The way that we play all or games will be against seriously tough opponents. We don’t dominate or scare like we used to. Every team believes that they have a chance.

And we should be able to hold off the teams just below us, BHA, Villa.
COYR!

Neither is he it would seem ...

Mikel can be given a wee bit of wiggling room by saying he has a lot of new players and needs time to get them all going in the same direction.

The one glaring thing I don't see as much as former sides we have is when a player has the ball in a dangerous area for the opposition, players are going wide and no one is consistently attacking the 6 yard box. Players would queue up for that in the old days. Pires, Wiltord, Freddie.

Is it the same on the training pitch? Are we just as tepid?

I think we’ll see a huge amount of Arsenal games still decided by very small margins one way or the other, a good finish, a missed chance, a mistake, a ref decision. Mainly because I think we set up defensively enough to never really get over run but also simply don’t dominate and create enough chances to over run the opposition. This sort of marginal game is almost as likely when we play the team at the bottom of the league as when we play the team at the top.

And I’d add we don’t have a great history of taking what limited chances we create or not making an individual mistake to hand the game to our opponents. We’ve already made 3 or 4 glaring individual errors in pre season to gift goals to opponents. With the squad we have that simply won’t change

Just seen that Terry Cooper died on 31st July. He scored the winning goal in the first cup final I attended when Leeds beat Arsenal 1-0 in the 1968 League Cup final. I couldn’t stand Leeds at the time, but had to accept that he really was a great left back.

Few reports we’ve agreed a few with Newcastle for Willock. £20-25m.

Read also that Willock scored 8 goals from just 13 shots on target last season. I hope he does well at Newcastle and hope we negotiate a buy back or % sell on but the form he showed for Newcastle which has triggered the bid is totally unsustainable. £25m if it is that is good business considering Newcastle appear to be the only interested party and we’re a club in desperate need to improve our starting 11, and Willock isn’t in that. I could write the same for Nketiah, Nelson and AMN.
Next year we won’t have anywhere near as many matches as we’re used to, potentially 25% fewer. We need to be all about a core of 16-17 players.
At RB and striker we should be looking at selling 2 players and replacing with 1. Bellerin, Cédric, Lacazette, nketiah. You could say the same with Elneny and Torreira in CM.
We desperately need that creative player because we don’t look like a team who will create a lot, and can’t rely on our strikers to take the limited chances we do create

Having watched most of todays game I have to agree with hazuki and Rich that it looks like a case of same old same old. At first I was quite pleased that with pre season almost over, we looked solid, comfortable an untroubled. As the game wore on it became apparent that despite our control we weren't creating very much and we seemed unable to go up another gear. When you think that we have lost Ødegaard you could easily argue we are weaker going forward. At the absolute minimum we need a back up goalie, and an Ødegaard replacement, otherwise I fear we are just going to draw our way into the top half of the table.

Saw someone post online it feels like we're going to make a deadline signing of Ødegaard for £40m in a reaction to a couple of thrashings by Chelsea and City. Sounds about right. (although probably not thrashings, we'll probably lose both by the odd goal but never really look like winning either game, both chelsea and city will have us at arms length and we won't even land a punch)

All I have watched is a 4 minutes highlights package. It is only a friendly (?) but what I noticed was that the chances they made were more clear cut than our chances. They also had more chances.

I think we will comfortably deal with Brentford.

Seen some here who would welcome us signing Bernardo Silva. As I would. The Mail ran a story yesterday that City may offer him to Tottenham as part of the deal to sign Kane as they don’t want to pay Levy’s asking price of £150m.

I’ve said often enough that my automatic reaction to transfer gossip is suspicion rather than acceptance or belief. But this one does at least seem semi-realistic. If it is, the question is which North London club Silva would rather join? Barnet is possibly the true answer (imagine a smiley here). But if Barnet aren’t interested, would he fancy a move to a Kane-less Tottenham or Arsenal?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailym ... -deal.html

I doubt he’d fancy either, I read he wants to go to Spain if he does leave. Which for a Portuguese player with the style of football Silva plays makes total sense. But the big clubs in Spain are cutting costs not signing £60m players.
If it really were a straight choice between spurs and arsenal then Arteta may be a factor but spurs now have a Portuguese manager

One thing I rarely see us do is play an accurate long ball over the top of a higher defensive line for a well timed run. At t he very start of Arteta’s reign we did do this a few times with good success with Aubameyang getting in down the left side. It is such a simple tactic that even if it doesn’t come off perfectly can destabilise a defence and you can pick up second balls from a back peddling defence struggling to clear the first ball. I’m not advocating becoming a more long ball team but there is a need to mix things up a buoy as we’re far too predictable in our attacking play. In theory Lokonga and White can both play these passes

It feels like our ability or inability to offload fringe players will be what ultimately defines this transfer window. If we can somehow get a few out the door for reasonable fess we might be able to something interesting in terms of new additions but yesterday's team looked scarily average in terms of the kind of football being played.

Despite the introduction of White and Lokonga there are just still too many journeyman players at the club.

So much for the biggest clear-out in decades.

Hi Rich,

I suspect Silva is at an age where he would really want CL football. Obviously, if no CL clubs comes in for him or can afford him then he might have to lower his ambitions and with so many broke clubs around europe his possible suitors are far fewer than would be the case in normal times.

