Points to prove, Emery v Arteta

Given where we were coming into the game, Villa away was the perfect fixture really. A team with ideas above its station, a coach who preaches chaotic football, and a club with an inferiority complex trying to compete with bigger boys. This isn’t the cure all but there’s certainly some positive symbolism in this victory. Dumber beat Dumb.

Hi Tony and Junior
All good mate. I hope you two enjoyed that, at least the last few minutes. I hope your cut is getting better and the stitches are out Junior. Has your Kone dancing finished for now?

All good in wild Wales. No rugby to cause any extra heartbreaks. I’m going to watch the Toffees against Leeds – it’s funny how you get a burst of enthusiasm after a win!!!

Hi K’phobe
Started to really enjoy the when Xhaka was subbed.

The Kone dance was just a one evening show. I asked Ambarish to send you a few pics of Junior in full flow on the vast stage. If that’s ok with you.

All stitches are out now or dissolved so Junior is feeling better movement in his hand. He’s got finals in 2 weeks so mad at his work.

Enjoy the Leeds game.

survived some squeaky bum times, but this should have been a 3 point result no matter as this Villa team was the poorest defensive unit we’ve faced all season…like you, Tony, there’s nothing I enjoy quite as much as seeing Xhaka going off the pitch, but if we don’t become considerably more clinical in front of goal there will be some tough times ahead…here’s hoping that when Partey returns MA will try Trossard in Xhaka’s spot with Marts out wide, but I’m certainly not holding my breath…fun game to watch though, if you were a neutral observer

Happy days city drawing with about 10 minutes to go.

such a game of fine margins, considering Ramsdale’s save on Bailey, that hit off the bar, and Jorginho’s strike that turned into a rather fortuitous own goal…I’m not quite sure what positives to take from this affair, minus the obvious, as I feel like we could have been undone if Villa had the horses to play in the 2nd half the way they had in the first…of course, things would have been really dicey around the club if we had been held to a single point, as that would have meant that we had only secured 2 of a possible 12 points in our last 4 matches…so I guess everyone can briefly exhale, if nothing else, then get back on the training ground and practice our GD shooting LOL

City dropping 2 points today typifies their bland form robotic football where De Bruyne had an off day at the office.

Ambarish I’ll have to let some of your positive sauce soak in. You called it right today and us staying in the title race.

🙏🙏

Ambarish

Great little pre-game piece. And timed to perfection (although I reckon you were a last minute guy when you were submitting your work at school and university – nothing wrong with that of course! 😅) I agree with Tony that you’re now the master prognosticator or so I’m handing over to you. I was thinking it’d be a narrow 1-nil to us, but I’d rather forgotten about Emery and his chronic defence-o-phobia. It felt like the game was open right from the off with both teams taking it to the other.

The Emi-carom was wonderful, made better by the fact that it hit his forehead rather than the back of it. That’ll stay in the memory for a while – although it would have been even better if Jorginho had got in his face after scoring and mimicked that trophy-fucking gesture Emi pulled off (fnarr fnarr) at the WC.

City, Chelsea, BHA and the barcodes imploding. And all my other teams won this weekend.

I’d forgotten Forest Gump (aka Tom Wanks) was in the crowd today. Well, by 2. 45, I think that wooden bullshit actor had to conclude that, like life, football us not a bowl cherries. 🍒🍒🍒

Check Emery’s interview on match of the day. He’s clearly furious with Martinez for going up for that corner before the 4th goal.

Sitting back in my office at home this morning and just thinking over my torrid love affair I’ve had with The Arsenal, which will become 60 years later this year. Of course I missed Herbert Chapman the original Wenger if you like who innovated us and our football.

First, I only had a transistor radio and the odd newspaper, then a 10″ B&W TV and many years later a colour TV that was about 16 inches. That was over a course of about my first 10 years supporting the club. I grew up impoverished compared to most others. I’m not complaining as adversity was my motivation and still is in a way. It motivates me to help people who work hard to help themselves in other words; winners in the making or with life’s games in progress, because after all, life is a game.

I feel Ambarish you are good for my football soul by my not getting too cynical and to give deeper thought to your Arsenal beliefs here, as our hopes are equally the same. Time swerved as a fan does not make a fan more or less important in the club’s and fans eyes’.

It only exists on LG.

I was able to reason my cynicism on LG by supporting the club and squad. The club I feel let us down during the last 2 Jan TWs along with Arteta and Edu. We’ve are struggling because of this, and Arteta has to use a reactive gambling process with player choices and keeping to a predictable set of tactics.

Apparently, Pep went too Notts Forest with 4 game plans yesterday no less. Maybe if he’d had 5 he would have got the points, and oh, how I do like to see Kyle Walker bitching this morning; so refreshingly cool for such a player I dislike on and off the pitch.

