Afraid to say many are going to be pissed when they wake up and get their time zone morning PL news feed. Xhaka clone is about right but this new improved slower-than-refs Jorginho is just as costly brain fart stupid at times. Xhaka and Jorginho pivoting is likely to resemble something out of Fantasia and the dancing Hippos. Shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes or the time it takes to birth a super yacht sideways onto the dock to complete the pivot.
19 games to pray to whomever is your deity that Xhaka and Jorginho don’t play together in midfield. Do we remember how easy it was to have Jorginho in Ramsey’s(?) back pocket, in Wenger’s last FA cup win? Jorginho was completely ineffective and that was over 3 years ago. Does Arteta and Edu think Jorginho has improved? To anywhere close to Partey’s level?
We were after the ‘Dogs Gonads’ and ended up with the neutered version no one wanted, and on the put down list, to be cast off in the next 5 months into football’s player wastelands: better known as Sunday League football parks.
So what does this season now offer for us in light of our revelatory Jan TW?
I think we were our usual incompetent selves overworking our vast PR machine who deserve a pay increase and a reduction of hours to just 20 a day. 22 is far too much but with The Arsenal and Arteta and Edu very necessary to keep a semblance of our tradition in TWs from Wenger’s last dozen years of almost signing the world’s elite players: who all turned us down. Now Arteta and Edu are forming their own nearly-signed list to match Wenger’s in less time, only they’ve added a gazumped column now as well.
If you were talking to a complete football ignoramus or blinkered cricket mate and said “My club has just been gazumped by Chelsea for a player we really needed above all other players, and then a few weeks later we went to Chelsea to give them money for their worst and slowest player they were replacing with the gazumped player, which in turn helped Chelsea to buy one of the world’s top young talents.”
What answer do you think you’d get?
Now try that with a savvy PL club supporter and watch them collapse in the snow/ground laughing uncontrollably. Poor Junior is putting out fires all over his school, as more hot banter is hurled his way. Thai kids give no quarter. Before Junior went to school he had his well prepared “Well where are you in the league?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wouldn’t be enough because he’s been giving them belters all season. All I could offer was keep your noise cancelling ear pods in your ears and talk to girls who don’t follow football.
So how did we really fare?
We got a watered down version of Mickey Mudflaps but… one acclimatised to the rigors of the PL but a far lower ceiling. For our title ambitions Trossard fits the bill being one of those nuisance players that buzz around the box breaking the concentration of defenders, as Trossard brings our other attackers into play.
Trossard has an eye for goal and an assist and that’s exactly what we need right now someone with goals and assists this season and who seamlessly fitted in after one training session. Jesus will love playing with Trossard’s, especially for his movement.
He can also play 8/10 and on each wing. Trossard’s a Duracell Bunny player whose gas tank rarely empties. Arteta got lucky; Trossard had been a bad boy upsetting De Zerbi in the process who wanted rid of the player in quick time and Edu obliged for £21+++.
In a normal TW situation Mr. Bloom would have wanted £40+++ and Edu would have not gone near Brighton because he was floundering on what to do in the wake of Mickey Mudflaps debacle until the bargain basement player & price appeared. Edu grasped with both hands thinking there is a god!
Jacub Kiwior just 23 is unknown to me but Zinchenko seems to rate the Pole highly, so perhaps we’ve got a semi-polished diamond who can fit equally well as a CB and CDM. I would imagine Jacub is a vastly improved Holding who may well move on in the summer.
It’s too early to be predicting winning the title or what effect if any (if Partey stays fit) Jorginho is going to have on our summit defence. More likely the EL cup will be Jorginho’s brief. Europe comes into the mix in February, which generally causes pain for a few of the competing clubs with injuries and playing players in the red zone: something Arteta does often without consequential thought for our long-term strategy: see last season.
It wasn’t a bad window just embarrassing once again for Edu and Arteta with them being snubbed by the players they needed.
In the end we couldn’t go through a transfer window without our usual trolly dash in this case Jorginho as our panic buy. What are the odds on Xhaka playing all remaining 19 games if fit?
Buckle up lads/lassies it’s going to be a rough ride to when the fat lady sings for the last time this season.
