I do find Arteta's constant positivity over the Balogun situation at odds with everything else we've seen and heard about it. I think of Balogun does stay and both Lacazette and Nketiah leave then Balogun will be Nketiah's replacement rather than Lacazette's

Has anyone denied Elneny’s quality? Accepting he’s made a slowish start is not the same as denying his quality. He played well at Old Trafford but was still outplayed in that game by Elneny, a player many don’t rate that highly. On the basis of his form so far it’s debatable whether he’s easily one of our three most important players. Shouts can also be made for (in no other order except alphabetical) Leno, Saka and Tierney. Aubameyang hasn’t been at his normal level this season, but despite that I remain to be convinced Partey has shown himself as easily more important than him.

The schedule this season is really playing tricks on teams; since we faced Leicester three days ago, Burnley have now played twice. We should have the fresher legs on Saturday at least!

By Sat, March 6, Burnley will have played 3x. We should have fresh legs.

Maybe he got some feedback from Lampard that he wasn't good enough anymore which left him a bit disillusioned at the lack of loyalty and dented his confidence. But when Lampard got sacked he thought "well that guy didn't know what he was talking about"

Pretty good summary Rich and agree with the ins and outs required. I'd keep Elneny as a squad player though as he's reasonably versatile and can provide cover for injuries. (although if his contract is nearing an end then probably best to move on as he's 28). Where we end up will likely depend on the logistics of how many can be moved out / in during one window.

After Burnley there's a tough few matches against Totts, West Ham and Liverpool and from there on, apart from Chelsea and Everton, we should normally expect to win most of them. What will make it really difficult though is that nearly all of those opposition are either in the relegation or very close to it, so 100% focus and effort will be needed for every match till May 24. Tough ask but it does make the end of season a lot more interesting in what has been a very erratic season (and not just for Arsenal).

How many strikers do we need? Lacazette goes, we have Aubameyang who will need to be replaced at the end of his contract. Martinelli is good enough to start in mine and some people's opinion. Okay, Lacazette goes we'll nee another. We have some goo young strikers but no out right lead strikers. Pépé can play up front and I think he's better there than on the wing. I think he's more dangerous running straight at a defender than coming in on the wing. He's got quick feet. He can throw defenders off balance fairly easily head on from a bit deeper in the midfield or running off the line.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/footb ... s-23602936

It’s great news that you have been in contact with Arteta and have such inside information. What a cult leader you are.

Am I missing something? Mavropanos?

https://tbrfootball.com/has-to-replace-luiz-better-than-holding-some-arsenal-fans-want-23-year-old-to-get-a-chance-next-season/

Sorry. In my first sentence I’d put Elneny instead of Partey. Changed it above to what it should have read, as a response to a previous suggestion that Partey’s quality had been questioned.

Hopefully my third sentence had made it obvious who I was talking about in the first sentence, as otherwise I’d be saying Elneny was even better than Elneny at Old Trafford.

Arteta is fairly direct which is nice. No reading the tea lives types of interviews like some managers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wc6kvL ... reload=101

Just saw this on a cousin's feed. He wasn't even born at the time of the recording so surprised he had this or knew about it. This is cool as hell! No idea who she is, but know the tune. Cherry Wainer?! Transporting myself back to 1966 in a time machine to be my crush.
...and Don Storer on drums. First time knowing about him too.

More talk today of Bellerin leaving. The right-nbacks I've seen linked are Lamptey and Aarons as young english prospects, and Denzel Dumfries (great name), 24 from PSV and Nordi Mukiele, 23 from Leipzig.

I don't know anything about the last 2. Transfermarkt website seems to place them in the £20m category. I thin the two english lads would cost closer to £30m.

One thing that I do know is Lamptey is 5ft 5.....and Dumfries and Mukiele are both 6ft 2. Lamptey's height is easily masked in Brighton's team of giants who play with a back 3 and also we haven't seen what he's like in a back 4, only as a wing back. I like him but for the price I don't think I'm convinced Lamptey is the answer

Dumfries isn't good enough, he's all pace and power but little skill.

few years earlier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIekZvhyrsk

I'm a bit embarrassed I've never heard of her. I like this one. Going to have to find more of her music. I had to look her up on wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Wainer

So, she married the drummer! Influenced by the great Jimmy Smith. Smith is from Philadelphia (or precisely a suburb), where a cousin of mine went to...oh, so that's why that same cousin had it on his feed? I've sent him a message. He went to the HS of that town. Can't wait to hear back from him.

