The headline is a bet of a test. See who on social media actually takes the time to read the blog and who comments without reading.
We know Arsenal will not put out a full strength team. Mohamed Elneny is still in Africa.
It will actually be enjoyable to watch those on social media and the good and great of her majesties written press (and spoken) rant and rave today. It will all be so predictable.
When the team is announced, we will see all those bitter fools say “but they could not put a team out at the weekend”.
And whilst they do have a point, the issue is the fact they are only talking about Arsenal.
On Tuesday, Burnley’s Premier League match with Watford was postponed as Burnley “only had 10 fit players”. The news was released with barely a murmur.
There was no hours on end debate on TalkSport. No discussion on Sky Sports News. No one going through their Premier League A & B lists, counting them up, and saying “why can they not play their U23s.
It is only The Arsenal that seems to be on the end of that sort of criticism.
So onto tonight.
Martin Odegaard, who missed the first leg after a positive Covid-19 test, is set to be available after isolating, while the likes of Kieran Tierney, Calum Chambers, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Magalhaes are expected to be fit.
Granit Xhaka is still suspended whilst Cedric Soares is out injured. Elneny and Thomas Partey are still on international duty (the Ghanaian might be back for the weekend) whilst Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is back at the club but undergoing heart tests.
Emile Smith Smith Rowe and Takehiro Tomiyasu have still not returned to training, whilst Bernd Leno is expected to keep his cup-place ahead of Aaron Ramsdale.
The knives will be out today, with everyone ignoring the fact that we are only playing because Liverpool successfully got the original tie postponed due to 13-billion-to-1 false positives.
Let’s make it noisy, make is us against the world, and earn a trip to Wembley.
In February 2016, Farhad Moshri announced that Moshiri had sold his stake in Arsenal Football Club to Red & White Holdings partner Alisher Usmanov in a bid to raise capital required to launch a takeover at Everton.
That sale included him relinquishing his joint ownership of Arsenal shares alongside Usmanov.
Two weeks after the Premier League confirmed that Moshri had purchased a 49.9% of Everton.
It was felt that he was the front of a deal that would eventually involve Usmanov, and the Uzbek billionaire would also end up involved on Merseyside; spending the money he always talked about spending at Arsenal.
Some Arsenal were up in arms. They wanted Usmanov and his billions involved at Arsenal, backing him over he Kroenke’s. Where Moshri led Usmanov was surely to follow.
In his first summer as major shareholder, Moshri went big overseeing £73.5million of signings as Everton finished 7th.
2017 would see USM, a holding company owned by Usmanov, agree an initial” five-year naming rights deal which saw club’s Halewood training ground renamed USM Finch Farm.
The deal was worth £20million and indicated that Usmanov would become more heavily involved in the financing of Everton.
2017/18 would see another £160m spent across two windows. “Oh what could have been” some Arsenal fans crowed “to have an owner that was not afraid of bankrolling the club to success”.
In 2018 Kroenke bought out Usmanov. At around the same time it was announced that USM had secured the naming rights of Everton’s unbuilt new stadium for £30million.
Usmanov did not own a single share and had already pumped £50million into the club.
Arsenal fans were beginning to get worried. A team in decline on the pitch, it was only a matter of time until big spending Everton, with our former shareholders at the helm, took our place as a top 6 club.
Everton’s big transfer spending did not stop.
In 2018/19 it was again over £100milllion; bringing in some great young talent including Richarlison, Yerry Mina and Moise Keane.
The £100million mark would be breached again in 2019/20. But whilst that took Everton’s spending under Moshri to well over £500million, the club finished 12th. And Usmanov seemed to have disappeared.
The summer or 2020 would see Everton’s transfer spending almost half under new Carlo Ancelotti. But in came the big names like of Allan, James Rodriguez and Abdoulye Dacoure on huge wages.
Something was clearly not right at Everton and Ancelotti returned to Rea Madrid at the end of the season, with Everton finishing 10th.
Despite protests, Everton then gave the managerial job to Rafa Benitez. As we all know he was a former Liverpool manager.
It was a bad appointment, and to compound what was happening the money seemed to have dried up.
In the summer of 2021 Everton’s only outlay was £1million on Demarai Gray. He was joined by journeymen free transfers Android Townsend, Salomon Robson and Askir Begovic.
