Back in the early days of the Emirates, Wenger’s Arsenal gave the word “brave” a new meaning, at least in football terms. For some, bravery will always be about barrelling into the 50-50s and putting your face in harm’s way like Phil Jones. 

But for us, as we honed the short passing game that endures in Arteta’s Arsenal, “bravery” became sticking with your football principles in the face of setbacks, ridicule, and occasional violence. 

It was in those days, not the glory of the Invincibles, that Arsenal’s modern identity was forged. This is our Plan A. 

Our courage is about taking the difficult but more effective option. That might mean passing and receiving in tight areas, or looking for overlaps even when you know the other team is ready to pounce on the counter. Above all it means persevering, like Saka did all match, knowing you will be kicked. 

That devotion to technicality even bled into our corners, in which we kept playing it short, and kept finding players in dangerous positions, like Zinchenko to make it 2-2. 

Yesterday’s win at Villa, when Sauron’s eye was glaring at the manager and players was brave as hell. That was true for the final 20 minutes, when we continued to go for the win, knowing that counter attacks are Emery’s meat and drink. 

Villa’s two goals were clinical in a way that makes it hard to point fingers at our players, but even if they were out of the blue they put us in a position where there was no longer margin for error, even when we’d been playing quite well again. 

We revelled in that pressure this time. Take the passage of play before Zinchenko’s equaliser: Saliba tracked Watkins on a potential counter, ushered him down an alley and mugged him for the ball. It was a colossal piece of defending and exemplified a team shrugging off the baggage and rising to the challenge. 

The past two weeks—yes, it’s only been two weeks since Everton away—Arsenal have played like a good team going through a sticky patch, as opposed to an average team that had finally been found out. 

The way we look back at this run will always be coloured by the results, but in every game you could say that we’ve done the things that good teams do. For me, that applies most of all to the way we’ve worked the ball from defence to attack, only for things to break down. 

Throughout this run, it has taken something special or a unique set of circumstances to take points off us.

But Villa are nothing special, and were the most vulnerable of any team we’ve faced since Wolves before the World Cup. They’ve got a lot of talented players, and Emery is still one of the best at preparing for individual matches, but their momentum has ebbed since the new year.

And while we’ve been doing a lot of things right recently, we haven’t been winning. Good teams win, and this was a winnable game. 

There were other factors in play of course. One was the physical aspect, with under 72 hours between kick-offs. Another is morale. It would only be natural for heads to drop after a winless run.

And yet, even in the lowest point in this game, immediately after Villa had scored their second, we were brave enough to keep playing our football, attempting and succeeding with high-tariff passes through the lines to players in spots that made Villa uncomfortable. 

Good examples were Xhaka finding Nketiah in the area from deep, or Saliba clipping a pass out to Saka on the move, as we tried to assert ourselves the only way we know. 

Fast-forward to a match poised at 2-2, with six minutes added and a lot more wasted by Emi Martínez. If we had ridden our luck, Villa had burned through a season’s worth. And here we are, pinning them in their box, working it from side-to-side, looking for a yard. By hanging back, Jorginho found several, and he made the most satisfying connection. 

The ball ricocheted off the crossbar and then off the head of Martínez, as poetic comeuppance, as if some greater force had looked at Arsenal’s last two weeks, had watched that guy’s World Cup celebrations, and said, “You know what, you deserve this.” 

It was a fitting end to a week in which Arsenal were supposed to have been figured out and needed to come up with a Plan B. 

No way, Arsenal must live and die by our Plan A, because our Plan A is who we are.

Birdkamp

Good morning positives, how are you doing?

As if losing last night wasn’t enough, no Birdkamp today, so that leaves me to spout my inane nonsense, so don’t be expecting me to tell you anything you don’t know or didn’t see.

We lost a home game to a team I believe to be the best in the world. However, judging from the meltdown on social media, you might think we had been thrashed by a non-league pup team from the heart of Tottenham, with huge swathes of our fanbase behaving like demented toddlers that got the wrong Christmas present. Quite frankly, the reaction has been nothing short of pathetic. Sadly though, it was entirely predictable from the emotionally stunted morons.

