Good to hear from you Kiwi. Health okay with you. Few home remedies keeping you going?

Yes but the " it's only pre season " excuse doesn't hold up under scrutiny , surely that same " pre season " is the IDEAL time to try a host of new ideas ....?

It was only a friendly doesn't really hold water either ; playing Tottenham we shouldn't want to lose at Tiddly Winks .

Thomas Franks ; comes across as a shrewd operator ..gives Mikel's ego a massive stroke with the " Arsenal are one of the best teams in the world " then goes out and beats us

Gidday Gaz ; thanks for that .

On the health .... had a cataract operation a month back on the left eye ; quite comical close the left eye everything has a slight fawn tinge , close the right eye everything is as clear as a bell .

Home remedies ; yesterday blended a bunch of avocado leaves , celery , carrot , mandarin , mung bean sprouts , soaked fenugreek seeds .... tell you what have a go at that concoction there is no chance of getting constipated .

Cancelled Sky the other day got sick of watching the Roosters put in sh***t performances ; we are grabbing Reece Robson off your guys next season ; wish we could grab Tom Deardon as well .

With the signings of Gyökeres , Zubemendi etc thought ;

Hmmm maybe that was a bit premature ; Arsenal are going to turn it on this year ... but after last night think I made the right call I don't need the stress

Or maybe Rich was right and we were wrong

I thought you were going to say you put that lot in your eye

I’m not sure you can judge whether Sky would have had a determining angle for var to see it was a foul simply based on the 3 minute highlight package Sky put out to customers. It wasn’t a Sky game so the pictures and angles are by another broadcaster anyway.weve seen from the prem that Sky get virtually every angle of every incident, the only time they struggle is crowded penalty areas when bodies block the view- this wasn’t that. I think we know that of that had been a prem game the goal would have been the single talking point because of the foul.

I said before I can’t fully comment on the performance because I didn’t watch the game. I’ve read plenty of views that the performance was very much ‘more of the same’ from the back end of last season where we dominate the ball, pass it round in a horseshoe and lack any real cutting edge and chances on goal . I’m happy to go with that as it seems to be the collective view. I’ve bemoaned that style of football for a while and have also written countless times how I’d like us to fix it
1 more creativity and technical quality in the 11, and a ball carrier from central areas….Eze helps a lot with this.
And I also want a genuine threat from the left hand side, a player with pace, dribbling and 1v1 threat. I want Leao for that, but with us having signed Madueke I can’t see that one happening so a lot rests on whether Madueke can make the left wing spot his own because we know what we’ll get from the other two.
I also think Zinchenko in a number of games might still be our best left back option!

I wouldn't put it past him.

Hi kiwi,

Nice to see you back.

We really need to sort out our left side and find someone who can dribble in central areas, otherwise I'm afraid it will be more of the same next season.......give the ball to Saka who has two men marking him and expect him to do something. That seems to be about the crux of our game plan.

Just to show how lopsided our play is, Max Dowman had more touches in his 19 minutes than Martinelli had in 68 minutes. Now I get the bit where we were feeding Max the ball because he was the main danger man (which in itself sounds ridiculous) but even so.

Noni on the left, bet you this is what transpires.

The pre-season forum bantering has started too

Good of you guys to start early and prepare for when the season starts

Hi Darren,

I think you might be right.

Can't wait for Noni to get involved, though. I like him. At least he has some dribbling quality and unpredictability that is currently in short measure.

No wonder Dowman has people on the edge of their seats. He looks good enough and intelligent enough to play already and he's only 15. Shame he's another leftie.

I think Saka needs to be given licence to roam all over the pitch, a la Messi. He's too good to be made to hug the touchline and get stifled by being doubled up on.

Pre-season is the time to try these kinds of things.

Aaah Yes But you need to unpick the sequence that gets us here first like a Christopher Nolan movie. You’ve gone straight to the spinning top thingy

1… we sign Eze after another protracted argument about money and a couple of players go out on loan plus Trossard is sold to get his last 4 year contract elsewhere

2. Maybe not for the first game but we start the season with Eze as our left winger because you aren’t signing someone for 60 million to just cover Ødegaard. Whilst Noni is doing a decent job covering saka Gabby is benched

3. After the first couple of games it becomes obvious to the fans that Eze isn’t suited to LW and he’s actually an inside 10 type forward.

