LCFC 1-3 Arsenal - Post Match Thread

[Cecchini1976]

Feel sorry for the players and manager, normally I would be fuming but they are dead on their feet. Half the line up shouldn’t be playing as still not fully fit, but we have no options. Injurys have been crazy this season. The players look shattered and playing with concrete boots. Can’t blame the manager or players to be fair. We need to get through the next week and then it’s one game a week and we can recover. 

[jim5000]

Rodgers confirmed in January that this summer they will be looking to buy a replacement for Vardy. That will take a significant (£50-60m?) amount out of any transfer budget we have. We’ll struggle to get in decent backups for Barnes, the entire midfield, and RB/LB.

 

Hopefully the non-compressed schedule of matches may mean that the players aren’t getting crocked as often.

 

While all teams have suffered excess injuries this season, we don’t have quality in depth to compete on 3/4 fronts (Premier League top 4, Europa League, domestic cups).

 

If we do slip out of the top four, or even out of the Europa League, we will struggle to attract the quality of players we need.

 

It all seems fairly shortsighted to not bring in some fresh players during the January transfer window. We need to finish top 4 this season (or win the Europa league) to keep our momentum as a club moving forward. The lack of investment could mean the crucial 5 months after Christmas that would shape the next few seasons means we are more likely to regress than move forward. 
 

Also the psychological damage to the squad if they fail to make top 4 from a commanding Christmas / January position for the second season in a row will start to sow doubts.

[South Shire Fox]

We were never ever going to be able to compete on 3 fronts with the size of our squad and its remarkable weve got as far as we have without problems. The lack of rest is clearly a massive factor in our injuries and we should of ****ed fa cup off from day one to allow for this. If barnes injury isnt too bad (fingers crossed) and we can get the other lads back then i think with the easier workload towards the end of season that weve still got a good chance.

Edited 28 February 2021 by South Shire Fox

[yorkie1999]

Just now, Koke said:

Arsenal through in the Europa League and won today. Total opposite to us.

Bigger, stronger squad. It’s this time of the season teams like arsenal and Chelsea start coming good and teams like ours start to drop off , so all this top four stuff is bollocks early on.

[PhillippaT]

Just now, Buce said:

 

If there's one thing the last two games have shown us, it's that we don't need to fear Rodgers being poached by a top club.

 

Poor performance all round and the buck stops with Rodgers.

We'll be waiting until the 25th Century to win anything else?   

[Shamomoa]

3 minutes ago, StanSP said:

Don't care about the result. Hope Barnes is okay. 

 

(and Evans, obviously, but his didn't look anywhere near as bad as Harvey's) 

Agree! Im not really that arsed about the result atm tbh just want barnes to be OK, but didn't look great 😬, could do with liverpool and Chelsea losing later just to help us out a little. Really hope barnes's injury isn't as bad as it looked. I imagine rodgers won't say too much about it, he will say they will have to keep an eye on it over the next couple of days. 🤞🤞 the team just need to try and forget about today and move on, really need a gd performance/result against Burnley! 

[BigGibbo]

Back to back managerial clangers from Rodgers and the lack of investment in the squad multiplied by the shortened season laid bare for all to see. 

 

Rodgers is a world class manager but has a bit of the Hyacinth Bucket about him so I'll always give him grief when he tries to be too snooty (Slavia) or too deferential (Arsenal) until he learns.

 

The owners are also some of the best owners in the world but aside from the training ground if you put the transfer outgoings alongside the incomings we've had for the last several seasons the investment in the playing squad is not great and getting worse.

 

Fingers crossed for serious investment this summer.

[Dr The Singh]

7 minutes ago, Heskey2011 said:

What is Iheanacho good at? 

Monopoly

[KFS]

The funny thing here is Arsenal will get a small bounce off of this but I hate to say it, this wasn’t a game where arsenal were good.

This was a game where Leicester were very bad and didn’t have anything in the tank.

[Dan LCFC]

In terms of damaging 90 minutes that was probably on a par with Bournemouth. Nowhere near as embarrassing but it had that same vibe of whatever can go wrong probably will. Horrible result and another two injuries, and yet another potentially serious one for an absolutely key player.

 

If Barnes' injury is bad then I think top 4 is probably gone. We just won't maintain it - especially with Vardy looking well off it.

 

The only solace is our next 3 are very winnable, but with us so shattered and so thin you can see us dropping points there too.

 

What a miserable week for us. I think it's all finally caught up with us.

[Koke]

Just now, The People's Hero said:

Weird isn't it? I mean look at the available players (the squads today) and you just can't see how they might have pulled that off?

 

Yeah with great players like Xhaka, ElNeny, Willian etc. We got totally dominated today by Xhaka ElNeny midfield. Two absolute nothing players, who btw also played Thursday and last week. 

 

*our injury list is worse than theirs but our squad as a whole is much better than theirs.

[Cadno'r Cymoedd]

Bad few days. And little optimism from me at least looking forward. 

 

After 15 minutes I was pleased today. 1 up and looking OK. But why did we then just go passive? That sucks the energy out of the team and allowed Arsenal, who had looked shaky, to grow in confidence. Who makes that call? 

[Criggers]

I’m not even angry at this point. Not like last year.

