Reiss’ great record, loanees done great, transfers that won’t happen, international insanity

by Tony Attwood

Let’s open with a nice piece of news: Reiss Nelson has scored six Bundesliga goals this season. No non-German player has ever reached six Bundesliga goals at a younger age.

Actually it wasn’t a bad weekend for our loanees: Matt Macey played for Plymouth as they won 1-0, David Ospina played for Napoli (they won 2-1), Calum Chambers played the whole game for Fulham (although unfortunately they lost).

And in another bit of good news Lacazette has p,ulled out of the France squad, which is good news in that it means he can’t get injured, although I have not been able to see exactly why he pulled out, after being pulled in.

But Football London, that 40 Arsenal stories a day machine code driven web site has told us we must all worry because we are the only team other than Cardiff not to have held a PL lead at half time.

Which made me wonder: why should we be worried about that?   I mean, there are no points for being ahead at half time, so what does it matter?  Being ahead at half time has benefits (you are ahead at half time) but dangers (players can take their foot off the accelerator, while the opposition are beefing up their efforts to score).

It is like saying that I should be worried because it is sunny this morning (which it is) because after the sun comes rain (which it always does – although it might take a day, a week or a month for that to happen).

Elsewhere in the very big news Jermaine Pennant has attacked Igors Stepanovs.  That is a top story in the Daily Express and has made it big on News Now too.  To me it is interesting that this story should be as big as it is, while Untold is getting attacked regularly for running its series on Manchester City, the organisations it is associated with, and the way it tied Uefa up in knots.  Funny ol’ world, newspaper reporting.

Incidentally I do think it odd that Untold is criticised for running the Manchester City corruption story on the grounds that Arsenal is sponsored by a middle eastern airline.  Perhaps they have not read our criticism of the Emirates, which is fair enough (there are over 8000 articles on this site) but even so, the notion that what Arsenal does affects the rights and wrongs of what Manchester City’s owners have done is very odd.

Anyway Football Fancast reckon that all our midfield problems (if you accept we have deep midfield problems) will be over because we are going to sign Abdoulaye Doucoure from Watford – and yes they are just going to let us have him, and the player wants to come to Arsenal.   Oh we are also going for Chilwell from Leicster too.

But the overall feeling is negative, with headlines such as “Arsenal’s lacklustre draw with Wolves shows how great Emery’s task is” from Gunners Town.   The writers of such headlines have forgotten that after one match in the Unbeaten Season the Times said that Arsenal fans were calling it the worst performance from an Arsenal side they have ever seen.  Of course they didn’t know what was going to happen next.

Anyway the transfer nonsense continues as we are apparently fighting with Juventus to sign Juan Mata.  And presumably his lesser known brother Doesn’t.

Meanwhile the question is, who will get injured with international call ups?  Tragically no fewer than 12 of our team are at serious risk – and it is a greater risk than occurs with league football, since the international managers are notorious for playing players with an injury, secure in the knowledge they don’t have to take the consequences.

Meanwhile we have the all-important internationals coming up like Switzerland against Qatar, Australia v Lebanon, Honduras v Panama… and I am sure Lichsteiner will see the error of his ways and play for  Liechtenstein and Xhaka with Switzerland, while some commentator somewhere will notice that Sokratis is asking all the questions.  (Don’t worry about that one if you don’t get it – it is very silly).

Mind you there is a tiny bit of good news as Lacazette has chosen not to accept his international call up – which means he will be getting treatment for a niggling injury.

Anything else?  Well, Foot Lond think we should sign Ever Banga.  Oh yes and the Daily Express tells us that Arsenal are going to sign Bailly in January.  Although they clearly don’t want to get rumbled when it doesn’t happen, as they say they got the story from the Telegraph.

Just one more: Foot Lond tell us that Arsenal are going to sign Lille’s Nicolas Page.   I suspect the chances are the ususal 3 in a 100.