All the media houses and some of the journalists and pundits are rattled by our set pieces antics. Some of them are calling it illegal, some others calling it not in the spirit of game. Well, I have something to remind them – Aaron Ramsdale! More than a couple years back, Kamara from Aston Villa hindered Ramsdale with no intention to play the ball. He basically reverse hugged him, blocked his views and movement and Villa scored. The referee was sure it’s not a foul on Aaron, VAR also took a look and decided it wasn’t a FOUL AT ALL.
These same media houses and pundits were calling us cry-babies at that time. They are rattled now, because we haven’t let the VAR and REF guys forget it and we are doing it to other teams in a more subtle way. Fuck’em. Here’s a clip if you are thinking we shouldn’t be doing it.
Match Report
We beat Man Utd 2-0 to go closer to Liverpool on the points table. Both of our goals came from set pieces, Timber scored the first and Saliba the second.
First half was not an exciting affair for either side. A Declan Rice corner in the 2nd half when Timber sneaked between Bruno F and Hojlund to connect and put it in the nets made sure we were 1-0 up. Raya had couple of brilliant saves before another corner from Bukayo was connected by Thomas Partey, hitting the back of Saliba and making into the nets.
A 2-0 score was enough for us and United. This is the first time in history where we have beaten Man Utd 4 games in a row. It wasn’t a very exciting game per se, but we took 3 points out of it, and continue our winning run. It also brought us closer to Liverpool who had to share points with Newcastle in a thriller 3-3 game.
Only 7 points different between them and us, and that’s very much achievable if we keep doing what we do best – WIN.
Injury niggles are concerning
We played without Gabriel Megalhaes, Ben White, Riccardo Calafiori in the defence against Man Utd. We have injuries earlier to Mikel Merino, Saka missed couple of games, Martinelli was struggling and Declan Rice wasn’t unavailable for 1 game at least. Our performance went downhill when Odegaard was not available for a stretch.
At this point, it’s concerning and we are just lucky that none of them have affected us like it’s doing to Man City. Well, may be Odegaard one did, but we are 7 points short of the Liverpool and we are still in the title race. But, it could have been worse. It can be worse in future.
Mikel keeps on playing same XI and we are happy with it – simply because those are our best 11 players and we want to win. But when there are 2 games a week, with travelling and hardly any rest, the players are picking up small injuries here and there and it’s only going to get worse as the season continue. We need to find a way to deal with this, and the best is to use the other 13 players we have.
Tierney is fit. I know he is not on our levels. I also know he is not that bad to play a game against Southampton or Ipswich. Nwaneri is getting his 10 minutes but he should get more minutes when we are 2-0 up against any team which do not call themselves Man City or Liverpool. Odegaard is our single point of failure, and Nwaneri sharing his 30 min every other game is not a bad thing for him and for the club. Thomas Partey is playing every game, sometimes at RB, at CB and in the midfield. He is covering a lot of ground, he is playing some brilliant football but lets not forget his injury history and lets keep him fit. Jorginho is fit and capable enough to share his load. It’s the same in defence, Saliba + Gabriel playing every minute for us when Tomiyasu can cover for them.
We need to be smart here. We should learn from Man City’s mistake and not wait for ours.
What’s next!
We are fighting on 3 fronts and we are still competitive in all of them.
Premier League
Only 7 points short of the leaders Liveprool, with almost 2/3rd of the season left. It’s a long grind and nothing’s lost yet after Newcastle did us and Man City a favor. Arne Slot will have his challenges at some point and we just have to make sure we keep winning to profit from it.
We are playing Fulham away next. That’s a tough fixture, they are punching above their weight and are 6th currently ahead of Aston Villa, Tottenham, Man Utd and Newcastle. We have Everton next, and Crystal Palace, Ipswich, Brentford to play till 1st of Jan 2025. It’s a ‘relatively’ easy draw and we should be looking to accumulate as much points as possible.
Champions League
7th after 5 games with 3 games left against Monaco (H), Dinamo Zagred (H), and Girona (A). All three are relatively easy games, and two of them are at home. Though anything can happen in Europe on a given day, two wins our of 3 will make sure we qualify for round of 16 and do not have to go in a 2-legged face-off against any team.
We are playing Monaco on 11th Dec. Dinamo and Girona game is in January so there’s still time to think about it.
