I'm sure we used to do it back in the day but hearing (mostly) Spurs and Man U fans react to every bad result by blaming the board/owners for not backing their manager with millions of £ more signings is ridiculous. Just look at what you have spent the money on that they did give you and crucially what you could have spent it on.

Spurs:
Ndombele £54m
Gil £25m
Richarlison £60m
Royal £25m
Lo Celso £32m (and £16m loan fee)
Sessengnon £27m
Sanchex £42m
Spence £15m
That is £269m - which is the same price as our starting 11 yesterday

Man U:
Anthony £90m
Sancho £85m
Ronaldo £17m plus all those wages!
Van der Beek £40m
even Varane, Martinez, Casemiro cost £170m combined - all good players but you cant complain about not having a good enough striker when you've lumped £170m of your budget on 3 players. Our equivilent (Saliba, Gabriel, partey) cost just £95m

Players got tight to Saka and they ended up fouling him or getting rolled to easily, Shaw was backing off to give himself some reaction time and security of the rest of his defence - that allowed Saka more space to shoot. The best players earn that respect/fear and the space it gives.

Just like peak-Robben, you know what Saka wants to do but stopping it is a different matter

Hopefully Everton don't get that new manager bounce. Their fans weren't necessarily against Lampard from what I saw - their anger was much more directed at the board who are all still in place, so I can't see their sacking of Lampard as changing the mood amongst the fans.

Upcoming league fixtures:
Everton (a)
Brentford (h)
City (h)
Villa (a)
Leicester (a)
That Villa game will be a tough one, we play City on the wednesday night and then have to travel to Villa for a saturday lunchtime kick off when they've had a fulll weeks rest. Emery factor, and he's got them picking up good results. If we could beat City at home a draw away to Villa wouldn't be the end of the world as I think that will be a tough one - I'd take a scrappy 1-0 right now

after that:
B.mouth (h)
Fulham (a)
Palace (h)
leeds (h)
great chance for maximum points from those games

It's been a really odd weekend for me. On Friday I attended the funeral on the South coast of one of my oldest mates. He was a lifelong Gooner and we'd been going to The Arse together since our teens. We went to the Forest game recently. He had lots of kids and grandkids, lots of siblings, nieces and nephews, and lots of friends, so the church was bursting at the seams with Gooners.

Moving on, yesterday was one of those great days that burn themselves into your memory. I don't when I was more elated after a match - maybe Anderlecht or WHL in '71. The stadium was absolutely rocking. Not many in that crowd started the day believing we could win the PL. That game has changed all that.

And then today, I went to Bernard's memorial gathering. I confess I have found Bernard's death really difficult to process. This was a man I'd known for maybe 25 years, exchanging views and opinions often daily. And yet I met him only once and we'd never had a proper spoken conversation. I had no idea of the circumstances of his death and I wasn't able to offer my condolences to his family because I didn't know them and I had no contact details. Thankfully, today has filled in a number of those blanks for me and I have been able to meet and talk with his wife and one of his daughters. Today has been helpful. I can confirm that Bernard was a remarkable man.

Plenty of Gooners including representatives of The Supporters Trust and The Gooner; both were important to Bernard and he was to them. There was a smattering of Forumites there though not many active contributors. Chapeau to truegooner, Gaz ( B/Wood ) and Pete on the beach. I think Pete is going to post something here soon so I won't spoil his thunder.

xG charts for the Man U game. Dominated them. It may not have felt that watching the game on the edge of your seat but Man U created very few chances and the ones they did create were very low quality

Attacking sequences involvements chart for the Man U game.

ps: the chart is created for every player on the pitch - it just happens the the 10 players with the highest stats for attacking sequences (shots, chances created, build up to a shot) were all Arsenal players. Dominated

Lovely post DHD

Yeah, I was thinking about Robben too.

Lovely post DHD. Thanks.

Teddy Sheringham
“It’s Arsenal's to throw away!”

“Pep will make sure his team hunt them down, and I certainly hope they do!”

