West Ham v Arsenal (H): Sunday 1st May 2022; 16:30

Fortuneseeker

alderz, I agree we are competing with teams with far greater transfer funds than we have available but I still find it very frustrating that we have been handicapped by the poor last few transfer windows. 👍

horshamhammer

Absolutely despise this talk of being 'streetwise', from Alan Smith in particular. Rolling around on the floor and time wasting is cheating. Call it as it is. Wouldn't expect anything less from a Gooner mind you.

alderz

Fortuneseeker said:

alderz, I agree we are competing with teams with far greater transfer funds than we have available but I still find it very frustrating that we have been handicapped by the poor last few transfer windows. 👍

So do I. But then I look at Arsenal spending more than any other team in the world and only beating us because of their gamesmanship. ManUtd soending £120m or something on Varane, Sancho and Ronaldo but sitting in sixth. Or Chelsea spending god knows how much on Lukaku. I sort of feel like there’s this idea that additions automatically means more points or better performance but idk I don’t think it’s that simple

OldCastleSwift

Of course it's not as black and white as that alderz, but we all saw the impact Lingard had last season, and that of Bowen and Soucek the previous January.

Money doesn't always equate to success, but in our case, where we didn’t have adequate cover in key positions, it was football suicide not to strengthen (IMO). Soucek and Lingard were loans, don't forget, so you don't even need to spend to improve.

If, as is likely, we finish 7th and reached a European semi-final, it can be considered a very good season, but from where we were at the start of January, it's actually a little disappointing.

claretandbluesky

Everton were doing is also today, another one of those cases in which referee's need to just implement the rules and teams stop playing the ball out as standard.

Ref stops play ONLY for head injuries.
Teams don't play ball out for a player down and they wait until it goes out.
Each time the physio comes on the player has to leave the pitch to be treated.

This should sort it.

thornburyiron

Surprised reading Noble’s comments on the OS that we were doing zonal marking because for their second goal there was a zone which was totally unmarked.

alderz

OldCastleSwift said:

Of course it's not as black and white as that alderz, but we all saw the impact Lingard had last season, and that of Bowen and Soucek the previous January.

Money doesn't always equate to success, but in our case, where we didn’t have adequate cover in key positions, it was football suicide not to strengthen (IMO). Soucek and Lingard were loans, don't forget, so you don't even need to spend to improve.

If, as is likely, we finish 7th and reached a European semi-final, it can be considered a very good season, but from where we were at the start of January, it's actually a little disappointing.

Seventh in the league isn’t football suicide

OldCastleSwift

I'm not talking about being 7th. It's football suicide to not strengthen positions that needed strengthening, wherever you are in the league.

When we were fighting relegation, we signed Bowen and Soucek because we needed players. If we didn't make those signings there's every chance we would have gone down. And as far as I'm concerned it shouldn't be any different if you're fighting for top four, which we were in January.

We didn't make those signings, which have effectively killed our chances of top 6, IMO.

jay_in_cpt

Back to the game… I actually thought apart from a few silly clearances in the 2nd half Fredericks had a very decent game… IMO of course ⚒️

OldCastleSwift

BubblesNeverDies said:

Lukerz said:

Also, that Bowen yellow was a joke & he should not just be accepting that. No contact but clearly endangering a player with a studs up challenge when he was not going to get the ball. Should have been a foul.

Exactly. What is Bowen meant to do, just carry on running and risk serious injury? It was a reckless, out of control challenge. If the situation was reversed, you can be sure that Fab would have been red-carded.

Seen the challenge again. I maintained Bowen dived (you can see he even basically admitted it to Dean and the Arsenal defenders). It was reckless by Ramsdale, absolutely, and he was lucky he didn't make contact, but Bowen was already on his way down.

And on your last point, if it was the other way round, say Fabianksi on Nketiah and Fab saw red, how many of us would have been saying he didn't make contact so it shouldn't have been red, and that Nketiah dived?

Jorderz_Moyes_will_be_Moyes

I thought he’d dived at the time, and Bowen’s reaction suggested he had.

However, Bowen either has to leap out the way or get clattered by quite a reckless challenge from the keeper.

If their keeper doesn’t launch towards Bowen like that, Bowen gets the ball and carries on.

So on that basis, it’s a foul, I think? At the very least, a harsh yellow for simulation.

OldCastleSwift

I think he was anticipated contact and went down accordingly. Just sheer luck for Arsenal that Ramsdale somehow avoided catching him, because it was completely out of control.

What frustrates me more is that Bowen did exactly what Salah, Grealish, Ronaldo and Kane would have done, but you can almost guarantee none of them would have been booked.

Brother_Sledge

Did VAR even look at it ?

