Wounded Liverpool to conquer; can we do it?

Marc-such is the life of the Kool-Aid crew, no matter what transpires they will inevitably find a positive managerial spin…when you put the handbrakes on your top talent it’s akin to drivng a Lambo in first gear through the park, they just weren’t made for that shit…I’m frankly surprised that MA didn’t replace Jesus with Tierney, then play him as a false 9

no matter how you slice it Pool was ripe for the plucking until MA’s preferred captain went full bull in a china shop mode, which in turn woke up the opposition and their juiced up fans, then our manager’s teeny tiny balls crawled back up into his belly…all you have to do is look at the stat lines following this defining moment and it will be difficult for anyone with even a modicum of sense to argue otherwise

sorry I meant to say quivering belly

TRVL

The worry is the greater the pressure gets as we get closer to the end of the season the more Arteta will revert to form, go massively negative and repeat his annual collapse. He won’t miss out on CL this time but next season when things are far more competitive he’ll be lucky to finish top 5.

The fan boys will be preparing their excuses for next season in mid May.

Marc-like yourself I worry that we might need the jaws of life to retrieve his now deeply-embedded onions…in the meantime, we’re left in the fetal position hoping desperately that someone else does us a solid so that we don’t have to watch our manager soiling himself again…I will say that leaving with a point was infinitely better than heading home with jack-squat, but even if we end up tied we’re still shit out of luck, unless things change significantly between now and season’s end

Feeling a bit deflated after drawing once we were up by 2 goals, but it is not a disaster. This is an interesting statistic from MOTD, before Xhaka’s booking Pool had 4 shots, 0 on target with 52% possession. After the booking Pool had 17 shots, 6 on target with 63% possession. Ian Wright maintains that this is how Xhaka plays most likely even in his own garden. Ian said he is happy with a point at Anfield. So the problems that remains in the schedule are the two games left at City and Newcastle. Hopefully the CL game against Bayern will do a number on City and a draw or a win for us against City will for me most likely seal the deal if we win the remaining games and if City slip up we can slip up against Newcastle.

However in the summer TW we do need to address the midfield cover especially since we will play CL next season. Ideally we will also cover right back and a new contract to Saliba. On my wish list an elite striker either developed now or one that has the potential of being world class, Balagun anyone?

One final thought if we finish 2nd we will have a very tough draw for next season’s CL as we will end in Pot 3 or 4, If we win the league we are in Pot 1.

today was all about nuance and context…for starters, in the lead-up to the match I made no bones about the fact that I was expecting a tie but feared the worst…knowing this one might logically wonder why all the bluster if the better of the two anticipated results was ultimately achieved…to which I would reply, context matters…I certainly never expected that we would find ourselves 2 up at Anfield in the simplest of fashions, considering our absolutely putrid record at this particular venue over the last decade or so…I likewise never thought that, if we played our cards right, we could have seemingly doubled that scoreline with little to no resistance, considering what was on offer up to the point of our second tally…in light of these easily observable contextual changes, my expectations naturally grew exponentially…for all intent and purposes it appeared as if the proverbial tables had turned and the young grasshoppers were about to “Billy Jack” our longtime road nemesis…so what exactly happened that ultimately saw us slinking out of town with an undeserved tie

in the first 40+ minutes it almost appeared as if the home team was sleepwalking, which was an all-too-familiar refrain for this rather inconsistent bunch, then for some inexplicable reason everyone’s not-so-favourite drunk uncle showed up and took a dump on floor…now if this was a chippy affair or those within the opposition ranks were wantonly targeting our young guns, a reaction of some form or fashion might have been warranted, but that wasn’t the case whatsoever…instead the Pool on this day, at least early on, seemed disjointed and somewhat lethargic, so letting those rather sleepy dogs lie was just what the doctor ordered…the fact that MA’s de facto small “c” captain decided this was somehow, someway the perfect time to unleash his inner-Barton, forever changing the complexion of this match

