Next game is big. We are home to Leeds while City have Pool. If City draw or even loose (not impossible) it could be 10 or 11 points at the end of that day. It would leave City with a mountain to climb.

It could well turn out that way. Liverpool won't roll over at the Etihad. Also, City have really tough CL games and there's no doubt that is their No.1 priority.

Blimey Fulham have lost their heads! Handball on the line when 1-0 up and the better team, red card and penalty….then the manager is sent off and Mitrovic barges the ref and he gets sent off as well.

No idea why Fulham argued the penalty so much it was absolutely clear. But 20 mins left don’t handball on the line, let the goal go in and start again at 1-1 with 11 men. The only time you can justify a handball on the line is literally the last minute of extra time when you’re drawing or leading

City will be eyeing up a treble now. They’ve got sheff Utd in the cup semi….although to be fair they beat us and Chelsea in the early rounds. Certainly a far herder cup run than anything Man U have faced this year

Once again I’ve watched a Man U game where they are second best for most of the game but are still going to win the game.

Glad they have got Brighton in the semi final. They’ll give them a proper game

United have had home draws in every round of both cups.

Back from the game. Canonbury tavern does a banging roast pork on a Sunday if you get there early.

The game, well stroll like I said. Ben White man of the match just superb. Holding had a great game but I feel when he gets man tight to his striker there’s always the chance the player could roll him and have a clear run to goal. however he did well today. I thought despite scoring xhaka had a so so game where he was guilty at times of not pressing enough but we won so who cares really.

I think the cameo from KT showed what a good player he is. 1 assist, created another great chance and his intelligent tracking back prevented a goal. He’s a far far better player than just a minutes sub.

Saka now has more goals and assists this season than Ryan Giggs ever had in his entire career

If you were making a team of the season I think you could make a case for most of our players. Part of that is because City have rotated a lot and have 1 stand out star.
Maybe it’s easier to look at any outside competition.
Haaland for sure
Kane - in any other season without Haaland would be much more heralded for his goals
Rashford will get in but why not Martinelli ahead of him. 1 goal less but 1 assist more…. Pretty level pegging but everyone will go for Rashford because he’s just been all over the media
Trippier will get mentioned but White has been superb
Newcastle defence based on goals conceded but Gabriel and Saliba are just better players and play high line and 1v1 defending - totally different to what Newcastle do
Casemiro - not a chance over Partey for me. 8 games suspended for Casemiro for a start

6 in 6 for Martinelli. He’s come back in to form with a bang.
6 in 6 for us since the City game.

Martinelli player of the month and Arteta manager of the month for March - it should be - any other result would just be the voters not wanting Arsenal to win it every month. We’ve won every game, no-one else has

Gabby was unplayable again in the first half. It was a ruthless finish. He doesn’t really get too much acclaim for some reason. He’s almost scored as many goals as rashford who is being lauded by the media as the best player in Europe right now. 13 goals is a great haul for a left winger

11 more points for St Totteringham’s day….and that is on the assumptions spurs are going to win 10 straight to end the season.

I think we can safely say without being too arrogant that we’ll finish above Spurs this season and welcome champions league football next year

It has been noticeable that he doesn’t take his man on as much in the wide areas but when he gets in the box in more of a striker position he’s very good. A bit different to Saka who thrives at driving at his man from wide areas.
Whatever he’s doing he’s doing it well, no need to try him as a CF because he’s doing it from the left wing.

I read that his quick touch away with the right and hit with the left is a typical Brazilian futsal technique.

Both Martinelli and Saka scoring goals with both feet, must be a nightmare to defend against. And even if you manage to keep them under control you have Ødegaard and Trossard or Jesus as well.

Xhaka has twice as many goals this year as the previous 3 put together.

When pundits and commentators reference the Xhaka renaissance they do it based on ‘that’ incident at home to palace which is understandable but is doing the player a disservice because it doesn’t focus on his improvement as a footballer.

Xhaka is the one people point to in our front 5 who fans think we can improve on, I don’t think that would be as easy as many think. He’s been tremendous and gives a maturity and balance to our play, not to mention the leadership.

