In Today’s podcast @shotta_gooner and I wax lyrical about everything, including Arteta, This is what we have all been waiting , for ,surely? We saw everything come together against a good team. Arteta made some big calls and was vindicated, if we can moan when it’s bad we have to cheer when it’s this good.
What stood out was how well the “deadwood” played, For me this showed that we do have a very good squad, with depth, and that the rebuild is nowhere near as big as many people think. For the first time since the restart, I’m full of hope.
Early blog for an early start start, high noon in fact.
This is a hard game to call, we go into the game feeling chipper following our late winner in the Europa League, while Leicester have their tails between their legs having been dumped out of the same competition. On the other hand they are doing well in league, while we are struggling big time. So in short, anything could happen.
Normally I can at least hazard a decent guess about the line up, but not today. I seriously have no clue what Arteta will send out to start the game. We have some players seriously in need of a rest, Saka, Xhaka, Bellerin for sure, but can he afford to rest them, or even some of them? Even one of them? The cheer up that Thursday gave us will soon disappear if we lose our 12th PL game, he has to turn our league position around, because putting all our eggs in the Europa league basket is a dangerous business. People are clinging to the hope of winning the EL, but if we get dumped out of that and are stuck in 12th or 13th place, the cat will be among the pigeons.
Make no mistake, this is a big game and in difficult circumstances, unless we win questions will be asked about selections and priorities. We can all understand why players should be rested and other given game time but that understanding will fly out the window should we lose again. That’s the nature of hindsight management. I don’t like Arteta, but I don’t envy his task over the coming weeks. He has to go on a good run or things will get nasty, and with the chance of fans returning to the stadium, that nastiness will become very vocal.
Anyway, we shouldn’t forget that we have some very good players, no matter who is selected and at least Maddison isn’t fit, so that should help.
Today @shotta_gooner and I look back at the limp surrender to City and try to work out why a squad of this quality is wallowing in mid table and scoring goals at a miserable rate. To be honest I surprised myself with my conviction that Arteta is way out of his depth as a manager. I try to understand where people are seeing progress but I fail miserably and conclude that the future is bleak unless surgery is done.
If you think I’m wrong, please use the comments section to educate me, I would love to be shown as wrong.
This afternoon at 4.30 P.M. we welcome the rampant Manchester City to an empty Emirates, a daunting task is ever there was one, While City have notched up 15 wins on the spin, we have lurched between wining and losing, being awful to decent while they sit clearly on top of the pile as we are stuck in dead centre mid table. All logic and statistics point to a City win, and yet? We still have hope. This hope may be based on nothing more than wishful thinking, but without hope, why bother?
City have no injuries to speak of, but I doubt Pep will risk his current star man, Gundogan to start. Aguero and De Bruyne either, so although they may all be technically fit, we should be spared the sight of them at kick off, then again, that will make their bench even more scary.
So to us, Partey wont feature but everyone else of note is available. I’m not even going to attempt to guess who will be picked beyond Xhaka, Leno and Bellerin. Any line up and set up is possible because I think Arteta will have to try something different to what we have seen recently, I don’t imagine we will be even attempting to out play them.
I normally look forward to watching City, but not today, I’ve put a kettle and a box of biscuits behind my sofa ,where I’ll be hiding for 2 hours. But as I said, we still have hope.
A few weeks ago, Daniel, my 15 year old son, rushed out of his room, and full of excitement told me that while it obviously wouldn’t happen The Arsenal were linked with Martin Ødergaard. I listened attentively, and while not wanting to kill his enthusiasm, also wanted to warn against the inevitable disappointment when yet again a transfer rumour proved to be just that: a rumour, written to generate website clicks. While it is also true that most of the players he tells me we are about to sign I have never heard of, this one intrigued me for I had a distant memory of the name – and a sense that we’d been linked with him before.
And so we had, back several years ago now when the footballing world was suddenly full of the new latest wunderkind, the ‘hardly old enough to tie his own bootlaces’ Norwegian Messi. Martin Ødergaard. With, of course, the best ‘knower’ of new talent, Arsene Wenger instrumental in inviting all 15 years old of him, to spend a couple of days at Colney. Money talks of course, especially if you are keen to cash in on a yet to be proved player, and so predictably enough he went on to sign for Real Madrid. But however talented they may be, teenagers by and large don’t cut the mustard in senior football, and so Ødergaard disappeared from view, needing to do his apprenticeship, an apprenticeship of course involving loans to clubs perhaps less well suited to nurturing prodigious, yet fragile, talent (think Gnabry and Pulis). But the fact that Wenger had seen something, and that six year later Arteta was seemingly interested, was enough to get me thinking.
Enough to get me thinking? That, if not a lie, is criminally economical with the truth. This 63-year-old, recently invited for his first Covid jab due to a ‘pre-existing’ condition, was straight on to YouTube, consuming all the Ødergaard videos and chat it was possible to find. And then he did sign (just a loan, but who knows?). That it also coincided with an upturn in The Arsenal’s results even saw a re-reading (about the 7th, if the truth be known) of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Suddenly we were back, the sunlit uplands beckoning, League, Cup and European glory only a matter of time. Arsene knew. And he made sure Arteta knew too. In my dreams I was shuffling back to the tube station, carried along on waves of song and the scent and smells and banter of match day, full of the 4-0 schooling we’d just handed to the lot down the road, a victory orchestrated by Ødergaard, Saka and Smith-Rowe. My dreams are so sad these days!
