I am not really a fan of Mikel’s animated behaviour at the touchline. Arsene Wenger ruined us all with his perfect fit suits and the red tie, and used to be the calm and composed figure on the touchline. Arteta on the other hand, is totally opposite to that. Micromanagement often ends with the shouting on the touchline and trying to control every aspect of the game from the manager box.
At times, it’s frustrating to watch that but it wasn’t last night. You know why? Because Klopp isn’t a messiah and he has done the same to us at Anfield. You get what you deserve.
Does this look familiar?
I am sure Jamie Carraghar loved it when we lost at Anfield and Klopp did it for 15 minutes. Though, he is having a mental breakdown on Twitter now because Arteta did the same and because Martin Odegaard, a 25 year old decided to click a picture of a staff who has supported the club before he was born. After a WIN. At HOME. As a COURTESY.
So, yeah. Both Jamie and Klopp can fuck off because what goes around comes around.
Right, just wanted to get that off my chest first. If you want to have a laugh, don’t forget to check you know who on Twitter.
3-1 against Liverpool is always a thing to celebrate. Even after a loss, they still top the table so it’s not like we are beating a 11th position Chelsea (lol).
The first half was our usual self. We started well, scored one and then missed a few. A messy own goal made it 1-1 and some of us thought it’s going to be the same old story where we are going to regret the missed chances and the goal we gave. However, Martinelli forced an error out of VVD and Alisson and Trossard came from the bench to score another one.
Win keeps us in the title race. City has played 2 less games and of course they will make life tough for everyone else. There’s going to be 15 very important weeks for our lads, and there will be slip ups. Aston Villa / Tottenham are going to create problem, Man United is picking up their form, West Ham / Brighton can win against any opposition on their day.
The winner is going to be decided by ‘who manages the least fuck ups’.
Another sign that we have a brain dead talent spotting and transfer crew. Savinho Brazilian starlet about to be signed by City for 30mil. Where were our scouts and wheeler and dealers plus Edu? Instead they put money on Viera who is useless and helped Chelsea with the PSR financial issues by signing what they perceived to be Kai Bergkamp.
When Arteta was a mere coach Edu had more responsibility and made some OK signings such as Gabriel and Partey. Now galaxy brain is involved and the duds continue to walk in through the revolving door.
Arteta may have been licking Raul’s arse at the time but to agree to Cedric, Willian and re-signing of two trouble makers should have been sackable.
I wonder what Stan thinks about his decision to give Josh more power.
Fucking Villa look like an Irish Pub team with no clue what to do on the pitch, no urgency, giving the ball away at will and are shambolic to the max. A very frustrating game to watch and here I pay for ESPN+ to watch such a shitty match.
Norg—if Pedro were a porn star he would kick the fluffer out of the room and instead ask for a full length mirror and Jergens bottle…I guess i better be careful with my words or he might try to excommunicate me from this blog too
Marquinhos another failed signing by Edu is going back to Brazil. You can’t make this shit up with all the failed signings that are at best average but more likely poor.
Any thoughts on this lads?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13061707/Football-set-hand-referees-BLUE-CARD-new-colour-card-widely-used-50-years-revolutionary-new-rules.html
Refs will soon need to carry a brief case for their cards. Perhaps the players can be instructed to wear a barcoded tag and the refs can scan them.
Also it opens the way for more corruption and match fixing. I am all for more automatic or semi automatic decisions like the offside rule. In the EPL you need a ball that has the electronics in it. Seria A has the Adidas ball which does have the tech. The EPL uses the Nike ball which does not have the tech, therefore we wait eons of time to draw the lines to come up with a decision.
Respect is earned and the refs are doing their best to not earn it. Why did no one dare to confront Collina, because he had earned the respect of the players. Why do rugby players respect the decisions of the refs? If not, their team will be disadvantaged by marching the ball 10 yards closer to the try line or sit in the sin bin. The refs in rugby are not surrounded by players like in the EPL, the captain does the talking because they know better. It is a football player thingy.
Killroy-until the PL is willing to have a honest conversation about the state of VAR and the reasons why they chose to pursue a different course than other footballing/sports leagues, they will never get things right…it would be different if those other plans had failed in a somewhat similar manner, but it’s clear that the PL has adopted the most divisive video review format of any sport I can thnk of, so it begs the question, why??? to continue down this path, regardless of any proposed minor changes, will simply lead people to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that something nefarious is going on behind the scenes
Problem – Ref’s are fucking useless and are getting even simple decisions wrong and damaging a multi billion pound product.
Response – introduce VAR and put the same useless cunt ref’s in charge of it.
And people wonder why it doesn’t work.
after a blue card – what next – pink for over celebrating and a rainbow card for excessive use of colourful language, and perhaps turquoise for diving .
While I appreciate what the blue card would hopefully eliminate, it will not work unless you stop the clock, which would not be a bad idea anyhow. Imagine a blue card is issued and then during that 10 minute interval VAR has a brain fart and takes 5 minutes to check for an offside situation. Totally a just ludicrous idea the blue card. Get the VAR, handball rule and issuing of yellow and red cards sorted then introduce something more complex.
Unfortunately football authorities and officials do not have the brain capacity to think outside the box. New rules and regulations coupled with new operating procedures always seem to come in a glass half full.
