Photo: Getty Images
Sorry for the delay, folks. Honestly, between this result and the blatantly obvious fact that our manager isn't going to address any of the several gaping holes in our squad, I wasn't in a huge hot hurry to write something yesterday.
It's already well after the fact, so some bullet points and we'll call it a day.
- I don't want to pile on about poor Yaya Sanogo, who is being thrust into a horrible situation by Arsene Wenger. He's clearly not ready for the responsibility of playing at this level - a decent knock-down in the build-up to Alexis Sanchez's opener aside - so really having a go at him doesn't do anyone any good. He's not picking himself for the starting XI. But, it should be noted that other than that one knock-down he was once again fairly dreadful.
- Especially given the increased scrutiny about head injuries, the fact that an obviously loopy Laurent Koscielny was left in the game after being clearly concussed is astonishing to me. The fact that we conceded on what should have been a simple clearing header had a tinge of karma to it, unfortunately.
- Wojciech Szczesny did as well as he could, but let's keep in mind that there were a few instances where a Leicester player was in alone and they just shanked it wide - there were two of those that I remember off-hand. A better team would have beaten us.
- We looked, once again, like we had zero ideas other than Sanchez's lone predatory moment. Same old tippy-tappy nonsense.
- Have you noticed that there are guys like Tomas Rosicky who have not played a single minute of football? Our injury problems are bad enough, but if this is a squad game now and if the boss won't use it, they're only going to get worse and worse.
- Mesut Ozil had another invisible performance. I honestly don't blame him though...to go from feeding chances for Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema to Yaya fucking Sanogo...it's must boggle his mind.
- The post-match quote from the manager that burst the most blood vessels in my brain: “Every solution every time you don’t win a game is to buy somebody anyway. We try our best and you have to trust us to find the best possible solution, but as well not to every time you don’t win think that it’s a miracle-man who wins you a game. Why did Man City not win yesterday against Stoke? They have plenty of strikers.” Holy crap, that is so disingenuous. It's a 38-game season...they scored 102 goals last term, we scored 68. HMM, I WONDER WHY?
Sorry...don't mean to be so negative, but it's just frustrating that despite our massively improved financial status, we're still acting like a mid-level First Division side. Sigh.
The Modern Gooner Player Ratings:
Szczesny 7, Monreal 7, Koscielny 6 (Chambers 7), Mertesacker 7, Debuchy 7, Flamini 7, Ramsey 6, Ozil 5, Cazorla 7 (Oxlade-Chamberlain 6), Sanchez 7, Sanogo 5 (Podolski 6)
Man of the Match: Ehh....Sanchez for the goal.
