By Bulldog Drummond
It seems to be part of an increasing arrogance on the part of the people who manage the daily affairs at Arsenal, that there is nothing on the club’s site about how one can watch a recording of today’s match if one can’t take time off work, or from travelling or from family arrangements, in order to watch the game live on TV.
Of course those people who can watch it live will do so, but those who can’t surely need a chance to catch up later. But is there any arrangement for such people? Well, not as far as I can see, but I suspect something will pop up at sometime on the Arsenal.com site.
Anyway, on to the match, if you are able to watch it, and we now have Thomas Partey, Matt Turner, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Ben White all available, and presumably ready to play for part of the game.
In the last game we saw Nketiah, Odegaard, Nelson, Elneny, and Lokonga, with Cedric, Gabriel, Holding and Tirney at the back.
Obviously Jesus is out for a long time yet, and although Smith Rowe is clearly recovered it doesn’t seem as if he has recovered enough to be back in the team. Zinchenko missed the last game with a muscular problem, and may not be risked.
Saliba is still playing in the WC, while Saka, Ramsdale, Tomiyasu, and Martinelli are presumably being given extended leave before coming back to the squad.
I have found two websites offering Arsenal’s starting XI – Sports Mole and Goal and both of them go with the same starting team.
Hein;
Cedric, Holding, Gabriel, Tierney;
Elneny, Lokonga;
Vieira, Odegaard, Nelson;
Nketiah
We can expect wholesale changes either at half time or halfway through the second half.
We ran several tables in the last piece (see the link at the top of the page) and I don’t normally like to repeat such things as it does go against the name “Untold” but there was one table that we can which I think was rather clever, and absolutely no one else will have run it.
It is based on the table that we run before each league game in which we take the form of the away team in the season and the form of the home team, and compare them ahead of the match – and it turns out to be a very effective way of predicting the score. What’s more, I have never seen anyone else do it (unless someone has sneakily started copying us).
Of course both teams are away on this occasion, so we took the league form home and away of both teams this season and compared them. In case you missed it here it is again but this time with goals and points per game So F/PG is goals for per game, and so on.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F/PG | A/PG | GD/PG | PPG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arsenal | 14 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 2.36 | 0.79 | +1.57 | 2.64 |
| 2 | Milan | 15 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 1.93 | 1.00 | 0.93 | 2.20 |
On that basis Arsenal should beat Milan. The goal difference per game is 0.64 better in Arsenal’s favour which means Arsenal will win by the odd goal. Looking at those figures it most likely will be 2-1.
It will be interesting to see.
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Final score 2-1 !!!
Would you believe it. Nice one Bulldog.
AND we won the penalty shoot out.
AND we won the trophy.
Played well again. Personally I think Odegaard looks immense.
One more friendly then back to the serious stuff. I cant wait.