Tag Archives: Premier League

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

Gunners look to shoot down Eagles

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Shorter blog than normal today due to the 12:30 kick off. Still need to smash a couple more coffee’s and have a fry-up before I head out to todays game.

The early Saturday kick off is easily my least favourite over the weekend. It is just shit having to wake up, get dressed and head straight to the game. Will be lucky to get a couple of pints in before the game, which often explains why the atmosphere in these early games are subdued.

Mikel Arteta’s pre-match interview was a day later than normal due to the trip to Dubai, on which he said:

“We worked really hard on things that we wanted to do, and we recharged our batteries. The context and the change in environment in beautiful weather helped, and the togetherness and the moments that we shared together were great. We feel fully recharged.”

What is now important is that the fans also used it to reset their brains.

Before the break, some of the old boo boys and moaners had begin sharing their views again. Today we all need to get behind the team and allow our behaviour to positively impact the players. not negatively.

On injuries, Arteta said “we are touch and go with a few”. Those few will be Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus. I would not be surprised to see both start.

One interesting quote to come out of the press conference was Arteta speaking about how it is important not to overreact after a run of defeats: “defeats cannot make you lose who you are because if you do that, then you were never who you said you were.”

He is spot on with this.

You can not keep chopping and changing tactics after a few poor results and expect to consistently perform. Liverpool are the perfect example of this.

Jurgen Klopp teams have played pretty much the same way throughout his management career. Even last season when times were tough, he stuck to his principals.

Football is becoming a lot more “formalised” on the pitch, with more set plays in open play. Players know where they need to be before the ball is passed, and this gives sides a huge competitve advantage. 7 tought games does not make Arteta a bad manager, nor does it mean that he should undo the great work he has done over the last 18-months.

In other news, we were approached yesterday by West Ham United for Emile Smith Rowe. Both player and club rejected the deal.

Arsenal would have rejected the deal because it was a loan offer. The door is open for Smith Rowe to leave on a permanent transfer. Probably anything north of £30m. We have learned from the Ainsley Maitland-Niles saga that loan deals only devalue a player.

West Ham fans have been up in arms saying “Smith Rowe thinks he is bigger than us” and then thrown abuse at the young England international. Lets get things right, ESR does not think he is bigger than West Ham, he just wants to have one more opportunity to resurrect his Arsenal career.

Smith Rowe joined Arsenal at the age of 10. He finally had his breakthrough season in 2021–22, and what has followed is 18 months of injuries. He clearly wants to give it another 6-months of trying to make it at Arsenal rather than be loaned out.

If Smith Rowe fails to make an impact in the 2nd half of the season, he will know his time at Arsenal has come to an end. Then I expect him to join someone like West Ham permanently in the summer.

We all know West Ham fans are a little fragile, but them abusing a player for trying to make it at a higher level, for the club he has been at since he was 10, just shows they are knuckle draggers.

Little over an hour before I need to get on the Central Line. Time for coffee number two and to stick some sausages and bacon in the air fryer.

UTA.

Keenos