74 charges against Chelsea. 115 against ManC. Arsenal playing Forest

 

 

 

• Nottingham Forest: the heritage and a very, very weird fixture list
• Arsenal v the man who never won a north London derby
• Arsenal v Forest: The referee who reverses all the normal statistics

By Tony Attwood

So how did it all come to this?   

The fact is, stories as we all know are made up.  But at last some of the media are realising the truth.   As the Telegraph says, “Edu quit job of a lifetime to join Forest roller coaster – and Arsenal are thriving without him”

Arsenal women are top of the league afte two games in which they have scored nine goals – not bad going, the latest being a 5-1 away win at West Ham.  Arsenal men are of course doing battle at lunchtime that will take them to the top of the league equal on points with Liverpool – but top becasue we already have a better goal difference.   These are positive moments.

And there are other amusing stories around, such as the former Manch City star being arrested over allegations of a £100,000 tax fraud.   And since that is government money and thus your money and my money, I have a certain vested interest in people paying their taxes properly.

And then there is Chelsea, which isn’t news since we always have Chelsea.    So we might ask, “What on earth have they been doing THIS time?”  And the answer is mucking about with the money again, resulting in 74 charges against them, which isn’t quite at the Manchester C level of 115 or thereabouts, but a pretty good effort.  Apparently, everyone at Chelsea knew it was happening… Some of these alleged crimes go back to 2010.    Which raises the question, is this a fit and proper business to be playing football in the League?  Sadly no one asks that.

But we must feel sorry for Chelsea’s owners.  I mean you pay £2 billion or more to buy a football club and then find there are things like this lurking in the wainscotting – although there are suggestions they knew all the time, and the new owners didn’t pay the old owners the full whack because of this.  Which isn’t really playing the game.

Uefa fined Chelsea around £8.6m just a couple of years back for  ‘incomplete financial reporting.’   Chelsea reckon they might get away with another similar fine, so they are treating it as life as usual.  One of my colleagues actually said, “They have more than enough in the allegations fund,” which is probably true, but suggests there could be yet more stories to emerge.

And thus we move on to lunchtime and a chance for the men to emulate last night s women’s 5-1 victory.

For today, the Guardian suggests a team of

Raya

Timber Saliba Gabriel Calafiori

Odegaard Rice Zubimendi

Madueke Gyokeres Martinelli

 For the substitutes, they quote vritually everyone who could possibly be there: Arrizabalaga, Setford, Mosquera, Hincapié, White, Lewis-Skelly, Merino, Eze, Nwaneri, Trossard, Dowman.

The Metro offer

Raya

Timber Mosquera Gabriel Calafiori

Odegaard  Zubimendi Rice

Madueke Gyokeres Eze

The Independent offer exactly the same team as the Metro.  And Arsenal Insider goes down the same route with a bit of positional shuffling, but the same players.   So as ever, once we start seeing lots of agreements, we leave it at that.

But just as a final reminder, here are the positions of the two clubs….

Premier League table as it stands now 

 

 

As ever we’ll have more to say once we know the result – although that is cheating a bit, I know.