I though it was an even start to the game , with us just shading it, until The Emperor hit a horribly short back pass for KDB to pounce upon and shin with his weak leg into the top corner. This of course instantly turned last years successful Japanese signing into the worst player we have and he should never represent the club again. Or so I was reading on twitter. For the rest of the half i thought we were very good. Jorginho and Xhaka completely bossed the game and in the 5 years of Pep, I’ve never witnessed City so comprehensively outplayed. Eddie earned us a rightly given penalty, which Saka dispatched with aplomb, and we went into the break with the very least we deserved.

City had been reduced to time wasting while kicking lumps out of our lad, in particular, Silva had 4 bookable fouls before he eventually was carded just before halftime. I say again, I’ve never before seen Pep’s City side reduced to playing second fiddle with possession and having to resort to thuggery. What came after the break seems to have made people forget just how good our young guns were before it.

However, in the second half things went badly wrong. To me we were pushing to hard, trying to be just too cure, and twice it cost us goals. As good as Xhaka had been before the break, he started to misplace passes, over hit ball and make some wrong decisions. Odegaard went AWOL and the control of midfield we had had, was no more.

Over the course of the game we made a few chances that we didn’t convert and we gifted them 3 chances that the did convert. The idea that we played badly a notion that I really can’t understand. This was a brave effort against a team that most others fear to take on in a game of football.

If we play as well as that until the end of the season we will still be in the mix for the big prize. I’m hugely proud of the way we took the game to them and like Mikel, I think I now have even more belief that we can hold up and keep our challenge going.

Although it’s disappointing to lose, remember, we have gone from a side that City simply brushed asise, to a team that van not only stand up to them, but actually put them on the back foot for most of a game.

Chin up.

Pedantic George (@arseblagger)

After a disappointing result, it’s so predictable how some people will try to avoid the difficult questions by bigging up the opposition. Which is exactly what I’m going to do now. 

Seriously, I think we can spare a bit of praise for our opponents yesterday, can’t we? 

It’s hard to keep up with everything going on in the league. But during the week I’d heard The Bees were doing well, and had a quick look to see just how well. It was a bit worrying.

They are undefeated in the league since October, have lost the same amount of league games as Man City, and hadn’t conceded a goal in more than five hours before Saturday’s game. They are the league’s form team since the restart. 

Safe to say, Brentford are a well-coached outfit, and Thomas Frank is going to take over at one of the contenders before long. 

Worse, we are exactly the kind of team that they like to play against. They’ve beaten Man City and Liverpool since November, with exactly the kind of robust and direct football that confounded us yesterday.

Where Everton clogged up the pitch and packed the box for set pieces, Brentford combine a low block with unpredictable patterns of play in the transition, overloads that appear out of nowhere, and newfangled set piece routines that will be all over the league in a year or two.

Everton were all adrenaline and fire, but there’s a smooth efficiency to Brentford that tells you they’ve got innovative thinkers behind the scenes.

We can try to make sense of Frank as a coach and Brentford’s style, but it’s obvious that a lot rests on Ivan Toney’s muscular shoulders. As strong as he may be, his intelligence shines through in how he uses his body and spots his teammates’ runs, even mid-duel. 

A couple of times he was totally off balance when he played a pass, and still found the runner. He was the main reason we could never sustain our pressure in the first hour; if you can find him he’ll take the pressure off, and your defence can reset. Toney dominated Saliba, hit the crossbar, and scored the equaliser. 

OK, enough about him. That goal should never have counted. It was offside. And even before that, there was no foul for the free kick; Toney was the one with his arms wrapped around Saliba, echoing Jansson on Leno away at Brentford in 2021.. 

They had caused us a lot of problems, and should have gone one-up at 0-0, but their style is also labour intensive. 

Immediately after Toney shot wide in the 56th minute there were positive signs for us. Brentford’s automated passes stopped connecting, and patches of open grass suddenly appeared in their defensive third. 

Odegaard played Saka into one such sward, and his low, inviting cross was met at the far post by Trossard. 

A quick detour, but does anyone else feel this might have been a game for Trossard to start instead of Martenilli? I thought it made sense to use the Belgian’s intricacy against Brentford’s packed defence, and save Martinelli’s dynamism for the transitions against Man City.

Anyway, the match continued for another 20 minutes after the equaliser, of which the ball was probably in play for about five. We’ve been in the same position and seen games out, but I think an extra three minutes could have been played on top of the time added on and nobody would have been able to complain. 