After watching the game and now the highlights again what came to my mind was B. B. King’s song “The Thrill is Gone” 😆
Fun banter on LG a dude named Guernsey gun is handing it to all the fan boys of the generational one. Made my weekend for sure.
Killroy—it wouldn’t shock me one iota if GG was another Pedro inspired iniaitive so as to give the impression that the rumours of his heavy-handedness have been greatly exaggerated (LOL) it will be interesting to see how this poster will be dealt with if they continue to rattle Pedro’s base…it might be a tad premature, but welcome to LiR Guernsey Gun
Great song choice Kilroy and all the blues from BB’s era. Freddie and Albert King especially, sadly what the song narrates is very apt and expected if I’m honest.
TRVL, Guernsey Gun was made for LIR. When you get binned you know you’ve struck home the truth with Pedro and his Pedrybots.
We’ll the ‘Wrigley’s’ ‘ advert, gum chewing, Thomas Frank, found the chink in our Emirates Fortress armor: ARTETA!
Once again Arteta is intent on his myopic tactical sense of Plan A or bust and bust we did. A brilliant game for the neutrals and shit for us and our slipping grasp on the PL apex.
5 points dropped in 2 games, does that sound like 2021/2022 again? It certainly doesn’t depict a title winning side succumbing to constant pressure. We are an open book now that even Dyche get us to drop our pants against a very average Everton side. They just had pride where we, as I see it, is paint by numbers play no matter what. Arteta’s plan of Xhaka staying in the final third falls apart when he spends much of the game defending where Jacub would no doubt be better for DM and Trossard for LMF. If the game is going tits up like yesterday then at least make the right changes. Trossard came on and scored so why not Jacub for Xhaka?
Arteta’s teflon Xhaka plan of playing in the final third has been turned to work against us if it wasn’t enough already?
How must Josh and daddy be feeling this morning after investing heavily and believing in the rookie who is still making rookie mistakes?
Will they believe their eye test that it was Everton revisited.
Why would this be so? Well, because Arteta is clueless with team selections and in-game management. Simples! Round plugs in square holes. It would surprise me if Arteta could get it right in a sex shop? He’d probably want square butt plugs.
Seriously, WTF was that shit show last night?
We wus robbbbbed!!!!! Untold and LG scream Lee Mason fluffed his offside lines! Weeeeeee Woooonnn, so the 2 blogs will bleat on for days until they come to their collective senses and realise we should have been 2 goals down by half time at Fortress Emirates that really resembled more like The Alimo.
Fact is and sorry for being boring in my repetitiveness, but the left side should be:
Zinchenko -Trossard – Gabrielli. So Gabrieli has quick footed, intelligent players to interact and create spaces and triangles for one another.
Equally, our right side should be Tomi – Partey – Saka because White can only play-by-numbers he doesn’t have a natural football brain. He’s an over priced bench sitter much in the Elneny and Holding mode.
Our current starting 11 has no place for Xhaka and White. If Arteta persists with his current thinking, we will continue to drop points at a similar rate to last season.
There was no good from last night from a Gooner’s perspective; only the bad and the ugly. So, there’s no point discussing it because there were too many ‘ifs and buts’ that would amount to nothing, but the lucky draw we escaped with.
As with last week, this vapid draw inspires no-one! We have no cohesion, fluidity or understanding of how to deal with opponents who know how to squeeze the footballing life out of our young pretenders to the PL crown.
Arteta probably thought that for such a big team in human form size would be slow enough for Xhaka to cope with. Arteta’s tactic was to hope above hope that Xhaka was in the right spot at the right time to score or assist. Clock being right twice a day thinking springs to mind.
Play like that against City who will be really up for this one, with all the finance doping clouds hanging over the club, and Arteta as well: guilty by association if nothing else. City will be out to prove a point that they are the best football playing club on the planet if Pep was to describe it. The will want to prove a point and collect the points.
We shit the bed at the Emirates yesterday, so it can equally happen again against City there days later.
My prediction is the same as its been since Arteta & Edu joined the club: we will win no major titles under their reign. Arteta is a bottler exclusively linked to his narcism thinking he is always right to the point of not requiring a plan B. When this doesn’t go right, Arteta then looks for busses and spouts ignominious excuses that he truly believes are correct.
