All the best for the New Year Top Gun, and to all on the forum. Quiet night for me, just a few dozen bottles and the Dagenham Girl Pipers over for a knees up.

You have a good one too.

Thanks Zed ...same goes to you , plus all others ...... was in bed by 9.30 read a book for an hour , went to sleep ...... never had a drink .

Will anything change in 2022 I doubt it ..... Covid , world unrest , US sanctions , EU blustering , anti Russia / China waffle

Oh here's one .......... maybe we will give Man City a damn good sort out . 5 -1 to us .

Newcastle seem to be calling off as many as they can before the transfer window. Not really fair on those around them.

2021 was a b******. Here's hoping 2022 brings better times.

Happy New Year everyone.

Happy New year to all.

Happy new year to everyone.

Happy new year everyone.

One hour away...

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!

Yeah okay ........ enough already of the happy New Year routine .... we all know we are nice friendly folk

Let's have a bit substantive Arsenal stuff .

Starter for ten ............ greatest stand out Arsenal moment ...?

For me toss up .... sitting in my mother in laws lounge , bottle of duty free whiskey beside me , arrived in England three days before , 1979 enjoying us cruising at 2 -0 ; five minutes to go Terry Neill chucks on Steve Walford to give him a token Cup Final appearance ,

Man U score then almost from the restart Sam McIlroy rolls in a shot that was travelling at about 3 kms per hour

.... my eyes rolled skyward ....what are we f&&&^^%$# doing ...?

The unbelievable ecstacy that followed .

Next day , poor as we were at the time I went up to the newsagent in Surbiton and bought every Sunday paper .

Ironically the Man United team had been staying at the hotel across the road .

1989 had a similar impact with different circumstances .

Happy New Year everyone!

Let's bring it a tad closer, 4-2 to us

Not expecting a win today but a draw would be a nice New Year start.

Happy New Year to anyome whose post I can read..lolol..let me stop. Haha..be good AG, be good. Remember your resolutions.

Happy new year to everyone

I agree with the assessment of Isco here. Looks like another Willian situation to me.

https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/ ... pmEe_XmoTA

I can't really think of any positions we need relatively urgently other than striker. I'm assuming Aubameyang is off. Lacazette, Martinelli and company have been doing a great job. Someone gets hurt and we are in trouble. Lacazette may be off if the right offer comes. I'd love to get Martial but other than being a long shot, he won't be available until summer I think. We could use a 3rd quality CB. Holding is good for a stop gap if either Gabriel or White gets hurt. I won't bring up Saliba, well I just did, lol...but that situation needs to resolved. I assume there is a logical explanation but often with Arsenal the explanation doesn't make sense.

Happy new year everyone.

I think we might do ok today. I'm not expecting a win or even a draw but I am hoping it will be a decent contest ending in at the very least a narrow defeat.

A 4-0 defeat with them having 80% possession and 20+ shots compared to our 2 and I will be enormously frustrated.

The Fairs Cup win under floodlights. Seventeen years without a trophy until that great performance. Please indulge my use of space, but a while back I remembered it this way:

"On 28th April 1970 many Arsenal fans rose with the first sparrow and spent all day oscillating between optimism and pessimism. The team was about to be measured and we were about to mingle in one of those great affairs of football. Would it be yet another anti-climax? In the evening the crowd arrived at the ground earlier than normal and the atmosphere was as thrilling as a beehive. The weather in Islington was very British. If the night was starred with promise, the heavy rain and clouds hid it. The wind spat dirt in the eyes of players and spectators alike. However, the muddy pitch did not detract from the quality of the play.

This happened at Highbury. Kelly dummied the defence and shot Arsenal ahead on twenty-five minutes. The Anderlecht front line of Mulder, Van Himst and Devrindt were dangerous in response. At half-time, still behind on aggregate, McClintock went out and gestured to the North Bank to get behind the team. The fans, pumped up as tight as a tyre, were almost immediately punctured by van Himst, who forced Wilson into a crucial save. On the hour Nordahl put the frighteners on again by hitting the post. A frantic quarter of an hour passed until Radford shook the night with a trademark power header. If the last image fastened on my eyes is that Radford goal then I will not die unhappy. A minute later Jon Sammels had our hearts pumping in pandemonium when he scored the third goal. ‘Charlie George hit a great cross-field pass to me; I knocked it past one of their defenders and hit a low shot into the far corner from just around the edge of the box. It was in front of the North Bank and the noise from the fans was so loud I felt they were lifting me up and carrying me over them, it was amazing. I think everyone realised that goal had maybe clinched the game for us and it was a huge relief,’ he recalled. Armstrong almost scored a fourth with a skidding drive, which would have been too hard on Anderlecht. So, the only major cup final ever played at Highbury went to Arsenal and a single night redressed a thousand slights from the years before. The glory of the win caught us like a rip tide and carried us away through the surrounding streets, the wind lifting our songs and tossing them high in the night sky.

Before that we had to run onto the sodden pitch. Amongst the crush of countless bodies was Bob Wilson, who chose to stay on rather than go to the safety of the dressing room. He recalled the scene. ‘Having swapped my jersey with Jan Trappeniers, I ran, walked, and bounced my way round the whole of the Highbury pitch. All the way slaps of congratulations turned my naked upper body to a deeper red than the Arsenal shirts. Elderly supporters brought up on the 1930s sides and Tom Whittaker’s team in the early fifties were in tears. So was Frank McClintock, his personal jinx of losing in finals broken at the fifth time of asking.’ Sammels later wrote of the significance of the result for the players. ‘The joy of our fans was nothing compared with our own. For us, that great victory was both a beginning and an end. An end to the strange conviction that, somehow, destiny was against us and that fate had decreed that Arsenal would never win anything again.’ "

Great memories OMOH. Although I’d seen the League Cup final defeats to Leeds in 1968 (my first season of going) and Swindon in 1969 (my first as a season ticket holder, albeit I presume it was in my dad’s name as I was still at primary school), I hadn’t had so many years of frustration as some of you. But like you, that Anderlecht game is my biggest standout moment.

If I had to pick the biggest standout moment in which we didn’t win a trophy (so not a cup final or championship decider), it was the 0-5 win at White Hart Lane in December 1978, which was eleven years to the day after my first game. In particular Brady’s goal. In second place was Storey’s last minute penalty equaliser in the 2-2 FA Cup semi final draw against Stoke at Hillsborough in 1971. I know we did win the FA Cup that year, but it wasn’t the final.

Brilliant memory OMOH - except for remembering how to spell Frank’s name.

It sure brought back memories of those times for me. Started me thinking about the old supporters club building. Definitely not commercial.

The ref has changed according to comms. Not caught it all but thank God it's not Attwell he never gives us anything iirc correctly.

Oh ffs I must have heard wrong.

And away we go !

C'mon Arsenal - Try and hang on - Only ~95 mins remaining !

Injured linesman not ref.

Proven true early on.

Poor touch by Ødegaard though (surprisingly)

Not a pen unfortunately Ødegaard trod on Emerson imo

Disappointing, could easily have been given.

and to be fair it was Var's decision not Attells

Is that true though. Perhaps it was too close for VAR to overturn.

If he had given it then VAR may not have overturned it.

That was a fantastic distribution from Ramsdale. Unfortunate it did not result in a goal.

Our new defence has so much more confidence in them

Our whole team has so much more confidence. Deservedly so.

We've been excellent so far today

Always 3 on Saka when he has the ball

Partey is winning a everything

You can’t ask for much more than this. Amazing first quarter

Martinelli is having a stormer too.