EXETERHAMMER

I am bored of poor ref and VAR decisions against us when we play the 'breakaway' bunch. Man Utd, Chelsea and now Arsenal. Costs us points every season.

Ace of Clubs

Imo that is studs up and out of control, had that been Fab I think he would have got a red.
Saw a picture of a VAR screen saying "checking club badge", could not post as it contained very bad language.

Pearces_Left_Foot

I don’t think bowen claimed anything but ramsdale was straight up saying he didn’t catch him . I don’t think it was a yellow

chicagohammer

It is truly hard to understand how Bowen gets booked for simulation when facing a challenge like that.

The challenge was reckless and out of control, fortunately there was little actual contact and Bowen was running away from goal, so I do not a see a red card for the keeper, but surely a foul, probably worthy of a yellow - certainly watching it live I saw the yellow card and assuming it was against the keeper, thought that was fair.

How a yellow is given against Bowen is simply beyond me.

Lukerz

Bowen has to take evasive action to avoid contact. That’s not a dive. That should have been a free-kick & a possible red card.

Fortuneseeker

Did Ramsdale intend to stop Bowen by fair or foul means, Yes, so he avoided getting a red card due to Jarrod’s actions.

OldCastleSwift

Lukerz said:

Bowen has to take evasive action to avoid contact. That’s not a dive. That should have been a free-kick & a possible red card.

Evasive action, yes. Could've just jumped over him. You can clearly see he accepted the booking and Dean patting him on the back suggests to me that Bowen admitted that he dived.

Only Bowen will know the truth (haven't seen any comments from him yet) but it looked like a dive to me (i.e. the Salah-esque head back, arched back posture)

Fortuneseeker

David Moyes doesn’t appear to be happy with a few decisions which he believed went against us. Possible handball leading to the second goal and he thought Bowen shouldn’t have taken evasive action. He was also disappointed with Antonio.

OutcastLondoner

In hindsight, I think resting Soucek was a mistake for this game, considering Dawson was out. He either had to play Soucek or Alese because we were short on physical presences at set pieces. Lanzini's marking a big CB on both of their corners and been brushed off once and caught ball-watching on another.

Really need to put in a performance on Thursday because I do think ending with no Europe (or even the conference league) isn't a fair representation of what we've done this season, to have stayed around the top 6 and get this far in the Europa League.

It's been a bit of a stressful watch these last few weeks because we haven't been as good as we know we can be but also, isn't that what we want? To be fighting for things right at the end of the season instead of trying to survive or just grind out the last few games of a mid-table season.

OldCastleSwift

I get frustrated with Moyes’s post-match comments after games like this.

He admits that not playing Soucek and Diop was a risk, because of the height we lose in both boxes, but didn't look to use either Alese or Kral, who are both over 6ft. I'm not saying players should play for their height alone, but I honestly don't think Alese and Kral over Cresswell and Noble would have negatively affected the team today.

He also bemoans the lack of attacking threat, but the options we have are entirely his. He signed Benrahma and Vlasic, but neither have delivered to their potential, and he believed our pool of strikers couldn't be improved upon.

I dunno. I know he's done an incredible job to get us where we are, but I can't help thinking it could have been better still.

OutcastLondoner

What's going on with Vlasic? How does he not get minutes even when we're resting players?

Yeoldhammer

its just highlighting how poor the squad is overall that he cant trust a number of players on the bench to make an impact. There is no way he fixes this in the summer either as there will be too many positions to fill.

PrestonHammer

He's a bit like me with food, he's too fussy.

Slacker

Yeoldhammer said:

its just highlighting how poor the squad is overall that he cant trust a number of players on the bench to make an impact. There is no way he fixes this in the summer either as there will be too many positions to fill.

That’s the spirit.👍

Pearces_Left_Foot

I took my brother in law yesterday who is an arsenal fan and he thought arsenal were lucky to win. I was expecting to lose maybe grab a draw but was a bit disappointed we could not create more yesterday . Overall it’s been a great season one that will live long in the memory and there is a chance it can get even better

alderz

One thing about the first goal - we had some spare men, but nobody on the far post. If someone is standing there it’s not a goal

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Yea not gonna give Moyes the excuse that we didn't have enough options after he's the one calling the shots and being picky over transfers

And again, he can't lament the lack of height when he opted to play and additional full back when we have a great prospect at CB who captains our U23s on a day he opted to rest Soucek and Antonio, two big guys at set pieces

Tbf I have no problem with Moyes resting players, Thursday is a must win and we can't afford ANY injuries to this tiny squad....but the blame still lies with him for not using the squad better throughout the season and not investing in Jan (that Zapata deal is a shambles and angers me to this day how ill prepared we were for that window leaving it so late when we have only had 1 striker for 12 months)