Arsenal defeated a very good Leicester team 2-nil on Saturday. Ramsdale deserves high praise for making 8 saves including at least two worldies. Arteta gets credit for putting out a team that was high energy, high press for the first 18 minutes. But the record shows for the next 70 plus minutes Arsenal were outplayed in almost all categories; out-passed, outshot and out-hustled. In a word, battered.
But hardly anyone in both mainstream and social media seem concerned about the underlying statistic. To the contrary the dominant narrative is either about Arteta’s Arsenal going nine games unbeaten, as if Emery didn’t go 22 games unbeaten just under 2 years ago or to gush uncritically about how brilliant Ramsdale was, without questioning why our keeper had to be so busy despite having new and improved defenders in front of him.
Seemingly me and Blackburn George are the only podcasters-YouTubers willing to challenge the prevailing narrative and to express our concern that performances like those at Leicester are unsustainable. Two years ago we were among a lonely few to go on record and proclaim that Emery’s 22-game unbeaten run would end in tears. By December 2019 we were proven right after Emery had taken us down to 14th and was summarily run out of town. We may be wrong this time but I, for one, doubt it. As George said, unlike Emery, Arteta has a much younger team with a much higher ceiling. But if his team continues to perform in the current manner, sooner or later our luck will run out.
Below is more of our opinions in our latest YouTube VIDEO. As always we invite you to support our uncensored, unfiltered point of view without the hype and false narratives that now dominate mainstream and social media. We are confident in our point of view because time after time we have been proven right.
Last night saw us playing good entertaining football for the first time in Donkey’s years. It was fantastic.
Great performances from Arsenal lads all over the pitch.
In todays Youtube we muse on why it was so good, why we don’t play like tis more often and did Mikel come up with 442 by accident or design. Then will it work as well if we use it going forward.
International breaks used to be a horrible time, no Arsenal got me down, but I have to admit that recently they have become a welcome break. But the break is over and we have to get back to watching, even if enjoying is a more difficult task.
We are 7 games in and the enjoyable football has amounted to about the first 30 minutes against the Spuds. There’s no getting around it’s been trudged stuff. The days of entertaining football with a wallop of swash and buckle are long gone. It’s all paint by numbers and effort with endeavour replacing skill. However, even if performances haven’t much, if at all, improved, results have. If we ignore the quality of our opponents 3 wins and a draw is somewhat encouraging. So perhaps we should do just that, and just enjoy counting points rather than watching to be entertained?
We play Crystal Palace who have hardly been pulling up trees themselves since our greatest ever centre midfielder to over. They have one win, and 3 draws but their win did come recently against Spurs so they too will be writing blogs about how things are on the up?
I think we will see the same starting eleven that got comprehensively outplayed at Brighton, we just have to hope that being at home sees them play a lot better.
Having watched Palace a few times recently, I do believe they are going to test us. We historically have dominated them at home, but history is just that.
I don’t know about you but I just want to watch some good football that allows our good players, and they are all good players by the way, to perform within a structure that enables exciting football.
Middle ground and nuance are a thing of the past for Arsenal fans, you have to pick a side and go to the extreme of that view. Then if you want to be heard and become important( at least in your own mind and vacuum chamber), you have to shout the loudest and attack the opposing view in the manor of a blitzkrieg. Or at least that’s how it must look to the casual observer. Knowledge and understanding of the game matters very little in the on-line fan community, which is just as well because most of us involved seem to have very little of either. People with hardly any knowledge, insight or understanding( yes, people like me) tweet, write blogs and do podcasts preaching and lording it over other fans who we believe to have less than us.
It’s a joke what we have become. We used to fight and argue with opposition fans, now you see very little of that, I suggest it’s because we are to busy fighting with those idiots who don’t accept our expert opinions and want us to listen to their pearls of wisdom instead.
Almost every single loud voice on social media platforms “think” they know how to run the club, set the tactics and select players better than everyone else, including the owners, managers and coaches. Not only do we think we know, but the whole reason most of us do it is a pathetic attempt to prove it. The problem is most of us prove the exact opposite.
Anyway, I started writing this in an attempt to look at how far apart opinions can be, in a light hearted way, not go on a blitzkrieg of my own, So ploughing on.
