Good morning, or is it?

As the sun went down in Manchester about 9 AM so too did the light go from our title hopes. Truth be told after the first 8 minutes of play it was clear we were in for a humbling and a lesson in football. It was complete dominance from start to finish, they were simply too good and we had no answers to their superiority all over the pitch.

It looked like their set up with a more conventional four at the back, took us by surprise and our press was ineffective, with them passing through us, or over us, creating havoc in our box, the final score 4-1, flattered us.

I said in the last podcast that we don’t have a single player that would get into their team, harsh perhaps? But I think that was clearly on show last night. They are quite simply a magnificent football team. Ok, with a 2 billion pound spend they should be, but they are. There are no excuses, that was our best eleven , bar one player, and we were totally outclassed.

It would be easy for me to point a finger at certain players that under performed, but I won’t, because I only have 10 fingers. Again, that might be harsh, but only on Ramsdale. However, if I was put on the spot, my first 3 finger points would be at Partey, Jesus and our skipper. Rob Holding was perhaps the pick of our outfield players, and that’s just plain wrong.

On the bright side, because of other results last night,we will be in the CL next season, which I would have taken as a success at the start of the season, so I suppose being involved in a title challenge has been a great bonus, and a lot of fun.

It’s a disappointing result and performance, but there’s no point naval gazing, we were just beaten by a vastly superior team, that had a good night. on their own turf.

Pedantic George.

Hello all.

In this podcast we look at dropped points against Southampton on the back of Liverpool and West Ham and my conclusions point the finger at certain players that seem beyond criticism. Then we try to assess our chances against City on Wednesday night.

Now, as I’m currently off twitter ( for reasons discussed in this podcast ) if anyone could promote this podcast for us, I will be very grateful.

Pedantic George.

It’s late on Friday night and I have no idea where to begin. So I’ll just start with Ramsdale passing it to Alcaraz with 20 seconds on the clock. Now, if you’ve watched Arsenal at all this season you’ll know that Ramsdale is good for a flub like this. 

It doesn’t make him unique as a Premier League goalkeeper, but he has passed it straight to opposing attackers several times this season.

Tonight, Alcaraz took the gift in his stride and got his shot away faster than other attackers have done in this situation. From my perspective, Ramsdale could also have made a better fist of saving the shot, which came at a decent height. 

Before long, we were two down. My thinking on this goal is that because we like to play with a lot of men ahead of the ball, moments of sloppiness early in the build up can unbalance us catastrophically. Even more if we’re chasing the game. 

Here Saka played a loose pass infield to our No. 5, who lunged to control it. Odegaard charged in to rescue things, but made them worse by passing straight to an SFC shirt. All three midfielders were now wrong side with Southampton breaking. 

Even deep into his 30s, Walcott lives for scenarios like this, and was able to isolate Gabriel, receiving a neat pass from Alcaraz and slotting into the corner with sangfroid. 

One of the players caught high up the pitch was Fabio Vieira. He wasn’t at fault for the goal, but had little impact on the game, and was hooked early in the second half. We’ll see what he looks like in the summer with a preseason behind him, but, to play manager, I think I’d have gone with Jorginho in midfield for this one. 

At 2-0 down we finally started playing. First, Zinchenko zipped a low ball across the six-yard box, with nobody able to react. 

Then the Ukrainian picked it up in midfield for what felt like the first time. He played one of those signature incisive passes to Odegaard, who bent the ball inside their left-back to Saka on the move. When we do manage to get Saka one-on-one, defenders are screwed either way.

Here Saka opted for the byline, and cut it back for Martinelli, who adjusted his feet beautifully to whack a low volley beyond Bazunu. If you had to pick an archetypal 22-23 Arsenal goal it would surely look a lot like this. 

Our first goal came on the 20th minute, and the first half didn’t end until the 53rd. But in that time we didn’t exactly pepper their goal. Odegaard headed over from a Martinelli cross, and a flicked header by White was cleared off the line, and that was it for the rest of the first period. 

The game seemed to drift, and it wasn’t helped by a lengthy stoppage for Bednarek’s awkward fall. Thankfully he appeared to be OK, though it was alarming to see him trying to fight his way back onto the pitch having clearly been unconscious. 