now I’m not so naive as to believe that we weren’t going to have to face some sort of opposition push, I just think that without the unnecessary clownish antics of one Granit Xhaka, this might not have come until much later, by which time we could have been 3 or 4 up…instead within two minutes of said hijinks a newly energized Pool side had cut the lead in half, which in turn focused the ire of the12th man squarely in our direction…thankfully we made it to half without any further blemishes, but it’s clear by that juncture if we didn’t make the right tactical tweaks we could find ourselves heading home in less than an hour with nothing but regrets

now if I were MA I would have reinforced the notion that, until Xhaka’s brain-fart, this Pool side couldn’t handle our full court press and as such we should have gone into full-bore reset mode by leaning into what had worked in the first-half…in fact, I would have even subbed out Xhaka for Trossard, to both inject confidence, following the recent shift in the balance of play, and to reinforce his supposed commitment to player accountability, which seems to apply to everyone except you know who…instead they came out feigning offensive interest, then started to turtle at the first sign of trouble, which unfortunately came almost immediately when a penalty was awarded in the 54th minute

now Salah might have been unsuccessful in his attempt to tie things up from the spot, but it nonetheless served one very crucial purpose, it scared the living shit out of our already fragile manager…almost immediately MA et al started to encourage players to come deeper and employ time-wasting tactics, yet no subs were forthcoming…it wasn’t until after Pool had made subs in both the 60th and 78th minutes that MA finally turned to his bench and when he did the choices he made were rather baffling, as they made us no better at either end of the pitch

in the end, the seemingly inevitable happened, we eventually captiulated after adopting a relegation zone tactical approach for the vast majority of the second half, a match btw that we controlled rather handily until the last few minutes of the first-half…now I might have been able to accept just such a scoreline if we battled from start to finish, putting on our best foot forward, but that simply wasn’t the case…what made this match an even-steven affair, a scoreline which btw actually flattered us, was a moment of abject stupidity, by someone who should know better, and the continued inactivity of our manager, who just doesn’t seem to know what to do when the going gets tough…Cheers

Morning all
Arteta blew it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arteta is reported to have said in his presser: a draws a fair result. What game did he watch because the one junior and I watched, L’pool adopted their siege mentality keeping us defending for our lives.

Another Rookie mistake with team selection playing Xhaka. How did Arteta not miss Ode and Saka being surrounded by tag-teaming Pool players? Why not take off Xhaka and put ESR on and even the players to 11 aside, because Xhaka was clearly a passenger for most of the game, as it passed him by. At the very least add to the right side so our attacks aren’t one-sided predictable. Pool just overloaded the left, and Saka had to go looking for the ball without support from Ode, Trossard and White he’s used to helping him out of tight spots.

What did Arteta do? Take Ode off instead of giving his markers someone else to have to think about, such as ESR or Trossard (again) and thus freeing Ode to be more creative. The game was too fast for Jorginho as it was Xhaka.

My comment at half time was Arteta needs to really earn his corn to get a big 2nd half out of the our disheveled players. Klopp’s message was clear they were going to win and played as if they believed they could. In fairness to the game L’pool could have won by 4 or 5 had it not been Ramsdale pulling a ‘De Gea’ worldy game to salvage a point for our rudderless dismal outfield players.

Where did the total belief go we had at 0:2?
How did it evaporate so quickly?
What should the hapless Arteta have done?
Why wasn’t Fabinho man marked?
Why did Xhaka play and play the full 90+ when it was clear he was a passenger?
Why didn’t Trossard play instead of Xhaka being our best player of late?
Why when we went 2:1 why din’t Arteta change to a 352 and play on the counter?

Arteta is a serial bottler as a player and now as a manger. L’pool were there for the taking as our 2-goal lead proved, but once again around 38 minutes we started to lose our composure and assuredness and defending deeper.

