Koscielny and Monreal CB pairing. Very rusty. You just know some non goalscoring forward like Shane Long is going to terrorise us and play his best game all season - we always struggle against him!

Reinforcements needed in January.

I dont think the midfield 3 of torreira/xhaka/guendouzi worked behind the front two today. no-one was playing between the lines and we lacked penetration and creativity from midfield. I think it has to be two from that 3 and either a No.10 or two wide men and 1 striker

Three games in a week, two of them against Man United and Tottenham and we got away with 7 of 9 points. Very good return.

Yes they were ugly tactics but they almost worked. This is a much much smaller club working on a consideraby smaller budget than us. Would you have been so critical if they played like that at Tottenham or Liverpool? They did get lucky in some ways and of course we were the better team, but their job is to make it difficult for us. You can't blame them for the ref. And while they fouled, we dived. For me tactical fouling is part of the game so I don't agree with your assessment of them as cheats.
I'm just happy we nicked a late winner.

Absolutely.

Considering how much he'd let Hudderfield get away with, I do think booking Xhaka for diving was a poor decision by the ref. If you are going to book players for diving you need to book them for fouling too. That and the stupid disallowed goal really put Hudderfield in the match and rattled our players. Still, we need to be able to cope with that sort of thing ...which we just about did despite the yellows. Ugly wins are good wins.

Well I fully supported Klopp when he decried Burnley’s tactics the other day, which were a lot of man and ball tackles and designed to intimidate. I dislike the tactics and I dislike refs who refuse to condemn it. People roundly agree when Pep raised it on a number of occasions last year.
On the diving, I don’t think xhaka was worthy of anything, Guendouzi borderline and Mustafi is anticipating the contact but does throw himself. The thing that surprises me is how often do you see a top 6 team not get a penalty for any of those? Spurs and Liverpool for example

Can’t believe that I just cheered a Chelsea goal? Wtf is wrong with me?

Chelsea 1-0 City at half time

Well fair enough Rich. Though I think the phrase 'anticipating the contact' is ridiculous and what Xhaka thought he was doing I have no idea.

Definitely not a penalty for me, but the problem for me is that if you're going to give a yellow card for diving when there's such clear contact you're going to have to give out a lot of yellow cards. No way any ref is going to be consistent with that. Just wave play on and let it be, in my opinion.

Different from the Guendozi situation which was just a dive plain and simple.

2-0 Chelsea. So maybe we don't go past them, but at least they'll ruin Citys chance of an unbeaten season if they hold on.

I know I’ve talked about our ref a lot but compare his performance today with that of Michael Oliver in the Chelsea v city game. There is a reason Oliver gets these big games, unfuasy, in control, let’s it be about the players and you don’t notice him and neither team can really complain

I think our record of scoring in all 38 league games could actually be harder to equal than our invincible season

Kos and Monreal need some match fitness but given Sokratis and Mustafi are banned for the next league game should we risk Kos and Monreal in the Europa League?

Just need Liverpool to lose now. I'd rather City win the league than Liverpool. The only positive thing I can find to say about Liverpool is that they're not quite as obnoxious as Manchester United.

Erikssen and Kane benched can they beat Leicester.................

Torreira has to be up there as one of the players of the season for any club in the prem. his two goals will have peaked the notice of people who haven’t watched all of arsenal games but irrespective of the goals he’s been right up there as one of the best players of the season

Think emery got the shape and formation wrong today.
Huddersfield were going to play 5-4-1 so we don’t need 3 CB, it takes away an extra attacking player. Also if we are going to play the wing backs the main threat is getting those 2v1’s in the wide areas and therefore we needed iwobi and Mkhitaryan to play on those half inside spaces to double up with the overlapping full back.

I felt 3 CB was too many and also the 3 CM were one too many and all too similar.

When teams sit in as much as Huddersfield did then we really need Özil. He doesn’t have to close people down he is going to get time on the ball and plenty of it. Even Mkhitaryan as a 10 might have worked better

Play Kos and Mon in the dead rubber Thurs for a bit of match practice or wrap them in cotton wool before Soham?

It was interesting that when Mustafi went off it was Monreal, not Koscielny, who came on. Might that suggest Koscielny is further away from fitness than Monreal, despite both of them being on the bench? If so, wouldn't two games in four days represent too much of a risk for Koscielny?

Absolutely. I wouldn’t play either in the Europa. Play a pair of kids, the whole team should be kids really.
Kos and Monreal HAVE to play v Saints, give them 8 more days training, they’ll likely get more out of that than a dead rubber against weak Europa league opponents.