Arsene was the greatest manager in the history of the club and gave us 22 years of beautiful football on a budget that would have relegated his rivals. The finest football brain in a lifetime.
Wenger was an ego maniac that dropped lucky with the players he inherited and signed, He should have been sacked in 1999 when he failed to win back to back titles and he’s responsible for the decline we now find ourselves in.
Mikel Arteta is a brilliant young manager who won us the FA cup with the rubbish squad he inherited. He’s changing the culture at the club and needs time to build a team in his image. He is getting rid of deadwood and trouble makers that previous managers left him and he will have us back on top where we deserve to be, All we have to do is support him. He’s elite.
Arteta has had 2 years and we’ve finished 8th twice and are now languishing in the bottom half. The football is shocking and shows no sign of improving. He has to go before any more damage is done.
Granit Xhaka is our best and most consistent player, he controls the game and is by far the strongest character in the squad. He progresses the ball more than any CM in the entire league and his passing is second to none. He should be captain.
Xhaka is the worst CM I’ve ever seen at Arsenal. He is slow with the turning circle of an ocean liner and always passes backwards. He disrespected the fans, the captains armband and has to be sold.
Mesut Ozil was the best player of the Emirates era and the only real world class player we had. The team should have been set up to suit him. The greatest play-maker of his generation.
Ozil was finished and has been rubbish since he fleeced us out of £350k pw. He was disruptive, lazy and was dropped by every Arsenal manager he had.
It’s our job to get behind the manager and trust the process. We are not the manager and a true supporter supports through thick and thin as long as he is in the job. You are not proper Arsenal if you do nothing but criticise.
A real fan loves the club and it hurts when things go badly. Proper fans just want what is best for the club we love only idiots blindly support.
Ok, enough of this nonsense, follow me on twitter , read my blogs and listen to me on Youtube, because I know more than you.
Enjoy the interlull.
Pedantic George.
P.S. If you don’t agree with me, go F*ck yourself.
It’s a big day for supporters, or fans, or whatever the f*ck we are supposed to call ourselves these days, and it could be a good big day. If we beat our North London rivals we would likely find ourselves in 11th place and poised to leap into the top half of the table! Won’t that be a thrill for us all? Of course we have to win first, but we are at home, Spurs are on a bad run and we have won our last two games, so it really shouldn’t be beyond us.
The problem is that we have played 5 league games and we haven’t played a good game or beaten anyone placed above19th in the table. I think we can win, but we will have to play a lot better than we have up until now.
The main problem I see is that to hurt Spurs we have to both control and attack through our midfield, something Arteta seems to have little interest in doing. This in itself begs the question of who Arteta will play in midfield? Xhaka is available again so will he start? I know we have won our last 3 games without him, but Norwich, Burnley and Wimbledon could have been beaten with just about anyone, and realistically none of our midfielders even managed to stand out against such weak opponents. Personally I think it would be madness not to start Granit.
Partey seems to be fit(ish) and as we paid £50m for him I suppose he better start as well. There is an argument to say Sambi has done nothing to suggest he should be dropped, but I think he will make way.
The back 5 I expect is Ramsdale, the Emperor Hirohito, White, Gabriel amd KT. So thats 7 of 11 picked, all we have to do now is pick the front 4. (isn’t this fun?) I believe Aubameyang will play either from the left or through the middle, but he will play. 3 to go. Exciting, isn’t it?
I’m suck here though. I would play Odegaard, Lacazette and Pepe. But there is a decent case for ESR or Saka.
Now you see having listed all those players I’m making myself fell quite confident. I figure that’s the problem with us at the moment, our team play is much worse than the quality of our players. but that can change, and what better game to change it in than this one?
Ok, that’s it, if you want to listen to more of my nonsense give this a watch, and if you would be so kind subscribe to Shotta’s channel.
Sometimes I come across an idea in the comments section that needs to be the headline act, this is one such notion from our friend Eduardo
“Arsenal where soundbite is king. Much like the UK and Brexit, all it took was good soundbites to get the masses to ignore the reality.
