Tag Archives: She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

Arsenal star “best in the league”

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Tuesday saw another 2 goals for Alexis Sanchez.

He had an awful game. One of those where nothing went right for him. When he has games like this his attitude is detrimental to the team.

When most players are having a bad game, they go into hiding. Never call for the ball. Are always marked. Sanchez does the opposite. He demands the ball. Try’s to play out of it.

Whilst this is admirable, that he does not go missing, it also creates a problem. Such is his influence on the side, when he demands the ball he often gets it, even when not in a good position to receive it. Then out of form, he takes a heavy touch, or try’s too much, plays a poor pass, fails to play a pass, then blames it all on a team mate.

Whether it is the passer who passed the ball to him or the receiver who his pass did not reach, it is always their fault. It is never Alexis’ poor first touch or poor pass to blame. He berates his team mate. Often Hector Bellerin.

It does remind me a lot of Thierry Henry. Demanding the ball even when he was not in a position to receive it, trying to win the game on his own when things were not going well. Alexis Sanchez’s desire is also his greatest weakness’.

Despite the poor game, he still popped up with two goals. The sign of a truly great player, is having a stinker but win the games. In the 90’s, how often did Ian Wright do nothing in a game, but Arsenal won 1-0 thanks to an Ian Wright goal?

That 2 goals leaves Sanchez just one behind Romelu Lukaku in the race for the golden boot, and moves him ahead of Harry Kane. With Arsenal set to face Everton this weekend, it will be a shoot out for the golden boot.

With Sanchez also having 10 assists to his name – Lukaku and Kane both have 6 – Sanchez only needs to be level to take the honour.

If Sanchez finishes with the golden boot, it highlights further just how stupid football players are as Sanchez was not named in the PFA Team of the Year.

Up front were Kane and Lukaku. You can justify that as at the time they had out scored Alexis Sanchez. But it does bring in the stupidity of the PFA award nominations having to be submitted in March.

Perhaps more shocking is on the wings. Eden Hazard was picked on one side and Sadio Mane the other side.

Alexis Sanchez has been vastly superior to both Hazard and Mane. How Mane especially has got in ahead of Sanchez is nothing short of disgraceful and shows how people are influenced by the “Liverpool love in” with the press – media outlets are reporting their great season, but they are just 1 point ahead of crisis hit Arsenal.

Even on Alexis Sanchez’s bad days, and Sunderland was one of the bad days, he is still better than Sadio Mane.

I am glad Sanchez is at Arsenal. He is one of the top players in the world. Even if his fellow professionals do not rate him as one of the best players in the Premier League.

We need to move heaven and earth to keep him.

Keenos

Too little, too late for The Arsenal

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7 wins in the last 8 games mean that Arsenal are the Premier League form team. But it is simply too little, too late.

The best we can hope for on Sunday is that Liverpool slip up at home to Middlesbrough (they won’t) and that Arsenal sneak into that last top 4 place. But even if we do that, this seasons league campaign would have still simply been not good enough.

Unlike Spurs, Top 4 is not our everything. A club Arsenal’s size should be challenging for titles. Last season we finished 2nd, and it looked like we had shown progression. But this was false hope.

We actually have more points this season then we did last season. This shows that our finish of 2nd last year was not due to ourselves performing well, but more due to others around us not performing well.

Arsenal have stood still over the last 3 seasons when it comes to points totals:

2014/15 – 75 points
2015/16 – 71
2016/17 – 72-75

Our best league finish of a decade actually saw us with our least points total over the last 3 years.

Arsenal’s staleness actually go’s beyond the last 3 years.

2007/08 was the year we should have won the league. We were leading for much of the season. We ended up 3rd. It was the year of Eduardo’s injury. It was also the last time we breached 80 points (83 to be exact). Since then, we have been average, stood still, not progressed.

2008/09 – 72 points
2009/10 – 75
2010/11 – 68
2011/12 – 70
2012/13 – 73
2013/14 – 79
2014/15 – 75
2015/16 – 71
2016/17 – 72-75

We have averaged 73 points a season over the last 9 years. Every season has been the same. Promises of a big transfer window. A winter of dropped points. A rally at the end of the season to make 4th.

It is no surprise that yesterday so many fans stayed away.

Whilst there are hardly any positives to take out of our season, we can still finish the season on a high with the FA Cup Final now just 10 days away.

The 7 wins from 8 games might be meaningless when it comes to the league, but make it 8 from 9 and we should be going into the final high in confidence with momentum. And that it what is important.

Win the FA Cup, and we have had a better season than Spurs, Manchester City and Liverpool.

A unsuccessful league campaign does not mean we can not have a successful season.

Keenos

Lowest Emirates Attendance Expected for Arsenal v Sunderland

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I am not going tonight. Neither is many people that I know.

The game has been on sale for weeks. It went to Silvers, then to Reds, then to family and friends – allowing current members to buy an additional 4 tickets. And now it is on General Sale. This is the first time that I can ever remember tickets being available for an Arsenal game on general sale since the membership schemes came in place back in the mid 90s.

Due to the game going to general sale, the ticket exchange has also not opened. So not only are there a few thousand tickets still available, there will also be a few thousand season ticket holders who do not make mid-week games unable to sell on their ticket, therefore leaving their seat empty.

I am going to make a bold prediction. The stadium will be no more than 2/3’s full. That will be around 40,o000. Of course, the club will announce a 60,000 sell out as they announce tickets sold, not people through the gates. Laughable but actually every club do it.

