That's the end of our warm up match

It wasn't even 10for Emile Smith Rowe. Does Jesus need 10 minutes? Rice and Saliba are crucial and I fail to see why they played.

The whole game is just exercise. That’s all.

Rice played because Ben white had to come on and there’s no alternative, Dec can do a 20 minute sub appearance in his sleep.

There aren’t alternatives apart from chucking on literal kids with no experience at all at a ground that DHD quite rightly pointed out is a difficult place to go.

By the way take it from me. As a fan who’s been to European away days.

Watching Arsenal play away in Europe is *%^@*** SPECIAL. One of the most fun things any right minded gooner can do. I cherish the memories of my trips away they were all superb and wouldn’t have swapped them for the world.

It’s not as easy as just playing reserves and accepting a hammering when you have 3 thousand fans who have spent a fortune going. The club are well aware of this.

Keep moaning about giving players minutes kids

We were happy with that group when it was drawn, avoided the real big name top seeds but as we found out there were no mugs in the group. Each team gave us a game at certain points. But we dominated the group, qualified top and were faultless at home, enough to give all 3 other teams in the group a negative goal difference

I can’t argue much the starting line up or the subs. When Jesus(or any starter) comes on for 10 15 or 20 minutes it keeps him ticking over fitness wise and means he can warm down and he’s had an easy tune up.

Having said that I’m itching to see what Nwaneri and MLS can do We all want to see the hyped kids get some minutes and Nwaneri in particular after all the fanfare about his minutes last season. It makes it look like it was PR or just to get him to sign when he hasn’t had a sniff 8months later.

If you big up 15 year olds and play them in the first team, don’t be surprised if people want to see them again.

He’s only 16. He was born in 2007 so he has never even seen us win a title. He has time I reckon.

MLS is 17. *%^@*** he’ll I’ve got spots older than those 2

I’m not sure chucking teenagers into a game like this makes sense.

Like I said I don’t disagree with the line up or subs. Nor would I have minded if either one of those players got 5-10 minutes. If you’re good enough you’re old enough. A dead rubber of all games seems like an ok time to do that, but then we were 1-1 not 4-0 up. No drama.

Arsenal have so far earned around €76 million in bonuses for playing in the Champions League.
Starting fees €15.64m
UEFA Coefficient 10-yr Ranking €25.01m
Market pool 1 €10.6m
Market pool 2 €4.23m
Round of 16 €9.6m
Bonus for four wins €11.2m (€2.8m x 4)

That’s crazy!! Massive. No wonder City posted all those massive profits, (dodgy 15 previous years notwithstanding…) what’s the total for getting to the final and winning the thing!

Gabriel didn't cover himself in glory. Went to ground a few times unnecessarily.

Apparently at Old Trafford the fans and Gary Neville are celebrating not having mid week games for the remainder of the season. They think it will give them a good run in for the end of season title celebrations.

I think last year City earned £85m for winning it - but that’s prize money only. Tv money is on top.

The initial prize money for just qualifying for the group stage is worked out based on co-efficient and past performance, so not all teams get the same initially.

Part of the tv money is split between your fellow clubs if the same nation and depending how far you go so I think we actually stand to make more money now Man U have gone out and more again if Newcastle go out as there’s fewer English teams to share some of that money with - at least I think that’s how it works.

Compared to Europa league where the winner gets about €26m it’s incredible money and we need to be in this competition every year!

That’s a silver lining after getting knocked out of one of the weakest groups. Lol. I don’t think tiredness has been their problem in the league by a long shot and looks more like a stalemate of stubbornness between the players and the manager, with the current management anting to stick with at least one manager for more than a year. Loving it.

They need a clean out but I don’t know if they have the balls for a five year rebuild.

Trossard has not been close to what he can do in the last few matches. Very worrisome.

Wonder where Rashford will end up at?

