I'd sign Bellingham in a heartbeat. He was only 18 in June.

I find the clamour around Declan Rice a bit odd. Chelsea and Man U both ready to pounce with £80m plus. Of course he is a very very good player but in my view having Rice and Phillips at the heart of England's midfield is maybe the biggest thing that prevents them taking that final step to winning tournaments and dominating the best teams in the world.

If I was listing the best 15-20 central midfielders in the world Declan Rice wouldn't make that list.

If you've got £80m to spend I'd be putting it Dortmund's way for Bellingham rather than West Ham's way for Rice every day of the week

Now ready for the greatest title turnaround in EPL.

Focusing on Manchester United, surely Declan Rice fits their current needs immeasurably better than Bellingham would? Rice would presumably replace Fred or McTominay who both play plenty of games for them, often together. In my view that would be a far bigger improvement to their side than having Bellingham competing with the likes of more attacking players including Fernandes, Pogba, van de Beek, Sancho or Greenwood.

It goes back to what I was saying about thinking of the balance of teams. Playing Bellingham at the same time or in the same games as the others I’ve listed above would arguably leave them unbalanced. Even without Bellingham, that’s why Fred and McTominay are in their team so often. In my view Rice would be a more sensible way for them to spend big money than Bellingham.

I was only able to see pictures of Charlie in the magazine "Shoot" (I think that's the name of the mag). In those days, no internet and no real-time knowledge of Arsenal and its players. Guess I must have only seen Charlie featured when he was winning for us. Thus, "ever smiling" in my mind.

Every week, I would wait for Shoot to arrive at the Singapore bookstands. If I could afford, I would pick up a copy. If I can't, I steal browses until the storekeeper chase me away. And on Sundays, we get 1-hour of "Star Soccer" (I think that's what it was called). Was in black & white then, and always hoping Arsenal was the main match. It was from one of these shows that I decided to be a fan of Arsenal. Think I was attracted first to the jersey.

It was quite a thing when you got into the ground and saw that the TV cameras on that gantry in front of the West Stand. You knew you'd be able to watch the match again that evening on BBC's Match of the Day. As you say, G7 - it was in black and white and there was only one match.

Later on, ITV's The Big Match would be shown on Sunday afternoons. They showed a few matches as I recall.

In 1973, I remember Brighton & Hove Albion 2, Bristol Rovers 8 being the main match one week (Cloughie at the helm of Brighton, of course). It's hard to imagine a League 1 (is that what it's called?) game being the focus of national attention again in our lifetime.

Hard to believe that we paid £35m for him.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... Epo-25HPq8

“I don’t have that much talent”. Wow.

Twenty caps for Germany and a World Cup winner. All things considered, I wouldn't mind being as embarrassingly bad as Mustafi.

I don't believe it. Another way of putting it is that he's reduced wage costs by ??%

He arrived just before Christmas 19.
In the next window, he was given Soares and Mari. No proof they were his choices or that he'd had time to consider who he might want at that level. They have to be relatively pure Edu. And agent.

Summer was more substantive. We bought Gabriel (looking good) and Partey (maybe okay for the price, though I doubt we'd get it back if we tried to sell; still have to keep fingers crossed that he's not a sicknote).
And signed Willian (bad signing, though many fans expected it to be a good signing and no-one has a clear idea of why he played so poorly)
Emile Smith Rowe returned from loan. As did Elneny. And Saliba - though not to first team squad.
Late in the day we replaced Martinez with Runarsson (bad sale, worse buy)

January brought Ødegaard and Ryan. And moved on Özil, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Willock, Sokratis and Saliba (Guendouzi, Torreira and Mkhitaryan had gone in the summer) - mostly on loans.

By this summer, the club had imposed a new strategy, reducing wages levels by buying younger players. In the full understanding that this reflected reduced ambition, short-term at least. Now isn't the time for performance according to this strategy, the time will be in a couple of years. Fourth used to be the target, now it looks more like top half of the table. It's a solid winning strategy from the board's point of view - there's a guaranteed reduction in costs over the next few years however the team performs. If the fans start cutting up too rough, they already have two scapegoats tethered in place.