For a game that will be remembered for its drama, it’s no stretch to say that the middle third was uneventful. Aside from half-chances in our favour, and a curious, negative half-time switch by Southampton to a back 5, nothing much happened until we gifted them their third and most frustrating goal. 

I don’t even want to go back and relive it, but as far as I recall our No.5 gave the ball away cheaply and we conceded a corner. Then our marking was all over the place as we allowed an SFC player to win his header in the middle of the six yard box. The ball looped to Ćaleta-Car who eluded Zinchenko and stepped in for an easy finish. 

The stadium was crestfallen. With 20 minutes still to go, the crowd thinned out, no doubt discouraged by Jesus skying a presentable chance on the volley and then straight-up missing a header at the back post.

Arsenal were doing many of the right things, but appeared to have set themselves an impossible target. Every time an attack broke down we had to wait for up to a minute for the game to restart, and it’s a mystery how Bazunu managed to get through the match without a booking. Ederson dallied on a single goal kick on Wednesday night and was carded instantly.

Once again, we were squeezing SFC without cutting through them, and the goal to make it 3-2 was a moment of solo inspiration from Odegaard. A nifty one-two with White forced a narrow opening, and he seized upon it with panache, arcing the ball into the bottom corner. 

Two minutes later, Trossard managed to find the gap between a Southampton defender’s legs—Nelson forced a save from Bazunu and Saka was there to equalise on the rebound. 

Southampton were now ragged, and when our third goal went in, eight minutes of injury time seemed like it might be enough for us to get the winner. Nelson came agonizingly close when his effort was deflected wide, and then Trossard clattered a shot off the top of the bar. 

And with time almost up, when we needed to keep an unsteady Southampton under the cosh, our No. 5 elected to shoot from 35 yards when it was the last thing he should have done. He blasted it over the bar, bringing this nauseating roller coaster ride to an appropriate end. 

The stats show that Southampton were implausibly clinical in punishing our mistakes. But who’s to say we wouldn’t have offered up even more clear-cut opportunities had they missed the ones we gave them?

Full time left us with many contrasting emotions to process. Some of those are positive for sure, but it’s not easy to take heart from a desperate draw against the league’s bottom team.

Still, while I think we’re under no illusions about the magnitude of the challenge ahead next week, you never know. So let’s go with that. 

Birdkamp.

In this podcast we talk about the squandering of points at Liverpool and West Ham, and how Jesus and his wandering, upset the shape and patterns of play.

Pedantic George.

For the second Sunday in a row, Arsenal were pegged back from 2-0 up to draw. We strode into the lead with two sublime goals in the first ten minutes, but never recovered from conceding a sloppy penalty.

After the break Bowen made it 2-2 when he seized on a hopeful looping ball. It could have been worse as Antonio’s header clipped the bar from close range. It might also have been a lot better, had Saka managed to convert a penalty at 2-1. 

Football is mystifying. You wonder how a team can make things look so easy, and then make the same stuff look nigh-on impossible minutes later. An explanation on Sunday could be that for the first time this season, the pressure of the title battle might have got to this young team. 

I don’t even know if this makes any sense but our football in the opening reminded me of the diagrams of Brownian Motion in school physics textbooks. There was a joyous spontaneity to our play, with players appearing in curious positions and darting off in random directions. 

Jesus collected it from our CBs, Xhaka tested their offside line, and Tierney looked like a less penetrative but no less assured version of Zinchenko at mid-back.

When the team moves in harmony like it did at the start, players can take the simplest option for the most devastating result. It’s something we should have kept in mind later in the game. Anyway, we took the lead when White overlapped for Odegaard and his low-cross was met at the far post by Jesus. 

Two minutes later Xhaka recycled the ball to Martinelli, whose deep cross was turned in by Odegaard. We were now full of ourselves and West Ham looked dead in the water. 

When does relaxation become complacency? Clearly we have to feel relaxed to play our best football, but here we also sacrificed the crucial intensity and devotion to the basics for a kind of languid showboatyness. 

About ten minutes after our second goal we had time for another slick move that could have killed it, fizzling out when a flick by Saka to Jesus was cut out. At the time I would never have guessed that it would be our last glimpse of champagne football for the afternoon. 