Moshri has overseen £660million worth of signings. But it didn’t matter how much you spent when you continually overspent on the wrong players.
In the last decade, Everton have gone from being one of the best run clubs in English football with David Moyes at the helm to one of the worst.
In 6 years of ownership, he has got through 6 managers. Each has performed progressively worse than the last.
Whoever relaxes Benitez will be his 7th manager.
What sums up the situation at Everton is the club have spent £37million full backs in January, only to sack the manager.
Those Arsenal fans that spent nearly a decade crying out for their Moshri / Usmanov dream team to take control of the club have gone very quiet.
The situation at Everton has soured very quickly. Despite millions spent the club is sailing in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile it feels like Arsenal, under the stewardship of Edu and Mikel Arteta, are finally on the right path.
The Kroenke’s might not put their hand in their pocket, might stay too quiet for some; but there is a warning in the way Everton have been run under Moshri.
It was interesting in the immediate aftermath of the Man City game that pundits and media seemed demonstrably rattled by the way Arsenal had outplayed the best side in Europe. After years of being summarily dismissed by the better teams in the Premier League Arsenal had been robbed of a deserved victory by what we might euphemistically call “questionable” officiating. Some of us tentatively suggested it was the biggest sign yet that Arteta’s “process” might actually be a genuine route back towards the top table of English football. The fans suddenly seemed united in a way we hadn’t seen for some time, and the outrageous dishonesty of Liverpool FC and the EFL (by which I mean Liverpool’s former Chairman) further cemented the view that it’s Arsenal against everyone else again. At last!
A lot of that optimism was dented badly by the no-show at Nottingham Forest. It was a shocking and unacceptable display and, longer term, will have no doubt sealed the fate of a number of the players in Arteta’s current squad. What followed at Anfield, however, was a Lazarus-like recovery and a redemption for the likes of Rob Holding and Sambi Lokonga. The XI Liverpool fielded, and the strength of their bench, gave all the evidence we needed to see their duplicity a week earlier, and it maybe galvanised the Arsenal players to perform with such defiance. The last time I remember a 0-0 being celebrated so much by Arsenal supporters was Real Madrid at home in 2006.
All of which brings me to this past weekend and the North London Derby that didn’t happen. Starting Friday morning it was apparent Arsenal were in trouble in terms of player availability, albeit not necessarily COVID related. However, a quick look at the ridiculous Premier League rules for this season (and it’s important to make the distinction between the Premier League rules and those for the League Cup which were circumvented by Liverpool) that Arsenal were well within their rights to request a postponement.
I understand this was the 20th Premier League match to be postponed due to lack of players this season. The first club to take advantage of it was Tottenham, claiming a COVID outbreak for which they refused to publicise the names/number or players, and which just happened to coincide with their new Manager wanting some time on the training pitch. Arsenal played Leeds the week before Christmas in a match that, had Leeds been held to the same standard as Tottenham, would never have been played. Not Arsenal’s fault, but I mention it as some “journalists” (and I use the term loosely) cited it as an unfairness this weekend. On 28th December Arsenal’s home match with Wolves was cancelled due to the opponents struggling for players. Last week Leicester got a match called off largely because of players being at the AFCON tournament. And again, on Friday morning, Leicester v Burnley was called-off. Nobody in the media batted an eyelid. And then came Arsenal…
The faux outrage this weekend from the media, Spurs themselves, and other clubs’ fans has been maniacal and comical all at once. Micah Richards and Alan Smith (who almost sounded like an Arsenal Man for a change) pricked the balloon delightfully on Sky yesterday by pointing out the facts. Gary Neville pretending his objections were on behalf of “the fans” were beyond laughable. This is a man employed by a TV company that made Bournemouth fans travel to Middlesbrough for a 1230pm kick-off in the week before Christmas and now he’s worried about us?! A man of such conscience will not, I’m sure, be appearing on any coverage of the Qatar World Cup later this year.
The only conclusion to draw from the stick meted out to Arsenal by all and sundry is that Arsenal are back. Instead of being laughed at, even at times sympathised with, for the state we were in, it seems Arsenal have people worried again. They’re worried that something is happening at our club and we might be about the gatecrash the Premier League hegemony once more.
It’s good to be hated again. It’s good to be formed up as a club with the cannons directed outwards once more. We are The Arsenal, and we’re back.
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 