- Brentford away of late – and how are Arsenal likely to fare?
- Arsenal’s record at home v Brentford’s record away, and the recent games
- Arsenal v Brentford. Slowly it is being recognised, Arsenal are more than XI
By Tony Attwood
This week’s analysis from Football Observatory offers a view of the “100 best performing goalkeepers in the world over the past year”. The top three are Gianluigi Donnarumma of Paris St-Germain, Inter Milan’s Yann Sommer and Thibaut Courtois of Real Madrid. So not a Premier League player in sight..
As ever there is a complex methodology involved rather than a Fleet Street hack smoking a fag and wondering what else he can write to denigrate Arsenal, which is what we normally get, and indeed the methodology from Football Observatory even takes into account the defensive strength of the team in front of each keeper.
So as ever, it all gets rather complicated taking into account games played, the level of the club, the results etc etc. But there is a final result and the top men are the keepers of PSG, Inter-Milan, and in third place Thibaut Courtois of Real Madrid.
And then in fifth place we have Mark Flekken of Brentford. Meaning that in consecutive matches Arsenal will have faced two of the best goalkeepers in the world according to the stats. And have already knocked in three against one of them.
Flekken, being that good has, as you might expect only missed one game in the league this season. Brentford have two players who have played in every game: defender Nathan Collins, and Bryan Mbeumo described as a midfielder/forward. Arsenal have one player who has made it into every league match – David Raya. (Mark Flekken has been sub keeper on 30 occasions).
But moving away from keepers the media are now starting to up the pressure both on Arsenal and on the manager. “Glory or catastrophe awaits Arsenal – this is Mikel Arteta’s defining moment” screams the Telegraph, and you can almost see the saliva dripping from the journalists’ mouths as they anticipate the way they can pull Arsenal to shreds in the coming days and weeks. If Arsenal don’t win the Champs League Arteta has to go, seems to be the illogic.
The justification for this outrageous comment is that “Commanding lead over Real Madrid has raised stakes for Spaniard and history shows failure to capitalise could be fatal for his tenure.”
But that history is written by journalists who more than anything want failure in order to be able to gorge on it mercilessly without doing any research, for it is always easier to criticise failure than it is to praise success.
Indeed if Arsenal were to win the Champions League this season all we would get would be details of improvements that the club would now have to make to the squad. This would then be aimed at unsettling the players in the team, and so the undermining of Arsenal would continue, day after day. It was ever thus.
But first of course we have Brentford, a match which apparently is not Arsenal’s defining moment. And the general feeling around is summarised by the Standard’s headline, “Arteta is, as a result, expected to make changes to his team when Arsenal host Brentford in the Premier League”.
Their view is that “Arteta made five changes to his team for the match before the first leg against Real Madrid, when Arsenal travelled to Everton” and therefore “A similar number is likely this weekend and there are a fair few players that could come into the side.” They then note that “Ben White made his first start since November last week and may replace Jurrien Timber at right-back, with Kieran Tierney an option on the other flank.” They then add that “Jorginho and Oleksandr Zinchenko could both come into the midfield, which would allow Declan Rice a rest after he was forced off for the final 10 minutes of the win over Real Madrid with a foot issue.”
So quite a bit of changing around in order to give some players a break, and avoid injuries that could keep them out of the game.
Real Madrid are away to Deportivo Alavés this weekend who are currently 17th in La Liga, as opposed to Brentford who are 12th in the Premier League. So Arsenal have the tougher task.
We’ll have a look at the possible line-up in the final preview before we set off for London.
“As ever there is a complex methodology involved rather than a Fleet Street hack smoking a fag and wondering what else he can write to denigrate Arsenal”
On the subject of knocking Arsenal, it didn’t take The Sun long to find an angle with which to start knocking us again.
You’d of thought following our magnificent performance against Real Madrid, that if they were going to have a two page spread about us, it would be positive, even a bit ‘gushing’, but no. The Sun have managed to find a way to put a negative spin on things.
I mean, we witnessed 2 of the best free kicks you are ever likely to see. Surely that aspect of the match cant be turned into a negative. Oh, yes it can.
And the man assigned the job of knocking the un-knockable, the ever reliable Arsenal hating Troy Deeney.
