A big day in the Premier League yesterday where most of our rivals won BIGLY. Liverpool turned their game around with Brentford after going a goal down, Chelsea took down Everton away which was a great result, and Man City won again…
The best start ever for Man City. Sticks in the craw, doesn’t it? Makes it very hard to watch the league with an eyesore like them topping the table. But it is what it is and I guess we’ll have to do it the way we did it last season and hope the Premier League gets to a punishment swiftly this time.
Arsenal have a big job to do this afternoon. Oliver Glasner is having a torrid time in at Forest at the moment, nothing is going for him, results aren’t leaning his way. Arsenal haven’t scored at Forest in two outings there. So it’s something of a bogey team we’re facing.
The other advantage Glasner has is the benefit of a whole week to prepare, whilst Arsenal had a tough Champions League game against Lille to deal with.
The good news for Arsenal is Arteta seems to be in the mood for rotating players this season. Calafiori found the bench for Myles. Kai Havertz and Odegaard were on the bench. Bukayo Saka is getting rest time this season. All good omens for rough Premier League games a matter of days later.
Raya
White Konsa Gabriel Calafiori
Martin Myles Declan
Saka Kai Madueke
I suspect this is how Arsenal will line up today - Timber is managing minutes, Myles probably has the nod on Bruno right now, and Madueke offers a nice pace blitz balance on the left. No reason to drop someone who has been quite productive of late.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Kai is going to start. It’s amusing to me that people still get irate when I write or talk about Gyokeres. He’s an option for our starting 11, if it hurts your Gyok Stan feelings that I have aggressive opinions about players, I’m sorry that this is the first time you’ve been introduced to Le Grove. We fight it out on opinion; there is no balance here. Balance is for the BBC. We don’t have balance when we meet in person; I’m not about to bring you an extra thousand words of it here because someone has really nice hair. I’m not here to soften the landing of this player, so until he’s out of contention for Arsenal, I will talk about him. The hope being that he can prove me wrong at some point.
Forest should have Liam Delap in their starting 11. A diabolical signing for Chelsea. Their fans couldn’t stand his heavy touch and embarrassing performances. He’s at Forest on a rehab mission for his reputation after breaking onto the scene at 21 years old with 12 goals for Premier League newcomers Ipswich Town. I don’t rate him, but he is big, he’ll throw himself around, so you have to be careful… that’s kind of the perfect striker for Glasner.
Forest have a huge hole in their midfield after losing Elliot Anderson to Sham FC this summer for a record fee. McAtee is decent in midfield, but the rest is trial by error for them. They’re also likely to be missing Morgan Gibbs-White. An output machine of a player who should be at a bigger club by this stage of his career. Igor Jesus is also MIA, which is fairly good news for us. Not exactly a monster, but better than Delap.
I’m quite looking forward to watching Diomande, their big summer signing in defense; he comes with a highly rated thumbs-up from the nerds online. It’s also interesting to see how their recruitment works now they are Eduless. Wonder how our ex-Brazilian is handling his exit… running off to Bulgaria was very much a ‘I have a mortgage to pay’ move. So, so odd. But, I did tell you he wasn’t rated as highly as the fans had him down.
Michael Oliver is the ref today. Yes, the guy who travelled to the UAE in 2023 to officiate two UAE Pro League games for Sharjah and Al Ain, receiving a reported £20,000 for the privilege.
Can you believe that flew with PGMOL?
He’s given 2 red cards to City in 67 games; one was Dedryck Boyata in an FA Cup game against Blackburn in 2014, the other was very recently against United, but that was ironed out by gifting City an absolutely outrageous offside goal that should have been chalked off. He’s also given them 12 penalties. He gave Martinelli the red for two fouls in the same passage of play. He didn’t send off Kovačić for those two horrible offences against Arsenal. Sent off Myles for serious foul play, before having it rescinded. He also sent Leo Trossard off for kicking the ball away.
Needless to say, he’s been a very bad referee for Arsenal. He’s only ever given us 6 penalties. There’s no team he’s given more penalties against. There’s no team he’s given more red cards to. Let’s also not forget Aina pulling the ball into play to prevent a corner with his hands… getting away with it… then joking about it on Instagram after because the decision was so diabolical. Quite the record considering that we’re not a dirty or clumsy team.
Extremely sloppy of the Premier League to let him ref important games against Liverpool and Arsenal after clearly compromising his integrity with the massive freelance paydays. But here we are, that is PGMOL for you.
Ok, let’s have a BIG day from everyone… I’ll see you after for the On the Whistle. Get urself a membership right now! x
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