Morning! How was everyones weekend with no football? For me, I spent most of the time watching the snooker. Ronnie O’Sullivan – what a sportsman.
There was only half the Premier League games on this weekend due to the winter break, and none at 3pm Saturday. The Premier League got their wish of every game being televised.
I am part of the problem as I watched every single live games (in between the snooker).
Manchester City injuries
Whilst other majors continually point to their injuries as to their poor form (Postecoglou, Howe), very little has been made from Pep Guardiola or the media about Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland missing so many games.
Alongside Mo Salah, they are the 3 best players in the Premier League. I doubt any other team would have survived without players of the quality of de Bruyne and Haaland out for so long.
Of course, part of that is due to how much they spend one wages.
In their place they can call up a World Cup winning striker (Julian Alvarez) and a £100m midfielder (Jack Grealish).
A lot is made about how much Mikel Arteta has spent since he came in, but that is dwarfed by the investment of Manchester City over the last decade building the squad they currently have.
“Net spend since Arteta came in” does not take into account the signings of the likes of de Bruyne, Rodri, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva and Ederson. Nearly £300m worth of starting talent that these pundits act like they do not just because they were signed out of the chosen time frame.
I also had to laugh at the weekend when I saw one armchair pundit say “this is the difference between Arsenal and Manchester City. They bring de Bruyne off the bench whilst we have Reiss, Nketiah and ESR. Arteta and the spineless director need to be buying world class game changes”.
It ignored that fact that KdB was only on gthe bench due to coming back from injury, that no other team in world football had a player of his quality on the bench, and that he earns in excess of £300k a week.
In 2022/23, Manchester City spent over £100m more on wages than Arsenal. It is the equivalent of having an additional 9 players earning £200k a week! For that you would expect them to have a deeper squad, more world class game changers on the bench.
The recruitment is not the issue at Arsenal. It is the finances. We need to close the gap on both Manchester City and Liverpool, and we only do that by consistently finishing in the Champions League.
If we take Manchester City out of it and compare to Liverpool, you can see the differenct in the squads when you look at the front 3.
Both starting 3 are fairly comparable – Salah, Nunez, Diaz v Saka, Jesus Martinelli. But Liverpool than have two quality replacements in Diego Jota and Cody Gakpo. Both are a similar level to Martinelli. Meanwhile we have Leandro Trossard (who is the level below), and then ESR and Nelson (who are levels below the Liverpool 5).
We only close the gap in terms of squad depth by getting that additional £80m a year in Champions League revenue, and investing it in better players than what we have.
Strikers misfiring
It was intersting over the weekend watching two lads who we were heavilly linked with 2 years ago – Dominic Calvert Lewin and Alexander Isak, but opted for Gabriel Jesus.
One accusation labelled at Jesus is he is not a clinical striker, and due to that we need to be looking elsewhere. Had we signed DCL or Isak, the same claims wouldbe made.
Both are decent strikers, but both miss a lot of chances.
Were Isak more clinical, Newcastle would have easily beaten Manchester City. The Swede reminds me of Emmanuel Adebayor that he has it all (physicality, speed, technique), but his performances are inconsistent and his finishing unreliable.
DCL is similar, missing a host of chances against Aston Villa as they drew 0-0.
Whilst both of these would improve our squad depth, I do not think either is better than what we have. And that is the headache for Edu and his team right now – there is a lack of top strikers in Europe and very few have proven on a consistent basis that they are clinical.
Sunday League performance
The irony of Manchester United playing on a Sunday was not lost on me during the game as both sides put on a performance that would not have been out of place on Hackney Marshes.
A 2-2 performance where neither team played with any structure, the defending was all over the place, and the teams just lumped in forward to their strikers in the hope of some individual magic. It was a Sunday League performance.
Ange Postecoglou is not a tactical genius in his “gung-ho” methods. His teams play with very little structure because he has the inability to coach teams in a more structured way. He is no different to the Sunday League manager who is not really a manager, and just there to do the subs. And Erik ten Hag is no better.
It was a dull 2-2 draw where both managers showed they are poor coaches.
And what about The Arsenal…
Not much happening still.
Emails went out last week reminding us of the importantance of either going to games or selling on the Ticket Exchange.
We now have to go to 17 games (or have posted them on TX) to retain our season ticket. I think it is a brilliant policy. You use it or lose it.
There will be cases where fans are unable to make that many games and unable to sell on TX, and the club will take into account individual circumstances. But ultimately if someone is only going to 10 games a season, and can not be bothered to sell on TX, then they should not have a season ticket.
Good to see that Jack Wilshere bought in David Seaman for a few coaching sessions. I always think it is benificial for legends to come in on an ad-hoc basis. Whilst they might not be the best coaches, just coming in and speaking to the players can have a huge impact, especially for youth players.
All in all, a good weekend for Arsenal as Aston Villa and Tottenham both dropped points (playing away from home). We now need to get back to winning ways next Saturday at home to Crystal Palace.
A victory will return us to 3rd in the table. Not bad for a team in crisis (see Newcastle for an actual team in crisis!)
UTA.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 
You are completely delusional.
Aryeta had totally failed in the transfer market since he has been at Arsenal.
Are you sure the club isn’t paying you to write this rubbish.
We could have had Kudus and Sbotslai/Maddision instead of Havertz..
Arteta is a just a disaster in the transfer market since he arrived at Arsenal.
Wasted 700m to only have us competing for top 4 in his fourth season absolutely joke
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