Well, my friends, it would seem the xG warriors and the underlying performance pirates are on the rampage, pillaging old tweets of folk who went far too aggressively against the team in December.

Arsenal comfortably with the best attack in the league by npxG since jesus came back from injury late november. 21.03 npxG, liverpool in second with 17.86 npxG. Lazy narratives gonna narrative.

— Seewrap (@craptor) January 22, 2024

With a shot chaser from Scott Willis.

Since Jesus came back from his last knee injury Arsenal have 2.2 non-pen xG (best) and are +1.28 in non-pen difference (best) https://t.co/R7pEJbyLbG

— Scott Willis (@scottjwillis) January 22, 2024

… and hot dang, I’m feeling frisky. Gabriel Jesus might only have 3 Premier League goals this season, but his impact on the team from an xG perspective is a sight to behold. I know people find these performance metrics boring, but to have a better output than Liverpool, the league’s xG monsters, is surprising to me.

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Well, happy Monday to you!

Starting a little 10-day break from the Premier League is always nice after delivering a walloping. Liverpool, who dished out another xG-defying win against a decent Bournemouth, played three games to our one before they meet us. It might not make a difference now, but I can’t imagine fighting on all four fronts is going to do them any favours in the long run. They can’t even flop out of the FA Cup because they play Norwich. They’ll beat Fulham and get to a cup final that’ll come in the February crunch and move Premier League games to later in the season.

Arsenal have a much simpler two months coming up. The big question is whether Arteta can learn the painful lessons of seasons’ past. Will he get too excited, lose track of the bigger picture, and blitz the same 13 players until they break? Or will we see more intention when it comes to rotating his faves so they are fresher when it matters?

The Palace game looked like a new Arteta. I know we were winning handsomely, but when has that stopped him from giving full 90s to everyone? This is a guy who took a full squad to PSV for no real reason other than winnertivity and macho vibes.

There are some key players that’ll be crucial – the first is Zinchenko, who has had an up-and-down season in the eyes of the fans. He was fantastic at the weekend, we saw exactly what we miss when he’s not in the side. Bravery, verticality, and ambition. We are better with him in the side, but he is always on a countdown to a calf injury. Can Arteta lean into Kiwior more often? Can he get rotated more when Tomi comes back? There needs to be a plan to ensure he plays the big games.

Gabriel Jesus is another player who spends a lot of time out injured. I’d rather give Eddie some starts than have to roll with Eddie for 8 weeks. We can’t afford to be without our number 1 chaos merchant for the run-in.

The real star man hasn’t played in months, but Thomas Partey could be in the mixer for Forest, and if we can keep him fit, anything is possible. I don’t want to see him as right back, but I do think his fast passing and aggressive play from deep could be really valuable. He gives us tools we don’t have right now. He won’t be here next season, so he owes us a really good sign-off after a drab 3-4 years of 3-month stints.

Jurrien Timber could be in the mixer for the Manchester City game if you track the return dates of typical ACL injuries. That’s only 10 games time. He’s a magical player and he could be very useful for the action part of the season. We might be getting a bit too excited about his return, he’ll be very rusty, but at the very least, he offers us top cover from the bench.

The final two we need to keep an eye is Saliba and Gabriel. Arteta took the Brazilian off early at the weekend. It’s hard to pick the player who is more important because I think Gabriel has been outrageously good all season, and I can hardly remember an error since he was dropped. Saliba broke down last year because of a stress fracture, and he has shared minutes with no one this season – a bit of a concern if you ask me, but at least he’s not being loaded up with cup minutes. Keep those two fit, and anything is possible.

My hot take for the rest of the season is kind of where I was at the start: I think we’ll finish second.

You have to be a realist and put a true perspective on who we’re trying to beat: The greatest team ever assembled. The greatest sporting department, buying players for the greatest manager, with no limits on spending. We just aren’t at their level, and nor should we expect to be. Beating City with our current squad just ain’t happening this season. It won’t for Liverpool either, and they have the second-best manager in the world with the best keeper, centre-back, right-back, and right-winger.

