Monthly Archives: October 2023

Beware of Riyadh Season

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Long term readers of the blog will know I have often spoken out against sporting events being “sold” to backwards countries in their attempt to divert the attention from those nations horrendous human rights track records.

We have seen F1, athletics, football, boxing and more go to these places, with all those athletes involved suddenly forgetting about what they have said about slavery, taking the knee, rainabow laces, etc. Sports washing.

On Saturday, we had the farce that was the Battle of Baddest take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

We had Tyson Fury talking about how welcoming the murderous Saudi regime were to him, in comparison to the UK Government. The self proclaimed Gypsy King trying to criticise our authorities for not providing him with “special treatment” when going through airports.

The so-called “man of the people” celebrating he is invited for a cup of tea with heads of Government in Saudi Arabia whilst complaining that he has not even had a thank you letter from anyone in the UK Goverment. He has rightly been slammed by many.

The fight was just farcical.

Bought by the Saudi’s as part of their Riyadh season, they then splashed out millions to ensure that former champions and celebraties were ring side for their event.

I never want to hear any of those who took Saudi money to turn up ever talk about human rights, racism, homophobia or anything again. They have all shown their morals can be bought. Just like Jordan Henderson.

The fight was launching the Saudi’s Riyadh Season. A 6 month “state-sponsored annual entertainment and sports festival”. Basically, the worlds biggest sportswashing initiative.

Interested in what Riyadh Season involved beyong boxing, I checked out its Wikipedia page.

The usual suspects were there – boxing, UFC, wrestling, tennis. But there was also football…

The Turkish Super Cup (their version of the Community Shield) is set to be held in Saudi Arabia.

The match between Galatasaray and Fenerbahce will be the 2nd time in 3 years that the Turksih FA have taken the Arab oil money and hosted the game abroad.

Back in 2021, the Turkish Super Cup was sold to Qatar. Just 3,500 turned up for it. In comparison, a year later nearly 47,000 were at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul. The Turkish FA are literally taking a game away from the fans for (probably) plenty of brown envelopes.

And it is not just Turkey who have sold games to Saudi Arabia for Riyadh Season.

La Liga are also in on the act, selling the 2023–24 Supercopa de Espana to the Saudis. This will be the 4th time in 5 years that the Supercopa has taken place in Riyadh

Real Madrid v Atletico Madrid and Barcelona v Osasuna will both take place in Riyadh in January. The winners will then face eachother in the final on 14 January.

La Liga had actually expanded the tournament from the traditional 2-team League Champions v Domestic Cup Winners to a 4-team tournament to enable them to sell it abroad.

Italy have also followed suit, with the expanded 2023 Supercoppa Italiana set to be part of Riyadh Season.

A week after the Supercopa de Espana finishes, Napoli will face Fiorentina and Inter Milan will play against Lazio. The final will take place on 25 January.

Manchester City are also set to play a Saudi All Stars XI in the Riyadh Season Cup. This will probably take place during the mid-season winter “break”.

I look forward to hearing Pep Guardiola complain again about how many games his players have to play, whilst the club arranged meaningless friendlies in what should be a rest period.

How long will it be until the FA get in on the act. Follow Spain and Italy and expand the Community Shield to a 4-team tournament and take it from Wembley to whichever Arab nations pays them the most.

If they do it, it will show all the Black Lives Matters posters, the taking the knee, the rainbow laces, etc are just virtue signalling. That the FA do not really care about any of these things and their morals can be bought.

Likewise, it will show that all the guff around the European Super League was just because they feared losing “their game”, and was not in protection of match-going fans.

Some of you reading the blog and thinking of commenting “Arsenal are a global club. We deserve games in our country”. Save you energy. I do not care for your opinion.

Arsenal existed before being a global brand, and will still exist after. Football thrives in places like Norway, Denmark, Poland and others where there is a not a huge export of TV rights. Local fans supporting local teams. That is where the passion is.

I have a fear that it will not be the European Super League that breaks up football, but a Liv Golf style “Saudi League”, which would see top European clubs leave their domestic leagues and join an international Super League funded by the Saudis.

An NFL style franchise league where teams play some games in England, Spain or Italy, and then others in Saudi Arabia and beyond.

If Arsenal ever joined something like, football will be dead for me. I also think the authorities would be overestimating how much interest there is in football in these countries and how quickly having Madrid, Barcelona or Munich in town every other week will wear off.

Turkey, Italy and Spain have already taken games away from their local fans to fill the pockets of officials. England might not be far from joining them…

Keenos

Arsenal cruise to victory as Arteta gives stars a rest

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“Odegaard has been dropped” was what one of my pals said when the team news came out.

