Up Next... Arsenal at home - pre-match thread

[treer]

8 hours ago, weller54 said:

Arse's attack is as good as anyone's in the league so I don't think we'll keep a clean sheet.. But we'll outscore them. 

3-2 win. 

What are you talking about?

Currently there are 5 teams with better attacks than Arsenal.

I sincerely hope you don't bet, you cannot predict even after the fact.

[Dan]

I think it's important to remember that these are never easy opponents and that people need to reign it in a bit like I have done.

 

5-0 Leicester.

[The_77]

2 hours ago, treer said:

What are you talking about?

Currently there are 5 teams with better attacks than Arsenal.

I sincerely hope you don't bet, you cannot predict even after the fact.

What a strange reaction. 
 

(Oh, and they’ve only failed to score in one competitive match all season)

[splinterdream]

Palace was a big test imo, they were up for it but we were better, same again this week, think it'll be a great game with both sides knowing the importance of it but we'll be at home and on form, keep the faith 😊

[car1os]

Bit worried - Lawro’s predicted us to win, and so has Charlie Nicholas...!

[weller54]

9 hours ago, treer said:

What are you talking about?

Currently there are 5 teams with better attacks than Arsenal.

I sincerely hope you don't bet, you cannot predict even after the fact.

OK mate!.. 

If you say so. 

[Tommo220]

9 hours ago, Lesta blue said:

 No chance. Wasn't even on the bench v Palace. Can't change a winning team

3-1 City.

Tongue in cheek mate - i was referring to the "Aggression" part. 

[Bazly]

Always good to get the view from the other side so trawled a couple of Arsenal forums on their pre match take on things. Their tone is very downbeat with most expecting a bit of a hiding, one even quipped 10-0. They definitely have a thing for Vardy, something of the rejected lover about it. there is also a lot of stick for their manager hoping that a defeat will bring about his departure. Some are also saying this game will define their season

 

From our viewpoint we don't tend to do too well against Arsenal and seeing this is a genuine 6 pointer so long as we don't loose then I'll be a happy bunny.

[urban fox]

9 minutes ago, Bazly said:

Always good to get the view from the other side so trawled a couple of Arsenal forums on their pre match take on things. Their tone is very downbeat with most expecting a bit of a hiding, one even quipped 10-0. They definitely have a thing for Vardy, something of the rejected lover about it. there is also a lot of stick for their manager hoping that a defeat will bring about his departure. Some are also saying this game will define their season

 

From our viewpoint we don't tend to do too well against Arsenal and seeing this is a genuine 6 pointer so long as we don't loose then I'll be a happy bunny.

Over the years there has definitely something of a bogey team feel with them, however in our last two home games against them we have beaten them convincingly. This deffo is a six pointer though simply due to the gap that we would open up over them if we get a result here.  If we do them over properly I do think it may well signal the end of the road for Emery though, he has that aura of dead man walking about him at the moment.

[gw_leics772]

On 06/11/2019 at 22:58, Deeg67 said:

If our players were getting as stupidly overconfident as some of our fans seem to be, I’d say a hiding from Arsenal might be the best thing for the team in the long run.  Fortunately I very much doubt they are.

We have every reason to feel this way and our comments will not affect the outcome one bit.

 

Enjoy the ride chap, let BRod worry about keeping their feet on the ground.

[FoxyJim1987]

21 hours ago, KFS said:

That’s a decent team if firing. People need to realise that this is a huge test.

It's really not though. That centre back pairing is woeful, Bellerin can't defend, Ozil literally can only jog, Pepe has only scored from a dead ball so far, Aubamayang is not a winger and will not track back. Mate we will have a field day. 

[Hammo]

On current form we are better than Arsenal, we are at home and should win. That’s why we are favourites.

 

But let’s not kid ourselves that this is going to be a walk in the park. A win would be gargantuan in terms of the season’s prospects, but it won’t come easy; we are going to have to produce another top-notch performance to earn it.

[Gubbins]

24 minutes ago, urban fox said:

Over the years there has definitely something of a bogey team feel with them, however in our last two home games against them we have beaten them convincingly. 

They have been down to ten men in both of them though. We really should beat these but our record against Arse is just so so appalling and not just recently either. One of the reasons we need to beat them is that defeat away to them is a near certainty so this is our only realistic chance to take points off them.

