FINALLY, we’re back in the mixer and there are some tasty football games to sink our teeth into this weekend.
Spurs vs City today is the first of the thrillers. Someone is dropping points, maybe both teams. Hopefully, it’s Spurs.
Then we have Leicester vs Liverpool in a top of the table clash. Again, hoping it’s Leicester dropping points.
… and then obviously, the Arsenal take on Leeds in a flashback of yesteryears Super Sunday’s. Jimmy Floyd? Lee Bowyer? Mark Viduka? Oof… some names that make feel a bit queezy.
Mikel Arteta has a lot resting on this game. It’s not pivotal to his future, but it’s a huge test because fans are demanding to see that the club is on the up. There’s a lot of worry that we’re on the slide and it’s terminal. Nail a win against a side everyone seems to think is excellent and we’ll have a nice week.
My uncle is a massive Leeds United fan. I spoke to him yesterday and he has a lot more faith in Arsenal than most of us do. His take is that Arsenal will be wounded and Leeds can’t defend for shit. He’s hoping to score early and take a point. The game plan from Bielsa can only go one way. We’ve seen them ship 8 goals in two games. Surely there’s a clue in there somewhere.
I think we’re hoping that Arteta and his coaching staff have had plenty of time to stew on the conundrum that is our lack of attacking prowess. We’re hoping the team is as fired up as Dani Ceballos after a rogue ‘you mum’ joke flies at him. We want to see a reaction and see off the Villa game as an anomaly.
What we don’t want to see: Lacazette or Auba through the middle
What we do want to see: Big performances from big players and an attacking approach that yields more than two shots on target
Arteta was asked in the press conference if he was feeling a different type of pressure now fans are calling him Fraudteta on the Twitter.com. He answered like Arsene Wenger would. He said the loss last week really hurt him. He will firstly look at his own decisions and try to learn. Overall though, despite saying again that the road back to the top will be bumpy, he’s very optimistic about the future.
Arsenal fans want to know that the people at the club care and we want to know that our new coach who is learning the ropes is actually prepared to the learn the ropes. If nothing changes this weekend, then it’ll start to look like he’s just stubborn. If he changes things and it doesn’t work, it’ll look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The job is hard, because we are a long way from the top and fans don’t like to accept that.
The coach is staying positive, he wants more honeymoons, and he seems very confident that he’s taking us on the right journey.
The Leeds game is a great place to try and claw back some points and make a move on the table. Big teams are playing each other this weekend. Points will drop. We need to make them up against a team that will most certainly not be in the top 6 this season.
Should be a fun game. See you in the comments. Listen to the podcast if you haven’t. I added music and cleaned up the sound a bit!
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Boom!
I can see a convincing win for us tomorrow.
I have faith.
Win tomorrow can boost conference and go a long way for players and the manager. Lose, and Arteta can quickly find himself in a hot seat, and if results don’t go our way in the next few weeks, he might be out of a job by Xmas.
Watching Villa vs Brighton game, and it’s amazing how good both sides look going forward. Villa players probably thinking to themselves, why can’t we play Arsenal every week?
Pedro
“Nail a win against a side everyone seems to think is excellent”
I really think you’re out of tune with the views of a lot of fans. The fans aren’t downbeat and negative because they think we’ll lose to a team who are excellent they are down beat and negative because they can’t see us being able to control a team who aren’t that good.
The other stuff going on in the background just adds fuel to the fire.
Up4grabs Yea I agree, Fekir and Laca had a great relationship at Lyon. Sometimes those kind of dynamics can really spark an upturn in form for players to produce more than the sum and all that. We’ve not been particularly smart with how we’ve built our attack the last 3/4 years. Love Auba, but I still maintain that was a stupid move 4 months after buying Lacazette. Made little sense then, and still we’re seeing the square peg stuff 2 years later. My ideal is having a potent striker supported by three attacking players all mobile, ball carriers, intricate passers,… Read more »
It’s not pivotal to his future
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Lose this one plus the next 2, who knows…….
What we don’t want to see: Lacazette or Auba through the middle.
Then whose playing up top are we getting Thierry out of retirement pedro?
Think Arteta is in a pretty safe position barring disaster, at least in terms of the club, Josh pretty much said on appointing him that the chopping and changing managers was over and done with. Arteta has had to face a lot of adversity in his fledgling career, a pandemic, inheriting a shit show, Raul, serious injury crisis, staff changes, an inability to ship players out he might want to, Ozil, forwards out of form, ridiculous international games, and these are just the things we know about, suspect a lot has gone on that we don’t. And Despite all that,… Read more »
We don’t want to see Auba through the middle?
Um what? That’s exactly what we want to see as well as no longer using our striker as a high defensive mid.