Right now looking at current PL managers I’d take Roberto De Zerbi from Brighton, so he can bring Mitoma and Caicedo with him. I look at Brighton with envy and feel Roberto could get a fine tune out of our squad.
You reading on this Josh K?
You’re welcome to air your views here and get respectful thinking back.
We’ll never be a mouthpiece for KSE; only for The Arsenal as fans, as we see it, and have seen it for many decades and before you were born for many of us.
No harm in trying is there?
Time to realise that the words orated by Arteta do not resemble the football played currently; too many lucky results pre world cup covered up what we are witnessing and will be seeing for the rest of the season.
Sadly, unless Arteta ceases his footballing love affair with Xhaka, White and potentially fatal usage of Jorginho, our football is just regressing to 2 years ago after we spent near half a billion pounds.
Trust the process, though, lads.
Cue Pedrobots to masquerade as Josh K here next.
Sid from LG one of the top posters there, who always keeps it real or real funny. One fo the reasons I pop in from time to time to read only. No point posting when the blog owner is a troll when the narrative becomes the slightest bit Arteta negative.
/Users/admin/Desktop/IMG_7100.tiff
Gabrielli = Martinelli
Tried to post a pic of Junior in full motion in Kone.
Ambarish if I send you a few pics could you post then in the comments?
Very flat performance yesterday, Brentford looked to waste time from the off and the ref let them but the simple truth is we weren’t good enough and Arteta had zero ideas on how to change things.
So we’re on 1 point from 6 which could easily be 1 from 9 come Wednesday. March’s fixtures look fairly straight forward but out other 2 matches in Feb aren’t easy away at Villa and Leicester.
We’ve seen before that Arteta does runs of wins and losses he needs to serious up his game now.
Tony—my thoughts exactly, even these seemingly minor tweaks would provide us with some more impetus going forward…the only other change i might consider would be Tierney for Chenko, so that we could have our 4 best defensive players on the pitch, thereby allowing our offensive players to go hunting with exceedingly less concern about us being stung on the counter…of course, it’s not like Tierney is some sort of lockdown defender, but he’s a level above Chenko, and he can still provide something in the opposition’s half, which would be preferable to having Tomi move to the left and keeping White at RB
with this configuration we could establish 2 triangular pockets on each side of the pitch, with Eddie roaming from side to side, as he’s not really that effective when being depolyed as a singular target up top or as a false 9, with his back to goal…on the right he could provide some protection for Saka by making overlapping and dummy runs, whereas on the left he could stay more centrally and find little pockets of space in the box while Trossard and Marts were having their way with defenders out wide left…let’s face it, Eddie’s two greatest assets are his poaching ability and his motor, so why not use these strengths to our advantage by deploying him differently on each side of the final third
right now we look exceedingly predictable and although massive changes could be perceived as unwarranted and rather desperate, some justifiable tweaking is warranted…it’s clear by City’s performance thus far today, they smell blood in the water and unless MA puts on his big boy managerial pants, which I’m not sure he owns, we’re gong to be chum come mid-week…of course, we can try to squeak out a 1 point result or try to play tight to the vest and hope to steal all 3 in the closing minutes, but history would suggest that these possibilities are relatively unlikely, so why not act like a supposed top club and come out on our front foot and see how they respond to the unexpected
as for the whole problematic VAR scenario, it’s clear that something needs to be done moving forward…that said, some might contend that human error also saved us on what should have been their first goal, when a questionable foul was called on Mbeumo…this of course shouldn’t go unpunished, from an officiating capacity, as Mason has faced ample criticism long before this particular incident, so it’s high time that the PL made those in charge far more accountable for their respective actions…right now it reminds me of Major League Baseball, where they closely evaluate every homeplate umpire following each contest, then publish the results for all to see, yet never seem to remove the bad apples from the equation…undoubtedly this has more to do with unions and labour agreements, but whenever non-sporting related issues take precendence over the integrity of the game serious changes are undoubtedly required
that Villa/City affair was vastly different once Unai took the reigns off and setup more offensively…of course, it was always too late to overcome a 3 goal deficit, but it should provide our managerial lightweights with some rather crucial insights into what might work best come Wednesday…personally, I think City’s backline is there greatest weakness, relatively speaking, so the more we put them under pressure, the more City will struggle to dictate things on the pitch…easier said than done, but I think that the more we make Rodri provide defensive cover, the less fluid this City team becomes
With yesterday’s VAR shit show Webb called an emergency meeting and all refs will have to attend a “summit” at Stockley Park next week to wade through the mess.
