Author Archives: keenosafc

Chelsea the worst away game for pre-match drinking

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Firstly, thoughts with those who live north of the border or anywhere else across the UK affected by the flooding. Stay safe, stay warm and look after your neighbours.

Chelsea away.

A 5:30 kick off in West London creates a bit of a headache as to what to do before the game.

For games outside of London, we would obviously meet in a pub local to Euston, King’s cross or Victoria, before getting the train. Then a few beers in the away put before heading to the game.

For the likes of West Ham, Tottenham and Crystal Palace, the meeting place will often be Islington or London Bridge. But for Fulham, Brentford and Chelsea, there is not a natural place for a few beers before hand.

Those West London clubs are a bit of a nightmare commute from Islington so that is off the table.

Victoria is usually the natural option, as you can then jump on the district line to all the grounds. But the area around Victoria Station does not really have a decent pub. Certainly not one that you can see yourself sitting in for 3 or 4 hours before a game.

At least with Fulham you have the option of going a little bit further south and heading into Putney, whilst the last time we went Brentford, we decided to head to Waterloo. Chelsea is probably the worst away day for a pre-match drink.

I am sure by the time I get a coffee down me and shake off last nights booze, a decision will be made. And that will probably be us sitting in a souless commuter pub outside Victoria Station. Probably a Weatherspoons.

During yesterday’s press conference, spoke about having 14 players away for international duty for 2 weeks, and a number of others in the medical room.

Reflecting on his selection dilemmas, he said: “We obviously haven’t had a lot of players. It’s the first training session we’re going to do today and we will know more after the session.

“I do have an idea [of his starting XI] but I have to see them all together today and how everybody is because we have a lot of people travelling around the world and with a lot of minutes in the legs.

“I want to judge what is the best for tomorrow, not only in terms of what I want to do tactically but also how the energy is, how the mood is, how the spirit is. In order to that, I will have a better clue after the session today.”

Bukayo Saka, William Saliba and Leandro Trossard’s fitness was also to be assessed in yesterday’s final training session,

I imagine this is a bit of “keeping my cards close to my chest”. The trio had remained with the club for the last 2-weeks and I am sure Arteta would know if they would be fit to start or not.

As we said in yesterday’s blog, I would not be surprised if Arteta has his prefered strongest XI start today.

Little bit of other Arsenal related news floating about this morning.

West Ham reportedly inserted a “first option on Emile Smith Rowe” into the Declan Rice deal. This basically means that if we receive a bid from another club, we have to give West Ham an opportunity to match the bid. If they do, we have to accept their offer before we accept any offer from another club. I think.

The final little bit of news is about Aaron Ramsdale.

He has spoken about needing to ensure he is playing first team football to retain his place in the England squad. The conclusion is that he would be open to leave for first team football. Not really a story and it is something we all knew was likely.

David Raya is an upgrade, whilst Ramsdale would command a fee north of £40m. We would basically be getting a better keeper at half the price.

Enjoy the game today.

Keenos

https://twitter.com/SheWore/status/1715639674083889625

Mikel Arteta could have “strongest possible XI” available for Chelsea

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Morning and happy Friday!

The international break is over and proper football has returned. This one feels like it dragged on forever…

The good news from Arsenal’s point of view is that all of our players have returned unharmed – although Gabriel’s Jesus and Magalhaes, and Thomas Partey might be a little sleep deprived having represented their country at 1am Wednesday morning (GMT).

Those lads would not have made it home to London until late Wednesday evening, so they will have to quickly shake of any jet lag (which I do not think actually exists). I imagine yesterday would have been a day of medical work on the trio – ensuring they were rested and recuperated from the last 2-weeks.

That gives Mikel Arteta just today to work with his squad ahead of the Chelsea game.

Due to this, I expect him to keep with the tried and tested formation and tactics of the last 18 months:

Raya
White Saliba Gabriel Zinchenko
Rice
Saka Odegaard Havertz Martinelli
Jesus

With Martinelli likely to return to full fitness, it could be the first time this season (I think) that Arteta has had his strongest XI to pick from.

There are slight injury concerns are Bukayo Saka, who missed England duty. But when you consider he was touch and go in making that squad, you have to think the 2-week break has allowed him to fully recover.

If Saka is out, expect Leandro Trossard to start on the right.

Games like tomorrow would have been when Arteta would have considered playing Rice and Partey in midfield – with the Ghanian deeper and the Englishman in a more advanced 8.

Considering Partey’s travels and fitness issues, I think he will be on the bench.

As we said earlier in the week, this is a huge game. Arguably our toughest away day of the season so far.

7 points from 3 games against other supposed “big 6” teams all came from home. This is the first time we would have played a top team away. That is, of course, if you still consider Chelsea a top team.

We will be kicking off the game already knowing the results of our title contenders. It is so close at the top right now that we could be starting it top of the league or in 4th.

Buzzing for it.

On a side note, I hope FIFA and UEFA are taking note of the rugby and cricket World Cup’s going on at the moment.