Can you remember fairly recently we bemoaned our lack of leaders?
Xhaka, Ødegaard, Zinchenko, Gabriel, Ramsdale, and there’s others - these players have personality

We are a fullbacks nightmare, the ball pings from flank to flank landing with a 21 year old winger on each flank who probes for openings. They don’t get time to think. We can buy our time with confidence that either of them will get the better of their opponent which nearly always happens. Both were unplayable today

Trossard. 5 starts in the league for us - 1 goal and 6 assists. He's been a huge boost to our title run

Another big save from Ramsdale early on as he just got a finger tip to Zaha's shot on to the post. It probably won't be lost on some rival fans that it came back and hit him and stayed out after what happened to Jorginho's shot that hit Martinez and went in. I'll say having made the save he deserved the luck.
Another probably unsung hero of our season because he's made big saves at crucial times in wins - the forwards take the plaudits but Ramsdale gave them the platform

I never realized you live in Melbourne and are still an avid Forumite and Arsenal fan, fantastic and thank you.

Steve had an amazing sense of humor, not from me I might say! Always funny, the center of attention, his friends all said if you have a party and you don't invite Steve, it will be boring! Warrior is fantastic too, both had good humor, maybe that's what made them good friends to begin with!

Unfortunately Judith, Warrior has changed. £80,000 a week has gone to his head.

Sad.

Don't get mad at him. I suggest you steal his identity, strip his bank accounts and then make him a Spurs supporter.

We are more than capable of getting a draw at City, but a loss wouldn't be a shock to anyone. That said, a lot of things gotta happen. We need Liverpool to do something for us. It will give us a wee bit of breathing room. If City beat Pool, I fear the worse.

Although we are capable, even Chelsea at home is no foregone conclusion, its a huge London derby. Newcastle away is very tricky. Liverpool away even moreso. Ideally 2 wins a draw, but....I don't know. A draw at City is paramount. I won't contemplate a win.

.

Got up at 3 am watched the whole game ... that was a big win . Palace might be *%^@ but they can be tricky ; thought they might get the new manager bounce a la Everton . Went back to bed , woke up minus about three hours sleep ..... felt like sh** .

but tonight decided to have a couple of decent rums ...... he ha .....
Wish Harlow , Bernard , Cannon or Daz were around

In this squad there is plenty of room for improvement , Trossard will bed in , Jesus to get fully fit .
Think what we need is a lumpy Dion Dublin Niall Quinn up front to give us more options ......at the moment we have to rely on unpicking the lock .

My plea to Mikel , PLEASE PLEASE inform Ramsdale he is not Franz Beckenbauer or David O Leary v Liverpool '89
playing some sort of sweeping role get back somewhere near your goal or you are going to look ***** stupid like you did v Sporting
Stop wandering around like some bloody deranged Bedouin / Aborigine .

Greetings Kiwi
I would partially agree about need for a more physical cf as an option upfront. It seems obvious, but a) we are doing pretty well with our posse of expert lockpickers (Ødegaard, Martinelli, Saka, Trossard/Jesus), and b) Jesus is pretty nuggety. So perhaps it is better to play to our strengths, and if desperate push the two centrebacks and Partey forward.
I completely disagree with the second point. That goal required a perfect shot from 50 yards. It was just below the bar and Ramsdale almost got back for it. The benefit of Ramsdale sweeping and making himself a passing option hugely outweighs the very small chance of being made to look silly like that.

Exactly what I've been saying because we have just such a player.
Falorin Balogun, and top scorer in the whole of Europe, and or am I doing a TG overexagoration.

Bon Jour Decaf ..... partially agree ??? we saw against Newcastle they defend deep .... ..we can huff and puff for 90 min plus and come up with f***all.

These are the slippery little details that escape you Mopane worm eaters ... just because we are doing okay with the current squad doesn't mean we cant improve .
As Bubblechris says in the next post

Anybody who watched live ..... I think it was a League Cup semi final [ cant be arsed checking ] us v Spurs mid 80's Allinson Rocastle scored .
Quinn won everything in the air ....at the moment we don't have that option ..... a collection of midgets upfront .

