What a win that was for an otherwise boring first 70 minutes. We needed it, kept cool and scored one in the 89th min. Everton got a corner in the dying minutes of extra time and brought Pickford into our box in the hope of a draw – but Dowman had other plans. He beat couple of Evertonions, and went on to score of a counter, becoming the youngest ever player to score in the Premier League. We are 10 points clear of Man City, they have couple of games in hand but fixtures are piling up for them as well and with injuries everywhere, the hope in me is growing.
It also raises our confidence for the Champions League second leg at home.
I haven’t seen us lifting a PL table ever since I started watching Arsenal and Football. No one has seen us lifting a Champions League trophy, dead or alive. No Arsenal fan has seen us lifting Carabao Cup ever, and it was in 2020 covid time when we last won FA Cup.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s coming for us :
Premier League
10 points clear of Man City with 7 games left for us. City got to play 9 and if we believe that they win their 2 extra games, that’s 4 points lead which takes away the pressure from the Man City game. We could lose at Etihad and still win the title.
Champions League
Leverkusen managed to hold us to a 1-1 draw on a night which wasn’t very fascinating for us. We were poor, and we won converted a 50/50 penalty to have an advantage in the second leg. We are playing at home on Tuesday evening, and we must win.
Champions League is probably the toughest competition we are in. With Madrid beating City 3-0 in the first leg, Liverpool losing to Galatsaray 1-0 and PSG thrashing Chelsea 5-2, upsets have already started and whoever is hoping to win must put up some show till the finals.
We reached semis last year, and Mikel must be hoping to at least play the finals. That would mean beating Leverkusen at home first and playing one of the Newcastle, Barcelona, Atletico and Tottenham in the semi finals. Atletico beat Spurs 5-2 so they are mostly likely through. Newcastle and Barcelona played a 1-1 draw and Newcastle has the away 2nd leg, so we might see those cunts in semis. 2006 IS STILL NOT FORGOTTEN.
Carabao Cup / EFL Cup
We have a master v apprentice showdown in Carabao Cup finals on 22nd March. It’s going to be the first trophy of the season for Pep or first for Mikel after his FA Cup win in 2020. Pep has a team that has won things and know how to keep their calm when it matters. We, on the other hand, has done so much to end up 2nd whenever it has mattered.
There is no doubt about the fight. It will eventually come down to us, to avoid committing errors and to walk the talk.
If we win, it will be a massive confidence booster. We have got a game against City at Etihad in Premier League and if we beat them here, we can beat them for the PL title.
FA Cup
We are in the quarter finals and have got an easy game against Southampton, who are in Championship.
One of the City and Liverpool will not be playing in semis, Chelsea are not threatening these days and we might end up playing City again in semi final or final. Or Liverpool, it will be equally tough.
If you ask the sensible me the criteria to judge Mikel for this season, he must win one of the Premier League or Champion League trophies and anything else would be additional joy. If you ask the fan, we must win all 4 and make sure Spurs get relegated in the process.
Right, that’s me done. See you in the comments. Would love to hear your say for today’s game and what you would consider as a successful season!
City drop more points tonight and a draw against them should almost guarantee the title.
I always loved West Ham, though I stayed in East lol
Get in you Irons!
Nobody said winning titles was easy. I’ll take a dull 70 mins if we manage every game the way we did today.
Great call on the subs by Tets, his trust in young players continues to bear fruit.
We all knew Dowman was a baller but the line between giving him the game time he deserves and managing his physical capacity needs balance, I think we got that sweet spot today.
Title pushes need those ‘closing’ players to provide that extra boost at the end of games and the end of a season, we’ve got ours.
It was nuts in the Ems at the end and rightly so, seven games people.
At the 80th minute stage of our game, I doubt anyone could have predicted we’d end today 2 points up on the oil kleptocrats. Big swing in our favour despite continuing the streak of playing pretty poorly. As soon as Dowman came on, things started to happen and Everton defenders were backing off him. Considering his age, he made an unnaturally big impact. Credit too to Hincapie.
We’ve never won the Carabao but it was the Littlewoods in 87 that proved to be the foundation for GG’s success.
‘One nil down, 2-1 up, we f*cked’ Rushie’s record up!’
