I think Rosenior picked the team in the second half v Napoli and again v West Ham.

2 hours ago, 19seventyone said:

The problem with rotation only happens because our signing policy is seriously flawed. Because these young players aren’t playing regularly they are not developing. They are actually regressing imo. If we are going to buy young and pay anything upwards of £40 million on a player then he has to be ready to play. Too many are not. I’d be very interested as to the due diligence done on prospective signings. Are they looking at things like character and personality? I’d take Gittens as a prime example. Lad has lots of ability and is very quick. His problem is I don’t think he’s ready. He’s played all his senior football in Germany against sub standard defences in the main and is struggling big time with the intensity and physicality of the league.

Not really, it is normal for a 21 years not ready to play

I feel like Liam knows his first 11 now:

The question mark would be whether to play either Neto or Garnacho on the left and rotate between Estevao and Palmer on the Right but I feel like if we play a final tomorrow this is probably the lineup he goes with.

Based on this lineup you can only rotate a couple of players per game, you cannot make wholesale changes and expect us to get through games without a massive drop off.

41 minutes ago, Imran_CFC said:

I feel like Liam knows his first 11 now:

The question mark would be whether to play either Neto or Garnacho on the left and rotate between Estevao and Palmer on the Right but I feel like if we play a final tomorrow this is probably the lineup he goes with.

Based on this lineup you can only rotate a couple of players per game, you cannot make wholesale changes and expect us to get through games without a massive drop off.

Yep, think that would be the preferred line up for most of us. You then have Acheampong who can be rotated with Trev and Fofana plus Delap for some games and Lavia when he's fit to rest midfield players.

I'm not sure about Estevao on the left, but can't think of a better option. Man we've spaffed a lot of money on sh*te left wingers in the last few years.

2 hours ago, Shweaves said:

I'm not sure about Estevao on the left, but can't think of a better option. Man we've spaffed a lot of money on sh*te left wingers in the last few years.

I'd try Fernandez there. He typically spends most of his time in that part of the pitch anyway ... 😎

2 hours ago, Shweaves said:

Man we've spaffed a lot of money on sh*te left wingers in the last few years.

Funnily enough that's what Epstein said about Peter Mandelson

"I'm not making excuses but we were stricken by illness and I'd only been in the job for three days. Plus we have loads and loads of fixtures."

I think that he got it wrong again in that first half. We threw it away just to avoid losing by half time. And it’s becoming his trademark, self inflicted sh*t first half’s.

I like the cut of this fellas gib. A whiff of the Mourinhos about him. Game plan and execute - I like that.

From what I’ve seen so far, I’m perfectly happy with him.

Thanks to the new owners we aren’t in a position to get the world’s best coach in, but we’re doing good under him. Won most games.

To be honest I had a good feeling about him and he still surpassed my expectations. I thought we would have a rocky start.

As long as we continue the current trend we’ll finish top 4 comfortably.

Couldn't help himself, just chatting sh*t.

12 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Couldn't help himself, just chatting sh*t.

He's not wrong to be honest, 14 shots to 5 against the league leaders at home is pretty good considering all the players we were missing

Still don't know what to make of him as a coach but this was actually one of our better performances

3 minutes ago, Drogba1 said:

He's not wrong to be honest, 14 shots to 5 against the league leaders at home is pretty good considering all the players we were missing

Still don't know what to make of him as a coach but this was actually one of our better performances

Did you watch it? We never even had a go, we never even got out of 1st gear. We never did anything to work Kepa or their defence. We may as well have forfeited the match, because we never got close to scoring.

Merson is bang on. We went out with a whimper.

I’ve no major issue with how he set up the team tonight. Id of liked to seen us go for it a bit more in the last 25 mins bit overall i think he had the right idea.

