On a positive note if we get a real striker next year we will be just like our title winning season when Diego was firing away. Carefree. 

7 minutes ago, Famous CFC said:

On a positive note if we get a real striker next year we will be just like our title winning season when Diego was firing away. Carefree. 

The danger is that by the time we get a real striker (as you put it), Hazard, Courtois, Kante will make up their mind to move elsewhere.

 

14 minutes ago, Famous CFC said:

On a positive note if we get a real striker next year we will be just like our title winning season when Diego was firing away. Carefree. 

So we will be looking for a striker who stops scoring in the 2nd half the season? 

Apparently Henry thinks the problem is Morata had too much time for those chances. I just don't get it, if he doesn't want time, then get on with it, he's the one giving himself the time and obviously not judging the angles correct and gets too close to the keeper.

Got to make the best of it and get used to him missing. Cause our board is penny pinching, as conte said in different words he rarely gets the players he wants, he does not want Batman and we don't do business in January so is morata or bust. Barca should be fun...

4 minutes ago, coco said:

Apparently Henry thinks the problem is Morata had too much time for those chances. I just don't get it, if he doesn't want time, then get on with it, he's the one giving himself the time and obviously not judging the angles correct and gets too close to the keeper.

He just needs that one then im hoping his confidence will come back, i always remember being at Sutton's first game and he missed those two one on one's, was never the same player.

All strikers go through spells, Costa went through a bad spell in the 2nd half of last season.

31 minutes ago, Stas1 said:

The danger is that by the time we get a real striker (as you put it), Hazard, Courtois, Kante will make up their mind to move elsewhere.

 

Well Morata can't be classed as a real striker if he can't finish, or even use his feet apart from running. Guess we are going down then sir. 

19 minutes ago, Ernie_blue said:

All strikers go through spells, Costa went through a bad spell in the 2nd half of last season.

But the difference is Costa had already proven himself, we knew he was good enough to be the lead striker at a top club..

Torres Liverpool, Sheva Milan. Even Sutton at the time had proven himself up at Blackburn.

But Alvaro is very much unproven as the lead striker for a top club. Same Lukaku.

 

Football is not an exact science (yet!)

players are not robots that perform to the fans specifications, neither are managers, refs.........hmmmm, tough job being a prem official good or bad decisions !

some of our own players are getting slaughtered by own fans cus of 2-2 at the Dome....I don’t get it, why go after your own?- including the Board which is RA, honestly we all owe that man for 14 seasons of success & entertainment !!

lets knock them out of the CC and keep on trucking into the FA Cup by beating the Canaries at the weekend 

life ain’t all plain sailing & yachting cups chaps !!

 

26 minutes ago, Ernie_blue said:

He just needs that one then im hoping his confidence will come back, i always remember being at Sutton's first game and he missed those two one on one's, was never the same player.

All strikers go through spells, Costa went through a bad spell in the 2nd half of last season.

I think it is not about confidence, but about abilities.  Messi, for example, does not whack them with all his might straight at goalkeepers, but smartly slots them into corners neatly past goalies.  And this ability makes Messi a great player.

Costa had a bad spell for a very specific reason - he was pissed off with the club for selfish reasons and did not want to give his all on the pitch, however now back in Spain he will score for fun

Morata was not our first choice in transfers last summer, so lets not pretend that we are surprised with his good, but certainly not fireworks banging performance. And I do not believe that any length of time will change this.

It just frustrates me that we are slowly turning into an accommodating, under-ambitious outfit with low expectations, where we should be thanking footballing gods for a fecking draw with dire Arsenal.

42 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Got to make the best of it and get used to him missing. Cause our board is penny pinching, as conte said in different words he rarely gets the players he wants, he does not want Batman and we don't do business in January so is morata or bust. Barca should be fun...

hardly penny pinching to spend 70m on a striker. he shouldn't have fallen out with costa. that wasn't the board's fault for that one. 

You would think so as that all makes sense to me.

