Not such a good morning?
Right, cards on the table, it was a 3 PM kick off and I haven’t watched it, I didn’t watch MOTD and I won’t be watching the game. I listened to the coverage on the Arsenal website and that was enough pain for me, thank you very much. Even poor Adrian Clarke and Dan Roebuck couldn’t find a positive spin either during the game or afterwards.
It sounded like a 3-0 leathering with the score being reflective of the game.
Immediately following the game, people on social media drew their battle lines and rushed to their chosen trenches. It’s so predictable, you have to be either a loyal foot soldier and accuse anyone being critical of being “plastic” or the first negative result in was seems like forever, is proof that Arteta is a fraud and the team has holes in that a bus could be driven through.
I do have worries , Saliba apart, that starting 11 was as good as it gets, and it got battered. We have gotten off to to a fantastic start to the season, but in all likelihood we will find ourselves 3 points behind City following todays fixtures.
I did see Arteta after the game and he is both hugely disappointed and fuming. One thing is for sure, our manager understands the importance of every single dropped point and no stone will be left unturned in his pursuit to to endure that it’s a blip rather than anything more fundamental and serious. Well he has 3 weeks of mulling to come up with his answer.
One positive ,as I see it, is we can stop musing on whether the season to be “invincible”, this might just be the strongest squad we have ever had, but the best team it is not, and not only is it not, it’s nowhere near.
Ok, lets see what happens in 3 weeks time and not throw any babies out with any bathwater in the meantime.
Pedantic George.
You got it covered George. Its odd isnt it, no matter how talented your squad is if they arent psychologically on the same page, anything can happen.
Internet reaction is often becoming more and more a trudge, same old same old, “its raining= bad!” “its sunny= its great!” and neither just brings up a dilema: what to say? I have some sympathy , as it must be tough to run a site that wants to be relevant. Id be irrelevant straight away!
Maybe the world of YT (etc) will crash and burn, certainly it will change. Sometimes I wonder if the drama of post match meltdown online drags you in?As a kid I would have been upset for a bit but still just walked on as the Zen heads say. I can recall Wenger amassing over 100,000 tweets after we had lost to Stoke, a similar situation, the team just didnt get started. How relevant were those tweets, maybe on to those who break down the data at various institutes?
We can all still follow Arsenal in the way we want, even if its away from the herd and numbers and off the beaten path.
On another day Rice could have be given a red, I hope he can keep his calm, if players keep niggling him.
Im not sure we can ever get to the bottom of why we lost but for me as I wrote in the preview i thought we were looking at going down. But are anxious moments really premonitions?
But once we come back from nearly a month away, it will be on the edge of the dark days of autumn and thats a different hurdle for all clubs, fun in the sun is one thing, roaming in the gloaming another. But we have great team, and Arteta does want to go yet either.
COYG!
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Fulham 1-1 Man utd means spurs are bottom of the league
Man city 5-3 sunderland the big story once again this week in a man city game is how VAR fucked up big time in favor of city, but unlike last week where it was just the one incident, this week it was two, a handball in build up to a city goal and a clear hand ball by anderson that should have been a sunderland penalty, and it seems VAR did not even review it, but there was no review needed as it was so damn clearly a handball. Have the pgmol decided city are to win the title
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If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
The extremes of social and mainstream media where captured excellently all those years ago by Rudyard.
So yes we had a mare and all the talk about invincibility has, like life always does, kicks us up the arse if you excuse the pun
We were told before the game Brighton were the best in the league at the high press and would harry us all over the pitch. Unfortunately the coaching staff and the players never got to grips with this. I thought Myles and Victor were more suited to this game but I’m not privy to the training and scouting reports so hey.
The first time football, long diagonal switches and availability for the ball, especially from the wide players, that is needed to beat the oppositions best tactic was never on show.
Mikel said that he knew from the first throw something was wrong and yet he didn’t change anything until we were three down and the game was gone. This again draws the accusations about Mikel not being able to change from his pre set game. Right or wrong he didn’t do himself any favours.
