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.
Tony
I agree with everything you say except you’re wrong on one thing – Liverpool win tomorrow and they go 11 points clear of us.
Had we won today and put them under pressure that could have been 5 points with a game in hand which would have put it in our own hands.
Arteta doesn’t like that – he always blows it when the pressure is on.
Our 8 goal machine*
Marc
Thanks for the correction it makes it much worse.
Wicksy
Today was a repeat of the last 3 seasons when your hero has bottled it and fucked up massively.
Now repeat after me “Arteta is a cunt and a 3rd rate manager who should be sacked”.
Tony
Its one of those you wish you didn’t have to make.
“We never get enough positive sequence of actions, one after the other, that could generate threat and momentum in the areas we want to conquer”
Get a grip you fraudulent twat of a manager…”conquest”? Really? how about you focus your energies on devising a gameplan that might actually translate into goals on the pitch and drop the whole fake-ass Sun Tzu nonsense…with.our lineup depleted for options up top and facing an opponent who’ve been vulnerable at the back all season, there was 3 potential tactical options:
(1) do the obvious and run back the final 30 of our last match…this would fool no one and enable Potter to make the necessary tactical adjustments(only Brighton has conceded less goals from crosses)…as I suggested after our last match, it’s one thing to bring Merino on late, when it’s far more difficult to make the required adjustments, and accounting for him as the expected starter
(2) make an early push and if nothing materializes slow things down with a shitload of sideways/fruitless nonsense, then look to eke out a late victory…this would likewise surprise no one and potentially leave us vulnerable on the counter at times
(3) try something fucking different that takes into account who’s actually fucking available and the tendencies of our opponent…sorry if you don’t see this as a perfect opportunity to finally earn your keep by actually fucking managing your way into a positive result, you’re in the wrong profession
personally I would have tried a 3-5-2, with wingbacks being deployed on both sides…not only do we have the requisite personnel, with our unbalanced defender-heavy squad, the Hammers were always going to sit a little deeper and look to make hay on the counter, so why not at least try to force them out of their comfort zone by inviting pressure then attacking them on the counter with a 5-wide “spread” formation, as this would provide us with some very advantageous 1 v. 1s (like having Ethan isolated on their fucking newbie Scarles)
instead we opted for a hybrid of the first two “beat a dead horse” options and paid the ultimate price…Potter must have been fucking ecstatic when he saw what we were rolling out there, especially when we were atypically docile from the hop and then tried to run our offence through a side that included a struggling Tross, the offensively-stunted Rice and our most vulnerable to the counter defender, Cala…which begs the question, when oh when will our MIT finally shed his fucking training wheels…asking for a friend
I think yesterday’s loss will be seen as the harbinger of Arteta’s departure from the club. It has to, right? Still no Director of Football, but the Kroenkes need to get Lewis and Garlick working on a new duo for the summer. We have to be nearing the stage where the cost-benefit analysis is being dusted off.
Marc – your political arguments yesterday were alarmingly weak. You usually do a little better in our exchanges. Too much Night Nurse in your morning cup of Horlicks? Maybe you’re finding the havoc being wrought across the world a little too distasteful and it’s giving you buyer’s regret…who knows? Your footballing analysis from yesterday, par contre, was as sound as ever.
Absolutely comical listening to the supporters on the radio wanting the cunt out after the game .
I think the cunts deserve each other now.
Potter who has inherited a pack of shit, wins at Arsenal again but loses to everyone else.
Watching Merino lumber around in the sunshine , brought back memories of Lee Chapman days.
Get Frank in and get this cunt out.
https://youtu.be/HXiZHXkG-ac?si=v175j10HAuHZptnM
Arteta’s rant about being, ‘really really angry’ or some such juvenile bollocks, put me in mind of this precious little lady from the execrable ‘Just William ‘ series…
For precious read precocious, although either will do.
Art – Lee Chapman. Ouch! John Hawley. Ray Hankin.
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?