A very good afternoon fellow Positives,
That contest was far from the smooth, efficient and goal difference boosting game I had been hoping for. Despite a unique PL first half in which we actually went in for the half time orange in front the Clarets were awkward opponents all afternoon, and I expect Sean Dyche is fuming in his usual splenetic manner after games at the Ems.
Of the match itself we were neither fluent nor were particularly sharp in our pressing play. We did enough however to open Burnley up through a patient interchange of passes, a deft touch from Mesut and a combination of Sead and PEA slotted the opener past a flailing Hart.
I saw no floodgates in the vicinity after our first goal however and, while I have not looked at the first half or the overall game stats, I suspect it was an even 50/50 possession for the afternoon. Nacho’s early departure was a blow, from playing a 3.5 formation at the back we then played a (? fill in the formation you think you saw). I think it was 4 with Granit sometimes the centre back, or the left sides third back, but I don’t know. And I am not too sure Unai does either.
Having sensed the chance of something better than a drubbing Burnley came out i the second half and both sides traded blows liberally and, in Barnes’ case, literally. Could the Burnley have been sent off ? Definitely ! Should Ashley have been sent off ? Probably! Had Mike Dean been the referee would he have been off ? Undoubtedly!
Amidst the battle however we carved out a rare second goalscoring chance and Auba tucked away his second in tidy fashion. Rather than slumping into a plucky-underdogs- defeated-mode however, Burnley regrouped and steamed into us with even greater vigour. Not in the bloody script at all. Barnes of all people ( boo – hiss) took advantage of a deflected clearance and Arsenal fans at home and in the stadium lurched into panic as he fairy on the festive football tree turned out to have witch tendencies. o do ot know about you dear reader but that was a very, very long 30 minutes between Barnes’ goal and Iwobi’s final killer blow.
Our man of the match for a sterling display going forward, involvement in our two opening goals and flattening the opposition when required goes to Sead Kolasinac. The “thunder of Bosnian hooves” headline stolen from the normally lugubrious Alan Smith. I would have given an award to Alex Lacazette, who was industry personified and ran the Burnley defence ragged, but after he was taken off the Frenchman appeared to be having some sort of hissy fit. No idea why but I imagine we shall hear more wild rumour on the topic. Pat on the back for Guendouzi as well.
I anticipate the same game at the Amex stadium on Wednesday so keep those gloves available, shin guards handy and gum shield within reach.
Have a fine Christmas for those who do the festival, and for those who don’t enjoy the weekend. I know I shall.
Positively Arsenal 
I see Mr Dyche did not let me down then.
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Interesting you say motm for Kolasinac as that was my first thought. However, pub post-game discussions and I’m leaning toward Socratis.
On with the Guiness. Have a good Christmas all!
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Sky
“If this game had been refereed differently do you think there would have been a different outcome”
They don’t like our friend.
I could’ve put money on it.
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I think Sean’s belly was obscuring his view of the offside call on Iwobi and looks like sky have forgotten what is written in the rule book: “benefit of the doubt”. Give an idiot enough rope…
Rich. You have enough gibberistic content here from Sky alone to write a follow up post on the Narrative!
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Unai asked if his team were too physical. Three cards for Burnely before any for the arsenal today?
Enough content here in sky’s post match coverage. No explanation or interpretation required. It is what it is.
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Now you know why our Friend never gets any or many of the big PL fixtures.
Just in case there was any doubt left.
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I thought there were a few good, meaty challenges from both sides and the lop sided card count shows which of he sides Friend thought the main perpetrators came from. Sokrtatis I thought did v well, and trod a good line between defending hard and winding Barnes up. As I said earlier in the week sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
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my God, Sean Dyche didn’t half talk some bollocks in his after game presser, and the media are running with it, can’t be having Arsenal winning, especially when opponents tried to rough them up.
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A shame the media give such an agenda driven twat like Dyche so much of an unchallenged platform so regularly.
They were incredibly lucky not to have Barnes, and maybe others seeing red.
Dyche got and deserved nothing, so the world was left watching for Sky to broadcast his festering biased bile.
Wherever he goes and whatever he does, I hope Dyche gets relegated.
To think only a year ago, some in the media and our so called fanbase were calling out this media/PGMOL/ League Managers Association protected, prehistoric relic of where the English game went so wrong ,as the next Arsenal manager!