We are one transfer window away from being a true threat to City’s dominance. We don’t have a striker, we don’t have cover for our wide players, and we haven’t yet mastered playing Champions League with a Premier League chase. You need those elements if you’re going to upset a group that has done it all. Bang the table all you want that I am weak saucing this, I’m not, I’m just being blunt about what it takes to be the best. United tried to buy their way to better than City, but failed. Newcastle have tried to bully their way to contenders, everyone feared them last season, they are further away than ever before. Chelsea spent a billion and they might not make Europe. If you think you know a better way of beating City, let me know. I think the way Arsenal are approaching it is the right way and it’ll bear fruit at some point… maybe even the Champions League this season. But the league is gonna require more time in the kitchen.

Ok, that’s me done. Check out our latest free podcast with Janan Ganesh. He’s one of the finest writers in the UK, a huge gooner, and I really enjoyed our hour chatting about Toney, Liverpool, and Arteta’s obsession with atmosphere.

Arsenal fizzed back into the season with dazzling style by pummeling hapless Crystal Palace with 5 goals. The Le Grove narrative during the break was that results would catch up to performances and that the entire team would get their confidence back again, and that kind of came true in the smallest of sample sizes.

The doom and gloom was out of place in the extremist world of online opinion and we all got a bit of a reality check on the nature of football. Sometimes things don’t go for you in front of goal, sometimes they don’t work in your own box, and every now and then it happens at both ends.

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Guys, I fell for a Fabrizio tweet that said Arsenal were going to move Emile Smith Rowe to West Ham on loan.

How could I be so silly?

Mikel Arteta came in STRONG in denouncing the rumor.

I’m really happy with Emile, he’s on the right trajectory now he’s settled and he’s training really well. You know that I’m not going to talk about any individual situation.

No change, Emile is Emile. He’s got incredible qualities, we are really happy to have him and what he needs now is chances to put all those desired qualities on the pitch. In order to do that, we have to give him minutes.

Now, this could be a negotiating tactic to get a bigger fee from West Ham for a loan, OR this could be the realization the manager had with Eddie a few seasons back after totally ignoring him for the majority of the season.

I’m going to take a big drag of hopium and say this… I really hope Mikel sees the light on ESR. We’re lacking final ball output and finishing. This is a player who brought that in bucketloads when he debuted during a nightmare period three or so years ago. If you can’t finish, why not give a player who can finish a go?

My bigger concern here is if this is just media guff, it would be better to send him somewhere where he’ll get meaningful minutes. He’s a long way off his £45m valuation when Villa were sniffing around. If we give him 12 minutes in H2 of the season, he’ll be lucky to fetch £20m. This is a player who will be pure profit on FFP, max out his value now, give him time to show his talent. Hey, maybe he’ll show that he’s a great again?

I will say it regardless: The biggest weakness of Arteta is the transactional nature of his personality. When you are hot, you’re given the captains armband and a £350k a week deal, when you are not, you are given away for free after returning late after seeing your sick mother. We let Auba go for nothing – Chelsea bought him back for €14 million. In a world of stringent PSR, every penny counts, especially with Hale-Enders.

The hot trend amongst the ITK accounts this season appears to be predicting players returning to the first team early. We had it with Thomas Partey in December when people determined he’d be back for the Liverpool game, 4 weeks later, he’s finally a consideration.

The rumor doing the rounds this week is that Jurrien Timber will be back in February because the Arsenal IG has him doing some ball work.

Don’t do it to yourselves…

Arsenal won’t rush him back and getting him into the squad in February really would be a miracle. He has to continue working on building his muscles and his game-day fitness, and then he has to go through the psychological pressure of stress testing the knee in training. This isn’t a quick recovery; there will be setbacks, and the club won’t rush it. I penned this blog last night, and guess what, Mikel came to give some clarity on whether he’d be back before May.

There is a possibility, but at the moment he’s still very, very far from competing, that’s the realistic picture of it,” said Arteta.

“Are we hopeful that he can have an impact at the end of the season? If everything goes well, it looks like there is a chance that that might happen but I think it’s too early to make that call.

