(The not-so-temporary quite-official) Gooner Thread

He was also very black and white with Zigic? - No, Welbeck? - No, Can you afford Falcao? - No.

That was the one that made me laugh - time keeping at football is becoming a real bugbear of mine. The amount of times I have been at the Emirates and watched keepers slow the game down from about the 10th minute, with the ref doing nothing about it (occassionally holding up a hand and pointing to your watch is not doing anything about deliberate timewasting). Even after watching all the timewasting throughout the game, there is still only 1 minute additional time at the half, and 4 minutes at the end of the game.  What makes it even worse is most of the 4 minutes at the end of the game is chewed up by a subsitution and a couple of injuries (meaning the ball is only "in play" for about 2 minutes). You cannot blame the other team for doing it, but the amount of times I have sat there and thought "just book the keeper now, in the 15th minute, and it does not happen again".

The first time I have ever seen an Arsenal player slightly try to slow the game down at home and he gets the yellow card immediately.

So true. I get annoyed at time-wasting, but don't blame players for doing it - I would do the same. It's up to the ref to stop it.

It is when the ref does something like during a game:

It is the whole "you are trying to be clever, but I am on to you. You are going to waste about 10 minutes over the course of the half, while 60,000 people shiver in sub-zero temperatures, but rest assured your little game won't work on me - I will add 4 minute on at the end of the game.  Now sure, I would have added 4 minutes anyway as there will be subs, injuries, etc, but that is not important".

Just book him you fucking cunt.

Chambers named in the first England squad of the season.

Borussia Dortmund already arrrrrrh

Our draw is OK, I was hoping we didn't get Gala but better them than Bilbao.

3 teams fighting it out for 2 places.

MCFC draw is shocking. 

Draw not too bad. Dortmund not as strong as they once were, we're good against Turkish opposition and Anderlecht shouldn't pose too many problems. 

Chelsea get a free pass as usual, City got a shocker although still ought to make it out and Liverpool should be nailed on for second place in its group.

So dortmund, gala and anderlecht. At home I back us taking all the points. In Germany... we may walk away with 1. Gala 1-3 (but 1 would be a good result) and at ander we should take all 3. That should leave us at the top of the group.

Simple right?...

I'm looking forward to the Dortmund ties, last season they were crackers - both games won against the run of play by the away sides.

Wenger on strikers:

"We are open for any position as long as we feel the player can strengthen the squad. Buy to buy? I don't see the purpose of that."

I think that's a fair shout, and reflection on buying someone like Zigic.

Lots of noise about Song leaving Barca, would you take him back to fill Arteta's gap? A season long loan with a view to buy based on performance could suit both Arsenal & Barcelona.

It's a shame that Gibbs is injured, he'd have been pushing for inclusion after Cashleys retirement.

Yeah true. He's been very unlucky, he seems to get injured just before an international break every time so he always misses out. Seem to remember the last couple of times he's been picked he's got injured the game before and had to pull out. He'd have gone to the 2010 World Cup if he hadn't got injured at the end of the season too.

Tough CL draw as I wanted to avoid Dortmund and Galatasaray. Seems like we play Dortmund every season these days and we have usually struggled against Galatasaray in the past. At least they don't have Drogba anymore. But it's not the worst group and we should be able to go through. Really need to top the group for once so avoid having to play Bayern or one of the big sides in the 2nd round. Be nice to go deep into it for the first time in years. Chelsea get the easiest draw as usual but City may struggle to get through. Looking forward to seeing Liverpool get slaughtered by Real Madrid, but they should be OK for 2nd in their group.

Also:

I think having song back would be smart business. Loan or buy. In his last season with us he was immense (the long through ball to rvp volley goal against everton comes to mind). Now id imagine that it will take half a season for him to find his feet again after not playing regularly for a while. The only thing im hesitant on is. Is he the world class DMF we have been looking for? Maybe...maybe not...

No he is not.

He might be a good stop-gap for us on loan though, given he can cover DMF, CB and even fullback at a stretch.

Song would be a playing for 4th place signing.

.... ya what?

Some rumours that he may be available on loan, but seems like he's probably already a Real Madrid player in principle. We should do everything we can to make it happen if it's possible though.

20m for a year long loan? Yeah, right. Like that will happen..

^ yep that's mental, never gonna happen

And they're saying 50mil to buy which is also too expensive for a 28yo with no EPL experience

I heart ridiculous striker rumours. Soo much better than being beaten by some 3rd tier team.