Since VAR disasters will happen you have to plan for it in such a fashion that even if they fuck up it will not effect the results. Everton showed everyone put out a physical team against us and we are fucked because of Arteta’s game plan. Frank did just that.
Bottom line title contenders do not loose 5 points against 19th and 7th place teams. On the other hand look what Ten Hag has done in under a year at Man Utd.
Seems when it comes to football matters we are kindred spirits here: we speak with our eyes and balanced thinking through our posts.
TRVL and Killroy summed the weekend up perfectly. We’re on think ice, which is getting thinner.
I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this guys, but TRVL if you coupled your 2 recent posts that would make a great post game/weekend post.
Killroy, I don’t know if you have time, but a post on VAR from you would spark good talking points here.
That is if Ambarish is ok with that and can email you both.
Just a thought to help Ambarish and LIR build up its numbers.
When it comes to VAR whoever controls the professional rugby union with their VAR version should step in to advise PGMOL.
Rugby replays are sorted with the minimum of fuss and I’d say from what little rugby I watch but glaring mistakes are very, very few and lesser video infractions’ mistakes are negligible to the games results.
Rugby plays the replays on the big screens for all and the ref to see it’s not all furtive like it is in PL football with small screen for the ref only to look at.
Oft is the case in rugby that the crowds’ verbal reactions with cheers or ohs that is a fair & honest reaction to the replay; it’s not perfect, but a much more professional & accurate use of the technology.
Totally agree with your assessment of the TMO for Rugby, transparent and all parties including the stadium audience is clued in. As far as commenting on it, since Webb has called an emergency meeting this week which is mandatory to be attended by all refs, lets wait until this outcome of that “summit”.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/mikel-arteta-arsenal-brentford-frank-29203975
Kilroy, heads will have to roll for this latest VAR stupidity. It has to improve and we’ll sub consciously get several 50/50 decisions go our way.
Usual conspiracy hysterics on LG by the usual suspects.
Meanwhile there’s a matter of the City game in a couple of days.
Didn’t realise the person running the VAR on Saturday was Lee Mason – makes sense.
Lee Mason is a useless cunt, he was one of the worst ref’s so why does anyone think he’d be any better with VAR?
Until ref’s are singled out and slaughtered for being useless rather than given a whole list of excuses it will continue – and before anyone says “ah the poor little refs” they earn £80,000 plus a season.
Everton is so fucking infuriatingly bad and sloppy against Pool. How in the world we lost to them makes now Tom Frank’s comment more believable when he said “it’s easier preparing against Arsenal because of their predictability”. Dyche surely must have noticed that also, same starting XI since the WC and nothing comes through the middle so double team the wingers, job done.
We will see if Pep picked that up also and we will get a battering with their quality attack. Don’t have too much hope will beat City at the Emirates unless Arteta pulls a starting XI rabbit out of his hat, but since that looks more like plan B so no chance that will happen. Welcome to the best result a draw.
England are unfortunate that this tremendous group of young players,Saka,foden,Bellingham,sancho,rashford,rice et al have coincided with the worst group of goalkeepers in my lifetime. Pope is the best of them but he doesn’t make the top 20 English keepers in my lifetime. Strange the way it goes. Pickford so poor again tonight,he plays like that kid in school who did stupid things in goal just to show he’s bored and doesn’t want to be there. I see a lot of that in Ramsdale’s game also unfortunately. One would hope it will disappear as he matures. David James was one such keeper who eradicated a lot of stupid errors from his early days simply by becoming a calmer figure later on.
None of you guys are irish I think but there’s a new documentary on rte1 tonight at 9.35 on Liam Brady just in case you can access that channel. Looking forward to it.
