Tag Archives: Arsenal

Great time to play Man City – PL fixtures announced

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Manchester City at home

Chelsea away

Welcome to the Premier League Unai Emery.

Whilst a lot of people have winced at Arsenal’s tough start to the Premier League season, I prefer to look at it another way.

The beginning of the season is a great time to play both sides due to the World Cup.

Arsenal have just 8 players at the World Cup – Granit Xhaka, Mesut Özil, David Ospina, Nacho Monreal, Mohamed Elneny, Alex Iwobi, Danny Welbeck & new boy Stephan Lichtsteiner.

Only really Ozil, Monreal and Xhaka start in our strongest XI.

This means for the opening day of the season, we could line up the following line up:

Cech

Bellerin Mustafi Sokratis Kolasinac

Wilshere* AMN Ramsey

Mkhitaryan

Aubameyang Lacazette

*If he signs

The only place we are looking lightweight is in midfield, as both Xhaka and Elneny are in Russia, and likely new signing Lucas Torreira will also be out there.

Manchester City, meanwhile, have 16 players at the World Cup.

The likes of Kyle Walker, Sergio Aguero, Gabriel Jesus, Nicolas Otamendi, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne strut their stuff around Russia

John Stones, Vincent Kompany, Ederson, Danilo, Fernandinho, Fabian Delph, Benjamin Mendy, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva and David Silva will also be out there.

Looking at their squad, you struggle to make a competitive XI out of those players who have not gone.

If they rush some players who will be knocked it early – the likes of Stones and Walker – they might be able to put out a decent XI; but an XI who would not have had much of a pre season.

Chelsea also have a lot of players at the World Cup. 14 in total.

Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois and loan man Michy Batshuayi. Gary Cahill and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

Olivier Giroud N’Golo Kante, Antonio Rudiger, Willian, Cesar Azpilicueta, Andreas Christensen and Willy Caballero.

Kenneth Omeruo and Victor Moses will be playing for Nigeria.

Going into the first few games of the season, they will be without a senior goal keeper and have just senior CB – David Luiz – to choose from.

Emery has a chance of starting the season off with a bang. Two wins against two top 6 sides.

Other fixtures to look out for are:

Spurs (a): March 2nd

Spurs (h): December 1st

Boxing Day: Brighton (a)

New Years Eve: Liverpool (a)

New Years Day: Fulham (h)

Last game: Burnley (h)

The post-Europa league games are also friendly. They will all get moved to Sunday and for away supporters, we have avoided any long trips:

Everton (h)

Fulham (a)

Crystal Palace (a)

Wolves (h)

Tottenham (h)

Southampton (a)

Two of the post Europa League away days in London and the furthest to travel is Southampton. Not bad.

With the transfer window closing on the eve of the Premier Leaghe starting, clubs have to get a move on with any business they have to do.

Arsenal have fairly nice fixtures in the last 8 games of the season. If we start well, we could be in with a shout towards the end.

Up the Arsenal

Keenos

Arsenal announce record season ticket renewals

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Today is the first day of a nice 5 day weekend myself. Instead of thinking “lucky sod”, this is the longest period of annual leave I have had this year.

It is off to the Oval to see England beat those cheating Aussie’s. Tomorrow I am actually working. I have taken a days labouring at the London Stadium assisting in the set up of the stage of the Jay Z / Beyoncé concert.

Friday it is relaxing, bit of food shopping for a BBQ on Saturday. Probably watch a bit of World Cup football as well.

Yesterday I confirmed my seat move within the Emirates.

After 12 years sitting in the same seat I am moving. From block 11 to block 3.

Having spoken to the club, I was informed that 6,000 people have requested a seat move. The club are going through applications this week.

It is a huge amount of people, they said, driven by a lot of people being forced to move due to arsenal creating more disabled areas to fall in line with Premier League regulations.

I had a conversation with someone dealing with season tickets in the office when I was moving and he informed me that it was very unlikely that all 6,000 requests would be accepted.