Which spending was he responsible for? Ødegaard presumably. Arteta's always been keen on him. Some of the money on Ramsdale and White, where the club might otherwise have chosen cheaper options. I'm not sure about Gabriel and Partey, though I doubt he was against them. The others are down to club strategy and the recruitment team.

Surprised no-one mentioned Rocky or Frank Stapleton

Takehiro Tomiyasu's work permit application has been approved.
He's available to play against Norwich on Saturday.

Shame we couldn't get them through so quickly when we had Yaya Toure through the door and also Čech the year before Chelsea signed him

I wouldn't argue with boring. I think that's where we went wrong choosing Arteta and ManU were right choosing OGS. Arteta doesn't play the style we became accustomed to with AW whereas OGS's ManU are recognisable.

Intra-game management and team selection. I frequently don't understand his choices either. I know there will be reasons for them, which means that I don't recognise what he sees. Maybe I would agree with them if I did know. I try to avoid believing someone is necessarily wrong when I don't know why they are doing what they do.

Man management I'd take issue with. Rookie mistakes with this come with being a rookie whatever the area of management. But most of the criticism I've seen has come from cliques with an invested point of view. And none of our managers have been great at this going back at least as far as Graham (I can't remember him well enough, but doubt he took many prisoners either).
Özil had been a running sore since Wenger days. Apparently running a lot on the pitch but always MIA. And a disruptive and undermining influence off it, as became increasingly apparent. Arteta decided he had to deal with it or lose any ability to manage the squad, given the number of Özil's followers. I can't honestly disagree with it, and now it seems that Özil has fallen out with his latest manager.
Guendouzi is acknowledged as a difficult player. But talented. And another disruptive influence (seems to have befriended Saliba before even he was signed by us). Worse than Xhaka for losing his head. Doing well at Marseille, but assaulting people too. Maybe easier to get away with that sort of thing in France, but we'd be crucified if we had a player with that reputation. Maybe he could have been managed, but Arteta has enough to do as it is.
Saliba. I don't believe that Saliba's situation is down to man management. There's not been any hint of pressure from the club to play him. Part of Sanllehi's dodgy recruitment year. Maybe add-on costs relate to the number of games he plays for us. Always seemed to want to be playing in France rather than for us or here. And very young. Too likely to develop well as CB in a team with a dysfunctional defensive unit. My guess is that the club hope that he does well enough on loan to get our money back.
Older players I'd expect many to be disgruntled. The teams's not playing well, they know they're not part of long-term plans and many of them are just running down their contracts. Many of them would leave if they could, but they can't. No way of managing this short of team playing better and them getting a few games.

I'm not saying that I think Arteta is the right man for the job. I doubt I would have appointed him (though I've not liked any of the names linked with us since Wenger left either - same issue of inexperience or having the wrong profile/CV), but I doubt he could have been expected to do much better given the circumstances he's faced. If I were the Kroenkes I'd hope to keep him until at least the end of the season. At that point there would be another opportunity to clear deadwood and more managers of the right sort would be prepared to be available. Anything to avoid the disruption of a mid-season changeover and the effect that would have on the young players who are the club's principle asset.
Remember they're not aiming at anything a fan would recognise as success.

We often seemed to lose heroes at their peak. I assumed that was just the natural pain of supporting a middling club who could win things sometimes. So I think I found it most painful when we seemed to have become a top club and we still had players being poached - Anelka etc. It seemed to become an annual ritual.

Yep Brady for me was absolutely heartbreaking. Remember my dad being annoyed with my homemade‘Brady is God’ banner on my bedroom wall which I refused to take down.
For weeks the North Bank sang/ pleaded “Don’t go Brady, don’t go”. Fool that I was, thought it surely would change his mind. Ho hum.

