Pizy

If we lose this with Soton having that many changes. At home. Their defense is terrible. After seeing Arse and Spuds both win yesterday. Classic trap game. Anyway, Kova not even in the squad is weird. Thought for certain he'd start today. Also crazy how few attacking options we have on the bench now that Pedro and Giroud are injured.

Yeah, I'm going to continue to pronounce his name as though he was Croatian. Pulisi-ch rather than the way he wants it pronounced in the Americanized way.

Paying so much for him, doing so almost as soon as the January window opened, and then the strange loaning him back there for the remainder of the season as a sweetener should tell us the club's thinking. They must know that had they waited until the summer our chances of signing him drop considerably due to competition from other clubs. You can bet that all of our rivals would've been after him. The club didn't want to risk it.

Are we the only match on today? Why is kickoff so late in the day?

I suppose another promising sign with this deal following the massive prices paid for Morata and Kepa is that we now know that our club will splash out on a player if they really, really want them. There was a period there where we'd only be shopping in the "middle" tier and I wondered if we'd ever compete for top players again. We will do so if it's the right player in the clubs' eyes. That's now 3 players purchased for more than £50m recently.

Think it's mostly because everyone's worried his signing means Hazard is off. I'm going to guess 90% of the opposition fans making fun of this and calling him shit would have been creaming themselves if their club had signed him. For instance, I'm seeing loads of fans from United, Arse, and Liverpool saying he's bad but they've all wanted him badly in the past.

Not going to shit on the deal or moan but I'm not over the moon either. So long as he isn't Hazard's replacement then I don't really see a downside to this transfer. At only 20 years old and with him being American, even if he is good but not great we'd make our money back. The whole loaning him back for the rest of the season is puzzling since as others have mentioned, he isn't a regular currently and we could use him now. I think it's pretty clear that this was something in the works for a long while behind the scenes and that after spending such a big amount we won't be buying anyone else this month. Only outgoings like Cesc and maybe Moses & Cahill. Especially with Sarri saying (alarmingly) that we don't need a striker.

Yep. Spuds are a better, more complete team than we are at the moment. Much further along in their progression under Poch. City, Liverpool, and Spuds were always the most likely top 3. All about that 4th spot.

Might Fulham have the worst defense the PL has ever seen? My word they're terrible. Arse literally couldn't have asked for a better opponent to play immedietly after getting thrashed by Liverpool.

He seems to have finally acknowledged Emerson's exsistence so maybe a corner has been turned.

Think Sarri may actually rotate a player or two for this one to our surprise. Could maybe see Christensen and one of the fullbacks being rotated in. Kova will obviously start since he didn't against Palace.

They sacked him at the perfect time when their upcoming fixtures were easy and they can quickly stabilize things. Since the match Solskjaer took over I think they have about 5 easily winnable fixtures in a row. I'd be starting to worry about them if I was Arsenal. Pretty confident that we won't allow them to become a danger to us.

How do you allow 5 foot tall midget Aguero win a header and score in between two giant CB's?

This is nothing like Conte-ball at all under Sarri. Second half of last season we would regularly allow even small teams to dominate the run of play for large stretches of games. We often had no clue whatsoever positionally. Under Sarri, the ball retention, the pressing, the winning of the ball back, and the positions our players take up to receive the ball and form passing triangles is miles better than it's ever been. The problem is we have literally one player in attack that scares anyone. Giroud is a good backup option but when he starts like today and has two CB focused in on him it's very difficult. When Morata plays he's soft as butter. Willian scores once every 15 matches it feels like. Pedro is clinical when he gets a good sight at goal but that doesn't happen often enough. Both Kovacic and Barkley seem scared to shoot most of the time. Compare this to Liverpool, City, Spuds, and even Arse who each have at least THREE attackers who teams worry about,

Palace are even more reliant on Zaha magic than we are Hazard. This is now both matches against Palace this season where Azpi has pocketed him. Since he was unable to do anything Palace were relegation quality. Cant remember Kepa even touching to ball with his hands other than claiming easy crosses.

Giroud ankle injury didn't look good and Morata was woeful in his brief cameo. We absolutely have to bring in reinforcements soon. Hazard looked dead tired by the end there so counting on him as a false 9 may not work for much longer.

Azpi or Kante man of the match. It was basically a training session against a parked bus for 80 minutes. Then, for some strange reason, we let off the gas and allowed them to attack us repeatedly in the final 10 minutes. We looked totally gassed towards the end there despite them being the side who were chasing shadows all day.

Willian has been frankly embarrassing.

KANTE OH MY!

Barkley is completely redundant in a match like this. We need someone who is very quick with the ball and incisive in their passing like Kovacic. Against parked buses he's useless. When a game is stretched and open that's when Barkley can utilize his athleticism. Not here. Also, Willian has again been useless. He's had so many opportunities with the ball in acres of space and does nothing at all with it.

We can't do a goddamn thing in the final third. Once again. Every fucking time we play a deep sitting defense we have no clue or quality.

Zaha, Schlupp, and Townsend. They go with pure pace knowing we struggle against that. Need to be in top form in midfield in order to control the tempo and not allow those three to run at us.

Alonso going to get targeted again here. That's the one area where Sarri has let me down. I'm fine with everything else he has done. But starting Alonso every PL match without fail is crazy. Who knows, maybe today will be one of those matches where he scores and isn't caught out of position over and over. Not holding my breath.

I feel like I'm missing something here. I know Bayern are down these days and have aging wingers, but is CHO really going to walk into their team? Surely not? Why would he want to trade our bench for theirs?

People here and on Twitter who have been moaning lately about Sarri have to remember that it took Klopp all the way until now to create this fantastic side. People were saying Brendan Rodgers v2 not long ago pointing to their identical records through 2 seasons of whatever it was. Pep was also infamously called a "bald fraud" as sort of a meme when he first came to the PL. Hopefully if we finish in the top 4 we can make a similar step up.