I’m finally done with the rituals that comes with having a kid in our culture. A month at my ancestral village, with AQI in double digits, fruits and veggies from the farm, empty roads and no honking, clear and visible night sky – things that are “normal” for them were something “awesome” for me. Made up my mind, 10 years and I will go back to where I was born.
But, before that, are we going to WIN? City are only 2 points behind us with 10 games to go. Last couple of months have looked familiar, we have seen it 3 times under Mikel and we dropped points to Wolves and Brentford. We did win NLD but hey, their ex-manager is calling them ‘spursy’ on podcasts these days and it’s hardly a contest in recent time.
Today’s a challenge. Anything but a win and City will be level on points. I don’t see us making it from there, Pep knows how to win things when it matters. And Chelsea are not going to make it easy for us. All we have to do is win our games, let them drop points before we do, and then we can think of winning the league this year.
Kai and Merino are out. Ben White is a doubt but hopefully we won’t miss him. I would personally go with the same playing XI we had against Tottenham. Calafiori in place of Hincapie can be OK, but lets not go back to Odegaard. Eze did well, and he needs couple of games in the #10 role to truely dominate games. He is our only players apart from Martinelli who got creativity outside of Mikel’s system and can do something on his own. The first goal against Spurs was a brilliant one and that short of ball wins you game.
Gyokeres has finally picked up. He scored 2 brilliant goals against Spurs and was moving better through out the game. Frankly I was disappointed so far with him, but he has got 10 games + CL + FA Cup + Carabao Cup games to prove me wrong.
Right, I will keep it short but I promise I will be more active. 3 very exciting months ahead for us, where we can win everything. Lets hope we do.
Wicksy
Arteta getting sacked isn’t a negative result – it’d be the best result we’ve had in decades.
It’s gonna be a boring game. Both teams are just happy passing to their own team mates in the name of possesion based football..
Saka is having a very poor day.
MA certainly wouldn’t be too pissed if we simply managed this one and left with a 0-0 away draw, especially with their top scorer not on the pitch and their rather wasteful play in our final third
if he had some fucking balls we would force early passes to Saka, then have him come inside and look for Timber on the overlap out wide, which is how we manufactured our only real chance…the fact that we never went back to that speaks volumes about our risk-averse plans
that ought to make for an interesting second-half…I very much doubt this one will end 1-0
Can we just agree that if you keep your Eze, Martinelli and Saka in your own half, you are not going to score much?
1-0 down and we are still not in any hurry.
Evening TRVL, not a good one so far though.
Madueke ON for Saka.. good change.
Cheers Ambarish—we wasted Saka’s time on the pitch…instead of taking him off for Noni, we should have taken off Zubi, sat Rice deeper and had Saka play in the midfield…he and Saka would have caused some real problems for them out on the right
no one wants to see Havertz on the pitch less than me, but maybe being back at the scene where he played by far his best football will inspire him to do something special…it’s interesting that he’s lost most of that “muscle” he put on while recovering from injury last season, maybe his giraffe-like joints couln’t handle the extra weight or the “juice” simply wore off
CL refs are mostly no nonsense. You will never talk about them after the game – which is a good thing – unlike Premier League.
Saliba has been grabbing shirts a lot today.
Fucking hell, how could you miss that..
Sensible words TRVL but unfortunately they will have fallen on the deaf ears of El B. Saka with like minded offensive players either side of him would scare most defences but numbnuts thinks otherwise.
Madueke winning a penalty..
No contact, should be overturned. We are never lucky.
Ok, it stands.. look like a bit of contact on the back side of Madueke’s ankle.
can’t imagine what some would be saying if that went against us
1-1..
#COYG
that was a squeaky one, which should surprise no one…you know you lack clinical finishers when Havertz is your penalty taker of choice
makes a change to have a different player than SP or OG – Pen is the new one.