Think it’s a bit over the top to call Arsenal “a middling club”. A worldwide fan base of 125 million. Still the third biggest trophy winners in English football. I’m as worried about our longer term prospects under Kroenke as anyone. But I’m sorry, “a middling club who could win things sometimes” is not, in my view, a fair description of Arsenal’s history.

https://withafunfilter.com/the-top-15-b ... the-world/

I read Wilshere is invited to train with the team. I really, really feel for him. Hodd talked about his personality. Lives for football is what I think he said. I hope the planets align for him and he gets a contract with us perhap Pay as you play or whatever.

I am excited to see White, Gabriel, Tomiyasu and Tierney start in a back four.

I am excited to see Lokonga start alongside Partey.

I am intrigued to see Ramsdale start in goal and hopefully show what it is that made us pay all that money for him.

I am excited to see if Ødegaard can add more goals and assists to his game.

I am hopeful that Martinelli can recapture his early form.

I am hopeful that Saka and Emile Smith Rowe can add more goals and assists to their games.

There are plenty of reasons for optimism but Arteta needs to implement a style of play that supporters paying the highest ticket prices in town can embrace and warm to.

It may be stating the obvious but we need to create more chances, score more goals and commit less unforced errors, otherwise every game is a boring slogfest with us hoping to nick a result.

I think if I put my wet finger to the wind, Arteta needs to win this game. A draw, Im guessing, will move him closer to getting sacked. Starters are healthy/healthier, not many excuses left.

I think you must have forgotten what it was like.
In the 36 years between 1953 and 1989, Arsenal won the League once. Most of the stars whose leaving was most lamented above, including Liam Brady, left in that period. I think it is perfectly reasonable to have felt that that Arsenal were a middling club. A middling club with an ancient history and marble halls. Swindin and Wright were dismally dire managers.

We did win things sometimes. Halfway through there was that one league title, miraculously tied in with the cup to give us the double and one in the eye for Spurs. Another cup in the late seventies.
We were clobbered by Third Division Swindon in the League Cup final - more bloopers from Ian Ure - and a year later we finally won something with the Fairs Cup.

As I said, we later became a top club, but that didn't seem to stop us losing our star players.

Neither do I think you can say we are a top club now, unless you stretch the definition. There's no chance of a place in the top four in the next few years unless other clubs implode. ManU have a huge commercial income, ManC and Chelsea have sugar daddies so all three can be pretty sure of bouncing back if they do slump for a while; they are top clubs until the money goes. Liverpool are too for now since they have a quality team and a great European Cup record, but they can't afford to slip for too many years much more than we can. Arsene's dream of the stadium providing the income to sustain us at the top failed.

But neither have we sunk back down to middling yet. Any fall into the bottom half of the table would probably be temporary. We're in the group of nearly clubs who fight over European places. If the new project does well - all clubs think that, but if it does, then we can get back in top four and maybe stay there for a few years as the top doped clubs have their occasional slumps.

Your exact phrase defining Arsenal in the post I originally replied to was “a middling club who could win things sometimes”. At least you’ve now changed it to “neither have we sunk down to middling yet”. All big clubs go through periods of underachieving. That’s the way football is. Manchester United went 27 years between winning the title from 1967 to 1993. Sure they won some cups over that time. Did you think they had became “a middling club who could win things sometimes”? They even got relegated. Liverpool went 30 years between winning the title in 1990 to 2020, with some cup wins over that period. Do you think that made them “a middling club who could win things sometimes”. Because in both cases, I don’t and nor do I for Arsenal.

It’s 60 years since Tottenham won the league, and they’ve probably had even fewer cup wins over that period. I don’t even think they can realistically be called a middling club. Tottenham are still a big club with a sizeable (albeit not as large as Arsenal’s) and loyal fan base.

I only started watching Arsenal in 1967 so missed the Swindin and Wright tenures. But I actually went to the Swindon League Cup final (and the Leeds one the year before). My dad told me about the years before I started going and Arsenal have never been anything but a big club, certainly since Herbert Chapman was manager. Underachieving? Yes! Middling? No!

In my view it takes more than some top players leaving to turn anyone from a big club to a middling club. Brady leaving Arsenal didn’t, just like Keegan leaving Liverpool and Ronaldo leaving Manchester United didn’t.

