Arsenal’s Task Is Clear After Rivals Have A Good Day
Nov 26th, 2016 by 'holic
That was an interesting set of results on this Saturday as our title rivals set out their stall. Manchester City took over at the summit with something of a fortunate come from behind win at Burnley, and with Vincent Company out for another six weeks they do not look convincing leaders. They didn’t stay there long.
Liverpool took over with a couple late goals at home to Sunderland and saw their talisman, Coutinho, taken off on a stretcher. Then came what in prospect was the match of the day. Chelsea had the chance to become the third league leaders of the day, but their opponents from the brown and sticky end of Seven Sisters had an opportunity to displace us from fourth place with an away win at the bus stop in Fulham.
The neighbours owned the first half and should have turned round a goal to the good but Pedro’s strike turned Chelsea’s fortunes round. They went on to win with a biblical strike by the basket case Moses (sorry about that) to remove the absurd ‘invincible’ talk from the marshlands.
It was an extra recovery day for the Gunners after a tough evening against PSG in the Champions League. The visit of Bournemouth on Sunday sees us face up to Benik Afobe (if he makes an appearance from the bench), a player with something to prove, and Edddie Howe, a young coach being perhaps prematurely linked with the Arsenal. The regulations regarding on-loan players means Jack Wilshere gets a weekend off. It will be good to see him and give him a cheer again. Arsene was asked what difference his absence might make to the visitors.
“When a player like Jack is in top form, you miss him always. But we want to win games again and the solution is definitely more on our side to focus on our offensive performance and be tight at the back, rather than expecting any weakness from Bournemouth.”
I’ts good to see we are not taking them likely. Bournemouth’s players will relish the opportunity to test our eighteen match unbeaten run. They have little to lose and know full well we are, strange though it might seem, struggling for fluency at the moment.
With nobody fit to return from injury Arsene has to find the right selection to get us back on the front foot from the same squad that was available in the week. Petr Cech’s recall is a given and the only real call to be made immediately in front of him is Nacho Monreal or Kieran Gibbs to start at left-back.
Far more influential could be the selections around Mesut Ozil, given little quality ball to work with of late. Aaron Ramsey got a mixed reaction to his performance in the week but his best work is done in the centre of the pitch and perhaps he will be given another opportunity to show that he can get to grips with the role. Is this the time to give Granit Xhaka another chance to get to grips with the Premier League?
Although Olivier Giroud seems to be back to full match-fitness the temptation to play Alexis centrally in a bid to improve our fluidity must be strong. Theo Walcott should start on the right and maybe AlexOxlade-Chamberlain will reclaim the other flank from Alex Iwobi.
The ‘holic pound
Both of last season’s matches against Bournemouth ended 2-0 to the Arsenal, so you won’t be surprised to hear that is the favourite with bookies this time around at about 15/2. It may be the smart bet but I fancy both teams will serve up an even better game. I am drawn to the elevens on offer for a 3-1 home win.
If GWR and South West Trains get me there on time I hope to see a lot of you tomorrow. Now we know we need the three points to stay within three of Chelsea at the top, so the target on Sunday is clear. Wherever you are watching it…
Have a great one, ‘holics.
80 Responses to “Arsenal’s Task Is Clear After Rivals Have A Good Day”
Get IN!
😀
..’basket case Moses..
😀 😀 😀
Basket case? There oughta be a (Mosaic) law against that, ‘Holic!
The top three won today and our game tomorrow becomes a must win. Totts struggled after a decent start due to their mid week European exertions. We are in the same position and fatigue may become a factor later on and scoring an early goal becomes very important. Walcott, will hopefully deliver tomorrow.
Hope Xhaka starts with Coq and Ox in place of Iwobi. Giroud would be our super sub again. 2-0 to the good guys.
Allot of pressure now on tomorrows game. I hope the crowd act accordingly, and also our manager on making the right decisions. Last thing we need is a jaded looking team, so Arsene better be ready to make sooner sub changes if needed. Crucial points up for grabs, I only hope the players realise how crucial. Last thing we need is an, ugh!, a goal will come attitude, which occurs more often than you’d like. Lets hope our boys go out there with some real intent on winning this league.
of all the english towns i came across the dead ringer of dagenham dave who can’t stop bitching about peasants and that something should better change for there is no heroes anymore and he almost feels like a wog and then he saw his old school mam and asked her to bring him some nubile for just five minutes.
They don’t know what is coming.
The Touchpaper has been lit.
The Floodgates are slowly opening.
A Tsunami is building.
Panic is writ large on many faces.