The 20 million apparently includes wages, it's not just the loan fee. The reality is, those are the kind of figures strikers in that tier cost.

We'll end up with Crouch.

has to be better than Zigic.

There has been talk of clubs going for Falcao or Cavani, and I think that Falcao would be by far the better way to spend the money. Cavani was brilliant at Napoli but has been very average at PSG. I think he completely overshadowed by Zlatan, and that has ruined him as a player.

Cavani not ruined, just needs new pastures.

Or he stays and we take The big Swede/Bosnian. 12 years too late but still be cool

Well exactly. A player like Falcao doesn't come around very often but when he does, you spend the money. Especially when you need a striker. Otherwise you end up with a 21 year old who has never scored a goal as your only available centre forward. As for being 28, he should still be in his prime. Before missing the second half of last season injured, in his previous 4 seasons he scored 34, 38, 36 and 34 goals. 11 in 19 before the injury last season and already 2 in 3 games this season. IMO, the kind of rare player who could be the difference between a scrap for 4th and 1st. If it's possible it's a no brainer.

I'd happily back a 50m move for either of them. Cavani has been overshadowed but he's playing from the wing.

Podolski still confuses me, 53 appearances and 19 goals from the wing, why are we not giving him game time? That's 0.36 goals per appearance. Cazorla is sitting on 0.23 goals per game, Walcott is on 0.23. Only Giroud has a better goals per game ratio of 0.39 and he's an out and out striker.

Given the results this weekend there is certainly a chance to establish a gap over sides traditionally considered our rivals.While t we haven't  played that well, I'd be chuffed to have a little gap on sides this early.

Arsenal have won 2 trophies since United last won a competitive match.

Rubbish performance with three more potential injuries...hopefully they come good over the international break.

Leicester played well though. If they can keep playing like that they'll stay up.

Edit: interesting interview with Wenger post-match. Said we are "very active" in the transfer market.

ESPN claiming 26 shots and only 6 on target, were we that off the boil? Didn't see the game but my impression was it was our typical frustration of lots of posession and shots, just couldn't close it out.

Some nice stuff played but ultimately frustrating. Leicester were very good. 

Like Wenger said, we didn't have many (any?) clear cut chances after the goal. 

We're lucky Leicester didn't win that match, they were really up for it. Every time they countered I was concerned they were going to score. A fairly mediocre performance by quite a few out there.

I really felt like that was a game that Rosicky could have changed with his bursts of pace through the middle.

i really can't believe we are in the same situation with the tranfers window again. We allways needed a DMF at the start of the window and yet still dont have one, sold TV5 and still no CB signed. they way we started the transfer window i thought we going to have all the business done and dusted well ahead of deadline day.

question you for lads who would you rather have starting up from for us Remy or Sanago?

Even Darren Bent or someone would be better than what we have. We look so poor up front. Every team in the league must have a better centre forward than Sanogo. We're really lacking that bit of magic that a top striker might provide. Someone who could just find a goal on a day like today. Could Sanogo actually get through a 2nd season without scoring? Surely one will at least hit him and go in one day won't it? Deflection in the box or off his shoulder when going for a header or something. Absolutely inexcusable from Wenger that this is our centre forward.

It was much the same sort of performance as the previous 2 games though. I'm not liking this new formation. Think we should stick with the 4-2-3-1 that took us to top for so long last season and perhaps with a top striker and without the injuries to Ramsey and Walcott could have taken us a bit closer to the title. Ramsey is losing a bit on influence by being asked to do everything without a number 10 ahead of him and Ozil is wasted on the wing. Ideally we'd go back to the shape of last season with Ramsey alongside a DM, Ozil in front of him at 10 and some actual wingers out wide. Walcott can't come back soon enough.

Sanchez was really good again which is the positive but imagine what he must be thinking when he has the ball and looks up to see it's Sanogo ahead of him when last season that was Messi. Koscielny probably should have been taken off immediately as it was such a big head knock. Chambers looked dodgy but that's fair enough. He's 19 and only played a few games at this level before and never at CB. But he's the cover for three fourths of our defence.

Got to hand it to Mourinho. Last season he kept acknowledging that his three strikers - Torres, Ba and Eto'o - weren't firing so what did he do about it? Discarded all three and upgraded them with Costa, Drogba and Remy. Of course he has more money to spend but noone is saying we need to buy three like that. We could certainly afford one.

To be fair to Leicester though they were pretty good and will stay up if they play like that all season. Morgan in particular was a monster at the back.

Sanogoal strikes again!