Where do I begin? We’re three games into a spluttering start to a season which promises much but has yet to deliver. We’ve lost one on a bewildering afternoon which felt like watching a match after inadvertently switching the Splenda for a tab of acid, nothing quite made sense. We’ve won one in a gruelling fashion which should have been much easier and experienced a draw that felt more like a defeat. It’s been a funny old time.
Perhaps that’s why so many people obsessed over the draw for the European Cup. Anything to take their thoughts away from a difficult few weeks. I didn’t pay any attention to such nonsense for a couple of reasons. Mainly because I felt so low after we were effectively robbed of the points on Monday night that I wanted nothing to do with football for a few days. The other reason was that the announcement of the teams in our group is meaningless. It isn’t a match. Nothing is decided. It just provides an excuse for utterly pointless conjecture as to the outcome of games yet to be played, some of which are still a very long way off. No one to my knowledge has ever predicted the outcome of our matches in the group stage with any accuracy and so the thought of joining such foolishness and speculation left me completely cold.
Then Friday rolled up and I suddenly realised we had a game the next day. And that of course means that a blog hungry public will be wiping the sleep from its eyes and rushing to Positively Arsenal for some words of wisdom. I needed to get an early night, wake up fresh and full of exciting insights into the team and its visit to the North East.
And so here I am. Coffee and muesli despatched with my customary aplomb and this blank page in front of me. The problem of the pre match blog so early in the season is there is so little one can say about either team. As Shotta pointed out in his excellent post the stats suggest that we will come good, we’re making far too many chances not to and we have the personnel who know how to stick ’em away. But that is a fruit which will ripen only in the fullness of time. Right now we’re not in any kind of rhythm when it comes to converting the many chances created. Likewise our opponents today are only three games in and have also posted indifferent results. We know from their recent encounter with Man U that they are capable of some resolute if occasionally last ditch defending we also know they’ve only scored two in three and that has cost them. But then I could say pretty much the same about us. It’s all too unpredictable right now and as you know I’ve never been much of a one for tea leaf gazing parapsychology.
We were quite clearly unsettled by the suddenly thrown together defence on Monday but I was more interested with how the unit grew into the game and put their panicky start behind them. Gabriel especially looked the part by the time the second half got under way and I am confident they will be better today regardless of who starts. Players put each other under pressure with poor passes in and around the area but they did so while trying to do the right thing and that is key. Piss poor play because you don’t know better is a big worry, a hapless execution of an otherwise sound plan is far less of a concern because it is unlikely to be repeated. One glimmer of encouragement was Cech’s performance. He made a couple of decent saves and I hope he has his mojo back because a strong confident keeper is so important when your defence is pulled apart by injuries.
Inspired by Shotta’s effort I thought I would try to do a bit of research for you today. I went to Steve Maclaran’s post match interview following Newcastle’s previous home game and attempted to listen to it. First of all I have to say it came as something of a surprise as I didn’t realise he was the manager at St James’ Park, I thought it was one of Alan Pardew’s coaching staff who’s name temporarily escapes me. Not wishing to appear ignorant I was hoping the manager’s comments would offer an insight into the way his team play and I could base some sort of hashed together pseudo analysis upon this but quite frankly it was like listening to Michael Owen delivering a eulogy. I drifted off fairly early on and apart from him saying something about several of his players having no legs after sixty minutes nothing really went home. An inspirational team talker I suspect he is not. However I have to say if the legs thing is true then we ought to be in with a bit of a chance of a few late goals. I may be no tactical expert but I am pretty certain that an ambulant opposition would be considerably harder to circumvent.
Ensuring that Newcastle don’t resort to the tried and tested practice of attempting to remove the legs of any Arsenal players will be the job of that cheeky scamp Andre Marriner. Now, I may not be any good at predicting the line up nor the result, and frankly my dear I don’t give two hoots for attempting to do either but there are still some certainties in life. The BT Sports commentary will be so woeful that I will turn it off after about eight minutes, switch to the Arsenal Player commentary, turn that off after they’ve read the eleventh email from a disgruntled fan demanding we sign a new defensive midfielder and go into the other room to watch the match on a Russian Sopcast stream. The other fact we can know in advance without fear of contradiction is that Andre Marriner will make some astonishingly bad decisions but unlike many other refs won’t be overly biased against Arsenal just generally incompetent. Although Andrew Crawshaw at Untold Arsenal suggests that Marriner’s real blind spot comes when Arsenal players are fouled in the penalty area. The best advice is to stay on your feet and keep going no matter how blatant the offence because we won’t get the spot kick anyway. To that end I think Theo should play because he’s like one of those slinky spring things that rolls right over, bounces back up and keeps on going whereas Olly being larger and heavier on his toes is more likely to go down like a felled redwood. That’s as close to a PA writer making team suggestions as you will ever get so make the most of it.