Interesting points. Next is whether UE will play a flat back four at Soham or go with a five which might look like Bell Lichtsteiner Kos Mon Kol

Best result of the week, City beaten.

...of the seasons. Invincibles live for another season.

I think now the league and the top 5 clubs have changed their view of us and now consider us a threat. I still hear a few pundits here and there count us out of the top 4 but they don't say it as convincingly as they did before.
Emery may be the talk of the town to some extent but Sarri has been a revelation in my opinion. Chelsea were 5th last season, 30 points off pace. The result against City was massive for a few reasons.

Liverpool are still unbeaten - I predict that you will notice this at some point and then post on here how worried you are, the sleepless nights etc etc

Reports this morning that Arsenal are trying to offload Özil to Inter Milan for £25m and also to shift his £350k off the wage bill. Or £18m per season.

Arsenal will consider flogging Mesut Özil for just £25m in January with Inter Milan interested

Gunners are running out of patience with Özil and want to get his £350,000-a-week wages off the books

Linkage: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/7933573/ ... nterested/

If he did leave I would have no problems. The club now has a great culture & it can get better. Perform or you are out of the team/ club. No favourites & results & effort matter. I think Emery learnt some lessons from the problems at PSG & he does not want to get into those bad habits. Özil is one of Wenger last big mistakes - renewed his contract to try & save his own job.

It seems logical letting him go but on the rare occasions he plays he does contribute so if we do sell we will need to bring in another creative outlet. The rumour has it the club are due to make a 70million loss this year so I’m not sure how much can be spent on replacements.

If the losses can be put primarily down to lack of champions league football and a high wage bill I still can’t quite square it in my head how the likes of spurs and Liverpool were able to still spend huge amounts when they weren’t regulars in the champions league. I know spurs wage bill was significantly lower but Liverpool’s has always been comparable to ours

If we lose Ramsey, Özil and Welbeck for peanuts I’m not sure how we would replace them. That’s a lot of shoes to fill for a limited budget.

Then Čech and Monreal are out of contract in the summer and may need to be replaced.

AST explanation

Overview

Arsenal's financial performance for the year 2017/18 shows the following developments:

· Matchday, Broadcast and Commercial revenue have all fallen. This is largely a result of playing in the Europa League and overall the impact has been a loss of revenue of £40m (of which non participation in the CL has contributed a £35m reduction)

· At the same time there was a major increase in the wage bill of about 17.5%, from £200 to £235m (this includes allowance for pay offs to AW and his staff which may be treated as an exceptional payment).

· The amortisation costs (cost of buying players spread over length of their contract) also increased significantly - by £19m.

· The result of this increase in costs and reduced revenue is an operating loss of £44m (£52m operating profit in the previous year)

· However Arsenal had a major sale of players in this period including Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott and Sanchez. The impact of these sales gives Arsenal a profit before tax of almost £70m

· It is not a sustainable position for Arsenal to rely on player sales to finance their business model year after year. Looking ahead to the current season there have been very few receipts from player sales and a wage bill that is still increasing

· Taking all these factors together the AST predicts that in the present season of 2018/19 that Arsenal are heading toward making a loss of nearly £70m (in the absence of any player sales). At the operating level we predict a loss of c£60m.

· There are new commercial deals starting to come on stream that will give a boost in 2019 but these figures demonstrate why Arsenal really do need to secure a Champions league position at the end of the season.

· At the end of the current 2018/19 season we forecast cash available for player purchases of c £40m.

It's funny because I thought Torreira had a weaker game than usual apart from the goal, and Xhaka was comfortably our best midfielder on the day. It's typical how even a defensive midfielder starts to get noticed when he scores goals, rather than when he's doing his actual job better than anyone in the league week in week out.

Sorry but this is utter nonsense - the club renewed his contract, because he's one of the very best playmakers in world football.

I have optimised the forums tables so it should be a bit faster now hopefully.

Rog ...

I thought Torreira had his worse game of the season. He was okay rather than poor, but I didn't think he played as well as Guendouzi or Xhaka.

Will be good business too. Then pass some of that savings onto a new contract for Ramsey. Ramsey has started to earn his right.

Rumor mill is Welbeck is being off loaded to Turkey, Galatasaray. It will never happen but if the Özil rumors are true, I wouldn't mind seeing Fabregas back for one last hooray. Yes, I'm biased favorably for him. When Henry left he became my favorite player.