Well, we needed a win and we got a big one. 5-0 against any opponent is a great result irrespective of how poor the opposition is. Though, if you are thinking all is well now, you are on the wrong side of the fence.
Crystal Palace didn’t test us defensively. There’s nothing to talk about it. In the midfield, Jorginho’s assist to one of the Martinelli’s goal showed us why Thomas Partey was an integral part of our title chase last season. Declan Rice has been brilliant since joining us, but he either lacks those incisive passing or is restricted by the approach manager asks him to take. I am inclined towards later, because he was playing a much advance role at West Ham and was doing pretty well. We need better than that in the midfield.
Our first goal was a brilliant header from Gabriel. We have all missed to notice him as Saliba takes all the fame but he is as integral to the defence as anyone else. And he is still growing in that role. As they say, if you have nothing to talk about a defender, he has done a great job. Second goal should have been awarded to him, I have no idea why the Premier League decided to give it an own goal.
We were slow throughout the game, as if we were tired or saving energy for the future. As long as we win, I should not complain but we need to change gear in coming games. Third goal was a brilliant counter attack, Raya released the ball pretty fast and Trossard made sure to finish it. 4th and 5th goals were just the Brazilian doing his own thing; Martinelli decided to pay tribute to the Thierry Henry, twice under two minutes. Both were brilliant goals.
So, what’s the problem? In a 5-0 scoreline, your centre forwards remained goalless. Martinelli, who more often than not, hug the side line, drifted a bit to the middle and ended up with 2 goals.
We need a goal-scoring centre forward. There’s no beating around the bush anymore. Either that, or play Martinelli in the middle. Jesus is not scoring 20 goals a season for you but he can cover the wings and in a much better way than Martinelli or even Saka. Pep knew it, we can see it but Arteta needs to make that change. Also, once Thomas is back, please do not play him at RB to accommodate Rice and Havertz.
ESR got some minutes finally. He wasn’t great, nor was he bad. I saw him taking his trademark run with the ball but stopping suddenly in search of another player in red and white to pass. I mean what was that? For fuck sake, let them play a bit like humans and not machine. I may be wrong here, but Arteta’s reaction to Martinelli’s second goal was more of a ‘you are not doing what you have been told’.
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I have some bad news, we haven’t done anything (yet) in the transfer market. I doubt if we have the money, but a CF would be great. There is no point keeping 2 world class GK, get rid of one. Eddie can fetch you some money. There’s no one else we can think of selling and can bring us some money. Cedric will probably go on free, so will Elneny. Lokonga, Tavares will finish their loans at end of the season and come back to us, giving some more headaches to Mikel. Marquinhos is back from his loan spell after we terminated it but either we find him another club or he will play in the U23.
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Liverpool won without their 4 starting players. They sit 5 points ahead of us. Not good because a three horse race is even tougher to win. Mikel and Havertz can win something and I will eat the humble pie. Until then, I have my doubts.
Right, short one today. We are playing Forest next in a week’s time and Liverpool after that. A head to head game against Klopp will be a 6 pointer in current scenario and that would decide if we continue to be in the race. Hope you are doing well.
Live score are showing Kiwior at LCB with Gabs rested. Midfield of Havertz, Jorginho and Ode. I think Cooper will be very happy because our left side is even weaker with Zinchenko at LB.
Up top Trossard Replacing Gabriel, Jesus and predictably Saka wide right.
Cooper’s Forest have a good 90 minutes of high tempo football in their tanks. It’s going to be an interesting game.
This is an away game so there’s that to factor in as well as a laboured midfield with Jorginho pulling the strings to let Ode run free. With Zinchenko spending more time in Forest’s final third, Jorginho is going to be left with too much to do, that he is already too slow to do and always getting caught in possession too high up the field.
Expect to see Forest cut through our midfield centrally and left side.
I’m hoping rather than being more positive about a win, but we should nick an away draw.
Fuck me – ESR starting, and an otherwise pretty strong line up.
Hi Tony
I think Live Score can be regarded as complete cunts when it comes to predicting team selections. Are you tuning in despite the late kick off? I think we’ll see a 3-0 win tonight (and therefore no transfers). Which is good – giving twatty more money is akin to buying a flamethrower for an arsonist.
TRVL
Havertz’s salary is Ridsdale levels of incompetence – we’ll never be able to unload him without paying him off probably something equivalent to £250,000 per week or £13 million for each season left on his contract.
To be honest I haven’t and don’t expect any inward buys this Jan – what has surprised me is Ramsdale hasn’t forced a loan move.
Turgid, robotic uninspiring shit.
Eighty fucking one percent possession and no real chances.