Along with team and tactical predictions the other thing I never usually insult you with is suggesting that the three points is all that matters. This trite and tired observation so beloved of just about every other blog is the one thing guaranteed to get my goat. The game is about entertainment and while Monday night’s result may have left us all down in the dumps there was some wonderful football played and I spent the night on the edge of my seat, which is surely what entertainment is all about. I am about to use the word ‘however’. Prepare yourselves. However I have come to the tentative conclusion that maybe we need to just win a few games, get some points in the bag no matter how, if for no other reason than to settle the players down and get them back into their groove. Today and for the next couple of matches maybe the win is more important than the performance. Perhaps, just perhaps those slick performances will start to flow if the side aren’t playing catch up because of points dropped in the previous match. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. Anyway, whatever the line up, whatever the result my faith in the squad, manager and his staff will remain unshaken and I will look forward to each game with the same excitement as I did the last, after all what is the alternative? Wallow in the mire of despair? Yell at the kids? Kick the dog? Go on Twitter and abuse Monsieur Wenger? I don’t think so. I’m a supporter, I think I’ll just support.
Positively Arsenal 
would also add that Cazorla needs to up his influence on the game.
We were actually doing better 11 v 11 than we have at 11 v 10.
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That was very good Stew
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had the misfortune to not be able to see the second half and had to rely on BBC Radio 5 for commentary, and it could not be more anti Arsenal, claiming that the ref got the sending off wrong, that Coquelin made a meal of challenges on him, the clear begging for Newcastle to get a goal.
It wasn’t till I realized that the pundit was Danny Mills that it became clear as to why the commentary was so bad and so bias. “A yellow at best, if that at all” was his summing up of the red card. English football still in the dark ages.
FT: 1-0 to the Arsenal
well worth the win
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Clean sheet!
Three points!
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Arsenal 1 – Commentators 0
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I watched with the aid of the mute button
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THE 3 POINTS and CLEAN SHEET are what is needed at this stage!
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now that we scored , did not concede and hence won… we will still hear that cos we missed chances we need a striker…. this is the same Newc that man u could not score against!
Sure we need more goals but its not every time a striker loses the ball, we will need to replace e him surely!
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Wenger on transfers “we are out there working on it, I am optimistic but it is difficult to predict”
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well only 75 hours till we know on transfers
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Coquelin with 95% passing accuracy albeit against ten in an away match that’s still very good.
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only now seen the goal, sorry ox but only lampard gets awarded those goals, will go down as an OG
AW on transfers: “We’re working on it, not more or less optimistic. You always want more goalscorers”.
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All that today told me was that we are more reliant on Ozil than many imagine. Having said that I am glad that he was spared some of the heavy challenges that went in from a side who seemed intent on kicking us to death. I also suspect that today will be a day when suddenly the three points don’t matter and that it is all about the performance. Funny that.
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We are stil way below our three year average of 1.85 goals ber game, way below our potential. Trust me Positvistas there is a deluge coming. Pretty soon the players and coaching staff will figure this out.
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Nice one, steww. Those three points will do nicely. People think playing against packed defenses is easy but its clearly not. Unlucky for Theo as they dropped deep after the red which I thought was very soft. The refs are an absolute joke and once again Untold have done a fine job highlighting this. How he waves off that pen on Bellerin is beyond me but we still keep on truckin. We’ll continue plugging away regardless always have always will
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I’d like to see Coq take more chances. He made a couple of darting runs with the ball that caused some problems. He has shown he has the acceleration and feet he just needs to take off the handbrake and we will see the goals start flowing. Especially when we have Gabriel and Koscielny playing. Gabriel is an absolute monster he nipped in with some very tidy challenges and he looks to be very good at everything.
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Cabaye should of had Palace up one nil after some nice work from Zaha. Best chance of the game thus far
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Harsh on the Newcastle defender if that’s called an own goal.
