Well that was most satisfactory.
A three one win which could, and perhaps should, have been much more comprehensive. In the first half we were totally dominant with seventy three percent possession away from home, in the second we were less so but still much the better team.
One thing that worries me is Laurent and his tackles from behind that lead to the inevitable penalties. It does not matter that he is getting a touch on the ball, because it’s illegal to tackle from behind. So even if he is getting a touch the chances are a spot kick will be given. Do stop it son.
When you consider that Arteta, Santi, Tomas, Diaby, Podolski, Bendtner and AOC are out injured, the fact that we were able to field such a strong starting eleven makes talk of us having a weak squad seems a little ridiculous to me.
Our new shiny new superstar looked every inch just that. Given he was said to be under the weather the signs look absolutely fantastic.
However, it worries me that his acquisition is being talked about as the making of the team. This team has lost one game in six months, and that was to a referee rather than to a team. The growth of our existing players is the reason we look so formidable. When you think that the pre-Ozil team was built for a negative net transfer spend, huge credit must go to the manager.
The star of the show, once again was Aaron Ramsay. Most tackles (7), most touches (111), most passes (88), ninety two percent completion rate, two goals, and man of the match. The boy is quite simply the best player in the league this season so far. To think that as little as six months ago he was “not fit to wear the shirt” according to some expert fans and even pundits! Don’t tell me Arsène doesn’t know best; just don’t ok?
Imagine the Wengerball we will be seeing when the wounded return. Its frightening you know? It is !
Jack looked much improved. Its been clear that the two years out is going to take some coming back from, just like it did for Aaron and Tomas before him, but with his talent and will it is just a matter of time.
Oh, and how good has Flamini slotted back in? His signing could prove the master stroke of all master strokes.
So that’s it people, you likely all have seen it yourselves, so you don’t need a mug like me to explain to you what you saw.
Great innit ?
Positively Arsenal 
Since I started commenting on blogs I have come across many people who I both like and admire.People who despite me not having physically met them I like to think of as real life friends.People I trust.Of all those people the most maligned and attacked by others is Hunter13.It is ironic that of all of us ,he has been right about everything ALL of the time.
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hehehe…it pains them to admit that there are fans out there who have a better understanding of the game and what arsenal has been/is doing than them…..
like wenger ..it takes strength of character to remain on the course. and you can only do that when you KNOW what youre supproting…i.e conviction…not blind faith!.
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But, but, but …. Hunter13 was BANNED from sundry blogsites (I had heard) for being anti-English, inverse-racist and other stuff. I agree with you PG, Hunter13, you sound just the type of dangerous, decent guy I like to share a beer, a game and laugh with.
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Am I correct in hearing Arteta is just about back?
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i have been to arseblog gunnerholic aclf….whenever i put them all into a corner of having to admit they got it wrong they will not do so and start attacking the poster rather than the points made and questioning my support, asking me where i from..when i started supporting them etc etc……and when the attacked hits back..they ban me… sounds familiar? isnt that what the natives do to our players on the pitch too….?…maybe its a culture thing…lol….many times ive had 5 or 6 going ta me swearing and abusing and when i say something back the blogger bans me immediately while lets the others express their @opinions@ …
the best part is how offended they get when i just say something true and logical and reasonable : i.e that they are too small in credit/experience/knowledge to have opinions on wenger’s football and his decissions….their ego cant take it i suppose
🙂 ….
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Hang on do you mean that Hunter does not hate England and is not a sexist asylum seeker from Somali (don’t ask!) and does not hate people from poor countries (like Greece. Heh!) and also Arsenal Football Club, it’s history and traditions? Which is why he now lives in London, England, and supports AFC.
Blimey!
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Hold on, I thought only I was the only one correct all along. Hunter is 99.99% but not 100% correct like me!
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i have played the game i have friends who have played the game , i have friends who are coaches managers in other team sports… i dont know it all but i certainly have a better understanding than the army of gloryseeking mugs who opened arsenal blogs ONLY after wenger’s arsenal inspired them to do so……..
the man built as a new stadium for fucks sake and the fans thought it was ok to use this period to moan about titles and question clubs optimal use of resources and if wenger was achieving or failing the company’s objectives. (???) …such clowns…
now that most of what many like me were talking about the past 6-7 years comes out to be true …yet they still try to use it to their favour…..they have no accountability…all they want is to write their @opinions@ and create “debates” out of nothing to excuse their idle time……them irresponsible crybabies : )
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finsbury September 16, 2013 at 12:53 pm
ahahah … lets keep em guessing then! run rings round them !!
