shouted or moved in to cover were Warnock and Emerton. For the last goal in particular Emerton must surely have seen Adebayor completely free after Samba deserted his post to hold hands with Nelsen, yet he chose to simply stand and stare whilst Adebayor had all day to round Robinson and score.

To be fair to Warnock he had no chance of beating Adebayor in the air for the 2nd goal. Nelsen is the player that should be picking him up and should have picked up RvP for the first, but both times he allowed them to run into the gap. Given the fact that Adebayor was the only Arsenal player in the area for the 2nd goal you would of thought he would have been touch tight.

To be fair to Emerton he was playing Adebayor offside, which he was until Warnock ran back and even then it was close and I would say offside.

28 consecutive passes Arsenal made before scoring the 2nd goal.

Goals on sunday showed the move all the way through and there wasn't a single point where we could have got the ball from them. Passing and Moving!

Looking back we had a decent first half which was wrecked by 2 moments of madness from Nelsen. On another day we could have been 2 or 3 up at the break.

[B.R.F.C]

That was quite simply shocking

Keith Andrews-Why Why Why Why Why? A terrible signing and without being harsh towards our Julie he's out of his depth at this level.

Reido-A poor performance from him and when we have two central midfielders that bad we are in trouble.

Nelsen and Samba-The lack of communication and organisation at the back was woeful. We left huge gaps for Arsenal to exploit and sure enough they did without any problem whatsoever.

Our pattern of play yesterday without full backs overlapping to our widemen was as follows. Defence to central midfield followed by a few passes across realising no one was making a run and then losing the ball in central midfield or chipping it forward to Roque in the vain hope we might actually get something. With the central midfield pushing up in this movement, a simple ball by Fabregas or the like out wide had us chasing back the whole time.

The communication in our team was non existent in defence along with no one making supporting runs to the striker or when Roque/JR/Benni made challenges in the air standing beside each other...fantastic.

Also why the hell is Carlos not given a chance? At 2-0 down we have nothing to lose and he just sits on the bench twiddling his thumbs. What the hell is going on?

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread Arsenal didn't even need to get into first gear to beat us easily...we were that bad.

Edit: The only thing that made me laugh even more was the escaped mental patient in the BBE down by NO4 screaming

[Exiled in Toronto]

Looking back we had a decent first half which was wrecked by 2 moments of madness from Nelsen. On another day we could have been 2 or 3 up at the break.

That's how I saw it. I thought we created more good chances in the first half than we have against Arsenal for the past 2 seasons put together. We didn't concede 2 goals because we were pushing up - the 2nd came after 29 passes FFS - we conceded because Nelsen seems to have no awareness whatsoever of players around him. In fact, the longer Arsenal dilly-dallied, the more likely it was that Nelsen would go AWOL. Ince must be wondering where this top 7 team is that he was expecting.

The second half however was a different matter. I'm used to Rovers only showing up for half a game, but it was usually the other way round. They clearly had given up, as had Ince, which is unacceptable. Our dogs of war approach had been on the way out for quite a while as Dickov, Todd and then Savage left, but even so, it was very poor.

As to Andrews, he was probably 3rd choice for his starting position behind Dunn and Grella, so to expect more than he did against the best central midfield in Europe is bizarre. He did create and then very nearly finish our best move of the game, but was otherwise comprehensively outclassed.

Interesting that after Everton, the Ince out brigade were chirping that one swallow doesn't make a summer, however, it seems that one bad defeat does make a clueless manager.

[speeeeeeedie]

Thanks EIT for a moment of clarity. This board really is depressing at times.

If we are shipping goals after 10 games I'll start worrying. Ince finally has his chance to prove if he's up for it as there are no international breaks for a while. He'll get a good few weeks with all the players hopefully working on defending as a unit.

[AggyBlue]

Also why the hell is Carlos not given a chance?

Ince said during the pre match interview that he didn't feel Carlos was ready for a start.

[Iceman]

Top class players, cannot be managed by a mediocre management team. In saying that, it does seem that professional players who cannot defend, doesnt deserve a better management team. Again what does JW do,and does he allow this rubbish to continue for much longer.

Ince is a bloody idiot. Ive never liked him, i got stick for being negative towards him, but hey what the hell. How can he say, Carlos aint ready. The guy plays for his country against top class opponents, yet Ince feels that Andrews and Reid are capable, when clearly they not.

[rover6]

Ince said during the pre match interview that he didn't feel Carlos was ready for a start.

Or a sub appearance?

Why's he on the bench then?

Edit: Those questions are aimed at Ince, not you Aggy... Although, you are free to answer them whilst Ince gets round to registering here.

[B.R.F.C]

Or a sub appearance?

Why's he on the bench then?

Edit: Those questions are aimed at Ince, not you Aggy... Although, you are free to answer them whilst Ince gets round to registering here.

Exactly what I was going to say. If he isn't ready then why is he on the bench?

[AggyBlue]

Or a sub appearance?

Why's he on the bench then?

Edit: Those questions are aimed at Ince, not you Aggy... Although, you are free to answer them whilst Ince gets round to registering here.

Dunno, haven't got the foggiest.

I'd have given him half an hour, after all the second half seemed more like a pre season friendly.