they had their 3rd and 4th CB playing.

think they did better than ours

3rd, 4th and 5th choice CBs playing...

That's not really an excuse, though.

We just knew they were there for the taking and went for it. If it was a better team we were playing then we'd have been more cautious.

It was just so easily the weren't concentrating !!

Had it been a tight game they would have done better.

Why is that not an excuse?

You can hardly expect the young lads to play at the same level of the first choice players (although they are pretty close)...

It was just a lack of concentration and slight complacency.

It's not an excuse because the players put in today all joined in multi million pound deals and they shouldn't be playing if you don't think they can do the job.

Through the legs this time. Stoke coming

How did they not do the job? It was 8-2. The only defender that wasn't looking to attack was Evans. We were likely to get caught out a few times. It seems SAF is happy for us to play more open again.

Oh no! Stoke coming! We should be scared!

Stoke > Arsenal

And?

It might only be 5-2

Super Keith Andrews,

Are you trying to infer that a young player is failing because he doesn't play fantastically every week?

True elvis

It might not

I'm not too worried about our defending today. We were missing both starting centre backs, and possibly Rafael/Fabio at right back. Not to mention, we defended very well when the game was close, and it seemed like defending wasn't really a priority once we started banging in the goals.

I'm sure we would have been much more organized if it had been a close match...

As a northern Ireland fan I'm biased but I thought Evans looked quality. First 20 mins he was class. V unlucky for pen IMO! Jones at fault for 2nd goal. Possibly too deep for the 1st one however he forced theo to shoot at near post... He was only one looking to defend and brought ball done beautifully at centre half. Today he looked better than jones

Super Keith Andrews,

Are you trying to infer that a young player is failing because he doesn't play fantastically every week?



No, I'm saying it's not an excuse to say they didn't do well because they're young. That's an Arsenal excuse.

The difference is that our young players learn from their mistakes. You seriously cannot expect a young player not to perform badly in the early stages of their career, in fact, you can't expect this of anyone.

The problem with this "no excuses" card is that it reflects a very critical attitude, an eagerness to hop on a player's back the moment they put a foot wrong. Rather than pointing fingers and looking to assign blame, it's much more constructive to accept that every player is going to have a bad game every once in a while. A player is not deserving of a judgemental glare just because they have a bad game.

Phil Jones was fantastic for us and, to my memory, didn't make any mistakes.
I'm not saying young players can't make mistakes, that's far from my point. I was merely stating that saying "they were our 3rd and 4th defenders" isn't a good excuse if you play badly against a team playing poorly.

He was at fault for 2nd goal needed to head it out for corner, jones = vidic Evans = rio

so every goal scored against us now would be scrutinized to see where de gea went wrong, really? Is he d first to concede a goal between his legs? Pathetic. You keep finding faults, we keep winning.

Super Keith Andrews,

It's not really an excuse, it's contextualisation; it's an explanation as to why we shouldn't be surprised that Vidic and Ferdinand's presences were missed. We just write off that game and move on.

If they did this consistently, that's when you get into "no excuses" territory. We have to allow them to have a bad game every once in a while at this age, because it's all part of the learning curve. The problem is when they don't learn the necessary lessons, and I think that's what you're worrying about.