It's another inevitability of flogging players - more injuries and more fatigue - both mental and physical fatigue.

Honestly I don't understand why we play decent strong sides in the League cup, Wenger had it spot on when he played the 2nd string, it is not worth the risk.

Injuries become more and more inevitable if you flog your core first team with 2/3 games a week over and over and over, it's hugely influenced by the manager's approach and sacrificing the league cup is a price worth paying for me, in terms of preserving some energy and reducing injuries.

I have to agree in terms of some of the signings not making sense, particularly Merino, we could so do with another forward, another midfielder was not a priority, plus he doesn't seem to add much.

The other major problem is that Martinelli is just not doing it,

Every once in a while he turns up with something and you think “Hmmn better” and I know he was playing off the right but when a 17 year old comes on and improves the side you have to question where it’s gone wrong for him. In the invincible season pires scored 23 goals. Gabby just doesn’t have that season in him. He absolutely should be a part of our future but frankly someone else needs to come in to assist. It hurts saying it.

The suggestion seems to be that Raul Sanelhi screwed the club big time by signing players for way too much, paid agents too much and generally being terrible so Tim Lewis was brought in to act as a defacto decision maker to sign off on transfer and legal business.

Arteta wasn’t that keen on Ødegaard but Edu pushed him and got him. Arteta wanted merino but edu wasnt keen but relented. Arteta wanted Watkins but Lewis didn’t see it as value for money. I think Edu seems a big loss personally and they need a big replacement and as soon as possible. Preferably not somebody from the Mediterranean

No. They have a deeper squad.


Not really a fair question. None of us here know the ins and outs of managers available. That is what the club's scouting system is for. Would you have asked the question when Bruce Rioch was in charge? No one knew who Arsene was. There might well be an Arsene out there we don;t know about.

Agree 100%. Play the 2nd string.

There comes a time when everyone gets to a point where it's hard to see what more you can do or add to a situation.

Has Arteta reached that point? In my opinion, no, not quite yet.

However, if this season culminates in a less than runner up position in the league, and an early CL exit, then the summer is going to be a very high pressure zone for him. If he doesn't try something different, then he's repeating late Wenger; stubbornness, blinkers on and a level of arrogance that isn't justified by performance.

This summer needs a big statement signing, so it's not solely on Arteta. But tactics are; and we're playing tippy tappy and too slow (again a la late Wenger), as many have pointed out.

He still has my wholehearted support for now; he's done a fantastic job at correcting the late Wenger years (look at what's happened post Ferguson at United as a comparison), but no one person is bigger than the club.

Martinelli is probably burnt out.

He's played almost full complement of league games for 2 previous seasons. He's now getting muscle injuries, likely overuse related.

He's barely had a break - playing all our games and regularly travelling abroad for Brazil.

He also suffers from the lack of pace around him and the slowness of our attacks.

It was striking, though, to see how little phased Nwaneri was by being double-marked, whereas Martinelli had been pretty much nullified.

Sadly I agree with both of you.

Our tactics are not ideal for Martinelli. He is very dangerous in broken play because his pace and directness are most effective. He would be really good in a Liverpool style attacking set-up.

As for Nwaneri, he has wonderful natural balance. He can beat a player with an instinctive drop of the shoulder.

But Liverpools squad is exactly the same as last year when they did suffer a few more injuries and lost Salah to AFCON and we beat them in the league.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-live ... /verein/31
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-arse ... /verein/11

Just look at the difference in graphical form. It’s stark.


