Was thinking this too earlier.

His application to the nut house has finally been accepted

Very irritating when we should be prioritising trying to a goal game instead of giving away a needless free kick.

How on earth as Martinez not been sent off in English football yet?

It was accepted years ago, unfortunately he had them on 'block' so he didn't get the message.

All you say makes a lot of sense but Mikel [not surprisingly ] has too much " latter day Wenger " flowing through his veins .

Whenever we suffer a loss some immediately dredge up a few names to improve the squad or blame injuries [ Oh [ slobber sob ] if only Ødegaard was available

but of the two teams on display ; making one on one comparisons only Isak , Gordon , Guimaraes would make a combined team .

Yet they were a country mile better than us ; so that leaves one factor .... manager/ tactics ..... given Mikel's timidity I can't see us ever playing expansive gung ho football .

that's the story John ; I love seeing someone else getting their nuts in a knot .
Do a bit of yoga , go for a walk down to the local slag heap , go out into the shed and make a book case that'll calm the nerves .

If you saw my carpentry skills: they are not likely to calm anyone. I am currently in South America. The one EPL game they showed a replay of was our game. There were 6 other games on tv, many live from a number of countries.

I sent him a message to see how he's doing ...

Many moons ago we had a guy on here Cannon Balls

.... he proudly posted a photo of a bird house he'd built ; I remarked that the level and square came with the No 2 Junior Carpenters Tool Kit

Inter away then Chelsea away, no let up at the moment. That turnaround is going to be tough especially as Chelsea play a virtual entire different team for their European games so they’ll mostly all be well rested. Chelsea play at home to Noah(!!??) on Thursday.

https://x.com/samimokbel81_dm/status/18 ... -j6VVZXEoA

Edu set to leave Arsenal

I do wonder, after the way we've played this season, if the last two seasons might just be as good as it gets.

Few teams just keep moving forward, all it takes is some injuries, loss of form and poor decisions in the transfer market and you can quickly go from being contenders to also-rans.

It was clear we needed some high quality additions to the forward line this summer and probably another creative midfielder, we weren't able to do it and it looks like it might come back to bite us on the bum.

Liverpool's next 7 in the league
Villa (h), Saints (a), City (h), Newcastle (a), Everton (a), Fulham (h), Spurs (a)

City's next 7 in the league
Brighton (a), Spurs (h), Liverpool (a), Forest (h) Palace (a), Man U (h), Villa (a)

Arsenal's next 7 in the league
Chelsea (a), Forest (h), West Ham (a), Man U (h), Fulham (a) Everton (H), Palace (a)

The away games against lower half teams are crucial for us, we need to find a way of getting back to the back end of last season's form where we strode in to other teams ground, silenced the crowd and dominated by playing on the front foot. We should be taking maximum points from west ham, fulham, palace at least.

we need to use this mini stretch of games to get back within striking distance because the other two have far tougher runs than us here.

Hi Rich,

The way we are playing what makes you think we will take maximum points against WH, Fulham and Palace.

All tricky places to go when not firing on all cyclinders. The sort of games where sometimes you just need someone to do something specially individually and all we really have is Saka to do that at the moment.

Will be interesting to see where he ends up.

He brought an element of common sense to our transfer dealings after some absolute madness under the wenger and Emery periods. Theres some absolutely superb signings he made when you look through it. Big gabby 27 million, martinelli 6, timber etc etc. He seemed part of the team that restored order to the club.

It’s a shame but the nature of the business. Hopefully they move to secure a first class replacement.

Thinking back to the Bayern away match last year the conclusion was we just didn’t have enough firepower in the final third to be able to overcome them away from home. To be honest we didn’t address that this summer and instead opted to bring in players who were similar in profile to what we had already.

We have 3 players who can regularly break lines in the final third. Saka, Ødegaard and Martinelli. They have pace and final ball but outside of that once in a blue moon Partey, Rice or Jorginho will find an assist or it’s set pieces. It’s nowhere near good enough for a team expected to compete for the title. Add to that we actually let 2 players go who can break lines in Vieira (passing) & smith Rowe (movement) and no matter how much or little they were being used they at least had that profile. This was a mistake.

The other problem we have is that we made a major transfer blooper signing Gabriel Jesus. He cost 42 million and is our 2nd highest paid player on 265k a week. 15 goals scored in the premier league and 20 in all competitions since he joined is a dismal return and nobody will touch him on those wages apart from the Saudis. I do think Arsenal cannot afford to make bad transfer deals of this nature on our budget and we should be enjoying having access to such an expensive signing on our bench but actually I was surprised he came on instead of Sterling Saturday.

