The last time we enjoyed an extravagant midweek score and performance in the Champion’s League we returned to earth with a bump at the weekend. Despatching a Ludogorets side (which has proven to be far better than the naysayers ever suggested) with style and six of the best, we returned to face Middlesbrough at the Emirates. Most of us were salivating at the prospect of more of the same but instead were treated to an hour and half’s frustration as the team from the North east put in as organised and determined a defensive display as one could hope to see.
Stoke City have the potential to pose similar problems today. Sitting in the middle of the table they are well used to frustrating more illustrious opponents and on occasions even embarrassing them. I’m hoping that the experience against ‘boro will stand the team in good stead although to be fair we didn’t fail to beat them due to a lack of effort, we just had an off day.
The team Stoke will face today are in very good form both individually and collectively and the confidence with which they went about their work on Wednesday will surely inform the way they go about it today. Alexis is the outstanding player at the moment playing with the kind of verve and audacious invention which cannot help but remind us all of heroes from a bygone era.
Like everyone else his partnership with Özil has tempted me into comparisons with the days of the Henry/Bergkamp axis. I’ve decided not to go down that particular avenue of analogy simply because I’d rather enjoy the here and now. Also I have a sneaking suspicion that there is mischief in the motivation of those drawing such parallels. Set our players a ridiculously high bar and they can easily be dubbed as failures should they fail to clear it.
Now I know there are some of you who enjoy the comfortable indulgence of middle brow middle ground moral superiority and will see such thoughts as more evidence of an unhinged paranoid fantasy. It is what makes Positively Arsenal such a broad church and far from decrying your chosen position I salute your ability to shuck off and dismiss the mounting evidence all around you. However when each month brings a new media campaign against our club it is surely forgiveable if some of us begin to question much of what is said about us.
The Black November stories have now been replaced with the destabilising ‘want away stars’ transfer stories. I can only assume the hope is any drop in form from our leading lights will result in negative reactions on the terraces and online. The stick to beat them has been provided and already I’ve read comments comparing Sanchez with Van Persie so it seems to be working.
The manager and the players have to cope with this phenomenon as best they can and just get on with their jobs. It must surely bring at least a rueful smile when they see the Heroic Harry headlines which accompanied Spurs ignominious exit from the Champion’s League. Still, overcoming adversity is part of the make up of all top sportsmen and if they can shrug it off so must we. Like the penalty embargo and opposition players being allowed to kick ours with impunity, it is wrong, unfair and there is bugger all we can do but suck it up. Or pretend it isn’t happening. It’s all about your chosen coping strategy I suppose.
Hopefully Stoke will come to play football and not kick their way to a point. I confess I’ve not seen much of them this season but in the interest of research and because I’ve been too ill to move from the chair I spent a little time catching up with their last couple of matches. In Arnautovic, Adam and Shawcross they have some renowned brutality to call upon if they sense any slackness from the referee. However Shaquiri and Allen are both skilful, capable players, and this isn’t the same one dimensional Stoke side we once knew.
Mark Hughes suggested Shawcross may not travel to London today so that’s encouraging. He also seemed confused when interviewed as to why his team can win at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, but not the Emirates. I suspect it’s down to them scoring less goals than us but I’m not an expert and lack his experience in the game. Stoke have been attempting to emulate the Welsh national teams 3-4-3 formation which served them so well in the Euros this summer. Asked whether this experiment would continue against Arsenal Hughes suggested that his tactics might be dictated by the players he had available to him.
So much for research. The simple fact is top teams don’t react to their opponents. Rather they try to impose their own style of play onto the match forcing the other side to adapt. Whatever the tactical approach Arsène will have seen it before and the players have the experience to deal with it. I sometimes wonder if confidence and current form don’t play a bigger role in any case. I’m not suggesting that if you played nine up front and one in midfield that it would all work out as long as the team was feeling chipper that day, just that there are more variables at play than how the line up looks on paper.
Anyway, the kettle has boiled and I need another Lemsip so I’m going to shuffle off back to bed and leave you to enjoy your Saturday. Here’s to three points and some scintillating football. See you at three.
Positively Arsenal 
Good morning Stew – it has been a struggle for Stoke to shed the Pulis approach to possession football whereby success was measured by the amount of time you could waste on throw ins and wiping the ball. I presume it must have been as awful to watch week in week out as it was to play against. We shall which spots the leopard has on today.
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Excellent preview Steww.
I hope any illness goes away as quickly as possible.
I’m stunned/in awe of the posts here at PA esp. since & inc.: Saints preview.
I don’t know what to say. Thank you.
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excellent Steww,
I think stoke nowadays are a little more refinned they play when they can and kick when they have to. I would also suggest hughes suggestion of stopping our momentum in the build up losely translated means yeah were going to kick tthem all over today.
I think the two or three player rotation will continue today but apart from Cech and Nacho coming back into the side the third is anyones guess.
