Really hoping we haven't had our great games already against Real and that we can go again. Also hope that Tets hasn't run the players into the ground in training
Sorry you don’t like the narrative about the ballot Pedro but for those of us who have been buying silver memberships every year (4 of them since 2002 in my case) it happens to really matter. I get that you’re living in USA and so it barely means a thing to you , especially as somehow you seem to get seats when you come back. But for many of us we don’t just want to turn up for the rubbish games that no one else wants like Bournemouth but to also see the ones that really matter. The reduction in allocation of silver tickets from 8000 to 1800 over the last 19 years is scandalous and it’s a shame that the football influencers don’t fight this cause.
Have a few San Fran 49er friends that have been season ticket holders in and around the 50 yard line for over 20 years, they are not cheap, and this is what happened.
"Long-time 49ers season ticket holders, particularly those in highly desirable seats, are facing significant challenges in affording their seats at Levi's Stadium due to substantial price increases. Many fans are finding the new prices prohibitive and struggling to sell their tickets, while the team is upgrading certain sections to club seats at a higher cost, further impacting long-time fans. The Santa Clara Stadium Authority also manages Seat License Agreements (SBLs), which are required to purchase season tickets.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
Price Increases:
Long-time season ticket holders are reporting significant price increases, in some cases doubling or even tripling their previous costs. For example, one fan reported a price increase from $4,000 to $9,000 or $10,000 per year."
So, not only did the prices go up when the moved to the new stadium, but that had to pay for SBL fee's on top of it.
Forget that, it is straight up greed!
With regards to your particular situation, you probably had your season ticket prices go up, but now only have a 1/4 chance of getting a seat at a good game.
I’m not in the same boat as you but I totally agree with where you are coming from.
I haven’t been to Arsenal since 2021, gave up my membership for many reasons including the ones you mention.
It’s far cheaper and easier to go to my local national league south team, stand with my friends, drink beer in view of the pitch and only have a 10 minute journey home.
Top level football has sold its soul (long ago) only going to get worse.
Understand Bukayo Saka has now agreed his new contract with Arsenal.
All that's left now is official paperwork and announcement.
Bukayo Saka STAYS! @Teamnewsandtix
I was a bit sceptical 2 years ago that it was only a 4 year contract and not 5 or 4+1 option. It wasn't like the contracts some of our other players signed at the time. I'm now ecstatic about the news.
I also didn't like how brutal the contract was - something close to £300k pw including bonuses and shared my worry about the wage it'll be expected of us to offer him in 2 years time. Well, that time is here and I'm curious.
Whatever he's getting, the likes of Saliba, Gabriel and Rice will carefully be looking at. It's a slippery slope but it is what it is. I just hope it makes sense cause in a couple of years time, the topic will be back.
Isak has scored 4 non-penalty goals in the last 12 games.
Over the same period, Newcastle has scored 21 goals goals not scored by Isak.
0 non-penalty goals in 8 out of his last 12 games - against Ipswich, Villa, Manure, Leicester, West Ham, City, Fulham, Bournemouth.
He's a brilliant striker but he has his bad patches.
He isn't coming but even if he was, it's more about the players behind (not) creating enough. As demonstrated, even Merino can look good in our setup. But we need that extra creativeness that a player or two can add to the team.
We were not nearly good enough going forward in the PL this season to challenge Liverpool. They scored another 5 yesterday,
The slow sideways crab football with very few attempts on goal killed us.
Regardless of who we sign, our attacking play has to drastically change or we will be shut out by the deep blocks next season again. Let’s see if Arteta can mix it up next season on the offensive front.
If not, we winning the PL next season. That’s the reality
Big respect to pool they deserved it we and the rest of the chasing pack were not good enough
Newcastle in 3rd have lost 10 games.
13 draws for us is not good enough. Hopefully next season we get a clinical striker and change a lot of those draws into wins.
All eyes on tomorrow night though. I have my ticket, my boy was not so lucky the ballot struck again. He has got 3 tickets all season and has applied for every game.