Lots of hype about Sterling and others, in my books Chambo has clocked up two goals already. Ramsey close last week, there’s more coming.
Would’ve been nice if they’d taken one of those late chances but I’d take 1-0 to the arsenal every time.
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Cabaye with what must be the biggest miss of the day against Gazprom, *#*##^ c’mon Palace.
And Liverpool two down early on against West Ham.
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Wow no shit Fins? Go on you Hammers. Jenko for a hat a trick
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Lots of defensive cohesion today. Well played Arsenal.
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Seems to me City need a world class striker. Lots of possession, no end product, blah, blah.
Seriously though Navas is doing just what Chris Waddle suggests in our game; chuck the ball in the box at every opportunity. Great job City.
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Charlie Adam, that dog. Caught in the act. Stamping. Red card.
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Firstly, thanks Shotta, for the last article, and to the respondents (if that’s the correct term).
Ta also to Steww for this article. I read it this morn when there were only a couple of comments. My God, Steww’s better than good. (In fact PG summed up my feelings with his early comment).
I want to thank Edu for his comments over the last few days – concerning U21’s and other things I wouldn’t have known but for his posts. (although your in-match commentary today was perhaps a bit testy?).
Today’s game commentary via BT Sport was the most reasonable I’ve heard during an Arsenal match covered by them. My biggest surprise was what I heard from Howard Webb in the BT truck! He who allowed Kung fu kicks on Ars players, and set am alarming tone whilst reffing the WC2010, where you might have thought Holland were playing Arsenal. Still, I think the fact Owen and Mills, among many, many others, not being there (who was the co-commentator)? must have helped a modicum of perspective.
Someone wrote here that we could see what role Özil could’ve played if fit, but given the way Newcy were hacking us, it’s probably best he didn’t play with a minor injury (summat like that). Well I agree entirely. I think Marriner saw the foul (despite Webb’s analysis) and just didn’t wanna give the penalty. But like the cup semi at OT, whilst the ref started by allowing all kinds of crap upon Arsenal (like Fellaini busting Coq’s nose), Marriner became peeved at Newcy’s antics and could no longer allow what he was seeing. It’s a pity he booked Carzola – which I think was incorrect/pressure of crowd.
Sure, Arsenal didn’t take many of their 21 chances but I still think they played well. I particularly enjoyed watching Gabriel, who looks to me like he’ll kill any git that comes within a hundred meters of him (oh, that’s the whole pitch then). (I’ll link to a vid of his bowling skills if ever I get to the end of this).
After the match it was back to the studio to hear from Jake lankybitch, who admitted he doesn’t like Arsenal, but his main objective was to trot out the Ars needs striker line. Ian Wrought thought Theo’s and OG’s efforts weren’t good enough, and so it went on.
Sorry to the guy on here who had to listen to Mills on the radio. Danny is a moron! but I think we have to understand that to get and keep these jobs you’ve gotta lie and slag off everything Arsenal. (That’s why you’ll never see or hear Bob Wilson on the various channels, even though he’s a long-time, well respected broadcaster).
I’d better stop. Well played Arsenal.
Arsenal bowling, start at 1:50 to see Gabriel’s first effort. After that it gets….:
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Raining goals today but apparently Pool Chavs and Shitty didn’t get the memo, shotta. Funny old game innit?
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Shotta beat me to that comment… i was waiting impatiently for the end of the game first.. I have been so annoyed with the fact that if any of our strikers miss a chance, the next comment is that we need a striker… really? has any striker actually ever scored in all 38 games?
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Stoke hoping maybe they can get a couple more sent off and having another crack. What a joy that must be to watch. 9 man Stoke vs Tony Pulis West Brom good lord
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Have not having
Stupid phone
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I think criticism of our strikers and attackers is pretty fair. We have carved out a tremendous amount of chances just haven’t converted em. Wenger’s comments on the subject today was very interesting. Like usual not much meat but a bone nonetheless lol
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Sterling opens his account for the season though unlike the Ox he’s been starting every game. Sagna cross.
City also struggling to create against a bus but they should find it easier now they’ve got that first goal.
