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supercollider7
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Oct 25 2013, 10:14 AM
Post #311
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- East German Gooner
- Oct 24 2013, 03:32 PM
- supercollider7
- Oct 24 2013, 01:19 PM
What's our best hope of qualifying out of this group now? I'm not as confident as a few others here so I've been considering the permutations.
If Napoli lose at Dortmund, draw against us at home, and beat Marseille at home, they'll have 10 points.
If Dortmund beat Napoli at home, beat us at home, and beat Marseille away, they'll have 15 points.
If we draw Napoli away, lose to Dortmund away, and beat Marseille at home, we'll have 10 points.
So the home game against Marseille now becomes must win. And we must hope that Dortmund now beat Napoli and we can get at least a 1 or 2 points from our remaining away games. And also maybe by some miracle Marseille can nick points off of Napoli and Dortmund.
In the scenario of Napoli and Arsenal finishing with 10 points, we will advance no matter what the goal difference is. We would have the head to head advantage. I am 100% with your sentiment, that's why I was so furious. That was a HUGE goal from their Pole. HUGE. That was a swing of finishing top or not qualifying at all. We must now win at Dortmund to top the group. Wenger NEVER talked about the scenarios at half time. NEVER. Mourinhno or even AVB would have had white boards all over the dressing room to go over each and every scenario and BEAT all the details to death. EVERY INCE of the details. When you saw Giroud throwing his shirt after drawing Reading last year at the League Cup thinking that the game was over with no over time. You know Wenger adopts a lassez-faire approach. At least he should have gone over this with his captain and co-captain. I would HATE to see City or even Spurs to win this competition before us. I don't think focusing on all of that is ideal for a team at half time. As players and coaches always say, you want to focus on what's in front of you.
Maybe before the game we could've decided, "if you can get a draw, then take it."
But I think the plan always was, considering how conservatively we started the game, to ramp it up in the last 20 minutes and go for the win. Dortmund tend to tire out toward the end and we certainly had the impetus going into the 80th minute.
As a manager you have to take certain risks and at that point if I was in Wenger's position I couldn't have told the team to sit back. We were on top and could get a very very crucial 3 points. We'd virtually have qualified had Cazorla's shot went in off the bar.
In hindsight, yeah, a draw would have been great. But in that moment, in the second half, no way would I have simply settled for a draw. The win was within reach.
Unfortunately the players were a little too gung-ho, maybe a little over-confident, and Dortmund made them pay. Hopefully it was a good wake-up call and we're more careful in the upcoming fixtures.
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