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.
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.