Port Vale is a English club based in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. They are currently in League one, what you call the third tier and they are currently sitting at 19th place out of 24 teams. You can’t get any easier game than this. Our injury list is growing, Madueke picked one against City and would be side lined for 2 months minimum, Odegaard is out with his shoulder injury; Norgaard, Saliba and Saka are just returning from injuries, so lets not take any chances in the name of game time.
I am hoping we would get to see Nwaneri, MLS, Dowman – all starting against Port Vale. Heck, if I was the manager, I would even start Merino and Trossard and tell them post match to not ask for another start for next 3 months. Kepa, too.
Anyways, I am not too concerned about the game. I am more worried about the Newcastle game on Sunday, and whoever starts against them shouldn’t be playing tomorrow.
Do you remember the last day signing from Leverkusen? Well, he picked up an injury as soon as he wore the red and white shirt. Since there’s nothing else to discuss, lets see what Mikel had to say in the pre-match conference.
on if he’s surprised by the reaction to our approach against Man City:
In football, surprised? I’m not surprised about anything. No, because I don’t read it [the reaction], but I do get told a little bit what the narrative is around it. If you tell me that this is the main one, if I’m surprised, I will be extremely surprised. With my knowledge and my know-how, and how I analyse a football game, it was impossible for anybody to predict such a dominance from Arsenal throughout 96 minutes because it never happened in 17 years of Pep [Guardiola] as a manager. So if the narrative goes somewhere else and we talk about dominance, about something else, how can you be dominant against such a team if you have a handbrake? Dominance and handbrake are two different words, but I accept everything. I will learn more to have a different vision.
source: Arsenal.com
Look, I am a conspiracy theorist myself, slagging off the referees whenever I get a chance but I am not this naïve to celebrate the possession by passing the ball between the 2 CBs forever against City who were playing a very low block. It wasn’t a dominance, and the narrative is not going anywhere. Fans were curious why we went into the game with 3 DMs when we had a 65m signing in Eze who can play centrally and Nwaneri who was kept as a back up / rotation to Odegaard. Our set up was wrong from the beginning, you tried to correct it after an hour and we played much better. Fans are just asking why you didn’t anticipate that when everyone and their landlady could have guessed it.
Let me a be a bit blunt. We don’t care if you play 10 DMs as long as you win a game. No body questioned Mourinho’s parking the bus as long as he was getting them trophy and no one wanted Pep to play a more exciting, free flowing, Klopp-like football with a billion dollar squad because he is bringing City the trophies. But, you don’t have much to show in 6+ years. In fact, you don’t have anything to show except a FA cup which was won by a group of players that Emery left for you.
So you either win something and shut me up with your possession based football or bring me some exciting football and I can forget the losses. If you go into a game with defensive mindset, with 4 defenders, 3 defensive midfielders and your front 3 doing defensive work, you better make sure to win it because me and some more of the fans will call you out on your mistake. There’s no narrative here.
Right, that’s all for today. I have been trying to get some of the readers to the comment section so please help em out even if they turned out to be an Arteta fan.
Cheers
Why is the fucktard bringing on Gabriel?
Really no need.
things got so boring for awhile there that it appeared as if we were intentionally fucking up just to make things a tad more exciting
Dowman’s going to get benched if he tries anymore of those direct vertical passes…VG needs to show that he has some deftness to his game when an opportunity like that arises
in his game
either MA has no idea how to get the best out of his most creative players or he just doesn’t give a shit…probably both
Dreary, dull and dismal. It feels like the footballing equivalent of what sociologists term deferred gratification. They’re just doing the minimum required to get through. No flair, no experimentation, no risk.
it’s almost as if MA put the handbrakes on Eze so that we didn’t get to see how much better life would be if he was playing the 8 instead of our 100+M DM…MA was probably secretly upset that Eze scored
the crusade of the blunt instrument continues, with 2 goals on 3 or 4 shots on target…you can’t rely on such fine margins against better sides or you’re bound to get burned a time or two too many
KP—profoundly accurate description of this underwhelming display…what a missed opportunity
I’m convinced that MA would have killed both Messi and Ronaldo’s careers if given the chance…he abhors attractive football!!!
More than that Vieira…
He’d have killed the careers of every single one of the 500,000 world class players Wengo coulda/woulda/shoulda signed.
KP—that’s probably why he doesn’t have any of those coulda tales
If I was to analyse Arsenal at present I would say that the football has become even more negative this season , and a possible reason is that it could be that we miss Thomas Partey’s composure on the ball and more important his ability to pass between the lines.
It started quite well tonight , good movement and intricate passing which culminated with a nice goal from Eze but from then on we gradually lost our way and we became more negative and risk averse the more the game went on.
The ball over the top is the answer and it is a ball that we rarely attempt but this season we have scored at least 4 goals from the ball over the top.
Trossard today
Martinelli v city
Gyokeres v Leeds
Gyokeres v forest.
So why are we so reluctant to hit that ball over the top , there was also a moment today when Dowman clipped a lovely ball behind the defender to gyokeres in the 2nd half to put him in on goal.