I think we also, put an end to the era of Liverpool dominance with 1989 hammering the point home.
I’ve said before that this team and Arteta’s project gave me GG vibes, hungry young tyros, ‘no superstars here’, take the ugly 1-0s, main striker not all that but so useful in other ways, Madueke is our Perry Groves.
Fabio Veira or Vuskovic toss up for HSV player of the year. He’s found his level
Aitcho
Except for this season, we were mostly losing / dropping points in these kinds of boring games. Fortune is on our side so far, we have got results in games where we didn’t expect and we haven’t got any considerable, weird referee calls against us.
Ask any fan at the 80 min mark, and he would have bet on us dropping points today.
– only 7 more games and 🏆.
Also, West Ham restricting City to a 1-1 draw means, we can afford 2 losses out of the 7 remaining games.
We have got 7 goal difference. City has a game in hand and I’m considering that they would win it.
It would be fucking brilliant if we beat them 3-0 at Etihad though.
KP
Hincapie has been brilliant. He has kept Calafiori away from the starting line up, MLS is hardly getting minutes since he moved to the LB role.
MB, that’s the whole point, not dropping points.
I can’t even count the number of Wenger era games where their keeper had their game of the season or we’d batter possession stats only to lose to cheap breakaway goals against the run of play.
The result today, like most games we play these days wasnt an anomaly or statistical fluke.
Only Leicester can fluke a whole league and even then, their defensive action numbers were off the charts.
Any fan, every fan, would have been nervous that we’d drop points but we’ve seen this team enough now to know better than to bet that we would. Even at 80 mins
Much like ManC always seem to do, we ramp up the pressure and put the squeeze on.
Both ours and their record for late goals isn’t fluking it. We’re getting points in games we’d expect to these days
I’ve always believed that a title winning side has one player in the side who is crucial to the club’s success and when that player leaves or retires so does the ability to win the Premier league.
Arsenal ….Vieira…leaves 2006…no titles for 20 years
Liverpool …Alan Hansen retires …no titles for about 30 years..1990-2020
Chelsea ….john terry retires …no titles for 9 years and counting
United …Ryan Giggs retires …no titles for 13 years and counting
City …Debruyne leaves …no titles for 2 years( hopefully) and counting .
So who is the one player at Arsenal that is going to keep the club at the top if we do win the title this season, probably Rice or Gabriel.
So unless City find a player who was as influential as Debruyne they could go the same way as Arsenal, United, Chelsea and Liverpool , meaning no premier league success for decades.
I can guarantee you that if Debruyne was still playing for city now at his peak then City would not have bottled the league this season or fell woefully short last season.
Of course the league isn’t done yet, I did say yesterday that it could be as good as over in the next 5 games and city dropping 2 points today brings that prediction a little closer.
What today’s result will do is give us a spring in our step for the champions league on Tuesday which will lead us into the cup final next weekend before the international break.
Like many, I’ve been critical in my perception of Tet’s use of subs. Watching MOTD, his subs have had 21 goal involvements over the course of the season so far, the next best is some other team with 14. The stats go against my perceptions. Much like the guys who exhort him to be ‘braver’ or suggest we’re winning ‘ugly’ when we’re the top scorers.
Three’s an Arab saying about not needing two pairs of trousers that comes to mind.
Wicksy, I’m not sure we have that sort of talismanic player that we need to keep at all costs. The numbers show we have a very strong collective amd we’ve coped reasonably well when our marquee players have had time out.
Even Arteta couldn’t cock this up, which.is saying a lot considering his well-earned reputation…of course, I’m fucking elated for Dowman, as he looks to be someone with an incredibly bright future, but I can’t think of another manager that least deserves to have his blushes saved once again by the heroics of one of our blue chippers in light of how poorly he’s mismanaged/mistreated them over the years…from ESR likely saving his job then being quickly discarded, to the mishandling of Marts, from the whole fake injury narrative to the glaring lack of any help on the left, to the fact that both Saka and Ode have regressed under this manager-centric bully ball initiative, to the ghosting of Ethan & Skelly, who both clearly showed enough to get significantly more minutes, and let’s not forget the whole Saliba mess that thankfully got sorted before another Gnabry-like debacle was in the offing…fuck me there’s some on here who would have you believe the exact opposite, almost as if MA has cultivated an environment that has allowed our youngest prospects to flourish…anyways, enough said about that, as anyone without blinders on knows full-well that the he’s no coach, he’s simply a run-of-the-mill manager with a billion dollar budget…regardless, there’s a handful or so of players on this squad who have deserved a better fate when it comes to the accumulation of major hardware, which should be remedied this season (in spite of the manager)
Aitcho
Your Arabic saying reminded me of a story.
