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Archive for September, 2016

Twenty Isn’t Plenty

On Saturday I have to thump out a preview of our trip to Burnley which means I would have to abbreviate any attempt at covering the last twenty years in the life of Arsenal Football Club. The Arsene Wenger years have taken the club in a direction few could have foreseen in 1996, and even […]

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For the visit of Basel Arsene Wenger made just the two changes to the starting line-up that destroyed Chelsea at the weekend. As expected David Ospina was recalled in goal, and Granit Xhaka deputised for the injured Francis Coquelin. Basel arrived with an impressive record of four wins and a draw in their last five […]

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Please stop groaning. You knew I would have to do that! When I was a lad Basle was how we spelt the city from which our latest Champions League challengers have travelled. According to the Daily Mail it still is, so I am totally persuaded to switch to the Basel of today. Birthday boy Granit […]

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This is one of the good mornings. It follows one of the memorable days. Chelsea have had quite the hold over us in recent seasons, but that hold was not so much broken as smashed aside by a breathtaking Gunners performance. Arsene Wenger summed it up perfectly in the aftermath. “We played with style, with […]

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“Now it’s a new era where it looks like it’s balanced again.” Arsene captures the mood perfectly ahead of the meeting of London’s most successful clubs in the twenty-first century. Much is being made of Chelsea’s dominance of the fixture in the last decade, and to be fair, of our dominance in the decade that […]

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The team doesn’t get revealed these days without a great deal of debate accompanying it on social media. The official Twitter account showed Emiliano Martinez surprisingly perhaps behind a back four of Ainsley Maitland-Niles (an attacking midfielder), Rob Holding, fit-again Gabriel, and captain for the night Kieran Gibbs. Mohamed Elneny and Granit Xhaka were finally […]

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You have to be of a certain age to appreciate that headline. Sorry kids! When the topic of conversation turns to Nottingham Forest I usually end up boring people to tears with tales of Alan Ball’s debut, and the night we knocked Cloughie’s 42 matches unbeaten team, forerunner to our Invincibles, out of the FA […]

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From the intensity of a Champions League evening in Paris we returned to Premier League action in East Yorkshire, definitely not Humberside, as a friendly Tiger corrected me beforehand. Once again the team selection caused consternation and debate in the hour ahead of kick-off. Francis Coquelin retained his place alongside Santi Cazorla, and the rounded […]

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The trip to Paris now a distant memory, the Gunners face the long schlep up to Humberside in order to record a third consecutive Premiership victory. It would seem to be needed even at this early stage of the season as we seek to keep within five points of Manchester City, likely to make it […]

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We Are Ten

It’s a modest sort of a Thursday. Quiet, unassuming, not much in the way of new Arsenal happenings to stir things up. Sure, there are the tailwinds from Tuesday’s draw in Paris. I still don’t know why Granit Xhaka and Olivier Giroud didn’t start. Depending on who you listen to we either won the lottery because Cavani […]

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