10 minutes ago, General said:

Football is not an exact science (yet!)

players are not robots that perform to the fans specifications, neither are managers, refs.........hmmmm, tough job being a prem official good or bad decisions !

some of our own players are getting slaughtered by own fans cus of 2-2 at the Dome....I don’t get it, why go after your own?- including the Board which is RA, honestly we all owe that man for 14 seasons of success & entertainment !!

lets knock them out of the CC and keep on trucking into the FA Cup by beating the Canaries at the weekend 

life ain’t all plain sailing & yachting cups chaps !!

 

it's the negativity that comes after this result though, especially from the media. we've already got italian journalists relaying what conte has said about never getting the players he wants and other tripe, and then dimarzio talking about him replacing unai emery at psg in summer. conte doesn't help himself by being sullen after a result like this by making statements like the aforementioned. you can't keep trying to send a message to the board to disguise how poor your tactics and personnel were, and the fact that players are missing chances. the fact is that depleted arsenal side played well and wenger won the tactical game. 

7 minutes ago, enigma said:

it's the negativity that comes after this result though, especially from the media. we've already got italian journalists relaying what conte has said about never getting the players he wants and other tripe, and then dimarzio talking about him replacing unai emery at psg in summer. conte doesn't help himself by being sullen after a result like this by making statements like the aforementioned. you can't keep trying to send a message to the board to disguise how poor your tactics and personnel were, and the fact that players are missing chances. the fact is that depleted arsenal side played well and wenger won the tactical game. 

Won the tactical game again you mean right? Same Wenger who got his pants pulled down by jose only a few weeks back.

34 minutes ago, Stas1 said:

I think it is not about confidence, but about abilities.  Messi, for example, does not whack them with all his might straight at goalkeepers, but smartly slots them into corners neatly past goalies.  And this ability makes Messi a great player.

Costa had a bad spell for a very specific reason - he was pissed off with the club for selfish reasons and did not want to give his all on the pitch, however now back in Spain he will score for fun

Morata was not our first choice in transfers last summer, so lets not pretend that we are surprised with his good, but certainly not fireworks banging performance. And I do not believe that any length of time will change this.

It just frustrates me that we are slowly turning into an accommodating, under-ambitious outfit with low expectations, where we should be thanking footballing gods for a fecking draw with dire Arsenal.

Regarding Costa he was more of a smash it hard as you can striker, Morata tries to be like Messi but no one is going to be able to compare to Messi. Costa always had one bad half of the season at Chelsea, that was always a guarantee before the season kicked off.

Game could have gone either way, can't complain with the draw to be honest.

 

It's just annoying thinking about the chances Morata squandered, and the fact we conceded in stoppage time. Would have been amazing to have won it straight after with the Morata/Zappacosta chances.

Whatta game! Almost there, but not quite.

Morata had 3 golden opportunities and were all wasted. Very disappointing finishing on each of the 3. Zappa came on and was inspired.

The Arse finally did the job to stop the bleeding.

Fantastic game. Gutting to lose the lead like that, but our own fault. Willian was culpable for giving them the ball back, but also deserves credit for the fantastic pass to Zappa, who also did superbly to set up what should have been the winner.

My heart sank when I saw who was reffing. He's one of the worst the Prem has had in my view. Could have shown 3 red cards to Arsenal: Wilshere, obviously, plus Holding, who should have had two yellows, and then there was this shocker from Mustafi on Hazard that didn't even earn him a yellow and Sky didn't bother to replay:

One thing i will say about Morata, at least he got into the right positions, he could have gone completely absent and got no chances. His finishing was dreadful though. I would have got 1 or 2 from those chances, and im crap..

yeah I agree, i was annoyed with Morata but I must say he gets into some good positions, i think its not an impossibility to just up his game a bit and convert these chances. He could be lethal then. Lets give him more of a chance. I know its frustrating but the guy will be frustrated even more so im sure.

it seems to be a morata thing to miss against le arse : just look back at what happened in the community shield final !

