So the truth came out in the wash, Liverpool had the Arsenal game called off based on erroneous tests, and they didn’t update the authorities when the mistake was discovered.
Did you check in on the pearl-clutching journalists who had an issue with Arsenal at the weekend?
I did.
Crickets. The exESPN guy, The Mirror person, The Telegraph journo. Nowt to say on this one.
What do we make of that?
We’re back baby.
Hating the Arsenal is good for the follower count once again.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Arsenal face the return leg against False/Postive FC. It’ll be a tough game. We can’t forget that Liverpool is still the second-best team in the country and on their night, they can spank anyone.
That said, Mikel Arteta will have the power of being wronged on his side this evening, and hopefully and an extremely vocal set of fans ready to bring that 12th man energy to the ground this evening.
There’s not a lot of injury news because Arteta is keeping that news close to his chest. I’ve no idea how we’re going to roll the evening, but my guess would be that anyone who is fit, will play. Niggles might be less serious now. Players will have had a chance to rest. Minds will be focused on what the plan is.
Keeping a draw with 10 men now needs to switch into being a threat with 11. The Arsenal players don’t need to have the fear, they know they can live with big teams now, the job is just to push it over the line.
Liverpool are too good to be consumed by the bad media coverage they’re receiving. There’s just too much quality in their side. The one thing we have going for us is they are there to be got at this season. They have bad days. Spurs ripped through them when they played them a month ago. Liverpool aren’t doing great in the league. There are chinks in the armour to be had if we’re at our best.
We lack a midfield, that is the biggest challenge we’re going to have to deal with this evening. No Xhaka and no Partey leaves a massive void of experience in the middle of the park. Lokonga is nailed on, I don’t think we’ll risk Patino, so that leaves us quite limited. Do we bring Ben White up, we know he’s done it for Leeds and Brighton. Will Odegaard and Smith Rowe drop? Will he put Saka, our most versatile player, in middle again?
It’s a tactical minefield, but we’ve had plenty of time to think about it.
The Premier League didn’t roll well for us last night, Spurs scored two goals AFTER 95 minutes against Leicester, honestly, Brendan Rodgers is such a bottle-job, what a killer that was. Quite interesting that a small section of bedwetters are now pointing to Arsenal being in 6th as a problem. I’d rather have points on the board, but let’s be clear here, games in hand are there to be won, and Arsenal have shown enough good form this season for us to look at those games as possible wins.
The Burnley match at the weekend is huge for us if they can field a team. Sean Dyche is in deep shit. They’ve sold their best striker, they’ve hardly played, and they have 11 points. He’s going to steam into us or it’ll be a mess of a game. If we want top 4, it has to be a win. If it is a win, it’s a cup final every week until the end of the season, and that is where we wanted to be at the start of the season.
So tonight is important, but let’s be perspective FC, the most important requirement is making sure our players aren’t risked for a cup final.
Before I go, it’s been a bit of thing for certain Arsenal fans to say, ‘Arteta only like X player because he was a boring player himself.’ Scott did an analysis on what sort of a player Arteta was compared to the competition.
Players most similar this season to Mikel Arteta 2012/13 pic.twitter.com/EniDdgv0NZ
— Scott Willis (@oh_that_crab) January 20, 2022
Quite something that all those names are midfielders a lot of people would like to see at Arsenal.
Ok, that’s me done… enjoy the game, see you in the comments. x
“ A man who has been caught on camera urging players to commit fouls during his time at man c”
The thing he has to realise, Man City get away with things Arsenal don’t, look at Rodri in the last game, fouling all game and only a card in injury time, the club either have to challenge some of these things, or Arteta has to start getting wise. Xhaka is targeted by refs compared with other players, I suspect others are too
I have had my concerns regarding Ramsdale. Always thought he had a tendency to make ordinary saves look spectacular and many a times his grave mistakes went unpunished. But his personality aside, I still have doubts over his actual goalkeeping abilities.
That was all down to very very poor squad planning if you ask me. There seems to be this rush to get rid of squad players without actually having an actual plan. If we knew we were sending AMN on loan for whatever reason by the way as the last time he played in midfield, he had a decent enough game, then we should have in the first week of the window had an extra body coming into midfield especially knowing all along we’d be losing two players to the AFCON. Again, you can also go back to our summer… Read more »
Perhaps it’s the time we all stop pretending that Arteta knows what he’s doing.
AMN is a better CM than Lokonga, Xhaka and Elneny but our manager makes it a point to offload AMN because he doesn’t suck up to him.
After shoving Partey back into the field while he was limping Diet Pep also plays him a few hours after a flight from Africa.
Also yesterday highlighted why for all of the good in hold up play bla bla bla, Lacazette will not take you anywhere. He’s slow and not the sharpest in front of goal. Ideally we’d be getting rid and saying thank you to him in the summer, same with Nketiah and rolling with a new ST, Auba and Balogun. We’ve now got just the league to focus on and I really do hope we give getting 4th a real go. We basically have the fewest games of all our rivals and shouldn’t have any excuses as I feel we’ve send to… Read more »
Laca has forgotten that his job is to score goals. He seems to give the impression that his job is only to press or go down at the slightest of touch.
Arsenal were playing on empty for the most part last night and on top of that Arteta continues to make some strange decisions.
To trust in the the process you have to trust in your manager.
Unfortunately, I still don’t.
TR7
I’m in agreement.
Tierney getting off lightly in comments
the room on that side was truly embarrassing.
The player is very overrated.
With a dismal performance from Tomiyasu
with Robertson all over him.
White clearing balls in to the stands and Gabriel
looking jaded.
The writing for what in essence is our first team
was always on the wall.
At this point they should just hand over the keys to the Emirates to Jota, considering he owns the fucking club.