Arteta looked as lost as our players did looking to Arteta for an answer, especially at half time. What did Arteta do? An elongated session of rubbing hands visualizing a win? Whatever he said, it didn’t work: period!

What is it with Arteta’s in-game management or the supreme loss of it? The idea of a sub is to change the game if only by fresh legs chasing tired legs. Moreover, a sub is used tactically to either stop attacks or be very much part of ours, such as Nelson at Bournemouth.

Yesterday our subs were made out of desperation, as Arteta had no answer to Liverpool’s juggernaut raining fire relentlessly at Ramsdale.

The last 8 minutes off the first half and the whole of the 2nd half was a defense against attack Liverpool training ground practice where L’pool enjoyed a siege mentality adding to their game, wave after wave. Their reward was 2 goals, a missed penalty and where our deep block kept Pool down to 6 shots (21 in total) on target bringing out 4 unbelievable saves from Ramsdale & 2 goals.

Whereas we had 5 shots (9 in total) on target with 2 resulting in goals. Pool’s expected goals at 3.96 as opposed to our 1.41: worlds apart.

At the end of the day Arteta blew it and blew it big time and back to his rookie best. Arteta can’t really have a plan B because he doesn’t trust his subs – having more faith in Xhaka – let that sink in. Arteta can’t or won’t admit he’s made the same mistake as last season with a mismatched, bare bones squad.

If Arteta can’t get 3 points from an indifferent Liverpool, how do we get 3 points from a rampant City currently putting every team to the sword of late with consummate ease, at the Etihad?

8 games to go, and to at least put a worthy title challenge to at least prove we got close. I honestly, hand on heart, can’t see us beating City, although it’s how we bounce back from this points loss that matters now, because that’s what is was: Liverpool were there for the taking and Arteta bottled it.

I do believe we can win 7 from out 8 remaining games if we suffer no further injuries to key players.

Whether City drop points in their run in remains to be seen, but highly unlikely considering their current form and level of opposition.

Next season is going to be a whole different kettle of fish with increasingly better managers coming to the PL working a busy summer TW.

At this moment, I’d happily swap Arteta for De Zerbi who is far more tactically astute than Arteta where his teams play the beautiful game well and De Zerbi knows how to get the best from his players.

Finally, did anyone recognise our decline in fitness after 65 minutes. Our counter attacks ran on fumes and tired legs; had we had fresher legs on, we might have won. Another tell tale sign our squad is too thin for such intensity in each game.

Ambarish – Good to see the blog being lively yesterday, the signs are good for the future if we can keep the main posts current.

KP, Marc, TRVL, Kilroy & others?

With Ambarish can we keep 3 new main posts over 7 days to help increase traffic?

TRVL- Just adding above to your post game thoughts. The dreams are over so we’re just back to being left with hope City fails.

Same as last season.

And finally, today’s top of the irony tree is sitting Pedro who spent 10+ years trying to get Wenger kicked out only to be claiming CL football for next season is our trophy.

You just couldn’t make it up. 🙂

Hi Tony
Despite what Bob thinks, once you understand Pedro’s burning desire to be an insider at the club (some fucking ego on the boy to even imagine they’d welcome him in), his so-called thoughts become wholly predictable like Kroenke talking points. He’s bound to become the ‘top four is a trophy’ kind of twat because he imagines that’s what the club wants him to say in order to continue the Tetaflufferthon (glad I only had to type that and not say it) . They’ll be putting an identical narrative in the club official programme before the next home game too. He’s desperate to garner this image as a slightly edgy creative eccentric inside the (club) tent pissing outwards. But in reality (and stretching the metaphor as far as I can) he’s actually only soiling his pressed chinos and fashionably scuffed hush puppies!