Haha we’ve got so so many fans, pundits and ex players terrified and bitter they’re literally begging the neighbours to win the title instead of us!

https://twitter.com/nonewthing/status/1 ... Q9UCuAV94Q

Nice Twitter thread on Arsenal’s tactics and using themes from other sports particularly basketball.

There’s a great bit near the end of the thread where Arteta is filmed when doing his coaching badges about full backs and wingers not passing to each other in simple vertical lines, it should always be on the angle to allow the receiver a chance to turn and run or do what he wants with it rather than just having his back to goal and the defender right up his backside. Then there are multiple clips of White and Saka doing just this

Not sure if anyone has posted this but Jamie Kiwior was made official as an Arsenal player today.

Yesterday was incredible.
I'd give anything to be in the stadium experiencing that atmosphere.
It was rocking from watching on TV and we were relentless.
It was my Dad's 13th anniversary of His Passing last Friday The 20th and He was a massive Arsenal fan.
I started following The Arsenal because of my Dad and I know He would be so chuffed and proud of what we are doing this season.
That win yesterday was for him.
I know you are watching Dad.
Love you so so much and God Bless You xxxxx

What Arteta has done from the clunky football we played winning the Fa Cup to now is astounding.
Our movement, poise, passing patterns and almost as if we are playing on a chess board and picking out our positions is so beautiful to watch.
The player who embodied this yesterday was Zinchenko. I never realised he was THIS good at city.
So classy and just caresses that ball and executes at will. Just gliding across that pitch filling in at left back and moving into midfield.
And to think we would have missed out on him had Ajax not rejected our bids for Martinez.
What a travesty had we not signed our Zinny.
I love Tierney but I can see why Arteta favours Zinny.
Brilliant player.

The way we pummelled utd in the last 20 was incredible. We roasted them and fully deserved to win.
Delighted for Eddie.
So many of our fans let alone non Arsenal doubted him and were spelling doom when he hadn't even played a minute after the Jesus injury but boy has he shut a lot of people up and choke on humble pie.
He was excellent yesterday.
The whole team was.
Loving this ride.
Saka wow just wow.
Get that contract signed!

Thank you DHD.
As eloquent as ever.

Heard a stat on Kelly and Wrighty that before yesterday the last time we had scored a LAST MINUTE winner in the Premier league was in 2007 when Thierry scored against utd.
Surely that can't be right???
We have won late against villa and Fulham this season alone but maybe they weren't in literally the last minute?
Astounding stat if true.

Excellent.

Way, way too early to be talking about next season but I will already. Man Utd will be a title contender next year. Especially if they get Kane. It would have been a different game with Casemiro. We'd have a greater chance of a draw but I think we'd have eked it out. He'd make us play at a higher level.

Anyway, I can see them being title contenders in earnest. City will always be. I would expect Liverpool to be back and back to their recent form from a year ago. I think next season will be a highly contentious season for the title with a lot of drama along the way.

Chelsea have the personnel and will buy more in the summer if not this week and I expect them to be much tougher than they are now. Newcastle will be spoiler but top 4 is my guess. Tottenham will be Europa.

It isn’t true. Lacazette scored a last minute winner v wolves last year

Wonder how he will treat the fa cup Friday.

Can see some changes but not massive rotation. I would make big changes personally

Could see something like this ….Turner, Tommy, holding, Gabriel, KT, Partey, vieira, xhaka, trossard, Eddie, saka

I think that the statistic refers to last minute winners against Man United.

Here’s one that put us top of the table in 2017.
https://www.premierleague.com/news/522119

It could be an opportunity to bed Emile Smith Rowe in a bit more too. Perhaps from the subs bench.

We’ve now gone past the 19 game threshold for yellow cards. Saliba, Saka, White and Gabriel all had 4 yellows. Now the threshold is 10 yellow cards by game 32. So each can get 5 more yellows in the league in the next 13 games and still not be banned.

If a player reached the 5 card threshold on or before game 19 they had a 1 game ban. If they get 5 more before game 32 they’ll get a 2 game ban.

