Magic Lamps

And because Bayern don't sell players since they are cunts. They rather let them sit on the bench or train with the amateurs for 4 years than selling them to another club. That is because they believe they would be perceived as weak and want to be seen as a buyer club not a seller club. And this will be their downfall as they can't offer competitive wages as soon as the new TV deal kicks in.

rumours are that FCA are taking Marko Marin+money in exchange for Baba.

Donsah wish your Godfred was raw like me?

What I realized about him the past couple of days is, that IMO, he is not a winger. neither is he a cm/cam. Still he is kind of playmaker, but no no.10. He is something in between. The player he is closest to or rather should be is Iniesta. He also needed until he reached his late 20ies until people realized how good he was, having before been wasted on the wing or too deep in midfield. Like Iniesta Willian is neither a scorer or deliverer. He is a a creative player who channels the game, gets the ball out of the defense, catalyses the transition and distributes it after his dribbles. In any other league it would be much easier to utilize correctly but I have thought of a Barcelona-like 4-3-3 where Willian is Iniesta (cycles the game, makes the pre-assists, the diagonals to the winger to play the cross etc), Fabregas is Xavi/Rakitic (vertical passes -> assists), Matic is Busquets, Hazard is Messi and Pedro/callejon/candreva or even moses/kenedy/traore could be pedro/neymar, eto'o/suarez would of course be modelled by any of our strikers. ------------------------Matic------------- ----------Willian-----------------Fabregas direct winger-------------------------Hazard -----------------------Costa------------------- could be deadly. but would require a complete change of the football we are playing. Also it is questionable whether we would change our system just to suit Willian. The big downside would be the lack of physical presence in midfield. But on the one hand physicality is overrated in football and only still relevant in the epl because of the more lenient refs. On the other hand, our right winger has to track back anyway, so a more physically strong winger like Candreva/Bale/Moses could remedy that. It would also suit FAbregas better, who obviously is not a no.10 and needs a higher circulation of the play to get more of the ball. We should at least give it a go on Fifa and FM. ^^ Also this system is basically what we play everytime we got Moses/Cuadrado, Fab, Hazard and Willian on the pitch together while Oscar is out.

I think they tried hard from minute one. But as always when we try but are not sharp enough, we can't string 5 passes together, get found out, concede, try even harder, lack concentration to equalize and get frustrated hence the quality of football detoriates in the end. Arsenal weren't exactly great but sharper, more confident, scored a good individual goal and defended desperately + they had Cech. In the end a deserved loss but what saddens me most is that we could not even score. Neither from one of our numerous set piece with all our tall boys against that midget team or from open play where we had far more clear cut chances than they had. Probably should be fine in a few weeks but if this squad is good enough to retain the league id not k yet.

Difference between him and Ronaldo is basically that if Ronaldo has a shit match with Real playing shite in a big game, he still takes 10 shots and as many attempts to dribble. He sends those 10 shots into the stands and slips twice on his own redundant stepover for everyone to poke fun at him. Next week, he takes those 10 shots again, scores 2 screamers, everyone celebrates him as the best. Point is, you have to take risks to be the best

the much maligned (GC and) Willian were our best outfield players today by a country mile. But Willian is somehow not best as a classical winger. He strives at carrying the ball forward with his mazy dribbling. In the final third he is average. So maybe we should pair him with a more conventional winger like Kenedy or Moses and leave out either Fabregas or Oscar as they are obviously not athletic enough to be played both - in a big match at least.

