Top 4 challengers misfire – Arsenal now need get back on track

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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

Winter break is good for no-one

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Morning and happy Sunday! Enjoy the warm weather because from tomorrow we will see wine zero temperatures.

There is very little news floating around about The Arsenal, which is no surprise considering we are in the middle of our pointless winter break.

I really do not get the need for the break.

Most teams have had it interrupted due to League Cup semi-finals and FA Cup replies, whilst those who are not playing are out in Dubai or elsewhere in the Middle East on warm weather training.

I get in Scotland, Germany and others the need for a winter break. Heavy snow and frozen pitches result in games cancelled at late notice. But we do not consistently suffer that in England, and those clubs affected are usually lower league teams who do not get the break!

Moving on, I did have a chuckle at Newcastle’s defeat last night.

Their loss (and Chelsea’s win) meant they have dropped to 10th in the league. If the teams below them win their games in hand they will be 12th – below the likes of Wolves and Bournemouth.

Newcastle are basically having the season the media and pundits are acting like Arsenal are having. Their collapse in form despite their fans giving it the big’un on how they were back is a glorious reminder that money is not everything.

Their fans will moan about FFP, and how they have been restricted in spending. But they have spent £400m in 2 years.

A reminder that this blog is for everyone. We want to publish the views of all Arsenal fans. We e want your contribution.

What does Arsenal mean to you? We are be looking to publish a blogs written by you, the fans. What are we looking for? Anything. Your relationship with Arsenal. A memory. Many memories. How you came to support the club. Your current feelings on the club. Anything you feel like writing.

Put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and once you are done, send it to shewore@gmail.com with The Arsenal and Me in the subject. Throughout February, we will be sharing your blogs. Do not worry if what you have to say does not get used straight away. ALL will be published!

Not much else to really say today. Get ready for a cold week and wrap up warm.

Keenos

The Arsenal and Me – Daniel O’s Story

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Before starting this retelling of a life long love affair with my local team, I want to go back to a recent trip to Spain.

I went to visit a club that has ties to Arsenal via them both being a team that Santi Cazorla has played for at some time during his career, and are two clubs that he holds near and dear to his heart. Arsenal obviously being one of them.

The second club in question is Real Oviedo. Located in the Asturias region in Spain, they are the club Santi started his career.

Oviedo are a club with a rocky story, one very much different from Arsenal but no less fascinating. They are a club that I own a share in and recently finally visited and experienced live for the first time. What started off as a trip to see my second club, became a reminder what made me an Arsenal fan.

For me, Oviedo reminded me of home. I grew up on the Holloway Road in Islington.

It did not matter where I went in Oviedo, I would see the blue and white of the club. The Badge was proudly emblazoned on local businesses, whether they were linked to the club or not. The business owners were showing their love, passion and dedication to this fairytale story.

Seeing the level of pride this small town in the north of Spain had for their heroes, reminded me of the same emotions that the Arsenal would evoke in me when I was a young boy.

 Arsenal to me at the start was just a name that I heard on the playground of Pakeman Primary Scholl (less than 10 minutes from the Emirates Stadium).

“Did you see the Arsenal game last night?”, “What a goal by Ian Wright!”, and other Arsenal related topics dominated play time chatter. Red and white shirts seen all around N7 and N5. But to me, it was still just a name.

I was the small, unathletic child who would rather play video games than go out and play football for hours. Sports was not something that I really took up. I had watched England games before. I remember being on holiday in Dawlish when Gazza scored that goal against Scotland in Euro 96. But I was unaware of club football at that time.

That was until I finally asked. “Whats Arsenal” to my father (Who unfortunately supported Luton Town, but the less said about that the better). Little did I know, those two words would start a life long love story. 

After that question, it was not long until I got my first Arsenal shirt – a 1993 home shirt with the FA Cup winners patch on it. The shirt was years out of date at that point, but I did not care. It had the most important thing on the front. The Badge.

From there, anything to do with Arsenal I was invested in. Coaches doing after school football? I would beg my parents to allow me to do it. Arsenal summer camps? Oh you bet I would beg my parents to allow me to do this.

My bedroom walls were soon covered with Drawings of Arsenal players, posters about the club’s history and a collage of Arsenal Magazine covers, and clippings from newspapers. I called it my own Arsenal world of football and it was something that stirred up a sense of pride in my young heart.

This vice like grip a clue can have on an individual is something that I also saw at Oviedo.

It did not matter who you were, man woman or child, the Blue and white of Oviedo were the colours that you would proudly be wearing for the rest of your life. They were the colours you would live for.

Every child who ever kicked a ball or even a crushed bottle (like I witnessed in the concourse of the Estadio Municipal Carlos Tartiere during half time) had the goal to one day play for the team.

It was reminiscent of 10 year old me, training with Tuffnell Park, kicking a ball up and down the Holloway Road, practising my celebrations in the back garden. It was all to one day play in Highbury. Sadly this never happened, but it would never take away from my love for The Arsenal.

It has been 20 years since we moved from Islington, but that fire for The Arsenal never faltered. I now live in Ireland where Arsenal fans are hard to come by. Everyone here supports either United or Liverpool, the latter my brother sadly changed allegiances to due to peer pressure as a child.

Whenever I return home for matches, I see the familiar red and white all around the community and suddenly I am back home. I am that 10 year old who kicked a ball up and down Holloway Road wanting to play for The Arsenal. The 6 year old who got his first Arsenal shirt, and the child who lived and breathed The Arsenal.

Even with me often being the token Arsenal fan in Ireland, Arsenal was at the core of who I was as a person. The way I would play football on the school yard was the Arsenal way, the way I would conduct myself as a person would be the Arsenal way.

I have the club badge etched into my skin as well as the club’s motto but even more importantly, Arsenal will forever be etched into the very core of who I am as a person. The same way it is for the people of Oviedo who fought to keep their club alive in the face of almost certain annihilation of their club.

Puxa Asturies! Vamos Oviedo, Victoria Concordia Crescit.

Daniel

What does Arsenal mean to you? We are be looking to publish a blogs written by you, the fans. What are we looking for? Anything. Your relationship with Arsenal. A memory. Many memories. How you came to support the club. Your current feelings on the club. Anything you feel like writing.

Put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and once you are done, send it to shewore@gmail.com with The Arsenal and Me in the subject. Throughout February, we will be sharing your blogs. Do not worry if what you have to say does not get used straight away. ALL will be published!