We are back home and we are back to business after a very controversial week where we have seen it all – bad refereeing, managers throwing words at each others in press conference, almost all City players giving interviews against Arsenal and Gabriel XL challenging them to come to Emirates. We have been told that we are practicing Dark Arts these days and Mikel confirming he learnt it at City during his 4 year spell.
The rivalry is ON, ladies and gentlemen.
But, we only get to play City twice out of 38 games and one is already done. Titles are won by consistent performance and wins every week. We will find out if the team and the manager has moved past these incident and is back to business.
We are playing a promoted Leicester City today. They haven’t won a game yet in their first 5, and we haven’t lost to them in our last 5 encounters. We have won 21 of our games against them and have drawn 4, lost 1 in our last 26 encounters at home. The gist is that, we have always managed to win against them at home and we should do that today. Jamie Vardy is too old and toothless to create any sort of problem for us.
In team news, David Raya remains a doubt after a thigh injury against City and will be decided before the game. Neto is back with the team, and will most likely feature if Raya gets the day off. When asked, Arteta told that their is a chance both Jurrien Timber and Ben White will be available for the game. The usuals + Odegaard remains out of the squad.
After the Carabao Cup win, I am guessing both Gabriel and Saliba will make into the team with 2 of Ben White, Timber, and Calafiori filling the LB, RB positions. Thomas Partey + Declan Rice in the midfield with Saka, Martinelli and Havertz up top.
There is one missing player in that midfield. I am hoping Mikel trust the kid who scored 2 goals the other day and was much better than we expected. Leicester are poor this season so far, and these game times going to Jorginho who is probably in his last season at Arsenal, can be used to blood a youngster. Odegaard has still some time to go before being available and we need a specialist. By the way, even if Ode is available, there has to have a rotation and competition to him. If we fill that position from academy, there’s nothing better than that.
Right, a short one today. City has a big match against Newcastle and both De Bruyne and Rodri are not available. We can certainly hope for Newcastle to grab a win and makes it easier for us later in the day.
See you during the match. #COYG!
Oh, and I missed to appreciate it earlier. Thanks again for the donations guys. Your contributions keep the website running and pays a part of the bill. Really appreciate it.
I feel like we’re trying to recreate Drogba’s Chelsea…make sense conisidering where MA shops
S. of a B.
How the game has changed. Unfortunately Nwari seems now obligated to do everything by himself , which is clouding his decisions
Hoopah—not sure why you would think he was suspended? he should have been brought on ages ago, with Partey departing and Rice returning to his BEST position
Havertz should try opening his eyes when he’s in the fucking box
what a fortuitous potential winner…let’s hope we can stave them off for the last few minutes
There’s the scrape by own goal win we are good at this season.
Happy for the 3 points and Ethan got more time and looks good.
Tossard shot but off a Leicester player inside of leg
according to the commentator, we’re now a scruffy and messy team…so fucking true, yet incredibly sad in many ways…who the fuck pays a BILLION dollars for a scruffy/messy side
TVRL think mentioned it somewhere.
Didn’t watch Carabao so did not know
Told ya Ambarish 😂
now there’s a Havertz kind of goal…WTF was Jesus doing anyways…I guess in a way Kai scored a brace today…scruffy and messy anyone??
Hoopah—wasn’t slag you off, just wondering if you knew something that I wasn’t aware of…Cheers bud
Fourth goal was a typical road accident. Porky ran into the spokes of the bike , and Havertz ran behind chasing the ball rolling into the goal.
There was no doubt it was a goal
I couldn’t get a link so haven’t seen it. Right result but too much psychodrama along the way. No way should we have shipped a two goal lead to fucking Leicester.
Tony
Haha, we did and it couldn’t have been scrappier.
Nwaneri looked good in his 10 min cameo.. someone (Hoopah?) mentioned he will come in 83rd minute, haha.
Happy for the win, but boy do we miss a goal scorer.. at 2-2, we were struggling, luck favoured us but we shouldn’t leave things for the end.