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I thought of Hunter me self when I posted that link but there a few others like George, Frank and Gains who had the temerity to question the omniscient.
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BTW: What is the name of that poster, with the finance background, who use to point out errors in the Swiss Ramblers analysis? He too was ridiculed, because he had the gall to refute the narrative that Wenger had money to spend.
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“IT FEELS LIKE THE END OF AN ERA TO ME” !!!!!
The mark of a man is how he holds his nerve when all around him are losing theirs.
Some of our once allies dropped there collective bottles.
Cowardliness on the battlefield?
Well at least we all truly know which among us have fortitude.
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thats right shotta…they have already chosen their narratives and no matter the evidence to the contrary they keep insisting in their ridiculous ideas/opinions/debates/agendas….
i would have no problem if bloggers narratives were made out of their personal thoughts but they are just copying media and trolls narratives …they lacked the bottle as fans to raise the middle one to every statement meant to put arsenal down.
who the fuck is yogi arseblog bob pedro legrove gunnerblog jona-jona or anyone else to have opinions on arsenal anyway? why dont they all just shut the fuck up, admit they know nothing in comparison to wenger and just enjoy the years this genius is in charge of our club….. ? too much to ask?
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pedantic george September 16, 2013 at 1:18 pm
and they will call our fortitude as ignorance and blind faith 🙂
haha….. they are such bad losers
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They are allowed opinions Hunter.But they could have the humility to accept that those opinions were wrong when the evidence is made available.
We must not be smug just because we were smart enough to see the reality before them.
Anyway,they are all ……………………perhaps not.
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@Shotta at 1.15pm
I believe the poster your may be referring to goes under the pseudonym NotOverTheHillYet or something like that.
Thanks for that link to Alistair’s brilliant piece.
I sometimes record evidence which I hope to use to counter the numbskulls. Here’s one I just posted in response to Alistair’s piece as it support some of his points. It’s from a question and answer session Martin Samuel had last 4 July, I have included the link below to the entire article:
“He is not an idiot. I think he works with what the board gives him, and they consistently let him down by then trying to curry favour with the fans by claiming he has this huge budget. Some summers he has to sell before he can buy, which is rarely helpful in attracting the best players once they see a talent like Cesc Fabregas leave the club. A few years ago I sat with Wenger and asked him about the unrealistic expectations fostered by the board and he said they had agreed not to do this to him in future; a pledge that would appear to have been broken several times.”
http://is.gd/zNo0JB
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well yes they are allowed but they should accept responsibility and that their knowledge is too limited to help them form a solid one.
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I just reminded myself of the title to Martin Samuel’s piece I gave the link to previously, it reads:
“No Rooney, no Higuain but a French kid to take the Capital One Cup by storm… You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Arsene”
Well, Mr. Samuel he did…….
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at the end of the day they are there to register/record events about arsenal football club…not form opinion for the masses like hacks would
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Thanks for that link to Alistair’s piece, Shotta. And thanks to youse PAers. Brilliant.
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Özil, hippy that he is, joined Arsenal because he wanted to express himself artistically. Something he couldn’t do under anti-expressionists like Mou and Carletto.
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You didnt need to look at our financial statement to know that we were going to be financially constrained. What is 8 years of restrained spending in hopefully many hundreds of years of Arsenal history? We have self propelled ourselves to be one of the biggest clubs and we will keep growing unless something monumentally bad happens.
Irrespective of our financial clout, we built a team that would have won the title in 08 had it not been for a nasty incident. Winning the title under those conditions would have been an amazing feat, especially considering our steroid filled title rivals. Arsene had to rebuild after the players from that batch left and he has done that quietly and very well. Players like Arteta, Mertesacker, Giroud, Koscielny and others are top quality and have improved the team. I love our present team. They have silk and steel in equal measure.
Teams like Liverpool spend hundreds of millions to try and get near us. Teams like Manchester City have to spend more than a billion to overtake us and a few other teams to win a trophy. You dont need to sing “only one Arsene Wenger”. The least you can do is understand what the club and Arsene are doing and not act like an entitled prick.
Irrespective of ground reality fans decide that they have had enough after X amount of years. It is laughable.
