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Photo from Freepik.
Morning all.
What a day yesterday was. Ok, it rained hard all day on the south coast which was pretty miserable to say the least but out in Indore, India, England Women took on the hosts in the cricket World Cup. Whether you like the shorter game or not, or indeed women’s cricket at all, the game was a cracker. Made even better though with England producing a victory when they they’d looked beaten.
Two games of football took place in the afternoon, the first between Totts and Aston Villa, the second, Liverpool and Man Utd. I hoped for two away victories, I got two away victories. Do I care that both home clubs “should” have won? Absolutely not! With Arsenal winning on Saturday and Newcastle losing, the weekend in general has been good as far as the Premier League goes for an Arsenal fan. Just need Man City and Chelsea to go through a rough patch or five.
The count is on, no, not the one who might make an appearance in 11 days time, the “how many games is it since Viktor Gyokeres scored a goal” count. Which by the way, is 9. One more than Dennis Bergkamp took and the same as Thierry Henry after they arrived at Arsenal. Saying that, Gyokeres has scored for Arsenal since his arrival, three times, just not recently. How many goals have big money signings Isak, Sesko and Ekitke scored? Or Cunha and Mbeumo?
I’m sure Gyokeres is cheesed off that he’s not scored more goals but it’s not like he’s just jogging around hoping something will change. He’s grafting, and grafting hard.
The media cannot leave us alone can they? If it’s not over celebrating a win, it’s Mikel Arteta getting overly animated on the touch line. If we’re not over passing in search of a goal, we’re too reliant on set-pieces. Arsenal simply cannot win, not in the media’s eyes anyway.
However, Arsenal are winning and I don’t think they like it. So the more they moan and groan about Arteta, Gyokeres, Martinelli or any other player in Arsenal colours, the better we must be doing. One thing I think we can all agree on is that the media are irrelevant.
Another thing I suspect we will agree on is regardless of how many summer signings Arsenal made or however much we might improve over the weeks/months to come, no game is going to be easy to win. There was a day when Fulham would have been easy to beat at home and away, but not these days.
We have Crystal Palace up next and they are another club which has changed dramatically. Earlier this year we could only manage a 2-2 draw, whereas in 2024, we thrashed them 5-1 at their place. Oliver Glasner has certainly improved Palace since then. This season, they’ve thrashed Villa 3-0, defeated Liverpool 2-1 and drawn with Bournemouth, but, they’ve also been beaten by Everton away 2-1.
The Champions Leave is going to be just as tough, if not tougher, although the standard of officiating does seem to be better in the European fixtures. They will need to be red hot in our game against Atletico Madrid tomorrow night. Atletico are the masters of dark arts football.
More on them tomorrow.
Have a good Monday guys.