I spent the day listening to all the great podcasts, reading all the blogs, and even venturing over to some Spurs Youtubers that were most entertaining.

‘WE PLAY LIKE BAGEL FC, FAM’ one of my favourite lines.

I particularly loved The Arsenal Vision Podcast opening statements, do check them out.

Everyone seems to have bought into the project now. That’s a big shift from where we were a few weeks ago and the club has to be applauded for moving on the loose threads.

Everyone knows what we’re doing.

We can’t be City or Chelsea, so we have to go the path that is the smartest. That’s signing established young players about the bang. Does that get to CL glory as fast as signing 5 Jack Grealish’s? No. But we can’t afford to be that club moving forward. The problem with that strategy is the expense. Jack Grealish is a now player, in 3 years time, he’ll be fading out. We’ve had a crack at that approach, what did we learn? We can’t afford to hit Jack G levels, but we can afford older more experienced players… and it doesn’t work.

Arteta and his team are working hard to bring the fans into the process. We are part of it, whether you like it or not, and the manager knows that this whole vision fails if he doesn’t have us onside. YankeeGunner read into the end of the game a little hard, but it was pertinent that all 6 of the summer signings were on the pitch after the 90. I think the rest of the team was made up of players he’d given deals to. What does that say? This is Arteta’s team now.

The overarching theme of it all is joy. I’ve penned a piece about the meaning of Arsenal for The Gooner, which you must buy to read. But one of my themes is joy. Arsenal fans control the narrative. We decide if we want to back an idea or shit on it. We have decided that we will control our mood this season. We won’t cave to the attention seekers. We won’t cower to our inner demons and give up like the meek. We’ll show up and get behind this group of young players who are outrageously likeable.

I’m a Ramsdalian, no doubt. I watched that 90 back. He’s electric, as Dissenter in the comments said, he’s a bit of a showman. We’ve needed that. Leno is a top keeper, but he’s a bit meek. Tomiyasu, what a fucking player. Arteta bought in outrageous specificity with him. He wanted a right back that could play centre back so he could tuck in and support long balls over the top. The move was pure genius. No one is crying over James Maddison because Odegaard is going to prove a better signing. Ben White just quietly got on with dominating Harry Kane. We can now look back on our signings from last season and say… maybe there were some good ones? Gabriel looks like our best centre back, dominant, great at passing, far calmer on the ball. Thomas Partey is a top 3 midfielder in the league.

I don’t even need to sell you on the Hale-Enders… but one thing I will say: Arteta rolled out AMN, not Mo Elneney. That is progress. We’ve shifted out 30 odd players in 2 years. We’ve promoted from within. Signed very young players from all over the world. We just won a NLD Derby with the youngest ever starting 11.

Are things looking up? They might be.

Short one today. Check out our podcast. Small not on that, we ranked 55 for Sports podcasts in the UK this week. That is huge for us considering how good the podosphere is. Podcasting is a different level of commitment and it is absolutely painful to build an audience. So thank you for sticking it out as we searched for a formula and thank you to Johnny and Matt for making the shows so much fun.

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