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.
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.
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.
Morning! How was everyones weekend with no football? For me, I spent most of the time watching the snooker. Ronnie O’Sullivan – what a sportsman.
There was only half the Premier League games on this weekend due to the winter break, and none at 3pm Saturday. The Premier League got their wish of every game being televised.
I am part of the problem as I watched every single live games (in between the snooker).
Manchester City injuries
Whilst other majors continually point to their injuries as to their poor form (Postecoglou, Howe), very little has been made from Pep Guardiola or the media about Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland missing so many games.
Alongside Mo Salah, they are the 3 best players in the Premier League. I doubt any other team would have survived without players of the quality of de Bruyne and Haaland out for so long.
Of course, part of that is due to how much they spend one wages.
In their place they can call up a World Cup winning striker (Julian Alvarez) and a £100m midfielder (Jack Grealish).
A lot is made about how much Mikel Arteta has spent since he came in, but that is dwarfed by the investment of Manchester City over the last decade building the squad they currently have.
“Net spend since Arteta came in” does not take into account the signings of the likes of de Bruyne, Rodri, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva and Ederson. Nearly £300m worth of starting talent that these pundits act like they do not just because they were signed out of the chosen time frame.
I also had to laugh at the weekend when I saw one armchair pundit say “this is the difference between Arsenal and Manchester City. They bring de Bruyne off the bench whilst we have Reiss, Nketiah and ESR. Arteta and the spineless director need to be buying world class game changes”.
It ignored that fact that KdB was only on gthe bench due to coming back from injury, that no other team in world football had a player of his quality on the bench, and that he earns in excess of £300k a week.
In 2022/23, Manchester City spent over £100m more on wages than Arsenal. It is the equivalent of having an additional 9 players earning £200k a week! For that you would expect them to have a deeper squad, more world class game changers on the bench.
The recruitment is not the issue at Arsenal. It is the finances. We need to close the gap on both Manchester City and Liverpool, and we only do that by consistently finishing in the Champions League.
If we take Manchester City out of it and compare to Liverpool, you can see the differenct in the squads when you look at the front 3.
Both starting 3 are fairly comparable – Salah, Nunez, Diaz v Saka, Jesus Martinelli. But Liverpool than have two quality replacements in Diego Jota and Cody Gakpo. Both are a similar level to Martinelli. Meanwhile we have Leandro Trossard (who is the level below), and then ESR and Nelson (who are levels below the Liverpool 5).
We only close the gap in terms of squad depth by getting that additional £80m a year in Champions League revenue, and investing it in better players than what we have.
Strikers misfiring
It was intersting over the weekend watching two lads who we were heavilly linked with 2 years ago – Dominic Calvert Lewin and Alexander Isak, but opted for Gabriel Jesus.
One accusation labelled at Jesus is he is not a clinical striker, and due to that we need to be looking elsewhere. Had we signed DCL or Isak, the same claims wouldbe made.
Both are decent strikers, but both miss a lot of chances.
Were Isak more clinical, Newcastle would have easily beaten Manchester City. The Swede reminds me of Emmanuel Adebayor that he has it all (physicality, speed, technique), but his performances are inconsistent and his finishing unreliable.
DCL is similar, missing a host of chances against Aston Villa as they drew 0-0.
Whilst both of these would improve our squad depth, I do not think either is better than what we have. And that is the headache for Edu and his team right now – there is a lack of top strikers in Europe and very few have proven on a consistent basis that they are clinical.
Sunday League performance
The irony of Manchester United playing on a Sunday was not lost on me during the game as both sides put on a performance that would not have been out of place on Hackney Marshes.
A 2-2 performance where neither team played with any structure, the defending was all over the place, and the teams just lumped in forward to their strikers in the hope of some individual magic. It was a Sunday League performance.
Ange Postecoglou is not a tactical genius in his “gung-ho” methods. His teams play with very little structure because he has the inability to coach teams in a more structured way. He is no different to the Sunday League manager who is not really a manager, and just there to do the subs. And Erik ten Hag is no better.
It was a dull 2-2 draw where both managers showed they are poor coaches.
And what about The Arsenal…
Not much happening still.
Emails went out last week reminding us of the importantance of either going to games or selling on the Ticket Exchange.
We now have to go to 17 games (or have posted them on TX) to retain our season ticket. I think it is a brilliant policy. You use it or lose it.
There will be cases where fans are unable to make that many games and unable to sell on TX, and the club will take into account individual circumstances. But ultimately if someone is only going to 10 games a season, and can not be bothered to sell on TX, then they should not have a season ticket.
Good to see that Jack Wilshere bought in David Seaman for a few coaching sessions. I always think it is benificial for legends to come in on an ad-hoc basis. Whilst they might not be the best coaches, just coming in and speaking to the players can have a huge impact, especially for youth players.
All in all, a good weekend for Arsenal as Aston Villa and Tottenham both dropped points (playing away from home). We now need to get back to winning ways next Saturday at home to Crystal Palace.
A victory will return us to 3rd in the table. Not bad for a team in crisis (see Newcastle for an actual team in crisis!)
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 