Carabao Cup
Carabao cup is in advance stage now. We need to get through Crystal Palace on 18th Dec to qualify for semi finals. Newcastle needs to play Brentford while one of the Tottenham and Man Utd will be out of the cup after they face each other. Southampton will play Liverpool in the other game.
We need to win against Crystal Palace and then we will be facing one of the Liverpool, Newcastle and Tottenham/Manchester United. Semi final and final will be 2 very tough games to win a cup.
From January, we will part of the FA cup games as well.
Wrapping up
December is going to be fun for football lovers. It will be even better for us if we win most of the games and get closer to the league toppers. We also need to qualify for semis in Carabao and win the game against Monaco in Champions League.
Lets hope the winter brings us good.
Good old Arsenal
We’re proud to say that name
While we sing this song
We’ll win the game !
Cheers.
NORG
I know you’re an erudite perdon for whom facts and carefully crafted arguments matter (just like Marc – only joking!). But your assertion about the wildly undemocratic HoL being mostly labour people is wildly wrong. It’s exactly the other way around.
Have a proper look and let me know what you find.
I’m satisfied in my case that it was indeed deserved. And I would have been letting colleagues down and harming my career at an important time if I’d been all citizen smith and spurned it. I put my head in some difficult places in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and made a positive difference to a good number of British and EU people whose positions were becoming difficult. Everyone on here is good at what they do and work hard, and that shines through.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MNaD3zvkXE
From the latest Voice America who could be a big star. His guitar playing is full of feel and quality.
TRVL
Agree with you thoughts where had Klopp stayed, MA would have or should have won the league this season, although the Chavs could have thwarted our chances, as MA is no match for Maresca and the Chavs balanced squad who are just a bit suspect at the back at times is all.
Good morning dear Gooners. The storm in midlands has disrupted my broadband from yesterday morning. So it’s going to be a pain for me to watch the game. My calls to Sky who is my retailer put me on a automated bot which ultimately said that there is disruption in my area duh I knew that already. Welcome to the age of AI where telling you what you already know is being sold as ultimate intelligence. Anyways I am from IT and I should know it better.
To my friends here can anybody enlighten me why is it that in Britain who are a developed country the infrastructure and s services are so bad that you begin to wonder where are you living. The choices the consumers are provided and the services are atrocious but the costs are exorbitant. Yet the services are hopelessly bad and customer can’t even talk to any tech support. Your cousins on the other side of Atlantic got separated from you and looks to have built a different country. While your colonial prowess seems to have made you a complacent country. Am I seeing this completely wrong?
Hoping for a win but an ESR goal as well. He is like my son for me. Massively disappointed that MA chucked him away.
Madhu
I feel for you, but sadly this is what is considered progress. But ‘progress’ really is the ‘bottom line’ to the bean counters who don’t give a shit about service; only profits for their pay masters. The worst are CEOs who are accountants first and foremost.
https://privateiptvaccess.com Maybe this can help when you get your ISP service again. You will be able to watch the games live for about £10 a month where they claim to have every TV channel globally all in real time. Wherever there is an Internet signal you will have the football +++. Let me know how it goes if you try.
I use their other service to get games the next day when too late here to watch live.
You and I and most here are 45+ to 76 I think, so we are from different generations who grew up with good polite service, where value for money once meant something.
Now it’s all about what people can get away with, especially in hospitality and tech. The latter they think only profits. With hospitality I’ve just got a resort to comp me, as it was so bad & potentially dangerous. Luckily, I have 50k+ trip advisor readers I’ve built up over the last 15 years, so I give them the choice; a very honest & factual review backed up by pictures or they comp me and I leave others to write reviews. My reviews are very detailed as you can imagine. TRVL also employed such tactics when necessary good effect I learnt when we crossed this subject some time ago.
Trust me I don’t want to be comped as I want to enjoy the break, but it at least keeps hospitality honest.
I fear it will never get better as bigger corporations gobble other corporations up, and then streamline their newly acquired acquisitions to maximize profit that the unions can do nothing about. The bigger the corporation the more difficult it is to run. Look at GE in the 80s; a huge conglomerate heading for financial disaster until Jack E Welch stepped in and ruthlessly rebuilt from downsizing and made GE great once more.
My company has done business with GE for 15 years, which has led to many convos with the VPs and CEOs, as we won awards year after year from their conglomerate owner and when they came to our new head office opening.