Bob – if you’re reading mate. We didn’t always see eye to eye but you and I used to have some humorous, lively discussions on the darkside aka LG til pompous Pedro banned me. We also hail from the same part of N London (Highbury Grange/Stokey) and probably rubbed shoulders in our E based meanderings in the Cross and Bagley’s back in the day. Give it a Gooner go over here. Pluralism, laughs and nostalgia mixed in with forthright but not offensive opinions and a notable absence of stroller type fuddyduddyness. And no Nouveau Rich and his uneducated boring cant. Plus the average IQ is 30 points higher among all posters except for people like Tom and WE and some others. The exact antithesis of the daily roll call on HMS Tufnell and the ship of doom. Fence sitting and occasional pedantry equally welcome!

My thoughts today are turning back to Cardiff and les oiseaux bleus for their home game against Sunderland. I can’t face the drive so will get the prayer out and genuflect.

Brilliantly put, KP.

Tony
If, like me, you’re trying to put yesterday’s game to the back of your mind, here’s the remedy…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_y2u9l5nIU

I really got into Brazilian bossa nova and general pop music when I was there. You can tell Gilberto and his mate playing percussion are having a really nice time. I’ve always assumed that there are two mega spliffs (camberwell carrots or copacabana carrots) just outside the shot. Brazilian music’s answers to Jesus and Martinelli. Enjoy!

Never been south of Mexico but I can imagine Brazil has much magic to offer and great music.

Writing the post this morning cleared the Arteta cobwebs making way for realisation that we knew as soon as Xhaka was starting. The game had only one conclusion and that was chaos because that’s what Xhaka brings: much chaos and little else.

I also like African rhythms where Hugh Meskala plays a sweet trumpet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg7TFLDl8pY&list=RDEMGql9Hct3XQInzgXPj5uPxQ&start_radio=1&rv=_Vskq0LueWs

KP Give this a watch for probably the best African drummer of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkUzHu4KrxY

Tony

“And finally, today’s top of the irony tree is sitting Pedro who spent 10+ years trying to get Wenger kicked out only to be claiming CL football for next season is our trophy.”

OK let’s give Arteta the benefit of the doubt and assume we finish second. Right getting back in the CL is a step in the right direction but what’s the target for next season? Everyone agrees next season will be tougher – ManU will be better, at least one of Liverpool or Chelsea will be much better, Newcastle are moving in the right direction and with money spent in the summer will be in contention for top 4 again and City aren’t going anywhere by the looks of things.

So what happens if Arteta takes a backwards step and finishes 3rd or 4th? Does he deserve the sack if he misses out on top 4?

KP-your 8:39 post was wonderfully expressed, as you managed to intelligently summarize many of my innermost thoughts regarding the King of Fluffer Mountain in a fraction of the time I would normally require…Cheers

TRVL
Sometimes it just flows doesn’t it? I get a great deal from reading your stuff too. You know a lot more about football than I. I’m well and truly stuck in an Arsenal/Cardiff bubble these days.

KP-you would be a far more successful Rapper than I, as you’ve got the gift of “bars”, whereas I would be more of a niche market fascination for those who preferred their albums to feel like one unnecessarily lengthy and continuous track…have a good one

KP-you would be a far more successful Rapper than I, as you’ve got the gift of “bars”, whereas I would be more of a niche market fascination for those who preferred their albums to feel like one unnecessarily lengthy and continuous track…have a good one

Not sure why the above post was duplicated, it certainly wasn’t intentional…Cheers

Morning all
Ambarish – the key to keeping a blog interesting is fresh main posts at least 3 times a week to be commuted on. Any post I send you is to freshen up what is getting boring. Whatever I send you get posted anyway, so why not give any post sent to you, as long as its objective either for or against Arteta. My posts always even themselves out with positivity as in believing always in our club even when I dislike the manager.

Yes, this is an Arsenal blog, which we police ourselves by letting a poster know if he/she has gone too far.

Yesterday 96% of LG posters blamed the players the most because they are too afraid of being binned if they said how they really felt.