As for Wednesday I wouldn’t be too worried yet,I don’t feel city are anywhere near returning to their best. Nighttime game at the Emirates is a big advantage to us. Where I would be worried is that I don’t buy into the draw being a good result. If we are serious about winning the title I feel 3 points is a must here.
Two cracking champs lge games to look forward to tomorrow also. All is good in the world. (Unless you are an errant balloon).
League stats for Everton:
Shots on goal 18th
Attempts on goal 19th
Goals 20th
How the fuck did we loose to that sorrow performing team and didn’t do to them what Pool did. Oh, sorry I forgot we have the not so generational manager that took them for granted, couldn’t identify how they would play against us, when all the armchair managers did.
Pool got their injured players back Jota, Firminio and will now again be a force to recon with for top 4 chase.
Killroy
The generational one can’t change things if they’re not going to plan. It’s beginning to look very much like the last 6 months haven’t been the breakout of a special manager but a reverse blip for a distinctly average one.
The City game won’t be the measure – the away games against Villa and Leicester will be. Drop points in either and a title challenge will suddenly look like a battle for 3rd.
the PL’s VAR policies simply haven’t found the proper balance between removing human error from of the equation and not stripping the “spirit” of the rules from the game itself…this usually takes some time to get right, as most professional sports have tried a variety of measures over a period of several years, which they revisit per annum and tweak accordingly…in fact, in all 4 major American sports they’ve put limitations on the amount one can challenge, with some actually penalizing you if your challenge was unsuccesful in the hopes of creating some sort of “equitable” balance between game flow, the integrity of the sport and the all mighty dollar
of course, there’s no one perfect way, which makes for an interesting dichotomy considering the underlying intent of any review process…I would suggest that the PL look more closely at the model being deployed in the NHL, as both are predominantly free-flowing affairs, which care most about offsides, the legality surrounding any goal scored and any egregious actions which might have gone unnoticed at first blush…let’s face it, the two hanging “chads” in this equation, contact in the box and a player who’s in an offside position who doesn’t touch the ball, can’t be totally remedied with technology, so any race for perfection is inherently flawed
as for the tin foil hat wearing contingency, they will always have something to complain about, as I would suspect that many are the very same individuals who complained at length about bias officiating long before VAR was ever in the offing…I refuse to constantly point the finger of blame at functional non-participants, as that accomplishes little to nothing in the grand scheme
as for our upcoming schedule, it’s a who’s who of banana skins on the horizon…I don’t place a lot of stock in the whole game(s) in hand narrative, as that always seems to infer, albeit wrongly, that those “in hand” games will be won when it matters most, which just doesn’t ring true in our particular scenario…one has to only look back to last season when we used the whole covid narrative to push off a match that we were in a far better position to play at it’s originally scheduled time…even if we’re able to grind a point or 3 out of this City affair, it won’t convince me that we can simply roll on from there, but it would do wonders for those in the locker room who need to desperately turn a corner considering our present slide…like I said before, we needed to make a significant move in the TW for obvious confidence-based reasons and to force MA’s tactical hand…nothing we did helped in either of these areas, in fact, a move like Jorginho actually did the reverse and Trossard biggest impact will come when he’s replacing Xhaka not Marts
I can already see the LG Arteta fanboys coming up with explanations and excuses for failure to push for the title.
1. Var robbed us of points, when we should have played better in those games to make VAR errors irrelevant.
2. Jesus got injured, we all knew that Eddie was not going to provide the goals needed because he has ONLY purple patches.
3. Top 4 was always the goal not the title.
We had a TW where we could have brought in players that could have changed our playing style and formation until Jesus returns. But that would be too much to ask from the stubborn one. The wait goes on and next season will be 20 years since the last title, not as bad as Pool but still a long time.
Another defining game will be away to Newcastle and that will be one hell of an atmosphere in that stadium as they have CL ambitions. We don’t have anyone mentally strong enough on the pitch to support and direct the young players.
Killroy…11:36 posts…great minds think alike…Cheers
Just came away with an understanding from the Arseblog podcast of why Tets doesn’t rotate more of his players and it does make sense to me.
James from Gunners blog said that Arteta’s game plan, formation and how he wants his players to follow his instructions how to play is so complex that he doesn’t trust all his players to follo through. Therefore we have seen very little rotation and even if Trossard has an excellent game he doesn’t trust him enough to replace Martinelli in the next match.
