What the bloody hell is cracking friends?
Arsenal’s game in Vorskla looking extremely precarious. The home team were at one point saying they might not be able to attend. It appears they relented in the end and accepted a kind of neutral venue. It’s going to be a lot better for the Arsenal players. A nicer hotel, a nicer pitch and less aggressive Ukrainians shouting at them. It’ll probably look a bit like a closed doors game. Emery had this to say.
“First, we need to respect Uefa’s decision because I think it’s not easy for Vorskla.
“Yesterday we were preparing for the first trip to Poltava and waiting in the evening for the last decision.
“It doesn’t change a lot to play here. In 90 minutes it is not a very big change. It is clear they are playing in Ukraine, not in their town, but they can also move their supporters to Kiev.
“In 90 minutes we want to do our work here.”
We have a very fresh looking squad playing. Tyreece John-Jules, Joe Willock, Charlie Gilmour and Jordi Osei-Tutu join veterans Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith Rowe. John-Jules sounds like the name of some top geezer who is gonna smash your face in because he heard you sent his bird a Snapchat you shouldn’t have. Regardless of his scary name, let’s hope he gets a run out with the others. We’re as good as qualified if we don’t fuck this up, but that doesn’t make me feel any sort of pragmatism for this game. Let’s go wild. Let’s make this a Carling Cup 2008 extravaganza.
Poor old Aaron Ramsey though… I don’t care how pro you are, knowing this is your life for the next 7 months must be super depressing. Emery definitely pushing him to take the L and get himself sold up in January. Go join Wenger at Bayern.
Superb to see Liverpool lose to PSG. My man Tuchel has PSG players working hard, let’s see how long he can keep up the pretense he’s totally normal. I love his football, it’s so beautiful and thoughtful. But he’s a lunatic.
Last bit of football news. Remember I told you about how poor Gerry Peyton was waaaay back when… and people doubted the veracity. And I probs said, when Wenger goes, you’ll find out how shite things were. Check out this interview from our two exPolish keepers. The full transcript is here.
Szczesny Let me give you an example of a thing when you laugh at first, but then you’re like I’m playing for Arsenal, is this for real? Before the match with Chelsea I hear: Watch out. When Hazard takes his penalties, he will shoot at the opposite side of where you will dive.
Szczesny And that’s funny, but then you’re like did he really just said that?
Fabianski Mentioning penalty analysis he used to said (Garry): listen, he shoots that side or that side, but best go with your feeling.
So, he shoots here and there, but do whatever you want more or less(Fabianski comment on the matter).
Szczesny One time we had a GK debriefing out of nowhere
Fabianski And it was a video debriefing, we have never done video before
Szczesny Not knowing what it will be about we’re going right? And it’s a 4-5 min video of goals that I let past me, but could have done better.
Fabianski It’s only Szczesny goals though
Fab&Szcz They were only Szczesny’s, but there was us and Vito(Vito Mannone) and Emi(Emiliano Martinez), maybe?
Szczesny So, were watching, but we don’t know wtf is going on. It’s just showing errors, he Garry Peyton) is not explaining anything. So the video ends and Garry says: See, you’re not perfect. And that was it. We’re all looking at each other like welp
I can tell you, if you think that’s bad, you wait until you hear about the stories of players Steve Rowley passed on for not being ‘Arsenal quality’, or the horrors of the Tony Colbert fitness regime, or the weird little witch doctor that used to go to the club and advise Wenger about hair pills contributing to the injuries. It was an asylum towards the end. I cannot believe that Bayern is considering him.
BIG UPDATE: I only went and fixed the comment section. You’ll notice I have a privacy policy explaining that I’ll be doing exactly fuck all with your data. Not because I’m a good human, more because your fake e-mails and proxy server IPs are worth fuck all to me.
INSTRUCTIONS: Clear your cache, then you should see a checkbox that says you agree to the terms of the site. Then that checkbox will remain ticked and your comments will autofill with your sassy names, like EmeryLegsAFC139382. Big thanks to Stacey over at Codeable.
Additionally, Le Grove is going advert free. It’s shit for the experience and I just fucking love you so much, I want you to have all the nice things. That said, there’s a £50 a month paywall going up next week, so get your hit of prime content now, because you’ll be dropping me cash money soon.