[whoareyaaa]

Can't see anything but a win for us but that usually results in us losing.

 

3-1

[egg_fried_rice]

I felt this thread was the best place for this - an interesting retrospective on our clash with Arsenal and subsequent fates in the title winning season:

 

https://www.football365.com/news/remembering-2016-leicester-glory-and-arsenal-failure

 

Remembering 2016, Leicester glory and Arsenal failure…

Really, this should have been where it all ended.

 

This should have been the game when the whole world thanked the plucky underdogs profusely for providing some great entertainment, but now it was time to wander back out of the spotlight and for the big boys to step forwards. This should have been where Leicester City’s 2015/16 miracle Premier League challenge took a bucket of cold water to the face.

 

This should also have been the day where it all began. It had been 12 years without a title, over a decade of flattering to deceive, but now a phenomenal opportunity was presenting itself and all they needed was to reach out and grab it. This should have been where Arsenal took a grip on the title and didn’t let go, giving Arsene Wenger a moment of glory in the autumn of his managerial career, maybe allowing him to bow out gloriously at the top.

 

When Danny Welbeck rose in the 95th minute of Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Leicester on Valentine’s Day 2016, these were the scenarios that looked the most likely. Sure, Leicester remained two points clear at the top of the table, having beaten Manchester City and Liverpool in their previous two games, but to most observers, thoughts governed by logic and sense and precedent rather than the cosmic implausibility of Claudio Ranieri’s side actually winning the league, it seemed like a bubble being burst.

 

It wasn’t just that Leicester lost, more that this felt like it would ultimately be a microcosm of the season. Leicester had gone ahead, via a Jamie Vardy penalty, but had Danny Simpson sent off, gamely battled against the odds and were defeated in the end, by a richer and more established power. Surely, even after their extraordinary first 26 games, this was a sign that the final 12 would see reality take over and the fairytale would be done, ended, finito.

 

“THERE’S YOUR FAIRYTALE,” bellowed the always understated Peter Drury on BeIN Sports when Welbeck, who had been out with injury for nearly ten months, glanced his header home. “THE TITLE-TURNING GOAL OF HIS DREAMS.” This is precisely the reason everyone loves Drury: the cartoon exaggeration, delivered with such conviction that for a second it makes you believe that yes, an international striker scoring a late goal was more of an outlandish story than the team who was 5,000-1 to win the title, actually winning the title.

 

Sky went for a slightly more cautious: “Will that be the goal that Arsenal look back on in May as the one that propelled them to title glory?” The perfect Sky line really: bombastic enough to whip up the hype, but because everyone secretly knew the answer, uncontroversial enough not to annoy anybody.

 

Arsenal’s win put them on 51 points behind Leicester’s 53, while up in Manchester, Tottenham were busy beating City 2-1, leaving them level with their north London foes. Leicester might be able to hold off one of the big boys, but two of them, both a mere two points behind? Shortly after the whistle, Leicester dropped to third favourites for the title with the bookies.

 

“This was as well a mental test for us, because to find yourself down 1-0 at half-time to a team who defends so well, you need to keep going,” said Wenger afterwards. “We came back with relentless energy and took the risks to win it. We knew a draw was not good enough. It paid off down to the mental desire of the team to give absolutely everything to win. [This result] will strengthen our belief that we are in the fight [for the title].”

 

If Wenger’s words carried the smell of cautious triumphalism, the social media accounts of the Arsenal players were a little less tentative. It feels slightly quaint now, but this was a time when players posting celebratory pictures from the dressing room on Twitter or Instagram was a big deal, not just frowned upon by the people that usually frown upon these things, but also almost seen as a taunt to their opposition, as an example of arrogance and hubris. Several of them did, including Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alexis Sanchez and even Mathieu Flamini, who didn’t make it off the bench that day.

 

All of which seems quite silly, but it appeared to have a pretty significant impact in the Leicester dressing room. “For me the key point in the season was when we lost to Arsenal and it was last minute,” Robert Huth told Jonathan Northcroft for his excellent book ‘Fearless’ about Leicester’s title season. “Everyone was celebrating…A few of the lads stuck a few [of Arsenal’s] pictures up and it got the blood boiling. Certainly, it gave us an extra yard in the next few games.”

 

“Seeing Arsenal celebrate as if they had basically won the league against us,” Kasper Schmeichel told Northcroft, “that a victory against us could mean so much to them? It really showed how far we’d come. Watching them [celebrate], for me, was actually a boost.”

