OH MY WORD THAT WAS PURE JOY!

Mikel Arteta and his band of merry men beat up a team of League One upstarts by torturing them for the best part of 90 minutes.

Martin Odegaard showed all the Christmas spirit of a Grinch, teasing and torturing a team he knew he could bully.

Eddie Nketiah channelled his inner Scrooge by stealing from the poor to give to the rich!

Nicolas Pepe was like the burglars in Home Alone, except he wasn’t trying to take elite goods from a rich New York estate, he was stealing careers, time, and space from an embattled blonde northern child on the left side of defence.

Let’s be honest, Arsenal FC offered up very little festive spirit to the Mackems yesterday, and my oh my, was it an absolute feast of the eyes and belly.

Ok… I’ve run out of average festive metaphors.

Overall, that performance last night is what you get when the cogs at a football club are all working together.

The first team players you’ve pulled down to slum it in the League Cup all play like they’re dissecting a big team.

The peripheral players you give some minutes all put in a shift like they might have a chance at the Boxing Day game.

The young kids that earn a moment to shine all try to shine.

It hasn’t always been like that over the past two years. You weren’t guaranteed that David Luiz would bother his backside in a game like that if called upon, he was above it. You didn’t know if players like Saed and Mustafi would be offended that League Cup was their lot in life. You had no idea how that would affect the kids.

Not last night. The overall quality was very League Cup. That’s a team of players that haven’t had the gift of minutes this season. But all I was looking for was how they grew with the game, how they stuck to the core principles of the first team, and how hard they fought.

Nico was probably the prime example of a player that was rusty but worked himself into the ground and delivered. The man delivers, just like the Post Office. It might not always be what you like, but he’ll always have his name on a parcel by the end of a game. His game is deeply frustrating, Arteta was shouting at him, Ben White was shouting at him… then he rolled up with a goal and two assists. He’s such a nearly player.

The big story of the night is how ridiculous Arsenal fans are with the hyping of players we’ve ‘discovered.’  Charlie Patino is the most 18-year-old player I’ve ever seen. Tall, extremely youthful, and very normal looking… like he’d help you set up your gran’s phone in Carphone Warehouse normal… but we’ve seen the videos. We’ve seen Jack Wilshere call him immense. We have been willing him on for a long time. He landed his debut as sub number 4, then he popped into the box, stealing a 4th goal from Eddie with a simple tap in.

WHAT A MOMENT, HE IS A GOD, WE WERE RIGHT

I think it’s pretty much football lore that the best players score on their debuts. It seems we might have a gem. Arteta said he was keen to cook him slowly. Which is kind of menacing, but also very on-point with my Christmas messaging. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes to see him more regularly. Will he take a loan? Will he hang about for Europe next year? Who knows, but one thing is for sure, there’s likely a big future ahead for him. Hale-End does it again.

Our obsession with newness might take away from the bigger story.

Eddie looked very good.

I’m worried we might have some Emi-Regrets™ with this one if he leaves on a free transfer. Say what you will about how he’s dealt with his chances in the past, this season, right from preseason, he’s been delivering when given minutes. He looks like he has his manpower, the confidence is there, and no one in the men’s squad knows where the goal is like him. He has that fox in the box gene great players like David Trezeguet had. His overall play is also improving, just look at the chances he created against Everton. Why couldn’t he become our Divock Origi?

Remember, he’s 22 years old. A child in the grand scheme of Premier League strikers. I wonder if there’s a way back? Can he do it in the league? Either way, congrats Eddie, you can only ruin the Christmas of the team you are put in front of, you superstar Scrooge.

It’s worth talking about Folarin Balogun because he was given his debut on the left. We’ve all been clamouring for him. He had his chance last night and he didn’t hit the heights. For me, he was trying to force the game. He snatched at shots, made greedy decisions, and nothing really fell for him. Again, we have to remind ourselves that he’s 20 years old, he’s never been on loan, and raw talent takes time to mature. He’s not strong enough for Premier League, yet. As Matt said on the podcast, he needs a loan up north, in a very cold place, with a manager that is going to knock him into shape. I’d send him to a place that doesn’t have internet. He has a lot of work to do, but that’s elite football. Huddersfield made ESR, Millwall made Kane, Palace made Ashley C, Newport and Leeds made Ben white. No one is beneath a loan move and Folarin needs one. That is no shame, it’s just part of elite player development, and he is going to be elite.

As part of a bigger picture here, it’s a bit of a fan habit to assume every young player is ready now. Gabi is back in the side, he’s ripping it up, and instead of people acknowledging Arteta and his team has done a good job shaping a player that had been terrible for 6 months… people make statements like ‘I SAID HE WAS READY IN JANUARY 2020.’ This is average fan chat. If you hold the idea that Arteta needs to be a top 4 manager in your head, you can’t insist he rolls out with a teenage forward line just to satisfy your amateur view a good comp video is better evidence than working with a player every day. No manager keeps a ready player hidden away for months. If you want the club to progress young players / move up the table, you have to be prepared to wait for the players to be ready. How many young players have Arsenal brought through now? Enough for there not to be a huge debate every time someone is loaned or benched.

The game wasn’t all Christmas lights and fairy dust. We did concede a goal our starting 11 might have dealt with. Ben White isn’t as strong next to Rob Holding, football is about partnerships, and he doesn’t have a good one there yet. Bernd Leno isn’t built for this current system, this January, he’s going to have to find pastures new because he’s not ever making it back to our starting 11. I hope the scouts at Arsenal have some ideas for a back-up keeper, because he’s not the one. Cedric landed an assist, but the gulf between him and Tomi is absolutely huge, and we really would be in trouble if the injury to Tomi is serious. A big part of making it to the Champions League will be how we fill out the backup players because we’re very thin in some very key positions.

Back to the game. Martin Odegaard is really pouring cold water on all the bitchy Arsenal fans that wrote him off earlier in the season. What a dreamboat he is. He showed up to the league cup, led by example, pulled strings like a demon, and absolutely punished Sunderland for giving him space over and over again. He has it all… we’re starting to see the class player Madrid thought they were getting. His confidence is there now, he knows the fans, the team, and his role. I am VERY excited to see what we’ve unlocked. Again, he’s just 22 years old.

I talk about it in the podcast, but as a fanbase, can we just be a bit more like the fans inside the ground? Are we over the hurt of the past decade? Can we trust the club and the decisions a bit more and stop with the mean behaviour? Willian quit because Arsenal fans were horrible to him. He came in on a cloud of very dodgy decision making, so I don’t feel totally sorry for him, but that is a grown man quitting because he felt bullied. Is that Arsenal? I don’t think so. The fact that Martin Odegaard had to quit social media because of scummy behaviour online should be a lesson to us all. These guys are human, our actions have consequences, and we shouldn’t tolerate fans that behave like this. They are not us. They are harmful. It has to stop.

Final shoutout to the IRL fans that made it down to the stadium. It had a bit of a preseason vibe. Loads of people going to the game for the first time, lots of youthful faces, even a weird phone light thing that looked like a modern version of the Mexican wave. Fuck anyone that criticises people that show up for games that are usually hard to shift against lowly opponents. We could hear the noise, the players reacted to it, you are stars.

Right, that’s me done. Tune into a festive podcast. Ignore my terrible voice. Just enjoy us all lavishing praise on the team for an hour. We had a lot of fun.

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