ARSENAL BRUTALISE UNITED WEAKNESSES
Dearest friends, let’s start the article with an apology tour… I’m Justin Bieber, sitting at a drum kit on James Cordon, trying to make up for throwing orange juice at a small pug in LA.
I went down to the iconic Fancy Free in Brooklyn to hang out with Matt and the BK Invincibles. We planned to do a LIVE podcast - and the experience did not live up to what we’d hoped for. It was hard to hear in the room, our LIVESTREAM looked fantastic, but the sound was garbled despite the test run going well. It is the ultimate fear when you work in production and that fear played out. My biggest ‘I am so sorry please forgive me’ goes out to the Brooklyn Invincibles, Howard and Jason, and the Arsenal fans in the bar who came up to give their LIVE hot takes. The podcast was pure chaos in the best possible way - we definitely have a model for the future of how we would run things, we just need to do a deep-dive into what went wrong on the production side.
Here’s a shot of it so you can imagine how it sounded.
Still, as a great philosopher called Gary V once said, you cannot truly learn unless you embarrass yourself on a live hit on the internet. We’ll learn. We’ll come back stronger. THIS IS NOT OVER.
Final words: What a great matchday experience it was to be in Brooklyn with 200 hundred crazy Arsenal fans watching Arsenal deliver a MONSTER performance under pressure. I met AOP members, Le Grove readers, people from the comments section I’ve been reading for years who were absolutely lovely (Nigel is real, and I met him). I didn’t get to spend as much time chatting, but it was great fun regardless, and again… it’s such a privilege anyone reads or listens to the stuff that comes from here. So BIG thanks. Especially to a lady called Francis who rugby tackled me to say hello! She apologised and said she did the same to Clive Palmer, so I’m in fine company. Just as a side note, I’ll get some make-up pods in the locker for the members after that one failed.
We move…
WHAT A F*CKING NIGHT COME ON THE LADS!
Here’s what I liked:
Shocks to the system were felt
We had a new defence that had never played together
Players came in from the cold and performed
We found weaknesses that mapped to our strengths
We managed the emotion of heated night of pressure
We dominated Manchester United with absolute brutality
Arsenal told the world they were here, ready to fight, and the Premier League was only over in the minds of the weak.
It truly was a game of two halves and I’m not ashamed to write something so asinine. United were well organized, they clogged up our midfield, and they happily accepted the role of spoilers. That came through in the selections. I don’t think we’d have seen Rashford and Amad on the bench if EtH was in charge.
Arsenal were dominant and the strategy of ruining Onana from setpieces was clear for all to see from very early on. He’s not the best when it comes to crosses in the box. He likes to punch or hug his line. The strategy appeared to be a familiar one… punch flat inswingers under the bar and see what happens.