Let’s hope for another surrender by them.

Watching Spudz being played off the park by potential relegation fodder is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

3 0. Spurs look absolutely shot of confidence. Brighton are all over them.

3-0 now. Excellent.

Deserved as well

The clock is ticking on Poch

Well done BHA!

Leicesrer's Chaudhry takes out Salah and only gets a yellow. Xhaka twice got reds for similar tackles.

Bloody Liverpool then get a pen in extra time to win

Good result for us though

Looked a dive to me was surprised Var gave it.

Agreed but oe of Riley's top refs gave it. The one an only Antony Taylor...................

There was a slight touch of his left heel but not enough to take him or make him go down. Def not a pen imo.

Bet you Gallagher backs the ref......

And did he?

Liverpool getting some spawny wins atm. Something that will catch up with them or just ride it out and start improving? I’d choose the first one please.

Mike Riley is to refereeing what a diseased yak testicle is to haute cuisine.

-Abraham Lincoln

Spurs situation is funny as hell

What are they going to do in January ? They have 3 players out of contract in the summer so if they don’t sell they will lose a ton of money and if they do sell they will be significantly weaker for the rest of the season

Emery and Poch out! lol

As I thought, Tottenham hit their peak last season. New stadia weighing them down financially. They will be more likely to sell their best players in time sensitive contract situations. To be honest, our draw is looking more and more like a loss of points given our recent form against theirs.

Speaking of derbies, I'd have liked to have seen the West Ham vs Palace derby. Never seen a good 'ol London derby. The atmosphere must have been great.

Liverpool are looking imperious. Records might be broken. As unlikely as it sounds, our invincible record. Maybe its my usual paranoia about that particular record. I recall some voices saying Klopp wouldn't be good for us. I thought he'd be perfect for us. A shame. But I think Emery is a good manager for us and hopefully will be proved right. The man has one one season and the knives are out. We didn't get worse league wise. We got to a European cup final. We were getting progressively worse so thinking a new manager, struggling with English, new culture and league would improve us from the onset is...well, asking for way too much. We are visibly a better side this season. Arsenal will be a multi year project. For the first time for a very long time, top 4 seems a reasonable goal.

http://dailycannon.com/2019/10/arsenal- ... -for-540k/
Arsenal ready to pay €56m to buy back player they sold for £540k


At this point, I think it’s safe to say that letting Donyell Malen leave for just £540k was a bit of a rubbish deal.

Still only 20, he’s already scored eight goals in eight Eredivisie games (plus two assists) while across all competitions he has 14 goals and five assists in 17 games.

Malen left Arsenal in 2017 when he was still only 18, turning down a contract extension. “It was going well in England,” he said shortly after leaving, “but I still wanted to leave Arsenal because I had the opportunity to sign for PSV. I took that chance.”

Now, it is claimed by Calciomercato that Arsenal are prepared to go big to bring him back amid interest from Italy, namely Napoli, Roma and Juventus. €56m big, which is exactly the price the Dutch side want for Malen.

I don’t know if Arsenal are going to do that or not, but I do know this isn’t the first time we’ve been linked with him since the window shut.

It certainly looks like one to keep an eye on as the Gunners look to life after Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette as they age out of the top of the game.

The one thing with building a team from scratch is once you achieve some fairly decent level of success, the new trick is keeping the good players and/or replacing them quality for quality. Man Utd were able to do that for most years, we did for several years, Chelsea and City did it by sheer size of their financial war chest. Liverpool did it by both spending money and canny buying. Some comments from Tottenham supporters:

*It’s clear Poch is a dead man walking... why prolong the inevitable? It’s been a good 5 years, thanks for the excitement but at the end of the day your team lacks the cutting edge mentality to win anything. Not good enough, you can now ride off into the sunset back to Spain or wherever. ADIOS!

*Wayne Veysey is reporting that Pochettino wanted to offload Eriksen, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose and Wanyama this summer. Spurs were willing to offer a new contract to Vertonghen, but Poch vetoed it as his coaches think he is on the downside at 32 years old. They had agreed a deal with Brugges to ship out Wanyama, but Levy (as usual) tried to renegotiate the deal at the last minute and the Belgians balked, despite reports saying that Wanyama pulled out.

*Five starters who are either unwanted or want out. Never going to win that way.

*As much as we're all pissed at how the season has started, we have to acknowledge that Poch has 3.5 years left on an £8 mil per year contract. I would have a tighter leash on him than some but even I have trouble seeing Levy eat £28 mil in salary plus whatever the assistants are on.

