- Football is now effectively run and controlled by gambling companies
- Arsenal in the Champions League: there is always something going on at PSG
The Guardian has an interesting piece on Arteta’s time at PSG and how that period of his life developed his approach to football. Concerning PSG, Arteta is quoted as saying that at such a club a young player needs someone to believe in him, “someone to give you the chance.” And that he says is what he got and what made him a good player.
He also adds, “I had to do all the defending because I had Ronaldinho and Okocha in front of me. Imagine! It was super, almost unreal … a dream for me. I was so blessed and I had so much energy at that time. I couldn’t waste that opportunity.”
Arteta is also very fulsome in his praise of the PSG manager Luis Enrique, saying, “I am a huge admirer of him. “He has huge charisma, huge energy. He was always very supportive with the young players and what I love about him is that, wherever he has been as a player, as a manager, his fingerprints are all over the place.
“You can see at PSG that it’s his team. They have a clear intention as to how they want to dominate the ball and when they don’t have it they want it straight back. They are really aggressive and they confront you. But that is Luis. Everywhere he plays, against any opponent and in any context, that is how he does it.”
Meanwhile on the injury front Arteta has said that Jurrien Timber “was able to take part in training, that’s good news, so he’ll be available in the squad.” He also said that he hoped Ben White will be available, although suggesting they know more than Arsenal about these things the Guardian is saying, “Arteta is expected to be without Ben White….
Meanwhile Riccardo Calafiori was “emotional” after the 4-2 home win against Leicester on Saturday when he felt a muscle problem.”
As for PSG, a lot of writers have been critical of the team, including Goal who say that “the time has come to start developing their own Galacticos.”
And so a global change is being imagined at PSG after the years of Qatar Sports Investment setting out the plan that Manchester City have since so slavishly been following – an approach which works until the rest of the league have had enough.
Thus PSG have had (as many others have pointed out before me) Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Beckham, Neymar, Lionel Messi… And this has given them 23 league titles, “FA” cups and league cups. But no win of the Champions League – although they have been runners’ up once, as indeed have Arsenal.
But on the other hand, they sold a lot of shirts and got some good TV revenue too. And that seems to have heralded the new style and new approach in which they don’t need to sell any more shirts by bringing in super stars who don’t win the ultimate prize. The aim is seems is to work “organically” – which suggests they have been importing robots until now, although maybe they didn’t quite mean it that way..
And indeed the failure of PSG to win the Champions League, or indeed to get to the final more than once seems to hurt PSG. So it seems the club has spent time trying to work out what the cause of year after year of European failure, when in France they have just boringly been champions ten times in twelve seasons, coming second on the other two occasions.
One explanation is that the French League isn’t very strong. Another is that simply buying a top player for a top fee and then paying him twice as much as anyone else in the team, doesn’t work. Other players get a bit fed up with that, and if your main man has a bit of a dip in form, or indeed an injury, then the entire strategy goes out the window.
But at the same time everyone expects the club to win and when they don’t, everyone starts making lots of complaining sounds, which then makes matters worse, which then encourages such a club to go out and buy more players who quite probably feel that as they are the best in the world, they don’t need to be coached by someone who never really made it as a big-time player.
But it is strange to reflect that big-name transfers are what so many supporters still crave – not just at PSG but at most top clubs. It can work for ManC because if one top player fails they can buy another, spending money with impunity. But for those clubs not backed by an oil-rich country, life tends to work in different ways…
Still just as the UK has now turned away from coal, maybe we can also all turn away from oil.
Sorry to go off so quickly but just catching up, and I see Gallagher and SKY Sports are up to their old tricks again.
Isn’t it odd.
Man City are facing 115 charges of breaking rules, or cheating as it is otherwise known. And yet somehow SKY Sports, and the media in general, have managed to shift the focus of ‘cheating’ on to Arsenal.
It started off simply as SKY’s/John Stones accusation that Arsenal are ‘Masters Of The Dark Arts’. Then it continued with Sourness’s accusation that Arsenal are ‘Conning’ refs EVERY WEEK. But gradually the narrative has shifted to the notion that in fact Arsenal are just ‘cheats’.
From the Metro: Declan Rice responds to claims Arsenal are ‘cheating’ in Premier League matches.
And all this because we have learned how to not nullify good opponents, playing in a much more controlled manner. Shock horror, we slow the game down. Well I never. Apparently that’s cheating now. The fact teams have done that against Arsenal for the past 20 years is irrelevant it seems.
We use blockers. If done without holding it is not a foul. A player has no obligation to ‘get out of the way’, and it has been a tactic for years. Now WE have mastered it, suddenly it’s become cheating.
What makes it worse is that these accusations come from of all places the likes of Man City, and Graham Souness, who thought playing football like this:
wahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnEBI0_IrWQs was okay. The mans an embarrassment. Have these guys any self awareness at all?
I find it amazing that Kane and Vardy (Amongst many others) diving all over the place to win penalties, was never labelled as cheating. Oh no, they were just ‘clever’.
Again the double standards employed by the media to constantly paint Arsenal in a bad light is shameful.
And of course we had to have the usual double talk from Dermot Gallagher yesterday. You could of put your life savings on the fact he would find a way to exonerate a Leicester player for kicking the ball away. You could of doubled up on SKY Sports backing his every word.