Now, the goal posts are being shifted. Bullshit like: “Our pressure got Ozil”, “This could have been done earlier” are being used. No matter. We can enjoy the victory on this blog in the company of true fans.
George, I am going to use amazing your “The mark of a man…” quote.
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Hahaha, Zimpaul @ 12:46pm.
You can share a beer with Hunter, but he only gets out of bed at 1pm on match days!
Enjoying the Charlie Nicolas lifestyle in London, eh Hunter??
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Shotta,
I think the poster your asking about is on Untold sometimes called ‘notoverthehill’
I see GP has listed him as well.
I’ve found NOTH to be a rock of sense, I’d love to see him posting here.
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I think the Boss has promised to build the team around our new signing,he’s only 24! I’ve seems to have been around in world football for ages.
Quote from BBC:
Ozil said his admiration for Wenger and the Frenchman’s reputation for improving players had played a key role in his decision to sign.
“The coach is a world-class manager – he’s demonstrated that for years,” added Ozil. “A lot of players have developed under his guidance in the past and that’s why I decided to join Arsenal.
“I want to improve myself further and I’m looking forward to the style of play. Arsenal are well known for the strength of their technical game and their desire to play attacking football. I think I will fit perfectly into that.”
In yer face Doomers.
This little battery of real Gooners at PA have never ran from the truth, not have we ever had to reinvent to truth, or had to pop over to another parallel universe to continue to follow the bullshit and self imposed falsehoods.
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double canister September 16, 2013 at 3:16 pm
oh yes!!! certainly….saturday i found another one ….pub i mean … 🙂
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“The coach is a world-class manager – he’s demonstrated that for years,”
Uh uh….when was the last time he won something? … ahhaaa
Has he made optimal use of the club’s resources? Does he still have what it takes to motivate players ? Is he tactically flexible?
Is he aware that Arsenal used to own clubs like madrid juventus and bayern back in the glory days ? ….
( laughing)
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The Board have been talking bollix about making transfer funds available to AW for several years up to now.
I can think that the only excuse is not to seem impoverished every year in the market (the old all fur coat and no knickers anecdote) when we were competing against the citehs and chavsskis of the world, (we had to encourage our own players to stay){that didn’t work out tool well, so fuck off with the mercenaries} but the board have undermined Wenger several times and given an un-necessary and imaginary stick to beat him with by the financially ignorant.
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thanks for the link to a grat article by Alister Brookshaw, GP!
Excellent stuff, doesn’t it remind you of how the non-entities up the seven sisters road are doing the exact opposite of Arsenal’s behaviour?
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I am no more inclined to BLAME THE BOARD than I am to BLAME WENGER DC
They did what they had to do, as they saw it. AW did what he had to do, as he saw it. A few years since the stadium move we have not suffered any severe disruption. Financial ruin has not even been a vague, distant threat. We have had, and still have great players. On the field we have continued to produce excellent attacking football. We remain among the top eight sides in Europe. I call that success. Add a few shiny trinkets and even the professionally miserable and deliberately ignorant might see it.
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‘Tactically flexible’ hunter?
well of course Arsenal have no tactics at all.
how flexible is that?!
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Anicoll,
I can’t blame the Board.
Sometimes it’s tactically and strategically right to lie you your own supporters.
As I said, they had to talk bollix. We built the stadium through one of the biggest financial disasters for decades. I think we are on same page, so to speak.
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Pendatic George,
I love your line about not telling us what we can see with our own eyes. Same with Steww’s piece titled “Sunderland” not trying to do tactical preview. I find bloggers who try to preview or analyse matches annoying. Their attitude is to me borderline delusional or narcissistic.
If a blogger is tactically astute enough to analyse games at this level, then maybe they should be managing teams themself. Football blogs should be about supporting our teams by writing uplifting articles about them.
You are doing a great job at Positively Arsenal and you have created a great online community. Well done PG!
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BTW,,the most vocal teller of the truth in the blog-sphere has been Hunter13.Take a bow sone
ahahaha epic!…thank you sir ! wenger is sending me via email a player’s contract in appreciation and i will send you the whole of the transfer fee … i have money , its glory im after…… i will sign next month together with tomas no.7 …
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I can’t blame the Board.