That was James’ reasoning and I sort of can see that and it explains why Xhaka is always one of the first to be on the team sheet and that the starting XI has seen very little changes. When we were winning with those players all was good but now that fatigue is setting in or there is a drop in form, we have a problem on our hand.
In addition when there is a problem in our attack as we see this during low block teams or drop in form by Martinelli or Ode we have no one really to bring on and execute Arteta’s game plan. What a shitty situation to be in and it is all of Arteta’s making.
KIllroy—it kind of explains why Vieira looks somewhat lost on the pitch and rarely has the ball at his feet for more than a nanosecond…no wonder we re-upped the underwhleming Xhaka and Elneny, even though the latter appears to be a positive locker room presence and clearly understands his very limited role
frankly, we’ve known all along about MA’s propensity to micromanage, which is why our brand of football can look very robotic at times, especially if we rely too heavily on attacking from wide positions…I would suspect that it took opposing managers only 1 game to figure out that without Jesus we were going to revert back to a more wide-side dependent tactical approach, so they’ve adjusted accordingly…it’s probably why Trossard has had some good looks, as he tends to play a little more tucked in than Marts, which likely catches opposing defenders off guard, as we don’t generally attack that area of the box when Jesus is off the pitch(at least not effectively with the ball at our feet)
I get that he’s trying to create some sort of Pep/Wenger hybrid approach, with the sideways passing movement and the “pass into the net” mentality, but there has to be some vertical/direct tendencies within our tactical approach or it’s going to be park the bus central for a large chunk of our remaining fixtures…fact remains we simply aren’t near efficient enough when it comes to scoring from distance, so we can’t afford to get bogged down into those types of low scoring affairs for any extended period, as we don’t have the personnel required to get consistent results
Wednesday will be revealing but James McNicholas thoroughly believes Arteta will start the same XI that played Brentford and then we will see if we have the the sorcerer’s apprentice famous quotes come true “the Spirits that I’ve summoned are ignoring my commands”
Kilroy and TRVL, excellent posts.
Arteta’s gambles are once again not paying dividends. The quality players turn their backs on us because of Arteta. His optics of player treatment and tactical selections are too poor for budding elite players. They want an elite manager.
Sadly, Arteta is a far cry from elitism or ever will be at this rate in year 4 now with one possibly 2 to follow.
You only have two look at Ten Hag to realise what an elite manger looks like. It’s nothing like Arteta.
Good points, too, Marc.
I’m expecting our selection to be a groundhog day as far as Xhaka is concerned as a starter then the $64,000 question is will Jorginho start or replace Xhaka on 70 minutes when we’re 3 goals down or worst.
Pep wants the Title, as it might be his last in the PL. His players will want the win and overwhelm us and block off our wing play as mentioned above, so we have no outlet, let alone attack.
Hard to be optimistic about a myopic, one dimensional manager who leaves potentially our best striker; Bolagun, in France.
Let’s see what else he can cock up tomorrow evening?
Manuel Neuer looks as if he’s no longer required at Bayern after complaining about his coach being let go in an interview. Bayern are considering fining Neuer £1.4m for breach of contract or similar.
Shouldn’t we be all over this and snap up Neuer & Tapalovic his coach for 11 years?
Is Edu in hibernation now the TW is closed?
I mean he worked so hard and over excruciatingly long periods while Still missing Arteta’s targets who remain elusive to us, but not other clubs. With the amount of the Chavs registered players and new ones still to come, as Ted B squanders more cash against Manures new owners in a dick swinging competition of who can get away with spending the most under the not so eagle eyed FA, it looks like we’ll be buying Chelsea’s casts offs for seasons to come.
At least until we get a proper manager with elite being the a certified prefix to his name.
