A few barbs from Carragher who has now turned his anger to Salah, and a few articles talking more about the hierarchy than Slot. It’s not about what high brow paper you read it’s about the numbers you reach and influence you have.

The big difference is as soon as Slot gets a win he’s a genius again and all the bad form is forgotten. It’s the opposite for Arteta, go unbeaten for 18 games and most of the talk is questions, lose one game and he’s panned. Slot and Liverpool have been given an incredibly easy ride compared to what they should have had this season.

I think if you asked most fans or pundits who from Arsenal or City ‘should’ win the title ie: it will be a bigger failure for the one who doesn’t most would say Arsenal. But logically it has to be City right?

City have won 5 of the last 6 titles. City have the best manager in the league. City have a robot striker who scores every single game. City spent £200m this summer on top of £200m last winter. City have the spending power to do whatever they need in January. City have a core group of players who know how to win major titles.

Everything is in their favour. In comparison (relatively) Arsenal are plucky underdogs ‘relatively being the important word there before anyone gets their knickers twisted

Or maybe lots of people would take the view that Arsenal finished ahead of City last season, had a net spend in the summer that exceeded City's by over £100m and have much greater squad depth.

They've found a bit of form, but it is a bit early to throw the towel in.

We play after City so we’ll almost certainly be in second place when we kick off v Everton. A test of our minerals.
No excuse to not beat Everton, they’re a functional but not great team, but still a team you need to play well to beat at home

I’d say the squad depth is similar but City have bigger drop offs to some back ups partly because of the quality of the starters in some positions

Gk
Raya, Kepa,
Donarumma, Trafford, Ortega

Def
Timber, white, Gabriel, Saliba, Mosquera, Hincapie, Calafiori, MLS
Nunes, Khusenov, Lewis, Dias, gvardiol, stones, Ake, O’Reilly, Ait Nori

Mid
Zubimendi, Nørgaard, rice, Merino, Ødegaard, Nwaneri, eze
Rodri, Gonzalez, reindjers, Kovacic, foden, Cherki, Phillips

Wing
Saka, Madueke, Martinelli, Trossard
Doku, silva, Savinho, Bobb

Striker
Havertz, Gyökeres, Jesus
Haaland, Marmoush

Squad sizes are all but identical.

I’ve said if both teams suffered similar injuries then I think we’d be better off but if both teams were injury free then City are better off almost exclusively because of Haaland. At the moment we’re two points clear with all our injuries and City are playing the same team every week, no cluster injuries etc

Not throwing in the towel ; but when your team doesn't have a single shot on target in the first half against the worst team in Premier league history .

Couple that with our stuttering league results of late ; our style of play ..... you can be forgiven for thinking it is not going to be our year .

Could say the same about us.

And isnt this the period where we stuttered and farted against Villa etc in bet the Christmas period?

Okay so you are pinning it all on injuries but yesterday we had the attacking talents of Saka , Trossard , Martinelli , Modueke , Eze , Merino, Gyökeres , Jesus , Ødegaard , Nwaneri available

Yet still managed to serve up such a turgid load of boring unadventurous sh***&^^^t .

Wolves scored the three goals yet still managed to lose the game

Haaland is important but they have a better coach as well. His tactics can win them games.

Martinelli was too greedy for goals in the Wolves game. He took shots at goal all the time. I might be wrong, but I did not see him pass to the center all game when he had the goal in sight. Gyökeres was waiting for it.

Those Wolves players kept going down hugging their faces whenever touched. Shameful. That was their way of defending their game against us. No wonder they only have 2 points so far. Play football like a man, have more belief in yourselves.

You're not wrong I thought the same ; Saka and Ødegaard are guilty of similar .

Plus you have Timber ; intercepting headers Viktor probably would have buried .

Whereas City have the primary thought " give it to Erling " our mob seem intent on preventing Viktor from scoring .

It would have been far better for Gyökeres if Trossard had been on earlier providing service

That Martinelli one just before he came off was the worst. Gyökeres was there for the tap-in. I'm not sure if it is selfishness or woeful decision making.

I can understand why we want Saka, Martinelli and Ødegaard to be taking shots. But surely we need to be finding ways to get our best ball strikers into the game more. Gyökeres had one shot at goal and Eze had zero.

It’s not all on injuries but currently the amount we’re both having is not even close. Of course we can play better than we did v wolves and should be playing better. But City fans will be looking back at turgid performances losing 2-0 at home to an awful spurs side, losing at Villa, Brighton, Newcastle and cursing that they should be ahead of us already.

