One thing that will always annoy me is the post match analysis of games based solely on the result - I've seen loads of stuff about Man U's rock solid defence and world class performances from the 3 CB. They gave up 4xG, Man U's CB did not stop Arsenal at all, it was only our own poor finishing that stopped this being a 4-1 win and Man U's defenders would have played exactly the same and got zero praise for it

What was the rotated team Arteta should have played?
Neto, Nichols, Heaven, Kiwior, Zinchenko, Jorginho, Merino, Salah-Eddine, Trossard, Sterling, Butler-Oyedeji! That's literally all we could do. That side would have lost the game at Arteta would have got absolutely slaughtered.

Hmmm .... how do you define power ?



Watching Mikel's post match , while he is right we had enough chances to win ; he conveniently forgets we were playing ten men and those chances were created because United went into their shell .

Anyway on to Spurs Thursday at home again .... we lose that one ; doesn't bear thinking about . 6 - 1 to us ... Havertz scores 4

I’ve never got it and said it all season.

He’s the type of player that should play for someone like Newcastle or villa where they are not in dominant possession all the time.

Players who are strong, tall, generally of a certain physical stature and probably most important to Arteta....Duel Winners!
One part of power we don't have is that power when driving the ball forward - think of Morgan Rodgers for this.

Kind of the opposite to the days when Wenger would stock his team with smaller technical players

The penalty yesterday, very soft and exactly the sort we do not usually get given. If Var was in operation though I don't see how they could have overturned it based on the excessive weighting that is put on the on field decision and when judging the foul by maguire the critical part is he doesn't make an attempt to play the ball, if he'd made an attempt and his arm came out as part of his movement he might have had a case but it was just a straight grab at Havertz - of course Havertz makes a meal of it and I was surprised it was given - but if you did what Maguire (and Havertz did) in the middle of the pitch it would be a foul every time to little complaints.

https://www.football365.com/news/man-ut ... he%20melee.
Said this at the time, crazy that he was allowed to get away with it with no punishment at all whilst Havertz got a yellow

Not sure what to make of that game yesterday. Still in shock

Felt a moment. You just knew Odegard would miss the penalty.

Surely they have to bring someone in now. We are so short up front.

That's 7 new players and effectively means dropping Declan Rice, Ben White, Jurien Timber and all of our attackers (although I assume Saka still gets in ahead of one your new wingers.)

New signings don't mean dropping what we have, its about creating a depth of team that we don't currently have. Its pie in the sky as it would need so much money but to compete on 4 fronts and to be trying to win all 4 we need 22 top class outfield players
Raya, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Calafiori, new DM, Rice, Ødegaard, new LW, Saka, new striker - starting 11
new gk, Timber, Tomiyasu(?) new attacking full backs, MLS (in midfield) Merino, new attacking mid, new winger, Nwaneri, martinelli, havertz
That's 22 players. would mean we move on zinchenko, kiwior, jorginho, partey, jesus, trossard, and all the players currently on laon

No word on Jesus but Timber sounds like he should be fine. Jorginho just a tight calf.
Timber is a delicate one after his ACL, now way would we have planned to use him this much, anyone had any info for when Tomiyasu or White are back?

Some people are annoyed that Tamworth were denied the chance of a lucrative replay away to Spurs after their 90 minute draw. I think replays are a waste of time in a busy calendar but why not have the option that if two teams who are drawn against each other are at least 1 or 2 divisions apart then the smaller team gets to choose if they want to play at home (for the home advantage) or away to get the pay day

If our primary targets aren't available then we need to explore loans with options to buy (or not) - we can't do that with any more prem players unless we terminate Sterling or Neto. Douglas Luiz is out of favour at Juve, an old target of ours, I think he'd give us something extra in midfield albeit its not our primary issue. Osimhen has fallen out with Napoli and is currently on loan at Galatasaray - could he come to us for 6 months. Johnathan David is a 'classic 9' who only has 6 months left on his contract - he could be bought for less than market value and still offers good long term value at only 24. Sane and Coman feel like a huge risk/reward for a 6 month loan
Lookman, Mbeumo, Bakayoko, Zhegrova all with just 18 months left on their deals


by the way: when do title winning teams ever have loan players - they just don't, they've built their squad properly

Thursday maybe if you're in Oz but Wednesday 8pm in the UK.

It is a real shame we didn't push on from last year, 91 goals, 89 points a stunning back end to the season but there were gaps in the squad that we managed to paint over, the lack of key injuries helped as did the Dubai break and going out of both cups early. But last summer had to be about a striker and a winger, then a midfielder and utility left sided defender. Merino has taken some stick but his signing is much less of a problem than not signing an attacker.

So we're 2 maybe 3 players down on what we should have signed last summer. Now we go in to next summer with Partey and Jorginho out of contract and zinchenko, Tomiyasu and trossard with just a year left on their deals. Sterling and Neto surely won't be signed permanently. Then you also have Saka, Saliba, gabriel and Martinelli all with just 2 years left on their deal. We've mounted up a lot to do and the fear is once again you don't get it all done and are another step back each year.

In the summer we need to ideally renew the deals of Saka, Saliba, Gabriel and Martinelli - that will take a big chunk of money.
We need to sell every player currently on loan.
We need to find buyers for zinchenko and Trossard and likely Kiwior
We have a big decision to make on Tomiyasu - after a year out his value will have plummeted, may be forced to keep him and hope for the best and see if he can earn a new deal
Then we need to sign at least 1 CM to replace Partey and Jorginho
We need to sign 2 wingers to replace Trossard and Sterling
We need to sign a top class striker
and with all those defensive outgoings we will need another defender

Its just too much

I think it was Arteta himself who said every single transfer window is vital in the process and development of the team and that has well and truly been proven to be the case.