*It seems like youre under the impression the players have quit. Some of the more senior players and even Levy will have a say and understand the situation. Poch himself may even try to save some pride and step down prior to his firing. This team is way to talented to continue down this path..

3 draws out of the last 4, we need to take advantage of Tottenham, Chelsea and Man Utd off form and rack up some wins. With Watford excepted, we are winning the games we are supposed to. That is a must this season. We also need to make our home pitch a fortress. Take points off Liverpool or City at home would be nice. Winning against pretty much all the clubs below us at home in the league is a big ask but doable.

Keven Keegan style is going to be the way we win games it seems until the central defense gets sorted. Its not great but its not terrible either. I like Holding. I think he and Luiz is possibly the best pairing for us centrally. Others will likely disagree. Mustafi has been playing decently but he's always one big mistake at the wrong time away. It also can't help that he knows full well the fans are against him. Which I disagree with in terms of booing.

Central midfield needs to find the right combination for the opposition and the right substitution at the right time. Emery can be criticized for not doing either well, but I'm still confident with him overall as a manager.

The Daily Mail said Wenger is considering a job with FIFA. Wenger is finding the job hunting a little daunting. I think he is looking to replicate the role and power he had with for most of his career with a top club and he's naive if he thinks he will get that.

I think he is a bit blind to how football clubs are generally run. He had a rare amount of power. SAF had that kind of power and very few others (Moyes perhaps when he was at Everton, any others?).

Tottenham play Watford after the break in a relegation thriller and then hold your sides Liverpool away. Let’s hope they don’t regroup after the international break.

See RefWatch on Sky news tomorrow at 11.30 am for the answer.

The suspense...

I’m finding the spurs implosion utterly hilarious. No doubt they have been over achieving for a few years, also riding their luck along the way with very few injuries and some quite lucky results in the champions league.
The writing has been on the wall for a while. There was a time where it seemed like every player spurs signed was good value and performed well, even the squad players kept coming in and doing a job. They had a good manager and a stable squad who would run through brick walls for him - there was a collective confidence that lead to a lot of wins.

But crucially, no actual success. The group starts to question if this is where they want to spend the best years of their career, they build a new stadium (for double the original budget) which as we know severely restricts the budget and a few players get older and drastically lose form, and being able to pull magic rabbits from hats in the transfer market becomes a lot more difficult.

It is all very familiar to us but we kept in that top 4 the maintain income and there was a relatively healthy turnover of the players.

Spurs now face losing Vertonghen, alderweireld and eriksen for nothing. It would cost £150m in today’s market to replace their quality, when they’re on form. Alli has gone off the boil and is injured a lot. They’ve lost their threat from full back positions, Rose and Aurier also both want out. Died and wanyama have gone from useful squad players to liabilities in the pitch. Lloris is making more and more errors. Son is still quality but Kane is losing his aura, not everything he touches turns to gold unless it is a penalty.

For me the key point about Tottenham’s struggles at the moment is it increases the likelihood of them dropping out the top four, although that doesn’t mean they can’t get back on track. With Manchester United also having a difficult time, there really is a good chance for both Arsenal and a Hazard-less Chelsea to occupy the third and fourth places at the end of the season.

Rich mentioned Arsenal’s turnover of players following the stadium move. MOTD when discussing the Brighton Tottenham game pointed out that Tottenham, relative to City and Liverpool, still have a lot of players who have been at the club quite a long time. Linekar mentioned this might have led to players going stale. It’s a point worth thinking about that a steady turnover is actually a healthy thing. Assuming of course that exiting players are replaced with ones of comparable quality, or even better.

Having said that, I exclude Guendouzi from that observation. As I rate him so highly, I hope he’s at Arsenal another ten years - at least.

They are going stale but also now have a number of players who just don’t want to be there. 3 out of contract in the summer running down their contracts plus Dier to follow who apparently wants to leave.

Also I could see a huge united bid for Kane at some point. United will need more power up front.

Musician, Cream drummer Ginger Baker dies

Ginger Baker, the revered percussionist who founded influential band Cream with Eric Clapton, has died aged 80, his family has confirmed.

https://www.news.com.au/world/breaking- ... e6cd8554d1

Looking forward to watching Saka.

Luiz!

Luiz 1-0

Luiz 1-0

Pépé with the assist from a corner.

Pépé then curls one just over the top corner

No Pen ????

Well, it's a good thing VAR is here to help now.

Atkinson up to his usual woeful standard

Certainly looked like a pen didn't it.

How is that NOT a penalty? Looks like a judo throw.

And Xhaka well on his way to getting his yellow ...

A clear penalty

All Xhaka does is foul the opposition

Literally nothing else.

Because it would have been to our advantage.