I only realised last night that Burnley had a midweek game so much less rest than us before our game v them at the weekend.
Having so many fresh players really helped us overrun Leicester who had to pretty much play the same players from their midweek European game.
We need to make this count v Burnley, we should have the legs on them so need to press high and force mistakes

That was a fascinating video post AG and churned up a lot of memories. I recognised Cherry (though I didn't know her name) immediately from that clip based on a dim and distant TV programme I saw in the '50s. I too have googled her. I must have seen the 'Oh Boy' programme to remember her but I have no real recollection of it.

Not sure why but I do remember Lord Rockingham's 11 - and her. She is quite mesmeric and obviously made an impression on me. I've never heard anything else from her though she seems to have had quite a career. Everyone in Britain knows the 'Hoots Mon' song.

LTG and the Old Man will fill in the blanks.

Count me out. Until today I had never heard of either of them.
My interest/passion in music started with The Shadows.

And the first single that I ever bought was Telstar by The Tornados.
First album was With the Beatles.

Might be wrong but I think my first album was Electric Warrior by T. Rex.

Mustafi and Kolasinac get mentions.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/03/former-s ... IKzRihHIgQ

I had quite a lot of albums by that point (1971).

All to do with being aged.

Don’t worry about it. Getting old is way better than the only alternative.

I don't recognize the group but the song is familiar to me. I've heard it before.

Can we play Liverpool next?

I always had you down as a "glam rocker", Bernard.

Look up Joe Meek. He’s an interesting case.

Sad to read. Ever since January, I've come to like Mustafi a whole lot more. Club legend. I've always liked Kols actually. Tough guy.

Wow, ltg! Interesting indeed. HAHA I listened to "I hear a new world" and the song from the artist he produced John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me'. I like that song.
He lived in Islington for a time. Possible gooner? Sad to think how your sexual preference was criminalized in those days. Not too long ago. Obviously a troubled man. Tragic.
"Meeks' inability to play a musical instrument or write notation did not prevent him writing and producing successful commercial recordings." Amazing.

From Wiki:
Meek became fascinated with the idea of communicating with the dead. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in an attempt to record voices from beyond the grave, in one instance capturing the meows of a cat he believed was speaking in human tones, asking for help. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly (saying the late American rocker had communicated with him in dreams). By the end of his career, Meek's fascination with these topics had taken over his life following the deterioration in his mental health, and he started to believe that his flat contained poltergeists, that aliens were substituting his speech by controlling his mind, and that photographs in his studio were trying to communicate with him.

Meek was affected by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and, upon receiving an apparently innocent phone call from American record producer Phil Spector, Meek immediately accused Spector of stealing his ideas before hanging up angrily. His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper to steal his ideas), depression, and extreme mood swings. In later years, Meek started experiencing psychotic delusions, culminating in him refusing to use the studio telephone for important communications due to his beliefs that his landlady was eavesdropping on his calls through the chimney, that he could control the minds of others with his recording equipment, and that he could monitor his acts while away from the studio through supernatural means.

Meek was also a frequent recreational drug user, with his barbiturate abuse further worsening his depressive episodes. In addition, his heavy consumption of amphetamines caused him to fly into volatile rages with little or no provocation, at one point leading him to hold a gun to the head of drummer Mitch Mitchell to 'inspire' a high-quality performance.

Meek's homosexuality – at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK – put him under further pressure and he was particularly afraid that his mother would find out about his sexual orientation. In 1963 he was convicted and fined £15 (equivalent to £316 in 2019) for "importuning for immoral purposes" in a London public toilet, and was consequently subject to blackmail. In January 1967, police in Tattingstone, Suffolk, discovered two suitcases containing mutilated body parts of Bernard Oliver. According to some accounts, Meek was afraid of being questioned by the Metropolitan Police, as it was known they were intending to interview all of the gay men in London. This was enough for him to lose his self-control.



On 3 February 1967 (by coincidence, the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death),Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself with a single-barrelled shotgun that he had confiscated from his protégé, former Tornados bassist and solo star Heinz Burt, at his Holloway Road home/studio.

After Meek's death, the thousands of recordings he hid at his studio remained unreleased and preserved by Cliff Cooper of the Millionaires. Subsequent to his suicide in 1967, Cooper is said to have purchased all of Meek's recordings for £300 (equivalent to £5,485 in 2019). These recordings were called the "Tea Chest Tapes" among fans

Hi socrates. I did like much of the ‘new romantic’ music.