To all those morally bankrupt,do nothing excuses for human beings who looked the other way,Accountability and Retribution is at hand.
Long long overdue.
Those who suffered so long in silence,come out from the dark,and lift your heads toward the light.
Your time has come.
Some trolling on here tonight methinks and some impostors!
Nice preview Holic as always. From reports and the little I saw of the Chelsea/ Totts game nobody at the top won easily today and that will probably be the case tomorrow.
I remember the game we played at home against them last year because Ozil probably played the best game I’ve ever seen him produce. Quite sublime . It would be nice to produce a quality performance tomorrow as well as win. I haven’t seen us win at home since the Basel game so I hope we can get back to winning ways. I think 2-0 to the Arsenal might be the mark tomorrow and I hope we start to build a settled rhythm.
My team would be
Cech
Jenkinson Mustafi Koscielny Montreal
Xhaka Elneny
Walcott Ozil Ox
Sanchez
Ospina, Gabriel, Gibbs, Ramsey, Coquelin , Giroud, Iwobi
But I expect him to play Coquelin instead of Elneny and Ramsey instead of Ox
Fine preview Guvna and I suspect your 3-1 punt may bear fruit.
I differ from TTG in my selection in just two positions. I would start Ramsey for Elneny and Gibbs for Monreal as they are two players coming into fitness and form for whom another match just 4 days on shouldn’t be a problem. I am also keen to see how Ramkha works as a midfield duo.
A return to the imperious Mesut would be rather timely too.
COYG
A must win game tomorrow no questions asked we know what’s in front of us and we have to stay within reach of those teams above us. Hopefully we can bring back some of that pacey Arsenal game plan we all love to watch!
UTA!
Lighten our darkness oh Lord we beseech thee, Clive.
D’YOU SPILL MY PINT !
If AW means what he says … the solution is definitely more on our side to focus on our offensive performance … then that had better mean Theo starting. And from my pov OG up front, with Xhakaboom and Rambo behind Mesut and Alexis.
4-0.
Nice lager joke, Trev. 😀 But seriously, have a look at Emil Forsberg if you get a Leipzig game on your TV. Any size TV would do it. 😉
Bournemouth has never scored a goal against us.
Our record against them is P3, W3 GF 7 GA 0.
And Ozil has scored in both games he has played against them.
Clive@7 doesn’t sound like Clive.
And when did cba last post a singleton?
Mischief is afoot.
Cheers H!
and everyone else on here for real.
“biblical strike by the basket case Moses”
Keep taking the tablets!
Just off, don’t know what to expect so come on Arsenal surprise me with a great performance.
COYRs
Random match day stat:
Two longest-serving managers in the Premier League gong head-to-head today: AW (more than 20 years) vs Eddie Howe (just over four years).
Let’s do it. Just win.
COYG
Debuchy!
Debuchy will start today, BBC says.
And hints at a Giroud start, too.
But apparently not:
Cech, Debuchy, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Xhaka, Elneny, Walcott, Ozil, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alexis
Bench: Ospina, Gibbs, Gabriel, Coquelin, Ramsey, Iwobi, Giroud
Interesting team
COME ON YOU ARSENAL!
Come On!!!!
Get in!!!
Alexis really does strike fear in the defenders methinks..
GET IN!!
Debuchy is off with a hammy, Gabriel on.
..and there goes Debuchy..
Come on Gabriel!
Penalty for Bournesmouth. 1-1.
Wilson barges into Monreal and they get a penalty. Fooled the ref.
Comical..
Bournemouth creating more chances. COYG.
Why isn’t that another yellow for Arter?
Grr.. !
Come On!!
Alexis hits the bar, unlucky.
I do hope we do get to extend Alexis and Ozil’s contracts…
Brilliant shot… unlucky at the bar!
Poor Debuchy has caught Abou Diaby disease.
Teams seem to come into the Emirates and play with more freedom and panache than the home side, who play tight and don’t create any real chances. Curious eh?
And that was no penalty, and Arter on Ozil should have been red.
Theo!!!!
Walcott may be shite with his legs this game.. but he sure can head!
GET IN!!!!!!!!!!!
Bayonne
Agree that Arter’s challenge was totally reckless and deserved a red and the ref did not deem it even a yellow.
Cook shoulder charges and falls down and gets a free kick??
Bollocks!!!!!!!!!!
Come On!!
Great reflex save by Cech.
At this point, need the Holic pound to come good.
Alexis!!!
The pound comes through!
And a big thank you to Peter Cech.
Across the line. Great second half.
We have super subs!
😀
..and Alexis.. just WOW!
