Good morning one and all.
Arsenal take a trip to my neck of the woods today and will face the very epitome of Northern Grit. Burnley tipped their hand last weekend when they tried to kick Everton off of the pitch, and I expect more of the same only worse today. I also expect the referee to sanction it and the commentators to praise it. Football will take a back seat to a physical battle.
Because of the prospect of a physical aerial bombardment it is difficult to predict the line up. Does Arteta prepare to fight fire with fire? If he does I’m not sure we have the personnel to compete. Xhaka, our best midfielder and warrior, is suspended. Holding, our most physical centre backs is injured and none of our forwards have Giroud type attributes. So what can he do?
Personally I would go to 3 at the back , The Emperor Hirohito, White and Gabriel with AMN and KT flanking them, Sambi and Partey shielding them and some others up front. 3 of those someones, but I’m not sure which 3.
I just think if we play Ben White in a two we are sending a lamb to the slaughter, and he doesn’t need that so early in his Arsenal career.
Burnley blow hot and cold in little runs and they seem to be on a cold run, so that’s good?
Of course as it’s a lovely day up here, we could go all out to get the ball down and play, keep the ball and play as many technical players as we can muster, You know? Try to out play them. I know, I know, as if?
Anyway, I hope the referee gives us some degree of protection and we win. That would be grand.
Enjoy the game
Pedantic George
Positively Arsenal 
Got a good feeling about today. Arsenal to win .
#coyg
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I fancy an interesting game today. Tough, but arsenal to win strongly.
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Arsenal Team: Ramsdale, Tomiyasu, Gabriel, White, Tierney, Partey, Odegaard, Pepe, Smith Rowe, Saka, Aubameyang.
Subs: Leno, Lacazette, Maitland-Niles, Holding, Cedric, Tavares, Mari, Lokonga, Martinelli.
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BURNLEY TEAM: Pope, Lowton, Tarkowski, Mee, Taylor, Gudmundsson, Westwood, Brownhill, McNeil, Barnes, Wood.
Subs: Hennessey, Cork, Lennon, Rodriguez, Cornet, Collins, Pieters, Bardsley, Vydra.
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Like I said in the last thread I feel confident today Burnley have not won any of their last 12 home games and our record against them is really good. The one thing you need when your playing badly is to play teams who are playing worse and I think that is the case today.
The team looks quite balanced, not what I would of gone with but I’m not a manager and I think it’s well above what we need to win.
If we score early we could get our first big win with a big score for a while COYG.
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Dan Critchlow
@afcDW
·
1h
FT: West Ham u18s 1-2 Arsenal u18s
Edwards and Sagoe Jr with the goals for Arsenal, Flores with the assist for the first.
Burnley won 3-1 against Everton in the other game in the group.
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u18 line up today was Mitchell, Robinson, Foran, Jeffcott, Sweet, Bandeira, Ibrahim, Quesada-Thorn, Sagoe Jr., Flores, Edwards
subs:Quamina, Roberts, Richards, Davies, Okonkwo
the sub keeper was Arthur Okonkwo’s brother, Brian.
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That’s a seriously attacking line up and am little bit worried light in the middle of the park with odegaard partnering partey.
Maybe Arteta feels he wants the team to be on the front foot and possibly bring sambi later.
Hopefully Partey is fully fit. I would have thought a back three with wingbacks would have been a better set up for Burnley neanderthals but let’s see if this works.
I am thinking Pepe maybe key in this game.
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from lequipe – Robert Pires (Edu & Mikel) “They are very close, they have the same ideas on football & like the same player profile. Moreover, Edu would never sign a player without Mikel’s agreement. On paper, it is a complementary duo, which can bring a lot to the club”
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Odegaard makes it 1-0 with a great freekick
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HT: Burnley 0-1 Arsenal
Odegaard with a class free kick gave us the lead in an otherwise game of little quality
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A good first half and overall very composed.
The good
Tomiyachi the boy ca a pass seriously good with both feet.
Pepe been excellent hard working adventurous and even when he lost the ball fought hard to get it
Smith Rowe really good too carrying the ball with menacing intent just lacking the final ball.
Gabriel wot a defender and great to have pace at the back.
Auba needs to get more in the game.
Saka has struggled too.
But overall well worth the 1-0 should at least been two.
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60 minutes sambi on for esr
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Penalty to Burnley,
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Ramsdale gets the ball and after a check the Ref overturns the decision after VAR told him to check the screen
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we have been second best in this half, need to get that second goal to be sure of winning this
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78 minutes Tierney off, Tavares on,
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in this second half we have absolutely butchered some great breakaways
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AMN was brought on for the injured Partey too
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FT: Burnley 0-1 Arsenal
Odegaard’s superb free kick goal a worthy winner.