He is essentially no different to his footballing cousins, Allardyce, Pulis, and the latter day Jose as Stoke became his muse
Anyway, the important thing, we won, so hope everyone in here has a good few days
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“Now you know why our Friend never gets any or many of the big PL fixtures”.
That is because Friend is not a Northerner Fins – get with the project!
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Pity we are giving the bloke so much air time Mandy.
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Fight fire with fire.
Yeah that was our Friend’s first game with the gunners this season. If he gets as many matches with the arsenal as any of those from within the circle of trust this season then the flames will be evenly spread. I’m heading down to the bookies now, this one is easy money…
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Fins
Fear it could be a weekly column way things have been of late.
Hasn’t assuaged my worry those Tierney diving bookings’ will be used against us for a long time.
Shitbag Dyche making huge thing of Xhaka getting an absolutely routine free kick in those situations (watch Godin and he gets about 5 a game- get ahead, feel touch, go down)
Wouldn’t say what the other dives he accused us were or who by, which is strange given the detail he is giving for his other one-eyed stories.
I intended not to make much of their approach today but that proved impossible after Dyche’s post match bullshit and Sky’s support of it.
Again, just means more of the same in near future- pushing a little further, using the diving thing cynically and opportunistically.
Could Emery’s firm line in support of refs help us a tiny bit? Not too likely but not completely impossible.
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I’ve only been praising our Friend consistently on these pages for about four seasons Andy.
But I am indeed encouraged by your brilliant jest that I believe that all northerners including my sister are pigs.
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What about Mesut today? I shall be honest. I would give him a 6/7 out of 10. Great ball for the opener and half a dozen other really good quality touches and moves. At other times though he faded and had no impact. I was pleased to see him doing the captain thing with 20 minutes to go. I’d say he’s 50/50 to start at the Amex.
Show me a fence.
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Let’s not even start on George!
I bet he didn’t even enjoy that recently rare yet predictable given who was the official unbiased display in professional officiating and entertaining contest in association football!
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I am glad you’re encouraged Fins.
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I’m giving good odds that Özil who has just got back to full fitness will be on the bench and Ramsey who played midweek after also returning from injury will get the run out.
Place yer bets.
Make some easy Wonga or help others make some Wonga by clicking on their articles on the argument between the coach and Özil!
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Being able to predict a professional performance is not an act of encouragement,
It is the result of the official having a good record (& data) going back several seasons. Though he never gets the big PL games, or the arsenal more then twice a season.
A sure bet.
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fom football.londond
Emery on what he said to Dyche at full-time
I think the most important thing Is our victory. The things that happen on the pitch between the players and us is our moments.
I think we need to have respect for the referee and for us.
Emery on whether his team dived too much
No. I don’t agree.
Emery on Burnley
They are an aggressive team with a characteristic that is clear is the game plan.
But we have respect and we need to adapt in the game plan to the long ball.
They are more physical than us, that is normal.
Emery on Ozil’s performance
Very good response. He played like we need today.
His skills, his commitment was very good. He helped us. I said we needed Mesut Ozil.
Emery on Monreal’s injury
Muscular, we made the change to not take a big risk with him.
I don’t know if he can play at Brighton. Koscielny can play and Mustafi is close.
Emery on Lacazette’s reaction to being subbed
I didn’t see that. I think he is happy with our victory.
He wants to score. When a striker doesn’t score I like he is angry with this situation.
He worked very well today. I think he is going back to the best Lacaztte.
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I see Crystal Palace have come from behind to lead away to Man City
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I hope that any supporter of the officials could observe the bias against our Friend from the broadcaster.
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If Kevin Friend “never gets the big PL” games why was Friend in charge of Totties v City a few weeks back Fins ?
That is a “big PL game” isn’t it ?
“… and Arsenal never more than twice a season ”
Brighton, West ham and the red Mancs last season Fins. Check your “data”.
Anyway I thought the referees who do get “big PL games” are all hand picked by the corrupt Riley ?
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Sokratis was great but Kolasinac was definitely MOTM. No iffs ands or butts.
Ozil was ozil with 2 brilliant assists.
Had Ramsey been there as well we would have won comfortably .
Had to have a big laugh at the malcontents who were on the back of Kola when Wenger bought him and see how he has been for Arsenal since joining. The list of Wenger signing brillant players is getting long now which the Wobs discarded at the first instant but had to change there opinion lately.