Read some interesting thoughts on Arsenal’s identity. At the start there was a lot of Pep-lite and thoughts that Arteta was just modelling Arsenal to play exactly like Man City. But this has revolved beyond that. There are traits of how Liverpool at their peak played as well. Liverpool play very direct football as they have workhorse midfielders rather that creative passers. So they go direct to a very athletic front 3 and pick up second balls in the final 3rd. Arsenal have elements of that particular from Ramsdale who goes long more than you think.
I also think we play forward faster than City tend to, we go for the fast counter attack a bit more than them and are potentially more pragmatic in terms of getting back in to a defensive block.

it was also nice to see one of the few times Zinchenko found himself in a natural wide full back position to cross he didn’t flash it across goal it was the cut back to Ødegaard - a very City type move.

I’m not good enough at micro tactics to work out exactly how Arsenal do it but one amazing part of our play is the ability to get a wide player in space 1v1 against their full back or to get an attacking player quite free in a decent crossing position or some kind of easy 2v1 in the wide areas.

Most teams set up defensively in wide areas quite similar, you have a full back/wing back and you have a wide midfielder who has to cover to stop and overload. But yet Arsenal still find a way to get these opportunities.

Way he the Man U game again, particularly the last 20 minutes and see how many times we’re able to do this. And this is despite Man U sitting so deep with essentially a back 4 and 5 deep midfielders. We’re manipulating the opposition so well and moving the ball so fast we’re creating these opposing. I think the advanced role Ødegaard and Xhaka play helps create these overloads

I'm sure your dad would be absolutely loving this run.

What’s weird is when zinny or xhaka run off galavanting into different parts of the pitch the team always has the awareness to cover the person. I always think we will get caught upfield but it never happens, it’s a team working in cohesion

Hi DHD,

Thanks for the lovely post.

I still miss Bernard and I've never met the fella. He was a constant on here and really part of the fabric of the forum for two decades. Almost every time I logged on there was a fairly recent Bernard post.

He was definitely a one-off, slightly eccentric, very idiosyncratic and as stubborn as any mule you'd ever find. We all loved him for it, though.

I've said this before but he had this endearing way where whenever he was losing an argument he'd keep moving the goalposts every so slightly until he could swing the argument back in his favour.

I think everyone misses him.

I also miss Arsenal Fishbar and Mee, what wonderful people and I am sure there are others we've lost without even realising it.

We don't have Everton till the 4th of February, so, perhaps a silly question, but we go for the win and play our toughest team, right?

A friend of mine who is a gooner is saying not to risk injuries, etc. and put some of the more important starters on the bench but I'm more inclined to make sure we get the psychological advantage of winning at their grounds. If we can.

That second half exemplified that. We were throwing the kitchen sink at United and yet almost completely nullifying the risk of them breaking out.

Thanks DHD and Socrates. Very nicely expressed.

On that note, would anybody know of any way to contact Niall at all ? I sent him a message but not heard anything from him for a long time now.

Edit - I sent him an email ... Which just bounced back.
The address you sent your message to wasn't found at the destination domain

Well said Soc.

I read something that many people are getting wrong, and I’ve been guilty of this as well. There is a lot of talk of ‘Arsenal having to pick up 4 points v City’ the reality is actually ‘City need to beat Arsenal twice’.

I know people are saying this because they expect City to come strong and we need more of a buffer but the reality is we could still lose to City twice and win all our other games and be champions and there is nothing City can do about it

Thank you Decaf.

Thanks LTG
was bugging me

I gather that as part of the coverage of last night's football, Jamie Carragher carried out an in-depth analysis of the way Arsenal played against Man U. I'm told it was interesting and insightful.

Does anyone have a link?

The idea that the title is ours to lose with half a season still to play is ridiculous and should be seen for what it is - hope that we fail and a wierd underrating of City. The best club of the last decade in The Premiership, with a monster striker and a superior squad, they are just five points behind us. City have won eleven of the last 13 league meetings between the two clubs - the Arsenal none! Given that record shouldn't the story be that the league is theirs to win? Yes we are a much better side than before, and at the moment we are the bookies' favourites, but if I was a betting man I'd not go against City.