Hahahahaha oh my days you can’t write this shit 
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Why am i not surprised? Typical november 
That f*cking sucks… better hope to god Jenko or AMN can stand in for a few weeks… that could be colossal miss at a terrible time.
lol so for the foreseeable future we are likely missing Bellerin, Sanchez and Cazorla at a minimum… By the Middle of December we will be 8-9 points off the pace in the Premiership & Qualified 2nd in our CL group.
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I am not “that” pessimistic this time…
Ozil is still fit, Theo and Ox are pretty decent this season. Giroud is a good plan B.
Of course it hurts when Sanchez and Santi and Bellerin are out, but our backbone is still there…
Just that we are NOT ALLOWED to have more injuries.
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I take it you didn’t see Ox in the last 20 minutes of the North London Derby ? Ox is good when we play garbage opposition in the League Cup.
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well… at least he is not garbage-garbage like in the past 
Time to rally behind the team.
Edit: I do love jenko tbh.
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Honestly, if Wenger were tactically flexible, this would be the time to go to 3 at the back:
Mustafi-Holding-Koscielny
Maitland-Niles/Jenkinson – Monreal
The idea of Jenkinson starting in a back 4, without significant protection, against serious opposition, is very scary.
Anyways, what do you expect? You come in to the season with no other plan than to play Bellerín every fucking game, well this is what happens. Just as it happened to Cazorla and can happen to Özil and Sánchez in the future.
November is not some kind of anomaly or bad luck. It’s 2 and a half months in the season and it’s when muscle injuries start popping up systematically after a few good 3 games in 7 days weeks, and as Wenger now has gone years without planning the squad very well/being terribly reliant on a few players, you get the results you do when the injuries hit.
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You are such a hipster. 3 at the back? Really?
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Wtf does a 3 (or 5) at the back have to do with hipsterism?
I get the fact that this football hipster term is highly used in the UK, but I really don’t get it, tbh. In Spain hipsterism and football have absolutely 0 in common, your typical insecure, Catalan, in-secret-psychiatrist-seeing-on-his-father’s-dime-hipster here will throw his nose up at you and give you zero time if he finds out you play and/or discuss/watch football.
When, before this season with Conte and Chelsea becoming reasonably successful, did 3 at the back ever become sensible suggestion going into a man United game. That’s bloody absurd.
Edit: tactical is not doing something random just because it works elsewhere.
3 at the back existed long before Conte, mate…and certainly long before it’s recently become a bit more popular in England (thanks to mostly foreign managers).
It may or may not be true, but there were rumours in 11-12 we were considering employing it, to cover up Andre Santos inability to run/defend.
AC,
I like that idea… the only problem is, seems like we never practiced that before.
You know it takes time for the defenders to learn each pattern and communicate, if they never tried that before, better not to use it then.
It all comes to our manager. Not flexible. Against some inferior teams in COC or FA Cup, we should try something different, like formations, tactics… when we need something new like right now, I don’t believe our players are ready for that.
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His tactical inflexibility hurts us so much it’s insane, Pochettino used three at the back against us and will likely do the same against Chelsea.
Our plan A hasn’t won us the league in over a decade and when we do resort to a plan B which is likely initiated by the players or at least by circumstance it can have a positive effect i.e. Bayern, City et al. However, on the rare occasion this happens it’s back to your regular scheduled programming never to be seen again for months on end if at all within the same season.
That pressing game that we utilised against Chelsea is a faint memory which is incredibly irritating.
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Every year it’s the same thing. There is always a tactic that Wenger doesn’t do that someone else does.
3 at the back going into united is mental. Might as well pair Giroud with Mertesacker upfront and just play it long to knock it down onto the said Mr. Maitland-Niles if we really want to go fifa mode.
This flavour of the month tactic business should have been picked up with Klopp and his ‘gegen’ press and stopped there.
Wenger has his flaws, but why on earth does 3 at the back resolve any squad deficiency?
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Whilst three at the back could be helpful, it does seem like the ‘in’ thing; like possession football was a thing after Barca-prime and we’re beating Wenger with a rod because he’s not using it.
I’m not sure we can wholly trust a defence like ours to perform such a tactic, with Jenko in place right now in the four, it becomes unbalanced. With Rob Holding, early signs proving positives, he hasn’t played enough to jump straight in and shore a defence up tightly in a back three. We just have to deal with the hit of Hector’s injury the best we can.
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Every year its the same thing ? I couldn’t agree me and fuck its frustrating.
Because we’ve got a good, ball-playing CB on the bench, to go with two others (Kostafi), so it makes sense to use a strength to cover up a (major) weakness. It’s as simple as that really.
Plus, there’s the fact that our DM (Coquelin) is less important to our passing and building up from the back than Mustafi or Holding, so we wouldn’t be losing much by taking him out of the lineup.
It really doesn’t have to be as complicated or radical as you’re making it out. It’s just about being slightly more flexible to cope with a position we have zero depth in.
Actually, now that I think of it, given how simplified Coquelin’s game is at this point, playing full back in a 5 might suit him really well.
There is a massive jump down in quality from Bellerin to Jenkinson, so expect every team we played to target him as our very weak link.
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