Good day one and all.
Arsenal is traveling north to the King Power Stadium for a high noon confrontation with Leicester City in what may well be a last chance saloon to keep alive top-four aspirations.
The Gunners lost their way a bit in the last two Premier League fixtures as they conceded three goals in defeats to both Crystal Palace and Wolves, after conceding just one in their seven games prior (all competitions). It made the Gooniverse restless as questions are being asked as to whether they got the gumption to get over the last few hurdles as we approach the finish line. This is the same group of players that registered fine victories over United, Chelsea and Tottenham, and were impressive in draws against Liverpool and Tottenham (a) – both which they were unlucky not to win.
So why did we look so limp and stripped of any kind of heart? Is Unai Emery’s tinkering unsettling the team?
Since taking charge of the Foxes Brendan Rodgers lost his first against Watford but he look to have instilled ‘great character’ thereafter as his team won their next four. However, their last two matches were a loss and draw each, so to avoid three game winless run it’s unlikely we’ll find them in the mood to just rollover. Jamie Vardy too, who had his ups and downs under previous manager Claude Puel, seem to have got an arm around his shoulder and whispers of nonsensical motivational mantra into his ear as he comes into this game having scored six goals in their last six matches.
There’s no hiding that Arsenal was a bit sh** this past week but the battle for Champions League places is not over yet and it will arguably makes little sense to rest and rotate with two weeks left this campaign. Although Europa offers another path for a return to Europe’s premier club competition, being ‘at the beach’ would not be ideal preparation ahead of Thursday night – which indeed pose an interesting selection dilemma for Emery.
Win this afternoon and we will move to within a point of Totnum and also put added pressure on both Chelsea and Manutd – who face each other later at Old Trafford – as the loser may well find themselves out of the top-four race.
That being said, the Gunners’ away form has been pretty dire and beating the Foxes at the KP is a task easier said than done. So while this is a tough one to call, I think we can expect to see a very interesting game because both teams are going to slug it out, and if push comes to shove… the Gunners just need to dig deep.
@LaboGoon
**
Positively Arsenal 
Mixed bag for Iwobi in that half, but I feel he could make a difference in this match. It’s going to be tough another 45 against the 14 opponents for the 10 men.
I’d say this was a decent half from the Gunners in a match where there is an obvious and undeniable handicap against.
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70,77,78; [45] 90,87,90 [3]
69,62; [49] -none-
67; [23] -none-
78; [12] 89,90,84 [7]
55 [35] 54 [36]
Looked at stats once and in five full prem seasons of the seven double yellows against us only once was before 84th minute. Six of them – 3 on 90- came to a grand total of ten minutes with one strange outlier being Danny Simpsons 54th minute double yellow.
Anyway, 46 minutes in total over five seasons. We’ll beat that today.
For us the latest of our 8 in that period came in the 78th min. Our total was 2hours and 44 minutes.
Long term trends is long term trends.
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Maybe Finsbury, but have long thought the club are way to passive in accepting conpletely different refereeing standards than rivals.
Wenger was silenced, Stan too removed, Gazidis too political and dont know enough what to say about Raul
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Feels impossible to hold out as is. I’d try make big change just to throw them a bit.
Mavropanos for Mkhi, Mustafi move to right back. Willock for Laca maybe.
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iwobi off, Koscielny on
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Wow Rich.
Along with the long term pelanty trends that is a strong presentation of the facts.
But the click hungry Blaggers are going to be too scared to even describe the obvious cheating we are watching as cheating. “Cheating”. It’s a simple and efficient word yet it appears to be beyond them.
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Mandy the less I say about Raul and Brand Neymar the better! Haha.
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COYG!
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Arsenal Women
Verified account @ArsenalWFC
2m2 minutes ago
HALF-TIME: #BHAFC 0-2 #AWFC
We’re 2️⃣ goals to the good thanks to @VivianneMiedema and @Katie_McCabe11 😉
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some of our passing today has been of the laughable kind
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best quote I’ve seen today
“He gave the red because he wanted to, not because he had to.”
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lcfc take the lead, a free header seven yards out, poor defending from us once again, half an hour to go
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by the way sokratis with comical attempt to get to their scorer, now if that was Mustafi, you know the rest
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Michael Oliver at Mike Dean levels of “look at me” performance
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we need a goal and we bring on no goal no assist Guendouzi for Mkhitaryan, what does Nketiah and Willock have to do to get some game time.
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After that entertaining display of Premier League PGMO Rules (OK?) variable Football code variant I have been playing some football (Ass.) this second half with the nephews entertaining ourselves with nutmegs etc.
