My take on the Team

What a dismal beginning to the season.
The Newcastle game was dire but today was just horrible. When on bbc's 606, I once wrote that if we had kept all our players, we were two signings away from becoming a force to be reckoned with. Those two signings were a Defensive coach and a sports psychologist.

We lack any sort of urgency off the ball and defensively are disorganized. The second goal today, Nasri completely lost Mereiles on th wing and made no effort close him down. The amount of times I saw Walcott jogging when there is a 2 on one on Jenkinson was appalling. The defense is not just the back 5 plus DM. Our wingers fail to track runs from full backs on a regular basis. Arshavin - it is not in his game to track back but he did that more than Theo today. I hve to admit that Theo has no footballing brain. He cannot play out wide. You need to use him as a striker to have him run onto the through balls as his finishing is pretty good. But if you dont play him there, then dont play him at all.

We sorely lacked Wilshere's creativity as Ramsay still looks well out of sorts. Nasri can NEVER play centrally as he is adribbler and lacks the vision o a Cesc, Riquelme, Arteta type of player. Frimpong looks a beast but the ref was unforgiving int he first yellow incident. Hopefully the kid will learn. Miquel looked cultuered.

Have to say that Vermaelen is PHENOMENAL and did not deserve to be on the losing team. We have te defensive personel but the cohesion is severely lacking (no defensive coaching methinks) and the lack of confidence when the going gets tough (end of last season) needs a psychologist!

All in all, it's gonna be a long season.