In that classic piece of American movie-making A Few Good Men, the then fresh faced, unspoiled, up and coming lead-man, Tom Cruise, is playing the part of the newly minted, inexperienced and unenthusiastic U.S. Navy lawyer. He is up against a mean, corrupt, brooding representative of the Establishment, in the form of Jack Nicholson, Hollywood’s ageing warrior whose time at the top of the A-list is drawing to a close. It is the brilliant Mr. Nicholson’s role to disrobe young Cruise of his naiveté about the harsh realities of an Institution like the Navy. Despite Nicholson’s brilliance, which is now part of American film folklore (his reading of “You can’t handle the truth!” was in 2005 voted the 29th greatest American film quote of all time), this being Hollywood, in the movie itself it is the idealistic defender of the system, young Cruise, who is depicted as the hero riding off into the sunset under the beautiful gaze of Demi Moore while Colonel Jessup (Nicholson’s character) we are led to believe is driven to drink and dissolution. Isn’t Director Rob Steiner and writer Aaron Sorkin, two stalwarts of the American film-making, telling a cautionary tale of insiders who happen to blow the lid on the system, 20 years before the persecution of whistle-blowers such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden? But I digress.
What an apt metaphor for us to commence our pre-match musings. Like Hollywood, the start of a new football season is time for the mainstream media, pundits and the majority of Arsenal bloggers to unroll their portfolio of myths and clichés. Not surprisingly, the universal theme is the biggest spender will be the most successful. The BBC, that institutional voice of football wisdom, spoke through its stable of pundits here.
| Overall predicted ranking, using all BBC predictions | ||||||
| (using system of 4 pts for a 1st place, 3 pts for 2nd, 2 pts for 3rd and 1 pt for 4th) | ||||||
| 1. Man City | 2. Man Utd | 3. Chelsea | 4. Arsenal | 5. Tottenham | 6. Liverpool | 7. Leicester |
| 116 pts | 92 pts | 58 pts | 33 pts | 20 pts | 18 pts | 3 pts |
Jermaine Jenas: “When I look at everyone’s squad and the transfer business that has been done, I cannot see City not winning it. “
Guy Mowbray: “It will be harder for Pep than it was at Barcelona or Bayern but he has the players and the financial clout behind him to win the title…”
If not City, then it must be United, another of the big spenders with the biggest cheque book manager of the past ten years.
Jason Roberts: “I think United will win the League as Jose Mourinho has adapted his squad quickly into his philosophy by bringing in an effective spine of quality acquisitions…”
Conor McNamara: “Jose has cleverly brought in some big egos in Ibrahimovic and Pogba. This will give United some of their old swagger back.”
There is universal disdain for prudent Arsenal who haven’t shown similar profligacy as their peers.
Ian Wright: “Chelsea are going to be back in the mix and with United’s outlay and City also spending big, all three of them are going to be strong under Conte, Mourinho and Guardiola. As things stand, with no significant signings since Granit Xhaka, no new striker and injuries to their top three centre-halves, the best I can hope for Arsenal is that they make the top four again.”
Kevin Kilbane: The big clubs have all strengthened a lot, apart from Arsenal – how often do we say that? This might be the year they finally miss out on the top four and Arsene Wenger’s contract is up next summer. “
Maybe the BBC is off-message and ESPN has more balanced and rounded pundits (after all, they have the likes of Arseblog and Gunnerblog giving the Arsenal viewpoint from time to time). Shock, shock, shock. Practically the same results after summarizing the picks here of their editorial team:
| Overall predicted ranking, using all ESPN predictions | ||||||
| (using system of 4 pts for a 1st place, 3 pts for 2nd, 2 pts for 3rd and 1 pt for 4th) | ||||||
| 1. Man City | 2. Man Utd | 3. Chelsea | 4. Arsenal | 5. Tottenham | 6. Liverpool | |
| 55 pts | 50 pts | 27 pts | 15 pts | 11 pts | 9 pts | |
I will spare you dear readers of any quotes from the likes of Iain MacIntosh, Nick Miller, Tony Evans, Miguel Delaney, Julien Laurens, et al who are members of the ESPN stable of pundits. Trust me, it is the same guff as the BBC’s, i.e. future success is guaranteed by the amount that is spent on transfers with one new wrinkle, the importance of a celebrity manager who is willing to spend big in the market.
