Good morning Positive Arsenal,
A third straight win despite a number of changes in the starting line up, tiredness among the players and dogged opponents hell bent on leaving with a point. Perhaps the most striking point of the evening was Leicester’s approach. League champions last season, their trophy deserved, and dangerous opponents on their last visit to the Ems. This season an entirely negative, nine men at the back all evening, barely willing to move the ball over the half way line. Even Vardy seemed half hearted. Just one serious effort on goal (and an excellent save from Cech required). Was this mob really standing toe to toe with Athletico Madrid in the QF on the Champions League last week ? Entirely fitting that they should be undone by an own goal.
With regard to the Arsenal starting line-up it raised a few eyebrows, mine included. As I said yesterday we have a strong squad so changing players in itself was not unexpected after the hard afternoon at Wembley but Nacho as a third centre back, Gibbs as a wingback, Theo in from the cold, and no start for Danny or Larry ? I admit those selections puzzled me.
I heard someone say that maybe Arsene was using the game to assess those players whose future at the club after the Summer is in doubt. Speculative given the importance of the game to our final PL position but not entirely implausible.
Of the game itself we played “alright” in the first half. We had a lot of possession, stood up to the Foxes’ aggression, and moved the ball well to the edge of the visitors’ box. Beyond that point we seemed to seize up. Our attackers seemed reluctant to run at opponents into their penalty area with the ball. The ball was passed sideways and backwards across the final third. Corner came and went. We rarely had more than one player actually in the box to inflect any damage from open play. Sanchez dropped deeper and deeper to evade the Leicester centre backs. Theo flickered in and out to no obvious effect. It was only in the final 10 minutes of the first half that Mesut came to life. We never seemed to pull Leicester apart and we did not look like scoring.
As is our usual approach second half we stepped up our efforts after half time but it was not until the full complement of substitutes were on after 75 minutes that Arsenal began to crack the Leicester shell. Huth and Benalouane, having enjoyed an easy night swatting Sanchez away like an annoying bluebottle all night, suddenly faced the muscle of Giroud. Sanchez and Danny concentrated on the wings, and Aaron played further forward than le Coq. When Kosc went down writhing I had a bad moment but, much to everyone’s surprise, he was back up and playing within a couple of minutes. We became urgent in our efforts. The volume in the ground went up.
The pressure built, the Leicester defending became more ragged, for the first time all evening their defenders were being drawn out of position and gaps were opening. The goal when it came was scruffy, two deflections and no chance for the keeper.
After that decisive goal a strange few minutes. The referee and Sanchez both seemed to lose their heads for no obvious reason. What had been a fairly mild contest degenerated into a fracas with Cech and Schmeichel both leaving their goals to get involved in a row. Cech, to his credit, was telling Sanchez to control himself. Fuchs was already on a card and an idiot for slinging the ball at Alexis. The Austrian should have been off. Alexis, sore lip or not, should not have flung himself down. More concerning immediately after that incident Sanchez crashed into another Leicester player (Drinkwater ? ) in front of Arsene’s technical area and went down clutching his face again, for no obvious reason. If Jones has seen what I had seen then we would have been one Chilean short on Sunday for the NLD. The man had lost it. We all like a bit of passion and fight but even so …….I shall put it down to his exhaustion after two testing games in four days.
Very much a difficult job completed successfully. Three points nearer the opposition and the Manchester derby tonight to add a little more incentive to our chase. Fingers cross for the Ox and for Kosc this weekend and that they are both fit.
Enjoy Thursday.
Positively Arsenal 
Cold night in North London – not for the faint-hearted, it seems.
Didn’t see the game so hard to comment but I watched the Spuds who also made fairly heavy weather of things and with a day’s extra recovery time. Hard to work out how much a semi-final would take out of you regardless of whether you’d won or in their happy case, lost. Always concerning when it’s seen as necessary to chop and change the starting line-up; one assumes there must be good reason for doing so.
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I only saw it once but I’m pretty sure the ball hit him around the shoulder. The knock on the lip could have come at any point during a match.