My exact phrasing was "We often seemed to lose heroes at their peak. I assumed that was just the natural pain of supporting a middling club who could win things sometimes" - past tense ie that was how I felt at that time. I went on to talk about Arsenal then becoming a top club.


Yes, that is what I thought then.


No. Faded, a nearly club, like us now, but not middling. The European cups were too recent, the Kop too strong for middling especially in the context of there being no entrenched top clubs with massive income advantages.


They were middling for a long time. I define top as, well top. I don't confuse it with big.
Newcastle are big. Sunderland were big. So were Wolves. And Aston Villa. And Wednesday. & etc. But their tops are a very long time ago.

Given the chance, players want to go to top clubs because they want to win things. If they can't they'll choose big because big has a greater chance of rising than small as well as the likelihood of being paid more.

Liverpool have, and had, a greater allure because of their European Cups. Arsenal had, and to an extent still have, a greater allure because of Wengerball. Spurs because of the style of their double winners and West Ham because of their emphasis on style. ManU had it because of Munich. These push the club up the list for a period.


Went to Swindon, not Leeds. You went straight into the few glory years of the period, so I can see why you have a different perspective to mine.

Yes it could have been different, but all credit to United for coming back so well from the Munich disaster, which could have so easily sunk them. As a comparison when the great Torino team was destroyed in the 1949 air crash, they had a similar domestic record of achievement as United, but they never came back as strong - just one Serie A title and three Italian Cups in the 70+ years that followed. United rebuilt, and hard as it may be to imagine now, in the late 50s into the 60s there was widespread respect for their recovery amongst rival fans. By the late 60s of course tribalism in English football became far more rampant than it had been, and as far as Arsenal and United were concerned reached its low point in the Premiership years. Difficult to like United over the past 30 years, but not so in the period we are talking about.

The other thing that has changed a lot since 1963 is player committment to a club. Certainly relegation would not have seen Bobby Charlton leave United, nor Denis Law I think, who came to love United.

Interesting story about Law - before he joined Manchester City in 1960 there was much expectation that he would join Arsenal. Law visited Highbury and was impressed but decided to join City instead. In his book The King, he explained why. ‘It looked for a while as though I was going to Arsenal, who were like the Real Madrid of English football at that time. I had been to London a couple of times with Scotland: it was a big city, and Arsenal were a huge club. I had travelled down with Tommy Docherty who took me round the ground and pointed out the underfloor heating in the dressing-room, and the marble floors and statues in the foyer, and when I saw all that, Arsenal was the club I was going to, no doubt at all! But – and I’m ashamed to admit it, because looking back now it was very childish of me – one of the main reasons I didn’t go to Highbury was that they sent their assistant manager to talk to me about the move instead of George Swindin himself. I took it as a slight, and that’s why I find my reaction embarrassing now, because one thing I’m certainly not is big-headed. And you know who the assistant manager was? Ron Greenwood, who went on to become the brilliant manager of West Ham United and England.’ Law subsequently went to Italy - Torino - and after that United.

Give the first 3 games and the pressure Arsenal and Arteta are under he couldn't have hand picked a better fixture to break the bad run. Norwich at home.

At the moment any win will do - but to really restore a degree of confidence a comfortable win would be very much needed. A squeaky 2-1 surviving some late long balls in the box would keep the wolf from the door but wouldn't inspire confidence.

3-0 please Arsenal

Just looked at Norwich for their games so far: Liverpool, City, Leicester and now us. That is a really difficult start for the year. We really don’t know if they are good or really poor, so I think we had better turn up with no preconceived idea of how special we are. Arteta has had plenty of time to make sure his tactics are spot on. I am hoping for a comfortable win but let’s make sure we play from minute one. A fluky win won’t placate too many people.

Agreed


Unless another random selection of first teamers can't play because of illness.

True. I hope they have included in the new contracts of players, including contract extensions, a clause like : ‘all players will take legal drugs and injections as directed by the club. Failure to comply will be regarded as a fundamental breach of your employment contract.’ Failure to have such a clause would be gross negligence on the part of Garlic or whatever his name is who does the contracts. Therefore Aubameyang : you must take malarial drugs, Xhaka get the COVID injection.

