From Geoff Marks: Gotta laugh

Hi Myles,

My first game in 3 years, I pick them eh?

I’m glad I don’t go anymore, it’s not the same, the crowd aren’t the same, the experience is soulless.

Arsenal has lost it’s heart and soul. There was no atmosphere at the ground for a floodlit knockout European Cup match!

Observations as they come to me:

Bellerin is going to be a hell of a player with a little more experience, he really does have everything.

Coq is a proper tackler, strong, tenacious, mobile and has attitude. He’ll get better too.

NO WIDTH I was sat behind the goal and when Gibbs picked the ball up I felt Sanchez should have been in front of him wide giving him an option, instead too often he was inside and Gibbs turned and played him square, you can’t hurt the opposition like that.

Sanchez looks burnt out.

He’s had a sensational debut season but it’s caught up with him.

Gibbs is lightning fast but has no invention in final 3rd, almost every time he took the defender on he turned back inside and played a square or backwards ball.

When I think back to Ashley Cole…….boy were we spoilt.

LACK OF MOVEMENT

When Santi or Coq had the ball central (and Ozil but I don’t quite know where he was supposed to be playing) there was no movement ahead of them.

You can’t play Ozil and Santi together in the middle.

Ozil is useless out wide, he’s a playmaker not a modern day wide man.

Get the best offer you can for him and sell him close season. The move hasn’t worked and will never work. If we’re lucky we’ll get 20 million for him.

Wenger should have pulled him off for Rosicky after an hour but he bottled that decision.

NO URGENCY OR ZEST

Mertesacker to Kos, back again, to the full backs, pass pass pass….

Did I mention NO WIDTH?

SANTI TOO DEEP

Santi was picking the ball up from the back, why so deep? He’s a joy to behold with his dazzling close control, the Monaco defence must have enjoyed seeing him play 40 yards in front of them.

Only when Ox came on did we run with the ball directly at them, Rosicky would have given us that and should have been on earlier.

GIROUD Poor chap had a nightmare, can’t remember ever seeing a substitute leave the field so fast.

You always talk about partnerships in football. I didn’t see any evidence of one tonight.

Let’s be clear here, Monaco scored just 4 goals in 6 group games,

Tonight they set up to be difficult to break down, yet they scored 3 away from home in one game!

When we got one back where was the intelligence, the maturity to hold onto a one-goal defeat? Where was the leadership?

It was more than we deserved yet we contrived to allow them the opportunity to score again with 90 minutes on the clock and, with that, probably lost the tie.

Unbelievable. Unforgivable.

Wenger lost me 4 years ago yet this season I’d seen signs that he may have his mojo back but any manager responsible for tonight’s performance from a talented group of players should hang his head in shame.

He got the formation wrong, allowed his team to play at too slow a pace for 80 minutes and lacked the bottle to make the right substitutions.

26th February 2015

From Alex Jones :  when were Arsenal last competitive?

This abject culture of apathy has festered at our beloved Arsenal for a lot longer than people think.

People often refer to the last time that we were competitive being the FA Cup Final of 2005 – the most one-sided Cup Final there I have ever seen.

Yes – Manchester United were fantastic and Arsenal were unforgivably poor. It was as if they didn’t even want to win.

The last time Arsenal excited me was when we somehow managed to get to the Champions League Final under the tutelage of Martin Keown!

He marshalled the defence to a CL record of 10 straight clean sheets – all the way to the final aswell – not just 6 clean sheets notched-up from playing some mediocre teams in the group stages.

Anyway – a particularly low moment I remember from the Noughties was when we went to Bolton in the FA Cup one Wednesday night with the likes of Bendtner and Eboue, and Almunia and got tonked.

I remember thinking that this was a particularly low point but that the calls for Wenger’s head were myopic. “Arsene will come good in the end.”

Well, that was nearly 7 years ago – SEVEN YEARS and things are far worse now than they were even then.

Then, the rot was setting in – and now we’re as brittle as aged, rotting wood – easily shattered at the first sign of sturdy opposition.

Myles – the worst point in Arsene-al’s recent history has to be the Champions’ League Semi Final at Old Trafford WE WERE IN THE SEMI FINAL FOR GOD’S SAKE! – and at no point did that team even try to win it – one round away from the final – and that is with a team of Fabregas, van Persie, Nasri etc. So we’re here without them now and are even worse.

That tie harbours dismal memories of how bad Arsenal could be – no fight, no desire, no belief – and that could only come from the manager.

Would Alex Ferguson ever have tolerated utter garbage like that and allowed players to collect their wage packets?

I don’t think so.

Wenger should have been booted out a long time ago – and it’s taken me many years to come round to that idea.