 

The following weekend was the FA Cup fifth round, but since Leicester had shrewdly been knocked out in the third, it provided scope for Ranieri to give his squad a week off. They dispersed to kick back and clear their heads, returning a week later refreshed and refocused. A relatively old-fashioned piece of man-management, the sort of thing you could imagine Brian Clough doing in the 1970s, but it worked. They won the first game back against Norwich, drew with West Brom and then won five on the bounce without conceding a goal, including that Sunderland victory that saw Ranieri burst into tears after the final whistle.

 

Conversely, far from galvanising Arsenal, the win seemed to somehow inhibit them. Looking back on it now, the game calls to mind the team talk England cricket coach Trevor Bayliss, an Australian, gave after they beat his native land in the World Cup semi-final this summer, upon observing his charges celebrating wildly. “That’s why Australians think the English can’t win anything,” Bayliss said. “You’re celebrating winning the semi-final, but real winners win the final.” Arsenal certainly gave the impression that by winning this game they had struck the crucial blow, that they had knocked Leicester entirely off course.

 

Which is why, while the primary story of what came next is one of glory for Leicester, it’s also one of failure for Arsenal. In the years since their last Premier League win, Arsenal could make the excuse that there was at least one superpower ahead of them: in 2005 Jose Mourinho’s early brilliance came together with Roman Abramovich’s wealth at Chelsea; a few years after that came Sir Alex Ferguson’s great final sides, four titles won thanks to his genius, an astonishing defence, Cristiano Ronaldo and Robin van Persie; and then there was Manchester City, with more money than God and gradually learning how to spend it.

 

But in 2016, where were they all? The corrosive acid of Mourinho’s latter career was rapidly eating away at Chelsea; United were in the second, fruitless year of Louis van Gaal; while City were curiously flat under Manuel Pellegrini, who just before Leicester beat them that January had rather meekly announced that Pep Guardiola would be replacing him that summer.

 

Throw in Liverpool, who were in the early months of Jurgen Klopp’s tenure and not a factor, and Arsenal’s primary rivals for the title were this plucky band of misfits from Leicester, and a Tottenham side who were giddily discovering that they could be part of the Premier League elite, but weren’t ready for the big stuff just yet. Short of everyone else forfeiting a dozen points each, Arsenal could hardly have asked for a better chance, but they stuffed it up.

 

The obvious counterpoint to this lamentation of Arsenal failure is that Leicester didn’t lose another game after this and only dropped eight points from a possible 36: even if Arsenal hadn’t imploded, they still might not have won the title.

 

But that’s the point: Leicester reacted like champions to this defeat, whereas Arsenal got a sniff of glory and soiled themselves, losing their next two league games, one to a United side spearheaded by a teenager nobody had heard of a week earlier named Marcus Rashford, the other at home to Swansea. By the time they relocated their stones a month later, it was too late: Leicester were nine points ahead and Arsenal’s chance of winning the title were over.

 

Even as neutrals, around this time you were almost angry at Arsenal for making you believe they could do it, for making you believe they had it this time, for making you believe this was their year. It was never their year, and going by the current team it won’t be their year for a while yet.

 

‘Arsenal, somehow, will find a way to fail,’ wrote Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian: that season was barely different to any other. Tottenham wilted too, a defeat to West Ham and draws with Arsenal and Liverpool helping to open enough of a gap, before the collapse of the last four games.

 

Meanwhile, Leicester strode on, and it was this period that was the genuinely extraordinary spell of their title win. What was perhaps most remarkable at all was the lack of drama after the Arsenal victory: the Norwich game was won in the 89th minute and they snatched a point against West Ham with a last-minute goal after Vardy had been sent off, but otherwise the final couple of months were just a cold, determined accumulation of points. All of this with a collection of players with little to no experience at the sharp end of the Premier League, never mind this sort of title race.

 

From a psychological perspective, it’s usually one of two things that derail teams in Leicester’s position: either reacting badly to set-backs, or freezing in the face of glory. Leicester were presented with both of these challenges, but submitted to neither. The win at the Emirates, which by all logic should have knocked them fatally off course, seemed to spur Leicester on to achieve their astonishing feats. In a season as illogical as this one, it seems entirely appropriate.