- Baka needs to remember he has brains and avoid silly f***** fouls

- Moses needs to change his style of play when all of his crosses go to sh***

- Zappa looked on fire!!! his last minute shot should have been the winner!!! his cross was decisive though and he could/should have gotten a goal on top of that

- Willian doing a jekyll/hyde performance : super ball to zappa for the 2nd goal; sh*ttest clearance of all time that led to le arse's equalizer

- Courtois saved our asses and so did the back three on numerous occassions

- Kanté once again proved that those 35 million £ were an absolute steal considering he's filling two spots in the midfield when fab is having a subpar game and baka's still not quite at the level we expect (look at his fantastic tackle on sanchez I think that led to Fab's shot at the 45th minute) !!

- Alonso with his seventh goal of the season and actually showing Morata how to score with his feet ! the guy needs rest though ... 

- Morata could have given us a nice brace or hatrick and three points away from home ... instead he gave wilshere an assist and missed 3 or 4 sitters !!

Overall, they had a lot of chances, so did we ... a pretty entertaining game to watch. Morata was absolutely terrible... this was crying for a hattrick... and he f**ked it up !!! Props to Conte though for the changes because Willian and Zappa are the ones who created the second goal for Alonso. But he must take the blame regarding the in game tactics though! Actually the whole team should take it too! there's a huge need to review our tactics and in game plan. We need to be more offensive than we were !! We need to STOP sh*tTING OUR PANTS AS SOON AS WE LEAD BY ONE f**kING GOAL!!!! Sitting deep as we did in the last 7 minutes killed our win !!! But again, Had Morata converted, we'd have been having a 2 goal margin at least !   And even then, if Morata had scored at the 93rd minute, we would have won!!! Btw, Zappa was unlucky with his shot: could have been an assist and a goal for him!!

A shame our wingers aren't more intelligent when it comes to link play with the attack : apart from Zappa who did incredibly well in this regard, Moses f**ked up so many crosses yesterday that I actually stopped counting how many were blocked by  le arse's defenders.... Apart from his goal, Alonso looked knackered imo and needs some rest. But he was better than his counterpart though. As for the striker, I may get stick for that but Batman would have probably done better than Morata regarding the sitters he missed : had he converted one of them, we would still be in 2nd place and widened/kept the gap with pool, le arse and spuds...

But overall, a thoroughly enjoyable game despite the draw! Let's hope for better results in the league cup/FA cup/UCL and for Morata to actually start scoring with his feet now ! Up the chels !

Edited January 4, 20188 yr by Londonisblue

Felt like a loss, can't be happy after we had 3 one on one chances with the GK and missed all of them, I mean you'd think even Cahill would have scored 1 of those. I reckon the last game against stoke took lots of confidence out of Morata, after he missed 2-3 very similar chances, now he's doubting his technique and rushing the shots. He had time to take another touch for 2 of those 3 chances, yet rushed and missed. It will be interesting to see what Conte will do next weekend, I fear dropping Morata would send his confidence rock bottom, need to stick with him. The defending for the equalizer was dreadful, in fact the last 5 minutes was awful. You either defend back against the wall or keep the ball like City, we are doing the in between. When we got the ball, we rushed it and kicked it away, and Kante decided to dribble out near the penalty box when he could have booted down field easy. I thought that was an obvious foul to rob him the ball, but you can't trust referee in that scenario. There's no way they would have got through us if we packed defence around the box. Maybe this was harsh, but why Cahill ducked out of the way when shot was flying in. He was in Tibo's eyeline and not blocking the shot gave Tibo no chance.

9 hours ago, bluedave said:

The result is fair but it's criminal to have fluffed so many clear chances. Very frustrating. Oh well, at least the neutrals will have enjoyed it.

Feel a bit bad for Morata, he has so much ability but appears to have developed some kind of mental block when one-on-one with the keeper. If I was Conte I'd be booking him in for a visit with a shrink. Calls to sell him are premature and really f**king stupid, IMO.

When we signed I heard some pundit from Spain say morata good player, but does have issues in his head when confidence is down, seems like he's right

Why is it that every Arsenal Fan says they were robbed because of a dive, but don’t mention that Weelchair normally had to go after his dive?