Cc,
Sounds like a plan, at least you have one, bit of an omnishambles at the moment when it comes to arsenal.
‘My ideal is having a potent striker supported by three attacking players all mobile, ball carriers, intricate passers, and final pass/shot masters. Think that is the ideal blueprint, and we’re way below that with essentially 2.5 strikers in Auba, Laca, Pepe.’ Yep. Chavs have that in Pulisic/Havertz, Werner, Ziyech. Liverpool have it in Mane, Firmino, Salah, Jota. City have it in Sterling, Aguero, Jesus, Silva, Foden, Mahrez, Ferran Torres. Spurs have Son, Kane, Lucas/Bale/Bergwijn. Even United have it to some degree in Martial, Rashford, Greenwood, Cavani although much hinges on if Cavani is past it. We’re incredibly disjointed as we… Read more »
Refs still decide games. Horrible refereeing decision.
Not fair. First a red card. Then a PK.
Absolutely insane from Michael Oliver. On a mission to save the game for Villa.
God bless VAR sometimes. Oh lord.
Ha! The VAR official didn’t agree.
Bravo Brighton!
Think that Potter would have broke out the wand on the Ref there were that pen given after Penandes-gate.
Could have been a pen, but thst yellow/red card for lampety was a disgrace!
Grealish as a brilliant footballer as he is, is also a diving cunt, just like Zaha
Good win for the seagulls
I’d like to hear the Arteta apologists explain how the mighty Brighton were so much better against Villa…
He didn’t touch the Villa player. Pure dive
Emi has conceded more goals than Leno.
Weird given he’s the most elite keeper in history who organises the back 4 like a boss.
Brighton have better offensive players than Arsenal I guess. Not Arteta’s fault we don’t have a #10. Clearly if we had spent £50m we’d do better.
Trying hard to look at Brighton’s #10. What is his name and can we buy the fellow already?!
Arteta is the Chemistry post grad student mistakenly put in charge of a nuclear power plant. Expect the unexpected.
G8
Did you see the replay? The BHA player did deflected the ball first before touching the Villa player’s foot. Hence, it was no penalty.
Can someone explain how Sky in the build up can claim that the Spud’s compared to City have had a flying start to the season? The gap is 5 points and City have a game in hand.
I know Sky will always want to hype the product but this shit is just getting on my nerves.
Men on four year contracts who took over a disaster and then won the Cup are not going to be sacked in the near future. But with a lot of Arsenal fans the job is becoming impossible . It’s at least a two year job to get into the Champions League
Up4grabs Yea, and that’s my gripe because arguably we’ve not witnessed much of a plan and it’s still pending in truth with a gaping hole behind the front trio. If you remember, we had Laca and Giroud at CF options (say what you like but good options if not great). We binned Theo, Ox and Alexis in the same window, and brought in Auba and Mkhi. Now Mkhi might not have set the world alight but we’d have been much better to spend the 55 mil we used on Auba to bring in a wide player like a Mahrez who… Read more »
Nelson, I know he dived, the ref changed his mind after he saw it on the screen but could have still stuck to his first decision as there was a contact after..
other refs could’ve bottled it to be honest
Jamie
😂😂 he’s so calming and assured. His distribution too 😍
Unai got a draw against the mighty Madrid
Cc,
Yeah I must admit second option is more appealing.
Big mistake was letting giroud go.
We never seem to get the balance right.
We never had wingers then it was too many, tons of playmakers now none.
Then it’s trying to play square pegs in round holes again.
Oh … seems Villa are not the second coming of Messi’s peak Barca after all? Who would’ve thunk it …
Pedro don’t want to see laca or Auba through the middle!
Willian it’s then!!!
Marc
The media are always up Spurs’ anal canal as soon as they put any sort of run together, has been that way for years now.
Xhaka through the middle could be devastating!
I can see the sauce already dripping!
Nketiah as central striker. The guy is an instinctive natural goal-scorer.
WE
With Mourinho there it’s even worse than normal.
Brighton’s football is so much better than ours.
Been very unlucky this season.
Potter doing fine job and they deserved the luck at the end.
We have Bellerin.
Brighton have Lamptey.
“We never had wingers then it was too many, tons of playmakers now none. Then it’s trying to play square pegs in round holes again.“ It’s maddening. Blind spots galore. Under Wenger we had no defensive foundation and we were criminally disrespectful to holding players as we used Coquelin and Flamini for years. But had some fabulous attacking options at times Emery ripped the creative talents from us and left us eulogising the likes of Ceballos. Least said the better for me on that one. Now Arteta has a big task on his hands to structure a midfield and attack… Read more »
We were presented the chance to buy a world class striker and we took it. We upgraded on Lacazette so we just had to sell him and we could have done it this summer and invest the money. Auba outscored our xG in Arteta’s anti attacking football setup and scored 1 goal from 2 half chances. Imagine we spent Auba’s money for someone like Pepe who is taking years to get going and might not even work at all? To say buying Aubameyang was a mistake is such a silly take. Basically saying it was a mistake that we bought… Read more »
4th*
Ederson made it so easy for Son ….