Last year I was convinced we had the players to gain a CL birth. That was my target for last year for Arteta’s tenure at the time.

This season I expected a protracted charge on the title I didn’t expect a win but 2nd or 3rd while establishing our credentials in the EL cup by winning it.

I also didn’t expect the top 6 to falter at various times often in unison to pave the way for our PL summit assault or 2016 to repeat itself. I did, however, expect a disheveled season because of the World Cup that always has a distracting way about it, as players motivations change leading up to and throughout the WC.

We won yesterday simply because Xhaka wasn’t on the pitch.

Jorginho slows us down, but he’s such an intelligent player especially in his false 10 plays. Xhaka not only slows us down, but he impedes Martinelli and Trossard on the left or anywhere he finds himself on the pitch.

The fact that we were able to maintain pressure in their final third after Xhaka’s departure, and be in a position to shoot and score our 3rd goal that really won us the game says so much about Xhaka’s limitations. Marts goal was just pure banter at Emi. 🙂

I have a deliriously happy undercurrent running through me today.

My dislike of Arteta and his touchline juvenile tactics sending the wrong optics to players and millions watching is all too well known. Equally, I detest Xhaka as a player (I say this word loosely) and even more as a footballer.

I’ll admit I was too hasty to add Jorginho into Xhaka’s bracket, but I’m happy to be wrong about any negatives I write if they are proven wrong.

There’s still a long way to go where Manure City and L’pool could very well go on a run of wins as we could.

Whoever does will win the PL. For my age and health I hope it’s us.

Enjoy the weekend.

time served*

we’ve been*

even more as a person*

so what did we learn and not learn in today’s game

firstly, we will never be a defensive juggernaut so long as we deploy a rather plodding midfield and encourage our backs to play in more advanced positions, which isn’t the end of the world so long as we continue to press well and shore up our almost laughable finishing

secondly, MA’s appears to be having a bit of a rethink when it comes to Xhaka’s seemingly automatic inclusion, from start to finish, in each and every game…so what might this mean going forward? probably not that Trossard will play in his place, thus leaving Marts out wide, but maybe just maybe in the summer we might finally find a proper replacement

thirdly, Jorginho is still a much tidier player than Xhaka, but he’s ill-suited to be sitting deep as the sole DM…he was awright tonight, but his involvement in the game-winning goal clearly skewed the narrative a tad…he was largely at fault for their second goal, but he did supply a nice bit of service later in the game that we failed to take full advantage of, so it was a bit of a mixed bag…the last thing we need is to artifically prop-up a player that’s clearly inferior to our regular starter, as we don’t want to plant any unnecessary seeds in MA’s brain, much like with Trossard and Marts

finally, when we failed to acquire a seminal piece in the window, I immediately lowered my expectations a bit, so I’m not convinced that we’ll finish in 1st or even 2nd…that said, I do think that this is the kind of season where the inconsistencies of others could not only keep us firmly in the mix, it could be our ticket to ride…as such, anytime we get a chance to positively impact our goal differential we must not fail to take it, just like today when we scored late…it might seem insignificant now, but it might be vitally important come a month and a half from now…regardless, massively important 3 points today

Hi Tony
I think it’s worth having another look at their second goal. For me, the entire team was at fault (although White’s positioning was especially dire). The front three were half heartedly pressing while the defence and midfield had retreated. So with one pass our first line of defence was breached and, collectively, all three just jogged back expecting a turnover. Chaos and disarray followed ending in Ramsdale diving the wrong way. Their first was eerily similar with Saliba and Ramsdale particularly lax. Ramsdale is worrying me. He seems to struggle with getting down for low shots.

A rare come from behind win. But the boys looked tired and defensively clueless at times. Like I said, Villa away was the perfect fixture for us yesterday. Gracias Unai!

TRVL
Good points there mate. The stars seem to have aligned for us this year I agree. How City didn’t fell Forest after seeing those chances of theirs I’ll never know.

The Kroenkes may be too stupid /inexperienced to see all this good favour that has come our way. But if they have, and the tetchy, petulant man in the oh so perfect black jumper on the touchline doesn’t deliver, then let’s hope they buy him a one way Ryan Air ticket to Barcelona in the summer. One can but dream…

Hoopah and Divyanshu – what did you two make of the game? I assume you’ve both just about got your heart rates back under control. ♥️

TRVL and Tony
And I agree with you that yesterday’s game represents an even clearer requirement for Tets to join the dots about Xhaka’s present and future. He’s already slipped down the pecking order behind Jorginho (who was terrific in the second half!) in the ponderous midfielder department.

Hi K’Phobe
Agreed I said at the time to junior asking him where Xhaka and Jorginho were? They’d both gone walk about up the final 3rd.