I don’t think it’s that big a deal myself. It’s not a good look, for sure, but in reality it’s no different from the players who contort their faces in agony, squeal and roll when in fact they aren’t hurt.
Was the Burnley- tough honest British Burnley- player really in exceptional pain (for about 30 seconds) when Xhaka supposedly caught him? Surely not
Costa, on a very Costa day, can do that 5-10 times, and there’s probably not been a premier league game this year when someone doesn’t do it.
But, our football here still mostly denies that is going on and certainly denies it has anything in common with the sin of holding your face if you are struck elsewhere, so Sanchez will presumably come in for tons of stick in the coming days.
Meanwhile, the couple of bad tackles I heard were in the game will be utterly ignored. That’s just the game, though I’m one of those convinced our treatment is different.
Best just to try avoid talk of it and look forward to next game.
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Crowd I thought were commendably claim last night, patient almost.
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ah, now I know the pain of a comment not making it through here.
Was only a copy and paste job of what I said in other thread but still…
Shared the unease with the line up. I’d felt confident beforehand and thought there’d prob be changes but it didn’t look quite right to me. Theo tends to need space to thrive and I couldn’t imagine much against Leicester unless we got a nice early lead.
But it was all about a win and I’m delighted we got it.
We have a mad fixture list now, but I figured this game might pose the biggest selection headache of the lot, coming between an extra time semi and the Spurs game.
Now everything for the Spurs game, with Ramsey, Ox, Giroud and Welbeck hopefully having benefitted from the rest, a week off, hopefully with the precious points in the bag, then the final push with 5 games in 14 days.
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“Cech, to his credit, was telling Sanchez to control himself.”
Really? I thought he was arguing with the ref to book Fuchs and then told Sanchez to stay down till he (Cech) ran back to goal.
The collision was with Huth. Wenger helped/hauled Alexis up after that and said that Alexis was bleeding from the mouth then.
Much ado abut nothing really. Teams break up play all the time. It’s not pretty and not nice, hopefully not a usual thing, but it was pleasing in a weird way to see us slow the game down and not let Leicester build up a head of steam, with the ref almost as impotent as they are when we are on the receiving end of such shenanigans. Or indeed of worse, like that Been a Loony chap deciding to play hopscotch on Giroud’s spine.
Leicester got what they deserved, and unsavoury or not, if it pissed them off, I’m all for it.
As to playing Theo instead of Giroud, I think it was the right decision. Leicester would prefer not having to worry about an extra runner getting in behind. As we saw, they’d have no problem matching up Giroud’s muscle with extra physicality, and if crossing was to be the way to go, I’m sure they’d have preferred that to having Theo and Bellerin running at them down the flanks. With Theo and Alexis pressing their defense, I think their midfield had to drop deeper which allowed us to control the ball and Ozil and Xhaka had space to pick out their passes to try and move Leicester around. I’m not sure that would happen if Giroud played. He’d provide more link up, but we’d have to pass through them. Danny is probably still not fully fit, plus his finishing of late hasn’t been great.
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When I saw Theo on the team sheet thought Huth and Psycho Ben were in the a busy night Shard. Two lumps like that should have struggled against a pacey player, be that Theo or Sanchez. He never got at that them because they were playing so deep. I can see why Arsene chose him but he had very little impact (IMO)
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the idea of starting with alexis as main striker and theo right with ozil left looked an ok decision, but for it to work we needed Alexis to stay closer to goal and we needed Theo to put in a real shift, sadly neither happened, Alexis was awful, coming way too deep for the ball, and then losing it in all manner of ways, and theo’ workrate was appalling, and he seldom got into the areas where the mud and boots were flying.
one odd occurrence that seems to happen everytime we start without Danny or Ollie, loads of crosses, especially high crosses, and then when we bring them on, no one wants to cross the ball.
we seen last season that Monreal can be relied upon at CB, and its often been said Gibbs looks suited to the wing back role, so had no worries there, but I must say that Coquelin as our box to box midfielder is something I don’t get
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“the season’s worst buy” Xhaka, was my man of the match, as he continued his recent great run of form, with Gabriel not far behind. Alexis and Coquelin were the most underwhelming of our players.
