Bloody hell, it took Mikel Arteta a total of five and a half season to get a CF. He inherited three – Pepe, Lacazette, Aubameyang but he shipped them all off to play Kai Havertz – a midfielder, Mikel Merino – another midfielder and Trossard – a winger. We finished 2nd three times in a row and I can bet a tenner we would have won at least one of them had there been a proper goal scorer upfront. With the Sesko and Gyokeres saga and the delay that was happening, I was getting sceptical that it might not happen at all, but better late than never.
Since The King left, we had the young 16 year old Walcott wearing that number for a decade, he did much better for his age and the support he had around him. Auba came and delivered some beautiful goals and games for us. Loved him except for his move to Chelsea but hey, he got a family. Nketiah was a trial and failed as it did for the ESR #10. Time will tell whether Gyokeres does justice to the number but let me be clear, I am pretty sure he will.
We are paying £64m to Sporting because the add-ons are too easy. That’s a lot of money after we have already spent some on Kepa, Zubimendi, Norgaard and a lot of money for Madueke. But I DON’T CARE. I just don’t want to see midfielders playing as a striker and I don’t want to see a sulking Havertz up top. We are bringing a striker who has got personality, presence, and intimidation in him. He has some unbelievable stats albeit in a weaker league but hey, he did pretty well in Champions League.
I have no doubt he will do great in red and white. He knows it, so he pushed for the move; his agent knows it so he is marketing himself by dropping 6m of agent fees, the club knows it because ultimately they are going to pay 60+ million GBP for him.
Cristhian is here – Welcome to Arsenal
We have signed Cristhian Mosquera from Valencia. I was always calling out the club to get a proper CF, and ignore this versatility crap everyone throws around these days. How many games have you seen Kiwior, White or Tomiyasu play at CB or which one of them were able to bench Saliba when he was going through a bad form couple season back? No one. We need competition everywhere and we need good back ups.
Mosquera has been a starter for Valencia since 2023/24 season and have played the most number of games for any player in Europe top 5 league who is under the age of 21. If you are not even 21 and you play 73 games as a CB in couple of seasons, you are a talent.
A very good signing according to me, hats off to whoever pushed for it. And we only paid £13m for him with some add-ons. Brilliant deal considering Tomiyasu is gone and we have White/Timber for RB while Calafiori/MLS fight for the LB spot.
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Right, sorry for a short one today. Days are just getting busier as I am getting old. Hope you are have a good one, wherever you are in the world. Cheers.
Cheers Art
I’ll check him out on YT. Not for nothing was he a 66 WC winner I suppose. I guess his time at THOF must’ve coincided with Peter Storey.
There’s a none-too-flattering piece about last night’s game in the Guardian last night. I think the knives will be already sharpened for Stubborn el Bastardo if we fuck up that tough set of opening fixtures.
He banged in a decent number of varied goals if that clip was anything to go by.
I remember when he was a manager and some wit said, ‘Alan Ball – he always speaks highly of his players!’
Same age as I am now (61) when he died. Fucking hell.
Kroenkephobe.
We don’t recognise all our great players like we used to.
That used to be in our DNA as a club.
Because that distracts the comatosed brain dead fanbase from buying the KSE tat 24/7
What do these marketing slags call it “bandwidth”.
KSE want the bandwidth on selling their tat not celebrating the past greats that build the club.
Like that £25 on that dog stunt.
Bally, George, McClintok, Storey, Armstrong , O’Neil, Davis, Jennings, O Leary, Simpson , Thomas Graham, Rocky, Pat Rice, Adams, Bould etc deserve more kudos from these slags in charge
It might even make them fucking win something.
Dowman is the bright light and Reason to be Cheerful parts 1 and 2 of this pre-season: it’s what it will be remembered for.
I said before that I thought Norgaard is going to prove to be our best signing as Mr Reliable box to box, and perfect Partey/Jorginho replacement. I liked him at Brentford, as I did Mbeumo, Wissa and a few others including our Maya.
