Hello all.
In this last podcast of the year we make the most of the optimism that is currently awash in the Arsenal fanbase and look to what we might get from the City game. I’ve boldly gone for an Arsenal win, against my better judgement.
Have a good day and a great New Year, Thanks to everyone that read this blog, listens to the podcasts and contributes in the comments. All the best.
Pedantic George.
Positively Arsenal 
For fucks sake again! Spuds in deep injury time 😡😡😡😡😡
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“Most people involved with English football believe that corruption couldn’t happen here and have always been blind to the continued bias of an officiating organisation that continues to operate in the shadows and will never show any transparency.”
Bingo!
It can only happen in France, Italy or them dodgy Asian leagues never UK.
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If anyone watched that game until the end and believes the officials were even handed, they are either blind, incredibly naive or have an agenda.
Looking around social media see quite a few really pissed off about the teams treatment today , including some who think any critique of a ref amounts to an excuse.
Was pleased to see the fans applaud all our players at the end rather than look for scapegoats, that and giving the officials hell, hope they keep that up with refs like that, though one of the culprits was a faceless Aussie , handpicked by Mike Riley hidden away in front of a screen.
The bent officials that did us today will have a number of aims, one of which will be to keep us out of the top four, I don’t think it takes too much imagination to come up with who Riley will want in the CL places, and he is probably only reflecting the wishes of those running the EPL, Scudamore has gone but his tilting lives on.
Still, we needed corruption to rescue arguably the best team in the world against us, so I guess that is a measure of progress. I just hope this injustice rages them on rather than deflates them, I think with the character of this team, they will be just fine.
But they need to be careful, PGMOL darlings Liverpool and Spurs up next , Mike Dean is on his way soon.
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PIGMOB have had a look at the Government and decided fuck it, let’s do as we fucking well like, like them.
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there are now some suggesting Gabriel’s first yellow was given cos a man city player pushed him into the ref, the PGMOL game manager was looking in the other direction talking to Xhaka, when Gabriel was shoved, banging into Attwell, whose look of outrage at being touched by a player was there to be seen, he then booked Gabriel.
Another reason why Refs need to be miked up, and make the whole thing transparent
the afc coach suggested it might have been for Gabriel asking the ref why this penalty appeal was being treated differently to AFC’s penalty appeal.
Either way, a miked up Ref would reveal the truth, and wouldn’t that be better for the game
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Having played this well v Man City it’s clear we only have one team in the EPL to fear.
That team is whatever team of officials picked by Mike Riley and the PGMOL for any given game
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Now that I have somewhat calmed down a few things noted
1.We all asked for a performance and we got one. We dominated for a large part of the game and were resolute for all but the last minute of the game.
2.We often lose big games due to a combination of being cheated and indiscipline on our part. We can’t do anything about corruption so we need to focus on our discipline. Xhaka knows and he has said it himself refs will always target him. So why he pulled on the players shirt even when the player was already diving is beyond me. And Gabriel already on a yellow commits that foul and the ref gleefully sends him off. This is where Arteta needs to focus on, drill into the players that the pgmol are and will always be against you, so when the game starts know you are already a man down as the other team has 12.
3. At this point and the improvement we have seen, this team is a far cry from Emery 22 unbeaten. I think there is something special unfolding here and as these players grow and learn to deal with adversity the sky is the limit.
4. We now have the core of the team in place. A fantastic goalie, a fantastic back four, a fantastic attacking quadruplet of players (we are soo luck to have Saka, Martinelli Odegaard and Smith Rowe at the same time), so we need now to strengthen the midfield and striker position. We simply cannot fall back to previous model of quick and easy solutions. This is the time where the owners step up. Players coming in must be better than players we have. Imagine adding a player of the calibre of Isak or Vlahovic to this team!!!
5. There is a lot rumours flying that we have agreed terms with Coutinho. Now I could be wrong but I just don’t think this is the type of player we need. I can’t see where he would play other than disrupt the already settled front four. We need a Xhaka who is better than Xhaka. If we are to go for a young player I wouldn’t mind Sandro Tonali of Milan.
6. It may very well be that the games against Liverpool end up as contentious as the City game. But we must chanel our anger on the pitch positively and if anything these players should now believe that they are just as good if not better than some of the 100 mil pound players who warm the bench for these teams.
Finally we really need to smash the spuds away and break them as a team once and for all. The fact that they could above us with the brand of football they’ve played so far is a travesty!
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Sorry mate you lost me when you went out of your way to blame Granit
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They must get paid loads to do as they are told as they won’t be allowed near a world cup ever. How old are some of those tossers? still being paid a shed load by connections.
