By the way, a friend of mine is playing tonight for Bracknell against Ipswich and it's on ITV4!!! Keep an eye out for the Bracknell Number 8 Ashley Lodge. He's getting on a bit now but a decent midfielder.

CL draw:
- Leipzig vs City
- Brugge vs Benfica
- Liverpool vs Real Madrid
- AC Milan vs Spurs
- Frankfurt vs Napoli
- Dortmund vs Chelsea
- Inter vs Porto
- PSG vs Bayern

https://twitter.com/TheSecretScout_/sta ... iSGI4hL81A
Worth keeping an eye on this kid, Myles Lewis-Skelly - looks effortless in the dribble from central midfield.

I wonder whether there is a chance we might see 1 or 2 youngsters on the bench for the League Cup game? It isn't something Arteta has historically done.

Players such as Turner, Holding, Tierney, Cédric, Elneny, Lokonga, Vieira, Nketiah will surely start - so there is only 3 more positions to fill - it could easily be Nelson and Marquinhos on the wings and bring in Gabriel in central defence for example

https://twitter.com/iOkmm/status/158935 ... iSGI4hL81A

Saliba - playing his man well offside and then beating him in the race to the ball anyway.

Ha ha. First tie out. Man U vs Barcelona. Lovely.

https://twitter.com/EBL2017/status/1589 ... VVroWSgRXw

Just a few short passages of play but the levels of what we're doing with and without the ball are quite brilliant. This is purely down to smart, creative tactical thinking and hours of work on the training pitch with intelligent and technically excellent players

https://twitter.com/AndyCantwell/status ... VVroWSgRXw

I found this quite funny.

Fans always think commentators are biased against their team, this is a funny take on it

Europa play off round draw.
Thankfully this is the mess we avoided by coming top of our group

Barcelona v Manchester United
Juventus v Nantes
Sporting Lisbon v Midtjylland
Shakhtar Donetsk v Rennes
Ajax v Union Berlin
Bayer Leverkusen v Monaco
Sevilla v PSV
FC Salzburg v Roma

Liverpool have been put up for sale.

Probably not good news for them

We've taken 16 out of 18 points following our Thursday night European games. Playing on Sunday we consistently get just the 2 days break between games. Teams who play Champions League sometimes gets 3 days rest by playing Tues-Sat.

We're able to rotate more in the early Europa rounds compared to those CL teams however.

The consistency has been remarkable

That was a moment of sheer class.

Depends who buys them I guess.

Thanks Rich,
I won't consider us title challengers...yet. After the new year I'll revisit that. Right now, I just want to enjoy us winning for a change and especially us winning against sides we don't normally beat and in a convincing way at times.

I am not overly concerned about being top of the league. I don't care about City. I care about the other 18 sides and in particular 4 of those sides. I think us staying top till the New Year is very possible if not expected, but after that is where the fun (for everyone except me and my nerves) begins. I think its doable for us to win until our away game to Tottenham. If we get a draw out of that, I'll leave happy and possibly relieved. A win? I dare not even think of that possibility myself but hoping the players don't share that mindset.

Thick brexiteers vote for brexit. then don’t want to deal with brexit whilst maintaining it’s a great idea. Carney you traitor !

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63515486

Martinelli is going to the World Cup

Some squad

Alisson, Ederson, Weverton

D. Alves, Danilo, A. Sandro, Alex Telles

Bremer, Militão, Marquinhos, Thiago Silva

Casemiro, Ribeiro, B. Guimarães, Fabinho, Fred, Paquetá

Antony, G. Jesus, G. Martinelli, Neymar, Pedro, Raphinha, Rodrygo, Richarlison, Vinicius.

Wow that’s a lot of wingers they are taking. Only 3 strikers if you don’t include neymar so I have a feeling Jesus will start

Thanks - contrary to the earlier reports that I posted. Martinelli deserves it.
Gabriel does too especially considering there is a bit of a lack of natural left footed players in that defence.
It is a phenomenal squad

