Hello all.
Tonight we take a trip up to the extremity of our homeland , St. James Park, trying to turn a 2 goal deficit into a win, in order to progress to the final of the League Cup. A daunting task if I do say.
I thought we were very unluck to lose the first leg at home, especially by 2 goals, but what can you do? We are where we are and we have to make the best of it. So with the Dubai break coming up, we can play our strongest team. With the sudden rise of our 2 youngsters, I’m not sure what our strongest team is anymore. But I’m confident Mikel does know, and that’s all that matters.
We certainly won’t be seeing any of our new signings, given we didn’t make any. There has been quite a meltdown on social media about this, but that’s another think that is what it is, Many times Arsene would refuse to sign a body just for the sake of it, and I always backed him, so I refuse to be a hypocrite and give Mikel a kicking for doing the very same thing. Mistakes might have been made last summer, but we can’t fix them by making panic buys in January. We previously were very vulnerable to and injury to Odegaard, because we had no cover for him, and it came to pass, and we struggled. Well now a injury to Havertz would be catosropic. We just have to hope for the best.
Having dispatched the oil barons from Manchester, 5-1, I must admit that it gave me instantly more hope for us going up to the Northeast oil barons and coming away with a spot in the final.
Hope springs eternal.
Pedantic George.
Positively Arsenal 
Although my memory is not great, I can’t remember Arsene signing any so called stars until the last couple of seasons and that was when he was losing control of transfers.
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Ed, you are absolutely right. The squad is looking poor. The transfer splurge by Edu and Mikel, combined with the paying off of players, that everyone was hailing as brilliant appears to be short sighted and without big sales will come back to bite us in the arse.
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Ed, you have actually scared me with those numbers. I was consoling myself that the problems with the lack of numbers and balance of this season’s squad would be put right when we got the start of the season payout in the summer. However this is a massive overhaul and is Mikel’s first revamp of a squad. I wonder if the players out on loan are going to have to be brought back in. Most of which are players
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Mikel doesn’t like. This will inevitably lead to more players on the bench than will not get minutes when his favourites are fit.
If Real Madrid do start taking our top stars then we really are in trouble
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ian most of the players we have out on loan have sale options or even obligations#
We are in a bit of a bind when it comes to revampting the squad this summer, we need to sell players to raise funds, but every player we sell means we have to replace another player and if its upgrades we want and need then surely they will cost more than what we sell. Of course any of those out on loan who are sold can be seen as new money coming in, so best we sell Lokonga, Tavares, Vieira, the big question is should we keep Hein for back up keeper, or can we get a bigger fee for him than we would need to spend on a new signing, such as Garcia, who is said to be in the £20M mark, we won’t get near that for Hein. Maybe Reiss Nelson will bring in a decent fee.
i really do fear we will sell Saliba to raise big funds
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some are suggesting Arsenal will sell William Saliba to Real Madrid for massive fee and replace him with AFC Bournemouth CB Dean Huijsen who turns 20 in April, he is Netherlands born but has recently been capped at U21 level by Spain
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I think the problem is two fold, firstly we have three big first team positions to fill, a striker, a defensive midfielder and a defensive player who can play all along the back line. That will cost a lot to three players of quality. Then we have the job of supplementing the squad. This is not one or two this could run to five or six.
There is no way we can afford all of those and so we would have to run on small numbers once again. We have been relatively lucky with injuries in the past couple of seasons but if we did have a bad spell we would be knackered.
That is with the assumption that the new players hit the ground running and not like Merino and struggle to adjust for a while.
I do think the board gambled with winning something within the first five years of Mikel’s appointment and now we are starting the cycle again. Admittedly from a higher base but starting again nonetheless.
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reports that Tomiyasu is to have another knee operation to try and finally sort out his injury
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rumor that Havertz missed training with an injury
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Rumours the spuds have come in with a huge bid for Tomiyasu
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its being reported now that Havertz has a hamstring problem, that is all 3 of Saka, Havertz and Martinelli to have hamstring injuries, good job Arteta is one of those modern coaches with modern training methods that prevents these injuries that old out dated Wenger’s training used to cause.
