Tag Archives: Arsenal

Latest injury for long term Arsenal target “means a move is now highly unlikely”

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Is everyone have a zen morning? No Arsenal yesterday, so was a chilled Saturday made better by that Tottenham result.

It does not seem long ago that Arsenal were losing at Fulham, and social media was awash with Spurs fans claiming that they were I the title race and Arsenal would struggle to make top 4.

Three months on and we sit top of the league, whilst that lot up the road are 5th.

Media darling Ange Postecoglou is now being exposed as being the average manager we all knew he was – it is all well and good pointing to his achievement in Japan and Scotland, but the English Premier League is a different kettle of fish.

Spurs fans really have overhyped an average manager and average players. I saw one put out his combined Arsenal / Spurs 11 and it contained just 3 Arsenal players (Raya, Rice and Saka).

Despite Tottenham conceding 18 goals more than us, he had the entire Tottenham back 4! Sergio Romero and Micky van de Ven are basically FIFA pace merchants, and they have a pair of full backs that can not defend.

Yestersay’s defeat has Arsenal 11 points clear. By my math we probably only need 3 more wins to ensure St Totteringham’s Day returns again!

All flights and hotels are now booked for Munich. Anyone else on the 11:50(ish) out of Heathrow on the Tuesday, flying via Frankfurt?

I picture and entire plane of people getting off at Frankfurt, then doing the internal change to Munich. They might as well leave us on the plane for an hour grounded, re-fuel and continue the journey.

I see that Ivan Toney has once again spoken about his desire to leave Brentford this summer. The more the fella speaks the more I do not want him.

Yes, saying he could go Real Madrid was tongue in cheek. But when a player is constantly talking openly about the door being open to depart in the summer you have to question their mentality.

Toney should be concentrating on playing football, scoring the goals that would keep Brentford in the Premier League and secure him a spot on the plane to Euro 2024.

Clubs these days care as much about character as ability, and I imagine everytime Toney speaks, another Head of Recruitment ends up wiping his name off the whiteboard. My bet is he will end up at Tottenham or Manchester United. They are the sort of clubs that will be desperate for a striker regardless of character.

Another one we will unlikely move for this summer is Pedro Neto.

I like Neto, but have never been fully on the hype train. He always came across as inconsistent and his injury issues worried me.

The Portuguese winger has now been ruled out for the rest of the season. His injury record does not make pretty reading.

One reason why we are top of the league this season is due to having a squad that has remained fairly fit.

We still have a handful of players (Tomiyasu, Zinchenko, Partey) who cannot be relied upon. But on the whole we have avoided losing key players for any length of time.

If we are looking to recruit another winger, it has to be someone who is able to stay fit and ready to be called upon. There is no point spending £50m on Neto, only for him to miss half the season injured.

Neto has been on the clubs watch list for a few years now, and we were close to launching a bid for him a couple of summers ago. Injury stopped us progressing our interest back then, and his latest issue means a move is now highly unlikely.

Enjoy your Sunday. I am off to the tip to get rid of some old tyres!

Keenos

Bayern Munich, Ben White, North London Forever and more

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Bayern Munich

Hello my old friend, we meet again.

It was always going to happen wasn’t it? In yesterday’s blog, Bayern Munich were my 2nd least favourite potential opponent. Only Manchester City below them. So we go and get Munich, and then if we beat them it is Manchester City.

Even though they were my least attracted trip abroad, the flights and hotels are already booked.

As always, airline prices jumped straight after the draw, and we are paying £230 return via Brussels. Go the week later and you can get return flights direct to Munich for just £61…

It is probably the worst Munich team in decades, but they are still a danger.

10 points behind Bayer Leverkusen, it is unlikely that they will win the Bundesliga. I would not be surprised if they rest players in the league and go all out for the Champions League.

Ben White

Two bits of Benjamin White news in the last few days.

The first was his new contract. Well deserved. The second was the news that he was making himself unavailable for England selection.

On the contract, the way White continually rises to the challenge shows what sort of player he is.

Signed a central defender, he was shifted across to right back to cover the injured Takehiro Tomiyasu. He never complained and just got his head down and did what Mikel Arteta demanded of him. When the Tomi returned, the Japenese right back did not walk straight back into the first team.