Nobody is willing to speak the truth that to the contrary, as was proven that 2013 study by Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence; after ranking the ‘big six’ in the Premier League in order of their total net spending on transfers plus wages combined between 2000 and 2012; Chelsea spent most, with £2.078 billion, then Man Utd on £1.43bn, then City with £1.4bn, then Liverpool with £1.3bn then Arsenal with £1.1bn and Spurs on £777 million:
Chelsea did not do better than their resources in any year, under-performing against their wage bill eight times and doing only as well as expected four times.
United did better seven times, worse three times and as well as expected twice.
Manchester City performed better once: when finishing ninth in 2002-03 when wages said they should have finished 10th. They have otherwise under-performed apart from the title-winning season when they did as well as expected.
Liverpool did better than expected four times in the period, worse four times and as expected four times.
Tottenham did better than their wage bill six times – and worse six times, in the period under review.
The best performer by a country mile was:
ARSENAL “who out-performed their wage spending seven times, did as well as expected three times, and under-performed in 2005-06 and 2006-07.”
I am repeating the results of the study because neither the BBC nor ESPN seem to have any interest in educating the public of the wastefulness and unsustainability of the continued gargantum spending by the likes of City and United.
But there is additional data that makes a mockery of their predictions. Twenty years since Arsene Wenger arrived in this League there is some fairly predictable statistics.
- Arsenal has finished an average of 3rd; no other club except Manchester United has a better average.
- No other team has a better absolute deviation from the mean than Arsenal at 0.985, meaning that on the average the club’s position will deviate by less than 1. United is the next best at 1.28.
- All other big -6 team have in 20 years finished lower than Arsenal; City fell away to as low as 47th, way down into the 3rd
- Arsenal has never finished less than 4th.
- Arsenal has never finished below Tottenham.
Despite this never, never data there are pundits at the BBC and ESPN who predict that Tottenham will finish above Arsenal. Jermaine Jenas, Chris Waddle, Kevin Kilbane, Jason Mohammed, Tony Evans, and Dan Kilpatrick deserve awards from the Flat Earth Society. How do they get paid for such rank stupidity?
Think that is bad. Fifty percent (50%) of 34 and sixty percent 60% of 15 pundits at BBC and ESPN respectively expect Arsenal to finish out of the top-4. This is a club whose results in the last 3 years progressively improved from 4th, 3rd and 2nd. Who is willing to tell the truth that the majority of pundits in the media are idiots?
I suspect if I was to put the sports executives of the BBC and the ESPN on the witness stand and ask them why they employ people who repeat lies and falsehoods to the public, if goaded enough, in a rare moment of honesty they would respond as angrily as Colonel Jessup:
You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with lies and clichés
In the world of silent, unemotional data including what we know about the risks of spending and the importance of stability and continuity (Nick Harris and Sporting Intelligence), perhaps a more objective tool of predicting next season would be to use the data from last 8 years, since City became the beneficiaries of Sheik Mansour’s and the Abu Dbabi Group’s unlimited largesse, and do some projections.
| TOP-SIX : LEAGUE POSITION 2009-16 | ||||||
| YEAR | AFC | CFC | LFC | MCFC | MUFC | THFC |
| 2015-16 | 2 | 10 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
| 2014-15 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| 2013-14 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 6 |
| 2012-13 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| 2011-12 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| 2010-11 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 5 |
| 2009-10 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 4 |
| 2008-09 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 8 |
| Minimum | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Maximum | 4 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 8 |
| Mean | 3 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Median | 3.5 | 3 | 6.5 | 2.5 | 2 | 5 |
| Mode | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Range | 2 | 9 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 5 |
| Skewness * | -0.82 | 1.60 | -1.04 | 1.91 | 1.03 | 0.99 |
*Rule of thumb: If the skewness is greater than 1.0 (or less than -1.0), the skewness is substantial and the distribution is far from symmetrical.