If Liverpool missed Salah for 3 months we’d be above them for that alone.
If they had our injuries this year they’d be missing Trent for 4 months and Conor Bradley all season. Forcing them to play Joe Gomez there every game. They’d have also faced multiple injuries to Robertson and Tsimikas forcing them to play their 4th choice left back - because their 3rd choice left back Gomez is covering at right back, Konate and Van dijk stay fit but with a constant back line of Gomez, Konate, Van Dijk, academy left back or one of their midfielders and only Quansah for cover the defence plays every single game with no rotation. Gomez needs managing because of his previous long injury and so Slobaslai fills in at right back
Gravenberch would have dislocated his shoulder and missed 8 weeks leaving Liverpool to be very bare in defensive mid and have to play Endo or drop Mac Allister back there, then Macallister would have got a 2 month ankle injury playing for Argentina, then Salah would miss 3 months, Salah’s back up- Diaz would then do his cruciate and be out for 9 months and then a 3rd attacker would also get injured….so they’d be left playing Gakpo, Nunez, Elliot as a front 3.
Liverpool might have some good quality and depth in some areas but in others they don’t. Full back would be a huge problem for them and simply not having Salah who contributes 1/3rd of all their goals and 1/4 of all their assists would be a problem.
Last year they had nowhere near the injuries we had and got to 82 points, we had relatively few injuries and got 89. Liverpools squad is no deeper this year than last year - I think it would be pretty reasonable to say that Liverpool would be at least 6 points worse off with our injuries and we’d be at least 6 points better off

Evening Dec. Indeed, Nwaneri appears to have that lethal combination of balance, strength, close control, ball-striking, and footballing intelligence that characterise really elite wide players.

With Martinelli, I was thinking of how effective he would be in the Newcastle attack, basically doing what Gordon does combining with Isak. Which of course leads to thinking about how Isak might fit into our team. But you are right about Liverpool too.

Seeing City drop £200m in January to try to fix their mistakes does stick in the throat. City’s spending (cheating) advantage isn’t necessarily the players they can buy, all he big 6 have regularly signed players over £50m, many of the clubs down to the bottom 5 have signed £40m strikers etc. the benefit City has is being able to sweep their mistakes under the carpet and not suffer the consequences of them.
So loads of clubs can afford big money signings but they can’t just ditch them and buy another one at the same price is the first or second one didn’t work.

I completely despise City, Chelsea and now Newcastle, I refuse to give them any credit for anything they achieve because it’s all built off cheating, every part of their success. Chelsea ran their club in to the ground and were passing buckets round the ground to save them. They got 4th the season before Roman but they were going to have to ‘do a Leeds’ if they weren’t bought. Newcastle and City have both bounced around lower divisions recently and whilst they may have decent levels of support they’d be no better than mid table clubs without their money

This is statistics, you can get lucky, as Liverpool have done this season with injuries. On average though, I think with a better depth of squad we probably could have avoided some of our injuries, as they're mostly muscular and related to overuse.

I still think even with our desire to press high and dominate the ball there are plenty of opportunities we can use Martinelli quicker. Liverpool hardly sit back and wait for the counter but so often manage to find their front 3 with only 4 defenders up against them.
I think if you bought in a top class player like Isak then he’s presence and ability almost dictates the tactics.

Well that does compound itself though. If you keep the whole squad injury free you can rotate and they are all more likely to stay injury free.
Get some injuries and you have no choice but to keep playing the same players and lo and behold they pick up more injuries than those in injury free squads

We needed a Saka back up and an Ødegaard back up. I think in the summer the Ødegaard creative midfielder is more important than the Saka back up. Nwaneri has evolved in to a player who is capable of being the Saka back up. If you get a starting left winger who can play both sides as well then more money should go on a creative midfielder.

Back up gk
Defence is fine - maybe 1 more to cover departures
Zubimendi or similar in midfield to raise the technical level
A creative centre mid
A starting left wing
A top tier striker

Then I’d also love to see us supplement this with some young exciting players in the £10-20m bracket.

100%. These clubs are cheats. Chelsea and City the worst.

Harry Kane, would you?

Yes but he wouldn't.

Just seen that. I mean I would do it for comedy value alone but if Kane cost 64 at 31 years old Tim Lewis won’t agree as he wouldn’t do 60 for a 29 year old.

He'd be perfect in our team against what youngsters call the low block.

https://x.com/adamkeys_/status/18875818 ... -j6VVZXEoA

When Carragher is sitting next to Henry he doesn’t say a bad word about Arsenal. Here is is lauding MLS footballing ‘arrogance’. 3 days later on the Overlap with no Henry but with Neville instead he’s saying the senior pros need to get hold of MLS and get him in check

I long for the day where we have presenters who call out the pundit on these hypocritical opinions

Wouldn't touch Kane with a barge pole.

