Arsenal vs Everton (16/17)

Team news:
Everton: Everton have no fresh injury doubts, with only their long-term absentees, and Jonjoe Kenny, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Ademola Lookman, who are on international duty, unavailable.

Arsenal: Arsenal remain without Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (hamstring), while Laurent Koscielny is a doubt. Aaron Ramsey, however, will be fit to play.



THE MANAGER
Ronald Koeman did a fine job at Southampton before moving to Everton this season. A typical Dutch manager in the sense that he likes his sides playing high up the pitch and dominating possession, Everton have enjoyed a solid, steady season and will finish in seventh place, in keeping with pre-season predictions.

FORMATION
Romelu Lukaku spearheads an Everton system that usually appears as a 4-2-3-1, although Koeman has occasionally used only one holding midfielder in more of a 4-1-4-1 system. Koeman has broadly continued with Roberto Martinez’s approach of playing possession football and keeping an aggressive line, although their defensive record has improved considerably this season.

STRENGTHS
Only four sides have a better defensive record than Everton this season, with Ashley Williams recruited last summer to play alongside Phil Jagielka. Everton also protect their defence well – the January signing of Morgan Schneiderlin has provide extra quality in the central midfield zone, while Idrissa Gueye is the only player in the league capable of recording ball-winning statistics better than that of N’Golo Kante. He’ll be charged with stopping Mesut Ozil here.

DANGERMAN
Romelu Lukaku no longer leads the Golden Boot standings after Harry Kane’s four-goal haul on Thursday night, but the Belgian has enjoyed an exceptional campaign. Although sometimes criticised for his lack of link play in deeper positions, he’s excellent at running in behind the opposition defence and boasts tremendous physical strength. This season he’s noticeably concentrated on the inside-right channel, before opening up his body and finishing calmly with his left foot.

AREAS TO TARGET
Everton usually have among the best full-back pairings in the Premier League, but the broken leg suffered by Seamus Coleman means Everton don’t offer as much attacking threat from the right. Mason Holgate is a promising young player and has performed solidly in Coleman’s absence, but he’s certainly the least experienced of Everton’s back four.

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20170519/the-breakdown-arsenal-v-everton

Here we go

If this is Mertesacker's last match then I hope he comes on at some point.

We should try to win by 3+ goals, just in case Watford somehow beat Man City.

Koscielny with the dumbest tackle in his whole career. Makes today harder, now he's out the cup final.

Typical Arsenal. Start so well, looks like its going to be a good day, give us hope, and then this happens.............

Come on guys.
Let's smash three more in and see if the other teams does a barca-style comeback against the manchester teams.

If there was any doubt that we need a top class CB then Koscielny just showed us

5th spot.
Could lose the cup final.
Wenger signs a two year extension.

What an end to the season this could be.

yeah
this is just the beginning
we are gonna take L after L from now on
in for big sufferings

Europa League

That defeat against Liverpool at the start of the year - the one even Wenger admitted we weren't ready for - ultimately cost us 4th spot.

We've only ourselves to blame for this.

Yup.


Probably our lowest point in the last 20 years. This or the defeat in the CL final.

Let's see what the summer brings.

Not even excited for the FA Cup final anymore.

Funnily enough, we've ended up with more points this season than we did last season. Unfortunately, everyone else got better and we just stood still.

Stagnation.

It's like you turn 40 and then realise that you wasted so many of your youth days doing absolute *bleep* all.

Look at the last 7 years lol. We were fighting for 4th against Aston *bleep* Villa back then. 7 years on, we are still fighting for 4th Next year we will still be fighting for 4th.

cant see us getting 4th next season either
wenger staying,others improving,Europa league taking its toil etc
will probably come down to us wishing to lose at latterl stages of the league to finish lower than 7th and miss out on EL The year after!

AW: "Since January we played in a very difficult environment .. The psychological environment was horrendous."

Interesting

Just watching his Sky interview.

Said his personal situation affected the players and that the team "played in a hostile environment".

The "horrendous psychological environment" is basically that. Makes you wonder if he knew his situation was harming the players why there wasn't clarity one way or the other - even just something like "it'll be sorted at the end of the season".

A lot of this makes me think that nothing is decided and it'll literally come down to that meeting next week. There's clearly far more going on behind the scenes than we think.

So basically he's saying that the team was dragged down by his and the club's indecisiveness, or secretiveness?

The whole thing is weird.

His words were "We dropped off after December. One day I'll tell you the reasons for that". So everyone thinks he's hinting at something going on behind the scenes. Then he mentioned the "horrendous psychological environment". Then in that Sky interview he brought up his own situation and the hostile fans.

The whole year has been bizarre, off the pitch. Wenger's contract running down with no clarity, several player contracts (most notably Ozil and Alexis) running down to their final year, the fan protests, the Gazidis "catalyst for change" line, the recent news of an attempted takeover by Usmanov... clearly something isn't right at the top of the club but *bleep* knows what it is because nobody is telling us.