You man don’t follow football. You follow stats.

Agree with all of this pretty much. People blaming Raya when a lot of the team were struggling early and the Alavarez block was as much down to the pass to Raya as it was down to Raya.

Havertz at centre forward worked in the CS so not really sure why we didn’t do it again unless Arteta thought he would be more useful as a sub when the game becomes stretched later on

Disagree. It was a sitter, no matter who was on the ball. If Ben Blanco misses that and we proceed to lose, we’d look back on that chance with regret.

Also the Alvarez charge down isn’t reflected in the xG

Rewatching yesterday game. City just went all in with high pressing in the first minutes. Our midfielder just didn’t have technical ability to by pass that high pressing.

We were surrounded in our half for 30 minutes. Especially in that Ode and Jorginho side. Ode and Jorginho just don’t have the physicality to defend against high pressing and nor the technical ability to by pass it by using dribbling or passing.

This makes Raya have to take risk of long ball to Nketiah and Jesus to bypass that high pressing. But Nketiah and Jesus just don’t have the height and physicality to hold long ball because they were facing up against 6 ft CB and LB.

After city were exhausted, finally we can progress the ball to their half.

If we had the same starting line up like last season, I’m pretty sure city will eventually score a goal with that high pressing even if KDB and Rodri didn’t start

Moral of the story? Havertz have to start in CF in the next big game. He has the height, and strength to hold the ball. Buying Rice with 100M is the best purchasing arsenal have ever done

Thanks west ham!

1. Eddie has been bad all season and shouldn’t be starting.
2. You can’t honestly say that Jesus doesn’t have the physicality to hold a long ball. He does it all the time. It’s not just about height.
3. I think Kai is better at CF than he is at the 8, but there’s no way he starts the next game (or any game) at CF when Martinelli, Jesus, and Saka are all healthy.

Yet if you watched the game you know they looked better in the 1st half and we looked way better in the 2nd half. xG tells you very little of the full story.

Those early chances are indicative of probably Arteta’s biggest current flaw. We have conceded so many early goals in the last year - we start off too many games shaky before settling into our game.

We were lucky we didn’t concede at the beginning but if we had it could’ve ended very very differently. It’s something we really need to work on.

Would be interested to see the xT for this game as both teams had possession in advanced positions but didn’t create many shots with it

Take out first 4 mins

That really wasn’t a sitter. Saliba was all over him forcing him to shoot before he was ready. A good striker would score maybe half the time, but he’s a CB.

When I hear sitter, I am picturing a player in a comfortable position, time and space, but fluffs it. Half chance, sure, but it was good defending to put him off.

I thinks xG tells exactly that

1st half: 0.78 x 0.17 2nd half: 0.07 x 0.24

this also means that they only threatened us 4 times, and us to them 7 times.

Lmao so Nathan Ake missed a high-probability sitter and helped us score off a shot from outside the 18 yard box.

Surprised that isn’t counted, it can be considered a shot at goal