hello everyone.
I have to say the most entertaining thing was the post-Sunday game focus on Arsenal and the ‘dark arts’, with the Manchester City players lining up to complain about it or at least comment on it.
Manuel Akanji asked if Arsenal have mastered the ‘dark arts’: “Yes, I think there are not many better than them.”
John Stones in post-match interview: “Whether you call it clever or dirty or however you want to put it, they break the game, they break everyone’s rhythm. And they use it to their advantage.”
Bernardo Silva: “There was only one team that came to play football. The other team came to play to the limit of what the referee unfortunately allowed and allowed.
“The referee allowed a series of time-wasting incidents to happen. What worries me most is the many meetings they have with the FA at the beginning of each season. They say they will control these kinds of situations and stop them, but in the end it is of no value. They talk a lot but nothing happens.”
Nothing happens?! We literally sent off a player! Also, despite City going ahead, we played enough football to go 2-1 up at the break and the second half promised a lot for us until Trossard’s red card forced us to change tactics. Nothing happens. Get out of here.
What’s quite funny about all this is that Manchester City and all of Pep Guardiola’s teams have had a mile-long cynical streak. Even when they had the likes of Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta at their disposal, they weren’t averse to the kind of nonsense you see Sergio Busquets do on a regular basis. He was a great player, but he was also a man who dived, rolled, fouled and disrupted the rhythm of his opponents at every opportunity. Not to mention playing in situations where half-and-half was completely inadequate, even when it was 11v11.
And who do you think told him to do that? The guy sitting not far from Mikel Arteta on Sunday. A great chair kicker. A guy whose spit is so white that it’s like Riquelme facing Jens Lehmann. There’s a picture I shared before, when our manager was a coach at Manchester City. It was 100% clear that he was running under Pep and under his orders. Giving instructions to the players before the game.
I think I saw Guardiola say later that he would have done the same thing to us in the context of the game. So it’s even funnier to see City players complaining about what their manager would do if he had to. To put it plainly, do whatever it takes to get a result in a football match. It’s not like Arsenal invented it, it happens all year round in every game at every level, but it’s funny that we get the spotlight because of our performance against Man City.
Rather than being annoyed by this kind of thing, we should be happy about it. We should be inspired by it. Because how Sunday went and how City reacted to it tells us that we are no longer a team to be taken lightly. Erling Haaland lost the plot Telling Mikel Arteta to ‘remain humble’ Some people might find that annoying, but I just laugh. I find it funny and completely dismissive of the way the manager just looks at me twice and walks away, as if he didn’t hear me.
The fact that the Manchester City Twitter account cut out a clip of Haaland doing two rugby tackles on Saliba and Partey (both more yellow-card worthy than Trossard’s) says a lot about how this game went for them. He had scored a great goal earlier, but they were emphasizing the fact that he was a 6’5 attacker, as if to show how we were being pushed. We all know we weren’t, because this team can’t do that anymore. The sight of Haaland, a brilliant goalscorer, arguing with a 17-year-old who had just made his debut, said a lot to me.
I liked Gabriel’s answer to the question about Holland throwing the ball behind his head.
I don’t even remember this. That’s normal. You celebrate after scoring a goal at the last minute. It’s a fight, a war, provocations are normal in football. It’s over now and we’ll wait for them at our house.
Notice the difference in attitude. While the City players were lining up, grumbling and groaning, their sense of entitlement prickled, Gabriel just shrugged. Having been part of the defensive effort that almost earned us three points, and having been on the receiving end of the ball, he probably had more reason to be bitter in his post-match interview than any of them, and he just said, ‘Yeah, whatever. See you next time.’
And we will. I love it. Anyway, enough about them. They have their own issues to deal with now and we have to look forward and deal with the rest of what happens this week. There is a Carabao Cup game tomorrow (Arteta is due to meet the press later today so that could be interesting) and the team selection will be interesting too. I will have more to tell you tomorrow and a press conference update. Arseblog News.
If you need something to listen to in the meantime, here are three podcasts we released yesterday:
1 – Arsecast has additional coverage of the match against City.
2 – Arsenal Women ArsecastIt’s a new format for the show, which will see them discuss the 2-2 draw with Manchester City on Sunday.
3 – 30+ on Patreon – We discuss the entire weekend’s Premier League fixtures.
Hopefully that’ll be enough to sustain you for a while. Okay, I’ll stop here for now. Have a nice day.
