Goals

[beowulf]

In defence we seem reasonably solid but at the other end I cant see us scoring many.

Not sure Rodriguez will be the player he once was or promised to be, hope I am proved wrong on that score.

Austin warms the bench too much for me.

Long is running around like crazy but needs help.

Redmond is a good player but I cant see him scoring many,waiting with great anticipation for Boufal, but I can see him more creative than a finisher. Mind you I hold my hand up on that one as I thought that of Mane.

Were two players away from a reasonable side,one a striker and one a creative/scoring midfielder. Hjolberg looks good at creating but scoring? Early days I suppose.

[Ohio Saint]

I'm much less concerned than most here about the need for a new striker. I'm more concerned about feeding them in a meaningful way. After all these years, we STILL don't feed enough meat to the strikers with quality through balls.

[Edmonton Saint]

We haven't kept a clean sheet in 16 premier league matches. We need to go back to basics and keep it tight at the back first and foremost IMO and grind out some clean sheets.

[Saint Garrett]

We haven't kept a clean sheet in 16 premier league matches. We need to go back to basics and keep it tight at the back first and foremost IMO and grind out some clean sheets.

 

Not having Wanyama doesn't help....!

[Saint-Fred]

Not having Wanyama doesn't help....!

 

TBF he was around for quite a few of them games. I thought OR looked better on Saturday maybe it was having Clasie in midfield, or just that we are coming to terms with the system.

Three penalties in 4 games hasn't helped though...

We don't look like scoring a hatful like say, a Liverpool do, so we do look like we need to get a clean sheet somehow!

[davefoggy]

We haven't kept a clean sheet in 16 premier league matches. We need to go back to basics and keep it tight at the back first and foremost IMO and grind out some clean sheets.

 

Forster is the problem there

[The9]

Not having Wanyama doesn't help....!

 

Wanyama played in eight successive matches where we conceded a goal at the end of last season.

[S-Clarke]

Forster is the problem there

 

Or not.

[Ohio Saint]

Forster is the problem there

I say wahhhht?

[HKsaint]

Keeping Austin our best finisher on the bench is ridiculous.

PUEL has no idea who should be put up front.

[Saint_clark]

Keeping Austin our best finisher on the bench is ridiculous.

PUEL has no idea who should be put up front.

 

Doesn't matter if he's our best finisher if he's incapable of getting in positions to finish.

[Heisenberg]

Austin is our best natural goal scorer but cannot play Puels formation.

 

Puel was/is going to play his diamond (supposedly the only way he knows) regardless of the players we had/have available.

 

He's now left trying to turn Nathan 'one goal in 11' Redmond into the next "Thierry Henry" lol

[Lastman73]

Or not.

 

Or yes....wish he would learn to stop moving 2 seconds before a penalty kick is taken !!

 

 

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[notnowcato]

We created enough chances away to Arsenal, finishing let us down. I'd be more worried if we weren't creating clear chances.

[saint-crinny]

We created enough chances away to Arsenal, finishing let us down. I'd be more worried if we weren't creating clear chances.

 

Agreed, we created a lot of chances away at Arsenal which has to be a positive - bringing Boufal into the equation you would think would only add to that.

 

It's taking them that we need to work on - Long takes two of those chances that he had in the second half and that penalty would have been irrelevant. We can't keep passing them up or you leave yourself open to exactly what happened on Saturday, and you come away with nothing from a game that you could easily have won

[qwertyell]

The dreaded combination of porous in defence and anaemic in attack.

 

It's not panic stations yet, but if Long's going to revert to type, then we're depending on two Championship forwards and the ghost of Jay Rodriguez to score our goals.

[tajjuk]

Defence is fine, wouldn't worry too much about that, I mean all Arsenal's attacking talent on Saturday and they managed an overhead kick from a defender in a set piece and got gifted a penalty.

 

Before that it was Jose giving away a penalty when he was probably not fully match fit/in the right frame of mind transfer wise, same applies with his poor effort against Zlatan (though many a defender has got bullied by him) and you'd have to fault the lazy closing down by midfield against Rooney.

 

Midfield tracking cost the goal against Watford and it was midfield again that gave away the penalty against Utd.

 

In the 4 games only one striker has scored from us in open play and that was Imbrahimovic, we've then had 3 penalties, a corner and failing to track a midfield runner. Not sure the defence (aside Fonte who needs to get back into form) can be blamed much.

 

Plus Bertrand is due back which will improve the team both defensively and attacking wise.

