Before we begin with our business, here’s some interesting things that has happened around the world of football. Madrid and Mbappe humbled the great Pep Guardiola and Erling Haaland. Aston Villa made sure Liverpool lost 2 very important points at this stage of Premier League. We won, thanks to a double from Mikel Merino, against Leicester and things are looking a wee bit better at the moment. Lets dive into it.
Liverpool dropping points against Aston Villa has put us back into the mix. We are 8 points behind them with a game in hand against West Ham. And they have to play Man City away next. If things go our way and City decides to take Madrid’s revenge against Arne, we can bridge that gap to 5 points with a game in hand. To top it off, the next to next game of Liverpool is against Newcastle so yeah, lets hope the stars align.
We have been given several lifelines throughout this season, and the season before and we have always failed to capitalise. We can fix it by winning our game against West Ham. We must remember that we will visit Anfield in the last stage of the league, and we need to make sure that we accumulate as much as points as possible. If it goes down to getting a win at Anfield, that lot can make it very difficult for us.
Champions League – Round of 16
The draw for round of 16 is today, 11 AM English time. As we finished third, we could only play against the winners of PSV v Juventus or Milan v Feyenoord. PSV eliminated Juventus on a 4-3 aggregate while Milan lost Feyenoord in a penalty shootout. That narrows it down either PSV or Feyenoord for us. Considering that there’s Bayern, Madrid, PSG in the mix – I am sure every one of us will be happy with our next fixture.
If we managed to win against one of the Dutch sides, we will be facing one of the Madrid, Bayern, Leverkusen, and Atletico in Semis – so yeah, round of 16 is the easiest one we could get. Road ahead will be much tougher.
Injury List
Ben White is back. That’s some relief in the defence considering we were walking on a thin line and had to reach out to a 17 old MLS to save us. MLS has been very impressive though keeping Calafiori on the bench.
Tomiyasu finally went for the knee surgery. I was cheering for that lad because he was very good defensively, was a work machine and had those runs in him but the injuries has not let him play at Arsenal. Unfortunately, he won’t be back before the summer window, just like Jesus and we are stuck with 2 players costing us 350k+ / week wages for the rest of this year.
Martinelli and Havertz are still far away from a return, so we have very limited options upfront. Nwaneri is holding one side, Trossard the other and we discovered a CF in Merino. Sterling has been so poor, we needed to move a CM in front of the goal, and he scored 2 in 30 min. It sums up our problems in the attack.
Arsenal financials
Not that it’s my money or I am too concerned, but we did well financially this year. Thanks to the Champions League money and finishing 2nd in the Premier League, we have managed to lessen our losses. Our revenue increased by 31%, broadcasting revenue increased, profit on player sales increased, and we didn’t need to spend 18m GBP for letting players leave. Even after all these, we made a 18m GBP loss, thanks to the increase in wages from 234m to a whooping 328m. We had renewed some contracts (Martinelli, Saka, Ben White) and we brought in players on higher wages. It’s still okay, if we shed some of it in the summer. Zinchenko is a candidate, Tierney will leave and lets see what else happens.
Having a positive net spend on transfer means we will have money to spend in summer. Mikel and the club already confirmed they want to keep the money for the summer and for the right person. That’s a positive for the next season, while we manage with Merino as our local Mbappe.
Right, that’s me done. I hope I didn’t miss anything. I will be back with the match day blog tomorrow. Hope you are having a good time.
Oh, while I’m thinking about shite forwards we’ve had, I wonder what it was that attracted the formerly good looking prior to plastic surgery TV presenter Lesley Ash to the moderately wealthy failed footballer Lee Chapman.
Add Sanogo to that list…just for fun.
Kroekephobe
Fucking John Hawley that’s the cunt, Merino really reminded me of yesterday.
Merino made Hawley look like Mbappe at times yesterday.
This cunt has spent nearly a billion and we are have reverted to this.
I have given up being angry with the cunt, just going to take the piss from now on.
How’s his dog?
Time for a name change.
“I think yesterday’s loss will be seen as the harbinger of Arteta’s departure from the club.”
At some point even the most rabid Arteta fans have got to acknowledge that he bottles it when a pressure game comes along every season and throws away the chance to put / keep the PL destiny in our own hands.
Win yesterday and Liverpool losing today would have put us 5 points behind them with a game in hand and a trip to Liverpool. We’ll never know if Slot and Liverpool would have cracked under the pressure but you have to apply the pressure to find out.
Its now 3 consecutive seasons where its happened at what point will the Kroenke’s decide enoughs enough?
No goals from corners they have dried up.
Never in a million years will come close to scoring from an indirect free kick. Hell we won’t even get over the wall. Open play is all rigid backwards and sidewards with no one ready to play through the center. Nobody makes runs , dribbles with the ball takes on defenders. Ode just keep playing the same passes very orchestrated with defenders being able to defend eyes closed.
On the other end one decent counter and a cross is enough to open our defence. Rice is utterly useless and doesn’t know what he needs to do. If we are not in shambles I don’t know what is not. MA copied Pep and both of them are in a crises due to their extremely regimented constipated football. It’s the worst football that I have watched Arsenal play in all 25 yes I watched us.
New post.