Then this summer we signed Jurrien Timber. White has since taken his game to another level which shows he is the sort of player that is not scared of competition.

White is one of the leaders of the team and, unlike Tomiyasu, his fitness can be relied upon – incredibly he has never missed a game through injury for The Arsenal.

And all this brings into light the issues with England.

Arteta and his coaches will be much more demanding of White than Southgate and his goons. If White has risen to the challenge of Arteta, and our manager backs him, then you have to ask what actually happened on that England camp.

I also find the criticism of White to be a little odd.

One of the loudest critics has been Stan Collymore. The woman-beater pitches himself as a mental health advocate, yet has spent the last 48 hours piling on Ben White for his decision.

The other biggest critics are Liverpool fans. You know them fellas that spout “Scouse not English”. You would think they would back as player deciding not to play for England. But instead the accuse him of letting their country down. It just shows they are a fanbase with zero morals. But that is nothing new.

At the end of the day, it is Ben White’s career. If he decides that he does not want to play for England than that is his choice.

North London Forever

Love this from Gabriel Jesus…

Fixture congestion

I saw an article yesterday about how “European football has thrown Arsenal’s fixtures into chaos”.

The article began by mentioning that the Aston Villa game would now be moved from Saturday to Sunday due to them now playing in Europe on Thursday. This game always had an * against it for this reason, so it is not like this is something the club knew nothing about.

It is the norm for teams playing on Thursday to have their games moved to the Sunday. A real non-story.

But the article continued pointing out that we have to re-arrange the Chelsea game, and potentially the Wolves game, and how this will create end of season conjestion.

Liverpool and Manchester City are both in the exact same position in terms of potentially re-arranging league games due to the FA Cup. And in-fact they will have more congestion than us if they remain in the completion. Likewise Liverpool will have every Saturday game after their Europa League matches moved to Sunday. Yet it is only Arsenal who get the negative press over fixture chaos and congestion.

It just shows again that Arsenal are the most newsworthy club in the world, whilst no one really cares about Liverpool on Manchester City….

Enjoy your Saturday.

Keenos

The Arsenal peaking at the right time

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Morning! Hope you all haven’t missed me too much.

Just over a week ago I returned from 10-days in Egypt and bought something back with my that has seen over a stone in weight loss in that time. Some will say that is not a bad thing for me! The stomach bug hit me for 6 and completely drained my energy.

Today is the first morning I have woken up and not had a bowel movement that resembles the Niagra Falls. Sorry to all those tucking into a Friday morning bacon roll!

Sadly the illness led me to miss the Sheffield United victory (and could not even get out of bed to watch it on TV) and I have also sold my Brentford ticket. Hopefully this is now the recovery and not a false dawn!

This blog was never supposed to be a daily one. I only ever really wrote when I fancied it. But in the last year and a half, it had become something I was doing each and every day. The last 3 couple of days with no blog broke a daily writing streak of more than 500 days!

That Sheffield United victory seems a lifetime ago right now.

I remember writing to some mockery back end of last year that Mikel Arteta was ‘negative splitting’ his season. That we were holding back in the first half of the season deliberately to ensure that we had more energy for the final kick.

This is something you see distance runners and swimmers do. They will try and complete the second half of the race quicker than the first half, taking advantage of others who might have put too much energy into the first half of the race.

It is something Manchester City under Pep Guardiola have always done so well. Done just enough to get through games in the first half of the season before being unbeatable in the second.

Last season was the perfect example of how a team that has a better 2nd half of the season will usually finish ahead of a team who start fast and has a good first half.

Now some will argue that “we have left too much to do” and started out drive to the finish line too late. I really do not think being 2 points off top after 27 games is leaving ourselves with too much to do.

Yes, these fans will point to Fulham (both games), West Ham and other fixtures, but football is not perfect. If you say “Arsenal should have won those games” then you also have to concede that Liverpool and Manchester City “should” have won games they did not. The issue with fans at times is that they expect their own team to be perfect all the time, but do not hold the same bar of expectation to others.

On to Brentford tomorrow. A late kick off and a game I was really looking forward too. Instead I will be watching it from the comfort of my sofa, hopefully having kept down the last 48 hours food!

Have a good Friday.

Keenos