First half was possession without penetration, second half was a battle. How LCFC did not have a player sent off I really don’t know, and how both teams ended on same number of bookings(2 each) I’m at a loss to explain, other than to say PGMOL’s finest.
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Leicester for four yellow eddy Simpson, Fuchs, Psycho Benny and Huth – their entire back four
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got to love this post by Arsenal photographer Stuart MacFarlane, nice little dig at Huth, by the way was this not the incident right at the end at the touchline that Wenger said Alexis got the cut lip from and of course Tony Gale described as a foul by Alexis and that he should be off.
Stuart MacFarlane @Stuart_PhotoAFC 14h14 hours ago
Alexis Sanchez challenged by #Arsenall match winner Robert Huth. #afc #arsena
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anicol, I had taken my stat from Arsenal.com match report, they had it at 2 bookings each,
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Then I fear the Arse.com is in error eddy !! Sanchez and Alexis were carded for us, the four Leicester players for them. As I said Fuchs should have gone off after the throw in incident.
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ha ha ha, ITK Dial Square, or Arsenal Nexus as he now calls himself, is in a bit of a tizzy today after reports that Allegri has signed an new contract at Juventus, as this ITK has been not only claiming that Allegri to AFC was a done deal, but that his staff were already working at AFC and it was them and not Wenger who had decided on this switch to 3 at the back. Fully expect he will once again change his Twitter account when Wenger signs the new two year contract he says has not been offered.
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I have to point out that any critique of Alexis that ignores him deliberately blocking a player trying to steal ten yards on a throw in for the second time in five minutes is not accurate but and is unbalanced commentary.
If you can’t take the gamesmanship, get out of the kitchen?
Alexis did sweet fa wrong. technically with the run up for the throw in included he was probably also more the know two meters away.
He did great (apart from with some passes)
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yes ancol, fuchs should certainly have been sent off and so should benny, that was a horrible incident, but the media want alexis banned for making a meal of being hit with the ball, wonder who we are playing next that the media want alexis to be banned for, if they could get him a two game ban it would be ideal in their view.
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< re: the broadcasters criticism etc.
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To clarify:
“The media” want him banned whilst ignoring the infringement from Fuchs made (twice) before he took the throw in.
We know the drill. Its almost as if this extreme off the right wing verge of our media don’t like an institution that doesn’t promote debt slavery. Who could imagine such a thing?
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The 3-4-3 needs width. Without someone who could beat their opponent out wide, the formation is not that effective. Personally, I would have loved it if Iwobi had been given a shot at right wingback. I think he would have caused Fuchs nightmares and we would have had an easier time of it.
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had to laugh at LCFC fans signing “Wenger we want you to stay”, the same LCFC fans who have never seen their team defeat a Wenger team in the league and have only once seen them defeat his team in an FA Cup game, and that on penalties, the lack of self awareness of football fans never ceases to amaze me.
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Another football match.
Another post game discussion dominated by the officials (not here but everywhere). Win lose or draw. It’s not acceptable for any sport to fall to such depths let alone the world’s richest.
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I hope Alexis doesn’t get his leg broken.
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Thanks for extracting something out of a game that was for all intends and purposes a very dull affair – well, accept for Sánchez’s antics right at end.
Tbh, after Sunday’s heroics, leaving ‘it all out there’ and a relatively short turnaround, I wasn’t expecting much but for us to drag ourselves over the line, and that we did. So apart from letting of a relieving sigh at the final whistle, I was as happy as a lark for the 3 points got.
Hopefully the boys will spend some time in the ice bath and massage table to get them battle ready for our next match at the swamp.
PS: finished reading Shotta’s blog earlier this morning… very informative, educational and all that mental jazz from him and all contributing in the comment section. High 5’s all around.
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Gains I think we had lots of width on the right, if anything Theo and Hector got in each others way, but the problem was that once either of them got half a yard to cross the ball, there was no one in the area, or it was only a choice of Alexis, Gibbs or Theo, and so a high cross was pointless, and the passing lane for a low cross was crowded, as I said earlier, we put in the crosses right up till we brought on the big men, then we put in less of them, maybe it was the lads we took off who were our most likely crossers of the ball, I don’t know.