Talking of content, check out the latest podcast between myself and the excellent Aash. We talk about selling £60m stats good Xhaka. We talk players worth keeping. We shoot the shit about super league, FIFA, football rights and we have a mini love in over some of things we’re enjoying about the Emery ride so far. It’s a good listen. No, it’s a great listen.
SPOTIFY | STITCHER | ITUNES | GOOGLE | POCKET CASTS
Being reported that Utd have activated the year extension option on De Gea’s contract.
Now the interesting thing will be do they sell in the summer or are they hoping that De Gea is just playing hardball over money. If they don’t sell and De Gea either wants out or ManU fuck up top 4 or something similar and they let £50 odd million walk out the door.
Does anyone know how Courtois is doing at Madrid – I know Madrid are poor but is he performing?
So… Ramsey doing the baby-sitter tonight ?? Absolutely hilarious.
Ze most expensive baby-sitter on earth.
Highbury
Soon to be the most unemployed.
With so many games coming up in the next couple of months it is obvious that we need to be lucky on the injury front…….3 or 4 injuries and we are in trouble …we have offloaded 15 first team squad members in the last year and half and I think we are short of numbers unless 5 or 6 kids are going to be promoted. sanchez,Giroud,Cazorla,ox,walcott,coquelin,chambers,Debouchy,Perez,wilshere, ospina, Gibbs,paulista Ramsey ,welbeck and jenkinson are also off (possibly Elneny)so when you break it down ,we will need to bring in bodies. By the end of this season we will only have Aubamayang,Lacazette,Mhkitaryan,ozil… Read more »
Any news on the line up?
Happy to see what the young guns have in their barrels tonight
So all of a sudden, they’re speaken up one after the other in’nit! Smugs! Now that the snag is out of way, lets hope no more Gerry on our pay-roll
Pedro
I also like how the “your comment here” disappears now automatically as opposed to always deleting it.
Cech; Lichtsteiner, Holding, Jenkinson, Maitland-Niles; Elneny, Guendouzi; Willock, Ramsey, Smith Rowe; Nketiah
Subs: Martinez, Mkhitaryan, Gilmour, Osei-Tutu, Medley, John-Jules, Saka
Spurs won a tough game yesterday. I think they will be a little fatigued though. Mentally they might be feeling good, but they must know that that is their last hurray in the CL. They will be bounced by Barca
Our goal is to score early- if we do that, the game becomes more open. Better for our attackers to operate in.
Too bad Emery went to Ukraine…. would have liked him to stay back to prepare more
Banks
“I’ve said for years that Arsenal’s #1 problem was Wenger”
The thing is, it was so fudging obvious if you eradicated the cause of our problems(Wenger), the club would blossom once again. Unfortunately, those that kept cheering on and encouraging the team were infact only giving Wenger the added power to carry on.
As for tonights game, good luck to the youngsters. It’ll be nice to see a few new faces in the team.
At least they will be back at home early…
Disagree with the fact of playing Guendouzi tonight.
Trawling the Internet for anti wenger comments and using them as your main subject matter, despite the fact arsenal are playing tonight, shows you have strange priorities.It’s also a bit sad.
No doubt it wouldn’t be sad if it was another nonsense article about a 30 million budget next summer or if it was about Stan being shit.
Again it’s an interview published in the last 24 hours and he’s been linked with the Bayern job it’d hardly be out of the blue to talk about him.
Highbury
Guen will be a sub again on Sunday. I think being 19 wont be too much of an issue barring an injury from a bad tackle or something …. 19 year olds recover pretty fast
Our last manager was a dinosaur in so many ways. Its not even humorous anymore. He robbed the club with his 10M salary, and that part I have a major issue with.
Daylight robbery of the fans. I hope they never build a statue of him, nor have his name anywhere the Emirates.
Graham
I’m sure you are familiar with the dead parrot sketch …
Marko
‘No doubt it wouldn’t be sad if it was another nonsense article about a 30 million budget next summer or if it was about Stan being shit. ‘
No it wouldn’t, seeing as Stan owns arsenal and Wenger has left.
Finally my man AMN gets his start. IMO he’s the best FB we’ve got based on ability, skills and physical prowess. If he just concentrates on becoming a FB rather than a MF, he can easily dislodge Bellerin for the RB spot or even solve our LB problem.
