By Sir Hardly Anyone (and an abacus) “Arsenal [are] paying price for Mikel Arteta’s disastrous £140million spending spree”. “Why are Arsenal not spending despite having £400m in reserves?” Those quotes emerged just four years apart. If Arsenal spend a lot then it is a “spree” suggesting it is done without care. If they spend little …
By Tony Attwood Discussing the treatment of clubs by referees is made quite difficult by the fact that anyone who tries to claim their club is poorly treated by referees is simply told that this is just an excuse. Our 160 game analysis went a long way to resolve that debate by presenting video evidence, …
by Andrew Crawshaw On Tuesday Evening Arsenal Women kick off their second round match in the UEFA Women’s Champions League. The tie is being played home and away, the first leg at Borehamwood with a 19:30 kick off, the second leg is in Prague on Thursday of next week 9 September with an earlier kickoff …
By Sir Hardly Anyone When Arsene Wenger first came to Arsenal in 1996 he bought in four players. Indeed such was the oddity of Mr Wenger taking over the club but staying to see out his contract in Japan, some of the players arrived before he did. Those four were Patrick Vieira, Nic Anelka, John …
By Tony Attwood Does being bottom of the league after three games really mean anything? Presumably the people who write newspapers and blogs want their readers to believe that it does. They don’t spell it out, but the implication is always that how the table looks after three games is an indicator of how …
By Tony Attwood It is more than likely that you’ll know the Arseblog website; a blog very highly rated by many within the literate section of the Arsenal fan base. And yet I find to my surprise that in a recent blog, the writer can say, in questioning why Kolasinac was playing, “Reportedly he spent …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal by the end of last season was still operating at a level below that achieved by Mr Wenger in his final season – the season in which he was forced out of the club. We did for a short while under Mr Emery reach a higher level of achievement, but then …
By Tony Attwood This summer Manchester City has brought in three players: Darío Sarmiento, Jack Grealish, and Kayky. I am not sure how many more lawyers the club has brought in so far this summer but I do know they are still looking for at least four more, because in the legal press at the …
By Bulldog Drummond “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” John Stewart Mill. The Guardian which runs the quote above in an article on Arsenal today, considers today’s game to be of such little importance that it doesn’t even have a mention of …
By Tony Attwood Moaning about the club one supports is part of the process for many football fans. As far as I can tell, it happens in a lot of clubs, no matter how successful the club is. I mean, I heard Celtic fans complaining about their club after they had just won the Scottish …
By Bulldog Drummond The Arsenal under 23 game against Tottenham has reached half time and it is goalless, as I write this – if you are an Arsenal member you should be able to watch it on Arsenal.com or your phone – however you have registered your membership. It’s really interesting to watch – there …
By Bulldog Drummond We have often quoted the fact that in the last two thirds of last season Arsenal were the second best team in the Premier League using this table as evidence. P Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester City 24 20 0 4 62 20 42 60 2 …
By Bulldog Drummond Just to get yourself in the mood, and before we start the normal rundown, you catch one of the previous games – just click on “Watch the video” Knocking in 3 against Man City away. Watch the video Interestingly this game which is at 1230 on Saturday, seemingly hasn’t sold out. The …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Arsenal’s 25 man squad is complete – in the two senses that we have 25 men in the squad and only 16 of them are foreign grown, the rest being either home grown. We also have a few who are not included in the 25 because they will be classified as …
By Tony Attwood So we are playing AFC Wimbledon at home in the next round of the cup – something that none of the media wanted to see (although the club’s website speaks of “draw delight”). Not because they don’t like Wimbledon of course, but because it means Arsenal were not beaten by West Bromwich. …
By Bulldog Drummond “The worst ever start to the season” is one of the most common phrases that one reads about Arsenal at the moment, but why is it important? It would be important if losing the first two matches in a campaign meant that we then got relegated, but this is not so. The …
By Bulldog Drummond The league cup can hardly be called our favourite competition as we have only won it twice and have been runners up six times. Those wins were 1987 and 1993. The last final was 2018, and that was interesting in that the referee was noted as playing considerably less time added on, …
By Bulldog Drummond As you might expect our record with West Bromwich Albion across the last 10 years or so (since the start of 2011/12) is quite good. We have played them 18 times – 17 in the league and once in the League Cup. That league cup game was a draw, as shown …
By Tony Attwood There are quite a few calls around for Mr Arteta to go, with as always, some fans being swayed by press commentary. The notion of the bumbling buffoon who didn’t know what he was up to was promoted in the Guardian’s headline Arsenal fans need Mikel Arteta to work out what he …
By Bulldog Drummond WORST ever start to a top-flight campaign screams the Daily Mail, carefully noting that in 1895/6 we lost the first three games in the season, but were in the second division at that time. So that means a defeat against West Bromwich Albion could then give them another shock horror. The funny …
By Tony Attwood It isn’t of course just England that is seeing a return to racism on the terraces as those within earshot could hear from the away section at yesterday’s game. The Ligue 1 game between Nice and Marseillais could not conclude on Sunday night after uproar followed a projectile being thrown on the …
By Bulldog Drummond Having at least five players missing from the team through covid, and one who, while no longer suffering, is not yet back to full fitness, is enough to rip the heart out of quite a few teams. But for a team that had already suffered a defeat in the opening game, and …
by Andrew Crawshaw Last Friday and Saturday the teams remaining in the Round 1 knockout phases of the Champions and League pathways played their final games, and on Sunday the draw for the second round was made. At this point the 12 teams from round one were joined by a further 12 with direct access …
By Bulldog Drummond There’s an interesting division in the media today between the right-wing Daily Mail and the left-leaning Guardian today. The Mail gives a positive account of Arsenal and the Guardian rages ever deeper into its continuing anti-Arsenal approach which utterly denies that there was any improvement in the results in the last two …
By Bulldog Drummond According to the BBC, Romelu Lukaku is set to make his second debut for Chelsea, and yes I can see what they mean, in that he played a few times for Chelsea from 2011 to 2014. But I don’t think you can have a second debut with the same club. A debut …