If you don't make the most of each and every window and get most of what you wanted done (ins and outs) it just messes everything up.

Of course it’s Thursday in NZ and Oz. Early morning in Oz probably 6am.

100% City are finding this out to their cost too. Savinho and an old Gundogan as the only transfers this summer left them with no Rodri replacement, no back up for Haaland (they've been hugely lucky here) and an aging and injury prone squad generally. Prior to that City had a set of poor transfers with Calvin Phillips, Doku, Nunes, Kovacic all contributing quite little and they've been over reliant on the same core group of players for some time.

It is frustrating being an Arsenal fan knowing that we always seem to take the conservative approach in the transfer market, always leaving ourselves short and hoping it works out rather than going 1-2 extra 'just in case'. For once I'd love to be genuinely excited at the end of a transfer window and feel like we've done everything we needed and not still missing pieces. When we were rebuilding again in the early Arteta years it felt more palatable as you could see so much needed to be done and you could see the strategy of U23, prem ready players who we could build around. Now the strategy had to switch to ready to win elite players who raise the ceiling of the team and its felt like we've left ourselves short again by trying to raise the floor of the team instead

Ahh okay I see where you are coming from ; although on that note Merino and Havertz are both tall guys but have much substance as a bagful of candy floss .

Havertz reminds of that angular dickstop that had his ear shot off in " High Plains Drifter "

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... 7-1296310/

https://x.com/cjt49ers/status/187889064 ... -j6VVZXEoA

Still can’t see what Gabriel did to get booked here. Just stood in the way of Maguire who was going after Havertz. Refs drive me crazy in these situations, they take the cowards approach of just book players who square up if a melee starts, they don’t actually look at who does what. If Gabriel and Maguire did that on their own neither gets booked. Again, how Ugarte escaped a yellow when Gabriel got booked is awful.

Also, that refs directive about surrounding the ref arguing decisions has died a quick death hasn’t it. Just like kicking the ball away. Make up a pathetic area of the game to overly punish for a short period then give up on it whilst ignoring aspects of serious foul play completely

Vlahovic rumours are back, loan with option to buy.

If I had to put money on it I’d bet on us bringing in a loan attacker from abroad on the final day of the window

Confirmed that Jesus has suffered an ACL

Gutting for him. 9-10 months out minimum. Must make a move in the market for a striker now

The additional worry is that he's already suffered a serious knee injury which he picked up on international duty. That kept him out for many months and it's reasonable to observe that, recent flurry of goals notwithstanding, he has never recaptured his early form.

Begs a few questions, doesn't it?

Indeed. Although this is apparently the other knee to the one he injured playing for Brazil

Dortmund want Zinchenko on loan with an obligation in the summer for €20m. That must look quite tempting to the club right now. MLS is covering and taking his minutes.

That might explain why we opted for Tierney to come on rather than him. Felt pretty illogical that as it’s common knowledge he’s going back to Celtic in the summer.

If Zinchenko goes it still leaves, MLS,KT,Calafiori and potentially Timber and Tomiyasu.

20 million is probably to good to turn down.

On Jesus the injury will pretty much determine the end of his career with us. Feel sorry for the guy.

His contract runs out in 2027. If it takes another 9 months to recover from this it will put the club in an impossible position around the renewal with the player getting 250k a week for sporadic performances and massive amounts of time on the treatment table. No way can they offer a renewal in those circumstances

Feels like a KT situation. Probably the last we’ve seen of him apart from some fleeting appearances to try and demonstrate his fitness for his next club.

His transfer and time with Arsenal was a bit of disaster really.

Great shame really. He looked like the signing of the season in the first months of his time with us - scoring goals for fun and just what we'd all been praying for.

I wonder what the plan is. It can't be to have Havertz to play every minute and not get injured. Butler-Oyedeji doesn't look the part, so are we going to make do with Trossard or Martinelli. If so, who are our wingers?

They will view Trossard as back up. Still leaves Martinelli, Sterling and Nwaneiri covering 3 spots.

Think the only chance of us signing someone is a striker loaned.

thing is if they leave it until the end of January the season will be absolutely cooked anyway by then.

On Havertz i feel sorry for the guy but he’s one more bad miss away from being the latest boo boy. I really hope the crowd doesn’t turn on him if he struggles tomorrow

blimey we are signing zubimendi apparently

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... iedad.html

Now we just need to sign a new left back and it’s a successful window!

Very good

I said before that we needed some players to take us from 5th to back in the champions league or better and some of those signings might not be good enough to take us to title winners. We may not have known at the time but maybe Jesus and Zinchenko were those signings. I don’t hold any grudge against them because they both really did elevate us from 5th to title challenge, they came to us without champions league and ‘changed our world’ to quote Arteta.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQtM5ty89nk

Is this true?

I know it doesn’t solve any here and now issues but if we’ve managed to get Zubimendi tied up for the summer, that’s good business. Both our def mids leave on a free in the summer. Zubimendi has a £50m release clause which is probably under market value for him. If he’s waited for us and turned down Liverpool and potentially City while he waits that’s a big coup

what do you think

let’s superimpose Viktor Gyökeres head onto a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald and claim he shot kennedy