So explain this to me, if we can go to Napoli and be 2-1 down at half time, then come out, have a go and win the game 2-3, why can't we at least try and do the same against Arsenal? Let me guess, does it have something to do with the prize money for reaching the last 16 of the Champions League compared to the prize money of the League Cup final?

1 hour ago, Drogba1 said:

He's not wrong to be honest, 14 shots to 5 against the league leaders at home is pretty good considering all the players we were missing

Still don't know what to make of him as a coach but this was actually one of our better performances

14 shots? 1 from 25 yards that you could have saved, and a header from 10 yards from Josh that was all that was on target

While he has claimed Reece and Neto failed fitness tests others have claimed we have rested them.

Wolves Being more important. I mean the blueco mouth piece Kaveh on Sky told us on January first the league cup was not a priority and our owners did not care if we lost to arsenal.

f**k this guy and whatever goon BlueCo has on the top management all the way down to him.

I grew up on watching either winning or losing thru the team actually going for wins. Not this bullsh*t "oh we pushed the opponent hard, cut me some slack". That's loser sh*t and I'm Rosenior out until I can see actual winning mentality

Outside one or two questionable decisions I didn't really have an issue with the tactic employed, I felt the players let him down more so than any tactical issues.

7 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

Couldn't help himself, just chatting sh*t.

He definately does suffer from verbal diarrhea.

Sorry but he’s a proper yes really want to like him but he just spouts crap all the time

6 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

So explain this to me, if we can go to Napoli and be 2-1 down at half time, then come out, have a go and win the game 2-3, why can't we at least try and do the same against Arsenal? Let me guess, does it have something to do with the prize money for reaching the last 16 of the Champions League compared to the prize money of the League Cup final?

I think it's just because the players underperformed and arsenal did a good job on defending.

6 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

So explain this to me, if we can go to Napoli and be 2-1 down at half time, then come out, have a go and win the game 2-3, why can't we at least try and do the same against Arsenal? Let me guess, does it have something to do with the prize money for reaching the last 16 of the Champions League compared to the prize money of the League Cup final?

Because Arsenal are WAY better than Napoli - especially the decimated side they played against us. Sometimes its not a lack of trying, but a lack of quality.

23 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

I think it's just because the players underperformed and arsenal did a good job on defending.

I am not sure that they underperformed to be honest. I think the majority played to the level that they are at.

The first part of his tactic was relatively sound. He stifled them. 30 Mins into the game and Gyokeres had touched the ball once. It was a decent tactical ploy to nullify them, take away any momentum from their players and the crowd. However with a goalkeeper that we know from bitter experience is a flapper of shots from distance, we should have kept ourselves organised and structured but still jabbed from distance routinely, which would have undermined their confidence and created doubt if Kepa mispunched or flapped.

Back to the recruitment policy. The issue that we have is that we didn't have any players on the pitch, barring Caicedo, that is capable of shooting from distance. Joao Pedro gets a pass cos i think he was excellent. That was the best pinning centre forward play i have seen against the Arsenal defence this season. Lobotomy Liam was on the wing and wouldn't have had the gumption to have had a 20/25 yard dig anyway. Cucurella is a flying wingback or a box crasher, and Enzo, whilst havign a couple of goes just doesn't hav ethe physique to be crashing in bullets form 25 yards. None of our defenders can shoot, especially from distance and James was rested/injured.

So without those potshots, follow ups, resulting corners etc, Arsenal settled in because as sound as the tactic of containment was, we still weren't hurting them.

We then bring on an unfit (?) Cole Palmer and a mid-bereavement Estevao (who had just flown 6,000 miles form Brazil) expecting them to unlock an entrenched and settled Arsenal defence that is currently the strongest in Europe..

We can say the lads gave everything, we can say that our second half performance was really strong but we just couldn't break them down, but the reality is that we never hurt them or unsettled them once and, in truth, even on their day there are players forming the core of this side that are simply not good enough for this level and the tactics being employed, through a mixture of lack of ability and inexperience. Who'd have thought?