I’m reliably informed that Man City are “back” so Arsenal will surely take an absolute stuffing.
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I’ve got a theory about Bournemouth that I’ve mentioned but we will see, regarding their game I can see it ending in a draw.
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Not sure how true this is… Maybe mind games, but…
Andoni Iraola makes Liverpool promise as Bournemouth set to be without nine players
In-form Bournemouth will once again be down to the bare bones for their eagerly anticipated Premier League clash at home to Liverpool on Saturday
Their excellent run of form has seen them rise up to seventh in the Premier League and one point behind fourth-placed Man City as well as progressing to the FA Cup fourth round, where they will travel to Everton.
Bournemouth’s performances are all the more impressive given the amount of players they are currently missing. While Marcus Tavernier returned in the demolition of Forest, Andoni Iraola will still be without nine key players against the Reds this weekend through injury or unavailability: defenders Marcos Senesi, Julian Araujo, Adam Smith, Julio Soler and James Hill; midfielder Alex Scott, and forwards Evanilson, Enes Unal and Luis Sinisterra.
But rather than use the lengthy absentee list as an excuse, Iraola has used it to galvanise his side and he is promising to continue to go after opponents even as lofty as Liverpool.
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It’s absolutely true. There were some wonderful shots from the weekend of the collection of unavailable players standing in street clothes in the tunnel waiting to greet the match day group off the pitch. There were fucking loads of them. They looked like an amateur team who had been given VIP entry to the game.
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They only had a skeleton crew for that demolition of Forest! I heard some stat along the lines that excluding Tavernier, their substitutes had a combined total of 12 PL appearances this season, with three of them never having made a PL appearance at all.
Anyway, not Arsenal, but something they have to be looking at
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I think the most likely Arsenal / City result is a draw , failing that I fancy City to turn them over … and we’re really fretting about scraping a point at Bournemouth ( where we’re 3/1 on to win ) ?!
We’ll be even further ahead after this week-end’s games.
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More in the match thread when the time comes, but if we play to the level we have been in January, Bournemouth is going to be a real problem. They tore Forest apart in the 2nd half. Inattentive fullback play will kill us.
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If we’ve been playing to the level we played in January… bar the Man United match we’ve played some of our best football in January.
We are level on points over the same period to them.
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I think Bournemouth have won more points than anyone else during the same period. 
Also, that Forest side was on the back of six successive wins before our boys came to town. I love it when we play league’s in-form sides away. Not.
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Last 5 games we’ve won 11pts each.
If you take it to 6 we won and they drew. Newcastle have 12/15 over 5 and 6 games and Man City have 13/16.
Over 10 we are tied with them and Newcastle.
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The biggest threat to us winning the league are the owners that brought us the coaches and the players that have us 6 points clear with a game in hand?
That’s not heresy, it’s just silly.
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We smashed Leicester who were in a similar vein of form during our trophy winning season. That after coming back tired and jetlagged after winning the club world cup.
Bournemouth is a really good side playing under a really good coach. But newsflash , so are we.
We play close to our best. There’s no side in the world who can keep up with us. We’ve shown that with Klopp before and with Slot now.
Do we win against Bournemouth? I hope we do. It’s going to be a cracking match and I hope Slot does get his tactics right.
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Forest? A draw versus Brentford but for late heroics from Darwin?
No question, if we play to our best we will run Bournemouth off the park.
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A game when we dominated against Brentford?
The last 30 against Forest, it’s been some of our best football regardless of when we won the games.
As someone pointed out the goals Forest conceded were mistake ridden bar the first.
But ok we will lose badly, in fact let’s just give Arsenal the title.
All the time you’ve got Arsenal not particularly playing well and grinding out results but apparently that’s a positive and us doing more isn’t.
As I said this attitude is fucking tiresome.
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Dominating a game probably involves converting time in the opponent’s end into goals. That stopped being easy for a bit.
It isn’t a matter of giving Arsenal the title. In the end, it is simple convergent mathematics. Arsenal need to make up 2 points every 3 rounds to draw level. This cluster of 3 games (excluding Everton) is their best chance to make up ground, because we face City and Bournemouth away. If they cannot pick up 2 points (or worse, see the gap widen if we can scrap past Everton), the logic starts turning relentless.
These next three games are a chance to all but close the door.
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If there is a leveller to this game… We play midweek, they don’t
Not to mention, the one managing the football side of the operations at the owners is the one idolised by so many as some kind of actual transfer god.
Ayden Heaven, 18 year old CB, is leaving Arsenal to go to Manchester United just as Chido Obi-Martin did earlier this season. Quite surprised as Heaven has had first team opportunities this season such as coming on in the Carabao Cup.
He’s very raw for a defender, defending is clearly not his favourite task, and I actually think he looks a much better player when he gets the ball in midfield and drives forward with it.
I know that Lewis-Skelly and Nwaneri have made the step-up now at Arsenal but I do wonder if there is a feeling among their youth that it’s too difficult to get chances. Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly are two talents that cannot be denied, simply, they’ll both be England internationals and long time Premier League players. However they are also the only two players U21 to make a league appearance at Arsenal since Arteta took over 5 years ago - with the exception of Saka who was already an established first team player.
In the last two seasons they’ve lost Owen Asemota (to Aston Villa for 1m after he rejected a scholarship), Chido Obi-Martin and Ayden Heaven to Man Utd and Macauley Zepa to Fulham. It’s not unusual to see players moved on from an academy of course but reports are that Arsenal wanted to keep all of these players and they refused to sign contracts to move on. Martin and Heaven could be accused of chasing a pay-day at Man Utd but Asemota and Zepa going to Villa and Fulham don’t seem like cash-grabs.
Lots more players have left besides those four, as is normal, but those four in particular seemed to sting Arsenal’s staff a bit.
It also seems a little strange that they’ve been putting 22 year old winger Nathan Butler-Oyedeji on the bench recently. I understand giving him a reward of a couple of minutes in an easy CL game like they did against Zagreb but he’s consistently been on the bench for the first team and quite frankly he’s kind of rubbish. He’s way too small and just not technically of the quality of a Premier League footballer. It’s all a bit odd.
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Mini-Guardiola at the wheel!
5 posts were merged into an existing topic: The Owners - FSG