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tfl if our players can’t make the same challenges our opponents make, it is not for our players to stop making challenges, its for the club to kick up a stink and expose the fact that our players are treated differently far too often.
As Adrian Clarke said after the game today, Silva was in the process of diving before Xhaka put a hand on him, so VAR should have awarded a free kick out for the dive, and booked Silva, but they were only concerned in awarding the penalty. This is the very essence of the whole problem. AFC are being treated differently to City.
One thing that needs to be done straight away is that the refs need to be fully miked up, and each club have a direct feed to this, so they know what the officials are saying to each other. Eventually this live feed should be open to the broadcasters too. There is not a single good reason why the officials conversations are kept secret. If they are honest and capable then they have no reason to fear their conversations being aired
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west ham 3 up away to crystal palace
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Seeing as the dive took place before the holding of the shirt (holding not tugging) then that was the first offence and should be punished first Xhaka’s actions are therefore irrelevant.
Once again anyone believing Granit is at fault is being sucked in by the media once again.
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yes Ian, that is what Adrian Clarke pointed out earlier today, he questioned why the VAR review was only focused on the shirt tug, and not the preceding dive. Its almost as if they have an agenda
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Markyb I am not blaming or pointing the finger at Xhaka, am saying that if you know you are a marked man and a target then don’t give the ref an excuse. That comes with discipline and we have to learn that.
Edouardo things will never change. We were a marked team the day Wenger joined us. What followed was 20 years of racism, xenophobia, the Arsenal don’t like it up em bullshit that ended careers of Diabby, Eduardo, Ramsey (never fully recovered), the witch hunt, the media falling over themselves to fan the flames, Le Grove, AFTV, Pierce Morgan, Pgmol
Its just never going to change until we field an all English XI with an English manager and an entire troupe of English ball boys.
What I am saying is we need to be smart and try as much as possible to cut out the mistakes that get pounced on. The ref knew the City player had dived but the fact that Xhaka pulled his shirt just gave him the excuse to call it.
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FICZwBEVgAAnNbO?format=jpg&name=medium
they only adhere to their own criteria when it suits them, and it clearly didn’t suit attwell and co today
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Sadly, I think there are many good reasons why refs are not miked up, they would have to stop tilting games and targeting certain players.
Agree, it’s long been time the club stepped up and took this on, but for whatever reason, they seem unwilling , despite the cost to the club .
The execs must know exactly what’s going on , Wenger certainly did, as does Arteta. Emery at times seemed genuinely baffled by it, that’s saying something for a man originating from the nation of Real and Barca
Just wish Riley would go, but I suspect , like Gordon Taylor, he suffers from an innate greed and love of power , and a lack of a life if Richard Keys is to be believed so may not be moving anytime soon
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yes tfl and all I’m saying is that we have to rail against the ref for ignoring as you put it “the City player had dived”, its high time Arsenal FC stood up to be counted and go all out in the media to expose this shit. As you say its been going on for a couple of decades, so its high time we fought badk
I would disagree with you that it will stop when we have an all english team and manager, we had some awful reffing in the George Graham era in what was nearly all english team, I would even say in the Bertie Mee era when it was all English we still had norther refs screwing us over time and again.
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well Mandy that is a reason for them, but it is not a good reason, its a corrupt reason.
also my fear is that even when Mike Riley is replaced, this will continue, as much like when a new pope is elected its done from a pool of guys who have largely been put in place by the previous pope, with the main aim on continuing the same policies and views of the previous pope.
there is a long history of the core list of refs, not only in the EPL/PGMOL era, but back in the good old days of the pre Sky era of Football League, being from the North of England. As was the majority of guys on the FA and the Football League boards and committees.
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I think the players should agree that one of them in a post match interview would go out and absolutely tear into the referee and call out the obvious cheating and bias against Arsenal. Then all contribute towards the inevitable fine that would be imposed.
If Gabriel was booked for non existant dissent go out and challenge the referee to say what Gabriel said in public that warranted they yellow card. No pussy footing around it.
If the players stand up the club would no choice but to back them up.
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TFL. I’ve not watched it back with cooler head but I think that (minor) shirt grab, with player already falling probably reflects how different the game is when played vs watching slowed down at home, ie there truly is no reason in the world to have even a little grab at that moment, so it can only have been pure reflexes, ie no conscious decision to do it.
