Leicester midfield 3 this weekend, ndidi, tielemans, Maddison

West Ham soucek, Lanzini, Lingard

Nevermind City, chelsea etc

Arsenal yesterday? El Nenny, cebackpass and Smith Rowe.....would you swap ours for theirs ? utter poverty. Our fans are deluded if you think we can get in the top 4 with players like that getting so many games. You won’t get anywhere

Again, you completely ruin you credibility with statements like this.

Why wouldn't he play Willian in this utterly pointless, season already over, game?

Who in your view should have played in Willians position?

I am still livid with Arteta with the Xhaka at leftback thing. But one does need to get a grip.

Farcical, self-inflicted wound.

Arteta desperately wanted two quality midfielders. He got one. Really shouldn't have loaned out all of our promising up and coming midfielders. Really shouldn't have moved one of our two half decent remaining midfielders to left back.

I think it might be a case of just giving him minutes. You have to take a chance with young players, even if they look slightly out of their depth initially. In an ideal world (i.e one in which we had decent midfielders and Willock would have been firmly in the 'one for future' category) loaning him out would have been the right move.

Fair enough, but, believe it or not, Willock played 61 first-team games in the season and a half before he went on loan (obviously most off the bench), so he'd had plenty of opportunities to make an impact.

It would be interesting to look more closely at how Willock is being played. I haven't really watched any of his games at Newcastle. At the weekend, from the highlights I saw he seemed to be in a midfield 3 behind a front 2 who would split and work the wide areas and give him licence to press forward.
My view of Willock is he is not a No.10 - where he's been asked to play for us before as that position is more about the ball coming to you in the final third and you finding and making space in tight areas. I'm also not sure Willock is physically ready or defensively minded enough to play in a 2 man central midfield. So really you're probably looking at his best position being as a pair of No.8s playing in tandem in front of a designated holding mid. He's box to box specialising on arriving late and unmarked in the box with a nose for timing and a goal. I don't think he's ever played that role for us. In theory is you had a Partey/Cazorla/Willock midfield 3 it could suit him well. Cazorla can be the technically excellent deeper guy who's passing and creativity negates the need for a dedicated No.10.
A team who sets up to counter attack suits Willock as well because of the energy and late runs in to the box.

The question for Arteta and Arsenal is do we see us forming a team that can play to Willock's strengths or is it better to sell him to a team more suited and extract the maximum value we can from him whilst his stock is as high as it has ever been. Newcastle definitely want him

Willian's first goal for us apparently came from only his 3rd shot on target for us.

It was great to see the joy Saka had down the left from his left back position v West Brom. He linked well with Willian. This was mainly down to creating 2 v 1's every time Saka went forward because West Brom's wide player didn't track him. It happened in a similar way v Spurs at Home because Bale didn't track back. Attacking football is pretty simple really, it is about moving the opposition out of their spaces to create spaces for you in dangerous areas. If we're static the defence can be static which is the easiest way to defend you can just patrol a 10 yard circle from your starting position and keep the correct distances to your teammates.

Saka yesterday was just the natural positivity of playing attacking football, you realise that there is an opportunity for a 2v1 and you go for it, you don't worry about the full back being out of position and their winger unmarked if they counter attack because a) you just wouldn't ever attack if you thought like that and b) you should have your central midfield and centre backs with enough positional sense and pace to cover that anyway. CM and CB need to be on high alert and on the front foot to step in and win the ball high and keep the attack recycled back or even commit the classic professional foul on the half way line

So, in other words, Willian only has 3 more shots on goal than I have?

Let’s be honest here the players we’ve loaned out are not our saviours. It’s really searching to suggest otherwise

It’s not like we’ve made the mistake of loaning out Kai Havertz or mason mount. I’d have kept AMN but couldn’t argue with loaning Willock.

In an ideal world. But not if you only have Ceballos and El Neny in the cupboard.

We should have kept at least one of AMN, Willock or Guendouzi.

You are correct. I have to admit that I didn't think he was ready to play first team, from what we saw this season.

But the point is that we really did leave ourselves very thin in a couple of crucial positions.

Defense, ownership, goalkeeping, coaching, management, forwards, scouting, midfield ....

Yeh, but apart from that we're not in bad shape.

Interesting read about Martinelli. Might explain why he is now struggling a bit after a stellar start. https://newsjust24all.com/mikel-arteta- ... R0hua9CDc4

lol

We should have moved our one good player from wide right to left back so we could put our totally inadequate midfielder filling in there back in his midfield spot to replace an even more Inadequate midfield player who was playing there Inadequately instead. Only problem with that ? Probably means playing someone wide right who won’t be adequate!

https://youtu.be/SnmX4f6VBRw

Leno is meant to be up for sale which seems a bit odd.

I did read some reports a couple of weeks ago that he had asked for a transfer.

To sell Martinez and then sell Leno the very next summer seems poor planning, unless they have a pretty darn good replacement lined up.

There's 6 of them up for sale.

https://www.football365.com/news/bernd- ... r-overhaul

Yeah it’s a Kroenke inspired summer warchest PR article

This bit..