So who’s the target of his vitriol? Our incredible free kick ‘Messiah’ (His words not mine) Nico Jover. Yep, the guy who has turned us into all conquering free kick specialists.
But no, apparently our incredible set piece statistics have nothing to do with Joven:
SET-PIECE ‘MESSIAHS’ HAVE NO INFLUENCE, IT’S ALL ABOUT STARS LIKE DEC.
Apparently the best thing about Declans Free-kicks, wasn’t their sheer beauty. Their magnificence. Nope, it was the fact:
“…we can all now stop obsessing about set-piece coaches – and Arsenals supposed ‘Mesiah’ Nico Jover in particular”
So lets pick that little lot apart shall we.
“SET-PIECE ‘MESSIAHS’ HAVE NO INFLUENCE, IT’S ALL ABOUT STARS LIKE DEC”
Really? Well first lets drop the Messiah nonsense for a while, he’s a coach. So, coaches have no influence then? Not on free kicks? Not on corners? How about goalkeeping coaches then? No influence? Defensive coaches. No influence?
I mean why do these clubs bother? Just pick 11 players, let them have a kick about over the park then send them out on a Saturday with the immortal words ‘get stuck in lads’. Yep that’ll do, after all as Deeney says “It’s all about the stars’
They could explain why Deeney was so crap. Maybe he should of listened a bit more in training?
“WE can all now stop obsessing..”
And by WE you mean YOU. I haven’t heard Arteta or anyone at Arsenal for that matter obsessing about Jover. It’s YOU and your ilk in the media that are obsessing about Arsenals set-pieces. And there’s a reason for that, and that’s because Arsenals set-piece plays are quite remarkable, and are actually worthy of obsessing about. But, lets be honest here, the problem is it’s Arsenal, so it gets on Deeney’s, and The Suns collective tits.
“Arsenals ‘supposed’ Messiah.”
Well, again for a start I don’t recall Arteta or anyone else at Arsenal calling Joven the Messiah. In fact I haven’t seen that term used to describe Joven anywhere. Deeney is the first and only person that I know of, that has suggested Joven is the Messiah. But you’re right, he isn’t the Mesiah, he’s been a very naughty boy.
Anyway, enough.
Just wanted to show how even following such a remarkable night and performance these pricks in the media, of which Deeney and the Sun are prime examples, simply cant help themselves.
@Nitram As I said in the week I am a neutral fan but the performance against Madrid was very impressive.
Like you I found most of the so called “football journalists” nothing but idiots who have nothing to add in the form of analysis of the game. In fact most of the TV pundits are failed coaches. The ones who inhabitpubs whilst pontificating about the latest tactics are interrupt at picking out a pattern.
Sorry should be inept at picking
As an observation on the general debate about the quality (or lack of) of UK television pundits, I recall being really impressed on a visit to Ireland some years ago, by the discussion between John Giles, Eamonn Dunphy and Liam Brady on RTE. It was markedly different from and superior to the crap which is the normal diet here. They all knew the game, had different opinions, but were able to conduct an adult conversation backed by analysis and evidence of games and team performances.
John L
Don’t know if you have seen it, but there is a decent blog called The Football Terrace headed by a Man Utd fan. He is very balanced and actually gets a lot of stick because he is actually very fair to us in his assessments of how we are treated in the media as well as by referees and VAR He has been at pains to point out what he concedes is a media agenda against Arsenal. But something he pointed out yesterday was very interesting. He has been extremely critical of, amongst others, Jammie Carragher, especially the criticism he has aimed at MLS. But yesterday he was at pains to point out the praise being heaped on MLS by none other than, yep Jammie Carragher.
He poses the question. How can the same guy be so utterly illogical and derogatory about MLS one minute, then thoroughly reasoned and admiring the next? As he says, Carragher is not the only pundit with these conflicting appraisals, often within the space of a day. The first thing he points out is that these people seem to have these conflicting views depending upon the platform they are broadcasting on. In conclusion, what he suggests, more than suggests, is that it is the broadcaster, or the platform that actually has the agenda, as opposed to the ‘pundits’ or ‘commentators’ themselves, and in this case he lays that accusation squarely at the feet of Sky sports.
There’s a shock.