Arsenal against Fulham
By Tony Attwood
It was one of our sillier long-running bits of silliness, but we used to write “bench” as ” beach” for no particular reason, and the return of Saka seemed a good moment to bring the old ways back. He’s back on the beach. Sorry bench.
So 101 days on after doing his hamstring and having an operation in December, he’s on the beach. Bench. For the game against Filham Up. Fulham.
Ethan Nwaneri plays instead of Leandro Trossard, in the only change
Jimi Gower is on the beach for the first time.
Hilariously Arsenal.com then runs the headline “How to watch Arsenal v Fulham live on TV” which is followed by the news that it is not on TV.
Emile Smith Rowe plays for Fulham.
Raya,
Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly,
Partey, Rice, Odegaard,
Nwaneri, Martinelli, Merino.
Subs: Neto, Tierney, Zinchenko, Kiwior, Jorginho, Gower, Saka, Sterling, Trossard.
Incidentally, you might be a bit surprised not to find this article listed on NewsNow. The reason is we have seemingly been banned,
We’ll have more on this and the background to this issue tomorrow.
SAKA written in the stars
Looks like we’ve lost Gabriel to another hamstring injury though.
Looked like they were working on his thigh , same difference though . He might well be out until it makes no difference. Kiwior scares the life out of me when he comes up against pace , we need White back asap as we might go without Timber and Calafiori as well.
I watched the game live and can confirm that the ref well and truely won the confidence of his employers.
For a ref that shows the most yellow cards, he managed to give two to Fulham for their ten fouls. One card for 5.0 fouls, just a little below his average of one card for every 4.3 fouls.
Having committed only two fouls in the whole game he still managed one for us though! We get fouled five times as much as we foul the opposition but get cards almost twice as often……funny that!!
Welcome back Bukayo!
The referee came in for some criticism from Keith Hackett for refusing to stop play when Gabriel was in obvious pain after injuring his hamstring.
I was surprised to see Jimi Gower on the beach less than 24 hours after featuring for the under 21s in the 3-0 victory at Norwich.