Son’s a brilliant player. The one player out of that Spurs side that I wish we had.
All Man City and then Spurs score
Yea, like we were presented with the opportunity to buy world class Ozil when we already had Cazorla at AM.
Some fans just like shiny.
Teams with a plan are the ones that fight for trophies, opportunistic purchasing leaves the rest talking about how good a player is as we aren’t anywhere near the convo.
Aston Villa 0-3 Leeds
•Aston Villa 3-4 Southampton
•Arsenal 0-3 Aston Villa
•Aston Villa 1-2 Brighton
I think it’s a typo because I strongly suspect every single clued in Arsenal fan does want to see Auba through the middle. This week and every week. Hes not a winger, or a playmaker, or an attacking midfielder or a false 9, whatever that is. Hes one of the very best centre forwards on earth. So I assume that’s a typo.
Atalanta going through a rough spell at the moment, look devoid of creativity unbelievably.
Higuain or Suarez instead of Ozil and we may have won the PL. Can you imagine us with either of them the year Leicester won it? Think Hig scored 36 in Serie A and Suarez 40 in La Liga.
As Charlie says, a luxury signing given Santi was sensational as the 10 the year before.
Who says that good teams press high. Whenever Spuds loses the ball, every player moves back to defend.
Kane is offside, not Son.
Nelson
“Who says that good teams press high. Whenever Spuds loses the ball, every player moves back to defend.”
They are living dangerously though. Already had last ditch defending from them
Kyle Walker is a fucking liability.
Amazed if a big club doesn’t come in for Son soon – he’s been a good player for some time and is really playing well at the moment.
Weagle
But Ozil was world class? Great signing apparently. Nvm the needs of the squad, or what would fit best.
Cant wait for us to buy a brilliant LCB so we can bench Gabriel and be thrilled because his replacement is world class. Some fans just don’t get it.
Cc
We’ve already got him – Mari!
“A side everyone thinks is excellent” followed by “We’ve seen them ship eight goals in two games”.
Talk about flip flopping.
Cut out the hype and we’re playing a side that on their day could beat anyone or lose to anyone. A bit like us but not as dull.
Marc
Man-like-Pablo you mean? Saw some footage of him recently and I swear he’s put on a bit of size. All for a swole Mertesacker type in the squad.
This Spurs performance is very Arteta-like.
Defend deep and in numbers, miss out midfield and hit the forwards quickly and directly in the sporadic attacks they have.
Jose showing Arteta how to effectively park the bus yet be lethal in counter
lol NDombele was left for shit by De Bruyne in central midfield.
Left for shit
Mari was such a pointless signing.
Atalanta going through a rough spell at the moment, look devoid of creativity unbelievably.
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Usually start slow tend to hit the heights January/February time.
Oh no shithousing to a clean sheet for Mourinho then,
Lucky bastards. Ruled out
Dean loves the limelight, no handball there.
At times he’s 40 yds behind play , should retire
Weagle
Not if you’re losing 3 CB’s this summer and have scope to sell Holding and Chambers too. 4 mil he cost, Spanish Jonny Evans.
Ishola
Sky studio are handing out tissues as we speak before they eulogise the Mourinho masterclass.
Set up perfectly for a shithouse smash and grab, would be poetry if they put it to bed late on with a breakaway Bale goal on as a sub.
Mari was such a pointless signing.
As was Soares… and Willian.
Arteta has overseen some blatantly stupid transfer decisions. He has to take a large part of the blame because he was promoted to work side by side with Edu so he has been a huge part of every single decision we’ve recently taken re players joining, leaving, loaning or extending.
Mari was such a pointless signing.
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Hahaha I, like a few others, were baffled as to the four year deal he and Soares were given. What a waste of money considering we signed Gabriel afterwards. Then there’s Saliba. Completely stupid the transfer strategy if there was one.
I’ve come round to Luiz though.
Weagle
It’s shithousing all the way from Spurs from the first whistle.
But shithousing is an option when you can hit Kane and Son on the counter,
Charlie
We’ll get rid of Sokratis I’m sure, did we not just hand Mustafi a new contract though?
Hopefully Chambers as well.
Still even at that we have Gabriel, Luiz, Holding, Saliba, Mustafi.