We had been completely on top, and It was easy. So easy in fact that we needed a spooked grizzled veteran from an action movie to warn us that it was a “little too easy”, because the fragility of our dominance was about to be laid bare. 

Rice caught our No. 5 dawdling in deep midfield. The ball took a pretty fortunate bounce off Rice’s chest and arm, and then Paqueta evaded Gabriel in the box, earning a penalty out of nowhere that was tucked home by Benrahma. 

What followed was 15 minutes of aerial pressure, from corners, long throws and cheaply surrendered free-kicks. Just like last weekend, our team seemed to abandon its identity in the face of pressure. 

But unlike last weekend, we were up against a team whose weapon of choice was something heavy and blunt. You can see what’s coming a mile off with West Ham, in contrast to the dizzying multidimensional assault laid on by Liverpool. 

When opponents like West Ham are in the mood it feels like your team is in a headlock. There’s a constant, low-level sense of danger in those set pieces when you’re playing against percentage football. You know you should be safe if everyone does their job.

But you’re also aware that constantly having to clear your lines, stay cohesive and win second balls will wear a team down and eventually lead to mistakes. 

And we did slip, but not before having the chance to make it 3-1. 

The ball caught Antonio on one of his beefy arms. Saka hovered in the background during all the post-decision wrangling, and stepped up to waft his spot kick wide. 

The crowd was still celebrating Saka’s miss when West Ham looped an aimless ball into the area after we had cleared another long throw. Bowen reacted before anyone, and dug out an untidy finish that perhaps made Ramsdale’s job more difficult by zipping off the turf. Our GK got a hand to it, but not enough. 

After their equalizer West Ham lost their urgency, and seemed content, if not to play for a draw then at least wait for their moment. We injected some order into midfield by bringing on Jorginho and Trossard, but had long lost our ability to find holes in that backline. 

The final 20 minutes was a torpor, interrupted by a hairy moment when Holding was caught wrong-side and Antonio’s close-range header deflected over off the bar. 

In any other context, this outcome could be held up by the manager as an example of how quickly an apparently simple game can turn, especially away from home. The message is to keep at it and go for the jugular. 

The climatic few weeks in a title fight may not feel like the time for such basic lessons. But if we can rediscover the humility that got us to 74 points after 31 games, and combine it with the killer instinct to put contests to bed, then let’s see how far we can go. 

Birdkamp

We have Ramsdale’s acrobatics, Liverpool’s profligacy, and a lot of last-ditch defending to thank for a draw, gouged from a punishing trip to Anfield. 

We started off with confidence and style, striding to a two-goal lead, but were pegged back, first before half-time by Salah and then late by a Firmino header. 

Liverpool’s momentum grew after a set-to between Xhaka and Alexander, and never dissipated. Perhaps it’s easy to build up a head of steam when you have a referee stoking the engine. Throughout, there was a strange disparity between the threshold for a foul, depending on the shirt colour. 

People on the outside have set Arsenal new obstacles all season, whether it was bouncing back from the first defeat or the Europa League schedule, losing Jesus for several months or coping with a tough run in the new year. 

Here was the toughest single challenge, definitely since City at home, and maybe since the start of the season: 

A trip to the formidable last redoubt of a dissolute army. A wounded rabble accustomed to humiliation everywhere—everywhere but Anfield, where the indignation is shriller than the whistle blown in their favour every couple of minutes

Before we showed up, Liverpool had not conceded a goal at home in 2023, and they have suffered only one defeat all season. They even rested their big boys for this one, seemingly happy to sacrifice a game away at Chelsea mid-week. 

When things got started, it was less Sturm und Drang and more slump and droop. Liverpool didn’t know how much to commit to their press, and when they did, we were able to cut through them with two or three composed passes. 

Our first break of this kind gave us our opener, when Saka caused mayhem by powering forward. The ball bounced around to Martinelli who dabbed it home.

Arsenal continued to look menacing after the goal. We found Saka in boundless space down the right and his cross was skewed just wide at the back post by Jesus. 