I used to have to go into the Department of Trade and Industry at various stages of my career because they worked closely on overseas trade with the Foreign Office. I once met a colleague there and we shared the lift up to his office with this very strange character whose job it was to deliver the mail and internal memos etc. This geezer was really formally dressed and refused to have eye contact with anyone while we were going up to the 6th floor. He also appeared to be wearing 2 pairs of trousers with the bigger pair underneath the smaller, tighter ones.
When we reached my colleague’s office he explained that the geezer had been had up in front of a tribunal for sexually harassing a female co-worker. There were no other witnesses and so it was a question of one person’s word against another but he was given some sort of verbal warning.
So his self inspired solution to further scrutiny of his behaviour? Yes, start wearing two pairs of trousers to work!
All that aside, I’m still working out what happened yesterday evening. Dowman and his family must be elated. That goal had echoes of Martinelli’s against Chelsea a few years ago and the overall game put me in mind of that 3-2 at home to Bournemouth when Reiss Nelson got the winner.
In terms of thinking back to 1989 (when we’d also waited nearly 20n years for a title), it also runs pretty close to TA’s winner up at Ayresome Park in the last few minutes when we were struggling to score against Boro.
Still, fuck all that! We’ve got Liverpool playing the Spuds in a few hours!
https://youtu.be/zaij2OTnT8Q?si=3ra3V7PdkH2eWjga
I must be losing my marbles. Age, Arsenal inspired over excitement or thinking about bi-trouserdom…
Here’s the clip. It was actually dear old Martin Hayes that scored to winner not Tony Adams. I think that yellow and blue kit was one of the best away strips we had except for the 1971 version when we beat Liverpool in the cup. I remember listening to it on the radio at my mum’s and having to go into the garage because she was moaning about me swearing too much.
Squeaky Vera, the facts speak for themselves, young players like Mosquera, Saliba, Saka, Dowman, Nwaneri sign up, extend their contracts and remain because unlike certain dim-witted commenters, I mean you specifically, they trust and believe in the process. Nobody held a gun to their head Squeaky.
If your animosity is borne out of some yearning and misguided belief that ESR should still be in our squad, you’re an enemy of progress.
Or if as usual you’re getting angry about stuff you imagined yourself, again, take a look at what’s happening in the real world rather than your empty head.
ESR was good when we were eighth and UEL bound, like Fab Viera, he’s found his level.
If, here in 2026, you’ve finally twigged that buying players and building squads costs money and involves the use of a chequebook/cashcard/bank transfer, this is why Arteta manages one the biggest clubs on the planet and you’re squeaking on a blog about managers having the cheek to buy players.
Truly daft, as always Squesky Vera.
At the slight risk of missing the point (!), Dowman should have his pay docked (does he even get paid at his age?) for kicking and breaking that corner post after scoring that goal.
KP,
The vibes at the Ems were close to, not quite as manic, as the Bournemouth game. That’s what came into my head as well. Bournemouth was crazier because we come back to win it.
These days, one word against the other would be enough to have your colleague out for gross misconduct, thankfully we take work place haerassment much more seriously these days.
It’s just over 20 years ago that we had a landmark case where two men were imprisoned for subjecting a female colleague to a constant diet of bum pinching and breast groping. People were outraged at the decision at the time, “offices everywhere were at risk!'”.
They missed the point
Martin Hayes was another player who served our purposes for a short period, another not all that striker but useful to the cause.
Goalkeepers…
I’m surprised how Donnarumma has escaped criticism for his recent performances, it seems to have gone under the radar.
He’s flapping at crosses , his decision making is suspect as is his kicking and even his shot stopping has regressed , compare that to Raya who commands his area and I would put the save by him in the 2nd half down by the post with his left foot as one of the saves of the season.
Don’t be surprised to see Trafford replace donnarumma in the very near future.