Looking forward to refreshing change of pace for us today. Hope Arteta recognised the need to take initiative of the game, and give the fans good driven football from the go.

Welcome to the SG forum.

Again, HUGE game for Arteta. If the doesn't get all the points, it may be the end. A draw, I'm guessing will speed up the conversation in the boardroom. A loss and they will start a list of candidates if one isn't already made. And the only thing that can slow that process in a loss I think is a win in the NLD.

I have a Man Utd supporting friend from my LA days. Londoner. They want OGS out. However, they say, just like it seems like he's lost a match they should have easily won, he wins a game that they didn't think they should have won, and usually on the road.

Maybe Arteta will end up like that or something similar.

Thank God for Brexit and Boris Johnson

Imo today has to be the first make or break day for Arteta. Spurs next week will be a truer test. If he wins that there'll be no question of sacking him.

Come on you Gunners

Who is this God bloke?

Hi Rich,

I may be in the minority here but I don't want to see a scrappy or lucky win. I want to see at the very least the seedlings of an expansive and exciting style of play that creates chances and some moments that thrill the crowd.

I am fed up with this boring, aimless, sideways possession game that hits the buffers as soon as we enter the final third of the pitch.

Had a look at highlights of Norwich Leicester. There defence is not great but they attacked and made good headway down their RHS. So important for Tierney to keep tight on his man . Had a couple of good chsnces and they look okay with crosses.

I don't think we will see or or should expect to see, free flowing, pretty football yet. We haven't even mastered winning. We haven't had a first choice, settled side, play together for any modicum of time yet. Right now, any win will do. A lucky 1-0 win won't inspire confidence but it would far, far more preferred than any other result.

I think we are weeks away from any good looking football, since we have a lot of new faces that will only prolong a settled side that can play well together.

*%^@* sake just enjoy the game mate ! Go to McDonald’s and get a happy meal or something to cheer yourself up.

Ton of new signings who will be keen to impress, injured players returning, the sideways football is only ever because Xhaka and elneny play and their both missing.

I’ve been looking forward to it all week actually and may even get to the ground early to exploit the 2 for 1 offer they are doing on that Camden lager piss stuff they flog.

Happy days

If you can’t get excited about the first game this season when we can actually field a decent side you need to find another hobby. It’s time look elsewhere.

How about darts ? A load of fatties throwing arrows and hitting the dartboard every single time it’s ace ! Your never let down it’s a sure thing.

Interesting that Denis Law presumably didn’t think we were, to quote Pode, a “middling club with an ancient history and marble halls. Swindin and Wright were dismally dire managers.” Law seems to put Swindin not going to meet him as the reason he didn’t join. I’m not denying Swindin was a poor or even ‘dismally dire’ manager. He was before my time. But Law said Arsenal “were like the Real Madrid of English football at the time.”

If Pode reads this, I suspect the reason we’re not agreeing is differences in definitions more than me starting my support prior to the success in the early seventies. The mid-seventies was the closest I’ve seen Arsenal get to being relegated.

I don’t think you have to be top of the league to be a top club, or even near it. When Manchester United were relegated I still, unlike you who thought they became middling, saw them as a top club. In my view top clubs aren’t defined by the quality of their current team. As I said, for me getting relegated didn’t turn them into a middling club. Even in the lower division (and they did come straight back up, as Tottenham did when they were relegated) I perceived them as a top club.

To use an analogy, Celtic and Rangers are surely and undeniably the top clubs in Scotland. Even when Rangers were relegated to the bottom tier of Scotland’s league tier for financial irregularities, I still considered them one of Scotland’s two top clubs.

I’ve enjoyed this debate and hope you have. I suspect our disagreement has more to do with using differing definitions of words than anything.

I'll join in the minority camp

It’s kind of weird but I’ve really been looking forward to today’s game for a while now. It feels special for a number of different reasons. COYR.