Tag Archives: Liverpool

RIP Jurgen Klopp

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Morning all. Quick shout out to Gav for reminding me that I had not published a blog this morning! I am currently on a 469-day streak, so would have been devastated had I not made it to day 470!

No football for The Arsenal at the weekend due to us crashing out of the FA Cup, but at least we got to enjoy the cricket!

Sky, ITV and BBC have gone into overdrive with the Jurgen Klopp obituaries. Anyone would think the King had just died with the level of coverage Klopp has got.

I get that Klopp has done a lot for the city of Liverpool, and the media to pander to the Scousers for fear of being boycotted and cancelled, but it has felt at sometimes that we were watching Liverpool TV.

It is easy to forget with everything that is going on that Klopp has only won 4 trophies and a single league title during his 8-and-a-bit years in charge. That is behind modern greats Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola.

Klopp’s single league title has him joint 27th on the list of English football championship-winning managers, behind the likes of Herbert Chapman, Wenger, George Allison, Tom Whittaker and George Graham.

The way the Scousers are grieving, you would think he was Shankly or Paisley. The truth is he is closer to Claudio Ranieri in terms of what he has won in England.

At least the trouble in the WBA v Wolves game meant that we avoided whatever excruciating segment the BBC had planned ahead of Liverpool’s game against Norwich.

On WBA v Wolves, it was funny listening to Sam Matterface describing the scenes as if he was reporting from the front line. I did laugh when they say “we do not like to see scenes like that” when the only reason ITV picked WBA v Wolves was because it had the potential to see “scenes like that”.

Another fraud is Ange Postecoglou.

The greatest thing to come out of Australia since Skippy the Bush Kangaroo got very close to equaling Martin Jol’s “perfect season”.

In 2005/06, with no European football, Jol’s Tottenham was knocked out of the FA Cup 3rd round and League Cup 2nd round, meaning they played just 40 games that season – the minimum a Premier League team can play.

This season, Tottenham will play just 41 games having gone out of the FA Cup on Friday. That means their biggest result this season has been a 1-0 victory at home to Burnley! Expect the DVDs to be out soon!

In 2005/06, Jol took Tottenham to 5th in the table, the same position that Postecoglou brilliant Spurs team occupy. If that is where they remain, then it would be fair to make comparisons between the two sides and managers.

Ange Postecoglou is basically the new Martin Jol.

tomorrow we face Nottingham Forest. I imagine there will be a minute silence before the game for Jurgen Klopp so we can all pay respects to him. Hopefully the fans show him as much respect as Liverpool fans showed to a dead chicken.

Enjoy your Monday.

Keenos

Arsenal get the the result the performance deserved against Crystal Palace

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What a windy night that was! Hope everyone is safe and well!

I had a hellish drive from up the Midlands after seeing family. A 2 hour trip from Burton-on-Trent took me over 3 hours due to the wind, rain and pure weight of traffic. Was not a nice drive in the dark!

Arsenal were back (temporarily) for the weekend, winning 5-0 against Crystal Palace. We now embark on another 10-day break.

Going into the break, I blogged how we were not getting the results our performances deserved. Personally, I do not think we played any better against Crystal Palace than we did versus West Ham or Liverpool.

We lost both of those home games, yet destroyed Palace 5-0, but the performances were not too dissimilar. The main difference was Saturday we scored our chances.

I commented in the pub after the game “against West Ham, the headers were going over, Leandro Trossard would have fired into the keeper and Gabriel Martinelli would have shot wide. Twice.”

Whilst all this might seem a bit negative, it is not. I did not join others in the pit of despair during our run of 1 win in 7 games. Bar Fulham, the performances were decent. Saturday against Palace was also decent.

The victory took us to 3rd in the league, level on points with Manchester City and just 2-point behind Liverpool (who repopened the gap to 5-points yesterday). After 21-games, we are in the title race.

A couple of side notes now.

Liverpool: After 21 games, they are 5 points clear. After 21 matches last season, we were 3 points cleasr. If Liverpool do not win the league from here, will they face the same accusations of bottling from the media we got? Or as always, will those media outlets be too scared to paint Liverpool in a negative light for fear of boycotts and cancelling.

Tottenham: After 21 games last season, Spurs were 5th. After 21 games this season, Spurs are 5th. It is a myth that Ange has massively improved them.

Gary Neville: Neville has blamed Arsenal for Nottingham Forest writing to the PGMOL over what they perceived to be a poor decision at the weekend. It is all Arsenal’s fault that teams are openly criticising the PGMOL, despite Everton writing an open letter first, then Wolves, then Liverpool (twice). Just shows again mentioning Arsenal get the hits, impressions and generates that ad revenue.

Not much else happning out there. I still do not think we will sign anyone.

Have a good Monday!

Keenos

At some point games against Liverpool need to stop being a “shot to nothing”

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“It was a shot to nothing”

“Didn’t expect a result anyway”

That was the common consensus from the majority. And they are right.

But it is also important that we learn from the defeat against Liverpool. And Manchester City. And Chelsea.

At some point we need to move up to the next level. Away from calling it a project; that we are a team in development.

For now, it is fine. We are a team whose target was to compete for top 4. We are in the race.

But if we want to transition from top 4 contenders to title contenders, we need to begin getting results against City, Liverpool and Chelsea.

Those teams comes to Arsenal and do not see it as a “shot to nothing”. They see it as 3 points. Anything less is a failure.

The change won’t happen this season.

Considering how poor we have been and for how long, turning the good ship Arsenal around was always going to take some time.

It feels like we are on the right road. Just at some point we need to find a new gear if we wish to be title challengers.

At the moment we have one of the youngest teams in the league. They were due a capitulation and in the second half at Liverpool it was heads gone.

The game is easy in hindsight.

Mikel Arteta should have probably gone with Kieran Tierney over the inexperienced Nuno Tavares – especially against Mo Salah who is probably the best player on the world right now.

Likewise we probably should have flooded the midfield. Played Ainsley Maitland-Niles ahead Alex Lacazette matching up Liverpool’s midfield 3; with Maitland-Niles also providing extra cover in that wide position against Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold.

As it was Tavares was exposed on the left and we were over run in midfield. Thomas Partey and Albert Sambi-Lokonga provided no cover and no out ball.

But then had we made those changes and lost Arteta would have been criticised for changing a winning team.

We move on with Newcastle at home up next before trips to Everton and Manchester United.

Whilst a trip to Liverpool at the moment is a shot to nothing, we need to be returning to the north-west expecting wins in the coming weeks.

5th in the table after 13 games. I am happy. We dust ourselves down and move on.

Keenos