Gallowgate Toon

Needs to be dropped, absolutely. He needs to rebuild confidence, I think he's mentally shredded.

I think it's as simple as Gayle & Shelvey disruptions, tbh. Clarke now missing is also a big blow.

I thought Yedlin was rated at Sunderland when he played under BSA?

His movement is really good, you can tell he grew up at Arsenal. He just opened up the middle of the pitch on numerous occasions and made space for more of our forward players. We need a better version of him next year, but he'll make it as a solid PL player if we develop him the right way.

He's a young centre half still, like. Plenty of time to improve and some good attributes to work with. We need 2 CBs in the Summer, no doubt, but I have faith he'll make it.

Brighton have faltered plenty of times this season, btw. They won't win every remaining game. We'll be champions on GD.

Rotherham in January really. That says it all 2nd half of the,season we don't deserve promotion to be honest we've been behind Brighton and huddersfield from January onwards. Them 2 wins against them mean f*** all now we still need 7 points from 12 to be certain of promotion and the way we have been playing I'm not confident of getting that..Brighton win league by 7 points plus I think f***ing hell.

Rubbish.

Hayden makes a real difference to us, IMO. Even half fit, his energy and actual occasional drive makes us much more dynamic. He needs upgrading on next year (someone in the same style but better) but he'll make a good squad player.

Our shots to shots on target ratio must be awful, like.

It's a shame with Wenger because I think (thought) he's brilliant but even I find him absolutely infuriating now. I can't imagine what it'd be like if you were a fan. For years, it's been abundantly clear that Arsenal needed to improve the core of their spine. A top class CB, CM, and striker. Instead, he's only brought in a top class winger and attacking midfielder - the rest vary from average to just good. I think he's just got lost in his philosophy - obsessed with molding a squad into title-winners rather than going out and buying the necessary quality. I'd like to believe this year is a complete wake-up call for him but I reckon this sort of failure will just entrench him into his mindset even further.

I think all things considered a 433 would be more suitable than a 442 tbh. This. Gayle and a striking partner aside, I don't think we're at all set up for 4-4-2. We don't have the legs in central midfield and our defence (central, in particular) needs lots of protection. We're also struggling in wide areas - giving our wide midfielders more work to do wouldn't really help. It'd work fine if we were exclusively a counter-attacking team, but we're not exactly blessed with pace either. 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 are our best bets, IMO.

They're going to counter us, I don't really fancy Shelvey and Diame to offer much when that happens

The first half of the season was a real snapshot into the future of football under Rafa, IMO - we played a lot of good stuff in that period. The second half of the campaign has been disrupted a fair bit (it shouldn't have been, had we invested even a fairly minimal outlay) and has been a pressure cooker until very recently - I think he went safety first as a result but it's worked!

I was reading Brighton's forum a couple of months back and was surprised at their opinion of him - lots of commentary on his inconsistency. I didn't think he was that great against us in either game.

I like Cairney but he's definitely not the most athletic. For that price, he'd not be coming as a backup and I don't think he'd complement Shelvey, a superior player, well at all. Unless we're going for a 4-3-3 next season...

Huddersfield, like us, have lost to some very ordinary sides, iirc.

I just find some of the criticisms of Rafa really lazy, tbh. And, of course, the annoying way in which they're presented by people who only seem to surface when we've had a wobble doesn't help. As an example, I've just watched the game all the way through yesterday. I saw comments after the game that we just sat off and let them have it. From what I saw, that absolutely wasn't the case - we pressed high on numerous occasions but they kept the ball really, really well. Of course, we struggle when the game gets stretched due to our lack of athleticism and they managed it well from that POV. I wasn't that amazed by them, though - they kept the ball to stop us from having it, that was smart, but they really capitalized with breaks due to our unforced errors. If Rafa had been allowed to bring in another CM, I don't think we'd have seen that. I also thought Wednesday were just as good when they came up here. Personally, I reckon we've lost more games this season due to player incompetence than managerial/tactical mistakes (he has made errors, just like every other manager). I don't believe they're talented enough to always stay true to instructions, and some of our defensive play when midfield protection is gone is pretty laughable. If he were a true defensive manager, we'd have drawn a lot more than we have, we'd have scored a lot less, and we'd average far less shots than we do. And if Rafa was designing us as a truly defensive team, I seriously doubt you'd see the basic errors we saw on Saturday, as we wouldn't even offer that space. If anything, I think we have a problem with leaving too many gaps when on home soil. Edit: Nor did we start slowly on Saturday either, as we rarely do, IMO. We looked more dangerous in the opening 10.

Nowt new there. Everyone knows we needed strengthening in a couple of positions in January. That's nowt to do with the negative tactics at home though We've scored 38 goals in 18 league home games, like, and have some of the highest possession & shots. I'd hardly say we're negative. Inefficient & inconsistent, definitely. Stats can hide a multitude of sins. According to the stats we should have got battered at Huddersfield last week. Over a whole season? Plus, didn't they have less shots on target than us? I'll concede that the football in the second half of the season hasn't been to the standard of some of the stuff we played in the first, but I don't think it's down to negativity.

Nowt new there. Everyone knows we needed strengthening in a couple of positions in January. That's nowt to do with the negative tactics at home though We've scored 38 goals in 18 league home games, like, and have some of the highest possession & shots. I'd hardly say we're negative. Inefficient & inconsistent, definitely.

? We sit back early on. That is what we are discussing. It wasn't that long ago we were scoring really early on in a bunch of matches, like.

We average some of the highest shots and possession for a home side in the league. Any claims we regularly sit back are unfounded, imo.

According to journos, we'd made a decent start. They just scored a good goal. Let's not panic.

Was perusing the Brighton thread for this game and one fan had the cheek to say we 'seemingly got decisions'. Coming from a Brighton fan, who's team have had about 4x as many pens as we've had this season, man

Love how much he loves to goad fans, like.