Mike’s idea of a kickabout with a six year old probably involves him punching the kid in the mouth with the protection and aid of his mate Michael who is the ref for the kickabout. you know it, I know it, it’s their concept of the game. A cowards game.
The Mikes have been taking the mickey out of English football for too long.
I’m genuinely curious to see how many Blaggers will have the footballs to describe the cheating they witnessed from the kick off today as “cheating”.
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15 minutes left to save this game
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lacazette off, Nketiah on
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Really want to see Nketiah get more minutes in the league given the bias and unlikely event of AFC improving their “away” form *coughs* anytime soon.
Rather then call out the cheating we know the meme the shower of Blaggers have prepped: to describe a club that recently won three cups in four years including s victory after being 0-2 down as “Bottlers”. Damn I could be a self declared Expert in Sports Communications aka PR aka Propaganda to plebs like you and me.
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long keeper punt down field and we let vardy score, 2-0,
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Arsenal Women
Verified account @ArsenalWFC
59s60 seconds ago
WHAT A HIT! TAKE A BOW, @BMEADO9! 😱
🔵 0-3 🔴 (69) | @FAWSL
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Id still rather support the Arsenal than dogshite Leicester.
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I see Micky the cheat ignores what even the Beeb are calling (another) elbow and wow they even say it should’ve been a pelanty.
As in: way more of a yellow card then any shown to AMN.
Cheating. A word beyond the Arsenal Blagger as for he football Virgins of this world people don’t cheat in Sports. Amazing to think but this must be their logic, either that or they too have a cow to milk…
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FT: PGMOL 3-0 Arsenal
we could not hold out 10 v 12, man of the match Michael Oliver who totally dominated this game
4 defeats in our last 5 league games (a win v 10 man watford), an awful time of the season to have our worst run of form in years.
think we had one shot on target all game, that has been a pattern of our recent poor run of results, Emery needs a EL win or his tactical genius thinkering could see him out of a job
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fuck it. Dont think about it or go over it. Just concentrate on the EL game, its the only way. Let that Championship side have their wanker moment, its their cup final and just another tedious afternoon for us.
COYG!
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Arsenal Women
Verified account @ArsenalWFC
4m4 minutes ago
MAGIC FROM @DANIELLEDONK 💫
🔵 0-4 🔴 (75) | @FAWSL
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Wasn’t much point in thinking about it as a game of football after the cheat ignored the foul on Auba and three seconds later gave a yellow for a shoulder barge!
Was over it before it happened (or whilst it was happening) though I remain curious to see how many of the shower of Blaggers can even describe what we saw on the pitch, especially that opening period.
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2 games to go, we currently have 3pts more than we got last season, we have scored 5 less goals, and let in 2 less. with one away game to play we have 2 more away wins than last season, with 1 home game to play we have 1 less home win than last season
progress my arse, we have no actual style of play, no regular formation, no obvious tactical plan, other than hope we can get a fullback in on the over lap,
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Arsenal Women are Women’s Super League Champions 2019, with a game to spare after a 4-0 win away to Brighton, the 7 year wait is over.
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Very hard to deal with an away game, injury hit, in a wretched run of form , when a rwferee makes a clear signal of his intention to cheat, presumably to help others.
But, and there is always a but, emery and the team are making it too easy for those with an agenda. His faults are described in prev posts, would add he could and should have been much braver with youngsters. The D Suarez call was a bad mistake, assuming he made it, and whoever is responsible for Ramsey needs to check themselves out,we are told emery believed he didnt need him!
I am not one for chopping and changing managers after a year , when there are mitigations, i suspect stan isnt either, they would lose a lot of face.
But failure to win the EL will surely put emery on a pretty large degree of notice to shape up quickly next season or else. Collapsing so badly at the business end of season isnt good whatever the mitigations.
Very, very poor show all round in recent games.
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Good timing on our debate earlier about getting more ‘physical’.
How do you do it when the most lenient refs in the big league business can suddenly switch into mercilessly strict enforcers of rules, whatever the minute?
Week or so after watching Watford’s Hughes commit enough fouls for three yellows, you have an early booking when it is more usual to let a similar foul go as a free kick, and then a second yellow in first half which didn’t have to be given and when 2nd yellows. let alone in first half, are rare in league.
Whatcha gonna do, if that anecdotal evidence is in fact very consistent with how our games are officiated time after time?
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before the game I posted my hope that Emery would set up the team bravely, to approach the game like we have in most of the big games, to go for it, sadly he once again did his best impression of Joselite, he has too much fear in his game plan for my liking, and I think it has rubbed off on the players.
