If I just side-footed in a beautiful (hard) cross in with the same ankle I’d been hobbling about on for fifteen minutes, I’d probably be in a fair amount of pain too!

Q: Is this ‘new’ tactic just a natural progression as the squad has matured and players grown in confidence? Last seasons 4-5-1 was necessary to help younger players settle into the 1st XI and keep the pressure of as much as possible, the title was lost early on? Is it that dissimilar a style to Barca’s tactics?

Vela’s & Walcott’s pace will be vital to any success this season, even if they aren’t starters. Eboue’s performance just confirmed how much space & movement players who have pace and run/dribble with the ball can add to the front three.

On the fouling culture, Baresi was the master surely of the dark arts, and no offence, but Italy’s performance in the last WC final was a master class. Although Zidane wasn’t too impressed, I think he made his feelings clear on that subject.

However in England there is still this ‘blood & guts’ mythology that belongs on the rugby field. Baresi was dirty but how often was he truly nasty? And as long as this monster is fed (How many caps did Le Tissier get?), English football will suffer, and players like Hleb, Fab & The Lesser Ronaldo will always be looking abroad to finish their careers as they lie in bed on a Monday with their legs covered in ice packs.

For a 0-0 draw both teams lose. ie no points
This would remove the requirement to park any buses and make all teams at least score one goal to secure a point or three.

@anto, united have had to change the way they play with the loss of ronaldo changing the emphasis to crosses form the wide position rather than the counter attacking 3 man forward line.

If I’m affraid to one thing than it is that we migth suffer another Eduardo-case.
Not that Edaurdo will dive again and will be slaughtered for it by the press. No I refer to the Eduardo horror injury.
The way the oppononts are throwing in tackles and try to heart Cesc is making me affraid. He escaped against Adebayor last week, yesterday again some very sharp tackles.
The ref mostly gave a foul but the tackles are very dangerous at time.
The refs have to take care of this.

The Fa has to choose. Do they want the best players to play in the PL because another Eduardo-injury will bring the PL in a whole in a bad daylight. One of the reasons Hleb left, apart from the money, was the Eduardo tackle and the dangerous charges he had to suffer.
The Fa must now that people want to pay money to see good football and quality players but the don’t pay money to see those players being carried of the field and brought to hospital.
Also the fact that Arsenal players constantly are being stigmatized as cheats, in the press, plays a role. We all remember the not given Arshavin penalty in MU wich could have been an Eduarod injury if Arshavin would have his feet stuck in the ground. The dangerous tackle on Cesc by A********r, the kick in the face by that same player, yesterday once again I have seen charges on Cesc that made me shiver.
One of these days it will go wrong again. I really would like to see the Arsenal talking about it in the press and given video examples on what could have happened with some bad luck. Because of the suffering Eduardo and Arsenal had we are entitled to warn for a repeat.
They will call us weak or moaners but my God, I really fear it will happen again. We can only call on the FA to give instructions to the refs to have a sharp look on dangerous and twofooted tackles.

One of the greatest matches I have ever seen in person (and I know how easy it is to say that about something recent) was last year’s Arsenal v Man U at the Ems, a staggeringly exciting and flowing game. We won that 2-1, and over the years without a trophy we have had our fair share of good victories like that over the rest of the top 4. Chelsea away was rather fine last season too.

But those terrible games against Bolton, Blackburn and the other teams that openly declare that they will have

a) 11 behind the ball
b) a policy of timewasting from the first second
c) a policy of rotational fouling

those are the ones we have had problems with for several years.

During the Henry era we had a brilliant tactic to defeat these guys – Henry drifted left and took a central defender with him, and also drew in the full back. Pires then wandered into the centre forward position. Henry’s brilliance generally drew in a third player, and he then took out all defenders with a pass to Pires who scored.

Obviously there were other tactics, but my point is that the brilliance of those two together allowed us to beat the 0-0 teams.

As matters stand we don’t have two players of such exquisite skill who can do it themselves, so we are seeing a new approach.

Of course if a couple of players on our books now emerge as the new Henry/Pires duo, then we could be onto something.

It seems to me that to work it requires players who combine a high level of skill, athleticism and, crucially, judgement. But that’s alright because we have many such players, and as the season progresses, we can only become more effective at playing this way.

Agree absolutely with Walter. It seemed clear to me that Wigan made repeated use of foul play in an attempt to interrupt the flow of our game and nothing effective was about it, leaving Cesc and RvP vulnerable to serious injury.

Oh and we didn’t lose the man u game because of our system, that was down to us not taking our chances and then gifting them the points by conceding a soft penalty and an own goal.

yesterdays ref was good, i thought. he laid down the law in the first half and by the second, most players had got the hang of him. he should have played advantage a bit more tho.