by Tony Attwood
Details of the various treatments undergone by Santi Cazorla have started to emerge, and the full extent of the horrific problems he has faced have been revealed – including the possibility of needing an amputation.
But it seems all is over and he really is on the road to recovery. He is under contract with Arsenal until June 30 2018, and has expressed the view that he will be playing again in January. As we know, he can’t play for the first team before then, because he is not listed in either the Premier League 25 list nor that of Uefa for the Europa, but as I understand the rules he could play in a PL2 game.
“Everything that I have gone through has not been as simple an injury as people have believed,” he is quoted as saying. “Nobody trusted me but I do, I still do, although the pain keeps me cautious.”
Actually Santi, I think quite a few Arsenal fans did trust you and have always trusted you. Never underestimate the belief of positive Arsenal fans!
Elsewhere we are being denied more fun and games with Mourinho. Having lost out so badly in an employment hearing at Chelsea when he tried to excuse his behaviour towards the club doctor and found that the club’s case was so weak that it disintegrated in about two minutes, he’s found out again that maybe he’s not the best guy at taking on the authorities in court.
He’s admitted that the case against him for tax fraud is over as he accepted the fact that he had grossly underpaid his tax due to the Inland Revenue in Spain, and paid, in full the back tax and fine demanded by the authorities to settle charges brought against him.
Just as with the employment tribunal at Chelsea, he has always denied doing anything wrong and has ended up paying out in full. An interesting approach.
Apparently he said, “I didn’t reply, I didn’t argue, I paid, I signed the papers.” He didn’t mention the fact that he had previously said that he had reached an agreement and paid in 2013, and thus closed the case then. Mind you these legal cases can be pesky things, always closing down and popping up again.
But that’s what you have to do when you don’t have a single ounce of a defence. So maybe he was completely in the right, but just didn’t have the time to bother with all the legal issues so paid even though the accusation of €3.3m tax fraud relating to image rights is quite a hefty sum, and quite a serious indictment. It leaves him with a criminal record in Spain.
Fabio Coentrao, Pepe, Falco, Angel María and Cristiano Ronaldo have all been charged in similar cases. Ronaldo is fighting however.
As for the kick boxer Patrice Evra he has been banned for one match by Uefa pending further enquiries (see the last article on Untold).
The Marseille manager, Rudi García, made an interesting comment to L’Equipe about the man that Evra attacked. “He is not a supporter of OM, because you cannot insult your own players, you have to be behind everyone.”
That suggests one or two people at the Emirates who claim to be Arsenal supporters are not actually supporters. I always suspected as much.
Finally some words from Mr Wenger concerning Manchester City, suggesting that the approach used against Chelsea both in the game at Stamford Bridge and in the Cup Final might not be right for the Man C game.
“We will try to play our game – we will not hide, put it that way,” he said. “You want to defend well but you cannot only be focused on defending. We want to play and have the ball and create dangerous situations. Sometimes the best way to defend is to attack.
“You can win with any style. That’s what makes football interesting. As long as you’re strong in the style you want to play. At stake for us is three points and we want to try to go there and win.”
“I don’t see all their games. If you look back there have been many great teams in England and they are certainly another one.”
“He is not a supporter of OM, because you cannot insult your own players, you have to be behind everyone.” I wish some of our “supporters” would read that sentence and think about it. Or try to think about it…. if they have enough brain cells of course
“That suggests one or two people at the Emirates who claim to be Arsenal supporters are not actually supporters. I always suspected as much.”
Amen to that!
AW will want to win bad and i hope the players do too.
I think we need to be ready to attack in an instant, we need to soak up pressure, close down early, be a TEAM and keep City at bay, keep blocking their attack, frustrating them.
If we read the game well tackling should have to be minimal, just keep them at bay as a coordinated team, we’ve played this way before, and it makes teams work that much harder to score. This is where AW needs to be dictating and watching that players are concentrated.
City are playing free flowing football, players all over but still disciplined, much like the “invincibles” did and AW should know this style. Sadly our players are not yet as consistently free flowing , but we can do it, we’ve done it many times.
Still on Sun, i would play slightly a little more defensively with a 5-3-2 formation in the first half.
In fact, this should be a part of our game, playing 5-3-2 which allows us to switch to 3-4-3 at will.
If Bellerin and Kolasinac stay back more, it’s a 5-3-2, when they go more forward it’s a 3-4-3.
This would go some way to allowing the players to become better at the free flowing football that fans want to see. (This is probably why AW trains players in different positions).
Belerin, Kolasinac need to be more defensive minded in the first half, making our back 3 a back 5, not going forward as usual until the second half. Let the forwards achieve in the first half, keep the fortress secure for a while, in time we lean more to attack as City tire. They will try to score early i’m sure, because they know the threat.
Iwobi should play because he works good defensively and yet does have a little of Ozil style/ability for passes.
My team would be.
Cech
Belerin Kolasinac
Kos Monreal
Mertesacker
Ramsey Xhaka
Iwobi
Laca Alexis
In the second half, Ozil can replace Iwobi early to take advantage of City’s wearying legs for more presise passing.