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AFC_Andrew @PR_WhoRu 3h3 hours ago
Quick search of Google news shows a good 50+ articles dedicated to Sanchez’ theatrics & only two minor media outlets covering Benalouane.
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Excellent as always A5. As you might have seen in my twitter interaction with Tim Stillman last night, I am quite sceptical of the “captain hindsight” criticisms of Arsene’s team selection. It was a game he had to ring the changes for two main reasons.
First, due to the draining demands put on the players in FA cup semi-final vs City. I sense an almost casual dismissal of the magnitude of the efforts to overcome a very good City team. Have we already forgotten the colossal physical and mental effort to defend resolutely and to counter-attack at speed. That the gunners came from a goal down and it had to go to overtime when Arsenal scrambled a goal.
Second, in four days Arsenal has a huge derby with Spurs. This is a game that will ultimately decide Arsenal’s top-4 ambitions as well as Spurs title hopes. Arsenal are arguably underdogs going into this game and will need those warriors who suffered the most wear and tear vs City to be ready for the fight on Sunday. The critics of yesterday’s team selection are guilty of not taking into account the upcoming battles especially the magnitude of Sunday’s game. We don’t need these same critics to turnaround next Monday together with their mainstream media brethren to accuse Wenger of short-termism and not rotating vs Leicester as supposedly “superior” managers would have done.
Frankly I think more criticism should be applied to Sanchez and Walcott, who, particularly in the 1st half, were terrible in their performance.
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on the team selection, and I know that Arsenal.com team line up showed theo as the striker, but that does not excuse the bloggers who have articles today about how theo should never be our central striker again, he did not play as the striker, it was ozil left, theo right, and alexis in the middle, but of course a “Alexis should never plays as our central striker again” article does not fit with the agenda, especially when you have been writing “Alexis needs to be our main striker” articles for weeks now.
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The old fart’s thoughts.
I fear that these days counting the number of times early on that we play the ball in or through the centre circle gives me a reasonable idea of the speed at which we’re about to play. Last night suggested slow. It was. And, certainly not helped by Alexis and Theo (playing as Wally) doing very little that was positive in and around the area.OK Alexis had that screamer against the bar and Wally a badly timed half chance, but other than those their contribution was painful.
Petr’s great save kept us alive and despite the “at long last” intro of Olly and Danny which saw us step up a gear, the bad lads at the rear of the Foxes defence saw them looking ready to grab an undeserved point. That must have been heart breaking for our defensive/midfield players who ruled the pitch.
Step up Nacho…our go-to man in the past 2 games. A goal and an assist. Lovely jubbly. A goal, any goal, was at last rewarded when Nacho’s shot? cross? whatever took a delightful deflection off Huth’s tit. After that there was little to worry about other than Alexis (and the ref) having a joint display of idiocy. We will have to do better on Suunday so keep the faith that them that needed a rest, got it.
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–
Welbeck still being mollycoddled, struggled when starting a few games recently: off the bench for a few matches makes sense?
Iwobi unlucky not to start a match in the recent cluster. A good cameo off the bench in his last appearance.
Giroud. Unlucky not to start. but, following a stray arm in the face when Alexis clipped the ball into the area the push on huth before the goal followed immediately by the push afterwards as he ran to celebrate we’re worth the wait.
Gamesmanship? It appears from the last two football matches that when AFC players are not being sent off for tripping opponents in their own halves (unheard of in the game, except for AFC…) that they do know how to play the same Game as all the rest.
UTA
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Shotta
Exactly!
For my own amusement I delved back into the experts Blagasphere to listen to their wisdom following the SF.
The much repeated comments on OG,said/written with great authority about him not being suited to the variation in formation with three CBs were priceless.
Hands up any of you who can imagine chamberlain choosing to ignore Ozil unmarked to his right and instead to opt for an early hit variant of one his wicked curling crosses ( a bit like the one he supplied to Giroud at old Trafford…you can see where this is headed) towards, well, towards Giroud after the six has noticed that Europe’s premier targetman has been skilful enough to get himself one on one with Navas at the far post (nevermind Monreal!).