“We have had the most renewals in years” he said.

It highlights why the club eventually got rid of Arsene Wenger. The empty seats at the ground put paid to his time at Arsenal.

The chap in the box office informed me that it was the largest percentage of renewals since we moved to the new stadium. It shows there is a new wave of optimism. Some fresh air.

You only have to see on Twitter people declaring that they have renewed, and were unlikely to do so if Arsene Wenger was still in charge.

I will always back the team no matter the manager, I support Arsenal FC, not refusing to support the club because I think it is Arsene FC. I wanted us to win the league last season, I want us to win it this season.

Anyway, the news of record season ticket renewals will disappoint some fans who would have been hopeful of getting a season ticket this summer.

The Arsenal season ticket waiting list currently sits at well over 40,000. In the past, it has dropped by about 4-5,000 a year.

There have been stories of people over 10,000 getting offered a season ticket. This is due to people ahead of them turning down a ticket. Either due to not being in a financial position to buy, the season ticket they have been offered being unsuitable, or the child they but on the season ticket still being 6 years old.

My prediction is the season ticket list this season will only drop by a couple of thousand – especially with the reduced capacity due to the increase of disabled seats.

If you are not offered a season ticket this summer, keep an eye on twitter as there are plenty floating about.

My hope next year is those that have bought season tickets actually turn up.

We still sell out pretty much every game. The huge amount of empty seats is due to season ticket holders not turning up.

If you only kept your season ticket to sell on game by game, shame on you. You should have it stripped.

If you have renewed, turn up, support your team and the new regime.

Up the Arsenal

Keenos

How does Lucas Torriera fit into Arsenal?

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By now you all would have seen the Big Dave Ornstein news from a few last night.

That Arsenal are in talks to sign Uruguayan defensive midfielder Lucas Torriera.

Usually when Ornstein tweets, the deal is not too far from being done, so we can afford ourselves to consider just how the Sampdoria midfielder will fit in at Arsenal.

Signing Lucas Torriera would support my view that we will play 3 in the middle next year;

Xhaka Torreira Ramsey

Ahead of them will be a narrow two of Mesut Ozil and Henrik Mkhitaryan, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang up top.

The midfield 3 will give us a lot more balance and defensive stability than we had last season when we often played two.

It will give Aaron Ramsey the licence to get forward and attack the opponents box. It will also free him to press high up the field, putting pressure on the opponents deep lying midfielders.

With Ramsey getting forward alongside Ozil and Mkhitaryan, it will over load the opponents who will struggle to defend against all 3 – probably forcing them to bring a centre back out of shape create space for Aubameyang behind.

Ramsey will be free to press forward knowing that he has Granit Xhaka and Torriera sitting behind him, in front of the back 4

With both men having the ability to play from deep, it will give the defenders two options when passing the ball out.

Opponents will not as easily be able to pick off us transitioning the ball from defence to attack with both Torriera and Xhaka. Last season, if they stuck a man on Xhaka, it forced us long, or into mistakes.

Torreira will move Xhaka forward one, allowing him to press higher and be more influential on the ball.

Last year he was often caught out trying to press high, leaving too much of a gap between defence and midfield.

He will be free to do a similar job next season, but know that there is an extra player behind the him to sweep up to mistakes (instead of opponents being straight at the back 4 when he gives the ball away).

Xhaka has always been at his best for club and country when he has had another midfielder behind him. He has never really been the deepest of the midfielders.

Xhaka will also have to be the muscle in the midfield.

Torriera is tiny so Xhaka will have to ensure he does not get bullied. A similar role to what Matic used to do alongside Kante when Chelsea won the title.

I would be a liar if I pretended to know anything about Torriera, but in the little bit of research I have done, he will bring balance to a midfield.

It will also leave us with a second string trio of:

Elneny AMN Wilshere

So plenty of options, plenty of flexibility.

We now just need to get the deal over the line.

Keenos