I will eat the humble pie after the match if I am wrong, but what in the real world is Mikel doing in team selection? We are playing Fulham away in 30min, team sheet is out and Thomas Partey starts at RB. Gabriel, White, Zinchenko and Calafiori are not even on bench due to injuries but you have Tierney and I am sure he can fill IN as a LB against the likes of Fulham. Thomas is having a great season but putting him at RB puts him at a risk and the midfield is brazen of his skills. Jorginho is filling up in the midfield. Playing Partey at RB also mean we are weaking our right side because Timber is now going to play at LB. I don’t understand this infatuation to have a midfield in defence, I’m sorry. If the idea is to play the game virtually with 3 defenders and allowing Partey to move into the midfield during the play, I don’t understand that as well. You are better off in a 3-4-3 set up if that’s the case.
Martinelli makes way for Leandro Trossard because of his poor form. The games are coming thick and fast and it shouldn’t be a problem, he will get minutes to compete and displace the Belgian. Mikel Merino sits on bench, Jorginho gets to start ahead of him. Gabriel Jesus can’t replace a non-performing Kai Havertz, which tells a lot about him.
We dropped 5 points against Fulham last season, and we certainly would be hoping to do better than that. Manchester City dropped points yesterday, and we could go 4 points ahead of them if we win. We have 3 ex-gooners playing for Fulham, ESR whom we wanted to succeed at Arsenal, Leno – who was also a fan favorite during his time at Arsenal and Alex Iwobi, who is in great form for Fulham this season.
Craven Cottage is a tough place to visit and Fulham is having a good season so far. I don’t see it as an easy game and the likes of Jorgi, Kiwior, Trossard and Havertz would have to show their importance today.
I am expecting a tough game, but hoping we would win 2-0 with Saka and our captain on the scoresheet. I will keep it short today, do let us know if you are happy with the team selection and if it could have been better.
See you in the comments section in 30 min.
Madhu—they also didn’t provide Ethan with any Ode-like service, as we were too focused on sending in crosses to our ducking German tweener and Jesus, who couldn’t score a goal if his life depended upon it
TRVL your post is a perfect example of MA changes everything to accommodate his fav formations. Really don’t see what he is trying to see when we are chasing a win. Pathetic in game changes that completely bamboozles our own players let alone opposition. Ma is twisted in his mind as Generational. He is turning into a narcissist without having achieved anything. Imagine if he wins a PL.
Madhu
I doubt he will ever win a PL title – always the bridesmaid.
If we bought Rice for 100 M when he was considered as the best holding center mid for a mid table team then why does MA not trust him to play that role with tow creators flanking him. Why does he need a frankly nothing player like Merino to assist him. With no creativity whatsoever from midfield apart from Ode how can we ever create chances. Why such a conservative approach from a team aspiring to win PL. I just cannot understand.
In this game MLS was playing vertical passes from left back. But MA is bloody conservative that he subs him and shifts Timber to his least fav left and brings in Partey as RB. Removes Rice and brings in Jorgi. Removes Ode the line creator and brings in Jesus. Plays 2 Kai and Jesus up top with no creative players to provide them with any service. Baffling really. So when we finally ended the game apart from Saka there was nobody on the field who had an assist in the recent past and any history of creativity in them. Shocking bit of mgmt there. He is opposite of Wenger in the sense that Wenger would end a game with a back 4 and everyone else with ability to create and score. Now we depend on corners to get our CBs to score.
What an affront to a club which had players of calibre Henry, Dennis, Van Perise, Kanu etc. not sure who apart from Ska would have gotten into that team?
Madhu
El B is a busted flush. He needs to put his pet giraffe out to grass and unleash two playmakers at the same time.
Madhu
El B is a busted flush. He needs to put his pet giraffe out to grass and unleash two playmakers at the same time.
Morning all
I have a very simple comparison from yesterday.
I watched the first half of our game being bored to tears with MA’s perpetual ground hog day tactics, and was keeping an eye on the Pool v Fulham score, and decided to switch games, which just shows what utter garbage football MA gives us.
I’m a die hard Gooner of 60 years who has gone to unbelievable lengths to watch games in Thailand since 1998, mostly bribing hotel managers to get their IT to add the games or ditto bars who all watch Manure games.
So, I found myself enthralled with 10-men Pool showing us all how to play catch up football. Now, you could say that we also drew with Fulham but with 11 men and just poor all round compared to Pool yesterday.
