Half of the boring international break is over and only six more days left of misery before the Premier League resumes. We are going to visit Brentford and judging by the way we play after a break, it’s not going to be an easy one. Bees are anyway a very tough opponent with Thomas Frank sticking to old-school, no non-sense football that runs vertical. If you want to name one team no one likes to play against, it’s the Brentford.
About one- third of the season is over and it usually gives us a good perspective of where different teams stand and who are involved in the title run.
We are in the title race with joint second on points with Liverpool and one point behind Man City. After a poor season, Klopp must have reintroduced the high caffeine diet back and the results are showing. They have been a bit lucky too. Tottenham, on the other hand, had a new manager bounce but it’s ended now and pretty soon they will be back to where they belong, a fight for Europa Conference League spot. Man United is not going to be good for a foreseeable time. Newcastle are suffering from injuries and there’s no one else I think will be part of the fight. Sorry, Chelsea aren’t even in the screenshot so lets not talk about them for now.
Unlike last season, it’s a three horse race now. Pools are not going to back down, Pep is always part of the challenge and we are continuing our previous season form. Leave City out of it, the other two clubs performance depends highly on how they manage their players and what little injuries they suffer. Judging by the recent points tallies, the narrative of ‘lets not drop 3 points’ has changed to ‘lets get those 3 points’ – a draw is a loss because it’s going to get tougher.
We have got 8 games before New Year and if we managed to get 20 points out of available 24, we would be in a much better situation for the second half of the season. Games against Brentford, Wolves, Luton, Villa, Brighton, West Ham and Fulham can be considered winnable while the visit to Anfield will decide who remains closer to City.
Plus, we have to manage our Champions League games though we are in a much better situation till the round of 16 starts.
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In other news, Aaron Ramsdale dad decided to go on a podcast to criticize the club and Mikel about how they were not transparent about their plans in bringing David Raya just after 2 months of offering them a contract renewal. Well, Ramsdale had a drop in performance, he wasn’t improving anymore and it’s still too early to judge whether Raya will turn out to be better than him, I think the club and Mikel has got that authority to improve on players. You fight for your place and if you are better than the other, you play ahead of him. It’s as simple as that.
Except when your name reads Kai Havertz. You will play no matter what, there will be positions created for you and since you just played in a LB position for your country, we will suddenly have game plans where Havertz at LB will be the real deal.
Thomas Partey injury has baffled me. It’s time to move on now, from one of the best players in recent years. ESR, the same. I have been a big fan of both of them, but with their injuries we are limited to not bring in a replacement. An injured horse is of no use. Sad to say but we need to move on – get some money back off Partey and make some on ESR. I would have loved seeing ESR in place of Odegaard in that LCM role but it’s not going to happen now.
Couple more months and we might see Timber back in the squad. Zinchenko has been Mikel’s favorite for the LB position but I personally like Tomiyasu more in that role, simply because he is a bit defender and has a Honda engine in him.
We spent 100 odd millions on Declan Rice and it has turned out to be a good deal. Had Partey been injury free, our only worries would have a CF who can score and a back up to Saka (Marquinhos?). But we need a back to Declan Rice and a competition to Odegaard along with CF and Saka’s back up. Lots of positions to fix and it might have to wait till the next summer.
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Right, that’s all for today. If you are an Aussie reading this, congratulations on the world cup win and you can fuck off (sorry).
Cheers
two positives on the Havertz front, (1) his movement off the ball has improved slightly in the last two affairs and (2) he actually showed some guile with the ball at his feet about 5 minutes ago…baby steps I guess are the order of the day
TRVL
No worries Ambarish will get to it when he gets a chance.
To be honest I didn’t know we were playing last night. I knew we were playing Lens this week but too many distractions going on in Tonyland.
That’s the CL group sorted so if Arteta brings the right people in in the Jan TW, we might do well in the knockouts.
I guess Mikel can take the butt plug out now Kia has scored 2 in a row. That must have been some dump!
Ah well, I’m afraid I’m off back into Tonyland and life with my spectrum family. Never a dull moment! Few peaceful ones either mentally or emotionally often being tested.