Your second point .....you dont have to be that precise '; any half decent lob is going to beat him .

Why does he have to be floating around twenty yards out of his goal .... if it was OK for Seamann , Lehrmann , Pat Jennings and F****** Bob Wilson to hover near their goal ...why cant that flouncy canary yellow fairy floss do the same

Thing is kiwi it’s not. He’s not always miles off his line and many of the teams we play can’t hit the target inside our penalty area let alone the halfway line. The goal against sporting is an absolute precision hit, Ramsdale is just around the penalty spot at the moment of the strike and he almost gets back to it. Sometimes you just need to put your hands up and say that’s a pretty remarkable goal and I’ll put the bottle of rum away for the night.

When you have had a bit of sleep and the rum has worked its way out of your system
a) have another look at the Sporting goal. It needed a perfect hit--hard and perfectly placed. A half decent lob would have been easy meat for Ramsdale. He wasn't even out of position.
b) although we can obviously get better, not every change, particularly the antiquated ones you advocate would make us so.
Try to wrap your head around the concepts of progress and tradeoffs.
i. unless you pay close to 100 million pounds and massive wages, you aren't going to get a striker who is big and ugly and skillful enough to play in our system and/or willing to sit on the bench.
ii. if Ramsdale stays on his goal-line, our CBs won't be able to push forward or we'd be hugely vulnerable to the ball over the top.

History will never forget Midos cross bar challenge. Love the laughter as soon as he hits it

https://youtu.be/pNAA4RL9US0

What was weird yesterday was the number of empty seats for a Sold out game. In Particular in the upper tier.

Thing is Stick a ticket in ticket exchange and it will shift within 30 minutes these days I guarantee you. So why on earth are there so many empty ones given that people can get money for the exchange and that Arsenal are going for the title and we are the hottest ticket in town right now. (Kardashian’s turning up!)

Even Yaya Sanogo turned up apparently!

Tomiyasu needs surgery and is out for the rest of the season. We'll probably see Walters on the bench for the rest of the season as well

Does pose the question who plays right back if we lose Ben white. Partey played there yesterday at the end but it would be madness to move him surely.

Bigger worry is saliba who is critical and the thought of Holding starting at anfield is terrifying to me

One thing I noticed on the highlights was when Ben White had a big tackle on Zaha and then another one on Mitchell, he was so intent on stamping his authority on the second one he just booted the ball hard out for a corner, when it wasn't really necessary. He had a bit of a fist pump celebration with Xhaka and the crowd. That corner was the one that Palace scored from.

In the grand scheme of things not a problem but it is just a tiny thing where the emotion took over, he didn't have to concede the corner.

Obviously I'm nit picking because he had one of his finest games in an Arsenal shirt

i made notice of it too and before the corner was taken I said to a friend 'I have a bad feeling about this corner'.
It was unnecessary but in the grand scheme of things not a factor...it could have been though. It's an emotional game in the moment so I get it, but still.

Against teams where we would expect to dominate I think you could play Walters, you could even play Partey and put Jorginho in midfield.

The worry would be having to face a top side away from home without White. If Saliba comes back soon I think he would be capable of playing RB - more capable than Holding.

For all the reasons above I would have thought it might have been good to give Walters 15 minutes against Palace when we were 4-1 up - could have got rid of any nerves ahead of a time he might be needed in a starting place

I saw that and at the time I saw them fist bumping I said to the guy next to me just watch they will score from this corner now. Corners seem to be our kryptonite and it’s definitely not Rambos strongest area either.

One thing noticeable yesterday was our ferocity at winning the ball back. As soon as their player took possession he was descended upon by several of our players. There was a brilliant moment in the 2nd half when this happened. They just couldn’t get out.

Thinking about the RB situation again - one fairly radical option would be Partey at RB but instructed to be an inverted full-back like Zinchenko. You'd need whoever played left-back to do the role Ben White does - which may suit Tierney better.
So you build with a back 3 of Saliba, Gabriel, Tierney, Partey inverted in to midfield with Jorginho and the rest is the same