Arsenal - Nottingham Forest

[JoeWorrallsBrain]

It's only one game, and its too soon to panic, but that first game showed NO development of our tactics and no better squad management from Cooper than last year.

1.  Aurier should not be playing in place of Neco Williams.  Aurier shows flashes of offensive iniative, but his overconfidence in his ball handling abilities and his lack of pace is a liability against stronger opponents.
2.  Worrall can only play when there is a back 5.  He is too slow otherwise, and handles the ball too poorly, against the top teams.
3.  The lineup we commit to needs to be capable of putting all of our best players on the pitch at once.  It is unacceptable that our coach can't figure out how to put Awonyi and Johnson on the field at the same time.  We don't have enough elite players that we can afford to have any of them out of the lineup, barring injuries.
4.  MGW should be playing in the midfield, not on the wing.
5.  Johnson should be playing on the wing, not it the centre.
6.  We will lose more games than we will win if we surrender 85% possession every time we face a top 10 club.

Put another way, we're making the same mistakes we made last year.

The off season was a failure when we failed to recruit upgraded midfielders and central defenders.

Again, it's early, but it sure looks like it's going to be another struggle just to stave off relegation.

2. Everyone is aware of thus and we played a back five and he contained the 2nd best team in the league.
3. Taiwo was coming back from injury. 

We narrowly lost to an excellent team away from home ffs. We got battered by them last year, clear improvement. They only created a handful of chances as showed by the xG of 0.6. Basically, glory piece of skill and a wonder goal. Jonno had easily the best chance too.

Why do people have such ridiculous and unreleastic expectations. Its so infuriating, if you're going to be annoyed at narrowly losing at Arsenal, I'm not sure you're going to ever enjoy following a football team.

2.  He didn't contain the second best team.  When he was exposed one on one (which was inevitable) the ball was slotted between his legs (because he couldn't close down the shooter) for the first goal.  In general, Worrall plays too far off his mark inside the box, even when the opposing team is moving the ball across goal rather than running at the defence.  My point is that you can't have players in your lineup who are liabilities and who force you into formations to support them, and then still have them fail, at the additional expense of any attempt at competing.
3.  That doesn't explain why Cooper took Johnson off when he brought Awoniyi on.  I don't think Cooper can conceive of a formation where they both can start the game.

Arsenal is a better team than Forest at this moment.  However, it is difficult to score in the Premier League, and that means underdogs always have a chance, as long they don't resign themselves to defeat (or a tie) from the outset.  It's too early in this season to be playing for strategic 0-0 draws.

I'm not annoyed that we lost to Arsenal.  I'm annoyed that we didn't attempt to win.