You don’t expect curve balls at 68 right from the outer left field, same as Kai scoring they come out of nowhere one after the other. Yet they come anyway.
KP
Hope the weather is abating in your neck of the woods.
LIR
I think the Wolves game will be worth a watch but the best games are Sunday. I’m sure last night was delirium for Gooners across the globe and the football fun to watch, as it always is against minnows.
4pm Saturday we’ll be back to our regimented ways to save energy to get through up to 100 minutes. Expect horse shoe football at its finites against Wolves.
If Kai doesn’t score Mikel might have to reconsider the butt plug again. You’d hardly notice with the way Mikel walks; clearly glutes to die for.
See you at the game lads
TRVL
No worries Ambarish will get to it when he gets a chance.
To be honest I didn’t know we were playing last night. I knew we were playing Lens this week but too many distractions going on in Tonyland.
That’s the CL group sorted so if Arteta brings the right people in in the Jan TW, we might do well in the knockouts.
I guess Mikel can take the butt plug out now Kia has scored 2 in a row. That must have been some dump!
Ah well, I’m afraid I’m off back into Tonyland and life with my spectrum family. Never a dull moment! Few peaceful ones either mentally or emotionally often being tested.
You don’t expect curve balls at 68 right from the outer left field, same as Kai scoring they come out of nowhere one after the other. Yet they come anyway.
KP
Hope the weather is abating in your neck of the woods.
Morning all
I’ve started planning for next year; something of a first for me as normally there’s not much space left in the next year before I was forced into covid isolation by my cardiologist of 16 years.
Absolutely no idea of timeline this present time, but I want to take my very cool brother-in-law with his equally cool science professor at Naresuan University at least I think it’s science who speaks good English, and she’s really into the chemistry of the plant et al.
If any of you are thinking of joining our photographic jaunt along with finding the best temple balls because that’s where they are made. I would equate this as one of the wonders of this world and very rare in the west and east for that matter.
I call it our joint adventure 🙂 for 2024
To suit everyone’s budget and holistic approach to life the link below offers something for everyone.
https://www.luxuryhotelsguides.com/fullufi=-1022136&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9__b3b3tggMVSKhmAh3UewDBEAAYASAAEgJLaPD_BwE
For me it’s under 4 hours from, BKK, but The Andes another photography stop sadly is a lot further. Maybe come back to Thailand with us and we can see the country, and then fly back home from there or to where ever takes your fancy. Japan is a wonderful country.
Just letting any interested parties know what the agenda for the trip is for us, but if you want to yodel hanging off a peak where you don’t need oxygen masks, I’ll be there to film it.
To set the mood here is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c4KAnQpdGw
Met but never worked for, KP. One of their best songs. Would be a Simply Red cover.
Enjoy your weekends mi amigos
Confidence from the Lens game but Wolves are toothless so could be a home rout.
It’s what we’ve asked for with Trossard at 8 and one touch football to break the low block.
It’s not rocket science but good to finally see.
Now we need consistency
Going to be interesting to see how Mikel manages the 2nd half. If we go in for the kill and score the 3rd goal then we could easy broaden our GD.
If Wolves finally find their fangs and I’m interested to see what our mentality is going not be.
It’s a typical confident home performance, so I hope we go on to make a statement.
What do you think KP? TRVL? LIR?
once again, as was the case mid-week, when we attack in a more direct fashion opportunities are plentiful…whereas when we dwell on the ball too much, at both ends of the pitch, things are exceedingly problematic…as such, I can only hope we will show the requisite balls and continue to push for goals, but I wouldn’t be surprised whatsoever if we sat back a bit, absorbed and looked for counters…it’s clear that some confidence was gained from the 6-9 drubbing, so it would be best if we rode that wave
we haven’t tested the new Keeper nearly enough and as such we’ve left the door open for them to get back into this match, should they find a way to get one past us…we should be in full step on their collective throats mode, but instead we’re a little too complacent for my liking
I would have much rather we had kept Marts on the pitch and had Havertz come on for Tross, who doesn’t supply much on the defensive end and who likewise doesn’t have the pace to impact things when countering
Tross simply had to finish off that chance after such a glorious little pass by Ode
I knew wolves would bite and always said how bad zinchenko is as a defender.