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Gah Im trying to do too many things at once I can’t even talk right now. Be back in a bit
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Coutinho off for a second yellow what’s he thinking there? LOLOLOL wow that’s shocking
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@ LOOMER… No problem at all in saying the strikers should make mere effort to score, that is why they are there! what is annoying is the follow up question will arsene now buy a striker before the deadline. if all teams bought a striker after each 2 or 3 games their strike do not score, how man would they have? because first it was clamour for theo to start and now that he had to try to break through a bus, we are in dire need of a world class striker according to them
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Well, yes we won. But I felt the team lack the cold blooded ruthlessness of an old ManU side had that would have annihilated the Geordies. With all our possession and dominance we should have scored so many more….did they mean to play like it was a training session….maybe I needed more sleep….
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Eduardo, you have a lack of fortitude.
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Wild game at the Bridge. Wickham with the sucker punch after quality cross from Bolassie. Minutes after Chelsea equalize
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CLEARLY IT CAN NOW BE SAID THAT CHELSEA AND LIVERPOOL NEED WORLD CLASS STRIKERS.. WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING IN THE TRANSFER MARKET?
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Well, well, well. What has happened today?
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We began as we left off on Monday, on the attack, good passing and movement albeit followed by some substandard finishing.
I see Liverpool also began today against the Ammers as they finished on Monday, hanging on for dear life and being torn to bits.
Good Saturday so far – I trust Poch’s boys will put the cherry on my cake at Goodison with a hilarious combination of Keystone Cops defending and clown shoes in the box.
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Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho says he will cope with his squad and will not ask to sign more players.
Really? I thought the solution was to buy new attackers and defenders after not winning a game?
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Loomer: Sorry, was off a bit (Jamaica won both relays for those who are interested).
What a massive draw Monday night is turning out to be. Chelsea and Liverpool bite the dust. How say the moaners? Oh. City is invincible.
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no george, there is no lack of fortitude with me, there is nothing wrong with stating that a couple of our players needed to up their game, there was lots of careless play in the first half, thankfully it did not cost us, and thankfully all of it was in the attacking third. I’m a massive fan of all 3 players I mentioned – Ramsey, Theo and OX, – and I expect better from them than what I seen a few too many times in the first half.
Talking about our players and playing well, I was very impressed with Monreal today and also Gabriel must be pissed of that there is an international break now, as his two performances this week have been great and I’m sure he would have liked to had more games now to cement his place in the team, with Per ill, but its likely Per will be fit in two weeks time and who knows if gabby will keep his place or not.
By the way Gabby called up by Brazil
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jeez I need to sit down, Robbie Savage has ignored the BBC slant on the game and gone and said the only thing the ref got wrong was not giving AFC a penalty, also said the red card was a certain red card.
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After a great start to the season Arsenal U18’s lost 4-1 away to Reading U18’s.
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THE BOSS ON VICTORY AT NEWCASTLE UNITED
Arsène Wenger faced the media after Arsenal’s 1-0 win against Newcastle United at St James’ Park on Saturday. You can read a full transcript of his press conference below:
on whether patience was key…
Patience and nerves. I believe that we needed to not rush our game, to wait for our chances and to take one of them. I must say that Newcastle decided from the start to make the game quite physical and we had to keep our nerves and not become a little bit aggressive as well. I thought we did that well. Afterwards it was a strange game. You play away from home, 11 against 10, and you know that they will play 15 yards deeper, you play 10 against nine in the final third, the crowd is behind their team which puts pressure on the referee, and then it’s very difficult. We didn’t find the space. They defended well and they’ve shown why they didn’t concede at Manchester United as well. We are happy to have the three points and to win 1-0.
on Aleksandar Mitrovic’s red card…
Honestly during the game I didn’t see. Just seeing the game on television, unfortunately it was a red card. He didn’t play the ball at all.
on whether Arsenal got enough protection from the referee…
I don’t know. I think the referee did alright but Newcastle wanted to stop us from playing, from moving the ball quickly and to stop our game. They tried that from the start on. Mitrovic went a bit overboard maybe, and maybe a bit unlucky. Did he do it on purpose or not? I don’t know.
on transfers…
We are open and we are in the transfer market. If we find an exceptional player in any sector, we will do it. At the moment I don’t know if something will happen or not.
on whether it was a perfect away performance…
It was important. We know we’ll turn it round at home so it was important mathematically not to drop points today, not to be too far from the top teams. It was important mentally as well because we dropped points at home. We had two different away games at Newcastle and Crystal Palace but we’ve got six points. That is very good.
on whether the red card changed his game plan…
Yes. I expected more space for Theo Walcott. At the start it looked quite promising but after 15 minutes it was a different problem for us. There was no space behind their defenders, the service through their lines was very difficult and they defended very well.