But Mikel Arteta still retains the support of Arsenal’s hierarchy and the club are prepared to spend big in an ‘unprecedented’ transfer window

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/10/arsenal- ... to=cbshare

Pretty sure Leno will enjoy cracking on with his career without missing Arsenal fans blaming him every time a goal goes in. Wouldn’t shock me if he wanted out sharpish

Forbes top 50 sports teams for 2021.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... s-24078326

It is a fair piece. I still think Martinelli can be a fine centre forward but there are very few 19 year olds who play the lone striker role anywhere in europe let alone at a big club, and those that do will almost certainly be surrounded by top quality.

20 years ago Martinelli could have broken through as a striker partnership in a classic 'big man/little man' combo. Right now the lone striker is one of the hardest positions for a young player to break in to first team football, mainly because physically they are often up against experienced centre backs and there's 2 of them to 1 of them, and there is a lot more to the lone striker role than running in behind quickly, dribbling and lethal finishing - which are the things that the best young strikers tend to be very good at.

Surely there needs to be a 1 in front of that 6?

A bit surprised to see Liverpool so high, only $100m behind Man U? Surely that can't be right.
Also Liverpool values at $1.3 billion more than Arsenal. It is only really the last 5 years they've overtaken us on the pitch consistently. I understand they have more history, more trophies and more fans but I'm surprised at that valuation in relation to others.

You can look at form tables in the league and put in the start date you want.
In the last 25 games (so take out the first 10 of the season) we're 6th
In the last 20 games we're 4th
In the last 15 games we're 5th
In the last 10 games we're 4th

I'm not putting this up here to show we're on the right track per se, more to show how wildly inconsistent so much of the league and teams have been this season.
It feels like we've only had a decent run of 6 games around the turn of the year the rest has been a lot of up and down so it is hard to think of us as the 4th best team over the last 20 games which is a big sample.

This season more than any has had a very strange set of circumstances - the same for every team of course. It will be very interesting to see what happens assuming fans can fill stadiums next year, do things return to a bit of normality, you'd think the home/away records will after being way off this year

Because we need to be managing him out of the club, not giving him expectations he is to stay.

I'm still a big fan of Martinelli and think all he needs his time. It should also be noted, its not like he's got the best support on the pitch at times. Also, he needs time to build a working relationship with the players who do play well like Saka, Smith Rowe and Tierney. They know his movements and he knowing theirs.

Because of Mo Salah, Liverpool is huge in Moslem countries, especially Arab countries. There are Liverpool shops in the major malls in Dubai.

So it looks as though UEFA will shift the CL Final from Istanbul because of the Covid risks in that city. The obvious choice is Wembley in pretty much Covid-clear UK; this would allow maybe 20,000 fans to attend.

But no. Oh no no noooo. UK is still barring entry to a number of countries which means that some of UEFA's 'guests' and sponsors would have difficulty attending.

Portugal on the other hand has a more relaxed approach to visitors so UEFA can bring in 3,000 high-roller lick-spittle cronies. And their wives. And their nieces. Bollocks to the club fans.

All things considered, I am not in favour of a breakaway elite. However, anyone who believes those UEFA weasels have the best interests of the game at the heart of their decision-making is deluded. They are leeches, just like the Kroenkes and the Glazers.

I once had a count of the exact money I spent to go to our Europa League final against Chelsea in Baku. It came out that I spent £1,143 and a some pence, think it was around 50p, that I wouldn’t have spent had I not gone. I don’t know how many Arsenal and Chelsea fans went to the game, but I assume the ones from London and the Home Counties all spent at least that. I say at least because I didn’t stop overnight and doing so would have cost even more. Well, I didn’t stay overnight but I did, simply in the airport waiting rooms as the flight back was delayed hours on end until some time the following morning.

All for a 4-1 bloody hammering. But my own experiences of that game makes me agree with you about UEFA. The game was between two London clubs. Why couldn’t it have been rearranged for Wembley?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/weaintgotn ... ley-report

Porto of course. And 20K fans, UEFA cronies, dignitaries, their entourage, other hangers-on....naturally.

Arseblog are reporting we are hiring a team to recruit new scouts. Looks like sacking the scouts was a mistake. Who would have guessed it.

Hi Gaz,

Maybe Hodd can throw some light on this.

Hi Zed,

I said when the Superleague was disbanded that Uefa, Sky, BT etc were not celebrating football being saved by the people, they were celebrating the fact that the gravy train was not leaving their station.

How about you convince him to stay

https://www.football365.com/news/arsena ... ns-emerson
If we get £35m for Bellerin I will be amazed and will heartily congratulate whoever brokers that deal. He seems a certainty to leave though. If we can push towards £25m then we should snap anyone's hand off for that.

Hi Soc,
Oh no of course not. ESL really isn't dead at all.

Man City are champions. It is their 7th title in their history.

City and Chelsea now have as many league titles combined as Arsenal with 13. 10 of those 13 have been won with the artificial finances of their rich owners.

https://tbrfootball.com/hes-just-been-a ... last-year/

Nice endorsement for Martinez