Ramsdale had a fine game, dominated the high ball.
We wasted so many good attacking positions it was unreal,
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Wow that second half, I mean Burnley what horrendous football.
But the defence apart from that silly back pass that almost led to a penalty should be very proud of the way they handled the aerial bombardment.
Pepe in the second reverted to his frustrating self.
Surprised Arteta didn’t sub Saka he looked exhausted.
Overall a fantastic three points that should annoy the hell out of the beeb boys
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Saka below par he needed a longer break imo and Auba still regaining fitness, I suspect and hope the attack will improve.
Lots to enjoy from the new signings I guess that includes Ødegaard too though we know his quality and Niles also looked good in midfield when he came on. Ramsdale a big difference but given Leno’s complete collapse in form I question the man management on display this season that btought out such poor form from a decent keeper.
having some pace in the defence helps.
how will arteta jiggle the cbs with a midweek game?
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Good subs again? There’s hopefully an improvement there fingers crossed.
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The bad management around the keepers goes back to the Martinez situation, Emi had the shirt ana Mikel took it away from him letting the wrong keeper go. Leno was bad in the air from the moment he got here he may have got less confident the more teams found him out but the actual problem has never changed. The fact that Aaron is making such a dramatic difference has highlighted just how poor Leno was in the air and what a giant cock up it was to get rid of Emi at a time when we would of got a bigger fee in had we sold Leno.
While I know football is a game of opinions I do think I’m being trolled on here sometimes, Pepe is absolutely bang average and he lost the ball twice in the first couple of minutes to say he was excellent is a slight of the hundreds of excellent players we have had over the years. Even his corners were shit today and that is a part of his game which is usually quite good. Every game that goes by makes me more and more convinced that Auba and Pepe should not be playing and while I agree Saka looks tired he still always poses a threat even if for the time being it’s from the bench.
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We’ve often struggled a bit against Burnley, even when we’ve been good. I couldn’t see beyond broken legs for Saka, Smith-Rowe and Odegaard so to leave there with 3 points and a free kick of beauty was a real bonus for me. The NLD will be a different sort of affair:- derbies always are – but I think that after that the forwards will start clicking as we move through the autumn. Or rather that I hope they will! I heard that a couple of our players did pick up slight injuries. Is there any news of them?
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It’s going to be a big scramble for 5th-8th this season behind Liverpool.
Only three shots on target yesterday. The Pep school is really not the most exciting football, we saw that in 2011, it depends on top players not top football & we also all saw Heynkes coach a better tune out of Munich with more or less the same squad, but I just hope we see some better fare from Arteta this year. I hope the choice to play an 8 as an 8 is a promising sign going towards as Hope is all I have!
On Pepe I think it’s clear that like Lacazette he doesn’t play for France as he is not a top level player: that is understood by all except the blagging experts who couldn’t call out the boondangle when it happened whose credibility is in the bin alongside Robbie and Troopz sure they might all dream of slapping each other’s arses on motd one day over the corpse of the Arsenal as the clicks roll in but: that doesn’t mean they know anything about the football!
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I agree with Ian on form you’d hope Auba and Pepe would not be automatic starters but with such bad man management all over the squad I’m not sure if any others apart from martinelli and Lacazette are ready to play a game!
Really was shockingly bad to see players who hadn’t even run in a pre season and who might not play for the club again thrown into big PL games for the first few weeks of the season.
Contrastingly lots of credit too to the young CMs who came on and played well, Niles has played with a lot of focus when clearly not fully fit so that was very good to see.
The selection for the midweek game will be interesting,
is Xhaka back for the NLD?
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fins xhaka is available for the spurs game,
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Ian you are right the game is about opinions and you are wrong about being re Pepe. Granted you don’t rate him that’s fair and maybe negative view of him colours your assessment. Yes he may have lost the ball twice but so did many players and loosing the ball is subject to various parameters, the pass quality, the press and defence pressure on the ball etc etc.
Truth is Pepe is not a bang average player and he is not a 72 million worth. But he is a good player and extremely talented player. If he can channel and harness the talent to be effective he could definitely reach his valuation. We got glimpses last season when he was high on confidence. Given how torrid our start to the season has been funnily enough he has been one of better attacking players in terms of creating chances. And yesterday he could have had a couple of assists at least if the others could score. He was one of the most involved out of our front three in the first half and worked hard defensively too. Burnley had to overload the right side often to deal with his pace which gave odegaard space. But he faded in the second half and should have been subbed.