Norg-I want to agree with your “brain capacity” offering, but it’s not so simple because tried and tested measures already exist, yet they’ve refused to implement them…as such, it really makes you wonder what’s behind their rather inexplicable stubbornness…is it something financial in nature or something more unsavory? there’s always been a sense that certain teams have been afforded a more favoured status when it comes to the officiating side of things, long before the introduction of VAR, so maybe they’ve maintained this much more rudimentary review system so that these inherent biases can be sustained…in the main, I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist/rabbit hole type of guy, but when certain obvious changes are continually ignored, it does raise some serious red flags for me
TRVL
It does make you wonder how much is swept under the carpet and hidden from view. There must be hundreds, thousands of conversations after every game especially if your team is on the wrong end of blatant refereeing ‘mistakes’.
It took years to expose Saville & Co – they were being protected by the authorities – it may be the case game officials and footballing authorities are in cahoots.
Blue Cards would make the game more negative – its like the Golden Goal in extra time the idea was that it would make teams go for the kill because it guaranteed a win when it had the opposite effect of making teams overly cautious because one mistake and the tie was lost.
Blue Cards would just see a team stick 9 men behind the ball to see out the sin bin.
Good evening all very happy to see The Toffees sticking to their stifling City’s play with 70 minutes gone and no shot on target for City. KDB is on.
Finally, we can get the 6-Nations here so happy days for me.
Tough test away to West Ham tomorrow on at a decent time.
2 really great 6-nations games to savor tonight and lucky they don’t clash with our game.
Ah well one shot on target by City and one nil. Everton have worked hard.
Really entertaining Scotland France game. It’s very close and I expected more From France. Still time but Scotland at home are always tough to beat.
Tony and Kilroy
Watching the to and fro between the ref and the box. That has to be a try right?
Fucking bullshit. You can see the G on the Gilbert ball while it’s on the ground. VAR fucks up in rugby for a change. That’s just wrong.
Imagine if Arteta was Gregor Townshend
Hi KP I was pissed about that too the Scots can feel aggrieved. The England game is fun too.
The atmosphere at Murray Field and Twickenham was absolutely fantastic even though the results didn’t go my way. But it looks like the Irish have again GS written all over this Six Nation’s tournament.
Arteta is being labeled by Pedro and his choir of delusionals as generational. What would you call a manager that comes to a club in 2022 and arrests the sliding to relegation by steadying the ship. The following season is unbeaten in 31 games and sits on top of the league by 5 points?
.
If you call Xabi generational, than what doe that make Arteta? Master of cone setters, Pep’s gimp, eternal apprentice or just fucking useless? Just one question, would Xhaka want to return to Arsenal? Yeah I didn’t think so.
Killroy
If Arteta is so good then why are the Spuddies who have a new manager, have spent very little money and lost their best player and Captain in the summer within touching distance of us? Emery is we were told useless but is 3 points behind again having spent nothing in comparison to Arteta who also inherited over a quarter of a billions pounds worth of talent on top of what he’s spent?
Last season was a reverse blip – Arteta’s very lucky to be operating in a world where Chelsea and ManU are both way off their usual performance levels.
Marc-your “inherited” point is an important one…not too dissimilar from the NFL in recent years, where teams will draft starting QBs then undergo a complete rebuild while he’s on a team friendly contract, it’s imperative that footballing clubs, like ours, take full advantage of the very situation you’re speaking of…for several years our best young players were vastly underpaid, considering their respective contributions, and even when they were given considerable raises, they still saved us a bloody fortune, as adding players of their ilk would have cost us an almost unthinkable sum in the transfer market
most managers aren’t afforded the luxury of both inheriting that many blue-chippers and having the financial capacity to invest heavily each off-season…unfortunately, as a result of MA’s poor/settling recruitment practices, we just might have missed our best chance “window”…expensive half-measure purchases like White, Ramsdale, Jesus, Zinchenko, Vieira and even Tross, were never going to be enough and they likewise hurt our ability to properly redress the very positions they currently or once occupied
even this off-season we functionally shot ourselves in the foot, yet we spent at an unprecented level…if we had pursued a readymade Xhaka upgrade, Rice and and properly addressed our Striker position, instead of paying above the number for the underwhelming Havertz, we’re likely talkng about being ahead of schedule, rightly or wrongly, and not kicking the can down the road again with all the nonsensical “all part of the process” garbage
finally, if he were a “generational” manager he would have looked across the sporting landscape and implemented a far more effective squad-building model, especially considering our particular set of circumstances…instead he simply rolled out his version of Wenger’s post-Highbury “second best” model, which was never truly about winning at the highest of levels, but doing just enough to stay relevant…it’s really a shame because if he was simply the coach and he had a Dein-like mentor/partner in crime, we might be in the top 3 conversation, from a European perspective, as the latter individual would have almost assuredly targeted players who would find a way move the needle in spite of MA’s obvious tactical shortcomings
TRVL
Arteta has somehow managed to get away with being able to convince the Board and a large section of fans that being in a permanent position of always needing 2 or 3 players to have the squad he needs – fortunately the fans seem to be losing patience with this, the board I just don’t know.
The atmosphere in the stadium last week at half time after Liverpool equalised was highly agitated – 20 minutes into the second half a guy who sits near me take was “whatever he said to them at halftime isn’t working”. Liverpool was really poor last week but it still took 2 pieces of really bad keeping / defending for us to get back in front and then take a 2 goal lead.
The football this season is really hard work to watch – we may have pulled off some really good results but the performances don’t get close to matching the results and we’ve had some piss poor results as well.
Whilst I’m not suggesting today is the right match to do it is Saka ever going to be rotated and given even 60 minutes on the bench?