He’s uber competitive, instincts are never to back off totally (only way he is safe from refs). problem is massive risk he gets called on it any time. I’d bet 9-10 of most lauded defensive players in league do similar things. Van Dijk, Fabinho, Fernandinho, Rodri, Dias included, (not to mention big lumbering Maguire, by far league’s worst offender) they just rarely get called on it.
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To add to the pain and distrust of those big calls, esp pens, always feels with us, from what we see on tv, that they move through replays looking to find what they want to make decision (invariably against us). So with Odegaard soon as they found what was strongest view for not giving, couple more views of that, bang, decision done.
With Xhaka even more detrimental. There they go and they’ve found one that makes it look most like pen, so there’s replay, replay, freeze at worst-looking moment. Then, I’m pretty sure, when they got ref to monitor, who they have already pretty much told it is a pen and why, they just use those ‘worst’ angles, freezing it at the worst looking parts.
Would bet for sure in rugby in broadly similar situation they would also show the other angles, where it looks unclear, or like it should go the other way, talking it all through as they go.
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Again to me it’s exact sort of thing club should try talk about to put pressure on. Discuss whether what viewer sees at home matches exactly with the images VAR is looking at, or more likely other way around, ie we are seeing the images the technicians are showing to VAR and VAR is asking to look at again, freeze, etc.
From there, you can talk about how flawed it seems for VAR to decide and build their case, and then present it as strongly as they can to ref, without offering the images that create doubt, or clarity. There’s no way VAR is designed to work like that.
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The team can be really proud of their performance today. I agree that if they are playing 11 v 11 with this team selection available they should fear no one. However 11 v 10 or 11 v 12 is more of a challenge for any team.
We all know the score re officials and I am sure the team have had the agenda confirmed today.
They have to harness the anger and turn in the same performance in the upcoming games. This young team will have to find resilience to deal with the unfair cards dealt against them as I see nowt changing anytime soon.
The home atmosphere has been amazing in the last few games and the team have won that support.
I do feel something exciting is developing but please no more false dawns.
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I did not see the match so cannot comment.
However can someone explain how one can dominate a match with 29% of the possession?
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Seeing as Xhaka knows he’s a marked man maybe he shouldn’t just change his style to playing different to every other player in the league maybe he should just give up altogether and go and play table tennis.
Because it’s his problem and not a ref problem after all.
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I know that saying this is likely to be rather unpopular, but all this prattling on and on about the referee and one or 2 decisions seems to me to be a smokescreen so that if each referee’s decision might take a minute or 2, so why is it that this team that managed to dominate the game with 29% possession did not manage to create more than 2 shots on target during the other 88/9 minutes?
Could we be seeing another wave of rosetinteditis?
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well jjgsol man city with their 71% possession had two shots on target, the penalty and the injury time winner
we played over 30 minutes with ten men, which altered the possession stats a fair bit. plus when we were on top in the first half it seen city with a lot of possession in their own half as we pressed them, there was a lot of passes to their goalie, in fact I seen somewhere that he had more touches of the ball than most of our players.
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Gabriel’s red card means he is suspended for one game, that will be Thursday’s CC semi final first leg v Liverpool. We will also be without Partey, Elneny, Pepe and PEA who are at the ACN, and also Nketiah who has covid. That is a big chunk out of our match day squad for such a big game.
Our next 3 games are all cup games, the two CC semi final legs v LFC with our FA Cup game v Nottingham Forest inbetween, then its back to the EPL with a NLD away to Spurs
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Arsenal lose, Jjgsol returns
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Yep I will stick with my look for the positive glasses. I support Arsenal and want them to move in the right direction and hopefully succeed.
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When we win, everything in the garden is rosy.
When we lose, it is the ref’s fault.
Eduardo, if we dominated the game for the first 60 minutes, why did we only manage 2 shots on target.
Yes, I know Man$ity only achieved that as well, so what? Is not their tactic to sit back and wait for the chances to come, which, as we can see, invariably happens.
For the last 30 minutes did they not play against a massed defence?
Can you not see the point I am making?
One poster said that we dominated the game, not 2/3rds of the game, but “the game”.
So far, no one has explained how you can dominate a game when you only have 29% possession.
Yes, I have not posted when we have won games against very poor teams or teams who played badly.
It is fine being a flat track bully and beating teams like Norwich and Sunderland.
It is when you play against the better teams that one can really see if there has been any improvement.
That improvement must manifest itself in taking advantage of when you are playing well.
So even if we did dominate the game for the first 60 minutes, if that domination does not translate into goals, then who cares?
Yes, I am a pessimist. But I would rather be a pleased pessimist than a disappointed optimist.
I wish people would look beyond the perceived bias of the refs and actually look at what we are achieving and what we are actually doing in the rest of the match.