This result will surely be seen as a continuation of what happened last week. I’d suggest there’s more to it than that, and sides like Brentford prove the quality of the league. For more proof just look out how the other teams at the top end of the table have toiled in the last few days. 

It leaves me unsure how worried we should be, but feeling a little better about our top four chances.

The good news is we don’t have to wait too long to find out where we are at the moment. The bad news is obvious—no wins in three, and last season’s champions are coming with a point to prove on Wednesday.

Birdcamp

As this match approached it was hard not to feel like an American meteorologist watching a hurricane gaining force out in the Atlantic. 

First, it became clear that Lampard was out the door, which would boost any football team on the planet. Soon, Dyche emerged as the only sensible option. Landfall for this perfect storm was an early Saturday fixture at Goodison Park, where we haven’t won for 5+ years. 

If you want a defining moment for the game, how about this:

In the 19th minute, after an uneventful opening, Saliba received the ball from Zinchenko and had to deal with a bit of attention from Onana. Everton’s No. 8 was the only blue shirt within 30 yards of Saliba, but he felt harried enough to clear the ball into touch. Onana pumped his fist, and the crowd roared. 

This action brought on a five-minute air raid, with a long sequence of corners and crosses that forced us to defend for the first time in the game. More importantly, it got the home crowd going, and the collective drive eventually led to a spell of good chances for Everton. 

We’ve seen that in most circumstances, Saliba has the ability to drop a shoulder and make an attacker look silly. Saturday’s match was not “most circumstances”. This was no ordinary new manager bounce we were facing. 

Going out was one of the worst coaches in organized football, and with him all the accompanying tactical confusion and low confidence. 

Coming in was one of the game’s all-time simplifiers, with a style and gameplan that can be assimilated in just one training session, let alone a whole week. 

Compounding that you’ve got a crowd so starved of quality that even the most run-of-the-mill stuff would send them into raptures. Such low standards, matched with the usual indignation and rancour made Goodison Park the perfect launchpad for them and trap for us. 

Checking the record Everton’s new managers get off to winning starts, especially if they arrive mid-season. Yes, even Frank Lampard pulled it off.  

To manage these circumstances, I think there’s a certain number of little actions that you have to perform under moments of pressure. 

Come out with possession enough times, and you reach a critical mass and your opponent’s tail will go down. That tenacity is the foundation for Dyche’s football. It’s the force that squeezes the gap between their lines to the width of a pane of double glazed glass. And on Saturday there was a massive reserve of it because of the freshness of the occasion.

Had Saliba dummied Onana, would the result have been different? Probably not, but that moment felt indicative and it stoked the flames. 

Throughout the 90 minutes we made interesting incursions into their half. We wrung some decent chances from their resurgent defence, notably with a Saka volley and an Nketiah slice in the first half. We could have created quite a few more, with a bit more lucidity. 

There were about half a dozen moves from back to front that will show up on a YouTube compilation showcasing our slick football, but they’ll leave out the miscommunications, overhit passes and iffy control that killed them, and for which Everton’s back ten deserve some praise. 

Looking back, it’s hard to single out a single player who disgraced himself. Maybe Ben White’s passing was a bit loose, and he gave up possession for Everton’s best chance in the first half.

For their goal, we ran out of tall players to mark their many big men, resulting in the mismatch of Odegaard vs Tarkowski. There’s not much you can say about a set piece goal like that. It was a deep cross, and Tarkowski muscled out our captain to get his run at the back post. 

On that subject it’s difficult to assess a performance against a Dyche team. Their goals come from split-second instances rather than passages of play. You can be probing, feel like you’re gaining the upper hand, then concede a set piece and suddenly be losing.  

The final 25 minutes yielded more promising moments, especially as Everton’s two banks looked a little less ordered. 

A sweeping passing sparked panic on the edge of the area, and Maupay’s attempt to shepherd Gabriel off the ball was clumsy. It should have been a penalty, and surely would have been a penalty at the other end. 

That was followed by several more flowing moves over the next 15 minutes, with no response from Everton who were puffing at this point. Trossard struck the ball straight at Pickford, A Saka shot was rushed by more committed defending, Trossard curled over after floating into ample space, and a Vieira cutback was just about dealt with.