Howard Webb has been on his show with Michael ‘Paxman’ Owen and played the audio of the Havertz handball. Interesting that they chose to release the audio on the least controversial decision that day with a rule that is totally black and white about the ball touching the hand/arm of the goalscorer in any way. The var couldn’t conclusively prove the handball didn’t happen to start with so was ready to stick with the onfield decision of handball for that reason - again correct protocol. Eventually they found the angle to show it hit Havertz hand. My only concern, and it wouldn’t change the decision, was there was no debate or check that it was definitely Havertz that scored the goal not Nketiah. Of course there is one angle that clearly shows it’s Havertz that poked it in, but most angles are inconclusive on that because Nketiah reached out to like it in almost simultaneously. If Nketiah had got to it, it should have been ruled a goal. So they missed a crucial part of the check, or at best made a snap decision on it with no discussion and luckily for them it turned out to be the right decision - but the process wasn’t perfect.

What would have been better, as with the Newcastle game would have been to play the video and audio of var discussing the strike to the head of Nketiah. Fans deserve to hear the exact reasons why var consider that not worth a red card and why it doesn’t in their opinion meet the threshold for violent conduct. Similarly, give us the audio of why they didn’t consider the foul by Luiz on Jesus a penalty. In my opinion the reason those aren’t released is PGMOL realise that the reasons given will have them in all sorts of trouble over consistency.

If the PGMOL are going to cherry pick decisions and audio to release and analyse then all of the video/audio should be made available for every var decision. No reason why it shouldn’t be.its too easy to only release audio on the correct decisions and the absolute howlers. Everyone will agree with those answers.

Harry Kane returns to England. Kinda weird seeing him an BM shirt. To be fair, Man Utd put out a weak side it seems. I think they still get to be in the other lowest tier European competition, right? Not sure. But I took at look at the Europa Conference League and the site said one path is elimination from the group stages of the CL.

So, hopefully Man Utd will be busy going to Slovakia, Ukraine or Greece or where ever for the spring.

Its hard to have any sympathy for United or their players as I think there are players actively undermining the manager. I am not a great fan of Rashford but maybe a new start somewhere else would be good for him. Not at Arsenal however.

PSV boss Peter Bosz was Havertz former manager at Leverkusen.

Look at this. The refs just simply see what they want and ignore what actually happens

https://youtu.be/TI11_iBm9Sk?si=h6t-0topmt2fIxXH


They are all bent

Maybe the perfect time to introduce AI to the FA as the referees have proved their inability to remain unbiased. The Villa referee especially should be removed from the lists. As a Liverpool supporter he should not have been reffing his rivals teams let alone his team.

I am sure he won't be.

Don't know anything about this Jim Cannon guy but sounds like a grade A azzhole

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kmMFAHo7lhw

https://www.football365.com/news/man-ut ... -pair-come
Scholes is living in the past if he thinks Man U can easily just throw loads of money at the best players in the prem and they automatically join Man U. I bet if you asked Scholes the reason why Kane and Rice would have joined Man U over any number of other clubs the fumbled answer would be 'It's Manchester United isnt it...!' And therein lies once of the biggest problems Man U have had since Fergie left, to me its always felt like they assumed they would return to the top because they are Man U, it would just happen without the hard work and skill.

Listen to the dialogue. Searching for a conclusion they want.

The decisions are a joke.

There's at least one mental decison against us every week. The Gabby non penalty at Luton. I mean just nuts and its become so boring.

Anyone got a clip of our disallowed goal last night? Gab was given offside but it was Kiwior who headed it in.

No real comment in the commentary.

It's quite clear Haavertz handled the ball. I don't see what you are on about.

I thought it was obstruction by Gabriel?

Could be. I thought offside was mentioned. Either way, it'd be good to see it again.

Why try?

Turkish soccer club president quits after punching referee.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/12/spor ... index.html

As punishment they have decided to give Arteta a yellow card.

I thought it looked like Kiwior scored it and he was onside. However Gaby was so close you could say he was interfering with play from an offside position?

Yep, that's it, Gabriel jumped for the ball and was close to getting it and close to the GK. It is a subjective offside but he's right in the middle of the goal, it is correct that it is ruled offside. No problem with that one.

No wish to labour the point but I found this still of the incident on a STAR website - not sure if this link will work.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/jakub-kiwior-arsenal-var-goal-31659717

Not easy to draw too many conclusions from a still image but from this, the goalkeeper is nowhere near. Looks like a clean header. Gab's presence isn't relevant.

Kiwior according to the commentator when I watched last night was fine. The ref adjudged Gabriel to have obstructed the goalie in getting to the ball. He was interfering with play. To be fair he probably was.