I’m happy for Jorginho to play the Xhaka role with Partey relegating Xhaka to the bench. Problem is Jorginho is Arteta’s new shiny toy. As TRVL said for this game the goal papered thinly over the cracks.

For Leicester’s away trip, I’d like to see Jacob Kiwior at 6, Ode at 10 and Trossard at 8. so we have a quicker more mobile midfield. Zinch and Tomi at FBs. At least it’s a Plan B and not something Rogers would be expecting.

Revert back to type by all means once we have a 2 goal cushion.

Shockingly, that would be all our key players playing in their most comfortable positions.

Shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?

Everyone’s pretty much covered the match yesterday – the score line flattered us but to me at least it really does look like a repeat of 15/16 with all the top teams dropping points when you really don’t expect them to.

Arteta fucks this up and he should be sacked but you know he won’t.

Hi Tony
That midfield combination only if TP is still injured I guess.

There could be one hell of a catty menage-a-trois falling out if Xhaka gets the sense he’s being jilted by tets for a flashier Italian gigolo (or gigolinho). There ought to be a middle way which involves trusting players and rotating when necessary but he’ll never do that because he’s very insecure and short termist.

I like your enthusiasm for the polish Granit doppelganger but I suspect we won’t see much of him esp if the aforementioned Partey comes back. I assume he will get some u23 action first. And maybe not even in the EL because the intensity and difficulty of those games are about to ramp up by a factor of five. I hope the club’s position is, that as things presently stand, we’ll go all guns blazing for both trophies. 🏆🏆

Only 15 games to go in the PL.

Hi Marc
Too true. I guess you were seeing the same thing as me as the second half wore on. Either a 2-2 with loads of wasted chances or Villa nicking the winner on a break.

I think that may be to do with our collective memory loss when it comes to the worst aspects of Emery. Villa we’re sitting far too deep for Jorginho’s combo goal with Martinez. Fair dos that he got such a shot off but there was no one trying to shut him down. It was a great time to play Emery’s Villa at their place.

Right, short one today. It’s Saturday evening, sun is still visible and I am off to a place where they are playing it on a big screen.

Ambarish
Sounds like a cool place to watch the game. What was the venue like? Was it full of Gooners? Have you moved to Delhi now?

Changing tack. I’m off next weekend with one of the twins to Norwich (a fine city as they like to call it) to see if the Bluebirds can win their third in a row. And Rotherham next month. Watching away games in the spring – it doesn’t get any better than this.

Manure being saved by De Gea at Maure.

They will tough at home to beat.

Hi Tony

Remember that 70s pop duet called Sparks? Two American brothers Ron and Russell Mael. A pair of properly odd geezers.

This town ain’t big enough for the both of us
And it ain’t me who’s gonna leave…

Well that Manure player Sabitzer reminds me of a hybrid of each of them and a certain Charlie Chaplin. Fuck, they’ve scored!

Anyway, a harmless ditty to brighten your evening.
https://youtu.be/eUJ_ifjKopM

Did you ever meet them professionally?

Hi K’phobe
I remember Sparks and the first song and their biggest hit I seem to think. They were probably more on the gay circuit. YTo be fair This town ….. was a good song another gay outfit were the Comunards. Others Erasure, Bronski Beat and the queen of queens Culture Club.

I appreciated the music just not the demanding bitches singing. 🙂 So, I steered clear: hetro stars were bad enough, K’phobe.

I’m trying to decide if that temporary Spurs Manager is uglier than poor old Steve Cooper at Forest.

ten Hag has delivered exactly how I had anticipated and, at present, they’re the best team going…of course, any discussions of this nature are highly fluid, but let’s hope City continues to struggle with consistency or we could have 2 title challengers in our rearview…I so wish that we had opted for him, as he appears to have more football nous in his pinky etc…now they’ve benefited greatly from the “resurrection” of Rashford, which certainly couldn’t have been predicted, but Hag isn’t the kind of individual who would knowingly look a gift horse in the mouth…this is just another reason why we needed to get that window just right, as I fear what might be on the horizon, with free spenders like Chelsea, who’s got too much talent not to figure it out, City, enough said, Newcastle and United, who with a new owner in place might up the ante, from an investment standpoint, plus Pool, who will almost assuredly reinvent their wheel so long as Klopp is patrolling their sidelines…this feels like our most commonsensical opening, as things should get exponentially tougher in the coming seasons, so the question remains, what do we do with our rather fortuitous gift horse

btw the only reason I didn’t include Spurs in the title contending equation is that when Conte leaves a club, which will likely happen come season’s end, his former teams tend to be worse off than when he arrived

on a side note, upon rewatching our Villa match, we’re rather fortunate that Coutinho can’t seem to play a full 90 anymore, as we could have quite easily left with 1 point or less…he seems to have a knack for punishing teams who’s midfielders allow him to have space and time in and around the box…thankfully that wasn’t the case yesterday