Glad he chose us instead of Pool..
😀
Keeping Alexis with us is the problem. He is definitely worth the 200k a week he is supposedly asking for. Sign him up Arsene.
At Old Toilet, at 1-1, Mourinho sent off after throwing a hissy fit over a yellow card to Pogba for diving (he did). Tee hee!
Moaninho always makes it about himself…
He’s gone next season i’ll wager.
😀
That was a fantastic second half from the team. The energy and pressing was top class and we had played with the same uninhibited manner in the last three games we could have won atleast one of them instead of drawing all three.
Koscielny was absolutely immense today and he seems to relish the captaincy and leads by example. The selection of Xhaka immediately paid rich dividends and he played some beautiful aerial passes and through balls. Elneny was full of energy right until the very end and did some very tidy closing down of the Bournemouth players. Sanchez and Ozil proved yet again that they are different class and both of them seem really determined this season. Giroud and the much maligned Ramsey did very well after coming on. Walcott had disappointing first half but the goal seemed to give him the required confidence to grow into the game. He still annoyingly misses some straight forward one on ones which hurts the attacking momentum.The Ox also grew into the game and a run of games could really be beneficial to him as well as Iwobi who could do with a bit of time out of the firing line. Debuchy was unfortunate with the injury after a promising start to the game. Felt bad for him. And Gabriel did a good job filling in at right back. I was worried when he came on but he coped well and used his physical presence in commanding fashion.
It was a game of high intensity. It was also the sort of game which should give the team a lot of confidence. The same old questions would have been asked of the team if we hadn’t put in that second half performance. Instead we are well in the mix after an Unbeaten November.
Arsene on Debuchy :-
On the injury to Mathieu Debuchy: “It was the back-heel that killed him. We are devastated for him.”
—–
He looked sharp.. what a pity he’s dead now..
😀
It’s interesting to speculate on the future of the Odious Portuguee.
I think he will believe that he is able to pull the club around and to drive the team to achieve things. It’s not his way to hang around and to turn a team around through building things up, but he might be concerned that his claim to have won things at every club he’s been at will go out of the window if he leaves OT empty-handed. So, I don’t think he’s going to walk any time soon.
On the other hand, I doubt that the powers that be in Stretford will want to make themselves look silly by sacking him. After all, if to make one unfortunate managerial appointment is unfortunate and making two looks like carelessness, how on earth would making three look?
So it looks like a marriage truly made in hell, where neither party dare end it. As I say, it’s an interesting speculation, and I’m not unhappy about it – the longer the “tragic” soap opera goes on up there the better, say I.
COYG
Manure draw again.
All hail the ‘holic pound, and beers all around on Lars’ tab. 😉
I enjoyed my day up at the Grove this afternoon although I had a better view of their penalty than the referee and he was wrong to give it. I thought the foul was the other way. That goal stalled our momentum and it took us till the second half to regain control. I thought Alexis was superb and Xhaka had a very decent game. Theo is working much harder but his first touch eluded him today but poor old Ox struggled today . The wide men in our attacking formation tucked in and we struggled to get width especially when Debuchy went off.
Bournemouth are not relegation candidates and knocked the ball around nicely but to look at the number of bookings you would assume it was a bloodbath.
The referee was utterly pedantic and useless and I hope we don’t see him again this season. He got an enormous number of decisions wrong.
Still congrats to Holic who is probably spending the accumulated pounds in the Tollie. I was driving so I had the pleasure of following a Portuguese brat throwing his toys out of the pram.
Interesting point Pangloss @59, about neither the club wanting to sack nor Maureen wanting to walk away. I don’t think Manure wanted to hire him in the first place. They would have carried on with LVG for another year but their hand was forced by the announcement of Guardiola by City. It has been a reactionary appointment. I suspect Maureen will do it the only way he knows how to do it. He is already making noises about how it would take him a further two transfer windows to make this united team his own. I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent huge amounts on big players in these two windows. We have already seen that not qualifying for the champions league hardly makes a difference to their spending power. They should also be aware by now that spending doesn’t ensure good performances on the pitch since they have spent massive amounts in the past three years or so.
The thing that seems to be bothering Maureen’s ego right now is that he is no longer the media darling anymore with the likes of Klopp and Guardiola having stolen his thunder. He desperately wants to among the mix at the top but his team is playing rather pedestrian stuff. It won’t be long before the entitled crowd at the toilet turns against him if the results continue in the same vein and that would be an awesome sight to behold.
I really think we should ban comment about Moaninho on this blog. It would be the thing that would hurt him the most to think people were ignoring him!
