Auba is back at London Colney and he’s looking pretty awesome in my opinion. New hair, some tie-dye shirts, and he’s smiling. He also told people on his Twitch he’s going to work on persuarding Odegaard to join the club this summer.

That’s positive talk. Let’s see if he can take that mood into the Liverpool game.

Arsenal are being heavily linked to £30m playmaker, Nabil Fekir. The Frenchman lost his dream move to Liverpool over a medical. He’s only 27 years old, but given our record with injured players over the years, would you roll that dice? Not sure I would. It’s clear he’s talented in the extreme… but that’d be no good if he was never on the pitch. Partey had 15 seconds of injury time in 12 years before losing most of this season to problems. If there’s an underlying issue, no doubt we’d activate it a day after he signed.

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I never quite understand the international football management scene. We have a golden generation of players in the first team, with Gareth Southgate leading the charge. We have a group of players in the U21s that were part of a world cup winning squad, and Aidy Boothroyd is running the show?

If any position should have a progressive coaching mindset, it’s the U21s. We have elite technical players capable of playing at the highest of levels, and we put a guy like that in the dugout?

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Oh man, Open Mic with Martin Odegaard was good, right? What a leader. I love him.

Jan Fjortoft, who helped bring him into the Norwegian squad at 15 years old, spoke on ESPN and said he thinks the Arsenal project would be good for the player long-term. Jan is a big deal on the Norwegian futbol scene, he has good relationships with the kids, one would hope his suggestions was laced with some knowledge.

The player himself had an injury scare during the break, but the Norway manager says he’ll be fine for Thursday’s game… international breaks, in a season like this, are beyond the pale.

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So bees vaccinate their youth? Unreal. Is there anything those guys can’t do? Actually, I was told they can’t count past 5… they use markers to navigate, once they go past 5, they get lost. Regardless, I’m impressed with bees.

What am I NOT impressed with? International break. Idle Arsenal fans festering is never a good blend.

The biggest concern most of us have is the return of Martin Odegaard next season. Honestly, I think the worry is a little bit overblown. Madrid are unlikely to be moved by his performances here. He’s played more minutes with Arsenal than he has in his entire career there. When he was sent to Sociedad, he was the 3rd most creative player in La Liga, Zidane was unmoved.

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Arsenal and West Ham put on a blockbuster London Derby for the neutrals yesterday as they shared 6 goals and the spoils. The game was the best and the worst of Arsenal. Truly a difficult one to rationally analyse. Arteta put it well after the game when he said there are two faces to Arsenal.

“The first half an hour was really disappointing, we weren’t at the races. We showed the face that we still have, but then we showed our spirit in tough conditions where any team could collapse, start blaming each other or show bad body language.

“We conceded a quality goal, but then we didn’t win enough challenges, we didn’t show urgency, and we conceded another two goals that were unacceptable. That keeps me awake. It has happened too many times too often. At this level you cannot do that because your opponents are too good.

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BIG news for the Guendouzi fan club coming out of Germany. Bild, their version of The Sun, reckons there’s no chance of the loan renewing and they also state there won’t be a perm move. The article suggests his theatrics don’t work for the club. This story has come off the back of a 7 week period where the player has started one game, dived in his own box to gift a goal, and had his coach call him an ‘animal’ in relation to the way he learns.

Matteo is one of those boring stories that hangs in the air when people who have no clue about human dynamics whine on that his deeply negative attributes are exactly what is required for a team like Arsenal to progress. They mistake being a dickhead with being someone that cares. In Sunday League football, that might hold weight, but in elite team sport, being a supreme dickhead doesn’t wash anymore. It’s not just football that refuses to tolerate it, Reed Hastings, Netflix founder calls talents like Matteo G ‘brilliant jerks’. He doesn’t accept them at Netflix, a company that has changed the face of Hollywood by building a high-performance culture of dense talent that is highly collaborative.

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haahaaaahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!

I mean, come on.

£15m a year.

Pure winner.

Elite.

Squad BUILT for him.

Premier League looking good.

He’s taking Spurs back to the top.

HE WILL NOT LOOK DOWN THE TABLE.

hahahahahhaahah!

2-0 up after the home leg because Jose managed to switch the tie so Arsenal would have to play Spurs after an away leg in Europe. Cruuuuuuising 0-0 on 60 minutes. Then bang. Next thing you know, Mislav Oršić turns it on. 2 goals. Extra time. One more goal. BOOOOOOOOOM

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