Maybe we will see a west ham like collapse when they switched from a three to a four either way our full backs will be important COYG
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Oh, really, Steww, you are among my top 5 Post writers, and always captivate me when I start perusing your latest offerings, but today you have exceeded all expectations, as it has taken me the best part of an hour to free myself from todays mesmeric article, and there is no question that you owe me an apology!!
The first thing I espied was the blackboard with the diagrammatic arrows and the odd ‘o’s and ‘x’s thrown in to be helpful for those, unlike me, capable of absorbing and understanding what was going on. Round and round my eyes went inducing a serious case of cross eyes and worse when arrows intersected, with one eye following one trajectory and the other eye …. well god knows where it was going.
Fortunately the dizzying swirling of the diagram eventually made me drop my laptop, and I snapped out of it – so here I am – and an apology I demand!!
The Post was as usual a delight, and I agree that Stoke have been tarnished by their association with Pulis ( and rightly so) but in recent times, they are showing much more skill than muscle with some astute player purchases, by the execrable Hughes, (yes he is another on my list of managers I would not miss) and if we are not on song today, they could cause us problems.
Hope you feel better soon!
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I loathe very few things in life, it’s really not worth the effort and does nothing but create a self-induced miserableness, however…. Stoke …. urgh.
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Nice one Steww. A game where an early goal will help, they are well capable of bending the rules to disrupt given a lenient ref who allows them to, and there seems to be a few of them about.
As for the penalty embargo….interesting…..early in the season, we seemed to get our fair share…..then it stopped, normal service resumed.
As for the fact we can do nothing about our players getting kicked with impunity, again, would question that, Wenger clearly has the ear of the FA and Ivan is very influential in the game, it seems that either they believe there is no agenda, which would contradict wengers past statements, or someone high up in the club has decided to leave this one alone, perhaps wary of potential consequences?
The Spurs media thing is a joke, but must be galling for their fans, their team to be constantly built up by the msm only to fall short of the expectations….think that may even be worse than what we have to put up with. However, Spurs players do seem to get a lot of favours with decisions on the pitch these days, I wonder if that is partly media driven…..with refs knowing they will be slaughtered in the press if they make a wrong decision against our neighbours……if so, wouldn’t be the first team to benefit in such a way.
All that aside, hoping for a valuable win today.
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Feels like it’ll be a bit of a race to see if we can use our momentum and the stellar form of Alexis to score before rough stuff and shoddy refereeing really starts to bite, bringing the game closer to an even contest the longer it goes on.
Mason is an alarming choice. His ability is questionable but the bigger concern is what happened last year. He only got one game in two months for his crime of not sending off Coquelin for two soft fouls, and then his return game, or trial, was another Arsenal game. Hard not to interpret that as, ‘you have fucked up and displeased me enormously, old boy…now have you learned?’
Simple good practice and basic psychology- ‘my future in the select group is under threat, having been deemed to be way too soft on Arsenal…I’m on trial here…must not do what caused me this trouble’- would say it was a very bad idea to give him one of our games until he had re-established himself as a competent ref.
Later in the season he did our Southampton game, let them kick lumps out of us, and got worse as the draw became more of a possibility.
Anyway, can still be a great day; I’m gonna spare myself a bad stream and the stresses of, among other things, Xhaka and possibly Coquelin getting booked if they give Mason half a chance to do so.
Nerves of steel, gallons of fortitude, and goodness knows what else (trust in the Masons? The lord?) might be required today, for the watchers. I’m gonna keep everything crossed and try wait till it’s done and dusted to discover what happened.
Early goal please, lads. Pleeease.
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3 early goals please.
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Nail biting goalless 90 minutes please then Giroud winner 30 seconds after the end of injury time.
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Loving another StewBlack preview. Literary feats I can only dream of.
As I said in my blog the other day, football is an enemy of hubris and complacency but if we play up to our potential we can score enough goals and defend as well as any team in the league to win this game. This is not last year’s Arsenal; we are better all over the park and have the quality to beat every team in the PL. The ever constant, which has given us the competitive edge over the past 20 years, is a brilliant manager who knows how to get the best out of his players.
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Sorry to hear the PA Treatment Rooms are back in use; a long season ahead of us so I hope you feel better soon and your little bit ‘flu niggle passes swiftly.
Stoke are always a much unloved fixture for most of us and the combination of them coming right after a CL fixture causes a certain degree of caution. Happily, most of the games that worry me we walk through so with a spot of reverse psychology in play hopefully we’lll be fine.
Just time for a quick nap ahead of hostilities …
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AA to answer your question from the last thread
the criteria used was joined the club before the age of 18, and without having played a senior game for another club, which rules out theo, ox and ramsey.
akpom not on the list cos he has not played in a bpl game this season for us.
