Every one of our games left this season is a cup final. It’s not going to be easy but hey, it’s about winning the toughest league in the world while competing against one of the best managers on the planet with one of the costliest squad assembled in history.
I have let go of my emotions and anger from last two games and looking forward to the rest of the season. It’s still not-all lost, and it’s still in our hand. And, it begins today against Southampton at home.
Arteta had some bad news in pre-match conference. Saliba is not recovering well and will need some more time. Zinchenko is out too for this game and may be for a few more. Tomiyasu is out injured, which leaves us with White, Gabriel, Tierney and Holding in defence. There are no other options, Kiwior is not ready yet.
It’s the midfield and defence which has let us down in our last two games. We need to stop leaking goals when 2-0 up. Conceding one at that stage gives the opposition a belief that they can do more. In Mikel’s world, we need to be ruthless, f*cking ruthless.
I’m hopeful today, I am sure players would have gone back to dressing room and wouldn’t have slept at night without thinking about their performances. When you are so close the title, you need to introspect what went wrong and fix it in the very next game. You can’t wait for a season, or a season break, or a trip to Dubai.
The most important piece of our playing XI is Partey. If he is fit, and playing well, he controls the game like no one can do. When he is in fine form, he improves players around him, be it Xhaka or Odegaard. It’s the drop in his performance that is affecting the team morale. One of the reason we need an upgrade in midfield, a better Partey’s replacement for games when he is not in fine form or when he is injured. We need an upgrade to Xhaka.
I can go on, but today’s not the time. It’s not going to change for last 7 games, so all we can do is stick to supporting the lads who have managed to stay ahead of Manchester City for a whooping 31 weeks (don’t care about those couple of days when City was on top).
We have done for 31 games. We can do for another 7. Our team needs our support and whatever be the result, they will get it.
Lets beat Southampton and go into the City game with 4 point lead, that would certainly put some extra pressure on them.
What’s your prediction today? It’s Friday, game is late night here in India and tomorrow’s off. Beautiful time to watch a game, and I will see you in the comments.
Cheers!
What a ball by Willock how we could use him now and Bolagun.
4:0
5:0
6:0 before half time has a certain ring to it.
Marc
We do and so nice of Spurs to provide the free entertainment.
Just think if we had Guendiuzi, AMN, Balogun and Willock right now. AMN was ok at RB even when he didn’t want to play it. Bet he’d want to play it now for a Title win.
Marc
The irony in this is priceless. Here we are with Arteta doing his best to fcuk our title challenge up being a stubborn pedant, and then Spuds lose out to Eddie Howe who looks like he’s going to get a CL birth in his first full season making Arteta’s 4 years optics look to pale in insignificance to steady Eddie. How much did Eddie spend?
Pierre was right about Eddie Howe.
Just said to junior the Spuds caretaker manager looks like a Sicilian cosa nostra soldier only thing missing is the shotgun slung over his shoulder and flat cap.
Just need Brighton to push City to extra time and win on penalties to make tonight perfect.
I thought I wonder if I spoke Indian we’d get more posters. then I looked at the many dialects and………….
Assamese
Bengali
Bodo
Dogri
English
Gujarati
Hindi
Kannada
Kashmiri
Konkani
Maithili
Malayalam
Marathi
Meitei
Nepali
Odia
Punjabi
Sanskrit
Santali
Sindhi
Tamil
Telugu
Urdu
I realised learning French in 5 years is enough
Sorry senior moment Brighton to beat Manure.
‘Arsenal have done just what Arsenal do…they have a really good run, then they lose games…In the end, they end up getting done, but that’s what Arsenal do since coming towards the end reign of Wenger. They haven’t really changed. Great when they play well. Easy on the eye. But, on occasions, when they really need to fight and make it difficult for the opposition, they don’t seem to have got it’
these were Mark Lawrenson paraphrased words almost a year ago to the day…he could have easily offered up the same scathing sentiments following our 3rd straight draw, with one minor revision, in that this time around instead of losing to inferior opposition we needlessly dropped 4 points to two bottom-dwellers in a GD title race…same old, same old has never been more fitting
now some might take offence to anything originating from the mouths of former players of longtime rivals, but it’s hard to argue with his predictive record when it comes to our particular club…btw he was the only pundit of some note who correctly predicted a draw against a rather anemic Hammers side…ironically, even he refused to believe that we could sink so low as to not find a way to get a result against another relegation side, as he predicted a 3-0 scoreline in our favour…I guess he should have heeded his own words on this occasion
I surely hope we learned something from that Newcastle dismantling of the Spuds…now that’s the kind of foot on the throat mindset that we should be aspiring to when the opposition is ripe for the taking, like with Pool, West Ham and even Southampton, regardless of the two we gifted them
it’s fairly clear that ten Hag believes that he’s still a good distance away from fielding a United side that he feels are capable of handling his preferred tactical approach…I really worry about what that might look like when he gets things sorted, as they’ve already found a way to win in a variety of fashions…kudos to De Zerbi too as he knew this could be a tricky one considering their deficiencies when it comes to the counter…BHA had the better Grade A chances, but they couldn’t get it over the line…frankly I’m surprised that ten Hag didn’t make Sanchez handle the ball far more often, as that would have been one of De Zerbi’s greatest fears…that said, I think it was still wise that he had a rethink on his Keeper selection, as I believe that Sanchez is by far his best option…I would suspect that both will continue to cause problems for us for the foreseeable future, unless De Zerbi discovers that his aspirations far exceed those of the club, which will be clear for all to see come the summer window
in regards to my earlier post, by “learned something” I meant that in a twofold way, both from an offensive capacity and about what not to do when facing Newcastle on the 7th
of course I was briefly elated that we scored twice late, but I’m feeling so dejected by our recent run that I can’t even pencil-in a win until the 20th, when we face Forest…now that doesn’t mean we can’t win any or even all of the next 4, against City, Chelsea, Newcastle and BHA, especially if our nervous nellie of a manager gets his tactical head out of his ass, but I’d be lying if I said I had any confidence in our collective prospects
I just couldn’t fathom why MA failed to act in a much more timely fashion when it came to tactical adjustments and his substitutions, even though I shouldn’t be surprised in light of the overwhelming evidence…as to the former, he didn’t do jack-shit until it was clear that the opposition was simply going to shift into full park the bus mode…whereas with the latter, I had several issues with the who and when sides of the equation…at least if you weren’t going to add some much-needed width, by bringing on Tierney to replace the unhinged Zinchenko, you should have brought in both Trossard and ESR to inject some directness into our attack…sadly, Jesus was rather pedestrian on Friday, of which we have no “real” viable alternatives, so it was imperative that we had some more goalscoring options in and around the more central areas of the box…unfortunately if Jesus continues to struggle to manufacture goals things could get rather complicated in the next window, especially if the rumours are true about a pending Balo exodus, because we simply can’t afford to have two highly paid Eddie-like propositions on the payroll