If we use the well known statistical tool of time series forecasting , we would arrive at the following predictions of future league position ranked from highest to lowest:
Man United: 2.88
Arsenal: 3.38
Man City: 3.38
Chelsea: 3.63
Tottenham: 5:00
Liverpool: 5.75
Lo and behold, far from the almost universal crowning of City, United is more likely to win the title. Furthermore Arsenal Football Club is not a disaster-in- waiting, it being projected jointly with City for 2nd place. However as any good forecaster would disclose, past performance is no guarantor of success. In fact as Leicester demonstrated, a club can go from almost last to first, not by spending big, but it in relying on the mental strength of the players. As Arsene Wenger emphasized:
“Maybe they are not the most prestigious in quality of the passing, but they found a way to be efficient and have shown mental qualities that are absolutely top.”
But none of this is sexy enough for the pundits. Instead, they use the time honored methods of appealing to fear and greed, two of the greatest human motivators. Fear that Arsenal may somehow slip behind its rivals as groundless as that has been during Arsene’s tenure and greed for the title which drives so many otherwise well thinking fans to believe that somehow Arsenal can afford to match City and United in their spending to be sure of getting over the line, a guarantee which is equally groundless based on recent experience.
Given my experience of the difficulty in trying to convince most fans with data I am reminded of a quote from a more recent movie The Big Short:
“Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.”
I wonder if they will be willing to doubt my prediction that by end of this season it is Arsenal – 3rd, Liverpool – 6th.
Positively Arsenal 
Jason Roberts: “I think United will win the League as Jose Mourinho has adapted his squad quickly into his philosophy by bringing in an effective spine of quality acquisitions…”
Really, Jason? Let’s see how long it takes Mourinho the coward to stop playing four attacking players in front of a box to box midfielder and revert back to his bus parking ideology. I’m counting the weeks until him and Pogba fall out over young Paul’s aversion to tracking back. I see a lot of plundits repeating this line about MU’s spine, but they tend to forget that the team is chock full of shit Van Gaal bought in the last few years.
Today I saw Pep look around his bench hoping to find a Messi or a Ribery or anyone who could break through the parked bus Moyes put in front of him and all he had was Navas. I’m sure Pep is a magnificent coach, but let’s give the man a few months before hanging so enthusiastically off his nuts. The pundits are treating him the way high school girls treat the hunky exchange student. It’s fucking embarrassing. As far as their transfers are concerned, who the hell did they buy that they’re guaranteed the title? Gundogan is the new Nuri Sahin, as far as his fitness is concerned, Leroy Sane is not even a full international for Germany and who honestly knew about Nolito before his brief appearance in the Euros?
We bought one of the best midfielders in Europe and all we get is a meh, that’s not good enough. Meanwhile Conte gets hyped up despite only buying Kante, who was garbage in France’s more open midfield, and Loic Remy MkII, Batshuayi. I mean, I know these people detest Arsene’s conservative, pragmatic management style, but come the fuck on. No heads rolled after Chelsea’s first team completely tanked the season last year and the pricks who masterminded this awful plan are still
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Great post, Shotta.
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Very good stuff Shotta, but question the figure of Wenger spending £1.1 billion as quoted from 2000 onward. I think that is not very accurate: net, gross or ortherwise.
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If Arsenal are 6-3 down,Wenger has got to go. He has been dithering when she shd be strengthening the spine and what does hedo?He goes to get kids and more kids.
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Magnificent article Shotta.
G69: tick.
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Very interesting read… shotta…
always wonder what spurs on the critics and always glad when arsenal defy them….with AW in charge no less…
the format of dat forecast is sneaky. LOL…
looks at first like result for today.
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Great post Shotta. This Arsenal squad is as good as one would expect them be, it’s just a matter of the players hitting their bearings.
Re Mancity, where did they strengthen exactly? Stones is still a work in progress that’s living off the hype of José bidding £40m for him last season. And it’s common knowledge that José overpay up to 50% more of players’ actual worth.
