“Mikel Arteta refuses to confirm whether Arsenal captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang broke Covid protocols by getting a tattoo on his hand during lockdown… but insists he WILL be punished if he failed to follow the rules,”
But that’s it until finally, way down the web page we have a piece in which “Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta calls on his side to use their ‘cruel’ Europa League exit to Olympiacos last season as inspiration when they take on Benfica in the last-32”
That is pretty much it all tied up in the headline although they do manage to say “Benfica sit fourth in the Portuguese top flight and Arteta said he is already allowing himself to dream about winning this competition. ‘Victory is always in the back of my mind,’ he said. ‘It is why we are here – to win trophies for this club.'”
Football London are at their pesky worst with the headline “Full Arsenal squad for Europa League clash vs Benfica revealed as Kieran Tierney returns.” Which literally is the full squad of all the players registered with Uefa for the competition. You could have read that on Untold last week!
But of course by and large it is the negativity that reigns supreme, as with, for example… To take just one example there is, “Arsenal could offload nine first-team stars as part of summer overhaul” from Sports Lens. Just consider that for a moment. The squad is 25 players strong – let us say 22 because we normally don’t fill all the English bred slots. Nine players out is 41% of the team. So on that basis we are going to swap around almost half the squad, and expect them all to play as a team whenever next season starts?
I’ll try and remember that prediction and come back to it.
Could be tough for us then.
That’s not anyone else at Arsenal. That is anyone else playing in the Europa.
I note that the main article under the Arsenal section on the BBC this morning is an article about David Luiz and how he came to play in Europe for Benfica of course. Being the BBC, the word “calamitous” was inevitably part of the headline even though the article isn’t quite as bad as that. Yes, he played in a game in Brazil as a 19 year old and as a result Anderlecht chose not to sign him. So they believe that word is a must when writing the headline in a story about his career.
Yes, apparently a bloke who has won every possible trophy as an English player but had a bad game whilst still a teenager fifteen years ago in Brazil, warrants the word calamitous in a headline when talking about his career. But then who does he play for now!