The old Gaffer knew something surely.
The Wobs have no place to hide. Hahaha.
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man city now losing 3-1
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Chelsea behind too …..
It is coming home
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Brighton’s Lewis Dunk has been sent off, so that should mean he misses the AFC game on Wednesday
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And they are getting a doing at the Vitality – excellent
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Eeee. City with goal back on 85
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Leicester win at the Bridge
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Plucky effort from City but South London’s big boys march on.
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just need utd to drop pts this evening and spurs to lose tomorrow to make it an excellent weekend for us
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Andy do you mean to say years of acknowledging Friend as a good ref on this blog means that your defence that implies that any critique of the pgMOB is an attack on the concept of referees in sport is not worth the typing?
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At the start of the match, I was praising Burnley for playing football rather than kicking AFC. It didn’t take long for them to return to type, so I’m glad to see them get what they deserved. Perhaps they need to reconsider their team ‘profile’ considering it’s the 21st century.
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Eh !!
I am with you up to you saying that you think (or thought perhaps) Kevin Friend is a good referee. The next bit though – what does it mean ?
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Bloody hell. Good Utd goal just then from Martial. Let’s hope that’s no sign of things to come now the Portuguese handbrake one has gone.
It looked for some time like he may as well have gone for more attacking football- with personnel he had, them tending to only look good (sometimes) when forced to push, and given defensive stuff wasn’t working…but he just couldn’t do it.
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Torreira will need to avoid a booking v Brighton or he will miss the LFC game
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Andy, I mean the arithmetic mean.
IBSF.
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Fair to speculate that Koscielny will start at Brighton.
Lacazette & Ramsey too. I’ve gone for Ramsey and Özil starting at Anfield though that is more likely later on, in February.
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poor old sean, he realises his team is really shit and so he has think up excuses for them. While I would never defend diving, Quen needs to be careful, if you send out a side to constantly foul and go in slightly late on challenges then you need to expect players to be ready to go down. When Sead slightly naively put his hands on the back of the burnley player he went down doing a great impression of a jelly fish, so you dont like diving sean have a word. If this is typical of English managers then no wonder they’re a dying bread.
I slightly surprised no one has mentioned the burley free kick and one of the worst decisions ive seen from officials at a dead ball. About five players offside but the cloaks of invisibility were out and no one was seen fortunetly Sok got back and it just went for a corner but again sean you dont get any decisions.
We still have alot of work to do if we are going to get points from our next two games, our wing backs are gret going forward but are poor defensively, the cbs are all on the treatment table or working their way back to full match fitness and poor old Granit is doing his best but is struggling to be honest.
We did play some lovely football and Mezut, Aaron and Laca all will be needed to link play and create. The team as a whole will need to work hard to protect those at the back and we may just need a couple of wonder saves as well apart from that everything looks rosy
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Arsenal’s greatest artist since Dennis Bergkamp… https://twitter.com/Arsenal/status/1076467921453486081
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Excellent review Andrew; these ‘elite’ level pieces save me all the bother of actually watching the game (live, at least).
I especially like your ‘splenetic Dyche’ but am also marvelling at [Irony Alert] your quoted ‘The Thunder of Bosnian Hooves’; in years gone by this line would have been promptly adopted as the name of a regular AFC blog …
But enough of the olden days.
Almost 24 hours on [Loose Descriptor Alert] and the ‘informed media’ debate has landed not on the seemingly half-rehabilitated Ozil but is instead focusing its laser-like focus on the widely (ie by us) anticipated meltdown from the Pulis heir-apparent and his laughable insistence on making Arsenal – over ANY other club you can imagine – the chosen target for his one man anti-diving campaign. Splenetic Sean Dyche indeed, and splendidly so, if I may.
You simply can not make any of this up.
I’m off to walk the dog.
Then I might (might) watch a recording of the game.
PS Let’s root for today’s Spuds match following the fine examples of the Palace and Leicester games yesterday; even if the much anticipated ‘manager-bounce’ was much in evidence over in Wales. One can but hope.
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yes AA its laughable that Dyche a week after playing dive experts spurs, where he didn’t have a single word to say about diving, comes out with a load of tosh about AFC being divers, the evidence he put forward, “they got 3 booked for diving recently”, and Xhaka won a free kick in his own penalty area, and Dyche totally refused to say what the two or three other “dives” he claimed actually were.
