In the words of Peaky Fucking Blinders, we have got a curse. Call it The Emery Curse, or the Emi’s, but we have one.
Last season, in the first game against Villa, we lost 1-0 after they scored in 07th minute and we never recovered. They were coming off of a win at City and they beat us. We did create some chances later on but never converted it. In the home game, we lost 0-2 when we conceded both goals in last 10 minutes. We were just 2 points behind Man City with 6 games to go, and a loss to Villa confirmed our title challenge was over. We needed a win so much at that point and they denied us. I hate them more than Spurs these days. The two losses costed us the title at the end.
Anyways, it’s a new season and a new fight. We take on Aston Villa at Villa Park today in a 5.30 evening kick off.
In the team news, there would be some surprises. Fabio Vieira is most likely going back to Porto on a loan so won’t feature today. Tomiyasu and Tierney remains unavailable due to injuries. We are most likely going ahead with the same team that featured against Wolves. A back 4 of White, Gabriel, Saliba and Zinchenko; a midfield of Partey, Rice, and Odegaard; a front 3 of Saka, Havertz and Martinelli. I would love to see Timber in place of Zinchenko starting today though, he is one for the future and improves our left side by a margin. Martinelli hardly gets any support from Zinchenko and that’s the difference between the outputs of him and Saka.
Gabriel Jesus is also not available as the rumours goes.
Mikel Arteta had to say this in the pre-match conference yesterday,
on how big of a test Villa away is so early in the season:
It’s one of the toughest places to go for sure. We know that, we’ve prepared really well to understand what we have to do to go there and win the game.
on the importance of getting a result against Unai Emery personally:
Personally? I don’t do things personally, I just have the will to win and prepare the team in the best possible way, regardless of who we are playing against.
source: Arsenal.com
It’s tough because we lost both games against Villa in the best season of Mikel Arteta. For the Unai Emery question, Mikel is fooling everyone including himself. He would have sleepless nights thinking how Emery got the better of him and I am hoping he has an answer to that today.
There are some things happening in the transfer window. Forest looks really interested in Eddie Nketiah and we have rejected a £25m and Forest will agree for £30m me thinks.
Fabio Vieira is going on a loan to Porto (from where we got him 2 years back). This one is a strange move, because we have sold ESR already and we would be left with only Odegaard as an attacking mid with no back up or competition. There are talks that the management is very impressed with Ethan Nwaneri and he would deputize Odegaard.
Merino deal is almost confirmed, he will be joining us from Real Sociedad for a £28m free. I have not seen much of him, but we know Rice is more of a #6 and we needed a #8 after Mikel decided to shift Kai up top.
We have also rejected a Wolves move for Aaron Ramsdale on loan + option to buy. We are in a favor of a permanent move for Aaron, and we have already decided a replacement in Joan Garcia from Espanyol.
Hardly a week left, there would be some chaos at the end, lets see how it pans out for us.
Right, that’s all for today. See you during the game.
Be interesting to hear Marc’s thoughts from ring side
Villa v LCFC is end to end fun football
KP—I knew you wouldn’t let me down with your unabashedly honest take of our manager and his amateur hour transfer practices
what a limped dick first-half performance and if it weren’t for Dunk gifting us one, we likely would have lost this affair…both sides had some slear-cut chances, most notably Saka’s two footer that he should have potted, after a rare good cross by Havertz, and Ayari’s failure to lift his head, when Raya was down and out…Havertz actually looked like a Striker for a brief moment when he finished that dink-over, as that was by no means a given considering his propensity to get things wrong in front of goal….as for the Rice red, it will always seems a tad harsh in light of the action taken and the time of the infraction, but he should no better….maybe he would have gotten away with it if he hadn’t gone down so theatrically, which seems to be an all-too-common practice during MA;s reign…ultimately I think we were saved by the fact that their junior high coach not only waited too long to bring on Adingra and Enciso, but he likewise took off the only player who seemed willing and able to take on players, Mitoma…all in all, it was poor managing by both sides today
so to sum up the events of the day, we lost Rice for our away Spurs match, Timber appears to be a bit of a wafer thin mint, our supposed big-time midfield signing is caught on camera looking like a slinged-up bitch and Ode took a knock that seemed to impact his performance from that point forward…all I know is that City would have taken that match at home even if they had 9 men on the pitch, as that BHA backline is dangerously slow and their stagnant movement in our final third would have been easily sussed out by Pep…I guess it made sense from a karma perspective, considering how we misplayed that whole fucking window…If Arsenal were a stock and I were a stockholder, I would be looking to sell
Ipswich Town vs Fulham.
Looks like ESR has succumbed to his junk food predilection. Looked pedestrian and is rightly taken off.