I then proceeded to make it very clear that the Arsenal captain had not been dropped, he had been rested, and Mikel Arteta had rotated his team.

Last season we suffered a little due to fatigue in the run-in. Arteta had played the same small group of players in every possibile game. He rarely rested or rotated his stars.

With the acquisition of Kai Havertz and Declan Rice this summer, and Jorginho and Leandro Trossard last January, the manager has options to rest players.

Sheffield United at home is a game you have pencilled in for resting a couple of key players. Back in the 90s, Fergie would have made 7 or 8 changes and his side would have come away with a win. Pep Guardiola also would have used an easy home game to give Erling Haaland or Kevin de Bruyne (if fit) a break.

So why then was the narrative that Arteta had dropped Martin Odegaard, rather than given him a rest?

Against Chelsea and Sevilla, Odegaard was poor. He looked tired.

Only Ben White and William Saliba had played more minutes this season for us, and neither get through the workload Odegaard does.

He is not only our creative outlet, but also the man that triggers our high press. It should not be a surprise that at some stages during the season he looks both physically and mentally fatigued.

Gabriel Magalhaes was also given a weekend off, with Jakub Kiwior coming in for the Brazilian. Interesting that the same pal who said “Odegaard dropped” later said “Gabriel has been rested”.

The hope would have been that we destroy Sheffield United, and do not have to bring on either Odegaard to try and win the game, or Gabriel to try and hold on. At 5-0 I would say the rest and rotation tactic worked.

The comfortable win also saw Ben White get a little break, taken off with half an hour left to play. Gabriel Martinelli was also taken off at the same time.

10-minutes after those two subs, Bukayo Saka was taken off. He was followed by Emile Smith Rowe and then Declan Rice.

We finished the game with Raya, Tomiyasu, Saliba, Kiwior, Zinchenko, Elneny, Nelson Havertz, Vieira, Trossard, Nketiah. You could easily argue that just 3 (Raya, Saliba, Zinchenko), were part of our strongest XI. Maybe 4 if you include Kai Havertz.

That is how you want to finish a game after a European away. A nice easy win and hardly any of your first XI on the pitch at the final whistle.

When we signed Kai Havertz, I blogged that he provided Arteta with 6 tactical options. One of those was that it would enable the manager to rest Odegaard, with Havertz playing on the right of the two-8s. That is exactly what happened Saturday.

With West Ham mid-week in the cup, I expect Arteta to play a bit of a 50/50 team and have an eye on Newcastle.

I expect Odegaard’s rest to continue and we will likely see both Saka and Martinelli on the bench. That will mean starts for Havertz, Trossard and Nelson. We will probably also see Emile Smith Rowe and Eddie Nketiah start.

In defence, it will be White and Takehiro Tomiyasu on the flanks and Kiwior at centre back. He will be joined by either William Saliba or Gabriel. Expect either Mohamed Elneny or Jorginho to come in for Declan Rice, with Aaron Ramsdale in goal.

Newcastle and Sevilla will see Arteta returning to the “strongest possible XI”, before he rests a couple at home to Burnley in the league.

Last year we would not have suffered the burn-out had Arteta had the players available to him to rest and rotate during the early season games. Rice, Havertz, Trossard and Jorginho are 4 players we did not have 12 months ago. All 4 give Arteta those options to give players a rest without seeing a huge drop off in quality.

Get used to players being rested, as I expect to see Arteta continue to shuffle the pack. And a player being rested does not mean they are dropped – if we were playing Man City at home on Saturday, Odegaard would have started.

PS: What a hat trick for Eddie.

UTA.

Keenos

MATCH REPORT: Arsenal 5 – 0 Sheffield United

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Arsenal (1) 5 Sheffield United (0) 0

Premier League
Emirates Stadium, Drayton Park, London N5 1BU
Saturday, 28th October 2023. Kick-off time: 3.00pm

(4-3-3) David Raya, Ben White, William Saliba, Jakob Kiwior, Oleksandr Zinchenko; Emile Smith-Rowe, Declan Rice, Kai Havertz; Bukayo Saka (c), Eddie Nketiah, Gabriel Martinelli.

Substitutes: Aaron Ramsdale, Gabriel Magalhães, Martin Ødegaard, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Leandro Trossard, (Jorge Luiz Frello Filho) Jorginho, Fábio Vieira, Reiss Nelson, Mohamed Elneny

Scorers: Eddie Nketiah (29, 50, 58 mins), Fábio Vieira (88 mins), Takehiro Tomiyasu (90+5 mins)
Arsenal Possession Percentage: 67%

Referee: Tim Robinson
Assistant Referees: Eddie Smart, Nick Greenhalgh
Fourth Official: John Busby
VAR Team at Stockley Park: VAR Michael Salisbury.; AVAR Nick Hopton

Attendance: 60,153

Mikel Arteta has made four changes in our first home game in the Premiership since beating Manchester City here in North London before the international break. Great to see Emile Smith-Rowe getting a start today, and as he has taken the place of our captain, the armband today is worn by Bukayo Saka.

