Really pleased for Eddie after a tough few weeks for him. Very good performance (against a poor side). I don’t think it particularly changes my opinion of him tbh. I’ve always thought he’s a very good goal scorer, easily PL quality and a great squad member to have. My major issues with him are many of his substitute appearances flatter to deceive and we have had to rely on him a little too much for my liking. Still, great performance and pleased for him.
They’re decent defensively and are usually a pretty tough nut to crack at home. They’ll need a bit of a lucky break to score without Eze or Olise though.
Totally agree. The only reason I feel different is I could see on the pitch a clear upgrade from Leno to Ramsdale. So far I haven’t seen that upgrade from Raya to Ramsdale (maybe my puny brain isn’t seeing the subtleties but I can only say it as I see it).
And you are supposed to drop players when they make mistakes. That’s the whole point of having “two number 1s” as arteta called it
I think this is the point. If you want to keep Ramsdale engaged and claim publicly “they’re two great goalkeepers fighting it out” you have to do as you would with other positions, swap them when one has an awful game.
On the other hand if Arteta is happy to dismiss Ramsdale because he’s certain Raya is better and is committed to replacing him, then don’t swap them.
“I swear the most annoying people here are the fucking optimists!”
Yeah exactly. I do think game state is doing something for us here… Behind for 60 minutes, they had little incentive to open up and go attacking. That said they were broadly “on top” for long periods and did very little. I don’t rate them in the slightest (but we were very poor).
Injuries right at the start of their toughest run too. Bad luck, but it’s what a lot of us were saying, they’ve sailed through with a comically easy fixture list and minimal injuries and the test will be what happens once they hit some harder fixtures and bad luck. Let’s see.
That said Richarlison out for a month hardly affects them