Rich I have said for many a long year that the idea that AFC should fight fire with fire is to ignore the way the PGMOL game managers treat Arsenal players when we play, you can’t fight fire with fire when the fireman is only interested in punishing one side. Can anyone tell me when they have ever seen someone sent off for what AMN did today, in any game, I really can’t recall it. I certainly have seen many opponents make five or six fouls, all worse than those of AMN, and receive nothing more than a couple of talkings to, even they old couple of final warnings. Two fouls, two yellow cards, which by the way means we can’t even appeal the Red and one game suspension.
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in this run of bad results the one thing that keeps coming to my mind is our need to brin in an old style target man, dare I say someone like Giroud. We are so predictable or should I say limited as to how we can attack when its pointless for us to put in any kind of high ball to our attack.
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fucking man city making hard work of burnley so far, need them to turn it on in the second half. By the way, Burnley are as big a bunch of cheats as any team I’ve ever seen,
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seems City should have had a penalty for handball but not given
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TheAFCnewsroom
@TheAFCnewsroom
1h1 hour ago
Arsenal records set today:
Arsenal had their lowest amount of possession in a PL match ever (33%).
Arsenal have lost their first ever midday PL kick-off.
Arsenal have now conceded more goals (34) away from home than in any of their previous PL campaigns.
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seen the city penalty claims, as clear a penalty as you will ever see, deliberate handball
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thank god for goal line technology, Aguero goal given, come on city get another goal or two, can’t be having liverpool win the title
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Of course we would have played better with Ramsey, what side wouldn’t. We miss his energy and we miss his skill. But unforunately he is injured and therein lies the problem, for whenever he has been injured over the last five years we have struggled. Whether we let him go or kept him we were always going to need to find a replacement for him, and I guess we were not in a position to do that and also find his wages, having also committed to big wages for Ozil and Aubamayang last year. Which is a great pity, and perhaps shows how hard it is to make the jump from good to great as a club these days.
Mind you, a few more perfomances like the ones over the last fortnight will see us quite easily make the leap from good to dire, especailly if we continue to be treated like we are so often treated by the officials. So just at the moment it all looks a bit poor, and all I can hope for in the near future is an all out assault on the Europa, and then maybe a very honest decision to be made as to what the DNA of the club actually is and what exactly is the five-year plan.
And with regard to our manager, I imagine that he has not yet really come to terms with the way this League and this team is refereed, but that when he does he will start to make apporpriate adjustments.
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we today conceded 3 goals for the third league game in a row for the first time since 1966
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foreverheady if the head coach has not come to terms with the way the league and his team is refereed with only 2 games left to the season, I have doubts he ever will
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Joselite, maybe but have never seen a jose team defend this badly except when he has list the dressing room.
Good post FH, it is time the club stand up to this officiating, shouldnt be left to emery, they silenced wenger.
Emery does have a rebuild but just wonder who in the club is really responsible for ins and outs? And after suarez and for that matter ramsey, can emery really be trusted on ins and outs?
I think the players have a very worrying dependance on ramsey
Expecting an all out assault on the europa now they have royally messed up this years top four gift horse.
Hopefully next season the fitness staff can get them through a season without running out of steam
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https://mobile.twitter.com/ArsenalPoland/status/1122470412972109824
How often in the PL does a defender get sent off for a second yellow to a diving opponent in the first twenty minutes?
As often as a player is sent off like Xhaka was for breathing in the wrong direction!
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Ozil and Rambo would clearly have been the leaders in the dressing room at the start of th season.
A coach who won’t see he had the best British CM if not the best CM in the league in his squad till March? We all make mistakes, but…that’s a biggie for a football coach!
How long would AW have lasted if he’d tried to bench Bergkamp and Adams? Asking for a friend…
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FT: Burnley 0-1 Man City
city need to wins from two to be champs
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If Arsenal can make it past Valencia and show they’re new players are actually better then Coqielin and Gabriel (are they?) and it’s Chelsea in the final then I hope that the new Chelsea manager continues to drop the World Cup winners’ striker in favour of a striker who has rarely impressed at that level.
An equally baffling and inexplicable decision as the one to not play the best CM in the league in CM, and this call is his entitlement.
A decision I hope to be celebrating come the end of May!!!
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The sending off of AMN was disgraceful but don’t let that fool you into thinking that LCFC were not well on top before it anyway. Yes it made our task all the harder, but we had 26% possession and only Iwobi’s tame shot on target at that stage.
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so on the day AMN got sent off for little or nothing, Martin Atkinson has let at least two no doubt Red challenges go today in the Man Utd v Chelsea game, these PGMOL game managers are a joke, a bad joke
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Eds
As I saw it the sending off occurred after the Gunners had held off the opening spell/burst from the opponents and were starting to gain more possession and get more into the game, that they then did OK to hold out till HT.
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