Our senior players (Gabriel excepted) went missing and Declan is far away from being a reliable captain as yet. Yes, he should have seen red and it was only timing that kept him on the pitch.
Normally after a defeat you would want a game straight after to put things right but actually the interlull might just have come at the wrong time.
The Opta computer said we would be the team most affected by the world cup and twelve points from fifteen is not bad especially when you consider the fixtures.
Our manager has asked for perspective and on this occasion I think he’s correct however tend think based on Mikel’s history that he will return to the never being beaten priority that won him the title and our brief venture into openness will again be banished to the vaults.
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our chance of turning the game around went when odegaard butchered that breakaway and was either unable or unwilling to pass to saka for a one on one, and ten seconds later they made it 2-0
as i said yesterday, Bergkamp and Ozil would have laid it on a plate for saka, he wouldn’t have had to break stride, but Odegaard does not possess that level of ability, but very few in the history of the game do or have.
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While the chance of drawing level at that stage certainly went, and you are correct about our captain, the truth is we weren’t at the races and the likelihood was Brighton would have won anyway.
If we were lucky we may have scored two,if they were lucky they would have scored six.
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I would also say the game was reminiscent of the league cup final. On that day we had players missing and our brilliant distributing keeper was rested and his replacement made several errors. Saturday we didn’t have that excuse and that’s a worry.
We need to make sure we can negotiate this tactic or every team will be using it.
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Mikel has signed a new deal
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arsenal women’s team made hard work of their CL game, winning 1-0 with an injury time penalty. They made 8 changes for this game, which suggests they may have under estimated their opponents.
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Mishel Nduka, has announced he is leaving ARSENAL and will sign pro forms with city when he turns 17.
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Timber called up by Netherlands but was unfit to train yesterday an is not in their team today v Germany
Havertz started for Germany but went off injured in first half of the game
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it was quinten timber who injured Havertz, got him in the knee with his studs raking down, rightly booked
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city have been found guilty of the majority of charges and after eight years it is now at appeal stage.
The rumour is that city’s penalty will be Everton losing eight points.
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city should be hung out to dry, all trophies won should be stripped off them, they should be relegated to the national league or lower, and they should have to pay billions in compensation to all the clubs their cheating screwed over.
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That is what should happen, but unfortunately the PL are scared of them and need the big boys to sell their project.
In reality I would imagine there will be a small fine, a suspended transfer ban, and if they win the league by six points then a four point deduction.
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the republic of ireland players, bar one, chickened out of doing the right and moral thing, the games with israel go ahead. Cowards.
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I think its time for Arsenal to sack Renee Slegers, defeat today to Chelsea, 1-0, leaves it almost certain that there will be no league title again this year, and that is after only 4 games. We have probably the best squad we ever had quality wise, and we can barely muster a shot on target. The signs were there is preseason and sadly it hasn’t changed, we dominate play but end up unable to even test the opposing goalie. We have scored 2 goals in 4 league games and needed an injury time penalty to win 1-0 in the CL against the easiest opponents we will face all season. Arsenal are already 7 points off top spot man city, and as followers of the womens game will know, that this means we have almost no room for dropped points for the rest of the season. With Chelsea women and london city lionesses and even spurs going well too, we really needed to start the season far stronger than we have.
as much as i hate emma hayes, i would not be against her being brought in to replace slegers, cos for me this squad needs a bit of hard nosed win at all costs attitude
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I’m not there yet with Renee, I do think once we start scoring we won’t stop. She obviously is running out of credit with the European Cup. The title is what the women’s team need.
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This season, for the men, is slightly different. Normally the assessment to see where we are is after ten games, but this season we play city in game twelve.
By then we would have played six at home and six away, including trips to Villa, Sunderland, Forrest, Newcastle, Liverpool and of course Brighton.
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konsa out of the england team injured
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Womens CL result
Paris FC 2-2 Arsenal
Russo and Stanway had given Arsenal a 2-0 lead but two goals in the last 20 minutes by Paris, the second one a penalty, sees the game end in a draw.