Leno has vastly improved his play off his foot. Used to look confused over here. But kicking is still not accurate
On point post TRVL, I added my comments during the game with it being slow in case KP was on the road. Rice will be a big miss against the Spuds away. Who comes in Jorginho? I said a couple of days ago Ode getting injured derails our season as we only have Nwaneri as his deputy.
With Ode being our only creator it’s just a matter of time before rotational fouling breaks him for a few weeks. I agree Timber is looking a different player this season and not suited to LB: should be played in his preferred RB.
I think El B has finally fcuked himself royally where injuries will come to bite him for the last time, where TWs were his major downfall with Edu as well. Both are culpable.
2 shaky wins and a drab draw does not make us look a title chasing side.
LCFC play chaos football under Cooper and will run us ragged, as they almost did Villa today. Another potential banana skin home and away.
Hi All
It strikes me that Arteta is on the horns of a self inflicted dilemma, namely a critical shortage of midfielders.
Rice – suspended for 2 (?) games
Merino – the second coming of Steven Morrow
Vieira – loaned back to a team that has already ripped the fuck out us once.
ESR – doing well on the other side of London
The answers? Jorginho, a rejuvenated Sterling as a box to box midfielder (yes I am taking mind bending drugs), an arguably disaffected Reiss Nelson, Nwaneri, Lewis-Skelly,Arteta or even Edu coming out of retirement. Any other ideas?
I was amazed. Amazed, amazed, amazed because of how inconsistent decisions can be,” he said.
“In the first half, there are two incidents and nothing happens. Then, in a non-critical area, the ball hits Declan, he turns around, he doesn’t see the player coming and he touches the ball. By law, he can make that call, but then by law he needs to make the next call, which is a red card so we play 10 v 10. This is what amazed me. At this level it’s amazing.”
Whereas I’m only ‘amazed ‘ that he ever became our manager. Fucking knob.
What’s the opposite of amazed I wonder. Unsurprised? Underwhelmed? Unmazed? He’s sooo amazingly embarrassing.
Tony
Not sure I agree with you about Leicester. They are properly piss.
Imagine the nasally bunged up, greasy hippy Neil from the young ones saying that Arteta quote.
KP—you know as well as I that this whole blame game is nothing new in North London…Wenger loved to use this wag the dog, low hanging fruit ploy, as he always knew it would find widespread support amongst his loyalists…now Arteta has taken up the cause, which he undoubtedly feels shields him from blame…is he so self-absorbed that he doesn’t understand that any manager on most any given evening can offer up a similar officiating critique? it will be interesting to see how this week unfolds, especially leading up to our Spurs affair
KP & TRVL
I only see LCFC as annoying, I can’t stand Vardy, but he does get in defenders faces to make them uncomfortable on and off the ball where mistakes get made too easily. He drags CBs all over the place like an annoying wasp.
If they play at the chaos pace they seem to be able to keep up, it’ll unnerve us and rush us into mistakes particularly in midfield and big Gabs in defense. They kept Villa on their toes until the final whistle and they will do the same to us.
The point is Villa took their chances, will we?
The red card was a stupid red, but was in keeping with the new rules, and Rice was on a yellow, so why give the ref a decision to make in a nothing position on the field. To moan and make excuses after the fact is just pathetic of El B. The ref officiated to the letter of the law.
A ready excuse now for not winning the league in game 3. Had the biased red not been shown……………….. El B will lament.
We don’t look anywhere as secure at the back now teams are coming to play against us at pace, rather than trying to keep the score respectable. Teams feel they can get something from us, and they are right.
Why? Because we are playing exactly the same as last season with no real improvements to our side other than a misfiring has been from the Chavs, and lurch Merino our busted 6/8 or whatever – LB anyone?
Last season we were The Dirty Dozen or (14) if we were to use a war film analogy: this season; however, we are more like Hogan’s Heroes with El B doing a good Private Shultz rendition of proving he knows nothing about producing a winning team. El B’s prime talent is rearing also rans, where this season will follow previous losing seasons, and we are only coming up to game 4 after the break.
City look their unstoppable self, and I fancy Slott to do well in his first season and push City far more than we will.
We look disjointed with our only really calm players are Ode and Maya, where Maya has kept us in all 3 games producing Emi like performances that I would have never thought possible given Maya’s lack of height. It will be interesting to see how Ramsdale does at Southampton, as I felt Ramsdale was the better shot stopper, but Maya is at least as good flying between the sticks like his boots are spring loaded ala PatJennings, as the cat as he was called. Another keeper with rocket fueled boots.
Timber looked positionally lost and was unusually poor at LB, he doesn’t invert well and was exposed too often: shocker I know considering he’s a RB.