Manutd? Meh. Zlatan is a loudmouth who might score the goals against those fighting for PL survival, but against top defences his walkabout attitude won’t do him or José any good. Paul Pogba coming from a soft could find life difficult living up to the expectation the price tag warrant.
Chelsea with basically the same ageing players expectation will be top 4.
Arsenal’s players are still on an upward curve in their development and naturally one would expect them to perform better than they did last season. If we keep our heads when closing out games and especially after scoring goals, we won’t let in those cheap goals we did last season which can result in a 10-12 point swing which should be enough to guarantee the last 4-5 weeks of the season see us taking the PL title fight down to the wire.
Wolfgang. Ah. “If Arsenal are 6-3 down,Wenger has got to go. He has been dithering when she shd be strengthening the spine and what does hedo?”
It doesn’t seem like he read this well articulated and thought through post innit? The dysphoria from the selfie generation is lit. Haha.
#COYG
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Shotta you statistical rogue !! I thoroughly enjoyed that and the skewering the pundits deservedly received. I wonder, genuinely, why there is so little variety of opinion among those paid to present football and entertain the public? The same turgid opinion repeated and rarely even repackaged between various outlets, the same TV format on every platform, the same smiles, the same vacuous, laddish expressions. Mediocrity, barely a new idea between them in 10 seasons.
Football deserves better than the punditocracy it has.
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Well I fooked up and more or less and lost my post (for now I hope, trapped!) but Shotts has sneaked in there and bowled a googly of cold hard facts that does the job better then any of my rants. He’s trapped his hopping skipping opponent leg before and with the aid of hawk-eye we can see that Shotts has ticked all the boxes, in line with the stumps, not bouncing over the wickets and no inside edges here. Clean as you like.
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Against Modern Football (media) was my working title Shotts.
On Sky the other day I saw a demonstration of wicketkeeping by the England star Bairstow. When was the last time we saw a football broadcaster do anything vaguely similar with a goalkeeper for the pleasure and entertainment of their audience. You’d think its a no brainer for people that were paying billions for the broadcasting rights. But no!
Given the circumstances around AFC that it’s the only club to sack managers for doing what is standard practice elsewhere and how this is ignored by the media as they focus their attacks against the manager and not the club in order to deceive the gullible it is important that we counter the staggering levels of bullshit pumped out into the ether.
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< demonstration of wicketkeeper training and coaching.
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Good and very interesting article Shotta. One complaint…why the pessimism? 3rd??
Keep the faith
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Fantastic as ever Shotta.
Some of these clubs are just shooting in the dark, spend enough and it will eventually come good….or so they believe. And in doing so, put the odd twenty million in the hands of so called super agents. It might work for the likes of Utd, but as the stats show, far from guaranteed.
I see the the self styled guardian of youth development has already started a cull of Utds youngsters. Utd have rejected one of their own as manager, and sold their soul to a very expensive version of the here and now. We all know how this one will end
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Great stuff – but you ignore one of the most important influences on final position – namely the demands of European football. Liverpool will gain (although not necessarily early in the season) from not playing in Europe and Leicester (for instance) will suffer from the opposite. Manure may suffer dependent on what sort of teams they play in a relatively weak competition.
Arsenal have gained financially from always being in the Champions League but it always drains resource in the EPL.
Our squad is as strong and probably stronger than ever not least thanks to the emergence of players developed internally. Such players (Bellerin, Coquelin, Iwobi etc.) are ignored by the pundits because they represent an unpalatable truth and aren’t headline makers in the same way as spending £50m would be. But they are likely to be more loyal and committed and that, in the long run, is worth a great deal more.
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Always a pleasure to read everything on PA (posts and comments alike), even though I haven’t been commenting this off season. The football is back and our boys take on Klopp’s rock band. This is what excitement is all about for me, not transfer shenanigans. Give me an Iwobi over some unamed, mythical £50M player any day. Thanks for that post Shotts, but I think City finished 4th last season and not 3rd. Otherwise, spot on as usual. COYG!!!!