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If I was a modern manager I would send players half way around the world, sitting on a plane, to tighten up the muscles and then expose them to warm weather training. It’s got to lead to less injuries for the rest of the season.
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With the latest injury news you would normally look to the youth players for back up. In all the seasons I can remember we have always had a decent youth striker if needed. This season the only experienced striker we have is Kay Kay but I think I heard he was injured, over to you Ed.
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Ah, I see Charles Charlie Charles has returned from loan so could be added to the forward line but KK is definitely the more natural option.
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Would you guys sign Diego Costa till the end of the season?
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Only if everyone beat the fuck out of him in training.
I don’t no about his form, but out of those out of contract, I would love Carlos Vela to come back to the club.
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well its now reported that Havertz has a torn hamstring and is out for the rest of the season.
Some suggesting that Merino will be our striker now, with Trossard, Sterling and Nwaneri used in the wide roles.
Saka, Martinelli and Havertz all with hamstring injuries, maybe, just maybe tactics, training methods and arteta’s inablility to rotate the squad has something to do with it.
Anyway I don’t know why anyone is worried as Arteta will surley do what he loves to do, GIVE YOUTH A CHANCE, ha ha ha ha ha ha
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ian, kaydon edwards is out injured at present, maybe annous could get squad time, but its almost certainly going to be Kabi, sagoe junior and butler odejeyi who will be unused subs in upcoming games
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Ian-LOL!
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so its confirmed that Havertz is out for rest of the season and will even miss part of preseason.
That currently sees the first team squad as
GK – Raya, Neto
D – Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly, Calafiori, Zinchenko, Tierney, Kiwior
M – Odegaard, Rice, Partey, Merino, Jorginho
F – Trossard, Sterling, Nwaneri
That’s just 18 players for our 20 man match day EPL squad, so 2 youths will have to be included to make up the numbers, and with so many forwards out its probably going to be from forwards Butler-Oyedeji, Kabi, Edwards, Sagoe-jr, with a real outside chance for U18’s leading scorer Harriman-Annous
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there is an outside chance that both Saka and Martinelli will be back in action in months time.
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talking of strikers, former Arsenal schoolboy, Obi Martin, who left us in the summer for Man Utd, scored a hattrick for their U18’s in the FA Youth cup 5-1 win over Chelsea yesterday, setting up a quarter final v Arsenal at the Emirates, game to be played by the 8th of March. Ayden Heaven who left us in January for utd is eligible for the game too, but he is part of the utd first team squad.
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Really sad news about Patrick Barclay’s passing. He was a true honest, clever Journalist rather than most of the hacks we are left with today.
I spoke at a couple of A.I.S.A events and so I got to meet him. He was always a strong admirer of Arsene and thought most of the criticism was unfair.
He was a thoroughly nice bloke.
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Arsenal U21 v Middlesbrough U21: Ranson, Rosiak, Salmon, Sweet, Nichols, Henry-Francis, Gower, Salah-Eddine, Sagoe Jr, Edwards, Harriman-Annous.
Subs: Nygaard, C. Ismail, I. Oulad M’hand, Kamara, Ferdinand.
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with that u21 line up it leaves Ismeal Kabia and Nathan Butler-Oyedeji as the young forwards to be with the first team squad tomorrow
By the way Ben White is back in the squad
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Jeorge Bird
@jeorgebird
Goal. Arsenal 1 Middlesbrough 0. Khayon Edwards opens the scoring for Arsenal. Sagoe Jr and Harriman-Annous involved in build-up. Impressive move
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that goal was Khayon Edwards 8th goal in 11 Premier League 2 matches for the U21s this season
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Arsenal U21’s 2-1 Middlesborough U21’s
Edwards and Rosiak with our goals
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As Mikel said other players need to step up with goals at the moment. I would say this particularly applies to Odegaard. The Captain is very technically gifted and quite simply does not score enough for such a talent. Today it doesn’t matter who, we just need a result COYG.
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New post is up.
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