Love it that our boys shut down the praises on Ramsdale and Ødegaard, but that Martinelli is really something. The Gunners gave us a good match. We were not too bad at controlling the mid field, but they absolutely did not give us any time in the final 3rd during the 1st half.
Thiago almost gave me a freaking heart attack! Personally don’t think that he had a great game, but it was a peach of a pass that led to Diogo Jota’s goal. Also love his shithousery standing in front of the ball to prevent the quick Gunners’ free kick at around 85th minute.
My 3 picks:
Ali - Massive bailout for Thiago. Quick to determined the threat from Gunners and neutralised them without fuss
Robbo - Fantastic in his defensive duties today. Never give up spirit that retrieve the ball from Saka and provided the assist to Bobby’s back heel. His passes in the 1st half were not too great though.
Joel Matip - Somehow he makes it seem so easy! Again great defensive displays today. Some really good in-your-face runs at the Gunners’ defenders.
Shout out to Hendo and Fab in protecting the defense. Also massive shout out to:
Bobby (providing better link up play, and the ball sticks to him much better than Sadio, which bounced off for a yard each time he got the ball) and
Mo (may not have many scoring chances, but his presence lessened the burden on our right flank, with Martinelli having to sit further back.
Yeah giving these sort of guys airtime just makes footballers look (even) thicker than they are. Really wish we saw fewer ex players getting these gigs. Ironically the thoughtful and more insightful ones usually don’t last long as they don’t bring enough ‘drama’ and ‘controversy’ for the broadcasters. Two ‘professional TV presenters’ to every ex player would be better.
Elo is a very simple rating system that is used extensively in video game ranking ladders and chess rankings. The formula is very simple and it actually bears out over time.
How much time depends on the degrees of freedom; ans as I understand it this one uses 20. So I wonder how ‘choppy’ the data is - I’m not a statistican and haven’t seen these rankings before
I am at a loss, why can we not win games properly with a nice 3-0 or in this case 0-3 scoreline. Just not good enough.
Anyway great win 3 more points, keeping the pressure on. I’m now off to check the all important goal differences just in case I have to get upset that if it comes to the crunch we won’t have to win 5 or 6 nil on the final day.
Edit: Just checked the goal difference as it is Shitty will need to win 9 nil on the final day if it comes down to that.
The best thing is by the next round of PL matches, we play early against Watford and if we win, we will top the league before Man City plays later and that will surely put some pressure on them. But as always, we can only focus on our match and like the mantra repeatedly mentioned, as long we win all our next 9 games, we are champions.