Saturday night’s game is against the defending champions, or nondefending champions you could say.
We have had a miserable and disappointing season, but imagine how Liverpool fans feel? They were touting themselves as the greatest PL team ever and talking about the Klopp dynasty to come, instead they find themselves in 7th place and 25 points behind City, nearer to us in 9th and only 4 points behind them. Think how bad we have been and they are almost as bad. The poor souls. Shall we shed a tear?
Both sides have won 2 of their last 5 games so it’s an even game, unbelievably. And even more unbelievable is that this form is a bit of a revival for both sides. I’m shaking my head as I write this. Neither club has a snowball’s chance of making the top 4 with 9 games left! What the actual f*ck?
Anyway, on to the game.
Goodness only knows the fitness and tiredness levels of our returning players. We do know that Luiz is out and that Xhaka was to sick to train on Friday. Now for all the stick Xhaka gets, we could be in big trouble if he can’t play. He’s by far our most import and and consistent player that rarely misses a minute of game time. I don’t expect to see either Saka or ESR, with both of them struggling to shake of muscular problems.
There really is no point me trying to think of something more to say, because I have no idea what we will see in terms of formation, line up or performance. Our success against them came with 5 at the back and a backs to the wall effort , shortly after they had won the league last season, buy they were half on the beach that day and we seem to have moved away from the total negative tactics we employed then and in the run in to the FA cup win, So who know? Perhaps you think you do? So tell me in the comments.
Enjoy the game and stay safe.
Pedantic George
Positively Arsenal 
rumors that both David Luiz and Tierney could miss the rest of the season
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Luiz a bad loss but Tierney would hit our already modest chances in Europa League terribly.
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I love how many tell us that Arteta has fixed the defense, just the 56 goals conceded in his 50 EPL games, compared to 70 in Emery’s first 50 and 64 in Wenger’s last 50, but they totally ignore that we have only scored 72 goals in those 50, that is a GD of 16, while we scored 91 under Emery for a GD of 21, and in Wenger’s last 50 we scored 96 for a GD or 32, so despite Wenger’s team letting in 8 more goals, his team had twice as good a GD as Arteta’s team. Tell me again where all this progress is
by the way Arteta has taken 75pts in those 50 games, Emery took 88pts in his first 50 games which is the same as Wenger took 88pts in his last 50.
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we can look forward to next season and maybe we get a new bigger better soundbite to help us, as trust the process needs replacing or we are going nowhere fast.
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Never mind the off field squad management which has been awful (Pepe & Other transfers! £300M worth) we’ve all noticed players being redlined and overplayed and the three we all knew needed some rotation especially with internationals got little rest or rotation and those chickens have also come home to roost.
Forget about everything else I won’t respect coaches in Sport that don’t respect their own players. The only reason people watch sport is to watch the best talents, otherwise you could just play with your mates with plenty of Pashun and Effort. that line/meme works a treat for the Super Agents.
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Seems if you take out KT, ESR, Saka, and Xhaka..and possibly even Luiz ( I know) from the Lineup, this team are just not very good
Just hope some of them are available for the EL
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well it would affect any team to be missing four or five of their best players, we are no different, we can ill afford to have Xhaka, David Luiz, ESR and Saka all out at the same time, but is that a good enough excuse for our Manager to be unable to get a performance out of a team that cost so much
leno £22M
chambers £16M holding £3M Gabriel £27M Tierney £25M
Partey £50M
Pepe £72M Lacazette £50M Aubameyang £50M
and we have seen values of £25M for Ceballos and £50M for Odegaard mentioned in recent weeks, that would put yesterday’s starting 11 at a cost of over £400M
yet we have loads of bloggers and big twitter accounts telling us its got nothing to do with our manager, but all fault is with Kroenke for not spending his own money on the team and outspending man city, although when you delve a little deeper it seems him being an American and not living in England has something to do with it too.
of course there is a large portion of the idiots still blaming Wenger for our 12 EPL defeats this season, not forgetting Gazidis getting a mention too. It really does seem that in Brexit Britian the Soundbite is king and Arteta and Edu and Vinai have struck gold with “Trust the Process”, its a cover all soundbite, it has no timeframe, it has no specific goals, it can make going from a self inflicted 15th to 10th count as a success.
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Well done Willock for making Arsenal supporters smile this weekend!
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David Luiz underwent a small procedure on his right knee on Sunday morning.
The procedure has been a success and David is now back at home rehabilitating. He will be able to return to daily support and recovery with our medical team at the training centre in the coming days.
David is expected to be back to full fitness and available for selection in the upcoming weeks.
Copyright 2021 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to http://www.arsenal.com as the source.
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I believe we will end up with 60 points that should be enough for tenth place which is about where we merit on this season’s performances.
EMN and Joe have proven they are quality PL players and this current ARSENAL squad have proven that they are not better than them and probably shouldn’t of gone out on loan.
With the amount of games we should not be talking about next season but there we are.
Personally I think Auba,Pepe, Ceballos and Leno are four we wouldn’t miss and we could use any money from sale and wages to fund more reliable additions plus the already academy players and those who could be promoted like Azeez and Ballogun.
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ian do you think Arteta has any intention of keeping AMN or Willock, do either of them fit into whatever style tactics he wants to play. Also do you think he wants to promote the likes of Azeez and Balogun, I don’t think he trusts young players, Saka left him no option but to pick him as his form was so good, and the team’s woeful run seen ESR given a chance and he done well too, but I’m not sure Emile gets in Arteta’s starting 11 if everyone fit.
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I see 34% possession, 3 shots in total and 2 on target,
Sounds like a great performance.
I am not impressed by the excuses as to who was absent. A manager or coach of Arteta’s alleged abilities should be able to marshal his resources, especially those who cost so much in fees and wages.
To suggest he needs to bring in more players, at vast expense, no doubt, indicates a lacking in his abilities, not the players.
I look forward to the confirmation of support from the owners and board.
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Ed, you are of course right, I was suggesting what would be best for the club not what is in Mikel’s mind whatever that is.
Jigsol,
It wasn’t even marshalling his players it was the total lack of intent to come out of our own half let alone attack. Liverpool did not play particularly well but we were just awful. Even at 0-0 we stunk the place out.
I think we got a corner at about the 70th minute and that was a small victory that’s how bad it was.
I have seen training sessions with defence against attack and all the defence has to do is clear the half way line to get a point well that’s how we played.
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Podcast is up.
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