Arsenal lose to Liverpool in pre-season friendly, but the stars were against them

 

 

• The 69 players Arsenal are looking to sign and the 29 who are leaving
• Arsenal tipped to buy centre forward but get 3 keepers and a left back

By Tony Attwood

The score was indeed 2-1 to Liverpool, with Arsenal talking up the positives, and most of us reminding ourselves that pre-season games are not a prediction of how the season itself goes – along with a bit of a feeling (among some, although of course not all) that Martin Odegaard  and Gabriel Martinelli were on good form, which bodes well for the season. 

As does the fact that Kai Havertz scores again.  Although Pain in the Arsenal were not impressed with Martinelli saying he “Offered a threat in behind and had a hand in Havertz’s goal, but was largely inefficient when he ventured into the final third.”

And of course we can trot out the old line about not being over-confident going into the new season – and as we pointed out in a recent post, we really do find Liverpool difficult to beat.  The BBC’s conclusion was that Arsenal look physically strong and sharp in their familiar style which Arteta hopes to evolve again after adding Italian defender Riccardo Calafiori this week.

It was of course too early for Riccardo Calafiori to join in and Jurrien Timber wasn’t in the squad at all.  Calafiori is understandable having only just joined and it is said that Timber is being very carefully managed in terms of game time after last season.   However the media are making something of this with Talk Sport running a whole article on the notion that “Timber and Kiwior both play left-back and centre-back but had difficult campaigns last season.”  Hence the new signing.

If that is the news then maybe so is the fact that in their final match of the season Arsenal under 21s beat Liverpool 2-0.

The Arsenal team for the early morning match today (not the under 21s game) was

Hein

White Zinchenko Kiwior Gabriel

Thomas Odegaard Havertz

Nelson Jesus Martinelli

Eight Arsenal substitutes came on

• Trossard (46)
• Vieira (46)
• Lewis-Skelly (69)
• Nwaneri (69)
• Nketiah (77)
• Jorginho (77)
• Heaven (83)
• Nichols (83)

So it is now back to London for the game against Leverkusen on Wednesday 7 August at 6pm (really????) with the match against Lyon the following Sunday after which it is the start of the season on 17th.

Meanwhile Football.London are back on their theme of the lightness of Arsenal’s squad saying, “Arsenal are closing in on the signing of Mikel Merino from Real Sociedad after tabling a new bid in the region of £25.3million plus bonuses…. there is an expectation that Merino is going to join the Gunners, after the Spain international said ‘yes’ to a move.

What they also tell us is that “Arsenal need to sign a new midfielder this summer, there is no doubt about it.”   Which is interesting given that Arsenal were within two points of the title last season and had their best defensive season this century and their best attacking season since the Unbeaten campaign.

Yet still the website goes on and on over the fact that, “It’s clear Arsenal lack physicality in the middle of the park and Merino has that in abundance. Standing at 6″2, Merino is tall, strong and powerful in the air. Also left footed, Merino provides balance in midfield that Arsenal do not have, and he could prove to be a valuable addition if the deal goes through.”

Still I suppose if they put forward enough names they will get one right eventually.  There is incidentally quit a lot of talk around about Chelsea still having huge concerns about being docked points for their failure to meet with all the Financial Fair Play requirements and may have to sell in order just to meet those regulations.  Arsenal are immediately being tipped to buy…. well, you can make up the rest, after all that’s what the journalists do.

And then maybe when we read all this malarky we might recall this headline from Football London:

“The Gunners were keen on bringing Martin Odegaard back to the Emirates Stadium in a permanent transfer, but the Norwegian international has all but confirmed that won’t happen”

OK that was from 2021 but it just goes to show that when one wants to know the future, football journalists by and large are about as reliable as the horoscopes that the media publish.   My horoscope for the month ahead tells me to “expect communication mishaps, and beware of internet outages.”  Which is pretty much what July was all about.  Anyway, don’t worry if Untold vanishes – it will only be an outage.

But there is more.  “Cancers [that’s me] are ultra-creative signs. You likely have a novel that you’ve been thinking about or the desire to start a band. This lunation gives you a push to go ahead and do so. The stars are in your favour. Additionally, lush Venus moves into your 3rd House on this date, which rules communication, further aiding you in your creative dreams.”

So if the stars were in my favour, perhaps they weren’t in Arsenal’s, so maybe the defeat doesn’t matter.   But if Untold Arsenal doesn’t appear on occasion, it is either just more internet problems or because I can’t quite work out how to get my hero out of the fix I left her in, in chapter 12.   And it strikes me, not for the first time, are the people who write for the media about Arsenal, the same ones who write horoscopes?  And do they have the same level of knowledge?