 

So I agree it's attack that is the worry, we had more than enough chances to beat Arsenal, we had a few to potentially worry Utd and enough to beat Sunderland/Watford once the team woke up.

 

Our best striker - Long, needs like 4 chances to score, our best natural finisher - Austin, doesn't seem to work in the system, leaving Jay Rod and whatever level he's at and Redmond who's hardly ever played up front.

[verlaine1979]

Defence is fine, wouldn't worry too much about that, I mean all Arsenal's attacking talent on Saturday and they managed an overhead kick from a defender in a set piece and got gifted a penalty.

 

Before that it was Jose giving away a penalty when he was probably not fully match fit/in the right frame of mind transfer wise, same applies with his poor effort against Zlatan (though many a defender has got bullied by him) and you'd have to fault the lazy closing down by midfield against Rooney.

 

Midfield tracking cost the goal against Watford and it was midfield again that gave away the penalty against Utd.

 

In the 4 games only one striker has scored from us in open play and that was Imbrahimovic, we've then had 3 penalties, a corner and failing to track a midfield runner. Not sure the defence (aside Fonte who needs to get back into form) can be blamed much.

 

Plus Bertrand is due back which will improve the team both defensively and attacking wise.

 

So I agree it's attack that is the worry, we had more than enough chances to beat Arsenal, we had a few to potentially worry Utd and enough to beat Sunderland/Watford once the team woke up.

 

Our best striker - Long, needs like 4 chances to score, our best natural finisher - Austin, doesn't seem to work in the system, leaving Jay Rod and whatever level he's at and Redmond who's hardly ever played up front.

 

I see what you're getting at here, but you could reinterpret that as saying that in the course of four games, we've conceded a wide array of goals, which might hint that the entire defensive unit isn't working as well as previously.

[The9]

Austin is our best natural goal scorer but cannot play Puels formation.

 

Puel was/is going to play his diamond (supposedly the only way he knows) regardless of the players we had/have available.

 

He's now left trying to turn Nathan 'one goal in 11' Redmond into the next "Thierry Henry" lol

 

 

Yeah, he can "only do one formation", that's why he's a professional coach for a Premier League side in European competition. I shouldn't even bother responding but he used a 4-2-3-1/4-4-2 at Lille and a 3-5-2 as well as the "one formation" (which in itself has been described as a 4-1-3-2 and a 4-3-1-2, a 4-4-2 and a 4-3-3 by various different sources in the past few months).

 

The only problems at the moment are Boufal's injury and us not having a striker who never misses, and nobody's got those.

[The9]

We created enough chances away to Arsenal, finishing let us down. I'd be more worried if we weren't creating clear chances.

 

Which to be fair we weren't until Saturday. But the fact that we created plenty of chances on Saturday against a good side, away from home, pretty much shows we'll be fine this season.

[tajjuk]

I see what you're getting at here, but you could reinterpret that as saying that in the course of four games, we've conceded a wide array of goals, which might hint that the entire defensive unit isn't working as well as previously.

 

Well no it's not a wide array of goals, 50% of them are penalties and 50% of them can be attributed to Fonte. (2 pens and Zlatans header).

 

If it was a wide array of goals it would be a worry, but it's not, it's largely down to individual errors, particularly down to one person. If Fonte hadn't f-ed up then we'd have conceded 3 less goals.

[Saint Garrett]

 

Yeah, he can "only do one formation", that's why he's a professional coach for a Premier League side in European competition. I shouldn't even bother responding but he used a 4-2-3-1/4-4-2 at Lille and a 3-5-2 as well as the "one formation" (which in itself has been described as a 4-1-3-2 and a 4-3-1-2, a 4-4-2 and a 4-3-3 by various different sources in the past few months).

 

The only problems at the moment are Boufal's injury and us not having a striker who never misses, and nobody's got those.

 

Although I agree that it shouldnt be a huge problem as we should be good enough, however we dont just have strikers who never miss, we have strikers who rarely score. I think we're woefully light up top, unless JRod is going to hit the form he was at before e got injured, and thats a huge gamble.

 

Long has never been prolific, Redmond has never played as a striker, and Austin has had one decent season, but shown absolutely nothing for us so far. Hopefully, once Boufal comes in, we change the system and then have a few more players for the opposition to mark, as we're too predictable at the moment. Even when Mane wasn't playing well, he was still a danger and gave the oppo something to think about. We shall see...