The game was a thing of beauty to watch where Fulham were not there at Anfield to make up the numbers. They had numerical advantage and the ran Pool into the ground with lightning counters mostly through Iwobi who looks far better than out Marts – Thanks Arsne MA’s father football.
Stunning equalizer from Jota has put the rest of the PL on notice that he’s back to his annoying goal scoring best.
I found myself wanting Pool to win from their gung ho, cavalier, 10-men, non-stop attacking and inventive football. Who wouldn’t who loves the game? Pedro are you reading?
After I had collected my thoughts when the game ended, I was back to being a Gooner again, where my fantasy football fix was over, and I was happy Pool didn’t get three points.
Although if they had, and that added another nail in MA’s exit coffin, then give me a fcuking big hammer.
TRVL
You’re right with your shoehorning assessment and MA will die on that hill alone, where I hope it’s a long painful football death by a 1000 goals and for poor selections, mind numbing, boring & repetitive tactics, and repeatedly talking absolute bollocks in pressers, such as “I knew in 23 seconds talking to Raheem that Sterling would be big for us”.
So big he can’t buy a start with no goals Jesus shitting his pants in each game.
Your position on Ethan & Ode playing together with, as Madhu said Rice the holding 6 is the only option that is new for us. How does the £5m? a year manager not see that? Sure it can’t be week in and week out, but the minutes Ethan got yesterday I imagine, because I was watching Pool’s thrilling game, probably frustrated him more than it was a aid to his game progression. The only thing he learnt was that he was used incorrectly.
Ethan needs to start with Ode. Simples!
I think Partey is the better 6 than Rice, being the more intelligent footballer, but I agree Rice did better with his deliveries yesterday, but most PL players should be able to whip a low aerially trajectory cross with pace with accuracy being most are paid over 100K a week? Shouldn’t they?
Skelly looks naive, but still was worth his start over KT. The kid just needs minutes, and lots of them, so starting all domestic cup games at least.
MA is done! He was done 3 years ago when they were going to fire him. A PR puff piece says how MA has gone on to many successes with the team.
Did MA win anything I missed other than the longest mistake ridden rookie ever to manage a PL top 6 club? At least Manure got rid of their reject managers. We just give them longer contracts more power and pay rises.
Way to go KSE. Any idea when we are going to win anything of note? It seems your last meeting at the ponderosa has bene a dead squib for improvements if you look at the results. At LIR we’d be very grateful if you could find a winning solution as your manager hasn’t in 5 years, does that not tell you something?
KSE are sporting winners in America why not here?
My answer to MA? Win this PL or leave, and be a pretender manager at another club and win nothing always being Graeme Souness’s: The Nearly Man!
We have no identity as Pool has with Slot, and the Chavs with Moresca both in the first seasons with MA five and counting.
Pep is frantically searching for a new identity for City and failing miserably like his protege.
We have boring repetitive tactics for every game that every manager from the bottom to the top of the PL know and can nullify, as Dyche did yesterday and Fulham last week.
By the close of play today 3rd to 8th could just be a 3 point gap, where City being as bad as they are, could be level with us on 30. You’d feel BHA can beat Palace at home and B’mouth get a win at home against the Hammers, so they will be on 27.
Our reality is we can’t score many or any from open play, and our set piece goals are being better defended against, which when you look at our slow ponderous play, does not show us in any champion form at all, just around the mid table is my guess.
Sorry it’s grim reading but with MA at the helm what is there that is good and positive to write about without being a stupid myopic fanboy.
AF you got and colorful thoughts to add?
TRVL
Forgot to add hope the mum in law is more settled.
Tony – iam with you mate nowadays watching Arsenal is a bore. My son watches it and gives me vibes of when I was young. Fidgeting and yelling at the TV. I tend to look into other games on my phone. Pedro is now laying the blame on Ethan that he is not effective when he comes on. Such pathetic piece of commentary. As you say by the end of today the gap between the top 8 may be 3 points and one slip from us we would be staring down the barrel.
Far cry from the exciting football you and me watched way back in 90s. Same as you I have spent so much in India to watch my beloved Arsenal. It’s an affront to the club that had such plates like Henry, Dennis, Kanu, Viera, Cesc etc.