If I were putting money down, I’d say it’ll be early April. Yes, I know Arteta said May, but I think at this point he’s protecting the player from desperate fans and setting expectations that this will be a complicated return. He could technically be ready by late March after the international break, but Manchester City isn’t the game you bring a player back into. Early April we have Luton and Brighton. I’d maybe expect Arsenal to arrange an international break friendly to get him into game action before he plays.

The main reason not to believe this new breed of early-injury-return-ITKs is you don’t rush returns from ACL surgery – the consequences are too dire. This player could be with Arsenal for 8 years, there’s no reason to risk losing him for 18 months by rushing his return.

Crystal Palace is our opponent this weekend, and I’m excited about the prospect. They had a tough replay against Everton midweek and lost the MIGHTY Sean Dyche. That’ll be a rough trip back and the extra fatigue is never great. Joel Ward, Michael Olise, and Jordan ‘killer only against Arsenal’ Ayew will all be missing as well.

This game is poised for an Arsenal loss or a total battering for Crystal Palace. No in-between.

I’m feeling positive about the game. Arsenal have had a summer break to Dubai, Arteta seems to be very positive about what he was able to achieve, and as Jacob said on the podcast ‘Arsenal are always better when Arteta has had a long stretch with them.’

It was great, it was a phenomenal camp in every sense. 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.

I think it gave us an opportunity to look at things with a bit of perspective and analyse what we’ve been doing, and I will take a lot of positives from the first six months of the competition. Even though results haven’t gone our way in the last few games, when you look at what we have produced in terms of the Premier League and any other team, we are up there.

This is an important piece of the December narrative. Results did not reflect performance. Perspective in a different environment can be really useful. The message of ‘keep doing the same, and the good times will come’ can feel counter-intuitive when combined with the painful feeling of losing games. But it’s true of anything. If you keep doing things the right way, eventually, performances will match the underlying data. Luck is not a long-term strategy, having a good system and coaching players to master it is. We can’t lose sight of our system being one of the strongest in the league, and we can’t forget that our lack of experience combined with bad luck hasn’t been helpful.

But don’t doubt Arsenal. Arteta sees the issues with clarity and if we’re thinking it, he’s thinking it. I’m sure we’re going to bang after the break. This is a faith-based assessment, but that’s what sport is about, believing that doing the right things will eventually pay off.

That isn’t to say there aren’t things we can be working on.

We have to continue to be ourselves but there are certain details and marginal gains that we have to improve and evolve, and the beautiful thing about my job is to constantly find the evolution of a team and what it needs to keep winning.

My basic assessment is the team needs to be working on moving the ball faster into our speed monsters, and there needs to be more aggression and killer instincts in front of the goal. If we want to win the league, we need more non-penalty goals than Nottingham Forest. We’ve lost collective confidence, but remember, it takes one individual moment of magic to get that back. We have to hope it comes against Palace.

3 wins out of the next 3 games is imperative to our campaign. I don’t want to be in the muck fighting for 4th and 5th this season. I want to be battling with Liverpool and City for the league title.

Ok, long post today. I hope you are enjoying the uptick in LG content. See you in the comments, but before, listen to the latest podcast with me, Matt, and Jacob.

I have never experienced cold like I have this past week… negative 21 celsius. I live in a 200-year house with wood windows that are ornately huge. They were such a perk in the summer. In the winter? A damn deathtrap. It was so cold in my kitchen, it froze the food in my fridge. I had to chop wood for the fire, buy 2 heaters, and beg the energy gods to show mercy to my weak and decrepit furnace.

Not good.

However, the upshot, is -12 today actually felt warm. Am I… midwestern?

Less about the weather. Let’s talk about Arsenal.

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Well good evening fellow transfer fiends. How are we today? Excellent. Let’s talk strikers.

Victor Oshimen dealt his Gooner fan club a blow by declaring he’s going nowhere soon.

“I am happy with the president. I have an excellent relationship with him, I am sincere. I have a really good relationship with him, he has always been close to me since I arrived at Napoli in 2020 and I also have an excellent relationship with his family,” he said.