Pretty sure someone somewhere said the same of Sol Campbell circa 2000

I do think Van Dijk is one of the most protected players in the game. No one is brave enough to card him, he has a status, no pundit will say a bad word about him or call him out on anything ever. Of course he’s a brilliant CB but this season alone
Dragged back a palace player in the box but no penalty
Kicked out at Havertz twice off the ball
Deliberately charged his shoulder through on Gordon’s face off the ball and in the box when Gordon wasn’t looking
Threw an elbow at Outtara last week
Raked his studs down Solanke’s calf
Threw an elbow at Richarlison tonight

Now the last 3 could be deemed yellows but the first two are reds for me because they are off the ball

….of all time…

That’s ridiculous, it’s not even as close to the corners as it could be. Every penalty that’s scored is the greatest of all time! Shearer used to hit the roof of the net on every single penalty. Penalties have won World Cup finals. Who wrote this??

Liverpool frighteningly good tonight albeit against a depleted and pretty abject spurs team who can’t defend.

Our only hope is the sheer volume of games Liverpool have left to play and the congestion it will cause from league games being postponed if/when they go deep in all cups. Whilst it’s not inconceivable that Liverpool drop the required points for us to catch them I just don’t think we’ve got it in us right now to get enough points to catch them even with them maybe slipping up.

It’s absolutely rotten luck for us.
City have 2 amazing years and 1 awful one
Liverpool have 1 awful, 1 good and 1 amazing
We have 2 good years and 1 amazing year
And we’ll be the ones without a league title.

There must be a million ‘un-save able’ penalties in the top corner so to even start to think about best ever penalty you have to bring the pressure and occasion in to it. Perhaps the best penalty is the penalty you have to score (and do score) or your nation loses the World Cup final as there is more pressure on that than the penalty to win the World Cup

Statistically who is the best…criteria …say minimum of 50 penalties …in a recognised top league or international….
Dennis Tueart was pretty good as was Greavsie ….best ever …who knows…I’ll let the statisticians decide …closest to 100% wins…

Spot on Rich…he gets away with murder

The Liverpool manager:

"It's always nice to play a final," he said.

"We come in every day, we try to improve the team. The players try so hard to improve themselves, but in the end it's about reaching finals and winning things."

Not that many have got to 50 pens. Le Tissier scored 48 out of 49 for 98% scored. There are some players with 100% records in the prem but on way fewer pens. Cole Palmer has the most with 12/12, he’d do well to beat Le Tissier

50 penos is pretty high, especially when you go back a few years. So I will offer Matt LeTissier with 47 goals from 48 pens.

As for best ever penalty, that's obviously not measurable but Messi's one in the shoot-out of the last world cup must be up there. The weight of a nation, his miss in the Copa, his last chance to win a world cup and arguably his status as the world's greatest ever player on the line. I'm not sure there was a penalty with more pressure even if it wasn't the one to win it.

https://x.com/tuckers35/status/18876163 ... -j6VVZXEoA

Given as a goal kick. There is always some sympathy with genuine big 50/50 decisions (less sympathy for var) but this kind of decision blows the mind. Even if you think you saw something your brain should tell you it’s impossible for it to be a goal kick.

The same guy who wrote that MLS was the real villain after his wrong red card wrote this on Van Dijk’s elbow on Richarlison

“When you are as good and as cool as Virgil van Dijk, perhaps it is inevitable a referee or VAR will occasionally give you the benefit of the doubt.”

I don’t necessary think what Van Dijk did was a red card, they are rarely given when you’re tussling with a player but he is getting away with stuff because refs are in awe of him and don’t want to punish such a great player - particularly at Anfield. It’s the same as what Kane got away with for years

I always see rivals say Arteta only won the FA cup ‘with Emery’s team’, are we to give Slot zero credit for doing so well with Klopp’s team then!?

Literally one of the most braindead things to say in football

Ethan Nwaneri is two goals away from Michael Owen & Wayne Rooney’s record of nine before turning 18. He has 7 games before he turns 18. Both of those other two were strikers