I love my rugby and cricket. Will watch almost every game we play in both (by we, I mean England). But these tournaments drag on.

The Rugby World Cup is taking nearly 2 months to complete, with at one point England not having a game for around 14 days.

Meanwhile the cricket World Cup is already 2 weeks in having started on 5 October. It finishes in a month.

What makes football World Cup’s special is games come thick and fast. 2 or 3 games a day. And your side plays every 4 days. It is non-stop. 100mph.

Cricket and rugby have their elongated tournaments which just means they struggle to gather any sort of momentum.

With plans to expand the World Cup, and further plans to expand the Euro’s, this could see a 3 and 4-week tournament into 4 or 5-week tournaments. It will mean you see your team play less, more meaningless games amongst smaller nations, and it will lose some of its sparkle.

World Cups should not be “lets have as many teams as possible competing”. They should be “the best teams in the world competing”.

The longer a tournament is, the more itnerest will wain.

Enjoy your Friday.

Keenos

Arsenal 2 points better off than last season, but will it be enough to be crowned Champions?

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There is a narrative out there that we have been poor this season. That Mikel Arteta has been found out. It is baffling.

Level on points with top of the league, we have played 12, won 8 and lost just once across all competitions.

We have already lifted the Community Shield, are through to the 4th round of the League Cup and have won 66.6666666666666% of our games.

Yes, there have been disappointments – the draws against Fulham and Tottenham, the defeat against Lens – but that is football. If teams “won all the games they should”, football would not be the most watched, exciting game in the world.

We are a better side than last season following the acquisition of Declan Rice, Kai Havertz, Jurrien Timber and David Raya.

Whilst Havertz is yet to fully get into his stride and Timber is our long term, Declan Rice is a signing that takes us to the next level.

In recent years, our challenge (whether that be for the title, 4th or 7th) has been derailed by injuries to Thomas Partey.

The Ghanaian has not started a league game since August (with just 1 substitute apeparance) and we won 4 out of 5 games in that period. Rice has been well worth every penny of the £105million.

Now some will point out “how are we better than last season when we have 2 points less”, and that is true. But just 8 games in, that statistic does not mean we are worse.

Infact, as pointed out by regular contributor Johnno, we “are actually 2 points better of this season than we were last against the same opposition“.

So we have 2 points more in the same games, although we have scored 2 loss and conceded 1 more. The goals scored difference is basically because we spanked Nottingham Forest 5-0 last season.

What is also interesting that last season, it needed an 86th minute winner to turn Fulham from 1 point to 3, and a 90th minute Eddie Nketiah goal to secure all 3-points against Manchester United.

I will concede that we do not look as free flowing this season as last, but I see that as a good sign.

Last year, we were so aggressive at the start of the season, building a lead ahead of Manchester City. But this fast start contributed to us running out of steam towards the end of the season.

This campaign, it feels like we are holding a little back, playing with the hand break on, trying our best not to get out of 3rd gear to win games. That tactic will leave us with more in the tank at the end of the year. And it is a tactic that is clearly working.

Now High Standards FC fans will be saying “well if we are better than last year, we shpould win the league”. No. That is not how football works.

You firstly need to assume that other teams around us have not improved – and I think it is clear and obvious that both Liverpool and Tottenham have improved. Manchester City, meanwhile, have certainly not gone backwards.

Secondly, you need to assume that our improvements are enough to make up the difference against how far behind we were last season.

Whilst the 2022/23 league table might show that we finished just 5 points behind Man City, it is easily forgotten that they secured the league title with them still having 2 games to play – and they only got 1 point from those 2 games.

I am sure that if they needed to win their final 2 matches of the season (Brighton and Brentford away), they would have done. Afterall, they were on a run of 12 league wins in a row when they secured the title. That would have seen them finish 11 points ahead of us.

If you buy in to the fact that Manchester City are no worse than last season, and they will not be throwing the last two games of the season due to FA Cup and Champions League finals, you have to think over 94 points is what will be needed to win the title this season.

Last season we got 84 points. So we need an extra 10 points. We basically need to average around 2.5 points a game – exactly what we are currently averaging. And again, that does not take into account that Manchester City or Liverpool might get even more than that.

This could be 2018/19 all over again when Liverpool finished 1 point behind City despite getting a huge 97 points!

I did not go into this season expecting us to win the league, despite the money spent in the summer and improvements I think we have made. What I expected was for us to back up what we did last season.

Liverpool showed that you beat Manchester City by “putting the pressure on” over a number of seasons, and position yourselves to lift the title if they ever have an off-season. We need to show that last year was not a “Spurs” season, a one-off. We need to back it up with another season where we push Man City.

And then next season we go again. Eventually Man City will get key injuries, wrong out of spun blood, and we will be in position to be crowned champions.

Even finishing 3rd this season behind Man City and a resurgent Liverpool will not be a step back. We just need to ensure we continue pushing them all the way to the end.

We are better than last year. The coresponding games prove that. We go again Saturday against Chelsea…

Keenos