“For me it is important to have a good relationship with the owner of the team. There have never been any problems between us, what happened has nothing to do with my relationship with him or his family.

“The president told me he always supported, even off the pitch, and I gave my all to win the scudetto for them too. It’s always important to have this type of relationship with the owner of the club.

“Of course I would like to play there one day, for now I have other plans for my career. But when the time comes you will know everything.”

So what could those plans be? Well, he signed a new long-term deal with Napoli at the end of last year. It’s not rocket science. He’ll be with Napoli until the summer, then I’d imagine a conversation will be had dependent on Champions League qualification. The Serie A Champions are a whopping 20 points off top this season, so it’s a big ask.

My view on this deal is the same as it’s been for a while: No chance he’s coming to Arsenal. High risk at £100m+.

It would be remiss not to talk about the Premier League hearing with the government. Richard Masters (Prem big dog) and Rick Parry (EFL big dog) were questioned about some of the moves that have been happening with clubs breaching the rules.

It was kind of mad watching MPs dropping a performative dance over unfairness, despite the reality being the opposite.

Premier League clubs agreed to rules around financial prudence after Portsmouth went under. The basic premise of the rules was that clubs needed to control how they spend relative to how much they earn. The overall idea was to stop small clubs from over-extending themselves whilst stopping big clubs with nation-state wealth from blowing everyone out of the water with spending untethered from basic business principles.

Logical.

Everyone agreed to how it would work. Everyone knew the losses that could be sustained over a 3-year period. Now the auditors are sharpening their pencils and clubs that have breached the rules are getting letters in the post with expedited hearing dates (something people wanted so cases didn’t drag over multiple seasons).

Everton and Nottingham Forest have owned their errors – so the only question is punishment.

Other clubs are pleading their case – or their issues are more complicated because the infractions have been inherited.

One set of circumstances has quick resolutions. The other set, not so much.

But rest assured, if the big clubs are found guilty, the punishment will be swift and just as aggressive as the one Everton are dealing with right now. If the Premier League goes soft, they’ll incentivise bad behavior, much in the same way the American government does with its slow decisions on bad business practices, coupled with fines that make the bad behavior worth it.

Are the rules going to shift next year? Yes. But the idea that means the rules already in place shouldn’t be enforced is ludicrous. You can’t judge the latest set of accounts based on a future rule change. I’m also not a fan of fans throwing their hands up and saying ‘we should just get rid of the rules.’

Premier League clubs have to live within set of rules. No one wants the league to go to an NFL-like system, but I don’t think they want an approach where the defining feature to look for in a successful club is how rich their owner is. You also don’t want a situation where an owner comes in, blows all the cash on the books, then exits after decimating the club. We also can’t overlook how unfair it is when clubs that play by the rules miss out on trophies/survival to those who breach.

The rules are imperfect, no doubt. They’ll get better. But the key takeaway from all of this is there are now actual consequences for poor behavior and it’s had a chilling effect on massive clubs with very aggressive ownership groups.

That’s why you will most certainly see some big sales from Arsenal in the summer. We need to sell to buy because we’ve been spending money like nobody’s business, and our intake has been dreadful.

Ok, back to transfers. Cedric Soares may finally be out of the club. He’s been linked with all the farewell tour clubs in Turkey, but this time, we’re assured, he’s actually going to leave.

Purrrrrlease…

The only way he’s going is if we don’t get a fee and that’s put into ensuring he gets his full 90k a week until June. Still think it’s unlikely, the man loves being at Arsenal.

There continues to be chatter around Mo Elneny leaving the club. Again, I’d love to believe it, but there’s a guy doing his coaching badges, just loving life at Arsenal like you or I would. Our longest-serving player is more likely to leave on a free this summer. He’s the backup for a backup. Hopefully we’re safe now Thomas is likely to be back in mixer for the Forest game.