The fact that we play tomorrow then again on Saturday does create a bit of a selection conundrum for MA, in that I can’t imagine him changing our starting 11 in a home affair against our closest competitors simply so that our regular starters are well-rested for what should functionally be a much more winnable contest against Villa…this could lead to a double-whammy of sorts, as we could lose against City with our regular crew being deployed, then trip over our dicks in 3 days with a somewhat different lineup against Unai, who will be highly motivated to prove a point against his former employers…of course, our lineup is young enough that they should be able to handle playing 3 games in a week, so long as no one suffers a knock mid-week, but I’ll be very interested to see how MA manages this particular scenario…all I know is that this week just got infinitely more important due to our rather inept displays against both Everton and Brentford, which should have yielded us a minimum of 4 points…if we can only manage to get 1 or 2 points between now and Sunday, the PR machine will start pushing the nonsensical notion that top 4 was ALWAYS our ultimate objective
TRVL
We also have a 12.30 kick off on Saturday and you just know Emery would love to put one over Arteta.
I’ve noticed that several posters have made mention of how the wingnut LG brigade have been spouting off ad nauseum about the officiating conspiracy, which makes perfect sense, as I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an online article involving MA spewing the same nonsense…it’s clear that the PR department has told all it’s payola monkeys to heavily push this particular narrative, in their usual wag the dog manner…of course, if we had earned a result in the game before and ended up with 4 of 6, this banter would have been incredibly short-lived, at least from official channels…instead of beating a dead horse maybe our manager should be worrying about far more pertinent things, like how to flip our currently nnegative game script
Never hope to see Bayern Munich win,always considered them the cuckoo’s of German football,just like fergie’s utd in England, picking the best players from their rivals at will and destroying the competitiveness of the league. But I’m shouting for them here. Another PSG flop in Europe would be pleasant for those of us clinging still to the anti financial doping agenda. Have to admire how Bayern can replace Lewandowski with Choupo-Moting, Near with Sommer,lose Cancelo at ht and still dominate away to PSG. That’s a cultural/ mentality thing imo. That’s what the great clubs have. The boys wanting to turn Arsenal into victims have to remember that that is a toxic mentality and should never be encouraged no matter what the circumstances. First thing we teach young lads in the dressing room at half time is not to complain to or about refs. Their football must do the talking. If complaints need to be made let it be done in the corridors of power away from the players and management. Their only focus should be on playing well. I don’t see this siege mentality that is being orchestrated ending well because at it’s heart it is seeking to prove we are being cheated. To do that changes the mindset into an unhealthy one. I don’t like it.
Agreed Almuniasaynomore—the last thing this club needs is to go down the blame game road again, like during Wenger’s reign, as it’s never good to have a built-in excuse at your disposal
TRVL,
Yeah,mind on the game tomorrow night is what I’m looking for. As I said yesterday I really don’t see city as being anywhere near their best. Really believe we can take them if we play close to our early season form. Don’t let the focus drift away from our performance, that should be the message.
I likewise believe that City are beatable if we perform vastly better than what we’ve witnessed since the window closed, but I’m not sure that MA knows how to properly tweak things in order to achieve those ends…we probably need a few moments of individual brilliance to get us over the proverbial hump…the question then becomes who’s got it in them to rise to this challenge
3 interesting notes:
(1) City have not lost to Arsenal in a league meeting since 2015, winning the last 10 games by an aggregate score of 26-3…of course this will in no way be a determining factor in today’s fixture, but it’s definitely a painful reminder of just how poor we’ve been in matches against the best and the brightest…let’s hope we find a way to flip this script moving forward
(2) Arsenal have made just 14 changes to his starting XI across the Premier League, nine fewer than the next club Newcastle…now there’s no doubting the fact that this worked in our favour during the first half of the season, as most club’s aspire to having a settled and successful starting 11, but the real measure of a manager comes when adversity hits and adjustments need to be made…it doesn’t appear, thus far anyways, that a viable Plan B is in MA’s repertoire, unless you actually believe moving Xhaka 10 yards up the pitch counts
(3) The Norway striker has hit 25 goals in 21 league appearances since joining City in the summer but a “major knock” could see him forced to sit out the trip to Arsenal…normally if your opponent loses someone who’s potted a quarter century of goals you would be elated, but considering the fact that Pep still hasn’t quite figured out how to best incorporate Haaland into his preferred tactics, I’m not quite sure if his absence fills me with any more confidence about our chances…to be frank, it should make our task all the easier, but it could mean that Pep will stack the midfield and play keep away