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In some ways, Arsenal should have been a good team for us to play.
They play a high line but dont really pressurise the ball that effectively, so you would expect us to make plenty of chances on the counter attack.
One thing I noticed was how good Arsenal were at the cynical little fouls as the breaks were just beginning to kill the opportunity.
I guess it's likely that all of the top teams are going to be proficient at this (man city certainly are) .
It is likely that counter attacks are going to be really important to us this year, so is there a way we can avoid this kind of treatment in future?
Maybe Neil could start moaning about it to bring the referees attention to it.
As an aside, here's how Adama Traore deals with this approach...
https://twitter.com/SamCarpenter_/st...560772613?s=19
What interested me was Arsenal Fans TV saying we were a physical team. Were we? I haven't seen that at all this year. It seems built on the narrative created by the media regarding the Aaron Ramsey joke but perhaps also the number of times Arsenal players went down for being touched lightly.
How sad that a team spending several hundreds of millions need to con the ref this way. How sad that their fans agree with it.
The foul that former players/pundits refer to as "taking one for the team" is the most frustrating in the game. I believe a leaf can be taking from Rugby here and a sin bin introduced. You commit what the ref deems a cycnical foul to break up play then you go to the bin for 10 minutes.
Its shirt pulling that really gets me. It should be a straight red.no place for it in football sneaking and cowardly.
I think we have been as efficient in professional fouls as anyone, particularly the last couple of seasons.
The thing our defenders need to perfect is the falling to the grass holding the head so the referee breaks up the attacking chance by stopping play.
Arsenal did it yesterday and Huddersfield did it three times when they were down to 10 men a week earlier.
It is blatant cheating as none of them had a head injury.
I was quite surprised at how dirty the Arsenal team was yesterday.