The way we play is so infuriating. Triangles between the two CB and the Gk, just to have one of our CBs try and ping a ball 70 yards to a player no more than 5’8″. Our build-up play is so slow and ponderous, that was the difference last night. Liverpool moved the ball so much faster out of their defence than us.
Also having major doubts over White.
Nearly half a billion spent since wenger left and we have to put players out on the pitch in a semi final who haven’t trained for weeks.
Crazy situation.
disappointed with last night but then kind of not. As every one keeps telling Arsenal fans we have to have patience it is going to take another 150 mil spend and a couple more years for lego head to challenge .I have come to terms with that. Lego head is inexperienced we have to except that and he does make some inexplainable decisions but if we can get the striker we are after and Bissouma or Bruno we should definitely be top 4 next season .For me Lego head has to get top four this season. Lego head has made… Read more »
Curtis Jones looks like a player, the boy has got a bright future.
Lolz. Once again the wheels have fallen off. Two games, two red cards. Poor discipline again. Stop the hyperbole about Arsenal. We are better, but still a very shitty team. Partey has been utter rubbish since his move. He’s 29 ffs. Sell him and Xhaka, buy someone who can stay on the fucking pitch. Maddison.
And let’s be honest here, we have not got a horrendous injury list …..who is injured ?
give wenger half a billion and he’ll buy xhaka,sanogo,jerkinson,lucas perez,viviano and the rest
Guns of Hackney
Yep, Maddison does it for me.
I agree Jim this Jota thing is a bit of a piss take and that first goal was so so bad piss poor from tommy and the defence as a whole .Jota would have had a harder time scoring against an under 11’s team
Well that was dispiriting to say the least.
And sorry I still do not understand how £50m Ben White was an ‘essential’ purchase over a CM. We literally have no CM, Lokonga looks like an u23 player out there.
£50m for white might be one of the biggest screw ups in defender history.
Was there no better CB in the world for less?
Partey has been so underwhelming a signing imo, expected so much more from him.
More Naby Keita than Fabinho sadly.
“give wenger half a billion and he’ll buy xhaka,sanogo,jerkinson,lucas perez,viviano and the rest”
Still finish 4th through.
Nigel will come swinging at anyone who doesn’t rate White or any Arteta signing, so lads beware of him.
He is the type that disappears for a while when we lose a big match TR7.
He will be back with his chest out when we beat Burnley.
Anyone else worried about how slow our build up play is?
WE Very disheartening to see getting totally outplayed at home by a Liverpool side without Mane and Salah. Kind of pricks the feel good bubble being built over the last couple of months. It was a crime to neglect central mid area and sign truckload of defenders. I swear we are not going to finish top 4 with Xhaka and Arthur Melo. Need to bring in a quality CM in. Tets has spent a lot of money and still says that we need “22” top players to compete. Looks like the process is going to be a really long drawn… Read more »
Pierre I would remind you that Arsenal have been without 4 players at Afcon and at least half a dozen players who were either injured or ill with Covid. We have played 4 games in January including three against Man City and Liverpool who were expected to beat us. The one game which we should have won was against Nottingham Forest. You suggest that we should have held onto AMN. However, lets be clear the player wanted to leave. The deal with Roma required him to join them immediately. AMN is not going to make the grade at Arsenal. Kolasinac… Read more »
Are we going to buy someone or what is going on? 21st of Jan.
The team were just off last night and there seemed to be a strange inevitability about the result even before they gave away that ridiculously easy goal .tommy was all over the place and that is his worst performance for Arsenal by some distance .ESR was never in the game . Lokonga looked as an earlier poster suggested like an under 23 player and ODE is not a CM .White-Gabby were not at there best and Ramsdale was not great either so way to many players off there game just a shame they let Jota get his cock out and… Read more »
“Nigel will come swinging at anyone who doesn’t rate White or any Arteta signing, so lads beware of him.”
Not just Nigel. There’s a group of absolute sycophants who seemingly can’t objectively criticise anything Arteta does. Like clockwork they tend to stay quiet after a loss they can’t blame on the ref, the grass, the weather, pundits, injuries..
Back with a bang and shameless peacocking after we beat bottom of the league Burnley though. Count on it.
I’m frustrated that our midfield has been the problematic area of the team for 15 years now. It’s maybe the main reason for not being able to challenge for the title. We had half a season of a good CM pairing in Cazorla and Coquelin in 2015/16, and once Santi got injured we barely reached 71 pts, which oddly was good enough for 2nd place. Last time we had a quality CM pairing was with Cesc and Flamini all the way back in 2007/08 when we were bossing teams left, right and center. Inbetween we got a glimpse of what… Read more »
New post duh
We are drifting backwards again. Last night was terrible, we were going through the motions ,it didn’t feel like a cup game. White is an average Championship player, he dithers, he is slow and allows the shot to be taken and turns his back. The midfield and attack has now drifted back to normal with endless passing and no end result. Arteta is not learning this is his best shot at being a manager and he will not make it. Having two midfielders on reds at the same time reflects on the manager as the players have no discipline. Players… Read more »
There’s also a group who only come out after we lose, or when a player makes a mistake, or a players form drops… Yesterday we had 5 starters who hadn’t trained, losing a semi final to Liverpool can happen, they’re not at the level they were 2-3 seasons back, but they’re still a teams that’s been together a while, and have a lot of experience + quality It’s the Forest game that I find more unacceptable than last night, with no European football, we should absolutely be going for the domestic cups Regarding the league, we’re roughly where most sensible… Read more »
Arsenal’s disciplinary record under Arteta is atrocious and may very well cost us.
We can’t keep blaming referees all the time.
Was Partey trying to cop a quick rest for u self. Getting two YCs in the last 15 mins makes Xhaka look like a saint.