There is a part in the offside law that says you’re considered offside if you’re clearly attempting to play the ball which is close.
It’s a tough call but usually these get called offside. Maguire had one earlier in the season which fell under subjective offside.

https://www.football365.com/news/klopp- ... eree-punch

"Then, maybe the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta will think twice next time they rush to harangue an official or question his impartiality after the game and incite pile-ons"

The only thing that amazes me with this is that Klopp was mentioned. Arteta's behavoir on the touchline may wind people up but other than that rant after the Newcastle game Arteta has been incredibly restrained towards officials. To my knowledge I've never seen him confront one as other managers have done, and he rarely complained about them - especially directly as he did after the Newcastle game. I recall after that spurs game where Holding was sent off he said something along the lines of 'If I speak I'll be banned for 6 months' By the way, Arteta has never questioned a ref's impartiality, he just said they were rubbish. Klopp has though, when he said Paul Tierney has something against him and Liverpool....and even media favourite Gary O'Neill did when we beat Wolves by suggesting that his Wolves side would have been penalised for the exact same time wasting that he perceived Arsenal to be doing

His actions on the touchline are 95% about what he's trying to do for his team, trying to coach them and stepping outside his technical area.

For me, there has been a sustained agenda driven against Arteta, and what happens is people who are then asked their opinion on a general matter don't think and analyse for themselves they just regurgitate what they've been fed by others. This by Peter Walton is a classic example of that

I agree when you watch the slow motion replays the handball is clear, and the rule is clear. The rule leaves very little subjective decision so it must be ruled out, and I'd expect it to be ruled out if it was scored against us.

My main gripe is the process to get to the correct decision - which I know may sound like splitting hairs but if the general processes aren't correct or fair then they might not get to the correct decision next time.
Firstly the onfield ref gives a handball in real time. Howard Webb said 'fantastic decision' - which if you belive that the actual handball Havertz was penalised for was the one the ref saw then fair play to him and I'd love to have his eye sight. My feeling is the ref gave the handball for the first contact of the ball hitting Havertz, which was his shoulder, because there is no way on earth he can see the graze of ball on hand that var needed 10 replays from multiple angles at frame by frame speed to spot. So he's made a gut reaction call in a melee of bodies from 30 yards away with zinchenko in his eye sight. It is pure fluke that var found a 'the' handball, but not the one the ref thought he saw.
Secondly, in the entire var audio there are two things that are not mentioned at all, not even considered worthy of checking and commenting on. If they'd mentioned them they would have still reached the same decision, but by not mentioning them or rulling them in or out they've reached that correct decision by a bit of luck.
1) does Cash handball it. We know the rules say that what Cash did wouldn't be considered handball due to his arms being in a natural position and his proximity to Havertz. But var should see the ball hit the hand and commentate to themselves that they are ruling out that handball
2) that there might be a chance than Nketiah scored the goal not Havertz. It isn't obvious from many replays who scored it, one particular replay shows it was definitely Havertz. If it was Nketiah then the goal should have stood, so to fail to check and audibly check it and clearly rule that it was Havertz final touch there is a chance they miss this part of the rule
People may say VAR didn't need to do lengthy reviews on that and rule them out because it was obvious no offence had taken place. But I've seen the replays and don't think you can rule either out so quickly without discussion with the assistant var. The fact that VAR also wanted to do a final check to see if any violent conduct had happened to gk Martinez because they saw he had blood near his eye shows that they were looking for lots of potential law infringements - but just not the ones that might have benefitted Arsenal.

So right decision, but the process was weak. I would have been far more interested to hear the conversations on jesus penalty and Carlos elbow. In fact I would like to hear the var commentary for all similar penalties as Jesus one and put them side by side to find the inconsistencies.

Saw this online.

Klopp
Charged 02/05/23
Banned 18/05/23
(16 days)

De Zerbi
Charged 23/02/23
Banned 03/03/23
(8 days)

Da Silva
Charged 27/03/23
Banned 04/04/23
(8 days)

Arteta
Charged 16/11/23
Banned - 28 days and counting…

Is there any reason for this, because many Arsenal fans are convinced the ban will come in ready for our away trip to Liverpool.