Dyche wants to rid the game of the awful spectacle that diving is, yet his own players were at it yesterday, but it seems Dyche see diving as something these foreign teams do, it needs to leave these shores with Brexit, so we can get back to good old English football like what we seen from Burnley yesterday, lots of in your face, lots of knees in the leg or back, the odd hair pull, a few elbows in the side of the head(in the UK its called wanting it more), rotational fouling of the most skilled player on the pitch, time wasting after 5 minutes(he even had a row with the 4th official cos their time wasting was being spotted, how very dare they).
It was all part of the narrative, jeez aren’t we being told that Ozil needs to be more Scotty Parker and less messi, we all need to understand Brexit means Brexit or the UK will never return to the wonderful football of the 70’s were Frannie Lee was “smart”, no he didn’t dive, where the tackle from behind was king, so much so that strikers had to wear shin pads on the back of their legs, where the ball was a stranger to the grass, and the league had no foreigners, well none except the dozens of Irish, and dozens of Scots, and not forgetting the Welsh, but I do have the feeling that Dyche would like to go back to the 60’s or maybe even the 50’s, as there was none of them darker players to be seen, I almost expect to hear Dyche actually say Burnley are white
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on yesterday’s game I think once we went 2 up we sat back and invited the pressure on ourselves, and it got even worse when it was 2-1, the amount of times we went from having the ball in a good advanced position, anywhere from half way line to even a corner, but ended up with the ball going all the way back to Leno, who would then just hoof it upfield to be contested, or even just straight to a Burnley defender. It was madness. No wonder Ozil was shouting at team mates to calm down and keep playing.
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Mike L. Goodman
@TheM_L_G
19h19 hours ago
Sean Dyche is entirely right that how your team stretches the rules is just part of the game and doing what you need to to compete but whatever your opponent does is a moral abomination and a blight on the game that shames them and their ancestors.
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not offside, the BBC even said AFC made a mess of this attempt to play them offside
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I’m with Passenal. It seemed to start with like a normal clean game but after about 20 minutes it definitely went up a notch or two on the aggression front. SD is an utter so and so and I am delighted that his backward looking Burnley are in trouble. Ozil was great to watch yesterday: to see him in the flesh is a thing of wonder.
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To think, I thought Jonathan Pearce was one of the better ones, based largely on detecting rare warmth and respect towards Wenger once or twice.
That was a fucking bizarre episode from him in his MOTD coverage of last night’s game.
Was he steaming? Getting it wrong first watch is one thing, but carrying on, as the replay is running of what a horrendous call it was, talking as though completely different images are on screen- i.e. us getting the offside trap woefully wrong- what the hell is that?
It made a wonderfully neat contrast to the commentator in Utd game who, after the excellent third goal, said with great enthusiasm something like ‘this, this is the Utd we want to see’
Cliche, but he must have come close to exhausting his stock of superlatives for the rest of the action and, my favourite, when penalty awarded, he worked his socks off to try add total conviction to it from the off, despite not having much to work with.
Something like : ‘pen! Ref was right there. Ref was in perfect position. Ref didn’t hesitate’ All trying to ‘sell’ the pen, if you like. Then we move to the replays and, his voice the whole while working to convey there’s no doubt it was a good call, he’s searching through it- ‘was it a kick from behind? Or the hand on the chest?’
In other words he knew it was a pen, or that’s the impression he strove to give, but didn’t know what for before the replays, and was struggling to find the foul while watching the replays. But never at any time the slightest bit of doubt it was a pen.
Safe to say…that’s not always the approach commentators take.
I know one of the regular commentators these days cut their teeth on MUTV way back (watched a youtube vid of one of our games against them a while back- from keane, Viera era- voice was very familiar) and there must be a chance he was the one.
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ew, went looking for old clip in question, couldn’t find it and ended up watching 3 mins of this instead
Sorry, Andy, but this guy was and presumably still is a crook or something similar, and Utd played like they knew it.
Just to add to the pain, those shitheads are signing that song about Wenger as he rightly complained about the travesty he was watching.
People, eh, might be Christmas, but a lot of us/them are less than shit.
Oh well, I suppose i had one day yesterday of not despising Utd to the core of my being. That’s topped me right back up.
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