MIKEL ARTETA ENCOURAGES FANS TO BRING THE SPICE
Arsenal vs. Manchester United has the ability to shape your month from a feelings perspective. It’s not often these games are teed up as must-wins at the start of December, but that’s where we are with Liverpool right now.
Any slip puts us in ‘mind the gap’ territory. Nine points is scary, but catchable. Twelve points? No chance.
The most important job we can do this month is snatch at every three points and not give Liverpool any breathing space. I don’t want us to match them with draws—that’s not good enough. We need to chip away at their lead and bring it down to five by the end of January.
Sky Sports put up an outrageous stat yesterday, trying to push us towards the very boring idea that Liverpool cannot be caught:
‘Every team who has had a six-point lead or more after 13 games of a Premier League season has gone on to win the title.’
Now, I understand there’s a very specific nature to this tweet, namely, 13 games. But don’t let this sort of distorted information kill your hopes for the season.
Arsenal blew an eight-point lead in the league from April after leading all season in 2023.
Last season, Liverpool blew a five-point lead in February in a 12-point swing to third.
Newcastle had a 12-point lead in the Premier League in January 1996. Kevin Keegan took aim at United, saying, "I would love it if we beat them!" before losing 1-0 to an Eric Cantona goal and eventually losing the league by four points. That was a 16-point swing.
Someone made this very salient point on Twitter.
I could not agree more here.
Records are chucked around for fun these days, but one important thing we need to keep in mind:they are there to be broken. The Premier League will slap anyone who gets too comfortable at the top of the league. We have seen it too many times to be sitting here, chatting amongst ourselves, gifting them the title like it’s December 25th.
There’s still a huge job to be done. Mikel Arteta inherited a worse team than the one Amorim has at United, and one of his first acts of "this could be good" was to kill United at The Emirates. My biggest concern heading into the game on Wednesday is that his squad of misfits is more than capable of showing up if they fancy it—and they are currently playing for their careers. Amorim is the new kid on the block. He has fancy ideas. He’s making players take off gloves. He’s putting arms around shoulders. The media and the fans are loving on him… it won’t be easy.
The post-United headlines I want to be reading are:‘Amorim says United fans will have to suffer.’ It’s the truth, but we can only get there if the real Arsenal steps out over those white lines in a spiteful mood.
Arteta seemed very calm in the press conference. I believe Gabriel M has put himself into contention for a start. It’d be wonderful if there was good news from Merino and Partey. I feel like whenever we have these bigger games, we’re missing players. Hopefully, it’s different tomorrow and we can put out our best and deliver a message to Liverpool.
United will be without Kobe and Martinez, but that’ll mean they’ll likely have more power at their disposal. Still, not enough to handle a brute force Arsenal side. But we need to be aware of the threats. They have a Marcus Rashford reborn (for five minutes). Fernandes loves it against Arsenal. They’ll have a whole group of attackers desperate to prove they have what it takes to bother Arsenal. The one thing we always know about this collective is it’s the small games that are the issue—because the talent there is for the bigger moments.
Still, you’d rather be Arsenal. We are on a tear for scoring goals. Our defense is starting to come together. Martin Ødegaard and Saka are two of the most threatening players in the league. We have proper competition in the midfield. Our new fullbacks understand the brief. We have bench players chomping at starting positions.
There’s a lot of love ahead of the game, and I am getting VERY excited to see what we can offer on the night. Teams that want to win titles dispatch games like this. We have to find a way. Put pressure on Liverpool, and who knows what will happen to their miracle-luck train of a season.
Mikel Arteta made a comment about the home atmosphere being important. Whether you believe noise impacts outcomes, that’s what he wants, so if you’re going, get lagered up before and bring your a-game. I’d imagine the hope is to rekindle some of those absolute classics back in the day and create a bit of momentum heading into the stickiest period of the season.
Ok, that’s all I have. I’m in New York tomorrow at Fancy Free to do a live podcast. It’s free. Just come down and have a beer! x
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BEFORE THE WHISTLE - MANCHESTER UNITED
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Ok, loads of news. Thanks for indulging me. Love you all xxx