Martin Odegaard won the Premier League Player of the Year award, beating young Bukayo, Ivan Toney, Harry Kane and Mitrovic. He already has 10 goals and 7 assists, captains a team which is topping the league and is in some fine form. Martin wanted to keep it short but thanked everyone, talked about how far we have come as a club and it’s great to see the club being recognised at all levels. Very excited for the future, just like all of us.
Though Bukayo missed the POTY award, he did bag the Young Player of the Year, beating Michael Olise from Crystal Palace, Martinelli, Saliba and Billy Mitchell from Millwall. It was lovely to see 3 of the 5 gunners in the list and one of them picking up. Loudest cheer was for Saka, who thanked everyone for the award, and dedicated it the children growing up in London with big dreams, called himself one of them not long ago and just showed the world how humble he is, again. This lad is a gem, not for just football.
Aaraon Ramsdale was picked for the Goalkeeper of the year, beating Raya, Leno, Kepa and Vigouroux from Leyton Orient. This should have been the easiest of the lot, Ramsdale is miles ahead of the London competition and nominations. He was honoured for his first award, aims to stay at the top for 10-12-15 years at Arsenal, hopes doesn’t get to leave.
Now, if you would have told me Mikel Arteta is going to, not only top the league in 2022-23 season after 27 games but also manage to win Manager of the Year award, I would have laughed you off. But here he is, winning it all when his competitions were Thomas Frank from Brentford, Marco Silva from Fulham, Emma Hayes who manages Chelsea women team, and Richie Wellens from Leyton Orient. Mikel Arteta was very honoured to be part of the award. Thanked his colleagues and staffs at the club and of course the supporters. It was good to see him in suit for a change!
It’s not wrong to say Arsenal dominated the London Football Award this season. And it’s just the beginning.
Hearing a 90 sec speech from Ramsdale showed how important it is for these lads to win things at Arsenal Football Club. How we have managed to build a culture where the players wants to stick with the club and define their greatness. Truth be told, we had been frustrated by the likes of RVP and Sanchez who left for what they called something bigger. These 20-24 years old wants to create bigger things at this very club, in red and white, and I love that.
I have been very critical of Mikel Arteta, I will continue to do so till he manages my club, but he deserves his appreciation for revisiting the club’s culture and motivating a group of players to give their best for the club we all love.
Cheers!
Looks like our Palace game has got more interesting with Vieira getting sacked today. Palace are now looking for his replacement, so thankfully, the chance of new manager bounce is unlikely even if a successor was found tomorrow.
Palace are on a 12 game loss run and now manager-less. Quite how this is going to affect Arteta’s game plans I have no idea?
All we have to do is be concerned about getting the 3 points and recuperating.
Caught between two schools of thought.
I understand your stance, KP, just the PL to focus all our energy on, and with City now playing Bayern over two legs, their run is going to be quite intense. Even if they get through that, they’ll probably have a two leg semi-final with Real.
It’s no secret City and Pep desperately want the CL, which could work in our favour.
On the flip-side it’s a stinger.
Because deep down, it confirms the underlying belief that Arsenal haven’t changed.
Yes it is Europe’s equivalent of the League Cup, but there is still prestige attached to winning these prizes, and Arsenal should be looking to make a statement, particularly with their piss poor record in Europe.
I don’t give Arteta any credit for his fortunate FA Cup win in 2019, it has become a fraudulent competition where PL clubs often play a full second XI. A lot of the shocks that used to provide a bit of ‘Cup’ romance and excitement have become diluted and played-down because of this very policy.
Having sacrificed the domestic Cups, it shouldn’t be beyond Arteta to do something special on the bigger European stage, and if there aren’t some soul searching questions about another abject European failure, then I don’t know if I’m supporting the right club and if I can justify my continued support.
It’s about time Arsenal came of age as a club, otherwise what’s the point of their existence!
