Erikse

Honestly referees often make assumptions about things being deliberate in situations where it's pretty obvious. You can rarely (or even never) prove "deliberate" 100%, because you can't read their mind. Can we prove 100% beyond reasonable doubt that Trossard intentionally kicked the ball away? What if he didn't hear the whistle, can we prove that he did? No, but everyone knows that he must have heard it. Just like everyone could see that Haaland did it intentionally.

He's kind of right, but I'm not upset about it. It was just funny. If he did something similar against us, we'd be fuming. He did have a go at Dan Burn when we played them.

That's true. But I think like 95% of Arsenals fanbase was screaming Arteta out for atleast 1 year straight. Gotta admit I was confused as to why they didn't sack him at the time.

Didn't mean to say that our start was like theirs, I was just agreeing with the fact that they had several opportunities to fire Arteta, but stuck with him and got rewarded. And Arteta might be the best example of it.

He was very exciting to watch at Dortmund. He scored in some spectacular ways, using speed, stregth and even scoring goals from distance. It's just the role he has in Man City, like facing a low block every single game when they are passing the ball around the box.

Haalands mentality is crazy. Aboslutely ruthless. It shows in his personality aswell.

Right now we have 4 midfielders who are better than Longstaff, so he's our 5th choice when all players are fit without suspensions, unless we need to play him for tactical reasons. I think our starting 11 is stronger in most positions. Not sure about depth, I don't know enough about their backup/rotation options. But if we are measuring expectations based on spending, we have for sure spent way more than Brighton in the last few years. I'd imagine that our wage budget is on a completely different level.

Arteta is a pretty good example. They also had a horrible start to the season they finished 5th, where most fans were calling for him to be sacked at the start of the season. Then they started looking like a completely different team later. I'm not Howe out, but he needs to change some things to win me back over.

Didn't we get like 3 injuries in the Dortmund game? This was basically the start of it I think. Fatigue will also impact Villa for example. They have more depth, but they will play atleast 2 more games in this years format. In all likelyhood they will go through aswell.

If Man Utd and Chelsea doesn't have a bad season or get an injury crisis, I wouldn't expect top 5 either, that would be unrealistic. But it remains to be seen what happens with Tottenham and Villa when the European games starts having an effect on their squad.

Again, you have to add Europe or no Europe into the equation aswell. We constanly (and rightly) put our mid season performances last season down to the fact that the CL games screwed our league form, so it seems pretty biased to ignore it as a factor when we are not even in Europe.

That's true, but most of these young players who might need a year or two to really shine.

It does really depend on different factors as to whether a 7th place would be acceptable. But if you look at other seasons, there is usually 1 of the 5 strongest teams in some sort of crisis, and only last year Man Utd was seriously struggling with injuries despite their squad depth.

If you compare the squads, we should be finishing above Brighton. Villa has atleast 8 extra CL games, possibly more. But you and Spurs are playing in the Europa League. I find it strange how most people agreed back in may that no Europe would give us a huge advantage, but now everyone has changed their mind and seem to be ignoring that fact all together. We didn't buy anyone special, but we kept our best players and Tonali is back.

Every team which is more funded than us are playing way more games than us, atleast until christmas. You've said it yourself that this is a huge factor.

Last season we were in group of death in the CL and got an injury crisis as a result. This had a massive impact on us, obviously. 7th would be disappointing with no Europe this season. We also have Tonali at our disposal now.

I guess a good performance would still be very valuable in this case.

Southgate would've perma benched him for tweeting this.

The annoying part is that even if we play close to our best, and even with no Rodri on their side, this lot still beats us 95% of the time.

Got to say the game reminded me a bit of our game vs PSG, bar the dodgy ref decision for the pen. More in the terms of defending a lead for such a long time against all odds, and then concede deep into extra time. I got that deja vu even before the goal, so I almost had that feeling that there would be an equalizer very late.

Maybe this will make them forget about the Gordon goal.

Hmm. I thought he blew the whistle literally right before the kick? Or am I wrong? Edit: Maybe it was a second or two before..

Sorry, missed that. Makes sense then.

Walker expecting that Arsenal must have to wait for him to finish arguing with the ref for them to be able to take their free kick. If only we could argue with the ref to buy us time like that.

Which would also help us playing a more attacking left back like Hall without leaving us too exposed. That's how many other top teams do it. Howe even seemed confused about the question when someone asked him about this.