Winning a few easy games means nothing at this stage.
If Arteta is learning from his mistakes and the improvement is as a result of a perceived change in managerial tactics then I am happy to sit up and take notice.
However, when Arteta goes back to his disgusting “Ozil” tactics in order to embarrass a player into wanting to leave then whatever he does is tainted by that.
I said I would not be popular in what I am saying but I have no doubt that many of you can see the truth in it.
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VAR is not flawed, it is a brilliant bit of technology that is being used by fuckwits.
You have to wonder why technology is used in every sport successfully and used in football around the world but the English officials are the odd ones out.
Well it’s because they are either corrupt or negligent there is no other answers it’s one or the other.
Either way it is not keeping up with the standard of a league that spends the most money, has the best players and needs to dramatically change.
Jigsol, I have been critical of the coaching staff and the team since Mikel got here and understand sometimes fans will defend a bad ARSENAL side or performance just because they support the club but today was something different the decisions weren’t about subjective opinion we were treated differently with different rules. Today we played really well and weren’t given the chance to see if we good enough when all the signs suggested we were.
ARSENE used to say every goal conceded was a amalgam of several mistakes not just one. I have looked at both goals and seen mistakes but that really is not the issue today. Mistakes are within our control and something we can work on to put right but when the laws of the game are applied differently to us than they are to our opponents then that is out of our control and is against everything that sport stands for.
So that is what every fan should recognise as a primary objective and worry about football issues down the line, you cannot achieve anything without first getting a level playing field (many ethnic, religious and gender groups have already had to fight these battles) and at this moment we are not there.
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jjgsol, I have been more critical than most, but I’m telling you, we were the better team today and we were fucking robbed.
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media reporting that Newcastle have contacted Arsenal over a loan to buy deal for Aubameyang, a loan for rest of season with a £20M option to buy in the summer
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We recently won against West Ham, not sure they qualify as a very poor team, at least from what I read about them?
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Of course George, if you hang onto every word the over paid font of knowledge that is Gary Liniker you would completely disagree!
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The point is whether any one thinks either ARSENAL or city would of gone on to win the game the football world was robbed of the opportunity to see.
If you cannot get the structure and rules of a sport right what’s the point in anything else. This is not about ARSENAL here the premier League are in the dock and if nothing changes then what’s the point.
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Fuck me, that was an awesome performance. A few more like that and I will be back to never wanting to miss a game.
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Arsenal v City
Pendatic George- arsenal were better
Guardiola-arsenal were better
Edouardo – arsenal were better
Ian Wright- arsenal were better
Ianspace-arsenal were better
Jeff Sterling – arsenal were better
Mandy-arsenal were better
Clinton Morrison-arsenal were better
Adrian Charles – arsenal were better
Aron Ramsdale – arsenal were better
Rodri- arsenal were better
Foreverheady-arsenal were better
Mills-arsenal were better
Paul Merson-arsenal were better
Mark Goldbridge (twat) – arsenal were better
Jjgsol- Y’all wearing rose tinted glasses
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Jjgsol
Maybe a good idea to watch the game before being so critical.
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I felt so proud of the lads, even 2-1 down they were still in it and didnt give up or put their heads down. I felt like it was the best subs I seen in years in dealing with going down to 10 men and good shuffle that kept us going. Our boys were bloody great. I havent felt so moved or angry by a game in years. We werent frightened of them either. Balls to them! Martinelli, hes such a cheeky player. The improvement of the whole team was a sight to behold. Lacca came across as a good captain too and looked after the lads till he went off-class. And then he gave the armband to Xhaka.Nice work shun! Rodri should have been off before the soft second (then one for his shirt off then another for antagonsing the Arsenal fans).Silva should have been booked for attending the Klinsman school of diving, what a fkin joke. How embarrassing for a player of that caliber to lower himself to being such a bulshitter.
The ref and assistants were purest dogshit. I cant even recall the last time I saw such a catastrophic running of a game, VAR looks at one angle? Eh? Why?The linesmen didnt have a clue, the Saka offside incenident was nuts, letting him go on. Then the City fould throw… We lost the game literally because of the ref, theres no other way around it, if we look at how it all played out and dont get stuck in supposition. I felt so ballistically angry though, and thats been a long time.
For me everyone was physically 8/10, maybe better, and psychologically everyone was 9/10, to go for it, not give up, to deal with such injustice ( top point Ian at 11.25 am)and take it to the end. Well played you beautiful Arsenal, I couldnt have asked for more.
Keep it up! COYG!
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new post is up
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