*watches tumbleweed roll by*
Yup. I thought the same too.
We certainly are blessed to have such a knowledgable and reliable stable of blaggers trying to outscream one another.
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The Ox > ‘six’
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Alexis Sanchez and Christian Fuchs incident could have been avoided, says Nigel Winterburn
Last Updated: 27/04/17 11:56am
Nigel Winterburn has blamed the referee and his assistants for allowing the Alexis Sanchez-Christian Fuchs throw-in incident to escalate at the Emirates on Wednesday evening.
With a couple of minutes remaining of Arsenal’s Premier League clash against Leicester, Fuchs’s attempt to take a throw-in was blocked by Sanchez, who stood a few inches away from the Foxes’ defender.
Fuchs was twice forced to retreat and after becoming increasingly annoyed by the Chilean’s antics, made a third attempt by throwing the ball straight at Sanchez.
Sanchez fell to the deck holding his face after Fuchs had thrown the ball into his shoulder, causing a stir late on in the game
TV replays showed the ball bounce off the striker’s shoulder and glancing off his head.
Sanchez then fell to floor clutching his face only to be shown a yellow card by referee Mike Jones who had earlier gestured him to move away.
But Winterburn, who played for Arsenal between 1983 and 2000, believes the officials should have taken the sting out of the situation earlier.
He told Sky Sports News HQ: “I said straight away when the incident happened that both of them will probably get booked.
“The whole thing is a mess. The referee and the assistant got it completely wrong because they could have diffused it first of all.
“Sanchez was shrugging his shoulders as if to say ‘what am I doing wrong’?
“And the linesman or referee should have gone and told him to move away – because you’ve got to be two metres away.
“If he had done that, Fuchs would not have got irritable.
“Having said that, Sanchez’s reaction is ridiculous. But Fuchs should have been booked again because what he did isn’t right.
“Both were trying to get each other booked. But it’s a complete mess up by the ref.”
Ex-Manchester City striker Shaun Goater, who was also appearing on SSN, thinks Sanchez may have been unaware of the rules concerning a throw-in.
Goater suggested: “Rules say you have to be two metres away from the person taking the throw and I’m not certain Sanchez was aware of the rules.
“He probably wasn’t and he was doing what I probably would have done because I wasn’t aware of the rule until recently.
“Go as close as you can and pretend to jump and obstruct the thrower – that was his intention.
“And it irritated the thrower enough to make him throw the ball at Sanchez who has tried to get Fuchs a yellow card by going down holding his face.
“So, Sanchez was only doing what the players do in the modern game.”
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I love the dismay in arsenal twitter land and in the blogs over wenger’s comments in regard to Mbappe
Wenger said that Arsenal are tracking the lad, and are very interested in signing him, but that if the fee is in the £100M bracket it makes it very difficult for Arsenal to do. And that we would be at a disadvantage in the race to sign him with the likes of Real Madrid, PSG, Chelsea, Man Utd and Man City all having more spending power if they want the lad.
the spend what it takes, give him what he wants culture really has gone beyond a joke, there is so little awareness of reality now among people its unreal.
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Fins – The nonsense the blaggers (and podcasters) have spouted about our great French targetman will be the subject of my next blog. But, first I have to prepare myself to listen to their stupid podcasts. I would rather do a root canal, which, at least, is for my oral health.
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Eddy: As I told Stillman last night, if we could land Mbappe, which I doubt for all the reasons you mentioned, I would be as happy as a bug in a rug for the main reason that Arsene would sell Sanchez in a hearbeat and build the team around the Frenchman. We are talking about a Henryesque striker without the wasteful, wayward passing.
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Shotts
I’m not sure such a seasoned expert such as the fence splitter to whom you refer would be willing to acknowledge that the rookie player you mention is simply some years away from reaching the kind of levels required to make Messi cry or lead to lead his national team to a tournament victory or even just lead it like we saw Europe’s leading targetman do last summer, or at the least to have an fa cup final named after yourself (courtesy of our very own Mel). I can remember slurgus trying to poach a 24 year old RVP…
Never mind the football eh?