Where’s the need for Mari? A crock at that.
The big question:
If after our match against the Spud’s in a couple of weeks Mourinho comes out and accuses Arteta of parking the bus should:
A) Mourinho be banned from ever managing in the PL again
or
B) Arteta should be fired
“Not if you’re losing 3 CB’s this summer and have scope to sell Holding and Chambers too.”
You must be talking about a different team. Or a different summer.
WE
Mustafi turned the contract down or it was pulled. I’d love to know which one.
Mahrez is such a weak pussy at times
Imagine the confidence Arsenal would have gone into a big game like this had we signed a big game manager like Jose or Allergi…Arteta on the other hand plays with so much fear it actually plays into the opponents favor..nevermind the inability to have even a little chance becsuse of playing players out of position
‘Jose showing Arteta how to effectively park the bus yet be lethal in counter’
It’s not about respective managerial abilities of Jose and Arteta. More a reflection of how brilliant Kane and Son are as individual players and as a partnership and how ineffective Auba-Laca duo is in contrast. Kane and Son are world class players, absolutely top notch.
Ishola
True. Begwijn and Lucas are also very effective players in a counter-attacking set up.
I mean just look at Spurs here..they look so comfortable defending..no panic at all..looks like they could do this easily for another 90.min let alone a half
“It’s not about respective managerial abilities of Jose and Arteta. More a reflection of how brilliant Kane and Son are as individual players and as a partnership and how ineffective Auba-Laca duo is in contrast. Kane and Son are world class players, absolutely top notch.”
Yah that is what happens when you play your best striker out of position and downgrade him to a useless cross supplier..anyone with half a brain can see that Auba is wasted on the wings unless the team has a strong creative player…and all this is on Arteta and Arteta only
Marc
Happy days although he’s not quite as terrible as Sokratis and Chambers imo.
If we can file it down to Gabriel, Luiz, Saliba and Mari you’ve got a nice blend of youth, experience, height, pace and ball-playing and stopper defenders there.
Weagle We shopped Mustafi, Holding and Sokratis this summer. Think we pulled a deal for Holding because of an injury to Mari and Saliba being green. Sokratis, Mustafi, and Luiz are gone this summer. We’re looking at Gabriel, Mari, Holding, Chambers, Saliba. Good chance at least one of the English lads is off too. Like I say, for 4 mil his value is in longer term planning. Key to that actually being the follow-up sales and movements of course, otherwise I’d agree. A crock is harsh, apparently he had a screw put in his ankle and went through a period… Read more »
Mahrez is a baller but was never completely sold on him as a world class talent.
Just a notch below the widemen elite for me.
WE
You’re assuming Arteta is going to end up playing 4 at the back. On current form we’ll need to sign 3 or 4 new CB’s so we have cover for the 9 – 1 or 10 formations we play.
From what I’ve seen from Bielsa, he’s an uncompromising football romantic, who’s ready to go down on his own sword if necessary. Arteta’s been the exact opposite, a football pragmatist, who recognises the hand he’s been dealt, and is playing that hand to the best of his ability. I don’t think this is the football Arteta wants to dish up, this is just what we are at the moment Emery took a lot of unfair stick, he was an experienced manager, with an excellent CV, who is now doing well with Villarreal Our lack of creativity and cutting edge predates… Read more »
‘He’ll look at his decisions firstly’? You mother f – in better! he’s drenched in clown juice right now. WTF don’t you wanna play one of the best strikers in the world in his best position after giving him the big doh? cos it makes more sense having him playing left back at times? He doesn’t deserve the golden boot? Ending the on field bromance will mean we will never get to see the handshake celebration? We don’t have enough wingers or wide forwards? 343 needs to stop if he’s gonna keep picking his favorites. Even then, why we’re not… Read more »
Haha Marc, 5 at the back when he’s feeling dangerous.
“You must be talking about a different team. Or a different summer.“
Sokratis, Mustafi, and Luiz are no longer Arsenal players as of July 2021. Holding almost left the club this past summer.
So no, pretty obvious who and what I’m talking about.
Auba outscored Kane last season and the season before
Let that sink in
Buzzy
Spurs are under pressure and have conceded a goal that was ruled out.
They will need the rub of the green not to concede in this match.
Shithousing to this extent means it’s far from a smooth ride for Spurs that you are implying
WE
Someone should get Arteta on the Bolivian marching powder – he could get really reckless and play with a back 4.
Brilliant Kane, my longstuff
” he’s drenched in clown juice right now”
juice or sauce is the question
If Mourinho gets a result today with his high level shithousing then he may get wedded to it for a period.
And the NLD is coming up shortly.
The clash of the shithousers. Shithousery galore will be seen,