It’s not the end of the world and it’s worth remembering a month ago we beat PSG so it’s not all dome and gloom but save yourself the torment of riding your hopes on every league result because it ain’t happening this year.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... -adversity

There is plenty in this article which is valid and that many Arsenal fans are asking as well.....but why is the headline 'Mystifying Culture of Entitlement'.....nowhere in the article does it explain the headline.

I cant see how anyone analysing Arsenal over the last 3 years can come to the conclusion that Arsenal (as a club, manager, players) are in any way entitled

Nothing currently, just saying we need to snap out of the current funk and find a way to take all 3 points. The list of 7 games presents an opportunity for use to drag ourselves back in the race.

The issue when we're trying to sign attacking players is we haven't been able to generally pivot to an alternative signing. We've seemingly snapped up all our first choices when going after defensive players and central midfielders but there is a long list of attackers we've been heavily linked with (by respected journalists) and just haven't signed anyone.

In reality we've been punching above our weight for 2 years when you consider a) where we were and b) what others have spent (Man U and Chelsea), but we are very much reliant on a fit squad and a few key players to be playing well.

I still retain hope for this season, this squad went on a 16 out of 18 game winning run just last season. But we really could do with a boost in January. Striker and left wing.

I think we do have a GK and defence who can will the big trophies. I think Ødegaard, Saka and Rice are good enough to be in a team winning big trophies - so you're looking at 3 key first team positions in CM, left wing and striker. Zubimendi, Williams, Gyökeres - each with a release clause and £60m for the trio - of course they need to all want to come and plenty of other teams want them but that was the kind of boost we needed this summer

https://www.football365.com/news/arteta ... fle-forest

Talk of Edu joining Forest and leading up their owner's other 2 clubs. Strange move, yes its overseeing a collection of clubs but none as prestigious as Arsenal. Would seem like more than just a guy wanting to do something different - a possible power struggle

Arsene Wenger is going to be the new sporting director. This makes complete sense. Welcome back Arsene.

Hello Rich. I was going to make the same post. It’s a really weird accusation as not only is it obviously untrue (a strong team work ethic is fundamental to Artetas Arsenal) but the article doesn’t really give any evidence for it. I think Johnathon Wilson is a really smart journalist and author so I was surprised he wrote something so weak.

Interesting that things don't appear to be going well for Mbappe at Real Madrid, he's been criticised for not doing his defensive work and having a bad attitude.

Its similar to the past few weeks when all I heard were pundits and media telling us 'I don't want to hear about injuries being an excuse'......not once has Arteta used it as an excuse, he's gone out of his way to say the opposite.....Arteta was called out for supposedly not giving 100% accurate news on injury updates - despite a) him potentially not knowing for sure and b) why should he give opponents accurate news. Meanwhile every other manager moans about injuries (Pep!) and lo and behold a lot of those players were absolutely fit for City's next game - but the media gave it a full investigation of minutes out and how its tough for them.

It's just bizarre

Depending how you want to spin the Edu news you can frame it 1 of 2 ways.

1) disaster for Arsenal, Edu had such a strong link with Kronkes and Arteta and has been a key cog in driving the club from a mess to title challengers. he was instrumental in Arsenal's uptick in the transfer market with some very smart signings such as Gabriel, Saliba and Ødegaard

or

2) he's leaving to triple his money, had failed to use his incredible links in Brazil and South America to allow Arsenal to sign some of the worlds best talent from there, he was responsible for disastrous signings like Willian, Vieira and Lokonga. He's failed to get good value from Arsenal sales, and has also failed to get some key big signings over the line for players that were very publicly chased (Sesko, Mudryk, Caicedo, Raphinha etc). It is a real opportunity for Arsenal to build on his work and push on with a fresh approach to the director of football role especially if there were aspects of running the club where the top people werent seeing eye to eye

The truth as always will be a balance in between but I think we can be sure of which side the media will generally fall down on

Quite often Headlines get sub-edited. I wonder if that happened here.

Hardly a surprise.

2 years ago we won at St James' park 2-0 with a midfield of Jorginho, Xhaka, Ødegaard with Zinchenko inverting from left back.

Ødegaard has missed the last two 1-0 defeats there. At the weekend the midfield was Rice, Merino with Partey inverting and Trossard/Havertz playing a double false 9 and Timber coming from left back.

