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So, Willems comes on:

 

Ritchie - Willems - Hayden - Longstaff

 

Couple minutes later:

 

Willems - Ritchie - Hayden - Longstaff

 

ASM comes on:

 

Willems - Ritchie - Hayden - ASM

 

Couple mins later:

 

Willems - Ritchie - Hayden - Almiron

 

All of those midfields happened in the space of about 10 minutes, I think. There were changes after that, too.

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As I said on Twitter what stands out with that starting lineup is fear. Same as Pardew. No idea what to do so throw an extra midfielder/defender in. Go behind? Start throwing attackers in randomly with no plan hoping for fret.

 

I'm starting to wonder if this might go better than I initially thought.

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As I said on Twitter what stands out with that starting lineup is fear. Same as Pardew. No idea what to do so throw an extra midfielder/defender in. Go behind? Start throwing attackers in randomly with no plan hoping for fret.

 

I'm starting to wonder if this might go better than I initially thought.

 

Yeah, I thought we’d do OK today but that second half was fucking grim.

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Guest chopey

That was much, much worse than I imagined. He's literally Fat Pards.

 

We are down.

 

Delightful.

 

How dare you !!!!! Brucey's amazing tactic of no midfield and running Richie until he breaks will catch on with the die hard fans and match that with Lascelles hexagon foot spraying the ball in every direction and Shelvey's steam roller pace Stevie is really putting his stamp on the team.

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This mouth breather is a tactical dinosaur.  His changes in the second half significantly weakened us and played a huge part in the Arsenal winner.  He made three subs that included both positional swaps and formation changes.  Consequently the players looked more and more lost as the game went on.  So once Arsenal scored, the game was over save for a moment of luck - which never materialised.

 

And the players he subbed on did not look like they had a fluid understanding within the team.  Saint-Maximin had no fixed position and wandered everywhere, which lead to us being even more disjointed in attack.  He all too often dropped deep and that meant we didn't have players stretching the Arsenal back line to allow us the space to move forward.  It genuinely didn't look like he had been given a specific instruction on where and how to play.  To be honest, it didn't look like we had any clear strategy to get at Arsenal all game, but by the end we looked like a Sunday league team with players just doing what they wanted.  The complete opposite to how Rafa had us set up.

 

I have no idea what Bruce thought would happen bringing Willems on into midfield.  None of the midfield three knew when to stay or move.  And then I think he pushed Willems out left and Ritchie came into the midfield three? :lol:  The guy didn't look match sharp and didn't look like he knew what to do in the system.  There is a running theme here with players looking lost. 

 

And talking of the midfield.  How many times did everyone press at the same time to leave huge gaps in the midfield?  There was one clear as day moment where the midfield three sprinted to the right wing to press and Arsenal casually passed it out.  I just laughed.  Last year, we always looked to have control over space on the pitch, but today we looked ragged. 

 

Later on, Almiron ended up in midfield and looked totally ineffectual in both attack and defence :lol:  Compare that to how much he offered both going forwards and without the ball when Rafa had him playing wide left.

 

What an absolute disgrace this club is.

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Any risk of Longstaff going shit under Bruce? - Under Rafa he would have had confidence and comfort as he would have been told fully what to do, and those around him would be where he would expect. If Bruce is throwing things all around and very disorganised, it must be very tough for a lad with fairly low amount of pro-games at this level to adapt to such chaos.

 

Big risk.

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Things will only get worse as well. Bruce will benefit for a time from the work Rafa did, especially in organising the defence, but that will fade away and we'll start getting ripped apart by teams going forward.

 

 

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So, Willems comes on:

 

Ritchie - Willems - Hayden - Longstaff

 

Couple minutes later:

 

Willems - Ritchie - Hayden - Longstaff

 

ASM comes on:

 

Willems - Ritchie - Hayden - ASM

 

Couple mins later:

 

Willems - Ritchie - Hayden - Almiron

 

All of those midfields happened in the space of about 10 minutes, I think. There were changes after that, too.

 

it was terrible but we kept the same 3-5-2 / 3-5-1-1 shape until the end. makes it all the worse how disorganised we appeared

 

we maintained a flat back 5 when defending right up until the final whistle

 

the midfield changes were..

 

longstaff - hayden - willems (ha)

 

longstaff - hayden - ritchie (haha)

 

almiron - hayden - ritchie (hahaha)

 

maximin just went wherever he wanted but was meant to be where almiron started the game, off / alongside joelinton

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As I said on Twitter what stands out with that starting lineup is fear. Same as Pardew. No idea what to do so throw an extra midfielder/defender in. Go behind? Start throwing attackers in randomly with no plan hoping for fret.

 

I'm starting to wonder if this might go better than I initially thought.

 

Yeah, I thought we’d do OK today but that second half was f***ing grim.

 

Didn't see much pre season but you know you have to think the 3 in midfield is a strategy to utilise Shelveys passing. Nope, he's just a tactical coward who has no idea.

 

Hilariously if he was going to play the 3 in midfield Ki should be his number one choice but he'll never understand that.

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Things will only get worse as well. Bruce will benefit for a time from the work Rafa did, especially in organising the defence, but that will fade away and we'll start getting ripped apart by teams going forward.

 

 

 

Must admit, I thought it would take a bit longer for all the good work by Rafa to be undone, but with an idiot in charge looks like the disintegration will be fast-tracked to much earlier.

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