By Tony Attwood Here is a line up for the coming season that in popular among journalists and bloggers… Bernd Leno; Hector Bellerin, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkordran Mustafi, Nacho Monreal; Lucas Torreira, Aaron Ramsey; Alex Iwobi, Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan; Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. And a variant Petr Cech; Hector Bellerin, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkordran Mustafi, Sead Kolasinac; …
Aubameyang leads the line Ramsey, Guendouzi and Elneny start in midfield Sokratis partners Mustafi at the back Cech (c) Bellerin Papastathopoulos Mustafi Kolasinac Guendouzi Elneny Ramsey Ozil Mkhitaryan Aubameyang Substitutes Leno, Chambers, Mavropanos, Holding, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, E. Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Nelson That’s the confirmed line up. Chelsea’s team W. Caballero, Azpilicueta (c), David Luiz, Rudiger, Marcos …
By Bulldog Drummond So here we are again in the next round of the ICC. We’ve drawn/lost one, and won one thus far, and here’s the league table. Chelsea’s previous game was a 1-1 draw with Inter which they won 5-4 on penalties. Pos Team P W WP LP L F A Pts 1. Tottenham …
by Sir Hardly Anyone Maybe it is the change of arrangements, what with bringing the end of the window back to mid-August – a bit like having an extension done to your house by making the garden bigger and the living room smaller. (Sorry that doesn’t quite work but I am trying to play with …
By Tony Attwood In recent articles I have been looking at what next season’s Premier League table might look like. In the first article we showed there was a link between how much clubs spent in the transfer window and whether they would go up or down. Then in the second article considered how this …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw It is always rather encouraging when one hears managers of other clubs moaning, whinging and whining. Of course much of the time, the moaning is all made up to cover what is happening, but even so, there seems to be a certain level of uncertainty in one or two …
By Tony Attwood Yesterday we unveiled our new prediction process in the article How much does it cost in transfer fees to take a club up one place in the PL? It looked at purchases for last season and showed how they resulted to rises or declines in the position in the league table. In short, …
By Chayasai Unai Emery has not only brought a load of confidence back to the squad after their poor finish – by their own lofty standards – last season , he has also instilled in them a sense of pride in playing in Arsenal Shirts , a heightened sense of discipline and that you create …
by Tony Attwood Initially, as the transfer window approached this summer, the story was that Arsenal would have a summer spending limit of £50m. Then a little later that was raised to £70m. So the first question I asked was where did that extra £20,000,000 turn up from. Of course I’m not privy to the …
by Sir Hardly Anyone From the mountains of Rutland in Englandshire, home of the nation’s finances and wealth, I can now give you an indication that this is going to be a record year for rumours of Arsenal transfers. In the summer of 2016 we reached a grand total of 115 transfer rumours by the …
by Tony Attwood There is no doubt about it: Arsenal have a rare collection of extremely talented young players available for the coming season. While everyone last season would have known about Eddie and Maitland-Niles now we have a plethora of names to add to those giving us a list that looks like this… Konstantinos …
Here is the line up for the match, I hope. Different “outlets” are outletting all sorts of strange stories but I think this is the right one Starting XI: Leno; Bellerin, Sokratis, Mustafi, Kolasinac; Guendouzi, Elneny; Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Iwobi; Aubameyang That looks rather good fun. If it is right, great to seen Guendouzi again, …
By Bulldog Drummond Update: ESPN are showing 19 Bernd Leno 20 Shkodran Mustafi 5 Sokratis Papastathopoulos 31 Sead Kolasinac 2 Héctor Bellerín 10 Mesut Özil 4 Mohamed Elneny 29 Matteo Guendouzi 14 Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 17 Alex Iwobi 7 Henrikh Mkhitaryan Foot Lond are saying that we “will get to see Mesut Ozil, Alex Iwobi and Mohamed Elneny for the first time in pre-season, while summer signing …
Gathered and preserved by Sir Hardly Anyone and the man behind the bar at the Rutland Pug. STORY ONE: Guess who? FootLon that website owned by the Daily Mirror that loves to put forth 40 tales a day has a new tactic with the headline “Arsenal news live: Star ‘shakes hands’ on deal, Gunners contact …
by Tony Attwood Finding out about players who Arsenal have signed and who are not already super starios can be difficult. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of websites with the same headline “Matteo Guendouzi: all you need to know about Arsenal’s new signing” and they don’t tell me anything like I need to know. Like …
by Tony Attwood There used to be a programme on TV in the UK called the Fast Show which featured Ron Manager the TV commentator on football. In case you never came across him here he is And amazingly Premier Sports 1, which is showing the current pre-season tournament in the UK brought him back …
By Bulldog Drummond Ahead of Arsenal’s game which kicks off shortly we now have the first league table to emerge out of the ICC tournament thus far and it reminds us of the special arrangements being made in this competition. Indeed it makes rather interesting, if occasionally bemusing, reading . For what it brings home …
By Sir Hardly Anyone So here we are again, with the top ten tales from the “outlets” as they call each other. And I’m back with Albert Blizzard of the The Buzzard who was bemoaning a complaint from his editor. “He told me,” Albert announced after tucking into his pint and whisky chaser, “that my last …
By Don McMahon My heart is heavy and my mind in turmoil after having read Mesut Ozil’s scathing attack on racism in German football and in Germany itself. I lived in Germany for two years and really enjoyed being there, especially for the football. However, after reading his exposé about mistreatment and bigotry on the …
by Tony Attwood How could changes in tactic lead to each club’s tactics will affect their position in the top six? As always with analyses of tactics, we need to consider the effect of actions. For example goal kicks or throw ins being intercepted by the opposition are frustrating, and can be called “errors”, but …
By Tony Attwood Sports Keeda today say, “The Gunners start their campaign on August 12 against reigning champions Manchester City at the Emirates, before making a short trip to London rivals Chelsea a week later. If Wenger was still in charge, most supporters would have expected precisely no points from these two fixtures.” This is either realistic …
by Tony Attwood OK let’s try and weigh this up. My view is that we are not going to buy any more players because a) the budget was £70m and that has gone. b) Arsenal have far too many players to fit into the artificial “17” and “25” limits, and so need to sell or …
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is a most curious coincidence that when a big story (such as Mesut finally having had enough of racism in Germany) breaks, it always happens just at the moment when the transfer tales dry up. I mean it couldn’t be that these fellas down the public house are actually making …
By Tony Attwood Football is instant – players, clubs and managers are only as good as their last result – or for those with a long term memory, the last three results. Which has been rather damaging to Arsenal across the last ten years if we look at the results. Season W D L Pos …
By Tony Attwood And so Mesut Özil has removed himself from international football. I’m glad he has and can only wish he had done it earlier. Mesut is one of those players who not only has a choice of which team to play for, but also which country to play for and he chose the country …