Fook my football boots.
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I believe that the Cardiff fans who were singing “don’t sack Mackay” because the funny papers told them to sing that song know more about he footy then your average arse blagging expert.
(See what I did there?)
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I trying to understand:
A player who deschamps does not consider ready to be his starter ahead of say, Giroud, this rookie is now the blaggers latest self flaggellating fetish? A player ready to come onand take the PL by storm whilst playing for AFC (no protection = more likelihood of injury for developing athletes).
Have I got that right?
We’re lucky to have such insight!
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Unless we are talking about the next Pele/Messi/Ronaldo (not the crap one)
However something tells me that most people commenting on this player have not seen him play more then 90mins and few if any in the flesh.
And a quick reference informs me that he still hasn’t been selected by deschamps ahead of Giroud and Benzema…
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Fins – Arsene is interested in Mbappe and that is good enough for me. He would play him on the flanks for the first year at least with Big Ollie as targetman and then gradually transform him into a central striker (see career path of Henry, RVP, Adebayor). No way can he come in this league and dominate. Look at the pig’s ear United have made of Martial. Now, according to the funny papers, Jose wants Morata and Greizman with Rashford as 3rd striker. Martial would be surplus to requirements. Who will buy him given that he is on contract for huge United-style wages?
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Positivistas: Have you surveyed the other bloggers since Sunday? Most are absolutely devastated we are on a winning run. As for our top-4 chances, contrary to the math, they see absolutely none. Arsene staying on is a virtual disaster. They are worse than aTottenham supporter?
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Just in case you are wondering about my unusual profuse posting: no work until 12:00 noon local time. Lol.
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Exactly Shotts AW would ease in him to life as a PL CF waiting until he was fully developed (no protection!) to play him there on a regular basis.
A few years down the road!
A bit like some other manager is attempting to do with some player that UTD paid £60M for two years ago now. I’m not making this up! Utd paid lots and lots of wonga for a player they’d have to wait years and years to see develop. Then again they paid £90M for a player who can’t match a one legged Diaby…
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Fins: I will always preface my comments by saying I doubt we will get him but Mbappe is a highly developed specimen for an 18 year old. In the last CL match vs BVB I saw him shrug off a much older, mature player with such force using a legitimate shoulder charge it was scary. Too scary for the ref who called it a foul. It wasn’t. But as we all know they will try to Diaby him in the Prem and the refs will be happy to allow it. No way is a 19 year-old Frog coming to England and show up honest, hardworking English pros. No siree.
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Fins
We quite likely are talking about an absolute world beater in Mbappe.
Older Ronaldo is probably the last player to do so well as an 18 year old. Quick look at the stats confirms he is ahead, in scoring terms anyway, of Ronaldo 2, Rooney and even Messi for his age/1st full season. At 17/18 he is scoring at near enough the rate Henry only did at 22 for us.
I can well believe we may have tried for him a couple of times already, but the problem is whereas a select few could do something ludicrous like pay 40 or 50 million or whatever it would ave taken to get him at the start of the year for a 17 year old with a single goal in senior football to his name, we surely couldn’t, even if we believed we were looking at the closest thing to a guarantee of greatness in a 17 year old.
I watched him this summer in the tournament Maitland-Niles was in- Euro u19’s I think- and he was quite simply sensational, ridiculously good. Opposition couldn’t get near him and his touch and end product was near perfect most of the time.
I’d bet the house the club saw it,too, every minute of it, and that they most likely tried their luck with Monaco afterwards.
Monaco no doubt gave a firm ‘non’, and who can blame them. Also, it’s reasonable to assume the lad was happy where he was. Settled and knew his chance was coming.
Still, I dreamed this summer gone we could somehow do it, but it was not very realistic, not for us.