Before the half-hour we were two-up. This time Martinelli took advantage of Liverpool’s loose structure after being invited to chase a ball down the left flank by Xhaka. He had time to cut back and pick out Jesus, whose downward header skipped past Alisson.

Liverpool had mustered a couple of chances in between, but had never been able to pin us back, as is their wont in home games. Turns out, all they needed was 50,000+ irate fans and a complaisant referee in Paul Tierney.

A few minutes before the break, Xhaka and Alexander-Arnold had a tiff about something, and this seemed to get the crowd going. For the rest of the game we were heading away corners, blasting goal-kicks up for Van Dijk to win, and scurrying leftwards to try to close the space exploited by Salah.

Their first goal was kind of fortunate, with the ball stabbed across the box blindly by Henderson. Salah stole in to turn it home, but it looked like it rebounded off his shins as Gabriel tried to clear. 

The second half was a 51-minute assault. Heavy Metal football as they call it, but with Paul Tierney on the drums. It’s tough to clear your lines when the person receiving the ball is manhandled, and it’s hard to win a duel when your shirt is being pulled, almost every single time. 

Conversely, it must be a doddle gambling on the transitions when the initiative is being handed to you by the ref time after time.

In this fashion Liverpool’s pressure built to unbearable levels. Some time early in the first half we dealt with one of what felt like a hundred corners. Jota was first to the ball, running away from goal before suffering some kind of seizure, locking up and collapsing at the feet of a perplexed Rob Holding. The result was a gift of a penalty, with love from Paul to ‘Pool. 

Justice was done when Salah scuffed the penalty wide, but Liverpool’s Tierney-driven momentum continued to build. Summing up that impunity, Konate went straight through Xhaka with studs showing. No card. No foul in fact, and it sparked another Liverpool attack. 

The few times we were able to negotiate their press, we looked dangerous, but our decision-making was foggy, dulled no doubt by constant firefighting. 

In the last half-hour they managed to bundle through our backline more frequently, forcing Ramsdale into a succession of ever more astonishing saves. He clawed away a Salah strike, and plunged to halt Darwin, who had been unleashed when Klopp sent on all of the strikers.

The frustrating thing about the equalizer was that we had just started to give Liverpool something to worry about, especially with overloads down the left. A couple of minutes before Liverpool’s goal, Gabriel had a free header from a corner, directed straight at Alisson. 

Also frustrating is that Zinchenko got done so easily by Alexander-Arnold, who had all the time he needed to scoop it to Firmino unmarked. 

The onslaught continued, but not without reply. Tierney dragged a shot wide, and Martinelli over-hit a simple pass to set Saka clear. Well, it would have been simple if he hadn’t needed to spend the whole match switched on and sprinting back towards our goal. 

At our end, Ramsdale pulled off a scarcely believable save from a deflected strike, and Konate miscued with the goal gaping. Maybe he’d have made better contact if Xhaka’s shin had been in the way. 

Arteta claimed it was two points dropped. Possibly, but a draw is a creditable result when you’re facing the 2019-20 version of Liverpool, with 2019-20 refereeing. Truly, there’s nowhere quite like fortress Anfield, as the other big sides have discovered this season. Birdkamp. 

Hello all,

Today we look back at Leeds and forward to Liverpool, while worrying about the difficulty of the run in.

Pedantic George.

Arsenal stuttered to a comfortable 4-1 win against Leeds on Saturday. And if the idea of stuttering to that margin of victory sounds stupid, well it was that kind of game. 

In true post-international break tradition, we started out blunt going forward and vulnerable to counters. 

But after Jesus drew a silly foul from Ayling in a rare moment of danger, the game flipped. Then, aided by what must have been an angry Arteta team talk and a tactical rejig, we had the whole thing wrapped up before the hour. We were even able to give most of our big players a rest. 

To my mind, Leeds set up a bit like Oxford in the FA Cup in the first half, pushing pretty high without the ball and playing with what felt like 11 midfielders. I recall Roca was doing something interesting early on, alternating between central defence and defensive midfield. 

Coming to The Emirates and containing Arsenal is not easy to do. But if opponents catch us on a sloppy day, they have big swathes of the pitch they can pour into. The game plan for individuals is pretty straightforward, too: Work hard, stay in position and break quickly. Summerville was on board, seizing on repeated turnovers, surging into our half, giving and going. 