We started the match completely on the front foot, with the ball almost breaking for Kai Havertz in the penalty area, but a quick-thinking lunge from defender Jack Robinson stopped him from getting an early shot at the goal, which could easily have opened the scoring for us.

The boys are pressurising the visitors, and from a Gabriel Martinelli corner, Jakub Kiwior desperately tried to get to the ball, but it flew way past him, which was a wasted chance.

After a thirty-five yard shot from the visitors courtesy of Gustavo Hamer which went wide of our goal, Bukayo Saka won a free kick in the Blades’ half, which although went nowhere, it was a great chance to open the scoring. The visitors are playing it really tight today, doing everything they can to keep out our strikers, but they surely could not keep this up for ninety minutes. Can they? No they can’t, actually.

After Gabriel Martinelli was receiving some treatment from the medical team after a bad tackle, Declan Rice crossed the ball into the penalty area, and after defender Auston Trusty missed it completely, Eddie Nketiah hit a beautiful right-footed shot from the centre of the Blades’ penalty area into the bottom left-hand corner of the net. Sheffield United came back at us briefly after the restart, but we quickly regrouped, got it together and put more pressure on the visitors’ goal.

Bukayo Saka passed a beautiful ball over to Gabriel Martinelli, whose left-footed shot from the left-hand side of the penalty area was saved by goalie Wes Foderingham as the ball was heading for the the top left hand corner of the net. We are in complete control of the match now, coming up to the half-time break. After a couple of corners in which Wes Foderingham miraculously kept our strikers from scoring the second goal, referee Tim Robinson brought first half matters to a conclusion.

Arsenal started the second half in fine fettle, pressurising the visitors’ goal relentlessly, which resulted in a well-deserved goal just five minutes after the restart, courtesy of a Bukayo Saka corner which found the trusty right foot of Eddie Nketiah, who shot from the left side of the six yard box to the top right-hand corner of the net; it was thought, however, that Ben White was impeding Wes Foderingham but the VAR team cancelled out the visitors’ appeals.

Eight minutes later, we were three goals up when Emile Smith-Rowe perfectly set up a beautiful ball for Eddie Nketiah to crack it into the back of the net from twenty-five yards for his hat-trick and our third goal of the afternoon. Great play, chaps.

We almost grabbed a fourth goal soon afterwards, when Gabriel Martinelli ran down the wing, cut the ball across to Ben White, whose strong shot was saved well by Wes Foderingham.

After sixty-six minutes, Ben White and Gabriel Martinelli were replaced by Takehiro Tomiyasu and Leandro Trossard, just to get some fresh legs on the pitch. Our boys are in complete control of this match now, and it is now starting to look like a training match at London Colney.

With fifteen minutes of the game remaining, Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith-Rowe were replaced by Reiss Nelson and Fabio Vieira to give new legs a run out for the rest of the match.

We had a penalty appeal turned down when Eddie Nketiah took a tumble in the penalty area after a clumsy clash with centre-back Auston Trusty, and with two minutes of the match remaining, Fábio Vieira was hacked down by Oliver Norwood on the very edge of the penalty area, with referee Tim Robinson being asked to go to the pitchside monitor by the VAR team to check. A penalty was given, and Fábio Vieira made no mistake from the penalty spot.

A minute later, Mohamed Elneny replaced Declan Rice, and in the ten minutes of injury time, Takehiro Tomiyasu scored our fifth goal of the day when he hit a beautiful right-footed shot into the back of the net from the centre of the penalty area following a corner, and despite a VAR check again, our Japanese international’s first goal for the club rightly stood.

A couple of minutes later, referee Tim Robinson blew the whistle for the end of the match, much to the relief of our visitors here this afternoon.

All in all, it was a total wipeout for us today here at the Emirates, we were in complete control from the start of the game until the end.

Big congratulations to Eddie Nketiah for his hat-trick (particularly his sensational third goal) this afternoon. Everyone played very well today, with twelve shots on goal, (eight on target); with these impressive statistics, our confidence will be on the up for the Carabao Cup match against West Ham United on Wednesday evening. And, most importantly, we are just two points behind Tottenham Hotspur in the Premiership table tonight. Very well done, chaps.

Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as this season is going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Our next match: West Ham United at the London Stadium on Wednesday, 1st November at 7.30pm (Carabao Cup). Be there, if you can. Victoria Concordia Crescit.

Steve

Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon