“Arsenal dont look like champions” as we reveal the line up tonight. Maybe.

 

 

• Regulator has power to force ManC owners to sell up if they lose appeal
• Are Arsenal doing better than last year (or the year before that?)

By Tony Attwood

“Arsenal are brutally mocked across Europe: ‘Boring’ Gunners dismissed as ‘harmless’ by rivals” announced the Daily Tosspot, sorry Daily Mail, in mid-April this year, with comparisons made between Arsenal (a Peugeot) and Atletico Madrid (the Mercedes).  There was, of course, no subsequent retraction, or apology.  “Just reporting what others say,” said a journalist.  

But the word among the journos still is, that Arsenal, the champions by seven points last season, don’t look like champions.  Ok that is five words but I am sure you get my meaning: Arsenal don’t look like champions are supposed to look, so they can’t be champions and let’s not pretend they are champions because despite the points total last season they don’t look like champions should look, which is like ManC – and don’t let anyone talk about cheating or we’ll send the lads round.  Etc.

Of course the problem for the media is that the club that is top of the league is actually in line to be thrown out of the league for cheating.   But it seems there are a lot of Manchester City fans around, so no one in the media has gone so far as to wipe the Mancs out of the league table yet.

But when will the newspapers catch up?  And come to that, when will the League actually do it?   They are supposedly working through the appeals system,  and I guess it is fair enough to have an appeals system, but not one that takes forever and a year.

Meanwhile,  Arsenal, I am told, don’t look like Champions and so they can’t be Champions.  Apparently they haven’t got that swashbuckling devil-may-care adventurousness that being a champion requires.  Or something like that.

So today the Telegraph says, “Morale has plummeted at Arsenal as job cuts spread discontent” as if no football club in the world has ever had redundancies before. But of course they have, and redundancies happen all the time, simply because jobs come to an end and are not needed any more.  Especially as the club has just decided not to extend the terracing at the Clock End.  People are redundant because their jobs don’t exist.   I can say that with some certainty since in my time I have made people redundant, and believe me no one does it for fun.  You do it because the job doesn’t exist.

But redundancies are always an easy story for journalists, and are based on the simplest of analyses – some jobs don’t last forever.   The price of tickets goes up, so fewer fans misbehave.   The restrictions on drinking alcohol increase, so fewer fans misbehave.   The resale of tickets by season ticket holders who can’t get to a match has become automated so fewer employees are needed…  The number of fans who give up their season tickets each year declines, declines and declines again, so fewer…. well, you get the idea.

Of course I am not an Arsenal director so I don’t really know what is going on, but in our type of business society, the number of people one requires in the workforce changes all the time.  So people are required and not required.  It’s called capitalism.

But meanwhile here’s another point – there is a good bit of news about Arsenal!   The story is that Mikel Arteta has “mastered the art of making substitutions at Arsenal” as witness the fact that “Arsenal have beaten Nottingham Forest, Sunderland and Leeds this season thanks to goals from players off the bench.”

Now the implication is that the clever journalists knew exactly what Arsenal should have done in previous matches, but the bunch of thickos that we have running the club don’t have a clue, and so the journalists are always miles ahead of them.  Which makes me wonder, why are they still journalists, rather than football club directors?

But meanwhile the poor little things running the club have finally taken notice of what the papers say and have learned how the substitutes system can work to their advantage.

And so once again we are back to the notion that the journalists know, and the managers don’t.  

But even now the journalists can’t write this up as a straightforward bit of praise, so what we get is, “They say that once is an accident, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern. After Mikel Arteta’s substitutes proved decisive yet again for Arsenal, we can say with certainty that his ability to change games from his bench is a pattern worth noting.”

And believe me, in terms of praise from a newspaper, that really is something.

So what of the teams for the games today?   Well, it hardly seems worth mentioning since apparently all the real action is going to come for the bench, but even so….

The Standard goes with

Raya;

Timber, Konsa, Gabriel, Calafiori;

Rice, Lewis-Skelly;

Saka, Odegaard, Madueke;

Havertz

Football Lineups offers

Raya;

White, Konsa, Gabriel, Calafiori;

Rice, Guimaraes; 

Saka, Odegaard, Eze;

Havertz

Arsenal Inside fnacy

Raya;

Timber, Gabriel, Konsa,  Calafiori;

Rice, Lewis-Skelly; 

Saka, Odegaard, Madueke, 

Havertz

So a fair range of choices – except if you are particularly paying attention you will see that the first selection is the same as the last in terms of names, with just a spot of positional changes.   Which suggests it could be something like that.  We shall see later.

The game is on TNT in the UK if you ain’t got a ticket.   I’ll be back tomorrow with the usual review and then unless something extraordinary happens we will start to meander towards the next game which is on Saturday against Everton.

PS If you haven’t seen Ian Wright’s “Children in Need” video here it is…

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