Hi Herb
Good points. I may have sounded a bit like an apologist in that post (heaven forbid!). I think it was just an attempt to explain away the disappointment by being philosophical. I’ve also been on a high after seeing Cardiff get an equaliser against WBA on Wednesday!
You’re right of course – our best teams in the past would have challenged for and won both trophies.
I underestimated Sporting. More to the point, I underestimated their coach who prepared his team excellently.
It was palpable how much of a change TP and MO made when they came on last night. To that extent, it would have been better to start with a team resembling the one that beat Fulham, established more than a one goal lead, and then brought on the second stringers to close it out. But that’s hindsight. It all looked pretty controlled until Ramsdale let himself be Nayim’ed (I was in the parc des princes that night and went to bed last night suffering flashbacks… ).
Those fuckers that run Palace didn’t deserve PV. Calling him at 7am to tell him he’d been fired… Shoddy. An extra incentive for Arsenal to take Palace to town and for fans to sing themselves hoarse to the PV song on Sunday afternoon.
Someone creative in the club ought to be suggesting that we somehow co-opt PV into the coaching team for the final games of the season. No silly fucking hand rubbing bullshit before the game, just spelling out some home truths and what it feels like to lift the title wearing an Arsenal Jersey.
Tony
Palace are in a daze if their last few games are anything to go by. Their attacking stats are dire. Arsenal need to hit them like a train, press the beejesus out of them and establish the type of lead that will demoralise them. Fulham redux.
If CP try the kind of dirty tactics of previous years (I think however most of their thuggish players have left), respond with controlled aggression and get the ref onside.
One way in which we’re better than previous years is we seem able to put setbacks behind us more quickly. Remember during the Wenger years how we’d go on long losing runs because he and some players couldn’t stop reacting like babies? I think the psychology is better now.
I’m sure it’s only coincidence but firing PV on St Patrick’s day as well.
Almunia – if you’re reading. Slainte mhath my friend. ☘️
Does anyone know when the decision on City’s FFP charges is due?
Hi KP
I didn’t see that Blackpool result coming (QPR are a basket case, Ainsworth has a big job turning them around), but I was impressed to see your lads take a point, the stadium must have been rocking when that equaliser went in!
I think Wigan and Huddersfield drop, and Blackpool, Cardiff, Rotherham, QPR and Birmingham battle it out to avoid the last relegation spot. Cardiff have picked up a bit of decent form, so I think they’ll be ok. A worrying lack of goals, but a solid defence. A few 1-0 wins wouldn’t go amiss.
A total lack of class from Palace, I agree completely KP, PV should be offered a coaching role at Arsenal, I’m sure he has more affection from Arsenal fans than Arteta, and those who feel the need to brown nose Arteta have very short memories.
I wanted to be pragmatic about last night, but as you can see, the more I typed, the angrier I got. Of course there are pluses to going out, but big clubs who put winning above all else have no truck with ditching or sacrificing competitions, it’s why Liverpool kicked every ball last season, City are still deep in three competitions, even United still have a chance of three trophies (Lge, FA and Europa).
My personal opinion is you can only be a considered a genuinely big club if you’ve done it on the world stage, and in terms of international football, Arsenal have zero presence.
Just annoyed that we’ve been in Europe for thirty years and only have one defunct cup to show for it. We are not knocking the door and carry zero threat, absolutely no other European club fears us.
Not a good place to be.
Here is another reason why we needed to stay in the EL and try to win it and it has to do with in what pot will we be when the next CL draw takes place. Pot 1 will be the CL & EL winners as well as the winners of the top six divisions in Europe. Pots two, three and four are then determined by clubs’ UEFA coefficients.
If we win the league we are in pot 1 if we don’t win the league we are in pot 3 or 4 because our club coefficient is 23 since we were out of Europe. United’s coefficient is 7 even the Spuds are at 21. So it was essential that we stayed in the EL to improve or guarantee that we will not end up in pot 3 or 4 and now play in the group stages champions or the elite clubs of Europe. Just an additional pressure to win the league or we are fucked in next season’s CL to get out of the group stages.