Injuries can be managed but there is some luck to them. Mosquera rolling his ankle on landing. What if Haaland did that next week? Injuries have a bigger effect on every title than people like to admit. I reckon you could go back through the last 30 prem champions and they’d all have had a very good record with injuries through the season.

If people think injuries aren’t a huge factor then we’d be happy for City to be without their first 3 choice strikers and 3 first choice CB and their captain for a 3-4 game period against decent teams and no mitigation or excuses can be accepted.

Absolutely Pep is arguably the best coach the game has ever seen. Arteta is still in managerial nappies in comparison. Which makes my point about favourites and expectations for the title even more valid.
Pressure is different, I get that Arteta is under more pressure to win it than Pep in the same way there was more pressure on Jimmy White to win the world snooker championship over Hendry…..but the expectation in football is so strange.city have ever advantage going, cheated the rules, best manager, best striker, all the know how and experience but no expectation to win it and won’t be treated as a huge failure if they don’t win it

Summer signings.
I think Zubimendi has slotted in really well, he’s been a very good signing. I also think Madueke is an exciting player, different to Saka but the much needed quality back up. Happy with both of these.
Mosquera for £13m has been good, he’s needs to improve aerially but that’s another good signing.
Kepa hasn’t really been needed but having a gk of his experience on the bench for just £5m is a good signing
Nørgaard has been underused - difficult to judge him other than if Arteta doesn’t trust him enough it seems an odd signing.

Eze, a few moments but it feels like we’re struggling to get the best out of him. We’re trying to play him as a right sided 10 when he’s thrived off the left side, we also play to penetrate through the flanks rather than centre so he struggles for touches - but he must find a way with his talent to get on the ball more and make things happen. He is here to lighten the load and expectation for creativity and moments from Saka.

Gyökeres, underwhelming. A few factors against him but a non scoring striker can still offer more than he has so far. We don’t play to his strengths but I’m not sure if his strengths are enough. If right now you offered by a summer chance to send him back for £35m and spend £100m on Julian Alvarez I’d do it in a heartbeat even if it was our only summer business.

Looking at our run of fixtures we definitely need to up our game or find ourselves chasing City again.

In truth our attacking play has not been great all season. Our performances up until the recent injuries was underpinned by a rock solid defence who gave very little away.

Our goals record is decent, helped by a few from corners and set-pieces, but we don't create a glut of chances and as soon as we concede first I always wonder where a goal will come from. It feels like keep giving the ball to Saka and hope he can conjure something up.

Inevitably, conceding a few goals recently has heaped the pressure on us to improve offensively.

The four game run after Xmas is pretty brutal but I'm moderately confident that we can get back on track if our injury luck improves. We've got the squad. Areta needs to be brave with rotations (eg the palace game) and substitutions. We need to see a lot of the likes of Madueke, Nwaneri (for Ode), and Martinelli coming on in the last half hour.

I really think that Ødegaard getting back to his best is key. His absences have been very disruptive. We've hardly seen our best front 6 (which I think includes Big Vic at 9) playing together.

There is nothing we can do about City but it is worth noting that while their results are ominous, they haven't been blowing sides away either. The 3-0 scoreline this weekend was fairly flattering. And obviously their reliance on Haarland (and to a lesser extent Foden) is a big vulnerability.

Its hard to see Chelsea or Villa putting in a sustained challenge, somehow.

On a brighter note, we are 14 points better than Spurs

If it didn’t need pointing out…

Top of the premier league and top of the champions league against your beloved coach who only works for clubs when they have an unlimited budget.

Please go eat a barrel of unsalted stale dicks.

We can always rely on them.

I saw a headline on a piece (didn't read the piece) but it spoke of spurs needing to define the culture at the club. I'm sometimes wary of buzz words being thrown around without any meaning, but having seen what Arteta has done in resetting the culture of high performance and values I do buy in to this with any club and I think there is something lacking in that department with Spurs - and even though I don't mind Frank, I don't think he's the manager to sort it out

White out for a month, we are cursed

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/37640648 ... w-arsenal/

If this keeps up they will have go into the market in January for a right back

Ben White looks like he'll miss a month. Not many options other than Timber at right-back with Mosquera also out. We're looking at Nichols (who I'd maybe play in the cup tie) or Nørgaard?!

Considering he's only 18 months back from an ACL it is remarkable how durable Timber has been in that time. Seriously good player

I know it is battle scars from the past but Arsenal fans are pushing out one of the most negative reactions I've seen to a win - I hope Arteta and the players are shutting out the outside noise!