Apparently because a player was down injured it didn’t prevent a quick free kick. Kicking the ball away is fine now it seems. Which is great for the two tier refereeing the PIGMOB like to employ because now it becomes a subjective call. Anyone can kick the ball away without sanction. You only get a yellow if the REFEREE deems that the action either prevented a quick free kick, or deliberately wasted time.
A simple ‘objective’ rule that kicking the ball away is a yellow card has been turned into a massively ‘subjective’ call. Just the way they like it. Because now that means they can justify every decision the referee makes, or otherwise, under the banner of ‘it’s haw he saw it’. Yippee. I bet we all cant wait to see how that pans out for us. Oh yeah, we have!!!
Under that ‘subjective’ banner, isn’t it funny how attempting to tack a free kick from the wrong place, whilst the ball is moving, didn’t have the same impact on the Rice decision. As I have said a dozen times, Rice DIDN’T prevent the taking of a quick free kick. It would of had to of been re taken anyway.
Kicking the ball away, choking a player. Grabbing a players arse. All fine and dandy when it’s against us.
Dermot Gallagher’s attempts to justify every single decision against Arsenal, and SKY Sports pundits complicity in it, is embarrassing.
And I pay these w******* wages!!!!!
I go away for 2 days and come back to the same old shit. Groundhog day springs to mind.
Messed up link above. Hope this works better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnEBI0_IrWQ
Wow…. That Trossard shouldnt have been playing on Saturday.
https://x.com/TheAthleticFC/status/1841033057924759915
Ben
From the Mail
“‘Secrets’ of Arsenal’s set-piece goal glut are ‘revealed’ in the French press, hours before they face PSG – and suggests Mikel Arteta’s team will be ‘sanctioned’ for their dark arts tactics”
-Gunners have transformed their set-piece game thanks to a specialised coach
-But critics decry some of Nicolas Jover’s methods as being ‘dark arts’ tactics
“But ahead of the club welcoming the Ligue 1 big beasts on Tuesday evening, L’Equipe appears to have offered the visitors a look at how and why their hosts have seen so much success from set-pieces – and offered a warning to Arsenal should they try similar moves on the night.”
I mean I bet PSG are ecstatic, as I doubt very much they had spotted what we’d been doing for the last couple of seasons. I mean those guys at PSG really haven’t got a clue. Thank God for L’Equipe.
This is what L’Equipe say:
“The sports news outlet alleged that Jover drills the squad on perfecting their set pieces using second goal net ‘perpendicular to the goal’ during training, with dummies placed in the second goal.
Players including Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, and Gabriel Martinelli are then said to be challenged to shoot at targets, scoring points against one another in a competitive ranking.
L’Equipe also claimed that Jover has been working on specific runs to sharpen players’ attacking edges.
Players are thought to be given just two seconds by Jover to run into a specific point to receive the ball, with Jover insisting on repeating and re-repeating the action until it becomes second nature to the squad.
Arsenal made their opponents pay on both occasions where set pieces have undone rivals this season, but L’Equipe was keen to highlight the winner at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as an example of Jover’s technique in practice.
The French publication stressed that while Arsenal have been able to get off the hook for utilising this tactic due to ‘permissive’ refereeing in the Premier League, they should not expect such an easy ride in the Champions League.”
And that is it as a direct lift from L’equipe. All pretty complimentary as far as I can read. Not a mention of ‘Dark Arts’ or cheating, just an appraisal of what we do, how we practice, and how well it works. The only disparaging remark is that referees allow us to ‘get off the hook’.
The truth is there is no foul so no foul is called.
And even if they were accusing us of Dark arts, which they clearly are not, talk about pot a kettle when it comes to gamesmanship. The French and Spanish invented the word.
Then we get to how the Mail interprets the L’Equpe article, and more importantly how it interprets it in ITS own words.
First we have this caption under a photograph of Arteta and Guardiola:
“Claims of ‘dark arts’ tactics utilised by the squad have ramped up the rivalry between Arteta and his former boss Pep Guardiola”
Yes there have been, but from ‘pooping his pants’ Pep and ‘anything Arsenal do is cheating’ SKY Sports. As you read above, absolutely nothing of the sort from L’Equipe.
Then we have this
“Ben White’s dogged tracking of Guglielmo Vicario proved crucial to allow Gabriel to sprint in from the penalty spot and bury his header from the corner kick, much to the chagrin of rival teams and fans who believe the defender should be penalised for blocking the ‘keeper.”
Do they? Have you asked them all? And even if they do so what. Arsenal are not breaking any rules, deal with it. And that’s the thing that annoys them. They cant. We are too good. So, because of that they want us penalised. In fact they want the rules changed.
So, finally going back to that headline. What Arsenal do is hardly a ‘secret’ and at no point do L’Equipe suggest Arsenal use ‘Dark Arts’, and at no point do they suggest Arsenal should be, or will be, ‘Sanctioned’.
We have a headline from The Mail that bears no relationship to reality, and just puts words in the mouth of L’Equipe simply in order to recycle the ‘Dark Arts’ nonsense yet again.
This really is getting ridiculous.