 

 

 

[SuperMike]

17 minutes ago, Gubbins said:

They have been down to ten men in both of them though. We really should beat these but our record against Arse is just so so appalling and not just recently either. One of the reasons we need to beat them is that defeat away to them is a near certainty so this is our only realistic chance to take points off them.

Just thinking exactly the same myself. Other than these 2 wins I reckon we haven't beaten them for about 95 years (or did Glover and Stringfellow score in a win in the early 70's ?)!! Looking at their likely defence / midfield I can't see them finishing the game with 11 men again!

Luiz, papadopoulos, chambers, kolasinac, Torreia and Gwenda Oozy will not be able to live with the pace of Vardy, Barnes and Ricky or the running of Ayoze, Youri or Madders.

"9 man Arsenal thrashed by Leicester"

[Guest An Sionnach]

Now that Ozil has realised that this the best gig he is ever going to get , he and Auba and Lacazette are a pretty handy threesome . If our defence can shut them out then top four will look increasingly likely

[Blanchflower78]

No must win here other than we must win in order to stop the media and rival fans claiming we cant beat anyone of note! 

Expecting a more difficult game than neutrals predicting. 

2-1 city

[Les-TA-Jon]

1 hour ago, egg_fried_rice said:

Meanwhile, Leicester strode on, and it was this period that was the genuinely extraordinary spell of their title win. What was perhaps most remarkable at all was the lack of drama after the Arsenal victory: the Norwich game was won in the 89th minute and they snatched a point against West Ham with a last-minute goal after Vardy had been sent off, but otherwise the final couple of months were just a cold, determined accumulation of points. All of this with a collection of players with little to no experience at the sharp end of the Premier League, never mind this sort of title race.

I said this at the time in 2016 - the mainstream media with their big club/PL blinkers on were saying similar:

 

"These players have never been in this situation before, it'll catch up with them" 

"This group has got no title winning experience, they won't last"

 

Etc etc. 

 

The reality was, the core of that team had just two seasons before smashed the Championship with 100+ points, playing twice a week with every other team seeing us as the scalp of the division. That team did have experience of winning, being relentless and the psychology required for a long title race. Never mind the fact that the season before they'd pulled off the greatest escape ever too. 

[FoxinNotts]

Can our players handle the pressure of being favourites against Arsenal? If the answer to this is yes, then we’ll make a massive statement to the rest of the league. 
if our young team ‘freeze‘ under the pressure, then it’s gonna be a tricky afternoon.

[Blue ROI]

We've beaten the top 6 sides before since promotion but this is surely the best place we have been in pre-match facing any one of them. Everyone expects us to win which is rare.

 

Our PL home record against Arsenal isn't bad at all but mainly a lot of draws before the last 2 wins. We overwhelmed them last year but they might decide to be less attack minded for this one. 

 

Their attack is good and the best we will face so far (Liverpool aside) but we have the better of it in the other areas so Vardy on song would tilt the balance our way.

 

Looking forward to this. Saturday night games are 50/50 for us over the years but I'd be confident of 3 points.

[urban fox]

12 minutes ago, Blanchflower78 said:

No must win here other than we must win in order to stop the media and rival fans claiming we cant beat anyone of note! 

Expecting a more difficult game than neutrals predicting. 

2-1 city

Yes but when we do, all the talk will be of how rsenal are in crisis rather than how brilliant we have been. In a way that suits us, the more we stay a little bit under the radar the less of a scalp we become for others.

[FoxFossil]

Guess BR is working hard on player attitude when we are favourites, as we are probably favourites for the next 7 games! Get used to it boys, Arsenal just the first of many.

[SpacedX]

Massive gaping holes in midfield, very questionable at the back, but where shades of the Arsenal supply line remain - still a potent force up front. 

[gw_leics772]

On 07/11/2019 at 12:49, Dahnsouff said:

So who are Arsenal likely to start with in midfield?

Xhaka is essentially in exile. 

Ceballos is injured.

So that means

Guendouzi and Torrera in the middle unless they unleash the OZIL I guess

Along with Pepe on the wing?

 

Them gunners reckon it will be

 

Lacazette
Auba - Özil - Pepe
Torreira - Guendouzi
Tierney - Luiz - Sokratis - Bellerin
Leno

I like guendouzi. (Granted, it's in the same way i used to like the odd player from a shit team in league 1, thinking "he could do a job", but nevertheless, I like him)