Not quite imo. Costa bombed opponents to shreds last year in preseason. Remember his amazing goals like his incredible solo effort against those teams nobody cares about? other than that I agree. Remy will score when we play ok but what is special about Costa is, he makes goals out of nothing. He creates his own chances (vs Aston Villa )and makes goals from situations that are not even chances (remember that Ramires mishit vs leicester?). Costa has that magic ability to always be there were the goals come. Remy is a good striker, too. He has great pace and is a deadly finisher. He also has more than decent positioning, he usually is there where a striker has to be but there is no way he would find himself in those scoring positions as often as Costa does given the same number of games. Those little details are what seperates a good striker from a great one. Those little details win the league.

lol. I think before we see a youth player fielded regularly we will see one of our 19(!) senior player collapsing from fatigue.

this. was by far our best defender today. Also nice pace against Cazorla and Walcott twice intercepting their runs. Decisive stepping out of the line. We would be bollocks to get rid of him. Still has a good 2-4 years in him. More than JT and Iva for sure. If we sign Stones, he will be a great squad option for years to come. Yes last season was not his best, had some big errors, but so had Ivanovic and even Azpi. If he can recover his form of 2012 to early 2014 he doesn't need much protection or a deep line.

HIs presence alone made Ramires and Hazard shoot well over. Like Neuer made Benzema, Higuain and Palacio waste their chances. Nevermind Cech would have had no chance from 4 yards if ramires had only got the ball on target and for Hazard's shot, he was already committed. A simple lob or a shot into the near corner would have done the job.

What saddens me most is that in this crappy summer we are undoing all the great work of our past few season of early, clever punctual signings that won us a hard earned league title. Failing to replace JT, Iva, Mikel, Ramires with quality players will set us back at least two years in our development as a club. As all of you I would at least be curious to know the reason. Anyways, even if we manage to get those two defenders in we will only roughly have recovered the level of last season. Iva, JT are slowly declining there is no denying that. Courtois, Oscar, Hazard and maybe even Willian might improve a bit but that is no way proportionate to the huge leaps of improvement all our rivals have made. Also with signing a cb we deviate from that stupid one in one out policy anyways so fuck it.

Just out of interest: With everyone rightly acknowledging that no emphasis should be but on those (glorified) preason friendlies as we have had a shorter preparation time than all other teams hence not being as sharp as them, why the heck didn't we simply start preseason a few days earlier? In 2 weeks we have to go to the etihad ffs.

dead rubber no.5. No idea why we are doing this stuff. But I guess at this stage of the season, the matches can't come quick enough as this is the only way to get into match fitness.

Was utterly awful to watch. Horrible game full of feuds and chopping around. Arsenal were pretty shite as were we. Stil they needed one chance to score and we could not score from two or 3 100%-chances. Playing with Fabregas and Falcao in a big match is like playing with 9 men. I think it is obvious now. We do need reinforcements. Most players just don't improve much. What angers me most is that us losing was set in stone before the game began and we could do nothing about it and that the sucker merse called it spot on.

Not quite. It is not like he is completely useless. Yeah his setpieces were shite and his passing inaccurate but he created one moment of magic we should have scored from. His is like pirlo. invisible the whole match but picks his moments to set up scoring chances. But in a big match we also have to utilize him like pirlo which means we have to play 2 mids with who mask his defensive incompetence. Either that or leave him out completely in big games. Anyway we need a better midfielder.

that was a Torres like performance from him. with the difference being torres fucking scored in the only CS he participated.

we almost always lose the community shield and i fucking don't get why we can't get our shit together early on even if it is against a great rival. I fucking hate losing to arseanl and i hate even more that it was so clear from the very beginning we would lose this match and there was never anything we could do about this.

Not accurate. We lost the community shield in 2006/7 vs liverpool but won the two cups that season. Also we lost the community shield 2012/13 vs city and won the euro league

over.

On the ball, Falcao looks exactly like drogba - completely out of professional football.

thank god it is only giroud and özil in a big match.

most of us called it from the beginning that Arsenal would be sharper, better prepared and more hungry for this. I had the same feeling pre Newcastle last year. Why do we even watch matches of which we already know they are gonna be shite?

from smoke to smother. when we lose this our finishing is to blame once again.

I wonder what is more obvious: Writing "We need a quality CM" onto the facade of the fucking Burj Khalifa in 80m thick red font or our midfield performances in the last 9 big matches including this one.