Ive literally got a text message off a mate suggesting this. Apparently he used to play there.

For comedy value alone I’m up for it.

I'm thinking Calafiori at left centre-back, freeing Gabriel to partner up with Ben White again, but this time they're up front.

No defence in the world's gonna fancy facing that.

But yeah, it's gonna be Sterling at false 9.

He's probably a better finisher than Havertz.

If that’s true about Havertz then this is all on the club.

The Havertz injury 'scare' story is extremely light on details

There may be very little to it.

Let’s hope so. It would seem like laughably bad luck/weird that he got injured during a rest and recuperation trip!

Quite possibly however as Ash pointed out he’s been holding his hamstring in the last 2 games. It’s been visible.

Paha City Real Madrid have that way of playing where they just fear no one at all. Nor should they, having bought or nicked the world’s best players. I say this in the full realisation that Real will probably end up knocking us out

Do we believe that if we sacked Arteta this summer and a new manager came in and said I want a new striker that the Knonkes would be saying ‘at last, thank god we have a manager who wants to spend the money we’ve been desperate to give him for a new striker”….!

Neto seems inclined to go forward, and checks a couple of other boxes (tall, has a pulse ...)

Exactly. I was hoping that City could do everyone else in the competition a favour, but they are just too flakey.

I doubt anyone is suggesting booting the manager out but Arteta is culpable here partially. He’s a hands on manager and approves the signings and highlights what he needs. He’s not absolved of responsibility.

He insisted on spending 32 million plus 90k a week wages on Mikel Merino when we already had Havertz, Rice and Fabio Vieira who can play left 8. (vieira has played a lot of football for porto this year) Edu advised against it and suggested Rodrigo Muniz at Fulham who is least a viable option for a third striker. Now we find ourselves in a position where Merino will likely be sat on the bench against Leicester and we don’t have a forward to ease the load. You have to question some of this stuff really.

I think the board are guilty of not helping him out. Had to give him the money for Watkins by not it was writing off the season which will now being a game of chess in trying not to load our forwards and get them injured again.

Madrid had a lot of important defenders out last night, Tchuameni played CB and Valverde RB, which meant our old friend Dani Ceballos played in central midfield. They battered City who really were only missing Rodri. Media star boy Foden only made the bench.

Depending which side of the draw we’re on our potential QF opponents will be the winners of the City v Real tie or the winners of the Celtic v Bayern tie.

It’s worth listening to the latest episode of The Handbrake Off Arsenal podcast to hear what respected journalist and Arsenal fan, Amy Lawrence has to say about the MLS situation following the red card and his celebration

What’s the biggest sliding doors moment in Arsenal’s recent history?

You could go for something like the CL final that we were so close to winning, but would that have actually changed big things in the future?

You could say Wenger joining but I don’t think that’s a true sliding doors moment. He was on Dein’s radar for a while and it wasn’t like we snatched him from under the nose of another club. With Dein at the helm Wenger to Arsenal was almost inevitable

So I’d go for a nearly signing. We were very close to Ronaldo, we wanted to bring Messi to Arsenal when we got Fabregas - there is still always the question in whether we’d have developed them as well as Man U and Barca did? Although clearly there wasn’t much stopping those two being superstars

What about the £40m + £1 for Suarez? I think he was actually underrated for that spell he had at Liverpool. He was a superstar and we were close to signing him from a big rival, I think at the time he could have won us the league, perhaps Wenger gets a new contract etc

https://x.com/terryflewers/status/18892 ... -j6VVZXEoA
Ridiculous from Carragher trying to justify his stance on MLS by attempting to say Arteta is keeping them in check, saying you need to know your place by not even letting MLS and Nwaneri change with the team. It is a Premier League Rule! Arteta has no say in this, until Nwaneri is 18 he can’t change with the first team. MLS can.

So, I guess it'll be Celtic then. Can't wait to get back at them for that Eduardo nonsense back in 2009.

https://x.com/wearetheoverlap/status/18 ... -j6VVZXEoA

This as well. Carragher and Scholes just dismiss Isak to Arsenal as unrealistic, Carragher obviously saying Liverpool would be far more realistic to sign him. Scholes makes an ok point that Real Madrid would be a bigger destination for Isak but the Arsenal fan goes through why City with Haaland and Madrid with Mbappe already have their star forward in place so why wouldn’t Arsenal be pretty close to being next in line.

https://x.com/m1nuyln/status/1889256979 ... -j6VVZXEoA

The Man U fan calls out Scholes and Carragher on the MLS thing by clearly showing how other players (Maupay in this case) have done the same and they said nothing…Scholes’ reply is just ‘well he’s just an idiot and takes the piss’
Hold on, so why does Maupay get away with it but an 18 year old Arsenal player get absolutely slammed for it. How are these pundits allowed to peddle such a dangerous narrative genuinely unchallenged.

If Havertz is injured as well that is ridiculously bad luck.
Trossard up top, Nwaneri right and Sterling left is what we’d have to do.

The back ups would be Tierney left wing, Ødegaard right wing? With Jorginho coming in to midfield and Merino as an emergency target man striker!!