WOW WOW JUST WOW
What an amazing performance yesterday.
It was surreal. We looked so calm , so comfortable so in control that to come away with less than 3 points would have been a travesty.
The way we played around Chelsea was a joy to behold and the only slight criticism was in the first half out final ball was slightly off and what a chance Jesus missed!
But we kept on going and lets not underestimate that chelsea team , they could still put out Sterling , Mount , Aubameyang , Havertz and Jorginho and Mendy and Thiago Silva and that wanker AzSPITicuella.
Yet at times we toyed with them.
There was one passage of play where under threat from chelsea we won the ball back on the edge of our box and Saliba and Partey exhanged quick fire passes around their players and we just played it forward with one touch passes. Pure quality.
I still don't want to think of us as title challengers. I prefer us to go under the radar and there are tougher away games to come at the beginning of the year but lets just keep amassing the points and see where we are at end of january where hopefully we can manaintain the gap between us and our rivals as it currently is.
Saliba is just majestic. Ben White has been brilliant at right back , now really seeing what a quality defender he is and my Ghanaian brother Partey , wow what a player , have to keep him wrapped up because out game revolves around him. We absolutely need a quality back up to rotate with him.
Jesus , Martinelli and Saka are a trio of trouble for any team and I am delighted the former 2 have made the Brazil squad. Well deserved.
34 points from 39 is just remarkable.
Wins against Spurs , Chelsea and Liverpool. Tricky away wins against Brentford and Leeds.
The character and unity we are showing is a joy to behold and long may it continue.
We look like a TEAM and everyone looks invested.
Huge credit to Arteta.
Lets keep going game by game.

That's appropriately a Bernard. Cheers McQ.

I get where you're coming from here David, but how under the radar are we really? We're top of the league after 13 games, with a healthy distance to all our rivals bar Man City. The way I see it, if any team is going to challenge Man City this year, it'll be us. The others are too far behind already in the case of Liverpool, or simply not good enough in the case of Spurs, Chelsea and Man Utd.

Arsenal and our fans will want to downplay talk of the title or a title challenge for obvious reasons, it keeps the pressure off us and let’s us just concentrate on winning the next game and let others hog the positive and negative headlines.

However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to convince anyone of this!

I think now we’re almost at a near this break in the season it would be ok for us to reassess what we want from the season given our start.

Pre season I wanted top 4 which would show clear progress in the league - the most important measure of progress.
I also wanted us to win a trophy.

Now I think we should be aiming for 2nd at least, we’re clear favourites for it, have a healthy lead over lots of teams and have beaten plenty of rivals.
I still want a trophy. 2nd and no trophy would still be incredible progress, but it feels like this team needs a trophy now

If we beat wolves on Saturday it’s massive. Means we are top of the league on Christmas Day.

Honestly who on earth would have envisioned that at the start of the season.

Then the January transfer window could come into play. If you could bring in 1 or 2 who knows. Feels hard to envisage we keep this pace up but haz is right who knows

Yeah, I just think we're at that point where talking about a title challenge can't be considered cocky or premature, especially considering how convincing the majority of our performances have been. Haven't looked at the history, but I can imagine teams leading the league after 13 games challenge for the title most years.

The World Cup is obviously a huge factor that makes it more unpredictable this season. Partey might suffer a long term injury, or De Bruyne breaks a leg and the whole thing opens up... We'll see.

Since leaving Spurs for Real Madrid Gareth Bale has only had 1 trophy less season….the season he went back on loan to Spurs

January is massive. Spurs, Newcastle united and Manchester united. If somehow we got through that still top or not far off it I would start to believe

Another factor is the scheduling. We don’t play city until April 26! The other fixture againest them hasn’t been rescheduled and won’t be for a while. (Will need us to exit a cup competition)I think avoiding them for the time being is very useful.

A cracking game in the Argentina’s Champions Trophy final between Racing Club and Boca Juniors today. 10 players getting red cards.

Does the squad get further trimmed before the WC.

I'd be very surprised if they did, the club is a cash cow for them in merchandizing and I have to assume the value has gone up considerably since being bought.

The word is among the various NFL and NBA owners is how can they get into the EPL game. And its understood they query Glazer and Kroenke at the owner's meetings.

Attendance were in decline for a while but a post covid19 return has happened. And so has viewership but we'll have to see if it lasts.

The EPL is the target though for a lot of them, among which is that football is now regularly on tv and the kids play it now as much they play traditional American sports in schools, especially the middle class suburbs where its the most popular over American football.

There was a small Argentinian restaurant near me in LA and I used to go there for empanadas and the occasional game. I've always wanted to see the various classicos around the world but they said never, ever go to the Boca/Plate game. It's not worth it and its dangerous. Go see either play a smaller club.

Racing is one of the bigger clubs there so I can understand the passion on both sides. Still, I want to see a game there (as well as every league in Europe).

Greetings SG Forumites

I’ve been meaning to join the parade of golden oldies from days gone by, over the past week. A combination of having a very busy week and being in a state of shock since I heard Bernard passed, has meant I’ve only finally made time at this witching hour (UK) of the morning, which I thought I better do before too much time had passed.

Although I haven’t been posting on the forum for several years, I regularly keep up to date with topics Arsenal on here. I think the last time I would of posted was around the time of the “wenger Protests” in 2017/18. A lot has changed of course; If this terrible event had to happen, I’m so pleased that Bernard left us when we are top of the league. In fact as I was in frequent contact with him he waxed lyrical about the team’s progress, over the past 6-12 months especially. Apart from the stuff- I 100% agree with- everyone has said about this legend of the forum, he was personally very kind to me. I don’t go to many games (certainly not these days) and the same with away trips, Because of Bernard’s high level of away credits he was able to get me an away ticket for a couple of games where I had planned a weekend social around games. Newcastle in 2015 and WBA in 2017, the latter was an infamous game as it was when the Protest Group put the first of the Planes up.