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Thanks Positivistas for your feedback so far. It is the only form of external gratification we at Positive Arsenal get for our work. It is a totally voluntary effort motivated by our love and support for our football club and which led our irascible leader Pedantic George Rodger to set up this site. Just a little note to those of you wondering why I chose such a provocative headline. Unlike the mainstream media and most other so-called Arsenal blogs, we do not rely on negativity, lies and emotion to gin up traffic to our site (fear and greed). We are rare among bloggers who rely on cold hard data to justify our point of view. At this point I wish to applaud Untold Arsenal for a piece today by Tony Attwood (http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/55265) which expose the Guardian and the so-called “pro-Arsenal” journo Amy Lawrence as just another example of the yellow press who deliberately twist the facts to serve a negative agenda. As for my piece, the data led me to a compelling conclusion, Arsenal will be 2nd or 3rd. I chose the more conservative knowing full well the emotions it would generate. As my co-administrators on this blog will confirm, traffic is streaming in. Unfortunately few care for the facts only the headlines. If we were to editorialize Jack Nicholson: Very few “can handle the truth.”
PS: Gainsy – I fully agree with your comment atop. I will give my two cents at another time.
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If I understand correctly, based upon your analysis, you’re predicting us to finish 3rd this season? Is that so very different from the predictions of BBC and ESPN? Also you subjectively accuse the pundits of telling lies and falsehoods when surely they’re just expressing their opinions? Away now for a while, match to go to.
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No DFB, I did not accuse the pundits of lying for predicting Arsenal to come 3rd. I accuse the pundits of erroneously relying on transfer spending to predicting the EPL winner. Hence they overwhelmingly predict Man City when the historical data forecasts United. The data predicts City and Arsenal fighting for 2nd. I conservatively predict 3rd. What is even worse, over 50% of pundits from both BBC and ESPN did not even predict Arsenal as making top-4 despite 20 years of data loudly indicating it is utter rot. That alone makes their predictions utter rubbish. The data speaks for itself that is why I have no fear sharing it with the whole wide world.
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was Wolfgang’s post August 14, 2016 at 2:19 am, left in for its comic merit
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shotta, “pro Arsenal journo Amy Lawerence”, she may herself an Arsenal fan, she may even at one time have written articles with a pro Arsenal slant, but from the very first day she got TV work, as another of these celebrity journo football writers, she has been nothing but another soundbite journo trying to gain followers with anti Arsenal utterings.
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I think Wolfgang has contributed a witty and ironic counterpoint to Shotts’ piece – clearly it is written in a light hearted vein.
Who knows, he may be back later ?
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Jon Toral scored the winner as Granada beat Mallorca 3-2 in the Trofeo Ciudad De Palma!
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anicol I think more light headed than light hearted
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I know it’s evil but if I were Bournemouth I would have ensured Doctor Eva and her husband received complimentary seats right behind the away dugout. Just so the camera could pick out ‘that’ moment of recognition.
What a difference a year makes.
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Another statistical brilliant analysis Shotta. We must make allowances for the pundits as A, their physical prowess has always meant they have not had to rely on the old grey matter and B, they keep their job by spouting what their employers want, the populist view as we have found from our own TH.
If ARSENAL win the league would they all say “well this virtually as surprising as leicester because no one predicted it” or will they say how they knew it all along,I suspect the latter.
First games of the season have not been kind to us in recent seasons so trying to predict todays game will be almost impossible, a draw today would probably be a good result although it wont seem like it as anything other than a win will feel like a bit of an anti-climax after all the build up. The last few seasons, for most teams, the start of the season has not been about performance at all but getting points on the board, three points today would be great start COYG.
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we are less than 3 hours away from kick off, and I would say none of us could be confident in predicting who our starting 11 will be. Selection has been complicated by Mertesacker, Gabriel, Jenkinson, Welbeck all being out injured, doubts over Wilshere too, plus Cazorla, Ramsey and Alexis are said to be less than fully match fit, and Ozil, Koscielny and Giroud have played no pre-season games and only have one weeks training behind them. Gnabry and Asano are not with the squad due to the Olympics. That is 13 players either unavailable (at least 6), and 4 with fitness doubts, and 3 with no pre-season done.