There is a definite need to match Newcastle physically but we have gone too far that way with the balance of the midfield exacerbated by Ødegaard's absence. There is a technical ability on the ball, passing, dribbling and creativity that is really missing from the midfield currently. We also don't have that sort of player at full back, left wing or striker. The full-backs are solid and their limitations in an attacking sense would be covered over if it were coming from other areas so its not the primary problem. Martinelli and Trossard are 'finishers' they don't do huge amounts in the build up, they are best at arriving and finishing moves. Similar in a way to Havertz, who also fulfils the role of hold up man. Partey can play an incisive pass and Rice can go on a buccaneering run but Partey/Rice/Merino all in the same team is one too many. Right now Trossard and Martinelli in the same team feels like one too many. When you have all of that you probably then need a zinchenko or Joringho from the base of midfield to set tempo etc.

Even on the bench - Sterling - another finisher, Jesus - a chaos type player right now but is lacking end actions. Nwaneri could help but its a lot to take the creative burden of the team on his shoulders alone

The balance is all wrong at the moment but we've painted ourselves in to this corner a bit

Yes, I've heard journalists can write a piece and a headline gets edited by someone else - even if that's the case its a really strange part to the headline, as there was nothing in the article to suggest this could be part of the headline.
You could equally write a headline on City's loss v Bournemouth saying City were arrogant and took Bournemouth too lightly and assumed Bournemouth would just roll over for them. It feels like its the sort of headline the reactionary fan in the pub loves to read and would spout himself but has absolutely zero substance

I understand that the pretenders to the throne are likely to have more questions put to them than the team who has won 5 of the last 6 titles, but for all the accusations and questions put to us on how we cope without Ødegaard you could ask the same questions of Man City and Rodri given a) their record without him and b) their ability to far more easily replace him than we can Ødegaard

Ah CB - those were the days - he certainly added a lot of interest to the forum. His duels with Daz were especially good fun. Where is our resident writer now? His work on Spooks and Strike was top notch, and a recent watching of Showtrial suggests he is still a sharp one - terrific telly.

https://x.com/alexcturk/status/18534904 ... -j6VVZXEoA

This is utterly ridiculous journalism. ‘A cold shoulder to your English fans’ for not giving an answer in English despite saying in very good English he’s doing the media in Portuguese - presumably because he’s doing the media as sporting manager still!

Truth from journalism never gets in the way of a good headline. I noticed on a Spurs site that after they beat City in the cup, that one of newspapers suggested that a youthful City were beaten by a much more experienced Spurs. The comments from a Spurs fan pointed out the average age of the City team was 26yo. The average age of Spurs was 23yo. The love in the English media has with City reminds me of the Man Utd days.

I think you've hit the nail-on-the-head Rich. It's all very well waiting to secure your no.1 or no.2 attacking target but things change so quickly in football. We needed more firepower and creativity and arguably have less with Martinelli seemingly unable to recapture his form of a couple of seasons ago, Nketiah gone and Jesus unable to provide a regular source of goals. Even Emile Smith Rowe offered a goal threat.

Trossard came after we pivoted from Mudryk. When we couldn’t sign Sesko this summer who was the next striker, what about Vlahovic a few years back? We made bids and couldn’t get them, but we didn’t get anyone else. We’ve shown we’re happy to pivot on signings but didn’t with our attacking targets.

Yes, a sub-editor would almost certainly have written the headline - it's part of their job description. In this instance, they didn't bother reading the article beneath, which is a bit of a shame.

Hmmm " those were the days " I think Old Man the key difference back then was variety .

These days the forum subsists on Rich's twenty five daily musings and the three or four who answer him .

Back then there seemed a lot more regular posters and what set it apart from other forums the main topic of conversation was often non Arsenal .

If you look back Daz's posts they were rarely about Arsenal but I loved his verbal gymnastics Always interesting he was a sharp cookie .

The slippery little re tard will be back crowing from the roof tops next time the NZ cricket team are all out for 18 runs at Lords or the Welsh Rugby Team tonk the All Blacks 76 -0

Really enjoying the Jimmy Seed story ... plenty of mentions of Arsenal .

Homely little excerpts from yesteryear .... Mid 1930's ; having made it to the First Division Charlton were gloriously happy one year ........ they made a profit of 5 pounds

what are you doing in South America ...... re tracing Che Guevara's footsteps ....... heading a diving expedition on the " General Belgrano " ...?

3 or 4…ouch.

Has anyone read Keown’s book, he chose this as the back cover picture so I doubt it’s a bland read (like Wenger’s sadly was)