6 - average
Bruno - 8
Stephens - 7
I know it's a game of opinions, but wow...
So with no recognised striker , you wanted us to take lacazette, Sanchez and the rest on at their own game?
Is this what they call fishing ?
I only heard reports during the first half on Radio 5, but the impression given (mostly by David Pleat - so not necessarily a reliable source) was that we were set up to only defend, we were defending way too deep with everyone behind the ball and inviting Arsenal to attack (the goals were an inevitable result of this), we had little or no threat up front, and no attacking intent - in short we looked slow, naive, overawed and gave them way too much respect.
Is that a fair summary of how we played,or it is complete twaddle?
Ryan 9 for his goalkeeping ability - certainly his positioning is improving and getting close to matching Stockdale now. However....and this is now getting ridiculous - 30 yeas of watching football (mostly on telly/PC admittedly) and I have never AT ANY LEVEL seen a goalkeeper kick so many goal kicks into touch...Now by all means do it approaching the end of each half to waste time but jeez man, he needs to learn to kick straight..,,
So overall 7.5
I'm not convinced by Stephens at the moment. He does a lot of excellent things in terms of disruption of the opposition and keeping the ball moving (although too often backwards), but he also makes a lot of expensive/potentially expensive mistakes. He is Pl quality some of the time, championship quality some of the time. The question is whether the strengths he brings cancel out the weaknesses.
I'm not convinced by Stephens at the moment. He does a lot of excellent things in terms of disruption of the opposition and keeping the ball moving (although too often backwards), but he also makes a lot of expensive/potentially expensive mistakes. He is Pl quality some of the time, championship quality some of the time. The question is whether the strengths he brings cancel out the weaknesses.
It is funny how opinions differ, isn't it? I thought he had his best Premier League game for us yesterday yet there seems to be a lot of criticism for him on this thread. He gave the ball away a couple of times (but less than in previous times) and at least once took it straight back off Sanchez. I feel he and Propper are really developing together. My only concern is if one of them gets injured.