Tony—any discussion pertaining to our selection process is always tainted by the knowledge that both Rice and Havertz will be on the pitch no matter the circumstances…as you know, I have no issue with the former so long as his tactical deployment always has the greater good in mind, which hasn’t the case this season…I’m of the belief that the Euros made matters significantly worse, due in large part to Southgate’s similarly dire tactics…when they struggled offensively there was a lot of chatter, manufactured or otherwise, which tried to suggest that things would look vastly different if only Rice was playing in more advanced spaces…of course this was either unfounded grasping nonsense or a careful constructed yet somewhat mismanaged PR campaign on the player’s part, as the real stumbling block was Southgate’s Arteta-like teeny-tiny tactical balls
on a bit of a side note, I did find it interesting that Rice actually looked the part of a deep-lying pivot at times yesterday, as his passing and set pieces were generally crisper and more deliberate than usual, yet he was replaced by Jorginho…hopefully he didn’t suffer an injury of some sort and it simply hasn’t been disclosed as of yet(update—he was taken off due to an injury concern, the nature of which I’m not totally sure)
as for Havertz, it’s not as if I wouldn’t play him, were I in MA’s shoes, I would just do so in a far more sparingly manner…in my opinion, he’s a luxury/specialist type, especially on a team that’s hoping to compete for titles, whereas if we were a middling side, without the financial wherewithal to compete at the top of the pitch, I would evaluate things much differently…on a side that’s not competing for European positions and isn’t expected to score with the same frequency as the top clubs, having someone who can put in a shift and poach 10-12 goals could be the difference between finishing mid-table and finding yourself in a relegation battle…conversely, on a top 4 side, he functionally caps your potential output, due to his lower ceiling in front of goal and the fact that he restricts your ability to switch things up, tactically speaking
now if he were simply a change of pace option, kind of like Jesus, and we had a REAL Striker leading the line, his presence would make infinitely more sense…problem is his fees and wages would make him a poor choice for either of the sides I described above…the middling club would never reinvent their wage structure wheel simply to accomodate this particular player, as they would much rather roll the dice on a “similar” type option for a fraction of the price…we, on the other hand, should have never invested so heavily on a player who’s not a bona fide needle mover…if he were a 40M get on Tross’s wages, our present problematic dynamic would never exist, as that sort of investment wouldn’t have hindered our potential Striker transfer plans and any pressure to start him would be functionally nonexistent
I know I keep harping on it but when you pay 100M for DM, then deploy him as a AM, and likewise pay 75+M for someone who doesn’t fit your tactical script, only to shoehorn him into a position he’s simply not qualified for, it will undoubtedly have a profoundly negative impact on your ability to compete with football’s finest…shit it’s had a negative impact on our ability to consistently beat far lesser sides…just imagine what might have been if we made all the same moves, had Timber at RB, Cala at LB, Rice at DM, then Merino in the 8-hole, and had bought an actual Striker instead of Havertz…that seemingly simple transfer adjustment alone would have put us in a far more competitive position today
btw things with my mother-in-law were far more complicated than we originally thought…thanks for asking…I actually wrote this post after returning back home at around 3 in the morning…things are already bonkers around here as we prepare for the holiday season, so this situation ought to make things exponentially more difficult…I’m sure we will discuss it at greater length at a future date…Cheers
Madhu—as to the Pedro banter, it makes perfect sense…he knows that those with a legit axe to grind with the manager have had issue with Ethan’s lack of minutes, so he’s the perfect scapegoat for the Kool-AId crew…anyone who knows the game can see that he’s not being given the same service opportunities as Ode, likely because MA doesn’t trust him to be on the ball that often…as such, the chances of him lighting things up are slim to none…the fact that he’s prodcued what he has, considering his limited opportunities, speaks volumes about his actual potential…I still believe that MA doesn’t want to provide him with too many “wow” moments before he signs his re-up, which is a classic MA cost-saving measure that we’ve witnessed before on several occasions
hasn’t “been” the case
Our next 3 PL fixtures will take us to the half what point of the season – if we win all three we’ll be 5 points worse off than in the like for like fixtures last season.
The fixtures are Palace away, Ipswich home and Brentford away – we seriously need to find our shooting boots again. Drop points in any of them and we could find ourselves adrift from Liverpool and maybe even Chelsea.
Half way point!
to better understand Pep’s current woes, just look at his DM pairing today…he’s even started DeBruyne, who hasn’t played a full 90 for quite some time, likely because City hasn’t lost a match in which he’s started in almost 2 years…ironically enough that last loss was against their crosstown rivals…they’ve been on a historically bad run yet they can actually sit level with us, on points, should they win today…food for thought
New post.