Any hope of a final flourish was extinguished by a litany of fouls, two hopeful long-shots by Zinchenko and a scuffle instigated by the ever irritating Maupay.

The uniting theme, true at numerous points throughout the match, was a lack of composure, from Saliba’s rushed clearance to Zinchenko’s fight with Maupay when we had more important things to be doing. Let’s hope we can rediscover it against another boisterous team next week.

Birdkamp.

Good Morning .

We lost a narrow match away at Man City. You can talk about schedules, fatigue and whatnot, but it’s hard to be upbeat about going out. This wasn’t the League Cup, which you can always shrug off; no, the FA Cup is part of Arsenal’s identity. 

Still, there are a few reasons not to go too far with a narrow defeat away at Man City, of all opponents. The first is that this was a horrible tie, against a team that has dominated English domestic football for half a decade. 

They almost never lose at home, and picked something approaching their strongest team, even if a Man City first XI is theoretical, given all their rotation. 

The other is that we made a lot of changes. Without injuries, I’d say that only four of the players who started would make our outright best XI, although that’s up for debate. 

And yet we competed well. Cheered on by what sounded like a stadium full of Arsenal fans who occasionally broke into Blue Moon, we had the better of the first half. We carved out some minor chances, and enjoyed spells in which we kept finding all of the dangerous space and they looked blunt. 

If you want more positivity, it’s that ITV will not cover another Arsenal match in 2022-23. Hopefully that will give you the warm glow you need to get you through the rest of this report.

I have no idea what formation Man City were playing in the first half. It looked like three at the back, with Rico Lewis playing as less of an inverted full-back than an all-out central midfielder. 

Our defensive plan was to play with an even higher line and get as tight as possible to Haaland, who was their only direct threat in-behind.

I say “only”. We nullified him tonight, but his presence affects everything around him. When he’s dormant, it’s like there’s an immense celestial body that can only be observed by its gravitational pull. 

Holding spent 45 frantic minutes in its orbit, in a battle that resembled a cartoon fight cloud, with fistfulls of shirts, a platinum bun and a toupee poking out of the dust. Once he got that yellow, few substitutions have been more inevitable. 

At the other end, all of the space was opening up on our left flank, and Trossard was eating it up. He set up Tomiyasu for a strike, tested Ortega and later found Nketiah following a great run, Eddie couldn’t quite make the right contact. 

At half-time, we were feeling good about things, knowing that Holding’s work was done, and that we had looked the more likely. Saliba came out, as expected, accompanied by Lokonga for Thomas Partey. Nobody wanted to see that. Please let this rib thing be bruising. 

The bad vibes stalked us into the second half, and in those first 15 minutes things began to unravel. Sambi Lokonga deserves some sympathy. Being thrown onto the pitch cold against a reinvigorated Man City is a test most central midfielders would fail. 

Just as everyone was starting to find their feet, Julián Álvarez slammed a long shot off Turner’s right post, City won the second ball, and Nathan Aké took advantage of our imbalance with a low, guided finish into the bottom corner with his weaker foot. 

The minutes that followed the goal were our best of the half and we carved out our best chance. Xhaka’s cross from the corner of the area almost picked out Nketiah, but was diverted by the lightest brush from Dias’s studs. 

We threw on our starters, but had lost momentum through a lack of midfield control, stuttering rhythm, and Man City’s maddening capacity to keep the ball and kill a game of football. 

Clearly, Arsenal can still improve, and if there’s something we can learn from tonight’s opponents it’s in those dozens of anaesthetising jabs that put a game to bed. 

Birdkamp

Hello all.

In this podcast we (well I say “we” it’s mainly me) get carried away with our performance against United and our setup.patterns of play and just about everything I can think of. I’m trying to keep a lid on my enthusiasm, but I can’t.

Pedantic George.

Good Morning all.

As grownups, when Arsenal are rubbish we can put it all into context and step back a bit. But when we’re great, oh boy it will give you a permasmile, and a secret source of joy you can return to whenever you want. 

Because after about two hours of misery, a deft prod by Nketiah at 18:30 on a Sunday evening unleashed a rush of euphoria that will course through my week. I feel I can deal with anything now. 

Step in dog poo? Scuffing excrement off my sole will remind me how we dispatched Man United. Lock myself out? More time to daydream about Arsenal while I wait. 