4. Despite this Arteta persists for another 3 games until it’s obvious it doesn’t work at which point he brings in Martinelli on the left to restore balance

5. After the first game when Gabby just runs down allow blind alleys THEN in comes Noni

…. Cue spinny top thingy and michael Caine explaining the plot.




… oh this is possibly followed a sequel where after all this Arteta realises we play better with an inverted winger on the left and Martinelli is restored. For Eze and Madueke see Merino and Calafiori last year and people start questioning the transfer window again.

The thing is if two men are marking Saka then we have a man not marked somewhere else.

If we are quick. Otherwise it is just our two center-backs in our half and 8 vs 10 in attack.

Wirtz Gakpo Ekitike Isak Salah Nunez(for now)
That is some serious attacking power from Liverpool and why I think they are clear favourites.
I cannot believe they are going to get Ekitike and Isak in the same window.
City will be better as well.
I'm not sure additions of Gyökeres and Madueke is enough to get us over the line to be honest.

Apart from a few games the majority of our football was boring and predictable.
Arteta has to remedy this if we are to prevail

Key thing for Liverpool is their defence should be weaker. Van dijk a year older and bedding in new defenders. Their firepower is scary though. Isak and Salah in the same 11 is nuts.

Think city might surprise a few. Will have something to prove.

Our season will depend on how Zubimendi and Gyökeres bed in. Smooth start then we are good but if it takes a while we could be making up the numbers

Agree on the defence TG but that attack should get them out of trouble more often than most.
Didn't think much of city's Jan business though Marmoush looks a good player. Their summer buys of Rneidgers and Cherki look good buys.
Hoping Dowman will be used as a wildcard and offer us that unpredictability....Nwaneri as well.

I don’t think Dowman can even play until he’s 16 in the league. I’d be shocked if he features much in our season

That sounds scarily possible. It depends on whether the sclerotic tendencies we saw last season are a trend and reflect Arteta's football thinking, or were just a temporary blip. Just about any attacking player is going to struggle if the play is too slow and the opposition is able to close all the spaces while we lumber deliberately forward like a mastodon traversing a swamp.

Nwaneri was 15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Nwaneri

Yeah that’s right it’s 16 for the champions league.

No, never moved to the deep south and the sunshine, instead we moved further north to the state with the most heavy drinkers - Wisconsin! Like you I'm doing my best to enjoy my retirement and still follow the Arsenal. Its over 70 years now since my dear old Dad first took me to Highbury and I do miss the old place! Good to see you back on here with your world famous remedies etc

I like your idea for a try. The problem is our Manager does not do anything other than a stilted approach to the game all built around his system of slow build-up of play.

Personally I think we have gone further into our shell since Granit left. People won't like me saying it but, having thought long and hard about it : I don't believe Rice is good enough. One dimensional defensive player who cannot either move the ball quickly forward when we come into possession nor does he possess the killer pass. He may be better in the Partey position.

Martenelli can never succeed if you fail to give him the ball to move forward onto. We never open up the forward line. Henry would suffer with the slow progress of the ball to the forwards. Go and look at old videos of Henry, Wrighty and all the players around them on the wings. Go back to Limpar and Pires and others and there is a release of the ball to a forward line actually moving up the field. It allows us to panic the defence and they cannot settle. The reason the ball goes always to the right in the forwards is because Ødegaard is the only midfielder capable of the forward pass or the killer pass and he's not even that great. But he is on the right side of midfield. Ask yourself what other clubs do.

Liverpool have had 2 managers in the past 3 years who both try and open up the forwards at pace. City likewise move the ball quickly forward once they gain possession plus they are great at complete shut down of opponents. And of course City are in complete rebuild phase. These tactics have rewarded their clubs.