Thanks for the kind words Desi. I agree that ManUre weren’t delighted to hire the Special One and are likely to give him shedloads of money to throw around during the transfer window while he remains on the scene. I wonder how much success he will have with it. I think it’s unarguable that he comprehensively lost the dressing room down at the Bus Stop and it seems to me that he’s finding it hard to get the Rowdies players on his side.
I’ve not seen him saying that it would take him a couple more windows to get the team that he wants, but it seems typical of the man. Maybe the rose-tinteds are more deeply tinted than I thought, or maybe I’m just getting old, but it does seem to me that back in the day, a manager could be expected to get as much as possible out of the players he had. In the long-distant past before transfer windows, I don’t recall managers coming in and making several signings immediately even though it was possible then.
I suspect that the club will decide the timing of José’s departure and I expect it will be sometime in the autumn of 2017 when it becomes obvious that despite three transfer windows massive spending (summer 2016, winter 2017, summer 2017) he’s not going to deliver.
Agreed also that Mourinho is no longer the media’s darling. He still gets enormous coverage but it’s no longer uniformly adulatory and uncritical. I think the balance is still favourable but I still have a copy of The Times from the beginning of October 2014 which included a coruscating article about him by Matthew Syed. It was the first criticism of him that I recall.
Enough talk from me of rival managers.
COYG
Oops, sorry TTG. The above written and posted before I saw your proposal.
How come there’s no post number 64 ?
Good stuff, Pangloss.
I do ignore Mourinho to the extent that I switch stations whenever he comes on until I calculate that he will be gone again.
I don’t care what he has to say. About anything.
I didn’t get to the Emirates this afternoon, thanks to whichever bunch of cowboys is currently running my railway “service”. On turning up to the station I was told there are no trains on Sundays for the next five weeks due to engineering works.
It was too late to drive to the underground and the replacement bus takes over two hours to do half of the journey, after which I would have had another train to catch and then the walk from Finsbury Park.
Thank you, *(&*^& Rail, for the loss of one £55 match ticket !
Others will cover the story of the game better than I but I will say that Mike Jones – yes, I could tell from the close-ups on my TV screen, Chris ! – could not handle the occasion and gave one of the worst refereeing displays I have ever seen.
His every facial expression betrayed the fact that he was overcome by the stadium, being on the telly and so wanting to prove that he wasn’t a homer, that his judgement went utterly to pot.
The Bournemouth penalty was a joke. Their player threw himself into Monreal and went for a sprawl. Please tell me how on earth Monreal was supposed to have brought him down. Prior to that, Ozil was dragged over backwards by two of theirs – decision, play on !
Where do they keep finding them ?
We did feel sorry for ourselves and got very sloppy for 20 minutes after that – entirely our own fault – but the penalty did halt our momentum which had been excellent up to then.
Xhaka will be a tremendous player once he has settled into the vagaries of our referees whims. He still looks a little hesitant to play his naturally aggressive game after the ridiculous red card he received the other week but his passing is already excellent.
TTG called the performance very well apart from being somewhat harsh on the OX who started off superbly ripping down the left and drawing some heavy challenges that yielded free kicks and a yellow card until the ref decided to ignore Bournemouth’s fouls and yard stealing in stark contrast to his inch pedantry when it came to Arsenal. Ox’s passing was wayward for a chunk of the game but we did get glimpses of the promising youngster with instinctive control and a fine burst of pace.
Happy to comply with the injunction on wotisname though.
I too had an excellent view of the astonishing ‘penalty’ given against us. Diabolical decision. I hope that Jones is thoroughly ashamed of himself and receives appropriate sanction.
I too thought the Ox did well. He had their defenders terrified when he ran at them. He had a few bad passes, but majority of his passes were decent, and he ran his socks off to help out Monreal defensively. He eventually ran out of steam in the second half. Overall, I think it was an encouraging performance from the Ox.
i three
am agog
You dirty bastard…
Where would we be without Alexis. I still think we are more threatening with OG up front, but Ollie as a supersub is working most of the time. I’m just worried Alexis will burn out, regardless his perpetual motion.
It seems we’ve unearthed another krap referee. That only leaves Michael Oliver by my count. And Jon Moss, who is krap but we always seem to win under him.
It was a super game, by the way, for neutrals anyway. Can’t really ask more than a great game that we win.
74 ?
A game of parts, beyond doubt, but three points and the ‘Holic pound secured adds up to a good day.
Refereeing was as inept as seen for many a day.
We still only had three shots on target, even if they did all go in! Should we laugh or what?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>