It’s an absolute shocker how Arteta has completely fucked these players. No creativity, spontaneity nor real threat. And on and on and on.
far too often our front side players have their backs to goal in crucial positions, which was oft-times the case during the Wenger “pass into the net” era…for the love of God why aren’t we being more direct at times, especially with them being insanely stretched at the back and with ESR on the pitch…for some god forsaken reason we’re all about crosses into the box yet we don’t have anyone up top with a height advantage…maybe it’s so MA’s Kool-Aid crew will call for Havertz to be subbed in…fact remains, ESR was more noticeable in that half than Havertz has been at any point in his tenure…problem is most of ESR’s dummy/direct runs are being wasted in this sideways cricle jerk of an offence
you’re so right KP, this guileless and predictable brand of football is so not the way to title glory…we have one individual who can pick a pass, Ode, and he sees the ball very rarely compared to the likes of Zinchenko, and we haven’t a clinical finisher amongst us…I’m pretty sure that the whole Havertz debacle will continue to haunt us for the foreseeable future until we find a way to bring in someone who can manufacture goals on their own
I watched the Zirkzee kid from Bologna again the other day against AC and he’s got some potential, but I just can’t see MA favouring him, as he doesn’t look like a high press come back to defend kind of Striker…another interesting individual is Girona’s Striker, Dovbyk, who’s lit up La Liga this season…he’s 26, so it’s hard to tell if this is a one-off gig or not
maybe on the training pitch we should put pictures of Keeper’s gloves and defender’s legs in each corner of the net, as we have no problem whatsoever hitting those squarely on a continual basis
you have to be trying to miss to not score from that distance…Jesus in a nutshell…tbf Eddie would have hit a fan in the 10 row
Kroenke
I’ve seen this kind of thing in sales – a piss poor manager joins a company taking over an existing high performing sales team. To look like he’s making a difference he changes things that have worked and starts to micro manage the team, when things get worse they keep doubling down, they then start to lose the best performers and replace them with “his people” who don’t make a difference and don’t last either.
It all comes down to how much damage they cause before they’re shown the door.
I knew there had to be a point to bringing Turner over to the PL!
Turner has been an absolute gong show at Forest, which speaks once again to MA’s inability to indentify talent…I can remember a whole host of Artetites praising Turner’s acquisition
thank goodness for a couple timely gifts…we should be punishing the shit out of this team anyways
Marc—good analogy, as I’ve witnessed a very similar set of circumstances on multiple occasions
I give Nuno some credit for showing some balls by replacing Wood with a more counter-friendly Striker, as we know full-well that our gutless MIT would never dare to do such a thing, especially at half…unfortunately, little did he know that Turner was desperately seeking a way in which he could put his fucked up stamp on this fixture
I will say this, if MA were given the task of constructing a team that would never get boat raced, like against Bayern or United some years back, then he’s done a spectacular job…of course, who the fuck would ever provide someone with those exact instructions and likewise say spare no expense…talk about lowering the bar
how shitty must one be to have Jorginho taking you off for defensive reasons
Saliba was rather fortunate that he wasn’t punished for that in the box contact…even weirder was the fact they kept showing the wrong VAR clip
Lacklustre. There will be an improvement against Liverpool I expect, but that was dire. Arteta is a fucking idiot – he’s not only jeopardising his job security with us, but Barca won’t touch him with a bargepole either.
Match was too late in the night for me.
But enjoying the erudite tongue- in- cheek commentary from
KP
TRVL
Tony
Marc
Thank you Ambarish for giving us such a conductive atmosphere
Owe you a local brewed caju fenny bottle
TRVL
By the time bonus’s are added it will be closer to £350K. Must be a German thing – Ozil was on a similar structure.
Hi Hoopah
Cool man. I enjoy your angles on Arsenal equally.
I don’t recommend that you try to track down the highlights from last night. It was even duller than the Palace game. You have to wonder what the home fans were thinking watching such a low block and time wasting by their expensively assembled heroes only minutes into the game.
I was thinking last night about how we’re morphing (back) into a GG managed team almost. Dour, perfunctory, ground-out wins against sone very ordinary opposition. The major difference of course is the money spent. GG bought Perry Groves, Dixon, Winterburn, Ian Allinson, Smudger, Kev R, and Bouldy for about the same amount of money as Kai Havertz ‘earns’ in a month. 😊Back then, in the latter half of the 80s, all wins were greeted as great news.
Are we too demanding now? No, in my view. Precisely because of the cash that has been spent at Arsenal, the improved levels to which we performed last year (and haven’t recaptured this) and the improvement in pitches and player preparation (Imagine Ode and Fabio Vieira getting the beers and pizzas in with Ray P and Sir Tony in a St Albans based version of the Tuesday club!).
So no. In essence, we deserve more and Tets simply isn’t delivering the goods.
https://youtube.com/shorts/k1itmV4yQL4?si=IbrgIITVA_U35lqm
For those poor unfortunate souls who didn’t witness the near death struggle between Ukraine’s only tree-hugging pacifist and the softest, hair highlightedest, fake tandedest southern shandy drinker in Christendom, here’s that earth shattering so called confrontation from last night. Only at Arsenal….. Hardly Kieron Dyer versus Lee Bowyer. 🥊🥊🥊
UFC comes to AFC – not!