We're not in perfect form, we need to get players back from injury but we still stand 2 points clear at the top of the league and 3 points clear at the top of the CL group......all of this despite having the worst injury crisis of the top teams. We have a perfect 12 from 12 record at home this season.

Our only dropped points in the league this season are from a wonder free kick, a once in a career deep block 9 man defence from Pep, a fortunate late equaliser, a header from a corner and a last kick of the game winner

We're told by critics and rival fans we have a terrible manager, rely on set pieces (until we don't) and rely on own goals, don't have a striker worth his salt etc etc. It is all done to destabilise and create doubt.

It wasn't that long ago we went 8 games without conceding a goal, and not just not conceding, we went a long time without even conceding a shot on goal or an xG over 0.5 in a game.

Gabriel back fit soon, Havertz back fit soon, Trossard to start and continue his good form, Jesus to give us some bonus chaos in some games. Still plenty to play for, we're top of the pile despite the set backs we've had when our opponents have nowhere near the same problems.

Time to roll up our sleeves and relish the challenge

I am no doctor but in this case is it possible we pushed a player who hadnt any played football for months into suddenly 3 games in a week?

What was the alternative. Play Josh Nichols in a game we made a hash of and struggled to win.

What’s happening is nuts.

Yes, that's not great on our part, however Timber was forced to miss the Brugge game, Mosquera has missed the last 3 games, Saliba the last 5 games and Gabriel the last 7.

We could have rested White, played Saliba/Hincapie as CB and bought in MLS. Or played Nørgaard as a CB again to rest White. None of this is ideal and it looks like once again the injury was caused in a top speed sprint back as Wolves broke for their only chance in the first half. It could have been Timber who got injured if he'd played RB having to go up and down the line with more miles in his legs rather than playing at CB

injuries cause other injuries. It can't all be bad luck, after all we have players like Zubimendi and Rice who play virtually every minute in the engine room, cover more distance than anyone and don't get injured.....but some injuries can be attributed to luck, and in reality we know nothing of a players condition really

We’ll probably have to get through our next 4 games in the year with just 5 defenders.
Nørgaard is a back up CB and should definitely start the palace cup game there
Nichols should probably also start the palace cup game
Calafiori can give Hincapie a rest and MLS can give Calafiori a rest.

Everton: timber, Saliba, Hincapie, Calafiori
Palace: Nichols, Nørgaard, Hincapie, MLS
Brighton: timber, Saliba, Calafiori, MLS
Villa: timber, Saliba, Hincapie, Calafiori

That’s the best way I can see a tiny bit of rotation

You could see a scenario where Declan moves into the back 4 at centre back and saliba goes right back.

However it’s utterly divvy at that point

3 to 4 weeks for White isn’t bad for a hamstring

Could have been a lot worse

I wonder if the club are considering a loan in Jan

Don’t know about the alternatives but it seems very very risky playing him 3 times in quick succession after being out for the whole season. Surely we could have found a makeshift right back against the worst team in premier league history ?

United lol

We were told it was between Gyorkeres and Sesko for us this summer. So far Sesko has been an absolute turkey of a buy and I'm surprised the press that I've seen haven't been commenting on it. The Manure goal keeper kept them in it.

Agreed, I think Sesko is saved from more scrutiny because he’s been injured or kept on the bench. There is also the expectat That Gyökeres was the final piece of our jigsaw whereas Sesko was just another piece in Man U’s full rebuild

Indeed quite right ; forget the ball and actually watch Gyökeres you find he does take up some great positions .

One of Saka's efforts , he got to the by line and a hopeful blast hit the first defender Viktor was there for the tap in .
If Trossard had been on the ball he might have chipped it .

That effort of Ødegaard's that hit the side netting Viktor was there again .

I don't subscribe to the view Gyökeres is clunky , slow , a failure ... I think it more we aren't utilising the bloke in the right way .

Okay President of the Gyökeres Appreciation Society is off to the Op Shop

Man U looked very good going forward but there are two considerations to that
1) they obviously haven’t got the balance between defence and attack because they’re leaking goals and chances. It’s easy to look exciting going forward if you just throw players forward with naive abandon
2) teams are more open when they play Man U, not one single team plays a low block against Man U, they don’t respect them and don’t fear them. It leads to more open games.

Tonight’s 4-4 draw encapsulates all of the above

Other teams will be under squad pressure too. It's the nature of the Christmas schedule and you have AFCON to make it worse. The league cup game is very low priority. Yes, we have some injuries at the back but we have plenty of midfield amd attacking options. Everton will be without Ndiaye and Gueye due to AFCON.