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.
you just know that Sterling will be an Arsenal player by 23.00 this evening.
“Mikel Arteta confirms that new signing Mikel Merino injured his shoulder in his first training session. “Gabi landed on top of him and it looks like he has a small fracture probably. It doesn’t look good.”
Timber all over again. You just can’t make this shit up.
so let me get this straight, before our new signing ever even sees real action he’s already on the fucking training table…so much for the whole rarely injured, duel master narrative…I bet that shit doesn’t happen if we didn’t dick around for 2 months over an easy peasy deal…there’s no way a midfielder who wants to play with any physicality is coming back in a couple weeks, in fact, this will likely impact him for much of the season
what’s next? likely a Sterling-sized cherry on our shit sundae
this Sterling gig will become a great case study for how unrestrained “homer” media coverage can negatively impact an organization, as there’s nothing but glowing reports about the possibility of us securing Sterling’s services…of course they’re rife with quotes from people I’ve never even heard of, who’re acting like they’re paid opinion fucking matters…one article actually said that “peak” Sterling would be our best winger…well that’s a real coup if we can somehow stuff all of fucking Europe into a time machine and go back 5 plus years…it feels like we’re on another collision course with karma due to the continued douchebaggery of our pocket manager
Chav’s hand me downs, TRVL. Except Sterling has £345 a week wages to deal with. Would the Chavs be prepared to pay 80% of Sterlings wages, like we do or similar?
Good luck Arron Ramsey with your move to Southampton. You were shit on from a great height here, so hope you settle quickly and show us what we’re missing as Emi continually does.
With it being 4pm in the UK now, I don’t see us signing any forwards or Sterling. Hazarding a guess El B would have wanted his prodigal son back, but the purse strings were shut tight and we dodged a big bullet.
Havertz it is then with Jesus the understudy.
Merino out for 5+ games, then has to get fit and up to PL speed so add at least another 12 games. Rice at 8 and a complexly unbalanced left side again for the season.
Hope we see Calafiori tomorrow against Brighton.
Tony—as someone who has both suffered a few shoulder injuries and witnessed a plethora of former teammates experiencing a variety of shoulder-related injuries, I would be very surprised if he will be 100% at any point this season…of course, the extent of his particular injury will determine how close he can get to 100%, but if he suffered any sort of dislocation or seperation, he will struggle to meet the requirements of his particular position for a considerable period of time
If I had to hazard a guess, here’s a player who came in late with a whole bunch of hype regarding his physical presence on the pitch, so it made perfect sense that he and our biggest horse would go mano a mano on the training pitch…unfortunately our new signing lost that pissing contest and is now on the shelf for the foreseeable future…now I’m not sure if this was just a freak accident or a telltale sign that our second choice Sociedad midfield signing isn’t nearly as tough as he was made out to be, but MA better pray that it’s the former not the latter
as for our other window failures, both this year and last, I’m very concerned about the very real possibility that our halfwit of a skipper will become the highest paid manager on the planet without one iota of proof that he’s worthy of such a commitment…if I were the Kroenke’s I wouldn’t even contemplate his re-upping until he wins something of consequence or, at the very least, displays the kind of managerial bravery that’s typically required in order to succeed at the highest of levels…thus far in his career he’s been outmanaged in almost every meaningful match and bang average, at best, when it comes to his recruitment practices
take this off-season for example, the Merino reach was simply an attempt to rectify his Havertz misstep…so in actual fact it has already cost us 100+M to replace a very average Xhaka and based on Merino’s injury that’s not even a foregone conclusion…now if he plays Rice in the 8, the cost of the Xhaka replacement plan will climb to well over 200M…not to mention, this means we will have an 8 deployed as a 6, a 6 deployed as an 8 and our original Xhaka replacement in the 9-hole…of course, Havertz is only our first choice Striker because MA somehow made him our highest paid player, which meant that his last Striker mistake, Jesus, who’s currently our second highest paid player, has now become his very unreliable cover piece…even with that all said, it’s clear that MA doesn’t believe the Havertz hype, which is why the first piece of business he tried to conduct this off-season was a failed attempt to get Sesko over the line…so all his claims about how were set up top are total bullshit, which isn’t something I just conjured up, it’s based entirely on his own actions
as for all the blather surrounding any possible Sterling get, no matter what transpires this was never part of any plan and if MA had ever suggesting, before the final days of the wndow, that our strategy involved the acquiring of Sterling from Chelsea, most intelligent fans would have told him to go fuck himself…desperation makes strange bedfellows
sorry about the excessive rambling…I had to self-medicate in order to help alleviate some of my obvious frustrations
MA had ever suggested, before the final days of the window
the only potential saving grace of this whole Sterling scenario is if it’s only a loan, without a buy option and we’re not paying his ridiculous wages…our simpleton duo could actually be forking out almost 900,000 per week on Havertz, Jesus and Sterling…what a fucking joke
our late window shopping would have been fucking amazing if it was 2018…now that we acquired Neto and Sterling maybe we should fire MA and bring Wenger back
I feel like there’s a garbage can somewhere at Stamford Bridge with our name and phone number on it…just once can we get someone from that awful club that’s both in form and relevant
You just fucking knew that cunt of all cunts would go for Sterling.
He’ll sell Martinelli – you know the one Klopp rated as amazing for peanuts, he’ll piss off Trossard who’s a solid player by picking his new favourite over him no matter how bad his form and lack of contribution and then just to ram it down the fans throats he’ll sell Saka to a rival.
Can someone please point out to this cunt that Chelsea finished 26 points behind us last season and 40 the season before. All we’re doing is helping to balance their wage bill.
TRVL
“our simpleton duo could actually be forking out almost 900,000 per week on Havertz, Jesus and Sterling…what a fucking joke”
You need to add Zinchenko into that mix.
Marc—we’ve given them the wage bill space to make a late push for Osimhen…wouldn’t that be a kick in the pills if they ended up with him and we were left relying on two or possibly 3 Chelsea castoffs, now that Merino is out…of course Sterling is better than Nelson, but at least with the latter didn’t cost 300+ per week or require playing time assurances…MA is doing exactly what Wenger did, once his head got too big, in that he’s taking advantage of those within the fanbase who actually believe the manager is above reproach
Marc—I was so waiting for you to enter the venting chamber!!!
KP—surely you must have some insanely graphic thoughts on this?
I love how the pro-Arteta media hacks are focusing on Sterling’s career stats, instead of his most recent ones, which are far more pertinent…last season he managed 8 League goals and 4 assist in 31 appearnaces and the year prior 6 goals and 3 assists in 28 appearances…whereas Marts had 6/4 and 15/5, during that same two year period, but everyone’s attacking his contributions, even though he’s on a third of the wages and was left on an island last season
TRVL
What numbers is Sterling going to contribute when he constantly finds himself isolated during 85% of attacks down our left when 85% of our attacks go down the right?
This happens and I think it might actually be the slap in the face a large chunk of our fan base seriously needs.
Maybe his presence will open things up for Merino, if our Timber 2.0 ever returns…talk about lowering the bar, considering our supposed priority was the young, highly sought-after Nico…not to mention, the last thing MA needed was another choirboy within our ranks…I’m starting to think that Xhaka’s exodus had more to do with MA than Xhaka and his wife wanted to return to Germany…of course, I was elated by his long overdue exit, but I might have thought differently if I could have foreshadowed how badly MA et al were going to fuck shit up