Yep I'm sure this post will release a fair bit of vitriol, because being an english player, Rice is untouchable but he either needs to change his style of play or we need to make hard decisions. Arteta will never do it as he paid over 100million for him and he will go to the grave to prove he is right. And its not just Rice the whole system of play needs to change to progressing the ball forward at speed. Because where we are now, is we need both City and Liverpool to have really bad injuries and a bad season overall bedding in new players while we scrap through games to build a lead over them.

The best club sides in the world would be queuing up if Rice was made available for transfer, Gaz.

Can't even begin to judge until we're 10 to 15 games into the season.

It's fkin pre-season. There has never been any point in reading into pre-seasom results and there never will be.

Wow such a bad take. Trolling possibly.

Rice got 9 goals and 10 assists last season. Xhaka never did that in a season. Every single team in the league would take him off us. City tried, Liverpool definitely Chelsea would have if he hadn’t been there at the start. Plus he scores big goals. Stamford bridge, Real Madrid, old Trafford.

Zubimendi has been brought in to break lines with his passing at speed. There’s 100% space for both in our squad and side. I think if you need to go for it you can even sacrifice one for another attacking midfielder.

Yeah you’ve had a shocker there and it’s not because he’s english

Now there's a thought ; have put a bit in my hair on occasion ; see if I could reverse the thinning

Geez Hoxton .... I watched that movie " Fargo " with Francis McDormand and thought how could anyone in their right mind live in such climes . you've provided the answer .

" Enjoyment in retirement " ; surely the only thing you could enjoy up there would be fiddling with a model railway with a blast furnace alongside .

b ...b...bu ...but Splitting hairs on whether it was a foul or not is not the issue ;

the point is that spaghetti for brains half wit we have in goal should never have passed to Skelly in the first place ;

and he should learn he is the F***** GOALKEEPER ...not some carefree Aborigine on a walkabout

It's good to see you in such good form, Kiwi. I think I should try some of those avo leaves.

In the last Euros he made more tackles and more interceptions than nay other player.

Well, just to ease your mind let me mention we didn't move to Minnesota -We're in Wisconsin just over the border from Illinois and Chicago! We have all four seasons here not just permanent winter although some local guys do go ice fishing in midwinter but I don't join them! Was 90F just a few days ago and around 75F now... I never saw that Fargo movie so I won't say any more than this, I wouldn't live in Minnesota if you paid me!

If you’ve never watched Fargo you’ve missed a treat, one of many great Cohen brothers movies.

Aw shucks thanks Soc ... and let me reciprocate by saying that being back to educate the less fortunates of the world like yourself ; does make me feel pretty damn good about myself

Thanks Decaf ... definetly worth a go ; best bet would be throw them in the blender with an apple / carrot , couple of oranges ...... something a bit more palatable,

Don't think you are quite ready for the " Jesus wept what the f***&& was that " taste bud shock I get from some of my concoctions .

Watched Mikel's post match Totts interview .... he states " He was very angry " now it could be the Spanish accent that obscures it but I get to thinking " are you really angry ? " he just delivers it in that sort of flat learned way he does everything else ....... there isn't any passion in there

....and the second bit I'd be asking " Okay except for an encouraging opening five minutes the rest of the first half was the normal slow ponderous sideways backwards possessional *&&&^&%%$*** .

IF you were so p****sed off ........ how come nothing changed second half ; no one looked like they had had the half time curry / chilli pepper / battery acid enema .

You did nothing different and didn't make a change until the 69th minute .....!!!!!!!!??????

With my normal sea weed on the rock style ; pre Spurs game I'm thinking WOW what a vibrant transfer window added a handy keeper , Zubimendi , Nørgaard , Motueke , Gyökeres ..maybe Eze what a squad we are really going places
Then after watching us play in the sleep inducing way as we did last year ,

I get to thinking Gyökeres and Eze wont be any improvement UNLESS there is a major revamp in Arteta's approach to the game

Well then, I will make a point of keeping an eye open for it - so many crap movies around today with poor story lines and dodgy actors that I rarely go out to see one in the cinema.... Think the last one I saw was Oppenheimer! Hope you're doing OK these days btw

Exactly. So many new signing for the top 4 so it will take a while for the dust to settle. But it is very hard to remain calm and rational!