As for us, how to put this? We were not good in the first half. Trying to work out what was wrong, I kept thinking of phantom limbs. This is a team that has flourished through instinctive partnerships, developed in the long-term and also over the course of this winning run. Against Leeds, key parts had been crudely lopped off, with Saka ill and Trosard moved out right.  

Everything was off-kilter on the right flank where Odegaard and White are accustomed to the crutch of Saka on the touchline to simplify things or turn up the heat. Several times they got the ball to Trossard tight on the flank where he obviously didn’t want it. When things fell apart, Summerville on their left was usually the man capitalising, 

Jesus looked pretty miffed about the whole thing. If you can interpret his gestures, it was like the team kept breaking a pre-match promise to play it forward earlier or find him in the channels. 

This is a guy who backs himself in any race or physical battle after all, unlike Trossard as a false 9, who drifts around so he doesn’t need to get involved in that stuff. So you can sympathise if he felt he wasn’t being harnessed in the right way. 

The upshot is that we were disjointed, while Leeds were menacing, testing Ramsdale as early as the first 20 seconds and then twice more half an hour in.

But everything changed when Jesus turned Ayling inside out, sending him to ground and going down over his outstretched leg. It was an obvious penalty and maybe an example of the chaos Arteta says he brings

It’s great that Jesus accepted the invitation to go down, where previously he’s tried to stay on his feet after getting bear-hugged in the box. It’s also heartening to see him take responsibility from the spot and get back to scoring ways at a crucial time. 

We improved after the goal, but saved our best football for the second half. 

Within a couple of minutes of the restart, Martinelli picked it up from Zichenko on the left, cut inside Ayling and angled a searching low cross for White to turn in, out of nowhere at the far post. Credit to Trossard for his early near-post run, which set the Leeds defence askew. 

At this point there was ample space to explore, and for the next 15 minutes we were flying. This spell yielded our best goal, when Gabriel Jesus got the ball to Trossard in a more familiar central position, where the Belgian’s nifty first touch bought some space in the area. 

Trossard shimmied to the corner of the six-yard box and cut it back for the arriving Jesus to finish. It was another of those cascading moves in the classic Arsenal style. 

The final half-hour was marked by several momentum-disrupting substitutions, but these were necessary on the back of a busy international break. At 3-0 up with 20 minutes to go and potentially the biggest six weeks in the recent history of the club ahead of us, you can’t blame the team for taking their foot off the gas.

Leeds were allowed back into it for a while. First Ramsdale had to save at the near post against Aaronson. Then they mustered the kind of counter previously seen in the first half-hour, with Harrison advancing 30 yards to the edge of the area. If they had been unlucky not to get more out of their chances in first half, they were fortunate here. 

Xhaka’s challenge diverted it to Kristensen, whose shot was deflected past Ramsdale off Zinchenko’s shoulder. 

But in 2022-23 Arsenal likes to have the last word. So it was, when Saka attracted half the Leeds squad on the right flank. He knows that in these situations a simple pass infield is enough to unbalance a team. Odegaard bent a cross to Xhaka who killed the match with a guided header and his third goal in three. 

Eight-point gap restored. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s probably Champions League football secured for next season. 

Leeds were not bad at all, and in the tougher moments forced Arteta to consider how to get more out of certain players, and the pros and cons of sticking with the same XI each week. The cohesion is powerful, but if one or two long-term picks drop out, the adjustment can leave us vulnerable. 

Birdkamp.

Hello all.

In this podcast we look at the fantastic performance against Palace and try to work out what our realistic chances of winning the big prize.

Pedantic George.

Clinical and precise, Arsenal dismantled Crystal Palace on Sunday to go eight clear at the top. Barring a consolation goal and a couple of Zaha-generated scares, the win was wrapped up after an hour to quell talk of a post-Europe slump.  

The Europa League should never have been an afterthought, and would have been great to win. To have done so would probably have represented Arsenal’s greatest victory in Europe, arguably ahead of the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1994. 