Sometimes it’s tactically and strategically right to lie you your own supporters.
absolutely, especially when they see themselves as “customers” milking it with their “customer always right” attitude disguised as entitlement to be served silverware or else they boycott and march outside demanding change…..
how wise would it be to tell the truth like “trophies? ahaha you avin a bubble bath then goonies?..look what we just built yer mugs? it will take us ages to recover”
how wise would it be for the manager to come out and say “my young players are very good but not good enough to win the title and the champions league against world class drogba xavi and giggs..oh non c’est nais pas possible….”
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If a blogger is tactically astute enough to analyse games at this level, then maybe they should be managing teams themself. Football blogs should be about supporting our teams by writing uplifting articles about them.
well said mate!!! first time in my life i come across supporters blogs who aim to be “objective” and creating debates with for and anti sides…..lmao….
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Hunter,
Dead right.
I really hate the bloggers who demand AFC show them the “plan” and the “direction” the club is going.
Apart from the stupidity of the question (no privately owned business on earth is going to spill the beans) and the vast egos of the bloggers who think they can handle the truth, the answer is bleeding obvious:
Forward!
Victoria Concordia Crescit…. and fuck off to the disharmonious.
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Victoria Concordia Crescit…. and fuck off to the disharmonious.
Stolen for twitter ,sorry DC i cant help myself,I’m like a tweet Magpie.
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“Victoria Concordia Crescit…. and fuck off to the disharmonious”
Poetry DC – I like it
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We know a good line when we see one
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I don’t do Twitter PG, so your welcome.
Let’s see if the wheels come off Liverpool’s groovy train tonight.
The Swans will be up for it.
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We have a really good chance now to consolidate our good start in the league before things get much tougher in November and December.
Touch wood!
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Victoria Concordia Crescit…. and fuck off to the disharmonious.
heheh i guess our fellow “i have suppoted arsenal for 40-50-60 years” fans have forgotten about that…..
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Good post, PG. I’d say our squad is thin in just one position–striker. Sanogo and Bendtner will be back in, but we were obviously trying to get an experienced player in before finally having to hang onto Bendtner. With Viviano and Flamini, the only other position where there could be a case for further need is CB. But Sagna and Jenks at RB have been fine and Vermaelen is now available, so really it is just one position.
Any team would seem to be depleted with three starters and three bench players unavailable (Arteta, Merts, Cazorla, Podolski, Sanogo/Bendtner, the Ox). The only concern is that we have two games a week for the next two and a half months. The good news is Arteta and Poldi seem close to returning and Merts was just sick. Without Mertesacker we do look much shakier–every CB pairing has looked better with him in it.
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I have often thought that the key issue in CB pairings is not the quality of the personnel Limey – although a talentless hoofer is of no use – but whether your centre backs play together regularly, get to know and understand one another and instinctively work together
Kosc and Per managed that solid week in week out combination after ( about) the Spuds game last season and the results have been literally 2nd to none in the PL
Tommy is a very decent back up and Bac has surprised me with his Lilian Thuram slide across the back line
Keep these lads fit and last season’s 2nd best defence might be improved upon
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“Birds of a feather flock together” as the saying goes…..(mind you I can’t imagine PG as any kind of bird!)
I find bloggers picking teams and proffering tactics boring…..
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Love Bootoomee kicking arse over on Untold….
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Hah. fantastic comments today ,it must be said. As those who never lost faith ,it is good to see that faith paid back in full. Love the current team and AW . The future looks pregnant with immense possibilities. Should be a fantastic adrenalin charged ride, I must say.
PS. Lets not beat everyone with the same stick mates. Of the three or four blogs that I visit I noticed many posters that were on the verge of nervous breakdowns after the villa game. As of today I have noticed many have been MAN ENOUGH, so to speak, to backtrack on their earlier comments, apologize and say that their faith has been restored and ,most importantly, that they won’t jump on the band wagon.
Only the most diluted, self-important two faced of the bunch are having a hard time digesting the humble pie in their inners and therefore are reduced to the tactic of moving the posts again.
I say again, HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO BE PROVED WRONG WITH THE RESULTS.
ONE ARSENE WENGER. THERE IS ONLY ONE ARSENE WENGER!!!!!!!
Don’t fool yourselves. You are not supporters. Just a few bad apples trying to corrupt the ruin the good ones in the bushels.
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Swansea, despite having to play around Shelvey, drew against a shit Liverpool. In Alejandro Pozuelo, Laudrup uncovers another Spanish gem.
That shower beat the Mancs. Remember that.
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If there is one team that will drop off the top four this year the red manure would be my guess and pick.
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