We looked unfashionably poor in defense losing our usually steely composure far too many times, and now becoming porous through the middle with Rice and Partey being too similar on their walkabouts, and especially down our left side when Timber inverts or too easily beaten. Looked like he had another knee issue in the 2nd half.
Rice is not an attacking anything period!
He’s a CB and good DMF. Nothing more and never will be. He’ll get the odd goals, as Xhaka did, but he won’t score enough to win the league: we need someone better playing 8, and in the final third to win the PL trophy, Eze or better, as I’ve consistently droned on here.
Up top Havertz is being lauded for his goal, but his stats are far from impressive for a striker:
Goals 1 A rare gift from Dunk
Passes 11 with 7 successful at 63.6%
Offsides 2
Possession lost 4 times
That’s it in 90 minutes. Live Score reports no other shots on or off target, and he’s our starting 9. I’m sorry but this kind of striker does not win his team PL trophies because the above stats are the norm for Havertz.
It’s ok because we’ve got Sterling as back up, but he’s a winger…. ooooppps!
We’ve got a band of misfit brothers who will give their all on the field for the badge and club.
There is no plan B, there never was, and won’t be this season because we are playing the same dreary football of right side centric with little penetration down our middle, and using our left attacking options sparingly because we have no 8. We boringly go left to drag defenders away from Saka, and then get the ball back to Saka as quickly as possible, and rash rinse repeat.
Compared to the top 8, we look very average – well below City’s proactive level with little to no likelihood of matching Pool and City, where as proved today, we’ll drop more points needlessly.
Looking at the PL I’d say if you drop more than 9 to 12 points you can forget winning the trophy. That’s how tight I think the fine margins are going to be this season. We could very well be 4 or 5 points lost after the Spuds game at game day 5!
This season is going to be tight especially for us as we look beatable: home and away.
We’ve made no statement of intent. We play our usual first high tempo 30 minutes out of the traps, and then lose our way regardless of being a goal up or not, we visibly wilt and slow down. We let our opponents in when we cede the control of the game we had and start to defend deeper as a team.
Front foot to back foot if you like. City do this but they still contain the game on the back foot as they lull teams forward.
Brighton had 52% possession if the first half and we were the home team. Let that sink in. BHA enjoyed 63% for the game, but 74% after the red card when the game became attack v defense in our half where Maya saved our blushes.
Nothing else to say other than looking forward to Marc’s thoughts when he sobers up after a lively Tolli afternoon maybe? You needed something to get you over that performance and last points.
Have a good Sunday and looking forward to Pool V Manure tonight and the 2 earlier games. Will be good no mater how boring it is to see the Spuds play this season.
Good chance to see what we’re facing in 2 weeks time sans Rice………
What saved the weekend for me, was a most thrilling rugby match between New Zealand and South Africa being played in Johannesburg. When the tickets went on sale they sold out in 90 minutes. What an atmosphere in the stadium, made me totally forget the Rice v Veltman shithousery were Rice got caught holding the bag. For the moment if there is a scheduling conflict rugby gets the nod.
Watch the Sp*ds and Pool winning which will put us 5th in the table even on points with the Sp*ds going to visit the toilet bowl. Let’s see if Arteta can pull a rabbit out of that toilet bowl without a proper midfield to boot.
Hi Kilroy
I’ll check out the highlights of that AB game – cheers. England got close-ish to the ABs in the summer series but didn’t really convince as likely winners did they?
The toilet bowl and rabbit imagery was very entertaining too although the scatological side of my mind took over wondering how a hitherto white rabbit was going to get all the brown stains out of its fur. 💩🐰💩
Spuds look poor with new not much better hence 1:0.
Need a much better 2nd half from
Both teams.
On this showing Rice shouldn’t be missed with Spuds being so dull. But it is the north London derby…
I’m straying into the realms of reductionism here, but Manure are fucking terrible. What a mess.
KP—they won’t make sense until they replace Casimiro in the midfield, which should happen in their next match with Ugarte
he was so bad they subbed him off for a kid who’s never seen the PL pitch before
Tony
Agree about Vardy. He and his thick as pig shit wife deserve everything they get. I guess you know about their spat with the Rooneys.
Everywhere JV goes, fans sing to the tune of sloop John B, ‘Your wife is a grass’ etc. Indeed I had a go at tickling my tonsils to that very tune at LCFC last season. He’s a pantomime villain hated by everyone except fans of the foxy filberts. The sooner they slip off of the popular culture misery go round, the better.
https://m.sundayworld.com/showbiz/roisin-gorman-rebekah-vardy-will-learn-that-being-rich-thick-and-mean-is-a-losing-combination/162375101.html
The paragraph about Davy Jones’s locker is priceless. An utter bastard. This is the state of public life in Britain, Tony. No wonder you choose not to live here any longer.