Man United thought they had a formula, but drew the wrong conclusions from that battling win in September. They should have come here to spoil and nick something like Newcastle.

Instead, with Eriksen and Fernandes in centre, they acted like we would stand aside and wave their expansive counter attacks through. Nah, we’ve spent the last four months making sure that Old Trafford in September was an anomaly, and we kept getting back into position in that first half. We play beautiful stuff, but are sensitive to the ebb and flow of a game, and are happy to surrender possession for shape.

They were also buoyed by the misconception they were in a title race. And thinking this might be the start of something, they brought Alex Ferguson to the carpet. What he witnessed in that final 30 minutes was gruesome, as we rained blows on his club until at last they collapsed. 

For most of the game, this looked like a contest between Man U’s adrenaline, emboldened by a recent winning run, and Arsenal’s control, reinforced by unflinching faith in what we’re doing. 

If you had to pick a moment to sum up Man United’s threat, it was Rashford bundling through in the 55th minute, picking up ricochets before forcing Ramsdale to deal with a deflected shot. 

Rashford is playing the kind of confidence that allows speculative knuckle-balls from distance to swirl into the net. When Man United’s opener went in, someone who hadn’t watched Arsenal this season might assume the game was falling into our opponents’ hands.

But even when individuals aren’t at their best, and I’d say that White, Partey and Martinelli looked off it at times in the first half, our structure and an unsettling hive-mindedness seizes the initiative when it’s there to be taken. 

In those moments there’s too much going on at once—it’s like watching a savant solving a Rubik’s Cube. You want to all slow it down to pinpoint the decisive step.   

Such a phase of play began with the pressable Wan-Bissaka coughing up possession, cueing a swift interchange between Odegaard and Zinchenko, a smart run and perfect cross from Xhaka, and a point-blank header by Nketiah after wriggling clear of Wan Bissaka in the box. 1-1.

Given that White was on a yellow and off form, it was no shock to see Tomiyasu stripped at the start of the second half. What an awesome option he is to have in reserve. And with that swap, Manchester United’s biggest threat was neutered, barring that one run.

In the first ten minutes of the second half we turned up the heat. Odegaard Matrixed Xhaka through on goal, forcing Martinez into a block. They had no time to recover, as Saka worked a yard against Eriksen and blasted low into the corner from 25 yards. Saka cannot be shut down for a full 90. He will always say his piece. 

On the hour, Ramsdale gave up a silly goal to make it 2-2. If we’re going to concede I want it to be a thunderbolt like their first, not a cheap giveaway, in which we know we can do better. 

Their equalizer heralded 30 minutes of ever-intensifying pressure. Saka hit the post, Odegaard’s shot was blocked, Martinelli struck wide from a corner, De Gea saved sharply from Nketiah after McTominay had tried to catch the ball. 

It was nigh-on intolerable. De Gea and Fernandes both hit the turf in the last ten minutes, desperate to eke out the last few minutes, with 90 minutes and an underserved point now in sight. 

And then the pressure finally told. Trossard turned and drove at their backline, laid it off to Zinchenko whose cross found Odegaard. Oh dear God, the ball lurched across the box to Nketiah, who improvised the kind of goal that will mark his career. Twenty years too late, here’s the fox in the box, and your defence is in trouble. 

Game won, weekend made, Monday’s productivity ruined. 

The depressive in me will always keep one eye on the top four baseline, even if it’s so far below us that you have to squint. 

Now it all feels like a reality TV show where a specialist is called in to solve a problem. We’re Cesar Millan, and Tottenham and Manchester were problem dogs. Now, with their behaviour corrected we can look forward to a fulfilling relationship, in which they know their place and take points off our rivals.

Birdkamp

Hello positive people, how the hell are you?

In this podcast we have a look back at the NLD and wax lyrical about the players, team play and of course, Mikel Arteta. Then we consider the chances of going on to win the title.

Feel free to be critical in the comments section, the blog is nothing without you.

Pedantic George (@arseblagger)

Good morning you happy lot.

Yesterday really was a day the likes of which I’ve never seen in the on-line Arsenal community. The fan base, or at least most of them, went from the misery of learning that long time target Mudryk had left us standing at the altar, to the ecstasy of giving our fiercest rivals, what can only be described as a very good hiding on their own patch.