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Renee Slegers was “too disappointed” to do the post match press conference
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Christos Tzolis has been forced off inside the opening 15 minutes of Greece’s Nations League match against the Netherlands with a hamstring injury
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Kai, Martin and now Christos interlull going well for us so far.
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Max Dowman was sent for in the England U19’s v USA U19’s game today
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“A risk not worth taking”
Apparently, that’s what Premier league executives are saying about the chance of them voting for cities expulsion if it is recommended by the independent commission.
It has been decades that some of us on this site have been complaining about corruption of other clubs and the complicity of the authorities to ignore it.
Remember when George Graham was found guilty of accepting payments from the Scandinavian agent Runne Hauge. GG passed Runne on to his good friend Alex Ferguson when he was offered Smecheal but already had Seaman. Ferguson was never investigated because he was Manures manager and they were the biggest club in the country at the time and the new PL needed them to be successful. It was also no coincidence that the club was so close to officials as well.
There was many people arguing that if we thought football was corrupt then why support it, why spend money and invest so much time following a sport that we believed to be corrupt.
Unfortunately, supporting a club doesn’t work like that you are hooked, sucked in and unable to not show a massive interest whatever happens. It is one of the reasons the English football pyramid has survived for long. The vast majority of fans of the 92 can rely on glory but they support almost vocationally.
So we all know the fit and proper owners test is a thin bit of paper and there have been some horrendous owners over the years and nothing really changed.
When the premier league encouraged sports washing with the likes of chelski and royal city it was obviously corrupt and money was calling the tune.
The latest news that PL club executives will accept cities corruption because otherwise it will effect their income as well, is a new development.
It is one thing to ignore sports washing but to find it guilty and accept means the product is tainted forever and every club is corrupt.
If this happens then the game has gone.
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City should be thrown out of the league completely. If the EPL fail to relegate them over fear of the damage it will do, then they are miscalculating how fans feel and they will do the EPL major damage if city get let off from proper punishment.
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Man City Women 4-2 Arsenal Women
Arsenal had the lead twice but this was another inept performance, it lacked energy, it lacked physicality, and dare I say it, some of our players are once again doing to the manager what they done to Jonas, they have downed tools.
I said in the summer that our womens team needed two additions that they did not make, a beast of a CB and a powerhouse midfielder, and watching our performances this season so far, its still the two things this team lack. Man City today had a powerhouse of a striker in Shaw, and Leah Williamson looked like a little schoolgirl beside her(what has happened to Leah, she has got skinnier and smaller), Wubben-Moy is our biggest CB and she is not what you would call an extra strong CB, she is a bit lacking in pace too to compound maters.
In Midfield Kim Little is starting to show her age, never seen her so ineffectual as she was today, and she was like that v Crystal Palace and Man Utd too. The balance of the team is not right, we have a right back playing left back, letting Katie McCabe go was a massive error. Stanway and Little in midfield has not gelled yet, Mariona has been poor by her standards so far this season, she went off with a hamstring injury today, and it seems its a bad one.
We have loads of options in attack, but Slegers doesn’t seem to know what the combinations she wants, its chopping and changing each game and during games. Olivia Smith must have an injury, otherwise there can be no excuse for the lack of game time she is getting.
I do fear that the players have lost faith in Slegers and some of them have downed tools. There is an international break now, and if Arsenal and considering replacing the manager then they need to do it double quick and get the new manager in during this break. I don’t think they will, I heard a rumor that they will if at all possible stick with Renee this season and if things don’t go well then they will move for England Manager Sarina Wiegman next summer after the World Cup.
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5 games played in the Womens Super League and Arsenal are 10 points off top spot and 5 points off bottom. Just the one win, 2 draws and 2 defeats, and have a minus 2 goal difference.
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You get the feeling ARSENAL will stick with Renee as long as they’re in the CL. Go out of that early and she’s toast.
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Konsa and Dowman both pull out of international duty with injury and are back at Arsenal to be assessed
its not been a good interlull for Arsenal re injuries
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there is another interlull next month, its utter madness
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Arteta has signed a new contract till 2030, his coaching staff have all got new deals too.
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George, sent the Leeds preview over. COYG!
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And up it jolly well goes.
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