It’s why I see Thomas Frank at Spuds making life very difficult for us to take points, as we saw last week. He sold Son FFS! Tears from heaven or Korea not really sure, but I’d be surprised if Spitting Image miss a beat there. It heralded change where we wanted status quo, because change will not be good for us or others.
Spuds finally have a real manager I’d have been happy to see succeed MA.
Our Noni looked more inventive on the LW; offering a different mazy two-footed game, than Mart’s more direct, one dimensional play, where I thought he’d play now Dowman can push Saka for the RW starting birth far more than Noni can or ever will.
LB’s are going to fear playing against either where they are the perfect foil for each other for rotation or playing together on the RW and ATMF, and bringing a new form of pacy chaos defenders are going to hate.
VG, even at Giroud level, Saka and Dowman should bring the best out of Ode, especially with Eze playing along side on the left feeding Noni or Marts.
I’ve wondered if there is more to come from him where others have written him off scoring goals wise, and am interested to see what comes next.
Of course, to get the best from our current squad, we need a proven successful manager to replace MA.
We have 2 incarnate players with huge, unbridled potential and seriously high and potential elite ceilings:
I’ve said all along Ethan is Brady + in the making with a healthy dose of DB10 mix, as an original inside right/false 9.
Dowman is a cross between Fabrgas centrally and GG out wide.
Can you image what a challenging squad we’d have if we’d added Isak and Eze at the beginning of the summer? MA must have known about Dowman’s progress, but I wonder if he’d have got minutes if Bertha hadn’t arrived?
MA only uses kids when he absolutely has to: however, now it’s looking like the top 6 all have their (Lamal) wonder kids who will get time this season and win their clubs vital points.
As for VG? I strongly suggested he’s Lord Bendtner 2:0!
He’s not better than Haaland as he’s proclaimed, and never will be. It’s why I linked him with our not so Great Dane. He said he was going to be a GOAT but made ore of an ass of himself blowing his trumpet too quickly. Bandtner was better at scoring with a Scandinavian deity than between the sticks every Saturday.
VG has dumped his GF ready to become lord of the elite dating world no doubt hoping to snag a real London or worldly female trophy.
Problem is he has to score first………….
Yesterday VG’s Havertz-esque performance never even remotely looked likely, so let’s see how he fares against Athletic Bilbao in our last Emirates preseason.
We should have bought Sesko but he wanted CL-less Manure, not MA: other’s also are not buying into MA’s laborious football identity/brand project preferring other clubs, so let that sink in…..
If, as I believe it is, having watched all preseason games with junior, I fear what we are witnessing is a lesser fit version of last season.
Parts may have changed, but the Song Remains the Same when the script needs shredding after 5 years of failure, and replaced by a quick first touch, action attacking football, at pace, as City used to do so effectively, and Pool is doing now.
The Chavs, even though Carragher believes otherwise, also play with that disruptive pacy, counter tempo, PSG have recently perfected. In effect, the Chavs beat PSG at their own game and smothered PSG when they had the ball, which frustrated the answerless, too over confident, PSG players.
PSG, like all the teams they had beaten last season, were succumbed by their own game played better by the Chavs.
We were so easily undone by fast counters last season by Forest, & the Southern clubs et al all sucker punched us points wise, time and time again: home and away.
MA has brought in players he sees as fixing last season.
Problem is all the top six have moved on and greatly improved their squads.
So the next summer TW and this January TW MA will be back to putting out the fires trying to fix things, and never actually producing a tactical master piece he is paid £millions to produce and implement to win the PL & CL.
Simple thinking here…..
MA employs inverted FBs to stop fast counter attacks which is failing abysmally.
Why not go 3 at the back with Saliba, big Gabs and Kiwior, as our defense has pace and Mosquera looked a decent, too, to rotate RB and CB. Not forgetting Timber who can play across the back line.
Play 5 from 8 in midfield of Rice/Zubi/Norgaard + Eze, Dowman, Ethan and Ode with the lumbering Merino for rotation.