What we saw in the City Madrid game is the difference that firepower makes at the top level.

Yes, it's an extreme example because Madrid have three of the best forwards in the world and Bellingham as well but having players with that kind of individual and collective quality gives you every chance, even in games you maybe do not deserve to win.

Even though some of Madrid's goals had an element of good fortune about them the sheer pace and quality they have in transition is light years away from us.

Even if Liverpool were to drop points tonight it still feels like we are lacking the firepower to go on the kind of run that would win us the title.

Arteta has run players into the ground.

I remember an interview where he described the need for top players to be able to play 50 games a season.

However, you have to have some perspective, players like Messi and Ronaldo are freaks of nature but also they are not obliged to do the kind of defensive work that Saka, Havertz or Martinelli are asked to do. If you watch Messi, even in his Barca years he spent a fair portion of games walking into spaces waiting for the ball to be fed into him.

No that was the end and even if we won with the new stadium on the horizon and the squad aging an evolution needed to take place. After that final I wrote an account on here of my trip where I said basically I was immensely proud of the side for just getting to the final and it’s likely a moment of change regardless.

I honestly think the biggest sliding doors moment was actually how the new stadium went down itself and Kroenkes ownership. Despite all the odds Arsenal managed to get it built with absolutely *%^@ all help from the government, Islington borough council and anyone else. Self financed and the club had no choice but accept long term sponsorship deals to finance it that pretty much were out dated a few years later and a hindrance hanging around our neck. We went from competing to just surviving and the mentality became that we were just working towards paying off the ground.

Looking back the stadium build should have been financed over a longer period, the stadium plans enhanced and more ambitious to accommodate a bigger capacity and far more facilities generating more revenue and the manager backed with more cash to invest in the side.

Sack Arteta? Has the rumour mill started on that story

Tend to agree sadly. We are left with hope but that is all. I think by the time the injured return the title will be gone. We might have a shot at the CL but we are outsiders.

Signing DB.

His signing sent a signal. His performances elevated us as a club.

Havertz to miss rest of season through injury. Torn hamstring


… right I’m off to drink bleach. That’s it folks

Good god. I’ve never known a season like it. Arteta has a hell of a job to even get us top 4 right now I think

We can say every player who has got injured has been flogged too hard, we can also say they had to play every game because we had no other options due to injury and a small squad.

To have all of Saka, Martinelli, Jesus and Havertz out is crazy. No team is coping with that.

Apart from Jesus nearly all of these players are robust, they’ve been through many seasons without injury. Some might think that because they’ve done that season after season they were ready to break down and this is the season it’s happened- maybe, but we have to see there is an enormous amount of bad luck involved here.

Hopefully the team can pull through but it feels we’re going to need to rely on some gritty tight wins for at least another 7-8 games until others are back. Even when Martinelli and Saka are back we have no recognised striker for the entire season.

Worth noting that the £20m extra odd that might have got Watkins would be paid off by simply progressing 2 more rounds in the champions league

I wonder whether Arteta will consider a tweak to the tactics or even formation. If you’re short of attackers you can go to a wing back system 5-3-2 with a Trossard/Nwaneri front 2, our normal midfield and MLS/Calafiori and Timber as wing backs?
I can’t see him doing it because of how much emphasis Arteta puts on our wide play

We will also need some academy strikers to come in and help. Huge ask to jump in to a title race and have the expectation of goals, but if we’re dominating against teams a youngster with a natural instinct for movement and finishing in the box would still be a preference to me than trying to put too many square pegs in round holes

Agreed. This is on the club and Arteta. It's fine being choosy about your targets but seem to be letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Haven't two gone with the squad to Dubai? Butler-Oyedeji and one other striker.

Havertz gave everything all season, he literally couldn’t run any more at the end of the Wolves match, a match we had to play 50 odd minutes with 10 men because of a terrible decision. That is part of this.

You’d have hoped our medical team would have identified Havertz as being in the red zone and so his training managed to- we just don’t know what happened or anything about the data on his pre injury etc.

Sometimes it really can be a mixture of negligence both in terms of flogging a player and not strengthening the squad and also a big dose of bad luck

Not sure. Butler-Oyedeji seems to be the next cab off the rank. Sagoe Jnr is another. Khayon Edwards is 21 and a striker, Kabia plays on the right wing. And there is Harriman-Annous who has done really well in the youth games but has only just turned 17. A few of those have deals expiring in the summer and we’ve shown before we have wanted players to commit to new deals before we reward them with first team opportunities. It’s real slim pickings

On the formation he reverted to a different one for a fa cup win where there were 3 centre halves and Tierney was one and Bellerin and Maitland Niles acted as kind of wing backs but also inverted midfielders however even that formation operated with 2 wide men (Pépé, Aubameyang)

I’m not sure changing the set up will be an option. One thing is for certain and that is at some point we will see some mad bollocks now Tierney wide left. Merino CF etc You can’t just flog Trossard and Sterling to death themselves for the rest of the season. They will need rest too