Arsenal (H) - FA Cup | Post Match Thread

Just got home and enjoying nice cup of tea before bed . I enjoyed that match - it was a good contest between two teams that a similar in ability and tactically astute. That meant that in many places each cancelled the other out - but is was fascinating to watch and to see the ways players were looking to shift the play to find an advantage.

So I'm surprised to read the first few pages of this thread and find people complaining about the performance, or calling the match dull. I presume from the times that these are people watching on TV - unless lots of people get straight on their mobiles at the ground to give their opinion. I suspect that the tactical intrigue doesn't come across on television - hence the dull comment, or that the way Arenal marked everyone man-to-man and were excellent at blocking our passing lines - didn't come across. Their tactics meant that passes were hurried or struggled to find a player in space and so installs were made - that is the point of the press.

Anyway = on the key points - referee set his stall out at the beginning - two kicks on Haaland in the first 10secs, then the drag back by Holding that should have been at least a yellow was given against Haaland and away we went. Despite that Haaland did well to give us an option of going long to him - and sometimes it felt like we were back in the 90's knocking it long to big Niall. It worked as an option - we also need to learn when to use Haaland to take defenders away and exploit the space that was left - couple of occasions players looked for him when the space was opening elsewhere - KdB chose to pass instead of shoot, Grealish tried to squeeze one through two defenders.

I thought Akanji was immense - couple of brilliant tackles - and second half he was taking control of the defence and calming everyone down.

And still cant decide if Ake was shooting for his goal - or trying to pass to Haaland - but it was well done whatever he was doing and came when we were finally getting some overloads to work. Grealish had draw two players to himself and that gave Ace just enough room.

Great stuff. I take it we get United or Liverpool in the next round and carry on putting cockneys out of the cup.
 
DMA's said:
Tbf haaland also needs to get better at holding the ball up and linking play. Still very much a work in progress
Click to expand...
Everyone can always improve, but to be even more fair, Haaland isn't getting credit for any of his passing efforts as long as it isn't an assist. And he's delivered quite a few passes that Xg wise should have been a goal & registered assists. He can be quite good at link up play if he is assigned more of that role, just look at his games for Dortmund.
 
That first half was utter dross,it had no urgency,cohesion or spark.The line up and shape was all wrong,as i predicted pre match.

Second half better but our desire to find a backwards or sideways pass is killing the game we have witnessed,enjoyed,and even reinvented,over the past few years.

The squad needs new players,and new ideas.
 
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