Up top we have VG and Havertz with Noni who can play either wing with Marts & Saka.
Even with the above unless we see a real change in the Bilbao game, MA is setting us up to fail again – 2nd or worse.
The supercomputer says 2nd again. I think we will be lucky to scrape a CL birth or worse.
It will be interesting to see what TRVL and others think in the coming weeks.
I was also thinking if Kanu had a son with his talents? Wouldn’t that be cool?
Tony
As I’ve already said I can’t see beyond City and Liverpool for 1st and 2nd. Winning back to back titles is incredibly difficult but Liverpool have bought some very good players and will compete, City will look to make amends to a poor season last year.
Newcastle are the surprise to me – I thought they’d manage to strengthen but it looks like they’ll be weaker than last season so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Howe go.
Enrique ends up at Newcastle and I’ll be fuming.
sad news from the music world this week – Superlungs died on Monday. My daughter and I had planned to see him at the Half Moon in Putney at the end of September. A really underrated singer songwriter who turned down Jimmy Page to be the front man for Led Zepplin.
Marc
Estevao is lighting up the Chavs and telepathic like with Palmer causing a very good Leverkusen many problems.
I feel you can add the Chavs into the top 4 mix on tonight’s showing. Far better than us thus far in preseason.
Villa, Spuds, Forest and Newcastle will be the teams to take points from consistently as well as the aforementioned clubs if you want win the PL.
Chavs v BL on channel app5 is a good game and free.
Tony
I only caught part of the first half but he looks like he could be a steal for £29 million. Arsenal or Arteta to be exact issues aside it looks like it could be a great season for the neutral.
Marc
Junior and I were discussing the summer TW generally last night, and both felt this pre-season seems to have more to it with clubs wanting to find their edge early.
Agreed, for the neutral this season looks set up to be a corker.
Normally, I take little interest in pre season games, but with Slot kicking off his TW buys early, I felt that this season is one where questions are going to be asked of a few managers who are pot-less at the end of the season spewing the usual excuse laden diatribes – well, at least from our manager as he misses out for the 6th season. This time by a few more places.
Do you feel MA has increased our squad level to say PSG’s? Me neither!
Do we have the players to play in the tightest of spaces that say elite players, such as Wirtz and Haaland can operate in? Maybe in Saka, Ethan and now Dowman, as well as Saliba at the back, we can at times during a game, but not consistently.
Pep, Enzo, Howe and our professional loser MA will all be expected to win either the PL or CL – or both this season. Emery will be at Villa until he wants to leave at the moment and still rebuilding or tinkering now.
I don’t see the wheels coming off Slot’s wagon anytime soon, and certainly not this season, so the questions are going to be asked……..
Looking forward to the last game tomorrow against Bilbao. The quality of the Arsenal game app is decent and I thought worth the £3 per game for 5 games was worth what came with the game being all things Arsenal. I was really interested to see what we did this summer so that included watching the pre season games…….
Tony
If Enrique and Arteta swapped jobs for the season with no further transfers come the end of May PSG would be finishing 2nd and playing shit boring football. I don’t know if Enrique would turn us into instant Champions but we’d be in the mix until the end and be playing some great football.
Marc
100% agree with that thinking.
Timber stretched himself, and that’s it for his season.
Watched couple of club friendlies with Gyokeres, and it’s the system that needs to be changed to accomodate him. He feasts on chaos, and we are too disciplined of passing sideways and back.
And Gyokeres scores.. good goal.
Arteta won’t have that – Zubi put in a first time cross and Gyokeres scored.
What was Zubi doing he’s supposed to pass the ball backwards at least 74 times before a cross can be put in.
And the usual Saka scores of a brilliant Martinelli’s assist.
Now that’s how a striker tries to score. Not that shite we have been doing from 6 seasons. Unlucky but hey
Madueke playing on the left side. I don’t know what to make of it.
An excellent one from Havertz too.