The Sunderland end will also be half empty. With the game moved to mid-week, I imagine they have already only taken the lower allocation, leaving more tickets for Arsenal to sell.

Do Sunderland fans really want to make the 4 hour train journey (or 5 hour drive) down to London on a Tuesday when they are already relegated, to watch their side lose again? Probably not. The away end could be at its emptiest since Wigan had one man and his dog turn up a few years ago.

So why so are so few people turning up?

Unhappiness

The primary reason is it is people’s dissatisfaction with the state of the club at the moment.

I spoke a few weeks ago how I was mentally drained with Arsenal. How I was done with football for the season. Whilst I went to Stoke City away – and the Stoke game did remind me why I spend so much following the team over land and sea (it was a great drink up with some good people) – I am not going to Sunderland. I have paid for the ticket as part of my season ticket, but I am unconcerned with not going to the game.

I feel many other fans feel the same with me. They can not be bothered to go to a semi-meaningless game on a Tuesday night.

The poor performances this season, the managers arrogance surrounding his contract, the lack of passion shown by players, the overall poor management of the club, the embarrassing actions from the club, the manager, the players and the fans. I just can not be bothered.

This unhappiness with the club is why I am not going, why many season ticket holders are not going.

General apathy towards Arsenal.

Boycott

Alongside the general apathy at the club, a boycott has also been called by Arsenal pressure group No New Contract.

Pricing

The club have been greedy categorising the game as Cat B.

To limit the losses on us season ticket holders having larger refunds due to missing out on two cup games, the club made the decision to make Sunderland a Cat B game. It is usually Cat C. This means that the cheapest ticket is £36.50. That is a lot of money for a mid week semi-meaningless game.

I would imagine the majority of these cheapest tickets have already been sold. What is remaining is a lot of upper tier, expensive tickets, the majority of which cost in the region of £50. That is a hell of a lot of money for a semi-meaningless game on a Tuesday night.

The club invited fans to bring along their family and friends. If a father decided to bring his 2 sons (or a mother her 2 daughters, in this PC world we now live in), you would be looking to fork out nearly over £200 by the time you buy 3 tickets, pay for trains, a bit of food, etc. And all this on a school night for a semi-meaningless game.

Had the club have got the pricing right and made it Cat C, then tickets would have been as low as £26. The most expensive would have been £38.50. These would have sold out, and then dissatisfied season ticket holders could have put their ticket on the ticket exchange, which would have also sold out.

The club have messed up big time. In an attempt to limit the refunds for season ticket holders, they will now be embarrassed by having a game in front of a half empty stadium.

Scheduling

The game is semi-meaningless. We have a chance of a top 4, but not much else. It is a pointless game on a Tuesday night. With GCSE’s starting this week, university exams going on, and it being a school night, today was always going to be a hard sell for Arsenal.

Mid week games often have a lower attendance than games on a Saturday. I rarely go to a mid week games. I get up at 5.30am for work. To then go to a game and not get home until gone 11pm, to then still need to have dinner and a shower before bed means that on mid weeker, I do not get to sleep until midnight. That makes it a long day, and then 5 and a half hours later I am back up for work.

I do not even go to big mid-week games. This year I skipped Bayern Munich and PSG. I do not remember the last time I went to a Champions League game.

There are many fans like me. The chaps who sit next to me live in Basingstoke. They do not go to mid week games as the commute is too long for them with work the next day. Same for the chap in front of me who commutes to every game from Birmingham. Then you have the lad from Northampton who sits behind me.

These are not people who should be told to support their local team. They are all North London born season ticket holders who have moved out of the capital for work / family.

A game on a Tuesday or Wednesday means they will not go .They rely on selling their ticket on the Ticket Exchange. But with it not open, there seat, like mine, will remain empty tonight.

The club can not control the scheduling, but they should have reduced the ticket prices to Cat C when it was moved to attract more sales.

Fragile Membership

The club constantly bangs on about how many members it has. The number of gold, silver and bronze members is well over 100,000. Yet when it comes down to it, most of these memberships are unused.

I would actually like to see (and I am sure the club have these statistics) how many memberships have gone unused this season. It seems a lot of fans – especially those abroad – have silver and red memberships without any intention of going to a game. They just enjoy telling their friends in Stockholm, Dubai or Bangkok that they are a member of Arsenal Football Club.

Some may well have used their membership, perhaps been once in 10 years. But essentially their membership is as pointless as the millions of pounds left unspent on Oyster Cards by tourists who took their card home as a souvenir and have no interest in returning to London and using the balance.

An argument could be made that the club should not sell memberships to foreign fans, and if you membership go’s unused, it should be discontinued. But the membership is a revenue scheme.

I would bet that the club brings in between £2.5m – £5m from the renewal of Silver and red memberships. They do not care if the majority go unused as they already have the revenue for them.

A lot of members with cards who have no intention of going to a game. Just like a lot of fans on the season ticket waiting list have no intention of buying a season ticket.

This leaves the club with a fragile membership, and an even bigger reason why the club need to get pricing right.

Expected line up

Cech
Mustafi Gabriel Monreal
Bellerin Elneny Xhaka Gibbs
Ozil Ramsey
Welbeck

Match Odds: Arsenal 1/9 Draw 10/1 Sunderland 25/1
matchedbets.com tip of the game: Danny Welbeck to score 2 or more 3/1

Enjoy the game (if you are going)

Keenos