And of course it’s up to Arsenal to halt ManC and stop them from taking our record is’nt it? 🙂
The two teams are not that far apart and if both are focused and determined we should see a good game.
Lets hope for an even better game of football, where Arsenal wins. 🙂
Would prefer to see Evra banned for life, even if it was for something completely fabricated. Repulsive little man who’s told some outright lies about being racially abused and somehow still has a career in football. (especially at Chelsea; word has it he was lucky to get out of Stamford Bridge alive. Some very angry people that day).
A video of Marca’s interview with Santi is the lead article at the English part of Marca. As I seldom allow video’s to play, all I see is an error message, probably telling me I have javascript turned off.
http://videos.marca.com/v/0_4lrcrczk-/
Is the sound track in English or Spanish? I haven’t a clue, I suspect it is Spanish.
There are other articles on Santi at Marca too. Again, I don’t allow javascript, so this article does nothing for me. Can’t writers, write?
http://www.marca.com/en/football/international-football/album/2017/11/03/59fc2df622601d32358b458b.html
Further down the page (the English lead page) is an article of pictures of newspaper co vers, some of which concern Santi.
Notwithstanding if some Gooners watching Arsenal playing in the Premier League at the Emirates Stadium support the Gunners genuinely or in disguise, Arsenal have to beat and MUST beat Man City in their backyard named the Etihad in a Premier League match week number 11 on Sunday afternoon to unfailingly collect all the 3 points that will be at stake for collection in the match.
It has become necessarily conpulsory for Arsenal to beat Man City on Sunday so as to become confident they can successfully challenge fot the Premier League Title this season and win it.
Man City are not truly invincible in the Premier League games so far this season as been made to believed in some quarters. But they have been aided and abetted in crimes committing this season in the Premier League games by the PGMO officiating officials who have been holding down teams in the Premier League games by force for Man City to rape them in broad day light as they unlawfully allowed for them offside goals and awarded them illegal penalty goals.
in view of this illegality as seen and known to have been delibrately and flagrantly committed by the PGMO referees and their match assistants in their officiating to favour Man City but to disfavour their opponent teams playing against Man City in Premier League games, Arsenal should take into cognizant the fact that the PGMO referee and the 2 match assistants will try as much as they can on Sunday to hold Arsenal down in the game for Man City to rape them again as they did last season when the Citizens were allowed to get away 2 illegal goals.against Arsenal by the PGMO referee and his 2 assistants..
Therefore, Arsenal MUST put an unfailing plan into place that will not only thwart any attempts by the PGMO match officiating officials to hold Arsenal down in the game for Man City to rape them, but should also have a master game playing application plan that runs on 5G in place which I am sure is superior to the Man City game playing application that is running on 4G which if Arsenal install their 5G game playing application to run in the game and protect it with anti virus inflltration protection, Man City game application of 4G will become disabled and rendered into obsolete state during the match by the superiority of the Arsenal 5G game playing application to the inferior 4G game playing application of Man City.
OT: Corruption News
A little story about Leeds United in the Yorkshire Evening Post.
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/leeds-united-fa-report-into-mccormack-transfer-exposes-unedifying-web-of-lies-hay-1-8835301
OT: Marketing News
Marketing Week has a story about commercial sponsorship in the EPL. The story comes with a picture of a football stadium, which is Arsenal’s Ashburton Grove (Emirates Stadi8um, Wenger Stadium, …).
https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/11/03/michael-barnett-football-sponsorship/
As ManU has had much more success than Arsenal in marketing, I was surpised to see Arsenal figure more prominently in the article.
OT: Pyrotechnics News
Tony has talked before about pyrotechnics (flares, smoke bombs, et cetera). Apparently the EFL is going to do something about it. Will the EPL follow suit?
https://www.grimsby-townfc.co.uk/news/2017/november/clubs-united-as-efl-tackles-footballs-pyrotechnic-problem/
Flares
Evra is a cock but he was racially abused by Suarez.
Josif
It is not as clear as that. Reports at the time suggested Evra had ethnically abused Suarez, used a term that he knew Suarez would regard as an insult, in other words provoked him. They also suggested simply calling someone ‘black’ in Spanish is not regarded as an insult. At the hearing it appeared that Evra had been carefully coached in his evidence by Manchester United. I feel the labelling of Suarez as a racist was unjust.
The fact that people need “rules” to live together is amazing, man shouldn’t need these rules, they should just know them(written in their DNA), but mankind(a kind of/sort of/animal man) seems to need them to be able to live together in some semblance of order.
Now people are so mixed(physically) and mixed up(mentally) that the rules seem to be not enough anymore.
Sometimes i rue the day i came back here.
SAA – Disney is missing a writer. You must stop thinking in 3G.
Pat – I agree with your view. Suarez might bite but certainly is not prejudiced which meat!
Evra is a racist who plays the victim card see so many like him before a little shit