Topic: Arsenal's Loss to Depor

[mercury]

Not having watched the game (saving my energy to stay up tonight for our own ), is is a beep - just beaten by a superior side - or a signal of loss of form towards the end of season, as some have observed they usually do?  It seems that Henry has bottled the penalty.  Not bad at all for us.  

[Ron]

Deportivo are a fantastic team ! Long time since I've seen Arsenal outplayed like that. So Deportivo did Man U and Arsenal this season   ....

[joepunter]

there's hope here lads. look at that arsenal team. seaman, campbell, stepanovs, luzhny, grimandi. poor. POOR. that's half their team. they've got away with it so far because the other half of their team has been so great, but with henry suddenly seizing up (did you see his abysmal performance against derby?) they mightn't get away with the rubbish at the back for too much longer.  

[redtel]

I watched last 2 games v. Newcastle & DLaC. and was pleased to see how they are suddenly struggling. They had a long unbeaten run since Newcastle  beat them so looks like they could hit a bad spell.

Its been mentioned somewhere that Henry always finishes the season poorly, and recent performances confirm that. No striker can go on hitting the net as often as he's been doing.

There is also Dixon to add to that list of defenders ,which just  does'nt  compare to our defence.  They have come back to win many games after going behind, but its asking a lot of the strikers to keep doing it. Add to this  fixture congestion and suspensions  and I think they have it all to do.  

[joepunter]

yeah - i was just talking about the players they fielded against deportivo last night. they have a whole zoo of poor defenders and mediocre squad players with dodgy passports. wenger was stupid to say 'i expect us to beat deportivo' before the match. he's been inflating their confidence for a while now ("this is the best ever arsenal team" "there is real belief here now" etc) and that defeat, combined with their bad performances against newcaslte and derby, might just be the pin-prick that bursts the arsenal balloon.

i feel like a bit of a hypocrite saying it now, because their sustained good form over the last three, four months had started to convince me that it wasn't true any more, but arsenal have always been sort of flaky. i remember marcus babbel saying that about them in august - 'there's something wrong with that team unit, i can't quite put my finger on it but there's something wrong'. the only other time babbel came out and said something like that was before the united-bayern game last year, after we beat united 2-0 at anfield. 'barthez is the weakest link, he is always prone to make a blunder' said babble (somewhat strangely). that was when everyone was convinced barthez was the world's best. subsequent events proved marcus right. maybe he was right about arsenal after all.

thierry henry is the oddest case of all. he's brilliant - anyone can see that -- but there's something wrong in his head. i don't know if you saw his stunning miss against derby, or the miss v southampton earlier in the season, but a real striker wouldn't have missed them. i'm sure you remember his performance against us in the cup final. he often reserves his worst performances for the biggest games. it looks like that habit hasn't gone away - i thought it had. he's a converted winger, not a real striker. with confidence he's brilliant, but under pressure he gets nervous - did you see the look on his face before he took the pen last night? something wrong there, definitely.

joy to the world, the cracks in the arsenal have started to show. so to speak.

[hampsy]

Yeah Ron, Deportivo played some fantastic football, simple football at it's best..