I almost met up with Bernard back in September, I was involved in a big exhibition I’d curated in London, and Bernard said he was going to come to the opening on this particular Friday night. Although Bernard was a stickler for detail on all things Arsenal and other well reflected topics such as Captital punishment and The Icpress File, he didn’t translate that in to his own life always (in my experience anyway) on the Friday afternoon as we were out getting booze for the evening event, Bernard called and said he had turned up and no one was there. Somebody who worked in the studios adjacent to where we were having the show let him in so he could at least see it, even if we hadn’t put all the finishing touches together. Although I didn’t get to see him, I glad he did that.
I was last in touch with him by text on the 20th October, due to another conversation id told him about the original Attenborough vs of ‘Brighton Rock’ and on that day he’d seen it was showing on one of the movie channels and had recorded it.

We now know he passed 3 days later, and I never found out if he saw it or what he thought.

RIP mate I miss you px

I love some of these interesting tidbits that may be well known to you guys but because I became a fan later, unbeknown to me.

19-year old Clive Allen became the most expensive teenager when Arsenal signed him from Queens Park Rangers for £1.25m in the summer of 1980.
However, he never played a competitive match for Arsenal as he managed only three pre-season friendlies before joining Crystal Palace in a swap deal with Kenny Sansom.
Allen spent only one season at Crystal Palace (1980-81) and finished as the club's top scorer in all competitions with 11 goals but they finished bottom of the First Division.
Overall, Allen played for a total of 10 clubs- 7 London clubs (QPR, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Spurs, Chelsea, West Ham, Millwall) and 3 others (Bordeaux, Man City and Carlisle United), scoring over 190 goals in over 400 appearances.
At international level, he managed just five appearances for England and scored no goal.
Following his retirement, he had a brief American Football career and played for the London Monarchs in NFL Europe.
Following the departure of Martin Jol, Allen served as caretaker manager of Spurs in October 2007. His son Oliver Allen is also a retired professional footballer.

I’ve seen it suggested that our home game with City can be (or has to be) rearranged for Feb 7/8 midweek, there is very little wriggle room in the calendar.
If that is the date then City will have to play away to Chelsea, Man U, Spurs and Arsenal in the space of 5 prem games.
As tough as our fixtures are in January if Man City are top at the end of that run then they will be very, very difficult to stop. Our run in is tough as well, last 2 games are ok but city, Chelsea, Newcastle, Brighton in the last 6

Check this https://youtu.be/InAWlnS1Vsw

Fair enough TG ... if that was the case you are a better man than most Gunga Din

Nice to see some clean sheets, only 1 goal conceded in the last 4. We’ve only conceded 4 goals away from home in the league all season

maybe so G7 not for me to judge ... feeling all calm and mellow tonight curtesy of four beers and a couple of on going wines and a decisive win over Mrs Kiwi .

Went to the recyclers today to dump some bottles [ obviously ] paper , cardboard , tins etc ...they've got this fridge plugged in near one of the bins ...????
I'm checking it out ..... big Maori bloke I've befriended who works there ; Wayne ... shouts .." do you want it Captain "
Me ...what's the story .....
Wayne ...bloke came in dumped it off said it works fine they have upgraded to a bigger fridge .

Mama Mia the fridge is as clean as a whistle not a mark on it and it's cold .

I scurry home grab the trailer , go back , load it on and take it home . I'm chuffed .... back the trailer into the carport to unload it .

Out comes the ''harpy''' .... "what do we want this for ...? ...well it's too good to throw away maybe we could ...............

""I'm not having a fridge that small in the house ""

Hmmm ...okay I don't say anything , keep my powder dry .

Son Kurt arrives later for something ...spots the fridge ...enquires . I tell him the story ... Kurt is an expressive character ; not short of a word

Mama Mia what a score , there's not a mark on it ...Jesus you'd get $250 for that no worries .

Mrs Kiwi rolls out while he is gushing over it . Ha ha ha ""Really says I ... you reckon it's that good "" get him to wax more lyrical .

All the while eyeing the wife with a monstrous grin .

Bottom line I put that uppity little strumpet in her place . Epilogue ... Gave the fridge to Kurt he'll pick it up in the weekend .

probably as close to truth as well ever get.

Only Terry Neil would ever really know what happened. They couldn't have liked the look of him in training. Very hard to work out

You missed out the really annoying bit where he scored 49 goals for Tottenham in the 86/87 season.