Also want to see what Eddie can do in the striker role. So much hype around him.
Also Jenkinson starts at CB. Lol.
Seriously, Pedro need to sort out the obsession with Wenger
Has gone past stale, I mean there’s so Much more to write about but dude would rather continue to harp on about wenger
Weird.
The Ramsey fan club should be in for a treat tonight right?
Carl Jenkinson at CB …lol
Hey Vic, how are you ??
(just kidding, don’t give a f*ck)
Hello Akilan, been ages!
Absolutely with you on AMN
Really refreshing to see how far he’s come under Emery and if he grabs his chance with an absolutely domineering display in midfield
Fingers crossed he has a blinder.
Jenkinson will play CB.
Yay comments section repaired. 3 cheers to Pedders and the people who helped out!
The sites fixed, good times!
Pedro charging for the privilege of commenting, bad times!
(Hope that’s a wind up, what’s this a Stan kronke site)
Pierre
Monty Python? Great sketch.
Today’s post “Ineptitude of the Wenger-era exposed” just got me going.
The great thing about Le-grove is that you can never get away from the Wenger rhetoric.
Onwards and frigging upwards.
Mikki travels there just to speak some Russian to the local folks…. Maybe he could convert some local folks to become Arsenal fan.
Akilan
I believe AMN is in the Iwobi category. Good enough for the squad but not first team material.
No it wouldn’t, seeing as Stan owns arsenal and Wenger has left
That and you harbor resentment for one and deep affection for the other
Just checked out the team line up. Unai has literally travelled with the second team. Perfect for this Sun game vs the turds down the road.
Will be interesting to see whether Ramsey finally decides to show us that he can be a team player or not. Ramsey, along with Cech, are the only senior players in tonight’s team.
I just saw somewhere that Jenkinson is pared up with Holding in central defense.
It can’t be true.
Victorious
Remember, Wenger has played a massive role in the clubs history.
The consequences of his reign are far reaching.
Welcome back by the way.
More interested in seeing Nketiah more than anyone else.
Really looking forward to tonights game.
Dissenter
Indeed they are. Check Michael’s post @ 16:58 for the team line up.
“Unai has literally travelled with the second team. ”
Ramsey won’t show shit tonight, he must be too upset by his situation.
(too bad for him)
“Absolutely with you on AMN
Really refreshing to see how far he’s come under Emery”
What a fucking moronic comment. I’d love AMN to push on and become a CM of Vieira proportions but how the fuck can anyone talk about his progression under Emery? Started 1 match got injured (not at fault = shit happens) and is only just getting back to fitness.
We can have that conversation after a few appearances but he’s hardly kicked a ball all season.
HL
Or that his ego was so inflated by AW, that he feels like snubbing us as he feels that he is worthy of a better team.
Ramsey is big time.
Specialises in bailing out bottling teammates in Cup finals.
This sort of carry on won’t rouse his competitive fires.
Pedro I applaud you for consistently digging up the Wenger failings. It is important that the facts become known, even though some find it boring and meaningless. What Wenger did for the club and what Emery is now trying to do, are poles apart. Nevertheless, they are entwined and will be for a good while longer. These next two seasons will prove to be a major transitional period for the club but based on Emery’s first few months at the helm, I can honestly say that we made an excellent choice of manager to help dig us out of this… Read more »
Really refreshing to see how far he’s come under Emery and if he grabs his chance with an absolutely domineering display in midfield
Christ you talk some absolute nonsense Vic. He’s made one appearence all season one appearence under Emery. Fair to say he hasn’t kicked on under Emery.
Who got our goal?
This sort of carry on won’t rouse his competitive fires
Either does any other games these days.
SMith Rowe
Marc
Smith-Rowe did.
Ramsey not even captain tonight.
He’ll be cleaning boots at the current rate he’s slipping down the pecking order.
Cheers DB
He’s got a couple now.
Didn’t mean to miss you out SF!
Smith Rowe has pretty good close control for a youngster. Good to see.
Marc
Which hopefully could be a good sign for him in the future?
I’ve been saying for ages that I wanted to see the likes of Nketiah, W.illock, ESR and AMN in a game for us.
Pleased that they have been given this chance.
