Football 2024-25. Pep’s last season?

Saliba yellow was just daft on his part.  Bentancur’s  wasn’t a yellow, but hard to argue with the others.  That was a proper case of “winning ugly”, but 6 points from visits to Villa and WHL is probably 4 more than Arteta expected.

I understand Beckham’s making his first visit to St Andrews tonight, for Blues vs Wrexham – that’ll be an eye-opener for him. :)

Saliba yellow was just daft on his part.  Bentancur’s  wasn’t a yellow, but hard to argue with the others.  That was a proper case of “winning ugly”, but 6 points from visits to Villa and WHL is probably 4 more than Arteta expected.

The spurs goalie got booked after being grabbed by the arsenal player, always love seeing in football when there’s a bad challenge that the ref books an opposition player as well, and you end up with the same punishment for each team.

Really enjoying the media omerta on the toon being in 3rd place. It clearly doesn’t fit with their toon civil war Howe vs Mitchell ‘it’s all falling apart’ narrative. If it was Spurs or Villa in 3rd and level on points with Arsenal we wouldn’t hear the end of it. All good though, Howe is clearly taking advantage of all the gossip to unify the players and coaching staff. I can only wonder what they’ll be like when they start playing. :-)

They need to start playing.

Didn’t understand the starting line up either?

They need to start playing.

There were small flashes of it yesterday. Gordon looked like the player of last season, but too many are off the boil. Isak, Bruno and JoeLinton all need to improve. Tonali, Willock and Trippier need to start next game, we were miles better once they came on. Not sure how you solve the Barnes/Gordon problem, probably stick with the current approach of using Barnes as an impact sub but he deserves a place in the starting 11.

Given Barnes loves to cut in, he can play on the right and go on the outside. He won’t get as many shooting chances, but will get in behind, and make chances for others. It also means the front three can be very fluid, Isak can play on the left, Gordon can play through the middle, and right, Barnes can play on both wings. It could be a nightmare for teams to deal with. they need time to play together though.

Barnes on the right is much better than any other option.

Longstaff ahead of Tonali is pure Howe. trusts hard work over footballing ability way too much. Tonali instantly made a difference yesterday. Always looks to play forward as a first option, Longstaffs first touch is almost always negative.  Eddie has to prioritise Tonali and Barnes. Doing anything other than this will put him in a very awkward position if we start losing games.

Man, Iwata and Paik are class! McLean’s somewhat of a knobjockey, though.

Fortunately I was out of reception up in the Canadian rockies ?.

Liverpool’s defenders showing their better at scoring than defending.

And Antony has found his level where he looks half decent vs Barnsley (still had to stretch a foot out to win the pen).

massive surprise about the passing of Schillaci – he always looked like the bloke who won a chance to play for his country and hit a purple patch he cloud never repeat. In interviews he seemed like a top bloke and very popular.

RIP Toto.

Sad to hear, older i get, the more you reminisce about childhood, 1986 was the first proper world cup i remember, 1990 i was 13 so remember it a bit better, ’86 was all about Maradona, 1990 was Italy and Schillaci, was his moment in the sun for football, hit form before the tournament and then did well, think injuries got the best of him afterwards though, back then a lot of good players were done for with injuries that you’d get fixed today easily.

Similar sentiments argee – lots of sporting and cultural icons from my youth seem to dying. RIP ToTo.

It’s mad, Paolo Rossi was the player of ’82, Maradona ’86 and Schillaci ’90, all passed away now :o(

Gazza was also an icon of 1990…

That Forest Brighton game was a bit lively. I’m sure this one will be the same.

What’s going on with the Sky pundits doing the pre-match stuff while wandering aimlessly around the pitch like a bunch of United players? They need to pack that in! 

A lot of them can’t get over that they’ve retired and hang around. Old blokes used to that in factories.

Probably be a bore fest this. Arsenal defensively Mourinho esque.

Or possibly another Haaland hatrick?

Holy shot!!

Good to see your predictions are about as accurate as mine @dander :D

Cracking isn’t it. More injustice for City, worlds against them.

As an ex-GK, if Ederson gets a foul for that the game’s gone.

(on cue – game’s not gone!!)

I thought they’d have learned after the first corner where Gabriel was marked by Doku and should have scored. And then Walker marks him? Surely you put Gvardiol/Diaz/Akanji on him?

Oliver levelling it up here…..

Cracking first half.

Trossard you complete bellend. Why? Just why? Why do footballers do such childish things?

I’ll call it now, 4-2 Citeh.

Oliver levelling it up here…..

Both the foul and delaying the restart are yellows. Can’t really complain. Refusing to leave the field could then be dissent as well. Could be reported for 4 yellows if Oliver’s brought enough report forms with him.

Yeah, thought it was harsh at first but agree deserved. I guess this should stop them doing it.

After Rice did it 2 weeks ago it was extra dumb.

Not been the blood and thunder entertainment of the first half but a good watch nonetheless for the tactician.

Who’s in charge of the pizza in the tunnel after?

Rope a dope nearly worked for Arsenal. Very entertaining for the neutral.

As a neutral, i was happy the anti-football arsenal were trying was punished, was always going to happen the minute arsenal went ahead.

Saying that, City were without any ideas for a long period there, the amount of times that Kovacic or Dias had the ball and every man and their dog knows it’s going sideways, it just made it easy for arsenal to have them pass side to side.

was always going to happen the minute arsenal went ahead.

A bit unfair; it didn’t happen until after the sending off. Admittedly they were close-ish in time but I don’t think they’d have done it for 45 mins if 11v11, they’d have been defnsive minded but look to break. Once 10v11, it was the ‘right’ tactic with the 6/3 or even 7/2 banks. Although as Roy noted, they didn’t do it very well because City scored (he is brilliant entertainment)

I’m amazed how uninspired  City were. If any team were capable of breaking down a massed defence you’d have thought it would them.

That wasn’t anti-football, but a great example of how to defend.  I expected more from City, but inexplicably they kept giving the ball to players less well-equipped to do anything with it.  Them celebrating a draw is a real plus for a Gooner.  Seven points from successive away matches at Villa, Spurs and City is probably a couple more than Arteta hoped for.

The anti-football comment is down to the stopping the game every minute due to ‘cramp’ and so on, as stated, they were always going to defend like that, only a daft team would go at city with 10 men, but i don’t think i can remember a time when a ref has basically stated he’s not stopping the game for players hitting the ground without contact in a long time.

Arsenal are hard. Proper organised, battlers. As blackhat says, 7 pts from those away games is above par. Might be enough to wobble City, especially if Rodri is out a while.

At the other end who’s getting his P45 first? I’m going for Lopetugui – West Ham look a shambles defensively and those jeans he wears. Sackable.

I had no skin in the city arsenal game and maybe because of that I just saw a bus parked and city’s inability to move it. If Reading were ahead against Oxford and their highly tuned players started to fall over with cramp I suppose I’d be apoplectic with rage.

Psychology of footie.

I thought Arsenal were embarrassing in terms of snide fouls, feigning injuries and general timewasting. Such shithousery does not deserve any success. They have a lot of very good players and should not need to resort to such cynical play.