Hello and how are you? The 30th of November sees the Mighty Cannon make a visit to west London and take on Chelsea FC at Stamford Bridge. Kick off is at 17.30pm central European time (4.30pm UK time) Expected weather is clear with some cloud and temps 6° (feels like 2°) and 0% chance of rain.
After the successful mid-week Champions League victories for both sides, this fixture has now been elevated to another level of importance. A win would put the Gunners way out in front (to the disgust of many) but a loss would mean the furious glee of keyboard and pundit schadenfreude vlogging us in the social media square of justice for the next week or so. How nice it must be to know everything and tell others exactly how it is and how it should be?
The words I’m reading online are putting Chelsea into the driving seat, especially after the Barca game, but two of Chelsea’s goals were utterly unusual keystone-cop capered mistakes by Barca, and certainly despite all the goals disallowed for offside, the scoreline flattered Chelsea somewhat? And as we saw (heard) with some voices from the Bayern camp after their loss, whatever you say or do, someone will criticise it.
The pursuit of perfection mostly means going down a rabbit hole of eventually failure (he wrote not bothering to give any examples) and a state of total perfection exists in utopia, a place where we can’t. It might mean weathering a storm of expected parasitical criticism, but pragmatism (at least to a degree) mostly yields a good harvest and the Gunners are quite capable of playing dynamic football and scoring exciting goals as much as having a grabba from set pieces. But who needs facts when aggrieved egos are upset?
Anyway enough of that crap, Chelsea are still without Mudryk (suspended) and Levi Colwill (ACL) and Romeo Lavia (thigh) out for the Blues, and the pundits are frothingly excited that Cole Palmer is available for the first time since 20th of September but perhaps Maresca will play him as a sub rather than risk him as a starter?
Big Vic is still not available ( hamstring) and neither is Kai (knee) but may mysteriously turn up on the bench, but def Gabriel Magalhaes (hamstring) and Gabriel Jesus (fitness) be not available at all.
Hopefully Trossard might be able to bounce back after his tumbles against Bayern and let it be a happy Advent hunting ground for Madueke who returns to his old neighbourhood.
Statto HQ have reckoned up the hot facts and figures and calculated that the Arsenal have a 43.1% chance of winning and Chelsea are at 28.3 %. Next up Brentford at the Emirates. So COYG!
Mills
Mikel keeps us guessing about who will or will not be fit to make the bench so wo knows, the good thing is our squad strength means we can cope. If Trossard makes it I expect the same starting eleven that demolished Spurs. Despite Chelsea being put forward as our main rivals it’s difficult not to feel confident a bad result will come, they always do, but if it’s not today we will holding te high ground running up to Christmas.
Exciting times. Chelsea will I suspect , have a go, and that will do us nicely.
Enjoy the game.
Pedantic George.
Positively Arsenal 
Saliba not in the squad today, Gyokeres and Jesus are subs
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Arsenal: Raya, Timber, Mosquera, Hincapie, Calafiori, Rice, Zubimendi, Eze, Saka, Martinelli, Merino.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Lewis-Skelly, White, Odegaard, Norgaard, Nwaneri, Madueke, Gyokeres, Jesus.
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The opposition today like fast starts and are quick in attack. They also have the best xg in the division so are obviously good going forward.
They do however like conceding goals and recent history shows we’ve got the Indian eye over them.
This is another game which has been built up to be a title decider but as this week has shown if we take one game at a time victories will come and after each one we will be nearer the finish line COYG.
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Caicedo sent off for reckless challenge on Merino after VAR check, and rightly so
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Arsenal have been second best so far, we’ve only had one shot in the first half.
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Our lads need to keep a cool heads, we have too many yellows.COYG!
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the red card incident
https://x.com/i/status/1995178943142625497
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close from Martinelli
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HT: Chelsea 0-0 Arsenal
the ref has allowed this game to be over hyper, and we sit with chelsea down to 10, and we have 4 players on a yellow.
We’ve only had 2 shots in that first half, chelsea had 5. We need to be a bit calmer in second half and play our football, put them on the back foot.
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Hopefully less scrapping and more football in the second half and we’ve got this…Madueke to come on an do the biz…COYG!
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Lewis-Skelly on Calafiori off
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Chelsea take the lead, it came from a corner that Raya conceded saving a shot that was going wide. We’ve made it so hard for ourselves
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Odegaard and Madueke on Zubimendi and Martinelli off
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Come on Martin, do the captains job and pull the team together.COYG!
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Merinooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 1-1, oh we so needed that.
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Get forking in there!!!!!!!
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the Merino goal
https://x.com/i/status/1995190384998445361
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Gyokeres looks set to come on
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Eze off, Gyokeres on
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15 minutes left to get the win here
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running out of time to win this. We’ve not been good today, not even against ten men
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FT: Chelsea 1-1 Arsenal
Merino with our goal,
for me this was a very poor performance, they had far more energy and we seemed to lack belief in ourselves.
Man City now 5 points behind us.
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we are at home to Brentford on Wednesday and then away to Aston Villa on Saturday.
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Chelsea better than us throughout and we lost the midfield battle even after their best midfielder went off.
The old adage is, if your playing badly and can’t win then don’t lose. We didn’t and we have ticked off yet another difficult away game which is very positive.
To be honest it looked like a very tired performance after a massive week. At the start of the week we would of taken the three results, especially considering the injuries and the fact we played the second half with only one of our first choice back four.
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Maybe the most unenjoyable game for as so far this season? They came out for the scrap and the ref let them get away with a lot in the opening stages then The Zube got a yellow and for some reason instead of just taking it and letting the yellows stack up for them we got stuck in. Get stuck in Bob! On another day Hincapié would have seen a red too?
Somehow we didnt seem to ever get going, plus this game was hyped way to much, and a lot of people etc wanted us to lose and hope that Liverpool or ManUre can come back and save the PL from the grasp of nasty Arsenal.
But what Ed and Ian say is spot on, we lost the mf battle, and looked like we had no belief and they were up for it and played pretty well all things considered. But also right in that we didnt lose.
Hope Trossards back soon. Was sorry to see Martinelli and Eze go a bit awol today, but thats football, all too human, and thats why we watch it or some of us. LOL!
On we go! COYG!
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reminded me of Man Utd performance against us on the 50th game at old Trafford.
Same attitude, same spirit from the oops and the ref was as incompetent that day as he was yesterday.
Cucorrella was allowed to get away with loads, Cassido acting like he was the injured party and is everyone named Fernandez a bit of a cunt?
Good point but not really happy with the game.
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George, sent the Brentford preview over. COYG!
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