ESR will be replacing Rambo shortly permanently
Soft as shit!
Enter Pierre with his VAR stats.
Their Goalkeeper protested about the runup. Funny…
Come on the gooners
Vorskla racking up the fouls.
Their goalkeepers had enough!
Test
Willock!!
Lies, all lies! the lot of you.
That’s a cool finish.
Good goal Wilock…talent
All the kids are scoring. Shame Eddie didn’t take the pen.
We have our Arsenal back
One look at Emile Smith Rowe and Ramsey’s bloated request for a contract was ran through the shredder. Shame they didn’t see them before Ozil’s contract.
Terrific the way he stroked that in.
Shoddy defending, but whatever!
Our Arsenal was never gone…..if you ever followed Arsenal prior to Wenger, there were some pretty dire times too. So get with the current program and stop spouting shit. Liars
willie cock will be a player….not exactly Vieira-esque but hope they give him more chances
@DaleDaGooner
It was definitely gone for about ten years thanks to the specialist in failure.
Has anyone seen my Lasagne recipe? I’ve got a little bit of cooking to do for mid day Sunday!
Arsenal are a football club again without doubt, they had stopped being one for a number of years.
So far this is going as well as you could want, basically no one there aside from Holding likely to start the NLD and we’re winning comfortably.
The kids coming through actually look decent now. I mean I honestly can’t remember the last time I was excited about some of the younger players coming through
I would sub out holding and bring in that 6 ft 4 in guy and see what he can do. We may need Holding for the next two games.
Nelson
Yeah the way “FC who” are playing I reckon another 10 and they’ll be on the bus home. Might as well give the kid a run out and rest Holding, would look at doing the same with Guendozi.
Marko
“The kids coming through actually look decent now. I mean I honestly can’t remember the last time I was excited about some of the younger players coming through”
Never thought I would see the day ……Marko giving wenger credit for producing such quality through the youth system.
Good to see us 0-3 up vs Vorskla. I was hoping that we would lead in the first half.
Missed most of the 1st half the game due to coming back from work. Saw the half time replay of goals and liked how Willock scored his goal.Henriesque indeed.
Lol @ Ramsey taking the pen. Probably trying to keep himself relevant.
Pierre
You’re dead right I mean Wenger did a great job with discipline – was all a big joke with young players answering their mobile phones during training.
How much do you want to bet that happens now?
Nketiah should have struck it with his left foot!
Marko giving wenger credit for producing such quality through the youth system.
Huh? Nah nice try. Never gave Nketiah a fair crack despite promising him opportunities after his two goals bailed him out in the league cup that time. Never gave Smith Rowe an opportunity. I mean what youngsters have been on the edge of the first team these last few years? Bar AMN no one really. Nah I wouldn’t give him any credit for any of the players towards the end there. Obviously because he was fucking useless at improving any of them
No big deal Holding missing the last group match. Win tonight and we top the group anyway. Can play the kids, give Kos a warm up match or a someone like Jenkinson – put them in the spotlight maybe get some interest.
Yup
Emery reads my blog…
Seriously impressed withh Eddie’s hold up play. Hope we get to see a couple of other teenagers to make their debut.
In fact never seen so many kids being taken away for such a game. Such a great way for Unai to see for himself what the kids can do! Really great from Unai to make the kids feel part of the First team.
Was a foul but we’ll take it.
My bad, it’s not given!
And ESR scores our 4th!!! Will he now go for the hat-trick?
Smashed!
Fuck that….. Was it really offside?
ffs ref
In fact never seen so many kids being taken away for such a game.
—————————-
Wenger never did this, called it being disrespectful to the competition or some such shit.
Ramsey just cannot catch a break
Bring on all the kids. Amazing.
I’ve just had the most peculiar idea strike me – I think it could be a premonition. Real Madrid are a shambles and go big in the summer – big money signings and get the Poch who leaves with the excuse “It was always my plan to do one season at the new stadium and then leave – it’s not my fucking fault Levy’s a useless tight cunt who couldn’t get it built on time or on budget” Completely broke the Spud’s need a manager who can steer them through the financial difficulties of a stadium move. Enter “Super Wenger”… Read more »
Lads, we’ve a Scotsman!
ESR loses ball and chases back and wins it. Good. Do not be like O
Actually born in England…….