The gameplan we had required the right personnel, I think we would have felt confident if Lennon or Modric were in the team instead of Keane and Bentley, because they have the mobility and skill to work the counter attack. Unfortunately Bentley was rusty, and Keane out of form, and neither were able to provide anything that would threaten Arsenal.
A lesson could also be learnt about squad rotation - none of the substitutes appeared match sharp, and Bentley still looked off the pace. It's all right having a bench that looks strong on paper but if these players aren't on their games then they won't be able to offer any impact when they come on to the pitch.
They are rubbish without Fabregas??? Yet have played in the champions league for the last 12 seasons. Arsenal have system and a style of play that runs from the youth team all the way through to the first 11 which allows any players to come in to the side and get on with it.
People were saying they were going to struggle this season without a main striker in Adebayor but Wenger has put Van Persie up the middle and due to the fluency they have in the whole team he never just stays up against the two centre halves much like the Barcelona way.
I think some fans get too carried away of what comes out of Harry's mouth about how good our squad really is compared to say Arsenal's!!
This, a very important point and one I have been saying for a while. We have a lot of players in our "great" squad that just haven't had enough minutes on the pitch to be able to step into a big game like this and be match sharp, Bale, Bentley, Pav all looked well off the pace. HR needs to try and distribute minutes on the pitch more evenly so fringe players can try and get some kind of rhythm.
I really think this is an over reaction. Their not that much better than us.
Imagine if just one of those chances against stoke went in, and we had beaten Stoke last week, we'd be going into this game on a high, imagine we wern't missing our 3 best players in Defoe Modric and Lennon. It would have been a completely different story. Its just circumstance. Im sure we'll beat the scum at our place convincingly.
Not much, but still better, and it's not simply a matter of one player, or even the squad as a whole. Run a player-by-player comparison, and there really isn't a lot in it—they edge us in some positions, we edge them in others. The difference is 13 years of one manager moulding the squad according to his vision, with little or no compromise; they believe they are going to beat us, we don't seem to believe we can beat them, even when we've got them on the ropes (2006 CC at the Lane?).
Maybe today we'd have been better off starting with Bale or Kranjcar on the left and dropping the anodyne Hudd, going offensive rather than trying to nullify their strengths, I don't know. On the other hand, we'd succeeded in frustrating them and were getting more into the game before two appalling lapses in our previously excellent concentration did for us, so who's to say Harry got it wrong?
We learn from it, put it behind us.