Now we are back to scrambling nervously
classic fucking Eddie
TRVL it would seem Arteta has no plan B still. His subs made us worse yet again.
i get making changes if we had two dominant defensive players waiting in the wings, but to take off your best chances to score simply so you can have Kiwor, an untested defender, and Jorginho, a below average defender at best, seems a little too nervous nellie for me
25 minutes worthy of top of the league play and then flattering to deceive to grind out 3 points at home against a very depleted Wolves side.
Story of our season limping over the line. We have to take our best off to save them to start every game.
good first half, but that second half saw us reverting back to our old “borefest” ways, which unnecessarily allowed Wolves to stay in a match that should have been done and dusted within the first 60
One of Arteta’s biggest failings is consistency in belief.
When we believe, we can play they quick touch, samba football, but we just don’t believe enough because when we’re pressed, we lose our nerve too much in each game, to be champions.
City and Pool control their games far better than us.
Why? Because Zinchenko is our new Xhaka.
He gets in the way of Tross and Marts and slows the game down taking too many touches. Then when he defends his errors lead to unnecessary goals.
Probably why Mikel is looking at the Ajax left back.
Underwhelming win. Maybe understandable after beating Lens in such style. I thought there would be a deluge after the way we started. One of those forgettable afternoons although Ode’s goal was beautiful.
Our 2 goals were things of beauty, KP it just got uglier as the game went on.
How we can have assembled a £B+ squad with so many 70 minute players, and a bench that are about as useful as tits on a bull to come on and improve our control on the game?
I got no idea 🤷 anyone?
regardless of all the nonsense that was being spewed by MA early on about having competition/depth at every position, it’s clear that this isn’t the case…I guess it makes sense though, as why would someone who has never embraced the notion of rotating his lineup ever give a flying fuck about having depth pieces on the bench…I would suggest that all that talk was simply his way of justifying the unprecedented transfer expenditures…if one cares to take a closer look at things, we’ve wasted enormous sums on Keepers, we have a 50+ CB who’s now our second string LB, we wasted 70+ on a German positional tweener, who can only score in sliver platter moments, and we spent 35+ on a lightweight midfielder, in Vieira…if MA/Edu hadn’t been so wasteful, we actually could have considerable positional depth
Looking at the short term, it’s (only) Luton in the week, with a much sterner test at (shit on the) Villa this weekend. Win that second game (and Emery has a terrific home record BTW) and this winning ugly malarkey might gain traction. We did it for years after all with GG, although we did all that on a shoe string back then. It sounds like heresy but winning means more to me than playing nicely.
Only Luton… I was at Wembley in 87 and still bear the scars.
Vieira
Tets will never say he has all of the right ingredients in his squad. Always just a few more signings if we’re to win something major. Jam tomorrow. Correct me if I’m wrong though but I think all the major components in the squad, barring Saka, ESR and Reiss, are players whose purchase he must have sanctioned.
But we’re top by 4 points. Spurs, City or both of these two teams of miserable cunts will drop points against Arsenal later today so I’m allowing myself to be a bit Panglossian today.
Ambarish
You OK out there? I hope you’re not working too hard. Blink once to let us know you’re OK. Twice and I’ll get my duelling pistols out….
KP still a long way to go with many twists and turns. You’re right we are always ‘almost there’ with recruitment. When your TW dealings are about 50% barely the right level, you get a shit bench, which you’ll never use properly anyway and Hale End are dirty words to Arteta.
For me GG was the best manager of my time, and ahead of Wenger unless Wenger had left in 2009.
Going to watch the chavs game and City v spuds first half at least.
It’s been too eventful here, which I’ll explain later.
Ambarish, you really should check in from time to time. 🙂
Kroenke
You missed off Saliba and Martinelli.
The general view about Arteta always needing one or two new players is correct – his problem is now he’s replacing players he bought. Zinchenko will be the next, several fans yesterday were moaning about the number of times he screws up.
Mc Allister with goal of the season potential. What a sizzler
What a difference Alison makes to pool’s defense. Looking very shaky
Cracking game at Anfield dodgy defensive displays but killer in front of goal.