Champions League group stage is concluding today after 8 game-weeks. Every team will be in action at 8 PM UK time, and we are visiting Girona today. Though a draw is sufficient to qualify for the knockout stage and avoid 2 additional games in a play-off, we would love to win and keep the confidence high. Girona aren’t having a great season, having lost 6 of their 7 CL games and we should be beating them easily.
Mikel Merino and Odegaard missed out against Wolves but are back in contention for the game. Saka will be missed but Nwaneri is back and I am hoping he won’t let us miss the starboy. We have a game against City on Sunday, so I won’t be surprised if Mikel pull out the likes of Jorginho and Sterling to rest some of the main team players.
Liverpool and Barcelona has qualified already, we are sitting on 16 points. Lets see how it can go if we lose today!
Inter, Atletico, Milan and Atlanta are between 14-16 points, a win would take them above us bringing us to 7th position. There are 6 clubs (Leverkusen, Aston Villa, Monaco, Feyenoord, LOSC, Brest) with 13 points that will level with us. But we have got a very healthy goal difference of 12 and only Atlanta (14) with their win will surpass us. It will bring us down to 8th position. No other teams with 13 points has more than 7 goal difference and for us to not qualify to round of 16 directly, we would be losing badly and one of the 6 teams would be winning with some margin. That’s a lot of permutations and combinations and it still favor us.
So, lets just sit comfortably, enjoy the game and lets hope Mikel do some rotation to keep the players fit for the game against Man City. Again, we should win against Girona with our bench players and I won’t mind if Nwaneri keeps his place in the team ahead of Odegaard, Jorgi starts ahead of Partey/Rice and Sterling gives some rests to Martinelli.
I never got time to write about MLS red card but what a shite decision that was. FA has rescinded the card and has deemed it to be a wrong decision. Michael Oliver (as usual) gave a RED against us for challenge that didn’t deserve it, VAR looked it in slow motion for a handful of seconds and agreed with Oliver. If we remove the bias-angle from that decision, what in the hell was VAR doing? A referee can have bad day or bad view but VAR was put in place for exactly the same reason to fix this. There’s incompetence at all level and PGMOL should be held accountable. With such small margins, you can’t forget to draw the lines at VAR, you can’t give two yellow to a player in the same passage of play, you can’t have two rules for two different teams for kicking the ball away, you can’t be handing straight red cards for challenges that deserve a max yellow. It’s a shite show and it needs to stop.
Right, that was all for the game and all thing Arsenal. But I have something more to talk about.
I read an interesting take from Goal.com regarding the new Champions League format :
I have been a supporter of the new Champions League format and though I agree with some of the things they have written, they have missed to touch the some important points for the sake of criticizing new format. Hear me out!
I agree with the sentiments here – more matches means more injuries and almost every big club in Europe is playing twice a week where both the games are considered important. They talk about players welfare but lets be honest here, no team would play another big club in all of those 8 group stages games. If a manager is fixated in playing his best XI every game, it’s on him. With high profile signings and money spent, clubs like City, Arsenal, Chelsea have got two XIs of 40-100m players. If you are hell bent on achieving success only via ‘100m’ players, it’s on you. If players are getting injured (excluding impact injuries) because they are playing more than they can sustain, it’s poor from the manager and the club who can’t decide when to rest a player even with multi-million health experts on their payroll.
Their next argument is money over meritocracy. UEFA wanted to make more money out of it – agreed but that’s not helping only the big clubs. Even the likes of Girona are getting 8 games, some of them happens to be big enough to generate excitement among their fans. There’s a trickle down effect here. For every Read Madrid making more money, there are Young Boys, who are trying to sustain in this market and remain competitive.
Regarding the extra safety net they are talking about, giving example of City, who after losing to Sporting, Juventus and PSG can still qualify by beating Club Brugge today – I’m not sure how that’s a bad thing. With the earlier format, it was more of a luck where you could land in a group of death, or lose a game on a bad day and you are out. How often we had seen a very non-competitive round of 16 earlier – very! Group stages may give you some boring games, but it would also filter out the elites for the next stage and it’s going to be more competitive as we go. I don’t want the likes of Madrid, City, Arsenal or PSG to go out of the tournament because of a bad day.
Right, that’s my take on this. Goal has certainly made their case and I am just on the opposite side of it. I am stirring the pot here, because I would love to hear your say – some of you have seen the changes in the past and would have better, valid points for and against it.
Incidentally, in the weirdest of coincidences, the Club Brugge manager is a Belgian guy called Nicky Hayen who formerly managed…. Haverfordwest County and was fucking brilliant.
KP—we certainly won’t be the only ones hoping that City shits the bed tonight and ends up on the outside looking in
Ambarish—where do you get your lineup info from? it’s usually wrong, so maybe you should find a different source in the future lol
like I said, as soon as Ethan plays for Saka everything is run through the left…nothing like catering to Sterling over our potential up-and-coming superstar…it’s GD bizarro world…I can’t even imagine what Marts is thinking, as there’s been more focus on the left side in the first 15 than he usually sees in a full 90
it could be offside, but what the fuck is Neto doing???
what’s the remedy to having played 4 straight CL games without scoring a goal = Arteta’s ill-prepared Arsenal side
let’s not forget that this is a Girona side is missing several of their regular starters
it should be 2-0
that might have been one of the dumbest in-box fouls I’ve seen in some time…good for us though
maybe Jorginho’s PK will inspire us to get another one before half
that’s why you should run things through Ethan!!!
Gentlemen (and Kroenke!) that is what is known as pick that out.
he’s the most clinical finisher on our current roster, which is frankly an indictment on our manager’s recruitment strategy
if we don’t try playing Ethan and Ode together in the midfield, when Saka comes back, that should be grounds for firing the manager…btw Ode should be on the left and Ethan on the right
Folks Ethan will be coached out of this if he does this more often. Have to easy that was a lucky penalty call. Partey fouls the defender who falls on him and trips him.
Am I the only sad twat not watching but tuning into a radio station? ‘Yes!’ I hear you all say. Ethan’s goal sounded sublime.
Villa and Pool being pegged back and City losing…
Marc – I wear my ungentleman-like attitude as a badge of honour. Mug the muggers is my motto.
KP—it was sublime in the sense that we’ve been bereft of clincial finishing up top…it wasn’t some sort of Ibra-esque highlight reel strike
we had better not repeat the Sterling mistake at the close of this window
I’ll give you one guess who put Villa ahead
just what we needed, another flopping fuck