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anicol we seen the last 3 seasons that despite stoke trying to play a more skilled game under hughes that when they come to the Emirates they return to nature, there is all the time wasting, the long throws, the late tackles, the pushes in the back, the niggly stuff. Thankfully we still founds ways to overcome them. But it makes me consider why Stoke, like a few others abandon there normal approach (including games against all other big teams), when they face Arsenal, what convinces them that they will be allowed to kick, scratch and generally be nasty in this fixture. I can only come up with one answer – the PGMOL
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JB™ @gunnerpunner 14h14 hours ago
JB™ Retweeted CD14
18 group stage goals. Özil & Alexis scored or assisted 12 different goals. 3 of the 6 others had an Özil pre-assist.
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Other than getting a good hiding every time they turn up I cannot recall Stoke doing much at all on any previous visit. Debuchy was probably disagree but other than that I can’t recall any rough stuff. Player recruitment like Boban and shaqiri at least give the option to try and play football.
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So Ox looks to have ousted Iwobi in the manager’s favours right now. I’ll take either to be fair. It’s a coin toss
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Right I’ve taken my painkillers, herbal tea is brewing, time to settle in for a relaxed couple of hours.
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The Ox and Monreal tore the Ammers apart last week – maybe the Boss fancies a second effort
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23 minutes mustafi off with a hamstring injury, bellerin on, gabriel moves to cb
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lee mason being lee mason, pgmol will be very proud of him
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Unbelievable.
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charlie adam scores the penalty,
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steww is it unbelievable, we see this from the pgmol all the time, it would be unbelievable for it to happen to any other team, but not to afc
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Bullshit penalty. It was an inadvertent elbow on the spin.
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ali @aliladiere 1m1 minute ago
The amount of times players have just run into our defenders and got a penalty is actually disgusting.
JB™ @gunnerpunner 2m2 minutes ago
There’s no foul there. If he’s given it for the elbow, then why no card? Ref’s making it up as he goes along
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Mason just confirmed something we can all expect; biased, incompetent refereeing will be used to derail us. But we have a stronger, deeper squad. No fear, no despair.
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if the refs deems that a foul for an elbow then mason should have sent him off, to me shows it was not a foul at all.
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There was no foul. Allen ran into the man’s elbow. Tony Gayle argues Xhaka should have gotten out of the way. Yeah right. Allow Allen a clear run at goal.
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bellerin to theo goal, his 50th emirates goal.
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Unbelievable
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that was theo’ 100th club goal
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Goal. Theo. No more than we deserve. No fear, no despair.
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shotta it is laughable what gale is saying, xhaka actually caught allen with his elbow cos he actually turned quickly to try and get to the ball, allen momentum seen him go into granit, not the other way round.
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Tony Gayle is a xenophobic imbecilic moron. I imagine his take on a dirty furriner would have been that he went down far too easily. Despise him.
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HT: Arsenal 1-1 Mason
Mason took the lead from a penalty, and Theo scored a fine goal to make it 1-1.
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tony gale always very anti arsenal.
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Theo limping?
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theo clearly limping as he goes off at half time.
when the bbc commentator says it was a debatable penalty, you know it was clearly no penalty.
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Eddy: Gayle and his producers have done 3 replays to convince us Mason is correct. Yet it is an equally valid observation that Allen ran into Xhaka’s elbow. Another case of “don’t believe your lying eyes.” #FakeNews.
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ozil with a HEADER makes it 2-1 from an ox ball in
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Serves Pieters right. Tried to again bully Bellerin and paid the price. Cost them a goal too. Excellent assist by the Ox.
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This team seem to get even worse refereeing at home than they do away. Seems any excuse and a pen given against us these days
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One worries about refs concoctions. The following, from Nov 30th left me in a sulk:
“In all my years following AFC I cannot remember one trophy that has been won for us by the referee, or one trophy that has been stolen away by a refereeing decision.”
Hours later I returned to the comments to see that AA, Rich & PG had written pieces that showed a different picture. I’d kept quiet because I don’t want to show what a miserable sod I can be – re the whole refshite conundrum.
The penalty against Arsenal shows how a match can be lost. That’s without all of the phantom and otherwise wrongly given fouls, which are already plentiful in this match.
Again, Shotta and edu point out how these things run.
Now I’ve missed 5 mins of the 2nd half. A 2nd goal has been scored by Ars. Ah, a lob-header.
I’m not having a go at you, A5. Its just that Ars have been robbed of several titles, and the attempts to destabilise the club continue unabated. Relentlessly.
Come On Arsenal.
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Interesting -Matt Le Tissier on Sky Superduper Saturday describing Granit’s actions as “unbelievable”, “what is he doing?” whilst on the touchline Wenger is supposedly assaulting the 4th official.
Their coverage is literally unbelievable (Jeff).
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mason making it up as he goes along
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And your reviews are epic, A5.
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clear that mason has two sets of rules today, one for stoke and a completely different one for afc
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68 minutes ox off iwobi on
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WTF! Stoke muscle Alexis off the ball while he’s in the air. Could’ve been really bad for Sanchez. Free kick or drop ball to Stoke.
Fk me!
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