Yet I expect all on here, unlike many other blogs, still believe we will have a team and subs fully capable of winning today. I expect the 11 I would select, will not be the 11 that Wenger will select, but I acknowledge he probably has far more information on the state of fitness and form of the players available.
for the record the team I would pick, (at this moment in time, it has changed constantly over the last few days, in fact almost every time I think of it, as I normally remember another player – especially in midfield – who should be in the team.)
Cech
Bellerin Holding Chambers Monreal
Xhaka Elneny
Oxlade-Chamberlain Ramsey Cazorla
Alexis
subs: Ospina, Debuchy, Bielik, Coquelin, Walcott, Iwobi, Campbell
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yesterday was a rather surprising day where football coverage was concerned, we had preview shows, live match coverage, match and goal updates galore, reports of the action, match highlight shows, journos, pundits, commentators, presenters, all excitedly involved in and covering the action. It really took the piss, it really did, they in comparison only gave a fleeting mention to the real business of the football season to come, namely the last 17 days of the summer transfer window. I mean how can they so totally chance their coverage and stance on what is the most important issue in the the game of football(well that is how they have covered it all summer), just cos a few games broke out. Very disappointing, I can only imagine how deserted, dazed and confused, all those involved in the transfer dick swinging contest fell after yesterdays developments.
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What a boring piece of football at Bournemouth? But then Gainsy warned us about what Mou will do to United?
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John Cleese @JohnCleese 10h10 hours ago
So Piers M describes silver medal winners as losers.It’s envy.He only has a tinfoil one.It’s for escaping prosecution for insider trading
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I see a bit of a fuss over the news Arsenal had 2 scouts at the Southampton v Watford game yesterday. yes normally when we send 2 scouts to the same game, it means there is a serious target, but in this case it might have more to do with the fact game 3 for us is Watford, and game 4 is Southampton. but maybe, just maybe Shane Long was the reason they were there
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so the rumors that xhaka would only be a sub today are true
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debut for Holding, Theo in ahead of ox, or will theo be up front.
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lots of ammunition in that line up for the malcontents to display their fake outrage with. No Xhaka, and Cazorla only a sub too, as is Jack, Ramsey at 10, Theo in the team ahead of Ox, and Joel “get out while you can” Campbell not in squad. 3 u21’s in the back 4.
God, Arsenal win with that line up and the twittertwati and malcontent bloggers will have to find a dark room to spend a few hours in.
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Cech is captain today.
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Liverpool FC @LFC 12m12 minutes ago
Confirmed #LFC team v @Arsenal: Mignolet, Clyne, Lovren, Klavan, Moreno, Wijnaldum, Henderson, Lallana, Coutinho, Mane, Firmino #AFCvLFC
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from fever pitch
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28 minutes – Walcott goes down in the area, and its a clear penalty, Theo takes it and Mignolet saves it,
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30 minutes – iwobi 20 yard cross field pass to walcott on right edge of the area, and he fires in a great shot to the left post of the net, 1-0 to the arsenal
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laughable by the commentator, seemingly walcott having his penalty saved, shows he is wildly frustrating
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36 minutes – coquelin booked for pulling down mane. Henderson was booked earlier in the game for lfc, a two footed challenge on ramsey
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39 minutes – cech with an easy save from a long range shot
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40 minutes – lovern booked for hacking down alexis
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Henderson gets away without a second yellow for a pull on iwobi, freekick arsenal
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43 minutes – alexis freekick off the wall for a corner
coquelin seems to have a knee injury
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2 minutes of stoppage time to be played
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46 minutes – Coutinho with a 35 yard free kick into the top corner beats Cech 1-1
HT: 1-1
Arsenal the better team in a scrappy first half, really don’t deserve to have been pegged back. It was a softly awarded free kick.
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Games aren’t won in the 1st half. Thoroughbreds show their class down the homestretch. Not worried in the least.
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48 minutes – monreal out of position as he was in covering the cbs, and lallana has the room to control the ball and fire past cech. 1-2
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SANCHEZ AND RAMSEY, NOT TOO SURE THEY ARE IN THIS GAME MUCH
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55 minutes – clyne gets in a good cross and coutinho gets a touch to flash it past cech, 1-3
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