Using the ball over the top more often will create more space for our midfield as the opposition defence will be reluctant to hold a high line, continually playing our football in front of the opposition makes it easy to defend and harder for our midfield to find space between the lines.
I’m not sure the Arsenal fans will be satisfied with this type of performance, they/we want to see more speed and risk in our play and even though we are winning games I can see some dissent coming from the Emirates crowd in the coming weeks if we don’t add some excitement and risk to our game , especially if we do fall further behind Liverpool..
“”ArsenalBallKnower
September 24, 2025, 8:53 pm
Merino looking like hes a League one player. Dude only can go backwards and there is no creativity in his play. This guy won the Euros for goodness sake. Show your level man.. and dont show up on the team sheet next week please.””
Welcome at LiR mate. You started on the right foot.
Arsenalbaliknower
Great moniker mate. You’re very welcome among the other Arsenal cognoscenti on here. Like you I struggle to see Merino’s value at times, especially when you consider that Spain is like a production line for top quality midfielders. I want to like him but he’s a bit of a jack of all trades and master of none. I’m looking forward to hearing more of your views as the season goes on.
Saliba signs till 2030. Madrid can take that contract they were drafting and shove it up where the sun don’t shines.
Ambarish
It puts his value up by a sizable chunk.
If only MA had spent even a fraction of the time he’s wasted trying to convince the world that his simplest of plans was so fucking ingenious on actually developing his craft, we might not be trapped in this rinse and repeat nightmare…instead of doing whatever it took to compete tactically, even if that required him to hire on someone who might play havoc with his monopolistic agenda, or simply admitting that he was in way over his head and moving on, which I acknowledge would be a tough ask, he chose the easy/selfish way out…he went full-bore Pulis in a day and age where no one of consequence would do likewise
by going all-in on his defence-first approach he might have raised our floor, as that’s typically the outcome, unfortunately he likewise made it exceedingly less likely that we would win any major silverware…it’s a settlers fucking paradise…think of how many things have to go your way to thread that fucking needle…just look at last season when we actually waxed fucking Real and still won jackshit…the whole thing is a thin margins horror show, where you live.on a knife’s edge yet the football is boring as fuck…keeping in mind that the only reason the Real series was atypically open was due in large part to our rash of injuries which forced MA to throw caution to the wind…the reason we know this to be the case is that in the following round against PSG, when we were considerably more healthy, he returned to a very similar sideways approach he had employed against Bayern the year prior
simply-put, this half-measure of a manager has made some self-serving business decisions that would line his pockets, by securing his continued employment, to the detriment of our trophy case…he has no interest whatsoever in being tactically adpatable, especially if that fucks with his settling safe space, and as such he couldn’t give a flying fuck that most of our best offensive players have regressed during his largely negative reign, football-wise that is…how else could one explain the continued lack of directness and pace, his inability/unwillingness to properly incorporate a Striker, the insane levels of attention placed on shoehorning defensive players into the final third instead of shaping the the tactics around the skillsets of our best and brightest, and his continued insistence on employing an inverted backer instead of providing our wide side players with the requisite overlapping help they deserve and require…welcome to Areteta’s Arsenal, where attractive football goes to die
Full bore Pulis, Vieira, with a soupçon of Mick McCarthyism.
Vieira
Do you fancy the Blue Jays for the WS this year? My beloved Mets are just hanging on in the NL wildcard spots. It’ll either end in ignominy this week or they’ll meet the Toronto Birds in the final. I have a feeling it’ll be the former. If Mr Met is too busy hanging out the back of Mrs M (and Juan Soto and Alonso go cold at the wrong moment), I’d love to see Canada win the whole fucking thing and send a wanker gesture to Trump and the various ballbags in the MLB
Arteta manages like he played – boring
KP—I’m not even sure that the Mets will make the playoffs, but if they do I think they have a better chance than the Jays to make some noise…btw I’m not a Jays fan, I’ve actually been a Yankees fan since I was a young kid in the late 70s…I was a big fan of the late great Munson, Ron Guidry and then Mattingly, who was my role model during my playing days…I was fortunate enough to have access to box seats in TO throughout much of my life due to my Father’s business connections, but I typically only went when they were playing the Yanks, much to the chagrin of my family
if I had to hazard a guess I think the Phillies and the Mariners might be best positioned to go to the WS, but it’s difficult to tell in such a “streaky” season where one month a team appears unbeatable then the next they look like total shit…that said, the Yankee’s starting pitchers have really found their groove recently, so if Judge can find a way to finally perform better in the playoffs, they could make a deep run…the Jays have vastly overachieved so they don’t know how to navigate their way through their present slump…they had better hope they can find a way to win the AL East and secure a bye or their postseason hopes might be crushed in the wild card round…Cheers
Vieira
Good to get your take on Baseball mate. October is one of THE months to follow sport in your neck of the woods. The Mets took 2 off the cubs this week so if could be worse but they need to sweep the Marlins this weekend. Cinci and the D’backs are breathing down their necks which is bonkers considering where the Mets were at the all star break.