Cheers Tony—when I think of Carnegie, Andrew comes to mind first and foremost, with Dale being a very distant second, rightly or wrongly, so I was struggling to make some logical connections between our earlier chats and the acronym PMA…now the fact that I had recently recommended Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which has some deep Filipino ties, combined with my knowledge of Andrew’s disdain for all things imperialism/colonialism related, which included him trying to dissuade the US gov’t from both acquiring and/or militarizing the Philipines, clearly led me to draw the wrong conclusion
as for Dale Carnegie, who’s work has received an almost equivalent amount of reverence and ridicule on this side of the Atlantic, I’ve always kept a relatively “safe” distance, likely due to the fact that his most ardent followers have always given off an institutionalized/cultish “love child” vibe…in the main, I’m a big proponent of anything commonsensical in nature, like the notion of never wasting one’s time on people whom you dislike, always counting your blessings and/or turning lemons into lemonade, even when I continuously fail to heed such seemingly logical advice, so I certainly would never intentionally slag his purportedly well-intentioned endeavours…unfortunately, by the time I entered the equation his teachings had become fodder for those who were either holier than thou or Mad Men types, who eagerly twisted his efforts for their own nefarious purposes
interesting enough I was unknowingly inundated with many of his “positive thinking habits” as my father was a straight-laced marketing bigwig during the very time period in question…he graduated with a MBA at a time when companies were desperately trying to fill their ranks with anybody they felt could properly harness the financial windfall associated with successful branding…in fact, I remember him telling me how on the eve of his graduation they sat in a massive amphitheatre where companies, many of whom would become household names shortly thereafter, would aggressively vie for their services…ironically many of the same “positive” techniques he was exposed to within the upper crust were the same one’s being peddled, some 20 years later, by door-to-door marketing weasels in their early morning “motivational circles”…having witnessed my fair share of these ritualistic circle jerk-like spectacles, I can’t even imagine the stuffed shirts of his ilk and era surviving any such encounter without having a gun to their respective heads or experiencing a coronary midway through the process…take care
Morning all
KP, I, too, was disgusted with the way PV was fired. Classless and indeed senseless.
Had Palace backed Paddy better they wouldn’t be in their current situation, so Palace just deflecting their poor financing of a squad primarily good enough to get 40+ points a season on Paddy. Connor Gallagher has been a huge loss for PV and Palace, as you’ll find his influences on Palace’s play and being in and around the goals last season made the difference.
Essentially, Gallagher needed replacing like for like. Lakonga wasn’t that player although from games we’ve watched Lakonga seems to be improving.
Looks like Woy H is being lined up as a safer relegation avoidance than PV. Palace grabbing at straws. Hope you enjoy the Cardiff game if you and junior make the trip.
TRVL, sorry I should have used the words. I forget how old I am sometimes, but not as often as I’d like. 🙂
I read “How to win friends and influence Other”s as a teen that and Sun Tzu. I had a friend and mentor in his early 30s who horrifically died of heart attack in front of me when I was 19. His GF gave me his books, so I had something of him and they have served me well. My orphan and adopted childhood was an unhappy and poor one with a father only interested in himself and garden, so I found my own role model who happened to ride Harleys.
Funny you should mention Door to Door as that is my all time favourite movie for motivating others. Macy was just brilliant: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274468/ Used it a lot in my corporate management days to stimulate a PMA in a different way. Like you, I wanted more weight behind the positivity being posted everywhere. Meaningless words if there is no reality from which to draw experience for the future or turn a negative mind round.
You have to admire Corporate America with its ruthlessness and complete disregard for any human nature nuances outside of their guidelines of: You’re only as good as your last victory.
However, in Arteta’s case KSE have been incredibly patient with Mikel and Edu, so unlike corporate billionaires of the past.
A large American hedge fund company CEO and his management minions are who we work with, so I always get to meet them talk and then leave them with my wife to deal with because women make the best negotiators, especially ones with spectrum mixes as our family has.