Either give me a reason for not putting up a blog that I’ve spent time writing or I’ll just leave it all to you and eventually call it a day here because it’ll get boring through your laziness. Success comes through hard work and very long hours where 80hour weeks were light weeks for us who have made our fortunes. More like 100 hour weeks if you deal in £millions.

When I asked you what kind pf engineer you we’re, you flippantly said IT “what other kind is there in India?” Well, that told me all I needed to know about you. A follower rather than an innovator. Nothing wrong in that, Ambarish if you want to be a small fish in a very big pond. My company trains mechanical engineers as well as being the top distributor in Asia winning awards every year. A company built from selling spare parts. You vision is to just let the blog grow over a year before deciding what to do next.

You either want to create a successful blog or you don’t. Wait and see won’t work with any business that I can promise you. If you don’t see LIR as a business, then why all the annoying adds?

I’m running out of patience with you, Ambarish , because you don’t answer emails that are trying to help you with your blog.

Incidentally, a room calibration engineer earns roughly £800 a day plus hotels and travelling time @ £400 a day. The top calibrators are always having to turn down work. My UK friend of 50 years+ is always busy in India calibrating rooms as well as working around the world while you are in the cut throat world of call centers and IT in India.

Up to you, Ambarish, but LIR is getting boring from your side, and not the posters who give up considerable time to post here because all that is left is to repeat the click bait articles instead of you creating topics for discussion and debate.

You have a blog that is open where posters all get on well and bring excellent thoughts on a wide range of subjects other than The Arsenal. This needs marketing by you, Ambarish, to make the blog interesting to other Gooners, which in turn creates more traffic with the lively and well crafted words.

Not having the time is just an excuse if you use Effective Time Management with all you do and your production levels will rise with the quality of your success.

commented on*

Successful people have these kind of routines:

Up at 5 and in the gym by 5:30
Showered and working in my office by 7:30
Work until 10pm and then work from home until at least 11pm 6 days a week with Sunday being a half day.

As a consultant or corporate suit that would be my usual working week. No time for family, just work to achieve my goals.

I ran my career by using Effective Time Management – setting a time target for each task no matter how minimal.

Free advice, Ambarish, if you want it.

The TARGET for next season is getting out of the CL group stages because if we don’t win the league we will be (as of this moment) in a group that could have tough to beat teams because of our shitty standing in the UEFA ranking.

Our UEFA club coefficient is 23 because we missed Europe altogether once and have only played in the EL and the final was a long time ago. Sp*ds are 21st and Man Urinals are 7th. Real will either be in Pot 1 if they win the CL or Pot 2. From those rankings you can see we can end up in a tough group. These are some possible clubs going into the groups before us.

Pot 1
Barca, Napoli, Bayern, PSG, Feyenoord, Benfica, (Winner of EL) (Winner of CL)

Pot 2
Roma, Inter, Dortmund, Leipzig, Atletico Madrid, Real, Ajax, Porto

Again, just to emphasize the winning of the title improves our chances advancing to the round of 16 massively and giving us more money to spend on players.

Ambarish, in my world the above is tough love, ask Junior. Maybe I’ll just stick to game days or days when you finally post.

Against Liverpool and 2 up, Arteta showed us the exact calibre of coach/manager he is when he allowed us to fold and crumble. He had no answers and was clueless with his subs. We were running on fumes after 60 minutes because of useless squad management.

Arteta is as myopically generational and arrogant as Pedro is; peas out the same pod who feel invincible only Pedro is riding Arteta’s very short coat tails where both will crash and burn together unless Pedro turns on Arteta in the end facilitating his “Brutus’ to blog saving effect.

Will this be you, too, Ambarish? Hoopah certainly gets it.

Mark my words Arteta and his bff, Xhaka, will be the reason we don’t win the title this season and Arteta will be the reason we miss out on future titles and CLs.

This should upset you even more Ambarish because it’s your first possible title, but you’ll learn the hard way at then end of the season.

I’ve witnessed our title wins and euro cup since the mid 60s and title races and cup final losses, Ambarish.