Copyright 2015 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to http://www.arsenal.com as the source
Read more at http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20150829/the-boss-on-victory-at-newcastle-united#0XOegcYW5m6F2gOg.99
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i thought we were great up till the sending off and then faced with a team dropping deeper than planned we huffed and puffed a bit till half time. once again the ref missed loads of off the ball tackles or just never went back to book players, although i dont think he was helped by his assistants. quite honestly how they ended up with ten men on the pitch was a mistery and while I understand about mental pressure a crowd can put officials under, at the end of the day he has a duty to protect players which he quite clearly didnt. The Santi booking was also an absolute joke.
As the tactical game switched to newcastle playing like the away team you could see how we struggle at home sometimes. Passing between the lines and using width are needed to destroy heavily manned defences and for long periods we weren’t using either.
Having said that if our one touch passing and desire to get the ball back wasnt good newcastle wouldnt havnt needed to foul the arse off us in the first place. So good overall performance not only going forward but defending resolutley as well.
Also good to see maureen miserable again
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some guy on twitter just set up the whinging brigade, with a fake “Ozil hands in transfer request” story. He got lots of bites.
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have to laugh at BBC Radio 5 having a presenter of 606 – Darren Fletcher – who uses tweets from Piers Morgan to back up claims that Arsenal have £200M to spend on transfers, when did the BBC become so shoddy.
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I think we all need to panic now, I’ve just been told by a fellow Gooner that Arsenal are a club in crisis, the club is a mess.
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Well, round at matey’s I had the privilege of watching the half time blunta with Henry, Redknapp and someone, before taking in the delights of the 2nd half. (Totty v Everton). Jamie invited Thierry to assess Kane’s profligacy during the 1st half when he was one on one with Howard. (the goaly, as opposed to the guy who hangs out in the BT truck. I’m chortling..)
I had the impression the righteous Redknapp knows just how to make Henry squirm, using semantics and Theirry’s apparent (temporary?) unfamiliarity with the technology to help in what felt to me like a pretty patronising acceptance of him being there at all.
Having eventually explained that Kane should’ve been aware of which if any of his teammates might be around him long before he actually looked for them, the team then moved onto a play on which one of Everton’s players had to leave the field, probably injured.
I thought this resulted from a bad tackle albeit that the spurs player “got the ball”. To me there was too much force. TH sounded nervous when agreeing with the ‘team’ that it wasn’t a foul despite the spurs player flying in so that both his legs ended up trapping the opponents ankle. TH didn’t sound at ease.
I thought and hoped the game would end nil nil, but what really interested me was the absolute shite played by both sets of players. Big cross field balls which couldn’t stay in play. Loads of misplaced passing. Lack of creativity. Poor finishing. Numerous dirty tackles. I suppose it was an early season bore fest, but the commentators didn’t report on it in any way like they would’ve done during an Arsenal match.
The reason I watched it all so gleefully is that I knew they’d serve up utter tosh, and it puts, for me, into perspective, the magnificence of Arsenal’s play.
Sure, today we didn’t win by 15 goals or even 2, but the way Arsenal play (“tippy tappy” in a squeaky scouse or manc accent with spittle coming out whilst they slag off Wenger), is an absolute joy, and allows these multiple chances to be created, which our players will be putting away sooner or later.
It’s important for me to see other teams live sometimes cos it reinforces my view that although Arsenal sometimes misplace a pass and sometimes don’t score when they “should”, I/we could set those “failings” against anyone else in the league/world!
Harry Kane, Señor Lukaku, where were you today/all 3 games into the season? Why didn’t the commentators ask “Do they need a striker/D effing M, et al”? Surely Martinez/Pinochini(otto?) need to be sacked?
Well done Jamdown. If only Simpson could’ve won the 200m, they could top the medals chart.
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I like this new goalie we’ve got, and Gabriel is a proper player. I always count January signings as summer ones (in that I never expect too much from them in Feb and March) so at the back I think we look quite sound. I also think the more forward players are playing as if they are waiting for someone special to arrive: some are being too anxious as if they know their future is under threat, some are waiting for the cavalry before they hit their own after-burners. This season is going to be a grower, and for once (injuries permitting, DV) the International break is particularly well-timed for us. I feel particularly excited to be following this team right now.
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