I have to say the game itself was also a little bit of a roller-coaster. The first half was football of the highest attacking quality. It was a joy to behold , almost total domination and control from whistle to whistle, while the second half was a much closer affair, while we still controlled the game, but in a more defensive way. Both sides of the game were displayed to great effect.

Our midfield three purred like a Rolls Royce engine, each complementing the others skill set ,passing around, dribbling and running past the Spurs two defensive midfielders like they weren’t there. Saka was running riot and Eddie seemed to be occupying all 3 of their centerbacks. Spurs look hapless in that first half. Magic I say.

Anyway, I’m sure you all saw it for yourselves and don’t need me to describe what you saw, so all that remains to say is “8 points clear people and roll on United”. I really believe that if we beat them we will go on to win the league, something none of us saw coming 6 months ago.

Have a great week people.

Pedantic George @arseblager

The FA Cup is great until it’s your team’s turn, playing on a windswept pasture versus rugged opponents, with Sam Matterface commentating from a different, dumber reality. 

It took us a while to get on top of the conditions and our opponent’s man-marking, but we did it comfortably in the end.

Bear in mind that not even Oxford United want to play at the Kassam Stadium, which is the third-biggest attraction in a retail park with a bowling alley and a Frankie & Benny’s. 

They have steadily trended upwards in the last decade, and aspire to more than this unfinished parody of Stoke’s Britannia Stadium.

With the ball wafting around like a penny floater at Cleethorpes, this was not a night for subtlety. The ball seemed to gain momentum rather than slow down with each bounce, and just wasn’t sticking. It took us about an hour to clock that fact and adapt. 

Every loose touch was punished by an organized and revved-up opponent. Of the men in yellow, I remember right-back Anderson, who matched Martinelli in a couple of races. 

Then there was Moore who went through the back of our attackers a couple of times. Brown with the man-bun was defending Saka. And finally you had the scowling Brannagan, who looked like an accident waiting to happen. 

Trying to put together a dainty move in these circumstances was pointless, like composing a watercolor landscape in heavy rain. Lokonga flailed, Saka and Martinelli toiled, while Vieira was having the worst time of all. 

We needed to be more direct, and much later on it was no shock when Zinchenko—fresh with instructions from Arteta—launched the ball behind the Oxford defence with his first pass. 

What you can say is that we were ‘on it’ defensively, tracking runners, winning headers and second-balls at the back. You can bet that Matterface wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to seize on a hint of defensive frailty. 

In the meantime, referee David Coote did intervene when we got buffeted, hoicked by the neck, barged in the back, even as the home crowd seethed. Still, Coote might have called a penalty for handball in the 35th minute. It was marginal.

So the first half drifted by without either side coming remotely close. For all we could tell ourselves that Oxford would tire after the break, it was hard to shake the idea that we might not rise above the conditions and stop trying to trap the ball with our shins.

Our prospects looked bleaker in the 49th minute when Holding was caught out. Their striker Matty Taylor went through before being put off by Turner, who looks good, by the way. 

Back to Fabio Vieira, who is happiest when has a clear picture of what’s in front of him. He is not one for a midfield scrap, but wants to move into space to use that left foot. So it makes sense that he found some clarity from a dead ball situation.

He whipped in a perfect cross, which found Elneny’s head and then the net. Did Elneny know much about it? Who cares! Elneny was as dependable as ever all night. 

From that moment, everything became a lot easier. The snap went out of Oxford’s game, and the distances between the lines grew, to the point that Vieira could receive the ball, turn and play Nketiah through to round their ‘keeper (can’t remember his name—oh, McGinty), for the second. 

Emile Smith-Rowe came off the bench for a 15-minute practice session, with all jeopardy removed by a delicate scooped finish after a neatly weighted pass by Martinelli. Was Nketiah offside? Who cares!

There was time for some comments about Arteta leaving his technical area. Now, a lot of managers are animated on the touchline, and a lot spend time out of that little box. 

Just like a lot of managers defend their players and avoid talking about contentious moments, like Arsene Wenger used to do. 

Is this going to be the new version of “I didn’t see it”? 

By then, Matterface had retreated into his alternate reality, claiming Arsenal had the benefit of no European football and could concentrate on the league and cup. 

Whatever, the win sends us through to a 4th Round tie at Manchester City. 

Birdkamp