The ballot sucks but you have to do it or you do not get a chance to get a ticket on ticket exchange otherwise.
The SSO debacle in November made it even harder to get tickets.
Now it's all well and good for new people to get tickets. However last season's final game against Everton was full of tourists.
Literally 90 percent of the seats around me were tourists.
63 goals scored from 65.76 xG. Looking at the table, that's an above average conversion rate.
The issue is the xG is low to begin with. That's not up to a clinical striker to fix.
Even the striker everyone wants has 22 goals scored out of 21 xG which is a decent stat but not something extraordinary.
Isak has 7 goals in 12 games - 3 of them are from penalties. 4 non-penalty goals in 12 isn't very glamorous. We need to start creating more. Yes, the striker can move better and end up in better positions, also reach balls he isn't supposed to etc, but still it's mostly up to the players behind him to fix that.
Of course there were a couple of incidents of players kicking the ball away yesterday and delaying the restart - nothing was given, and the players weren't even on a yellow already.
Same exemplary referee Canavagh btw, who said "I have no other choice" to Declan about his second yellow against Brighton, nowadays doesn't give the slightest of fuck about it and says play on.
Par the expectation though. Nobody gets booked for it, just Arsenal players already on a yellow.
I'm replaying that Dec 2nd yellow and I'm still shocked that it was Rice who was sent off and not the pos who kicked the living shit out of Dec.
It's a fact we were slaughtered early on and it kept going game after game after game. Same refs, so similar situations, vastly different outcome. I've talked about it quite extensively though, so yeah. While one team was fucked beyond belief for stuff not even one other team got punished for, while another team was given all the benefit of the doubt in the world... I cannot congratulate them, it's a PGMOL title.
Tom posting stats about xG and xGA. I wonder what the stats would have been if deserved red cards were given to VVD and Konate, half the laughable pens they got weren't given and some legit goals and pens against them were actually allowed like they should have.
Now, apply the same logic to us - minus the red cards and the laughable pens and the removed goals. The stats will be so vastly different.
Just remember that in the first 9 rounds, we won 5 games. Just 9 games and we had lost 9 points. Wanna know how?
Red against Brighton, red against City, disallowed goal against Liverpool, red against Bournemouth.
That's the 4 games we didn't win in our first 9 games. The refereeing was also scandalous against Wolves on opening day when their player Mosquera could have been sent off twice but didn't get even a single yellow card but we managed to win just like we did against Wolves in the return game, again with 10 men for another absurd decision.
There were also the game away at Brighton and that Saliba pen...
The pen Everton got at the start of this month.
The disallowed goal against Palace last week when Newcastle were allowed that goal against us last season.
It's absurd. That's what it is. We've not been judged equally from the first round of the campaign. They tried to kill us in the first 1/3 of the campaign, and they did.
it actually goes back to last year. just remember newcastle (ball out of play, definite foul on gabriel, offside), chelsea (sanchez foul, even confirmed by webb), city kovacic not sent, probably 1 or 2 more I can’t remember
the problem this season is it happened twice as often and with greater impact (red card vs no pen given for example)
we still have to be honest - in those games where refs didn’t influence the game (fulham away, everton hone, west ham home, newcastle away come to mind) we still dropped 10-15 points.
you can and should argue refs helped pool as it is true but had we not been a level below to last year we still would have an interesting game at anfield.
I for one am confident to say with fair officiating this year we would have 6-10 points more. I am as well confident if we had maintained our level from last year we would have had 6-10 points more.
I've no respect for Liverpool. It's a PGMOL title in my eyes. They went on a mission fixing their public image after the Coote video "leak" and helped Liverpool become champions.
Can't do nothing about it. Life goes on I guess.
You can put me on record though, something I didn't say last season for example, I seriously doubt they'll be even close to a double next season. I don't think they'll even be in the fight for the title.
The transfer window is yet to come and anything is possible but if they don't add something, I doubt they can replicate this season again - Salah in a generational form and without Trent. Also, maybe PGMOL refs will start showing red cards to their #4.
True. We weren’t at our best this year but if the roles were reversed and Liverpool would have had to deal with these calls from the refs then we’d still be looking at a potential double this season.
I’m with raptora on this one. Fuck being gracious. All these same fans were cheering on FC 115 over us and we are the ones who keep getting screwed over by PGMOL. If yall want to make peace and act like nothings amiss then you’re free to do so but this league is completely stacked against us. Go ahead and be simps and act like we lost it. Not me! It’s clear this title was equally given to Liverpool as it was earned!
We’ve been shipping poor results to middling teams left and right since the start of the season. We’ve actually been quite consistent in our frequently average performances
You can point to examples here and there of PGMOL trash which is fine but I can point to 15 poor league performances so honestly what’s the point? I don’t want to win a title playing this average. Being the least underwhelming team is not the title I want. We have been very poor for a club supposedly aiming for the title. That’s far more problematic and harmful to our season than PGMOL have been
This league campaign has been entirely typified by a blow out great performance and win followed not far behind by average or worse performances and dropped points against inferior opposition.
Let’s stop blaming everyone else for us being crap this league campaign
Think about it
Ode has been awful this season
Martinelli recently looks great but looked like a league 1 player until about 6 weeks ago
Trossard was really average until about the same time
Rice looked a shadow of the player from last season until then
Havertz started the season well then faded badly before his injury
That’s our entire offensive setup aside from Saka who has disappointed for 3/4 of the season. You can’t be complaining about the refs costing you the season when your whole attack apart from Saka has been miles off its best until the final stretch - and even recently we’ve still been poor in the league. We deserve nothing at all out of the PL this season and need a long hard look in the mirror to work out why so many players struggled so much this season
I underestimated pool. And they have deserved the title because we haven't been good enough. Injuries and once in a life time refereeing decisions haven't helped either. But it isn't their fault. They beat the teams they needed to beat to win it.
I am very excited for tomorrow. Need to take a lead to Paris. If we do we will qualify.
In other news Gyokeres is still banging them in. The ruthlesness is what impresses me most. If we want to go for it next season, it has to be him, Watkins or Osihmen. But they have to deliver. No point buying a "win now" striker if you don't win now.
Yeah that rubbish guy has scored 49 league goals and 28 asists in the last 3 seasons. He isn't world class but he is certainly not rubbish. What he lacks is ruthlessness.
Apparently, an Everton fan bought 10,000 blue flares and spent the last 4 weeks taking the blue labels off them and putting red labels on them before selling them to Liverpool fans. There were blue flares spotted during the bindippers celebrations yesterday. That's what I call epic banter!
From Google AI
"Every time a Pope has passed away, an English team has won the Champions League/European Cup. Here's the breakdown:
Pope John Paul I (1978): Nottingham Forest won the European Cup.
Pope John Paul II (2005): Liverpool won the Champions League.
Pope Benedict XVI (2022): Manchester City won the Champions League.
Pope Francis (2025): Only one English team is left in the competition"
🎶🎵🎶🎶🎶🎵🎶 ......" Freed from desire, mind and senses purified
Freed from desire, mind and senses purified
Freed from desire, mind and senses purified
Freed from desire
Na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
Na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
Na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
Na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na
It's coming home ....🎶🎵🎵🎵🎶🎶
I was 60 on the day the Pope died….
I was nearby-- ... 'The Day, The Music, Died' ♫♪
A long, long time ago
I can still remember--
How that music used to make me smile...
And I knew--if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day, the music, died... ♪♫
Selah.
Hello
Electricity outage is unacceptable
Really hoping we haven't had our great games already against Real and that we can go again. Also hope that Tets hasn't run the players into the ground in training
Sorry you don’t like the narrative about the ballot Pedro but for those of us who have been buying silver memberships every year (4 of them since 2002 in my case) it happens to really matter. I get that you’re living in USA and so it barely means a thing to you , especially as somehow you seem to get seats when you come back. But for many of us we don’t just want to turn up for the rubbish games that no one else wants like Bournemouth but to also see the ones that really matter. The reduction in allocation of silver tickets from 8000 to 1800 over the last 19 years is scandalous and it’s a shame that the football influencers don’t fight this cause.
I get the rage on this!
Have a few San Fran 49er friends that have been season ticket holders in and around the 50 yard line for over 20 years, they are not cheap, and this is what happened.
"Long-time 49ers season ticket holders, particularly those in highly desirable seats, are facing significant challenges in affording their seats at Levi's Stadium due to substantial price increases. Many fans are finding the new prices prohibitive and struggling to sell their tickets, while the team is upgrading certain sections to club seats at a higher cost, further impacting long-time fans. The Santa Clara Stadium Authority also manages Seat License Agreements (SBLs), which are required to purchase season tickets.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
Price Increases:
Long-time season ticket holders are reporting significant price increases, in some cases doubling or even tripling their previous costs. For example, one fan reported a price increase from $4,000 to $9,000 or $10,000 per year."
So, not only did the prices go up when the moved to the new stadium, but that had to pay for SBL fee's on top of it.
Forget that, it is straight up greed!
With regards to your particular situation, you probably had your season ticket prices go up, but now only have a 1/4 chance of getting a seat at a good game.
Straight up thievery....
I’m not in the same boat as you but I totally agree with where you are coming from.
I haven’t been to Arsenal since 2021, gave up my membership for many reasons including the ones you mention.
It’s far cheaper and easier to go to my local national league south team, stand with my friends, drink beer in view of the pitch and only have a 10 minute journey home.
Top level football has sold its soul (long ago) only going to get worse.
Btw
Sam C & Teamnewsandtix
Understand Bukayo Saka has now agreed his new contract with Arsenal.
All that's left now is official paperwork and announcement.
Bukayo Saka STAYS! @Teamnewsandtix
I was a bit sceptical 2 years ago that it was only a 4 year contract and not 5 or 4+1 option. It wasn't like the contracts some of our other players signed at the time. I'm now ecstatic about the news.
I also didn't like how brutal the contract was - something close to £300k pw including bonuses and shared my worry about the wage it'll be expected of us to offer him in 2 years time. Well, that time is here and I'm curious.
Whatever he's getting, the likes of Saliba, Gabriel and Rice will carefully be looking at. It's a slippery slope but it is what it is. I just hope it makes sense cause in a couple of years time, the topic will be back.
Good to see raptora back and in top form.
I was worried he might’ve got nabbed by the cops for vandalizing Liverpool’s title celebratory mural, but luckily he has slipped through.
Good to see you've sobered up after partying outside of Anfield last night.
Outside?
I was in the box seats!
Isak has scored 4 non-penalty goals in the last 12 games.
Over the same period, Newcastle has scored 21 goals goals not scored by Isak.
0 non-penalty goals in 8 out of his last 12 games - against Ipswich, Villa, Manure, Leicester, West Ham, City, Fulham, Bournemouth.
He's a brilliant striker but he has his bad patches.
He isn't coming but even if he was, it's more about the players behind (not) creating enough. As demonstrated, even Merino can look good in our setup. But we need that extra creativeness that a player or two can add to the team.
As Conte said “you might choose the wrong wife, but not the wrong striker”
Conte, the bum according to Pedro and some others, on course of winning Napoli's 4th ever Serie A title btw. They finished 10th last season.
Are not winning
We were not nearly good enough going forward in the PL this season to challenge Liverpool. They scored another 5 yesterday,
The slow sideways crab football with very few attempts on goal killed us.
Regardless of who we sign, our attacking play has to drastically change or we will be shut out by the deep blocks next season again. Let’s see if Arteta can mix it up next season on the offensive front.
If not, we winning the PL next season. That’s the reality
they scored 5 because they were playing Tottenham, who have past
form for only caring about stopping us from succeeding. That is their only goal and yardstick for succcess.
Pool far more fluid in attack than us this season
Big respect to pool they deserved it we and the rest of the chasing pack were not good enough
Newcastle in 3rd have lost 10 games.
13 draws for us is not good enough. Hopefully next season we get a clinical striker and change a lot of those draws into wins.
All eyes on tomorrow night though. I have my ticket, my boy was not so lucky the ballot struck again. He has got 3 tickets all season and has applied for every game.
The ballot sucks but you have to do it or you do not get a chance to get a ticket on ticket exchange otherwise.
The SSO debacle in November made it even harder to get tickets.
Now it's all well and good for new people to get tickets. However last season's final game against Everton was full of tourists.
Literally 90 percent of the seats around me were tourists.
How can they get tickets and we can't ?
63 goals scored from 65.76 xG. Looking at the table, that's an above average conversion rate.
The issue is the xG is low to begin with. That's not up to a clinical striker to fix.
Even the striker everyone wants has 22 goals scored out of 21 xG which is a decent stat but not something extraordinary.
Isak has 7 goals in 12 games - 3 of them are from penalties. 4 non-penalty goals in 12 isn't very glamorous. We need to start creating more. Yes, the striker can move better and end up in better positions, also reach balls he isn't supposed to etc, but still it's mostly up to the players behind him to fix that.
Of course there were a couple of incidents of players kicking the ball away yesterday and delaying the restart - nothing was given, and the players weren't even on a yellow already.
https://x.com/footalyse/status/1916111536805859774
https://x.com/footalyse/status/1916101124345446464
Same exemplary referee Canavagh btw, who said "I have no other choice" to Declan about his second yellow against Brighton, nowadays doesn't give the slightest of fuck about it and says play on.
Par the expectation though. Nobody gets booked for it, just Arsenal players already on a yellow.
I'm replaying that Dec 2nd yellow and I'm still shocked that it was Rice who was sent off and not the pos who kicked the living shit out of Dec.
It's a fact we were slaughtered early on and it kept going game after game after game. Same refs, so similar situations, vastly different outcome. I've talked about it quite extensively though, so yeah. While one team was fucked beyond belief for stuff not even one other team got punished for, while another team was given all the benefit of the doubt in the world... I cannot congratulate them, it's a PGMOL title.
Tom posting stats about xG and xGA. I wonder what the stats would have been if deserved red cards were given to VVD and Konate, half the laughable pens they got weren't given and some legit goals and pens against them were actually allowed like they should have.
Now, apply the same logic to us - minus the red cards and the laughable pens and the removed goals. The stats will be so vastly different.
Just remember that in the first 9 rounds, we won 5 games. Just 9 games and we had lost 9 points. Wanna know how?
Red against Brighton, red against City, disallowed goal against Liverpool, red against Bournemouth.
That's the 4 games we didn't win in our first 9 games. The refereeing was also scandalous against Wolves on opening day when their player Mosquera could have been sent off twice but didn't get even a single yellow card but we managed to win just like we did against Wolves in the return game, again with 10 men for another absurd decision.
There were also the game away at Brighton and that Saliba pen...
The pen Everton got at the start of this month.
The disallowed goal against Palace last week when Newcastle were allowed that goal against us last season.
It's absurd. That's what it is. We've not been judged equally from the first round of the campaign. They tried to kill us in the first 1/3 of the campaign, and they did.
it actually goes back to last year. just remember newcastle (ball out of play, definite foul on gabriel, offside), chelsea (sanchez foul, even confirmed by webb), city kovacic not sent, probably 1 or 2 more I can’t remember
the problem this season is it happened twice as often and with greater impact (red card vs no pen given for example)
we still have to be honest - in those games where refs didn’t influence the game (fulham away, everton hone, west ham home, newcastle away come to mind) we still dropped 10-15 points.
you can and should argue refs helped pool as it is true but had we not been a level below to last year we still would have an interesting game at anfield.
I for one am confident to say with fair officiating this year we would have 6-10 points more. I am as well confident if we had maintained our level from last year we would have had 6-10 points more.
I've no respect for Liverpool. It's a PGMOL title in my eyes. They went on a mission fixing their public image after the Coote video "leak" and helped Liverpool become champions.
Can't do nothing about it. Life goes on I guess.
You can put me on record though, something I didn't say last season for example, I seriously doubt they'll be even close to a double next season. I don't think they'll even be in the fight for the title.
The transfer window is yet to come and anything is possible but if they don't add something, I doubt they can replicate this season again - Salah in a generational form and without Trent. Also, maybe PGMOL refs will start showing red cards to their #4.
Dude,
You’re the disgrazia king of sour grapes, if you’re calling the league title a ‘PGMOL title' because they won the title in with 4 games to spare.
You’re no different from the stupid Madrid players that were hurling ice at the referee in the dying minutes if the copa de ray final.
Losing is not the end of the world but losing your class makes you look even worse. Get a grip and grow up.
Noted.
We stopped playing in recent weeks btw. Resting players and not the same desire. League was gone and another trophy is still available.
True. We weren’t at our best this year but if the roles were reversed and Liverpool would have had to deal with these calls from the refs then we’d still be looking at a potential double this season.
Imagine the difference in perspective!
I’m with raptora on this one. Fuck being gracious. All these same fans were cheering on FC 115 over us and we are the ones who keep getting screwed over by PGMOL. If yall want to make peace and act like nothings amiss then you’re free to do so but this league is completely stacked against us. Go ahead and be simps and act like we lost it. Not me! It’s clear this title was equally given to Liverpool as it was earned!
well I was at the West Ham game and you couldn’t blame the ref for that one. We were atrocious
We stopped playing in recent weeks?
We weren’t playing properly all season
We’ve been shipping poor results to middling teams left and right since the start of the season. We’ve actually been quite consistent in our frequently average performances
You can point to examples here and there of PGMOL trash which is fine but I can point to 15 poor league performances so honestly what’s the point? I don’t want to win a title playing this average. Being the least underwhelming team is not the title I want. We have been very poor for a club supposedly aiming for the title. That’s far more problematic and harmful to our season than PGMOL have been
This league campaign has been entirely typified by a blow out great performance and win followed not far behind by average or worse performances and dropped points against inferior opposition.
Let’s stop blaming everyone else for us being crap this league campaign
Think about it
Ode has been awful this season
Martinelli recently looks great but looked like a league 1 player until about 6 weeks ago
Trossard was really average until about the same time
Rice looked a shadow of the player from last season until then
Havertz started the season well then faded badly before his injury
That’s our entire offensive setup aside from Saka who has disappointed for 3/4 of the season. You can’t be complaining about the refs costing you the season when your whole attack apart from Saka has been miles off its best until the final stretch - and even recently we’ve still been poor in the league. We deserve nothing at all out of the PL this season and need a long hard look in the mirror to work out why so many players struggled so much this season
Correct. Forget Pool. We have been very average in the PL this season compared to the previous 2. Very poor good forward, even Rap can see that
I underestimated pool. And they have deserved the title because we haven't been good enough. Injuries and once in a life time refereeing decisions haven't helped either. But it isn't their fault. They beat the teams they needed to beat to win it.
I am very excited for tomorrow. Need to take a lead to Paris. If we do we will qualify.
In other news Gyokeres is still banging them in. The ruthlesness is what impresses me most. If we want to go for it next season, it has to be him, Watkins or Osihmen. But they have to deliver. No point buying a "win now" striker if you don't win now.
Not Watkins..please no
Can you stop with this Watkins nonsense. rubbish player.
Yeah that rubbish guy has scored 49 league goals and 28 asists in the last 3 seasons. He isn't world class but he is certainly not rubbish. What he lacks is ruthlessness.
Apparently, an Everton fan bought 10,000 blue flares and spent the last 4 weeks taking the blue labels off them and putting red labels on them before selling them to Liverpool fans. There were blue flares spotted during the bindippers celebrations yesterday. That's what I call epic banter!
Respect to Liverpool, no question that they are deserving winners. Beating them at Anfield and winning CL would cheer me up though!