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.
looks like MA’s still going to force action to the left side first and foremost, with Cala sitting higher and Timber starting much deeper than usual…MA can claim all he wants that he’s all in on Ethan, but his actions continually suggest otherwise…it will be interesting to see how he will be deployed once Saka has returned…I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he found himself with a far more minimized role once again, unless more injuries were to occur
we should be ultra aggresssive against this 16th place side with Bowen up top and no Paqueta, but i would suspect our blunt instrument of a manager will have us throwing 400 crosses into box in the hopes that his fake ass Merino experiment pays off…how apropos would it be if another shoehorning luxury buy became our regular Striker…only in Artetaland
Tony—enjoy your day bud
good to see some more intentional activity on Ethan’s side…you can feel the energy in the stadium rise when we start include our best offensive weapon in the build up
not sure if Potter is the kind of manager who can ween this side off Moyes’s tit..they’re so fucking negative they make Arteta seem almost Klopp-like in comparison
this Hammer’s side is so non-threatening that Gabriel has now been a wingbacker on both sides of the pitch…I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that before from him…well at least not in a league fixture
not worried about the slow start, especially with all those bench options lol
Rice proves once again why he can’t be a viable option in more advanced spaces
that’s why Cala’s not a real LB…love him going forward though…that said, I would have loved a proper forward option instead last summer
1-0 down
Rice was inadequate there, which otherwise is his better idiosyncrasy
But
Before all should have been bloy by Cala as RVL implies correctly
Same old same old from Arteta – its all just a bit flat and uninspiring. The problem today is our bench basically has no attacking options other than Sterling (has he has a good appearance for us yet?) or N. Butler-Oyedeji who’s never kicked a ball in the PL.
Drop points here and even Wicksy will have to admit Arteta’s a bottle job.
I still think we can find our way out of this rather pathetic mess if we allow Timber to play a more advanced role, have Rice sit deeper and then deploy Ethan in a more central position, so he can shoot from distance on occasion
TRVL
I think the commentators just said West Ham came into this with one win from seven – we should be able to turn it around but Arteta has a massive PTR when it comes to bottling it when there’s a chance to put pressure on the opposition.
Bowen starts the move and ends it putting it in the net, where was Rice to track him back. Bowen went box to box unchecked.
Watching from the mountains in the car
Tony
Fucking hell that’s some set of binoculars you’ve got.
Marc—you can’t let a 16th place team dictate the pace of play…there’s no one who’s more comfortable with playing a boring brand of football than the Hammers, so it begs the question why wouldn’t we put them to the sword from the off
TRVL
Don’t get me started – as I said same old same old from Arteta.
Rice has the fucking nerve to blame others for him literally running the ball out of bounds
Marc—speaking of which, the last time the Hammers conceded so many goals, at this juncture of the season, they were relegated, yet we haven’t produced a single grade A chance
TRVL
And we’ve got £110 odd million of full backs on the bench not including Skelly and only 1 striker in the entire fucking squad.
even the Hammers know how limited we are, skill position-wise, as they’re paying more attention to Ethan than they typically did with Saka on the left, which is why I said he should be played more centrally
not sure what this lineup will look like if our first subs are both LBs
The 110 mil backs coming on. What got ElB™ finally ?
If Zinchenko’s the answer I’d love to know what the question is – maybe its “what would make Liverpool fans happy”.
that’s not an injury sub, even though MA might suggest so for facing-saving purposes…fucking embarassing for someone who we paid 100+M for to be going off so early against his former side
maybe that’s our best plan, let the other team kick us in the face so we can get some set pieces
TRVL
Whatever the reason for Rice to come off surely Jorginho’s a better option than Zinchenko (who’ll now score a hatrick).
we can’t carve a chance with fucking Scarves on the pitch
Marc—I’m usually the jinxmaster, but I’ll gladly concede that moniker
imagine what Sterling must be thinking when we need goals and MA opts for Zincehnko up top instead of you
all that said, I still would be shocked if we didn’t score at least one goal, as they’re allowing us to crowd their box far too much
Game is shit.
Fortunately the Glenmorangie cherry cask is not bad