I resent the fact that budgetless clubs can easily justify paying almost anything to buy players who have hardly played, or ones who have and have proved they are almost sure to be superstars, but it’s a pointless habit, I suppose, and I have to accept the lay of land, and that there are good players out there we can compete for and we’ve a chance of producing our own young stars for the team.
Bit of luck, Real or Barca will sign him when he goes.
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I’m quite sure we could sign Mbappe if we really wanted to. Despite the budgets, or lack thereof, of other clubs. But could and should are often two different things.
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Rich
We have to apply the Ligue 1 handicap to his stats (though this never caused a problem with Koscielny).
However anyone who chooses to believe that the next world class French talent after Diaby (Griezzman is good but not that class for me) will move to AFC at a young age, well, to be kind they haven’t been paying attention this past decade.
But ignoring that I don’t understand why anyone would ignore what happens with young footballers like Tony Martial or closer to home Raheem Sterling*. Anyone who spends most of their time discussing transfers without discussing agents is…
*for those of you interested the SF on Sunday settled the sporting bet I’d had these past two seasons with a friend (Chamberlain or Sterling?). And the player who came on and got subbed off as opposed to the player who won the MOTM award, that player lost the bet!
I posit to all of you that is far more important for AFC to retain AOC then to sign this Monaco kid. For lots of lots and lots of reasons. English club needs English star is one. Another one of them being that AOC has the same agent as Sterling and he must slowly be figuring out which of his two mules is more attractive to the coaches out there: yikes!
Why were the Experts demanding that AFCs best player these past few months be sold?
What is that they know about the football (agents) that we don’t? I’d love to know IBSF
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Very good point Fins. AOC must be priority over any new signing. As you correctly emphasize, we ignore the role of the agents at our peril. Their goal is to maximize the transfer fee and by definition their cut. To hell with whats best for the player. Martial’s career is going nowhere fast unlike Mr. 10%.
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Why oh why oh why are we talking about transfers when we have 6 PL games to go and are fighting for every point? We just can’t help ourselves, I guess. New toys always excite, I get it.
Here’s my two cents: bloggers/pundits can lay off Alexis and lay off Theo. Let’s review, what did Alexis do exactly? Did he dive to try and win a penalty? Nope. Did he try to get Fuchs sent off? Well, in the clip I saw there was no waving of an imaginary card, like Pep did on Sunday. Did he annoy Fuchs and get him to lose his temper and launch the ball at his head? Yep, sure did. Did he fall to the ground and waste a little more time? Absolutely. Forever the cry has been Arsenal are too soft, naive, not winners, etc etc etc. Now we try a little gamesmanship and it’s all “oh that’s just awful”. Yeah, whatever.
And Theo. Well, I think we all know that Theo is at his best when things are instinctive. This was his first run out in this formation, so I doubt he felt comfortable. Also, I actually agree that maybe it doesn’t suit him as much, or at least not in this game where he’s got no space in behind. Arsene himself talked about how formations suit some players more than others when he was discussing Ox, who has looked like a revelation, but maybe actually hasn’t had to do the things he finds challenging while in this formation. Perhaps Theo isn’t so lucky. Perhaps folks don’t have to blame Arsene or Theo for letting Theo get his feet wet, and maybe they could remember how many goals Theo has scored for us this season before pronouncing him useless again. But, hey, I’m not holding my breath. I’ll just remember those of us who hang out here know better that that.
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Post of the day goes to Alabama – you go girl!
I’ve been quite disappointed by some of the posts on PA the last couple of days in relation to Alexis. I can’t believe that people are buying into and expounding the right wing media narrative. I say fuck them all – when the media call out the antics of players on their favourite teams for worse behaviour than anything witnessed last night then they might be worth acknowledging. Allowing Fuchs a free run up and long throw into our box leading to a possible equaliser would have been worse than a little bit of gamesmanship and time wasting. It seem that what is good for the goose is not so good for the gander when it comes to Arsenal.
P.S. “Even Vardy seemed half hearted. Just one serious effort on goal (and an excellent save from Cech required)” Except Cech didn’t save it he hit it into the side netting – there was no corner afterwards.
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Oi – the volley was from Mahrez and it was dead on target – brilliant one handed save !!
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