I have witnessed the managerial greats over the years and they all had that something special that Arteta has missing and no sight of having after 4 years.

Stand up and be counted, Ambarish.

Pedro made LG successful for making a stance against Wenger. Why not be LGs nemesis where you’ll find more fans believe in the Arteta out cause than you realise.

Give Stan and Josh another opinion to consider.

Kilroy, the target for next season will be to win the PL first and CL 2nd. Unless we make some serious investment in the summer TW, our targets will be near impossible to hit with Arteta at the helm.

As for Europe, you think Arteta is suddenly going to be a winning tour de force with his loser track record in Europe? He’s 4 years in and bottles winning positions habitually: last season 4th and this season the title unless we beat City at the Etihad.

How do you think De Zerbi or Ten Hag would have done in over 4 years with over £400+m to spend on players?

Sorry, Kilroy, doesn’t matter what targets we have for next season with Arteta: he’s incapably inconsistent through his narcissistic pedantry in always thinking he’s right.

4 years in and he still can’t select the right team and formation for Pool and to make matters worse he is still clueless about in-game management as witnessed Sunday yet again.

Arteta has, though, mastered the subs when we are winning 3 or 4 nil. Only took 4 years.

Here’s another thought.

Last season we didn’t have Europe to worry about and only a CL birth. Fitness wouldn’t be a problem et al.

What happened, Arteta bottled it thinking he could gain 4th without a quality midfield – just Partey playing 6/8 and partly 10.

This season we were useless in the Europa league and domestic cups, so only have one game a week for most of the run in.

How will the outcome be different this time when we dropped 2 points after being 2 up against Pool?

Being an atheist this seems off for me, but nevertheless a classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDyiREoBw0o

In other football news I like Wrexham’s Hollywood owners’ McElhenney and Reynolds and their passion for Wrexham. When they first turned up I wondered if this was a flight of fantasy to be short lived, as too many things are across the pond to the west in Tinsel Town; here today, gone tomorrow owners.

I did say wonder as in curious and where my curiosity has led to terms of endearment for our septic tank superstar owners. Obviously, there is a movie at the end of the footballing venture, which I hope ends up in the Premier League. Wimbledon all over again although as hard as Vinny Jones maybe, he’s too old to be the Wrexham hard man or is he? Maybe Vinny will have graduated to grabbing officials’ nuts prior to KO and half time.

I would be amazed if Guy Richie hasn’t been primed to write and direct such a sporting masterpiece with Jason Stratham as creative action co-ordinator and a bit part as Wrexham’s manager’s security taking out all 3 officials who cost Wrexham a corner.

Sorry Ambarish it’s clear I take The Arsenal far more seriously than you. With what you said coming from a football blog owner, it’s even worse.

Why bother to run the blog at all? Why not just post on LG? It’s either a passion or hobby – make your mind up? How many billions of Indians are there and you draw 3 of which only Hoopah is regular at games.

I wasn’t asking you to put more input, just agree some ideas to keep the content current. All you have to do was put things live.

You had 6 posters, now you’ve got 5.

Sorry, KP, TRVL & Marc I’ll leave LIR to you guys.

KP – if I’m thinking along the right lines, I think I know how to get my info to you. I’ve really had enough of bloggers. I prefer the real world. TRVL if you fancy communicating further send Ambarish an email address or Line invite info to pass on.

Be well guys COYG

Cheers

Ok.

I mean no offense, Ambarish, I’m just a larger than life type of guy who likes depth in my conversations and passions. I accept your way/culture doesn’t in any way keep pace with mine.

Be well and I hope you enjoy a title at some stage. This title needs a miracle for us to win it and Arteta is the least godly arsehole getting his karma through his own repeated mistake.

Can’t say I didn’t try, Ambarish to not write for the blog but also help out financially. You’re kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth, as my only agenda was to help you make LIR successful.

Be well, Ambarish. I’ll leave you in peace.