Daniel1980

He was surprisingly very good today and wasn't that bad in the previous game either. Considering how much Jose likes him, we might see him play quite often this season.

Really impressed with Andre today once again. It's only preseason, of course, but once again the lad has demonstrated that he deserves a place in the starting XI. Hope he keeps it up. Even Cesc ditched Torres for Andre. Bonding over their assists in the WC finals?

I wasn't sure what Jose was showing after Cesc's goal. Now it makes perfect sense.

Excellent performance from Eden, Cesc and Andre today. Luis, Salah and Ramires were very good too. Willian and Matic were good. Costa didn't get involved much, but he didn't get much service. Wasted a good chance after Cesc's pass, though. Oscar was disappointing. All in all, a good second half after we fielded our first team players.

He looked a lot sharper today than he did last preseason. Good sign.

If Drogba is injured, Jose might be forced to buy another striker.

We're playing without 6-7 players of our starting XI, mate.

He's there with the team, just not playing. Still injured probably.

In theory, the opposition is so weak we should easily win even without most of our key players. In theory.

I'm surprised Oscar isn't playing. He needs to get match fit too. Will probably appear in the second half.

I hope now Wenger decides that the team is good as it is and any new players aren't needed.

I don't really expect most of our first team players get many minutes in this game. Probably 30-45 minutes, except for those players who just returned from their vacation. The day after tomorrow, against Real Sociedad, I expect our starting eleven to play full 90 minutes with only a few substitutions. That will be the first real test of the preseason and also the last--the one we must win. The result of the game against Ferencvaros matters much less. If we play good football and stay injury-free, I'll be happy enough.

Nasri expects that we will be the biggest threat: Apparently he thinks Sanchez will suffer in the PL because of that but Luis and Costa won't.

I'm not sure he had 10 assists in 2010-2011. Russian site says he had 7 assists that season. Transfermarkt.com isn't very reliable when it comes to stats. According to them, Fabregas had 19 assists in the league last season while he actually had 13(or 17 with penalties earned). So Willian's only good season stats-wise was 2011-2012, the rest were pretty average.

I found these figures on the Russian site sports.ru: 2010-2011 7 assists in the league2011-2012 16 assists in the league2012-2013 6 assitsts at Shakhtar and 1 assist at Anzhi But it must be noted that this site counts penalties earned as assists too.

I don't have a problem with Willian. I prefer Andre to him, but Willian is still a useful player and I'm sure he'll get a lot of playing time this season. BUT he must stop taking corner kicks. FFS we might as well give the ball to the opposition.

I didn't know Luis and Willian shared a birthday. What a strange coincidence. He played better yesterday than he did in previous two games, IMO. Should become better with more training.

Very positive impression so far. Oscar had a good game. Linked well with midfielders and attackers. Hopefully he can keep it up.

Well, today we played Matic-Fabregas pivot against a much stronger opposition than Ljubljana, and so far so good. It's just preseason, of course, but it's a positive sign that on the occasions we used such a double pivot, it worked very well. The understanding between Cesc-Costa and Cesc-Oscar also looks very promising and should only improve with time.

Yeah, I think 4-3-3 would have worked much better if Ramires played alongside Matic, and Cesc played as the most advanced midfielder in 4-3-3, like he did in the second half against Ljubljana(?) while MVG played a bit deeper. Our attack looked much more lively then.I think Jose should definitely experiment with 4-3-3 more. It can definitely be improved with practice and might work really well against certain teams.

It must be said that our players were playing against fresher players in the second half and against a different team, and our players were much fresher than Fenerbahce players in the first half. So considering this, it's not really fair to judge what formation works better based on these too games. Mostly everyone played well. Even in the second game we controlled the game and looked organized, good short passing between players, we controlled possession well and made few mistakes. As Dion said, it didn't look like we trained 4-3-3 much, so it's not surprising that we didn't look very dangerous in the attack. It will come. I think both options are viable, depending on the opposition.

Nice first half. Everyone played well. So can the guys that were subbed off play again? Technically, it's a different game.

I agree, but the thing is, we have another match the day after tomorrow, so players need some rest too.

Besiktas vs Arsenal Hmm... The same team we're playing today.