Last season we had Trust The Process, that was our clap for the NHS, it allowed the dismantling of the squad, and shite football to be not only accepted by bloggers and big fan accounts, it seen them extol its virtue. Now this seasons soundbite is Leadership and Culture, and means fans are extolling Imperial measurement football as what we’ve always needed, even wanted. You see our poor results so far were nothing to do with us at all, it was not the process’s fault, no it was us being needlessly punished by the Champion League clubs for us deciding to leave the Champions league. But fear not we have a World Leading plan to make us great again, to bring us back to our times of Empire, we’ve branded it Leadership and Culture. The lack of goals in our Goals For Column is not self inflicted, its a Brexit caused supply chain issue, and has nothing to do with us making AFC an unwelcoming place for some very highly talented supply chain operatives. Our Leadership and Culture plan will sort it out, as we are making it easier for less qualified players to take up the roles of Goal Suppliers. Its World Leading just like our intense training sessions that AFC were so good to tell us about by planting questions to our esteemed leader in his Q&A, it was almost a leaf out of the Laura Kuenssberg fawning playbook when interviewing good old Boris.”
Arsenal take a trip to my neck of the woods today and will face the very epitome of Northern Grit. Burnley tipped their hand last weekend when they tried to kick Everton off of the pitch, and I expect more of the same only worse today. I also expect the referee to sanction it and the commentators to praise it. Football will take a back seat to a physical battle.
Because of the prospect of a physical aerial bombardment it is difficult to predict the line up. Does Arteta prepare to fight fire with fire? If he does I’m not sure we have the personnel to compete. Xhaka, our best midfielder and warrior, is suspended. Holding, our most physical centre backs is injured and none of our forwards have Giroud type attributes. So what can he do?
Personally I would go to 3 at the back , The Emperor Hirohito, White and Gabriel with AMN and KT flanking them, Sambi and Partey shielding them and some others up front. 3 of those someones, but I’m not sure which 3.
I just think if we play Ben White in a two we are sending a lamb to the slaughter, and he doesn’t need that so early in his Arsenal career.
Burnley blow hot and cold in little runs and they seem to be on a cold run, so that’s good?
Of course as it’s a lovely day up here, we could go all out to get the ball down and play, keep the ball and play as many technical players as we can muster, You know? Try to out play them. I know, I know, as if?
Anyway, I hope the referee gives us some degree of protection and we win. That would be grand.
The Norwich game is only the 4th league game and It is a massive game, and genuine 6 pointer between two teams that have played 3 and lost 3 without an open play goal scored between them. A real fight to not be bottom Dog.
That said, if we were picking a team to play at home, to score our first goal against, surely it would be Norwich? I mean they are our proverbial whipping-boys, we score the goals of the season against them, we have to win and win big! Right? I said RIGHT?
The problem is we are relying on them being poor rather than us being good. I honestly can’t remember the last time we played well. And I’m not kidding either, when the hell was it?
Now before anyone thinks about opening their wrists with a rusty spoon, let me just say, I think we will win. We simply have too many good players to keep losing.
Arteta and Edu assure us they now have the tools to succeed with Arteta’s vision, what could go wrong?
There’s big excitement with Partey returning to the team. After his stellar performances last season, I’m sure he wil be a real game changer for us, he might even get his fist shot on target since he joined? With Xhaka starting the first of his 3 game suspension and ElNeny injured, it looks like he and Sambi Lokonga will be our midfield probably with Odegaard, fresh from his starring role against the might Gibraltar. Joking apart, that’s a decent midfield.
As for the front 3, I have no Idea and I’m not sure Arteta has either. It will be perm 3 form Pepe, Saka, Lacazette, Aubameyang and Smith-Rowe(if he’s fit).
I expect Leno to be in goal with Tierney, White , Gabriel and someone at right back. Who that someone turns out to be will be interesting.
When you write the names down, it looks a decent team, whether they play like one remains to be seen, but if they are going too, now would be a great time to start. I can’t think of a game that we should expect to win easily, being as important to the Manager, players, fans and board. If the worst happens, we will be the worst team in the history of the Premier League after 4 games, and we can all do without that.
So good luck everyone, enjoy the game and try to chill.
Positively Arsenal 