Arsenal 2023/24

Three more points.

Four points clear.

Invincibles in tact for another season.

Another very good Monday morning.

COYG 

First game I didn't watch live this season, based on a 3 minute highlights package I think I've saved myself a heart attack.
What I did watch live was Salah's best Bergkamp impression - oh my god. What a result for us.

Arsenal paying $6.00 at TAB to win the league.

In fact you could drop $20 on each of Arsenal/Chelsea/Liverpool/Tottenham and if City don't win, you'd make money.

How confident are you arse fans feeling?

20 Legend

Arsenal paying $6.00 at TAB to win the league.

In fact you could drop $20 on each of Arsenal/Chelsea/Liverpool/Tottenham and if City don't win, you'd make money.

How confident are you arse fans feeling?

worth a punt, might give it a crack.

20 Legend

Arsenal paying $6.00 at TAB to win the league.

In fact you could drop $20 on each of Arsenal/Chelsea/Liverpool/Tottenham and if City don't win, you'd make money.

How confident are you arse fans feeling?

Top 4 will do.

What were our odds before the season? It's been a great start but realistically a title is not possible currently. Falling short of top 4 again from this start would be a major disaster. 

I’m still not thinking of winning the league. It’s way to early and we have a small squad with both Europa and a crazy World Cup to get through. I’m aiming for us to see us fight for as long as possible, rebound from setbacks along the way and be in the top 3 come the end of the season. 

Ian Wright is in Auckland for the womens World Cup launch. Half tempted to go up and see him. 

kwlap

Ian Wright is in Auckland for the womens World Cup launch. Half tempted to go up and see him. 

Any more info on this? Time and date, location etc.

Would love to see him as well 

Good results this morn in terms of our top 4 battle, Spurs being pulled back into the pack, Chelsea dropping points. 

It wouldn't be perfect, but a seemingly simple solution for our squad in Jan would be to grab Tielemans and Zaha, both are available cheap/free now, and would seemingly be able to slot right in, given their proven EPL experience.
Tielemans is not the right type of player to fill in for Partey, but he would neatly slot into Xhaka's current role, allowing Xhaka to fill in for Partey. Again not completely ideal, but it does seem like a solution that could work ok. 

I've got so much going on at the moment, I completely forgot about the PSV game this morning.
I'm shocked to the core, this never happens to me.
Happy to see we got the win!
Lineup was interesting, playing Nketiah and Jesus together - in pre-season they combined really well.
Who watched the game? Interested to get a run-down on how it went?

Buffon II

kwlap

Ian Wright is in Auckland for the womens World Cup launch. Half tempted to go up and see him. 

Any more info on this? Time and date, location etc.

Would love to see him as well 

I'm heading up to Auckland on Monday for Kings of Leon but I guess he'll be gone by then. My all time favourite Arsenal player.

Apparently Gilberto is part of the draw too.

paulm

I've got so much going on at the moment, I completely forgot about the PSV game this morning.
I'm shocked to the core, this never happens to me.
Happy to see we got the win!
Lineup was interesting, playing Nketiah and Jesus together - in pre-season they combined really well.
Who watched the game? Interested to get a run-down on how it went?

Dominated the game. Had pretty much all the ball, but wasted opportunities in front of goal. Very nice finish from Xhaka on his right foot. Saka typically the best player on the pitch and one worrying moment when he went down injured but he seemed ok after. Didn't realise Horseface was their manager. Couldn't hear it but hope he got the welcome he deserved.

Through to the knockouts, but also need to make sure we finish top in order to go straight to the Round of 16 and skip two unnecessary games in Feb.

I think we'd just need a point to top the group? Away at PSV might be tricky but you'd think we'd get through the last game at home to Zurich at the very least. 

PSV banging them in means that if we lose to them away and draw at Zurich we’d be second on goal difference.

Managed to get to the game last night, first time in more than a year. The reports are spot on, even in a “tourist” crowd like this the atmosphere was a step up. We were above the PSV fans who are breaking chairs, plastering Kings Cross with stickers that said “Fudge you, we’re PSV fans”, and needing a drum for every chant, they were absolutely humiliated in the end. 

Recap on the game was spot on, they created a couple of good chances on the break but squandered them. We just couldn’t click in the final 3rd, and Xhaka’s right footed first time volley finish on the half bounce was sublime compared to the rest of our efforts.

Gakpo, their skipper and best player, is in the Arsenal laundry after he reappeared having fallen out of Tomi’s pocket. 

Big Gabi signs a contract extension 🥳

I’m intrigued to see what this means in terms of Saka, Saliba, Martinelli, and even someone like Tomi who will be massively outperforming his pay given his relatively unknown stature when he signed.