Teams nackered and absolutely savaged by injury. Badly need a rest and hopefully can put together a half decent end to the season.

 

These injuries have been too much though. And the backup players really haven’t stepped up. Shows we need some real investment in summer and some players need shipping out if we can.

[davieG]

With Maddison and now Barnes out, probably we really are looking like a team that if you stop Vardy scoring you wont lose not that Vardy looks like scoring any day soon.

[Ric Flair]

8 minutes ago, TrickyTrevLeftPeg said:

Injuries aside. 

 

We've been poor for a while..negative no fight and they look absolutely spent.

 

Massive rotation needed.

We've not been poor for a while, we are up and down but have still managed to keep getting results. What we have to do in the face of adversity is still keep our strong mental belief. Its easy to think we now can't get to 70 points and hope that's enough for CL but take each game at a time and fight for everything and it might still be possible through mentality alone.

[Koke]

1 minute ago, yorkie1999 said:

Bigger, stronger squad. It’s this time of the season teams like arsenal and Chelsea start coming good and teams like ours start to drop off , so all this top four stuff is bollocks early on.

 

I'm sorry Arsenal don't have a better squad than us. I appreciate we have a worse injury list but as a whole our squad is definitely better than theirs.

[Adster]

Just now, BigGibbo said:

Back to back managerial clangers from Rodgers and the lack of investment in the squad multiplied by the shortened season laid bare for all to see. 

 

Rodgers is a world class manager but has a bit of the Hyacinth Bucket about him so I'll always give him grief when he tries to be too snooty (Slavia) or too deferential (Arsenal) until he learns.

 

The owners are also some of the best owners in the world but aside from the training ground if you put the transfer outgoings alongside the incomings we've had for the last several seasons the investment in the playing squad is not great and getting worse.

 

Fingers crossed for serious investment this summer.

I'm interested to know what you would have done with the same scenario faced? 

 

Do you think what you would've done would've seriously yielded a better result considering the ridiculous amount of injuries/games played? 

 

Have a word with yourself. 

[StanSP]

Just now, davieG said:

With Maddison and now Barnes out, probably we really are looking like a team that if you stop Vardy scoring you wont lose not that Vardy looks like scoring any day soon.

Yep, other than Iheanacho and Under, and perhaps Ricardo, chances, let alone goals will be a luxury for the next few weeks... 

Edited 28 February 2021 by StanSP

[FerrisBueller]

That second half was horrid. It’s annoying, because defensively we look alright (bar set pieces), what’s hurting us is not creating anything up top. It’s all too slow and passive again, Tielemans is incredible but he has a tendency to play it a little too safe sometimes. We are missing Maddison and we are going to desperately miss Barnes if his injury is as bad as it looks. We just need to start playing fast attacking football again, not passing it back to the Centre Backs at any opportunity. They all looked frigged and it showed with some of that terrible lazy passing. We desperately need Ünder and Albrighton to step up now, and FFS Cengiz stop with those flicks.

 

On to the next one.

[Hales]

We can't win every game, it's never going to happen.  The defeat I can take, the injuries make me feel sick. It's so deflating and if it feels like that for us then it must for the players too. When Harvey went off you could see heads dropped. I just felt sad for them today. They didn't want to be out there and we all wanted the whistle to blow. Thankfully we are out of Europe and they can get back to recovering and training properly. We desperately need the international break now and our players returning. Thankfully Fofana and Perez are back imminently and Praet is ahead of schedule. 

 

I hate people calling them bottlers, they are not but with our injuries it obviously affects their mentality and the flow and rhythm of our game.

 

Just feel gutted for them today😔

[EnderbyFox]

Said in January that I couldn't believe we were making the same mistake not strengthening for 2 years in a row. Too many games with too small a squad is always going to lead to a burnout. Today was just a symptom of that, low energy and no options off the bench to change things. 

 

Brendan has a job on his hands now. Needs to get them energised again for a midweek fixture. 

 

 

[Always Next Year]

We gifted them all 3 goals, Thomas started the rot and when they got the pen we fell apart.

[Shamomoa]

3 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

If there's one thing the last two games have shown us, it's that we don't need to fear Rodgers being poached by a top club.

 

Poor performance all round and the buck stops with Rodgers.

Cant put it all on rodgers tbh, players again didn't look up for it. (After our goal anyway) and once barnes got injured I think the players heads had gone a bit tbh and that was game over. Just a bad day all round tbh need to move on

[Criggers]

1 minute ago, Koke said:

 

Yeah with great players like Xhaka, ElNeny, Willian etc. We got totally dominated today by Xhaka ElNeny midfield. Two absolute nothing players, who btw also played Thursday and last week. 

 

*our injury list is worse than theirs but our squad as a whole is much better than theirs.

But when you start losing key players and you know you’re attack is shit it changes the whole dynamic.

 

We don’t have a world class squad that can just fill the gaps like the Man City’s of this world.

 

And getting one player back and losing two doesn’t help. Just cycling through injuries and no way to get any consistency going.

[dayday]

1 minute ago, Dahnsouff said:

You got a mic in the dressing room? What did he say to sap their energy, the willy puller?

At 1-0 you get on the front foot, not invite pressure.

 

We got what we deserved, f all.