Saka on the other hand had quite a poor game and I thought he should have been subbed much earlier. I think pushing Auba on the left and bringing on Laca for Saka would have given us a better chance of scoring the second goal.
Part of the reason we didnt play great in the second half was down to Burnleys tactics. When the ball is in the air like 80% of the time you are reduced to defending and challenging for the second ball all over the place. And Burnley do not need to commit many players upfront to lump it. We got sucked into their game but we did well and I don’t think they had any genuine heart to mouth chances to score.
Overall a plucky performance and a well deserved win. Winning ugly is extremely satisfying.
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Arsenal where soundbite is king. Much like the UK and Brexit, all it took was good soundbites to get the masses to ignore the reality.
Last season we had Trust The Process, that was our clap for the NHS, it allowed the dismantling of the squad, and shite football to be not only accepted by bloggers and big fan accounts, it seen them extol its virtue.
Now this seasons soundbite is Leadership and Culture, and means fans are extolling Imperial measurement football as what we’ve always needed, even wanted.
You see our poor results so far were nothing to do with us at all, it was not the process’s fault, no it was us being needlessly punished by the Champion League clubs for us deciding to leave the Champions league. But fear not we have a World Leading plan to make us great again, to bring us back to our times of Empire, we’ve branded it Leadership and Culture.
The lack of goals in our Goals For Column is not self inflicted, its a Brexit caused supply chain issue, and has nothing to do with us making AFC an unwelcoming place for some very highly talented supply chain operatives. Our Leadership and Culture plan will sort it out, as we are making it easier for less qualified players to take up the roles of Goal Suppliers. Its World Leading just like our intense training sessions that AFC were so good to tell us about by planting questions to our esteemed leader in his Q&A, it was almost a leaf out of the Laura Kuenssberg fawning playbook when interviewing good old Boris.
AFC where everything can be fixed with a new Soundbite. And anyone who dare point out the Emperor has no clothes is set upon by happy clappers(ask NHS staff how that helped them pay the bills)
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click like from me Ed.
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Eds
With the horrible hide of Dido the Hideouslyharding pulling the strings in the background when there are people with more experience, better skill, more training and all round competency not forgetting the all important reputation in the Game all who have been shunted out to pasture alongside Freddy Sven and Steevie B then…what could go wrong? Hehe.
Let’s hope “the emperor” doesn’t end up in the same category as Pepe but, well, never mind another extremely questionable transfer fee involving some interesting characters given that Saliba is more ready to be a PL starter for this team then either CB who started for the club yesterday (he will play for France not the Ivory Coast etc.) then: I hope for the best but I won’t be deluding myself Or listening to any see you next Tuesday blaggers (which amounts to the same thing given they have shown themselves to be just PR shills for agents).
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fins the denial of being a member out brigade from these bloggers and big twitter accounts is akin to it being almost impossible to find a German after the war who was a Nazi, no not I sir
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Tfl, you can’t talk about opinions and then say I’m wrong as a matter of fact in the same breath.
What I said was he lost the ball twice in the first couple of minutes over the ninety it was lots more than that.
I don’t really want to start comparing him with other players but rather concentrate on his performance. Saka is going through a patch of poor form but he is a young player who has just come back from a strenuous world cup and is probably being overplayed, the likelihood of an injury is very high. The point is with Saka is he has produced consistently at a high level before.
I can honestly say I have never seen Pepe produce a high level of performance over 90 minutes since we signed him. Like you say he produces in glimpses but that’s it.
To say he was excellent yesterday is a wild exaggeration and although his teammates were not helping yesterday by playing the ball behind him on several occasions when he did get the ball he done little with it.
He played one decent ball between two defenders to ESR but that was about it.
If we also remember we have played the two worst teams on current form in the division and Pepe was getting more and more time and space as both games went on and he still didn’t make a significant impact tells you he is bang average. He is not a new player he has been with us long enough now to be making big impacts in every game which tells you it probably won’t happen.
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Ian it is a matter of opinions but let’s say we agree on a lot more about this arsenal team that we disagree on.
Edouardo hahaaa very witty of you!
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Arsenal U23’s are currently 4-0 up away to Chelsea U23’s, Balogun with 2 goals, and Biereth with 2 goals, we were 3-0 up when Rekik got sent off, meaning Balogun was subbed off so a defender could come on, then Biereth got his second goal just on the stroke of half time. About an hour gone now
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biereth makes it 5-0 with his hattrick goal
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6-0 now, an og, about 10 minutes left
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chelsea pull one back in stoppage time, now CFC U23’s 1-6 Arsenal U23’s
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chelsea player booked for diving deep in injury time
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Eddy is now the headline act
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