Well as night follows day, Ødergaard didn’t really feature at all to begin with: we were dumped out of the Cup, and then met with horribly predictable reversals in the Midlands, first thrown to the Wolves’, then scrappily at the hands of a Villa side unreally favoured by Fortune. Ødergaard merely an ineffectual bit-player. Of course there was a reason why Real let him go, of course Tierney and Partey were injured, of course the Refs were never going to help us, of course the lot of the football fan is to be permanently disappointed. And of course a bit of me was deep down pleased: supporting a team, unless you are a shifting glory hunter, is not just about the shitness of everything, but it’s the active revelling in it.
And yet. And yet. And yet.
Just when you think it is all so bad it’s time to walk away, to stop going, to stop accessing the websites, to deactivate Twitter, Arteta only goes and starts Aubameyang up front, with Smith-Rowe, Saka and Ødergaard just behind him, and another great Wenger signing (Xhaka) playing alongside another tiki-taka Real reject (Ceballos) at the heart of the midfield against everybody’s flavour of the month, Leeds. And before you know it, it’s 4-O to the Arsenal and the side’s oozing Wengerean unction. Little twiddly midfielders everywhere, Wengerball incarnate, ‘walking-the-ball-in’ the clear ambition.
As I once read, Arteta was Arsene’s translator on the pitch. Could it just be that the DNA is reasserting itself? Might there be glory days ahead? Is it safe to dream again? And if it isn’t, if dreams aren’t allowed, then what after all is the point of anything?
This afternoon at 4.30 P.M. we play Marcelo Bielsa’s mad attacking Leeds side. It should be an exciting game because of how they play. They have an all action, all attack, energy filled game that they play no matter who the opposition is. I don’t believe they have a single player that is as good as his Arsenal counterpart. Regardless of that, they will come at us in waves for 90 plus minutes. They will impose their game on us. It might cost them dearly, but even if it does, they will do the same again to their next oponents, no matter who they are. Remember those days?
Now, as for us? Who knows? We hope it’s the way we played for 44 minutes against Villa and not what we have seen for most of the rest of the season, but as I said, who knows?
Two big misses for us are Partey and Tierney. Their absence gives Arteta a problem or two that is more than just their own quality being missing. Who he picks to replace them will change the way we play considerably. The conservative changes would see Cedric and Elneny come in. Cedric is a genuine defender and Elneny is full of running, which me might need to match Leeds. A more adventurous line up would see Saka at leftback and Ceballos in the middle. Again, who knows? I can see the benefits for them all.
Luiz and Leno are back and one of them, Leno, seems certain to be selected. Luiz though? That’s quite a call for Mikel. Personally I’m not sure he should pay the price for what I consider was shocking refereeing, but I suspect he will.
We absolutely have better players than them, but so do every other team in the league, so we can’t rely on that, we will have to play well to win. We can and I hope we do because that will make it a good game and a good day.
An early 12.30 P.M. start away at Villa to quickly look forward to. I think despite the loss to Wolves, we have seen enough of an improvement to actually “look forward to” in a positive way. There can be no doubting that there has been a genuine improvement to our recent performances and results.
I have long said that Xhaka is a top player who generally always plays well. I have maintained that he has suffered from being put in midfield with the wrong players and in a poor set up. He was blamed for the teams shortcomings rather than any of his own, Of course I received dogs abuse for this opinion and despite me providing his personal stats to back up my opinion, I was told by the “I used my eyes” brigade, that I was an idiot. Well, Arteta has basically said the same thing now, as Emery and Wenger before him did, so I wonder if these fans will claim Arteta is an idiot? Partey is a good player, but i’m sure he will benefit from Xhaka, just as much as the other way around. I feel it’s a midfield partnership as good as anything in the league. I believe that centre midfield is the most crucial part of a good team, so there is much to be pleased about with these two lads.
Leno will be missing so I expect to see a half fit new boy, Mat Ryan, between the sticks as Alex Runarsson, has done all he can to convince us that buying him was a mistake. Good luck Mat.
Luiz will be missing and I think Gabriel will replace him. The lad was showing signs of vulnerability before he caught Covid so it could go either way with him, he might be less physically ready, but more mentally rested? Let’s hope he is at his best, which we have seen is quite good.
Smith-Row and Saka will surely play ,if fit, and Pepe has eventually shown enough to keep his place, so for me, it’s either Lacazette or Aubameyang in the middle. There is a good case for either and whoever Arteta picks, I won’t be criticising in hindsight, should all not go well.
I think Villa have been playing better ,as a team, than us, but we have better players. However, our team play looks better than it was, so that, and our better players, gives us a really good chance of revenging the hiding the gave us at The Home of Football.
It’s great that we can again be excited about a game and today is not the time to harp on about what has gone on for most of the season, lets leave that until May.
Arsenal, on Thursday, posted on their Twitter account a quote by 1st team manager (don’t forget the promotion he was given that title last summer) Mikel Arteta, lecturing the public to not abuse football players, etc: “I’m all for people to have their opinions, but not to be insulting people and using a screen on someone’s phone to tell them whatever you want, to a person that you don’t even know. That for me has to be eradicated because its causing a lot of damage.” Just to make sure we didn’t think they were doing it for giggles, which was my first reaction, the tweet was accompanied by a heavily photoshopped image of a sombre Arteta on a dark background, bathed in pale light as if he was a persecuted soul, struggling against the forces of darkness. What a lovely attempt at psychological manipulation of the unsuspecting viewer. Is…
Positively Arsenal 