I can tell you it’s only going to get worse. I would look for retirement somewhere warm and remote, as in semi rural. What Marc said about kids stabbing each other is very real, and all over Thailand, too, where school students are tribal with each other far worse than football supporters of today.
Do you have family, Madhu? Anything holding you to the UK? My sound engineer friend I’ve oft talked about here said to me recently he’s had enough of the UK, which was something I thought I’d never hear. He travels the world for Wisdom Audio tuning elite audio visual rooms for the kings, superstars and the very wealthy, and has always been happy to get back to his cool corner of Blighty. He’s retiring in March and will no doubt sell up for happier pasture new.
Back to the game and your dilemma if you have the IPTV you can go to where there is a signal and watch on a tablet or phone.
Wish there was a more optimistic horizon, Madhu.
Tony what you said about CEOs being accountants is spot on. The company I work is a big tech in India. I have been with this company for 25 yrs and have seen the company change. CEOs are just that accountants and they only look a topline, bottom line and margins. They are so inept that they only know how to work on bottom line and improve margins. The only way they know to increase top line is to do it inorganically through acquisitions. Even that they bottle the integration part and loose enormous money in the process. We are a tech company ask anyone of the top execs to talk anything tech they will flounder. Yet corporate world is talked about as the panacea for all ills.
I have a 16 yr old son and I thought it would be good for him to do uni here. Currently he doing his A levels we moved in only 4 months back. Once he gets into Uni I will probably move back to Bangalore my home town. At least I can manage my finances better. Universities in India are in a bad state and unless you can get into the top universities its all downhill. I was part of the golden generation in India when the economy opened up and we got swept away in the Tech services windfall. Now the cupboard is threadbare and it’s scary what will happen to future generations. Looks like every country is going through the same phase of floundering economy, high inflation, extreme inequality quality of service, value for money syndrome.
Tony by the way IPTV is considered illegal in UK.
Madhu
IPTV through VPN location in Spain maybe gets it sorted ?
Don’t know how that works though
Madhu
Tech stuff and I are like oil and water. Sorry. If you lived a bit closer, you could have come to mine mate. Our house is full of Gooners so you’d fit right in!
Hope you get it sorted. There’s always X and another one I used to use is called golatotv. I’m not sure how ‘clean’ they are. Maybe a local pub?
What does everyone think about the spuds-chelsea game? A very dirty draw full of injuries or, gulp, a win for the scum? I’m pretty certain I don’t want Chelsea to win this one.
New post.
Madhu – you have seen way more life than me, but trust me unless it’s some responsibility that’s pulling you back to Bangalore, it’s not a good idea. For start, I was in Bangalore, it has good weather, IT companies so better much more options for change and $$$. But the cost of living is no less than London mate. I remember a friend buying a 4 bhk house in Watford for 250k GBP, thats about 2.5cr in INR and you would only a 3 BHK independent house in outskirts in that range.
I had to switch to Delhi-NCR capital reason, a little bit better in affordability but the job options are limited and the fucking AQI is killing here. Pune is competing with B’lore.
Mind me asking which Indian company in Brimingham?
Madhu
Hoopah is right use a VPN to set your country and you will be fine.
Totally agree with your corporate experience.
After your son’s education it makes sense to head back to your home town. If I were you I’d find a way to join KP for a game.
That would be some experience.
And the QoL is poor. Western Society went through a Identity crisis in 1900s, and we are catching up just now. Language scuffles, anti-immigration mindset is growing between states. Every state/ language/ religion/ caste is looking for an identity and sometimes not in a positive way. We have taken up some very bad things from US – corporate greed, and making money on the cost of lives.
If you have a VPN, just search the game in Google and add totalsportek. Fulham v Arsenal totalsportek. The first link has about 20+ streaming websites and all of them works.
Madhu
I look at it this way, if my ISP gave a good service with VFM I wouldn’t need to find other solutions if I’m not getting what I paid for. The UK fine people for now having a BBC license yet the programming isn’t up to main stream private TV standard,
I’m not very good at being told what to do and the UK had too many rules, so I left the UK in 1998 and never looked back. I’d worked globally for a long time, so it didn’t really make a difference.
Here we go then another 3 points to keep with the Chavs and Pool I hope.
Kiwior for Gabs and Jorginho in midfield with Trossard getting the nod over Marta
Why fucking Jorginho? It’s a good game for Ethan surely?
Match day post is live, guys.
Havertz didn’t look across the line at all for his offside. How much do we pay him?