Couldn’t go to the match today and had an internet meltdown so couldn’t even watch on a hooky feed.
It sounds like we came very close to bottling it after City dropping points – we really need to be able to win straight forward matches when under pressure without the drama.
Not sure if its lazy journalism or just piss poor journalists in general but all the criticism about our defensive tactics last week strike me as strange.
What the fuck did they expect? No one away at City down to 10 men is going to be expansive and Arteta’s struggles to be expansive on his best day against an easy opponent.
Personally I think the negative tactics at home to Brighton after going down to 10 men is more deserving of criticism.
Marc—I don’t think anyone was actually critiquing the notion of us assuming a more defensive posture, it was the fact that we hardly got a sniff of their final third once Tross was tossed…now tbf we held on for a considerable period, but it was always going to be a problematic approach…when you don’t show any willingness to be brave on the counter, even when opportunities arise, the chances of staving off the likes of City, even when their short-staffed, becomes all the more unlikely…not to mention, those who were disappointed by our bus parking exhibition against them late last season might have viewed this in a similar light, even though the circumstances were distinctly different…ultimately I think it speaks to the completely legitimate concerns some, like myself, have regarding MA’s oft-times gutless tactical tendencies…Cheers
How did we have 200M to spend on Havertz, Jesus, Zinchenko, Trossard, Jorginho and Kiwior, but not 47M for Cole Palmer, who could have played along side Ode, Saka and Marts
Questions like that will never be solved, TRVL.
Am I surprised at yesterday’s fiasco? Nope! Just relived we got the points. There was a time there when I felt a nuclear El B episode coming on after the equalized. I tried the Bad Boys 2 Foo Bar in-between vapes. Long exhalations prevented me for grabbing the keyboard lol.
I’ve been banging Nwaneri’s drum since his cameo last season. Not hard to spot raw talent by the way Nwaneri moves or effortlessly glides more like. Has Kanu abilities at keeping the ball and Ode’s speed of thought and movements albeit with training wheels because he needs game time.
Let Nwaneri fly at 8. Use Rice and the ponderously slow Partey at 6. Use Partey to close out games and Rice at 6 who can drop back into the cack 4 because we was a CD first and foremost.
God knows why it took El B so long to see Timber is best at RB? Calafiori no brainier at LB but has to stop with the rash mistakes.
PSG Tuesday night and I hope Nwaneri gets the start.
KP
I think you saved yourself some high octane fulled rants if you watched the game – that and your blood pressure at max. It was that kind of game. If your flask was empty, it would have been unbearable.
Life’s just got busy so more from me later…….
lol cack four, they were cack but I meant back
“God knows why it took El B so long to see Timber is best at RB?”
This isn’t actually the question – the question is why did Arteta buy him? What was the process behind deciding we needed to sign him and what position was he signed to play? If it was RB why did he not start there in his first game last season (the injury is irrelevant)?
It all comes back to Arteta being a fat kid in a sweet shop who just wants to keep buying players with no clear long term game plan.
I mean was Havertz really bought to be a striker or just shoehorned in there once Arteta had spent over £60 million on him.
Marc—I think it’s a two-part problem…firstly, there are times, like with Rice, where he needs to shoehorn so as to secure a player, then, secondly, there’s the fact that he believes he knows better than any manager and/or talent evaluator before him…neither best serve our club or make our push for footballing supremacy any more likely…in fact, I would still suggest that our greatest stumbling block is our manager, who went from MIT to legend in his own mind in a ludicrously brief period of time…as I queried before, why would Haaland go out on a limb to tell MA to “stay humble” unless there was something much more substantive behind his comment
Rashford needs to serious buck his ideas up or not only will he find himself kicked out of ManU he won’t even be able to find a PL club willing to bother with him.
Not sure that’s a red – it wasn’t pretty but no more than a yellow.
Arsenal v PSG – matchday post is live now, in advance.