Though, to digress, you have to remember that football talent was more evenly distributed in the 90s, and that every Serie A team had two or three world beaters. It meant you could expect to meet superstars like Cafu, Weah, Lombardo, Zola, Raí, Vierchowod, Asprilla and Mihajlović in Europe’s third competition, so it’s hard to compare. 

Anyway, in 21st-century football, the Thursday-Sunday fixture cycle is a grim slog. The further you progress, the more you start to wonder if it’s a trap, as Man United may learn. 

So we’ve broken out of it, and long-term that might be something to be happy about, but coming into this game we could speculate about short-term damage. We got a parting gift of tired legs and a key starter and a key backup sidelined for who knows how long. 

But come Sunday afternoon, it was Palace that looked listless, and no wonder, having also played and lost midweek, and now finding themselves without a manager at short notice. Was it fair to sack Vieira? They had not won a game in 2023, but were also on the last leg of a brutal fixture list, so I don’t know. 

It didn’t take us long to work out how they were going to try to get the ball forward, by drawing us up the pitch at goal kicks, and hitting their wingers in space. Had Joachim Andersen survived the warm-up you imagine he’d have been supplying most of that passing threat, because nobody else was up to it. 

Arsenal were always on top in the first half, with decisive and eye-catching contributions from Martinelli and Saka, but everyone is due some credit. Holding, aggressive and powerful in the air, showed his ball-playing ability with three or four accurate cross-field passes early on. Odegaard, Partey, Xhaka and Zinchenko escaped with the ball from tight situations, while joining forces to squeeze Palace high up the pitch. 

Ben White put on a masterclass. He was the one who stepped in to win it back to start the attack for our opener, and then got the ball to Saka with one of those ostensibly simple angled passes. When the dust settles on this season, we’re going to have to come to terms with the idea of an RB locking down the right flank but serving as Saka’s own private playmaker at the same time. Fingers crossed we can keep him fit for these last 10 games.

For much of the first half hour the ball bobbled to and fro across the Palace area, just out of reach of an Arsenal player. But finally, Saka’s cross made its way to Martinelli to cut onto his left and blasted inside the far post with his weaker foot. If Thursday night was a blow, he wasn’t showing it. 

Then just before half-time, Ben White added nuance and danger to two successive moves, and Saka turned and shot low past Palace’s young goalkeeper, maybe showing his inexperience by taking up an iffy position. 

While they looked ragged as a group, Palace have individuals who can turn a game, as we were reminded before we took the lead. Holding over-committed to a slide tackle high up the pitch, Schlupp pounced and Zaha loped into the space, going one-on-one against White. 

Zaha shimmied and shot low against the post, and the ball ricocheted off Ramsdale’s calf and out for a corner. The replay showed that Ramsdale got a fingertip to the initial shot, so maybe he earned that moment of luck.

On the few other occasions Palace managed to hurt us, Zaha was the man involved. Just after half-time he went on another menacing run, and later forced a save from a narrow angle.

When they did start to make a game of it in the second half, Arsenal responded. The first of those replies was the best goal of the game. Zinchenko played one of his characteristic line-breaking passes to Xhaka, who laid it off first-time to Trossard who keeps showing us how well he can measure a final ball. 

As with his chance against Fulham last week, Xhaka burst into the area, but this time prodded it into the net under pressure from the recovering defender.

Given the schedule, it’s understandable that Arsenal started to ease off with the score at 3-0. 

All the same, Palace’s goal was needless. It came from a corner conceded with a strange clearance by White, who could have picked up the ball and recycled possession but slammed it into the Clock End. 

We should have intervened as Schlupp brought the corner under control, but we didn’t, and he whacked it home. Palace barely merited a scoreline as narrow as 3-1, but might have narrowed it even further, when Zaha pulled it wide after some loose play, first by Ramsdale and then Partey. 

We decided we needed to get serious again, and wrapped it all up a couple of minutes later. A Jesus run caused a bit of mayhem in the Palace defence, and the ball found its way out to Tierney who pulled it back perfectly for Saka to kill the game with a strike into the bottom corner. 

Game over, with a win that answered a lot of questions, drew a line under Thursday and put everyone in a good mood going into the international break. 

Birdkamp