Arsenal v Palace. Both teams have other things to think about (such as the ref)
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By Bulldog Drummond
I see the Guardian is running a top 100 players of the year series, but only releasing it bit by bit. In the section on players so far released, we have Riccardo Calafio at number 97 and David Raya at 86 with Kai Havertz at 78. Then it is Gabriel Magalhães at 57. Numbers 1-40 have still not been declared.
I can’t see any Crystal Palace players there. Indeed I am not sure they have anyone in the top 100, while Arsenal appear to have ten – but that is only “appears” with a bit of IT jiggerypokery. Certainly, there are one or two others who must be in there.
Mind you that is as I say in the Guardian, and thinking of that paper we might remember the time they ran the headline “Arsenal close to landing Mykhaylo Mudryk from Shakhtar in £80m deal. Of course, I am sure it was only because Arsenal were too slow and spent far too much time arguing about pointless detail that we didn’t get him.
It is a topic that has occupied us before with the story last year for example Did Arsenal really go for Mudryk or was it all a clever trap for Chelsea?
Now the issue is…
For that story really does make the point that it is all very well for the media to scream out that Arsenal are going to sign this or that player, and then moan about Arsenal being too slow and missing out, but really most of the time it is the journos who get it all wrong. And if a football club ever is stupid enough to look at or listen to the media then that pretty much is the club’s fault. But I suspect they don’t.
Since self-evidently football reporting in the media is written by people who are not knowledgeable enough or good enough to get a job in the game being employed by people who themselves know very little about football.
Still on one level the Guardian has got it right saying, “The sad truth is he has been a huge disappointment.” You can say that again, although I think we suggested that might be the case.
Concerning tonight’s game London World tells us about
Arsenal Insider brings us the big news from the Palace (as it were) saying “Why Daniel Munoz will miss both Arsenal vs Crystal Palace matches” The answer is “In the EFL Cup, Munoz picked up two yellow cards in three matches, which put him out of action for the quarter-finals.”
So what of the team?
90 min give us
Raya;
Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;
Partey, Rice, Odegaard;
Saka, Havertz, Sterling.
The Standard has
Raya;
Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly;
Nwaneri, Jorginho, Merino;
Saka, Havertz, Sterling
Pain in the Arsenal go the same was as the Standard.
Meanwhile as we noted recently, in their last seven league games Palace have won two, drawn four and lost one. My guess is they’ll be playing for penalties.
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Arsenal v Palace. Both teams have other things to think about (such as the ref)
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