Whisper it… but there’s a hot young centre back called Jarrad Branthwaite doing the business at Everton this season and guess who is interested? Our defender fiend of a manager. He’d gobble him up like a piece of steak on a knife if he were given the chance. The player is a left-footed centre back, and he’s huge at 6ft5. Jarrad glides across the park like William Saliba, he has Everton levels of strength, but he does not have the thuggish anti-finesse of a Sean Dyche defender. He looks like a northern Bill Saliba if I’m honest. I’d pass this off as nonsense, but Arteta loves collecting defenders and we don’t have a rotation option for Bill right now. Feels more like a United player, though there are serious noises coming from Madrid.

The lad LOVES a slide tackle.

There are some rumblings in the evening newspapers that Zinchenko might not be ready for the Palace game at the weekend. One would assume this is a new injury issue or it’s just part of the mind games the manager plays with returns. The larger gripe is it could be true, because he’s just not very reliable as a player. Still, one thing that impressed me about Kiwior in the Liverpool game is I didn’t really notice him until the own goal… and I mean that as a positive. He’s adapting to the rigors of the league and I certainly think he has a chance to make it at Arsenal.

As Matt Kandela said on the last AOP. The next three games have to be 9 points. Deliver that and we’re at most 2 points off Liverpool and three from Manchester City. Lose any of them, you’d have to question if we’ve got the minerals this season to handle a sustained challenge.

This is an exciting few weeks.

Ok, that’s me done. See you in the comments. xxx

The Premier League has charged Nottingham Forest and Everton for PSR breaches. The Evertonians getting done for a second time. The Premier League put out this statement.

Both clubs have admitted the breaches, all that is left to do is punish, brutal, but this sort of justice is exactly what has been lacking over the past 20 years of Premier League football. Arguably, if we’d had this during the second phase of Arsene Wenger, he might have built better squads and won more trophies.

There’s a bit of consternation in the system about the tonality of the press releases. These statements are a precursor to potentially ruinous impacts on clubs and communities. However, it is hard to push that sort of narrative when the counter is ‘what about the clubs that were relegated after following the rules?’

I’ve also seen people say the whole thing should be changed because it’s only small clubs getting punished. And what’s a bit of overspending anyway?

Here’s where I disagree BIGLY.

You need rules in place and you need to stick to them. The consequence of having no rules or ignoring enforcement is you allow nation-states and oligarchs to pump untold millions into sports clubs that have no tether to reality. If you at least want to fake the idea of fairness, there needs to be safeguards in the league.

The only reason other clubs haven’t been punished is because they are slowballing the process and not admitting liability. There will be an end date for that carry-on, and if they are found guilty, they will also face painful fines and worse… an asterisk on their achievements.

This process the Premier League is going through might not be perfect, their execution in media might feel heartless, but the game will be better for regulations.

We’re already winning as well: Newcastle can’t afford the Kalvin Phillips loan fee and might have to sell a big dog to stay in the right lane for PSR. These rules also help the national game as well. Clubs invest in local talent because selling them gives them more room to spend big. It’s a win-win.

The injury news is looking good for the ‘like a new signing’ January we’re about to have.

Gabriel Jesus will be ready for Forest, so will Zinchenko. Thomas Partey is tracking fitness-wise. I doubt we’ll see him for the first game back, but I’ve no doubt he’ll be ready for the Forest game. Having him available for the Liverpool match will be huge.

Then you have Tomiyasu, who is being rehabbed back into action by the Japanese national team. He didn’t play against Vietnam out of precaution, and the reality is they don’t need to risk him against a team level below them. You might see him feature against Iraq and Indonesia. Two games that could help him get closer to the sort of level that’ll see him slide back into contention when he returns. If they go out round of 16, he’ll be back for Liverpool. If they stay in and get to the final, we’ll have him back for Burnley. My hope is he’s in the mixer for the West Ham game.

Those 4 players change how we play. They give us rotation options. They make us better. The final piece is Timber who will likely make it back end of March or early April. Champions League quarter-finals if we make them!

That’s enough to get me excited. Ok, short post today, see you in the comments. Check out the latest podcast and sorry about the weird sound, the stream was a bit off.