Changing subjects, I was sorry to hear the actress Nicola Pagett died of a brain tumour a couple of days ago (3rd March). Best known for Upstairs Downstairs which I never really saw, unlike my mum. But I most associate her with The Sweeney as she was in one of the episodes (Stoppo Driver). Sad to hear she once suffered from serious mental health issues.

Apparently she had manic depression which in 1997 coincided with her becoming totally obsessed with prime minister Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell. She hadn’t even met him. It was set off by seeing Alastair Campbell on the telly.

Just been reading about the team formerly known as The Washington Redskins changing their female cheerleaders group to become ‘gender neutral’ in keeping with modern times.

Of course Arsenal used to have something very similar and not at all offensive. I guess that many of us here will remember the Metropolitan Police Band marching up and down the pitch at half time, and us all hoping that the guy up front would drop his baton when he launched it into the air.

Back in the days of getting half time scores from A,B,C etc in the corner of the ground (and needing a programme to tell which match was represented by each letter).

"Constable Alex Morgan" - the North Bank giving him pelters when he threw the baton up

Well remembered. I’m impressed.

How ridiculous.

With regards to the Redskins, I try not to be too PC but in fairness, the term Redskins is pretty bad. Native, aboriginal nicknames for teams have been assigned to teams at all levels, from youth, HS, uni to professionals for over a century.

The term Braves (Atlanta baseball team for example) is a complimentary term. Cleveland's baseball team were simply 'Indians' which is just descriptive. Redskins is bad. The owner vowed never to change it. Then the BLM movement became national (and international) and even he had to bend the knee. They are no longer known as the Redskins officially.

The cheerleader thing is the LBGTQ community's doing. 40 years ago or so, the woman's rights movement had an issue with scantily clad women being cheerleaders. That's pretty much gone. There is a very large, viable cheerleading competition among girls as young as 7 or 8. One of my best friends, a couple has had their daughter doing cheer since she was 7. There are movies about HS cheering. There are uni competitions that are nationally televised and include males.

There is a middle ground somewhere in there. Societal norms are sometimes like a pendulum when changes happen. A movement goes to the extreme left or right before it 'rights' itself. While I'm fully supportive of gay marriages and have a very close friend married to his partner, I personally draw the line at trans boys competing in girls sports. There are women's wrestling in some schools and there have been serious harm done to girls from trans boys or is it trans girls? I don't know but the point is made. Interestingly enough, you rarely if ever, hear of issues of girls or women who live as boys or men and hear of controversies of them wanting to play boys sports or going to the boys restroom. I know of one person who has a daughter who wants to self identify as a boy. I haven't heard of any social issues other than looking ambiguous gender wise and people not sure what his/her gender is. "His" name is Kai, which I see a pattern of in such manner.

One of my favorite shows, Billions has such a character that I wasn't sure about the gender when the character appeared. One of my fave characters actually and the actor is similarly uncommitted to a gender in real life.

It seems the current state of America is if you make your money from the public, be it a sports team, tech company whatever, you address any accusation or concern by taking the action that addreses the concern in full.

Mr. Potato Head is being stripped of his gender identifier I hear. And he's getting married to his partner.

When I worked in LA and I sometimes part of the interview process, we would sometimes get someone whose gender was ambiguous. And I recall the first time seeing the CV in the group interview and the name was 'Chris' or 'Jamie', the HR rep would immediately take the initiative to say "So Jamie Smith", what is your preferred pronoun?"

...and I recall when team names became an issue in the 80s or 90s, but the counter argument was "Well, I'm Tom Ercison, the Minneosta Vikings could be disrespecting my heritage too?"

Up through the 1960s, the Negro baseball league self described their teams such as 'Black Barons', 'Black Yankees', and finally the head scratcher "Black Crackers' who were based in Atlanta. I wonder if it was painted on the side of their bus while traveling in the deep south?

In the end, I suppose things will sort themselves out. There are far more pressing issues in America than this.

Indeed.

First LP for me was Frank Zappa - Hot Rats in 1974
First single was Dancing in the Moonlight by King Harvest in 1973



I was gonna ask the missus if she remembers the first 12" she got but probably best not.

Hot Rats is an absolutely brilliant album.
And like you Bernard Electric Warrior was my first album - first one I bought with my own money anyway.