What you say about his preferred option being a move to Spain sounds entirely logical. I also agree that the two managers at Arsenal and Tottenham possibly cancel each other out in driving his preference between them. Is Tottenham being in Europe this season and Arsenal not a point in their favour? My guess would be yes.

Another factor is how much City value Silva at? Because if he goes to Tottenham that influences how much Tottenham have to replace Kane? Levy’s valuation of Kane, if it is £150m, minus a Guardiola valuation of say £70m for Silva, leaves Tottenham with £80m for their own squad building or changing. If City say he’s worth £80m, that would leave Tottenham with £70m. Either sum looks comfortably enough to replace Kane. I’m not saying with someone as good, as currently Kane is arguably the world’s best striker. But adequately.

If Arsenal are willing to pay £70m for Maddison, that total for Silva looks a bargain. Would we, or Stan, go to £80m if that’s City’s valuation of him?

Ramsdale was in goal for Sheffield Utd yesterday. Now all the highlights showed of his performance was the chances Birmingham created and scored from. His positioning left a lot to be desired. This coupled with the Arseblog Arsecast when he had the Shef fan on make me concerned if we are chasing him. He said his first 3 months last season were a disaster but then the next 6 months he was brilliant. The money they are talking for him are not for a keeper who does not consistently perform.

But we must get a second keeper by Friday. The ‘process’ at our club is abysmal.

Morning All

Is there anyone going to Brentford? If so, have you received your tickets yet?

Also, I understand new Season Ticket cards are to be issued; has anyone received theirs yet?

I wanted to but sadly I’m not. They started off for non-away scheme members as wanting 45+ away credits. After losing the ones prior to the last two seasons that weren’t behind closed doors, I didn’t have enough.

Annoying because I’ve never see Arsenal away at Brentford before as we haven’t played there since, I’ve heard, 1946/7 when they were last relegated from the top tier. That’s even before my time by over ten years.

i’ve heard they’re issuing new season ticket cards and if it’s true, I haven’t had mine yet.

Here's a handy formula to work out who is entitled to tickets and who isn't.

1x1+1-1=1 is about my limit.

Loved all the Messi melodrama, but can't help wondering if he wanted to stay so badly why he didn't volunteer his services for the club and city he and his family loves so much? Or just take home say 20k a week? Naive suggestion I know, but he hardly need the money, does he?.

Thanks Bern

They're making life more difficult for the Away Scheme members. They no longer send out the tickets automatically so I have to apply through the poxy website each time. Also they're not sending out reminders about the preferential booking periods, so I have to monitor the website for availability. Pain in the arse.

Annoying as it is for me, I do get the point. I get the impression that there's an lot more interest in away fixtures these days - far more, I think than there used to be when they first started the Away Scheme maybe 20 years ago. Back then, the Club were mightily grateful for punters who'd commit pre-season to taking tickets for all away fixtures - it guaranteed sales and made the Box Office's job a lot easier. Now though, away tickets are about half the price of home tickets and demand seems to have rocketed.

There's been a groundswell of unrest apparently that so few away tickets are available meaning that supporters can't build up their credits for the really big games or finals. Can't really argue with that view. It's not unreasonable that fans want fairer access to away tickets.

I thought the same Old Man. Messi is apparently worth $600,000,000.

How rich do you want to be, Lionel?

He wants to attain Billionaire status

My new season ticket card arrived as I was reading your post. I didn’t realise it was at first. It says MY ARSENAL REWARDS MEMBER on it, which I wasn’t sure was the season ticket card.

But the covering letter, about half way down, says “This new card replaces your existing membership card. Your existing card will not be activated for next season, so please do not bring it with you to access the stadium.”

You are missing the 3 dimensional chess move ltg. He's getting as much money as he can to buy out Kroenke.

Supreme footballer but I think we would really be in a Messi if he owned our club...

Brentford tickets have turned up but no sign of the Season Tickets.

Looking at the website - sorry, poxy website - Brentford tickets are sold out, as you'd expect but the last seem to have gone to the '35+ Away Points' category. Seems like we're all being kept on our toes.

League predictions for Arsenal based on our squad today? At best I think we will just scrape a Europa league position. I just don’t see us making enough chances and then converting them.

No thanks - The last thing we want is some super rich guy who didn't have his heart in it and didn't care about the club.

I see what you did there

Nice touch

Messi is rich waaaay beyond the dreams of avarice, but look how many more noughts Stan has:

Messi $600,000,000
StanK $10,000,000,000

It's truly obscene.

I haven't seen that many zeroes lined up since Mister Spock had a book signing.

Apparently it is actually against employment rules (presumably the rule is to stop individual players being coerced into taking paycuts, or something?).

He can't. Once they couldn't sign him he was not their player and even for free they couldn't take him on. It's the way the Spanish league is structured.

Without trying to over defend footballers on their salaries I have read footballers talk about how when they have a certain wage their lifestyle may reflect that, ie: they may still have big mortgages, have kids in private schools, have houses for family etc. They still have monthly outgoings and to drop from £500k a week to a measly £20k a week is going to effect that.

Of course, anyone of £500k a week should be sensible enough with their money to realise that just a few months work should have them set for life and never having to work again - but peoples lifestyles tend to reflect the money they earn