I’m also intrigued to see under the new corporate structure and wider strategy around the squad how they’ll help them earn wages that are within a structure, competitive with the market, and ensure it’s weighted towards individual and squad performance.

Anyone seen Wrighty in Auckland today?

Buffon II

Anyone seen Wrighty in Auckland today?

This happened somewhere in Auckland this morning

Wrughty.jpg 155.59 KB

Oh jealous. I would have gone up had I known it was happening. 
Very cool regardless

That was such a sharke game from us. We practically opened the door and invited Saints into the game. Still top of the table, Xhaka still scoring,  but we have got to find some mojo in the final 3rd again. The amount of chances Jesus squandered were poor. The lack of desire when chasing the game was also reminiscent of last season, gave the ball away without being under pressure several times - Vieira being the worst culprit.

Yeah that was absolutely rubbish. This fixture pile up certainly isn't helping. Really need to bounce back massively against Forest before we go to Chelsea.

We ere always gonna throw one or two rubbish games in the mix, happy that we came away with the draw from this one. 5-4-1 at home from the saints says it all really, they were never gonna make it easy for us.
Furst 9 minutes we'd had 6 or 7 decent chances, should have been 2 up at least if Gabriel could have reached Saka's cross and Odegaard could have hit the bottom corner. Xhaka's goal was class, lovely cross from White and and Xhaka seems to be really enjoying getting up to the box.
Jesus deserved a pen, he was being dragged back all the way into the box.
We could have done with a Tielmans kind of goal today. Seeing he is captain and getting full games, the only thing I see us offering him is games in Europe, is that gonna entice him to move in January?

Very disappointing. First game of the season where we've wastefully dropped points we shouldn't have. Second half was really poor. In the last ten minutes we kept giving it away with sloppy touches. 
Mind you, overall we still looked like a high quality side, just seemed like an off day in that second half. Really should have put it to bed invincibles-style in that first 20 minutes. 
Damage was limited however. All our rivals for top 4 dropped points this weekend, only Man City closed the gap on us. I think we're all resigned to Man City winning this title, it would take months more of our recent form before we could start to believe anything else, so can draw on a silver lining there with Chelsea/Spurs/ManU/Liverpool all not winning. 
Must-win at home to Nottingham Forest next week. 

Need to close out top spot in the EL group on Thursday night, then put Forest away on the weekend before heavy rotation against Zurich mid week ahead of Chelsea away. Need to get the boys gee'd back up, and get Partey back firing.

Villa hired Emery.

Saw that, not sure it will help them much, I never really saw him as the one to stop a decline, give him a winning team and he can keep it going - not much else.

bit harsh. His Villeral team always punched above their weight. I reckon he's a good manager. Not sure Villa is the right team but we wil see. 

I think he's better than what we got at Arsenal, club wasn't the right fit for him. His record is very good. 
When we beat Spurs that day during that unbeaten run, we were going places. If he'd got top 4 that season (and we should have), things might have gone differently. 
The recruitment was very poor during his era too. It's well known now that he really wanted Zaha, but they gave him Pepe. 

Yeah, I think Emery showed he couldn't work with the pieces given to him - and unsurprisingly some of those pieces have been moved on under Arteta.

Europa League knock out is going to be mental. Juventus, Barcelona, Ajax, Athletico Madrid all coming our way.

Rough time of it this morning. We put lots of pressure on without much actual threat. Defence wasn’t up to the movement that psv created. 
PSV have a huge goal difference so we now need to win our last match to through

blip in the journey, just need to beat Zurich to guarantee progression.

Holy shark. Mari was just stabbed while in Milan. Hope he’s ok! 

That result has been coming. Performances haven't been good for the last few games and we've been a bit lucky with the results. Think Zinchenko has been a big miss to the way we play. How is it we have managed to sign a left back to cover Tierney and he's the one who is more crocked?

I wonder what will happen in the jan window coz I feel we are about 3 players short atm. Obviously the middle of the park needs reinforcement, plus they often talked about RW position (gakpo would be amazing for us btw). Can’t place the last player but maybe a defender who gives us something different than what we have atm. Like a proper WB or something. 

The only comfort I have for the final round is that PSV have been average on the road as we saw at the Emirates, and Bodo/Glint is a hard place to get 3 points.

That was fudgeing enjoyable. The early goal was spectacular but we did our classic score early, go into our shell a bit. Thankfully whatever Teta said at half time worked and man did we come to life. Forest were a shambles, which helped. But to put 5 quality goals past them is great. Jesus is clearly out of scoring touch given the chances he missed, but given his assists and his off ball contributions you can just see it coming for him soon. 

Hopefully we can rotate like crazy against Zurich, cruise to a W, and be fired up for the London derby.