She is a force to reckon with and can make the biggest titled and anal corporate leaders squirm or feel comfortable or uncomfortable while keeping a perfect poise of humility and cleaning up at their global awards each year for S E Asia. She’s tough to negotiate with as she has no visible or audible tells and is limited with words unless it suits her agenda.
We tell Junior and our daughter as well as our employees come to us with solutions for problems first, not just problems that need solving. Thais are not good at thinking outside the box at times certainly less so than westerners.
Killroy-TM, what you say makes a lot of sense, but there was no way we could function well enough to be in a PL dog fight and the EL Cup. We don’t have the player resources and we’re going to have to be lucky with key injuries because of Arteta’s gambles with squad management.
Marc, I read somewhere a while ago that the alleged City financial irregularities would be dealt with at the end of this year. Click bait or true I have no idea.
Herb, also agree that big clubs win the biggest trophies, but such big clubs have infinite resources and debts that few worry about, such as Barca and Real Madrid. It shouldn’t just be City under the microscope.
Have a great weekend lads whatever you’re up to. 🙂
Tony
My anger is with the Everton Reject for repeating the mistake he made in the previous Jan TW when he got rid of players without getting cover for them and it costs us CL this season. He didn’t learn and we all knew that the squad was thin. He got players in that were not at our level or injury prone. This was not rocket science it was open to see for everyone. So he needed to address that and plan to go deep if not winning the EL to improve our coefficient and give us hope getting out of the CL group stages.
Since he didn’t do that if we finish 2nd one of these teams we will have to compete against in the group stages.
Napoli, Bayern, Real, Barcelona, PSG, Benfica.
Add to that those with a higher coefficient teams like Porto, Roma, Ajax, Inter, Dortmund, Atletico and we easily could struggle to get out of the group stages. If we would have gone deep into this season’s EL our coefficient would have improved but the chief bottler couldn’t see that far and most likely said fuck it I don’t have the squad. I fear that the possible ridicule and embarrassment is huge because of MA’s track record
Killroy-TM
Me, too, I worry about Arteta’s track record, more so with top players not wanting to play for Arteta. The history has been written where a PL crown this year would certainly garner him a higher respect. Mind you as we are relating this season to 2016, if we were to win, will Arteta go the way of the Tinker Man?
Another question that needs answering is why did he repeat the same mistake? Was it KSE not spending more than £600m+ a hindrance or was it Arteta making the decision on our title challenge season?
What would Di Zerbi do with £600M+? Brighton probably plays the best attractive football after us when we’re in irrepressible form as at Fulham.
To not win would the blame be leveled equally at the club owners, Arteta& Edu?
Even if Arteta fortuitously wins the league (similar to the FA win), it will be next season where he will be scrutinized. What we do in the CL, and the kind of defense of the title we maintain will be interesting from Arteta. Of course we’ll get he’s a CL rookie, give him a few tries.
A way to go yet, so guard your triggers for your health’s sake 🙂 , such as running out of gas for the last 20 minutes as before.
How long before we’re running on fumes because the bench isn’t good enough? Why hasn’t Bolagun been brought back?
Finally, can we win with injuries any injuries to the starting 11? Tomorrow we will find out.
Tony,
I thought the ruling was due much sooner – certainly before the end of the season purely because it affects who could be in the CL etc.
They can’t let City off it’ll be a green license to Newcastle and PSG to do whatever they like. If they give them a smallish points deduction say 4 points it’ll turn the PL into a handicap run competition – overspend by £100 million you get a 2 point deduction £200 million is 4 points but the £200 million of players will pick you up an extra 6 points so its a net win.
The rumours are that this has been pushed behind the scenes by Arsenal, Spud’s, Livepool, ManU and Chelsea etc.
Marc
Nothing would surprise me with the FA and other authorities. It’s got to stop and if we are clean of FFP then those who have bent the rules need to face the consequences.
I can’t see it going away and the press should keep it up front and center. We can only hope they face charges and are convicted.