Kroenke
I haven’t seen last nights match was Zinchenko at fault or did he play a part in us conceding?
looks like our only signing this window just might be the only one we didn’t want, an Arteta extension….I guess all that planted Barca nonsense did the trick…what a clown show…I guess this will give him plenty of time to enact phases 7 through 10 of his supposed “master” plan
Hi Marc
Given their respective talents as defenders, Saliba’s role in Forest’s goal was more surprising and disappointing. Zinch is ball-watching and lets it drift over him (definitely not the sort of thing Tierney would ever do) and then Saliba is badly positioned and thus lets their attacker turn him and out muscle him. It would be tough on Nostrildamus to apportion any blame as well. In essence, it was the kind of thing Mustafi, Bellerin and Sokratis used to allow almost every game during their tenures.Tony and Nutty would never have stood for it.
TRVL
An Artetextension? That just brought up a bit of sick in my mouth.
Manager contract extensions don’t mean anything in football – they all have clauses in limiting a payoff to the remainder of the season / 1 season unless you have complete morons in charge.
Doh!
Hi y’all been meaning to join the as ever excellent discussions here.
KP I thought about trying to keep awake but thought better of it. Judging by yours and TRVL comments with Marc’s additions, I would have fallen asleep inside 10 minutes.
I think you called it saying about ESR’s intelligent runs not being part of Arteta’s 101 playing it safe.
Maybe that’s why no real minutes for ESR for nearly 2 years. Sounds like he has a decent outing.
Had I known ESR was getting a start relegating Havertz to the bench, I would have been more positive about the outcome but not the manner we played: I fear that’s here to stay, and thus confirming last season really was a ‘stars alignment season’ Arteta and gormless Edu royally fcuked up.
If we play L’pool like we have in recent games, we will lose heavily.
as the sun sets on what could only be described as the most absurdly inept of windows, at least in more recent times, one can only hope that some of our closest competitors continue to mimic our inconsistent ways so that we can at least remain in the conversation in the business end of the season…minus giving another free release to KP’s old buddy, Runar, and the whole late window Barca/MA re-up ruse, nothing of real footballing consequence has happened, which certainly doesn’t fill me with the utmost of confidence
on a somewhat more positive note, MA wasn’t allowed to go half-measure shopping again, but one has to wonder how much that really matters, in the grand scheme of things, as it simply means we will likely falter again then be subjected to another summer window filled with contrived chatter and ill-suited luxury buys…here’s hoping that the players can find a way to push through despite the anemic tactics and that our Salt Bae-loving MIT will change his usual recruitment MO by actually targeting our most pressing positional needs first and foremost
“FFP expert and financial adviser Stefan Borson poured cold water on talk the Gunners didn’t have enough funds this month…If they were to invest in the necessary equity, they could push their limit up to the £105m from the £15m that it is now…they could have bought the striker that everybody thinks they need…If they would have chosen to, it would have required the owners to have put in a very considerable amount of equity…But they opted to stay out of the market.”
For those who will try to claim that this was simply a former City Financial Advisor trolling our club, think again, as this was the same individual who claimed that ‘if the Premier League charges against his former employer are “proven” then they “must” be relegated’
two initial thoughts on Stefan’s comments, (1) either our owner is losing confidence in our present manager so he has no interest in dipping into his own pocket, which could be a positive development, or (2) our not so dynamic duo might have just butchered the 3rd consecutive winter window…I guess only time will tell
The magnificent two even failed to give away Cedric. His wage is so high the Turks declined his services.
the cherry on top of this shit sundae was how MA waited until after the window was closed to announce that Partey had suffered a significant setback and won’t be available for some time…I wish I could say that I’m surprised by the timing of this reveal, but that would be a boldface lie, as this is how we’ve conducted ourselves ever since Arteta’s managerial apprenticeship began
TRVL
I doubt Partey will ever pull on an Arsenal shirt again. Arteta needs to start thinking new tactics as it appears Uncle Stan has pulled the purse strings tight.
Norg—for some time I’ve suggested that there’s something fishy going on with the whole Partey situation…it likely had something to do with the big money Rice purchase and his subsequent shoehorning in as an inverted RB
as for our absentee landlord, when he’s believed in one of his clubs, and more specifically the manager/coach in charge, he’s dipped into his own pocket to secure the chip…he did it for McVay, with the Rams, then with Malone and the Nuggets, but it’s clear that he’s not buying what MA et al are selling…it’s important to remember that our summer spending spree cost Kroenke nothing, as that was already in the coffers…not to mention, Kroenke saw a rather significant rise in the market value of the club, so he was once again playing with “found” money
New post.