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 …

Read More “Manchester City v Arsenal; portents, team news and the under 23s v Tottenham”

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 …

Read More “Arsenal are more than twice as dirty a team as Southampton – according to refs”

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 …

Read More “Manchester City v Arsenal: video of our last victory and news of Saturday’s game”

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 …

Read More “The 18 players leaving Arsenal, and who’s left in the 25 man squad.”

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.  …

Read More “Preparing for Man City who have made their worst start to the season since…”

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 …

Read More “The worst start to a season: why is that so important? WBA v Arsenal – the team”

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, …

Read More “WBA v Arsenal: WBA tactics on and off the pitch.”

  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 …

Read More “West Bromwich v Arsenal: head to head and the history”

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 …

Read More “Does changing managers actually work, when it comes to Arsenal?”

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 …

Read More “WBA v Arsenal: Arsenal injuries reach epidemic proportions”

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 …

Read More “Guendouzi strangled, racist abuse, physical violence: hello football”

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 …

Read More “Arsenal changed tactics yesterday and it didn’t work. But why did they do it?”

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 …

Read More “Women’s Champions League – report and videos against PSV and 2nd round draw”

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 …

Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the continuing assault on the club, and the team prediction”

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 …

Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: will we see the return of home bias on the part of referees?”

By Bulldog Drummond Our games against Chelsea of late have not been too bad, despite all that the media would have you believe.   Here are the last 14 matches – enough to give a fair flavour of what has been going on. Date Match Res Score Competition 27 May 2017 Arsenal v Chelsea W 2-1 …

Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: why Chelsea can tackle and Arsenal must avoid it like the plague”

By Bulldog Drummond It is at this point in the season that commentators start raging about how appallingly inept Arsenal are at everything, since we have five players out with an injury or illness.  And we might remember of course that previously it was Mr Wenger’s fault as no club, it was said, had as …

Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the injuries, plus referee ineptitude and disaster areas”

By Bulldog Drummond Mikel Arteta sent Arsenal sack warning   Metro Twenty months down the line, the manager still has no vision and Chelsea’s visit is unlikely to be played in a full Emirates (The Guardian) Those two headlines give us a summary of what the media think – and indeed each is understandable in its …

Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: leaderless, clueless and visionless Arsenal (report)”

by Andrew Crawshaw The match kicks off at 15:00 Saturday and will be streamed live by arsenal.com – at least it will if they have sorted out the technical difficulties that beset the coverage of the game against Okzhptes on Wednesday. As our European coefficient (27.7) is higher than that of PSV Eindhoven (12.0) we …

Read More “Arsenal v PSV Eindhoven – Uefa Women’s Champions League Preview”

By Tony Attwood Last season we uniquely devised a league table in which clubs were placed in order according to their results over the last 24 games of the season (approximately the last two thirds of the season, for most clubs starting on Christmas Day). The position of clubs in that league table across the …

Read More “Spending and tackles: is last season’s trend continuing this season?”

By Tony Attwood So we’ve signed Martin Odegaard as widely predicted, and the story is still that we are also going to sign Aaron Ramsdale as a back-up goalkeeper. The initial fee for Martin is reported as being around £30million with a further £4million in add-ons. He won’t be available to play against Chelsea having …

Read More “Martin Odegaard and the covid situation at Arsenal”

By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Arsenal as we well know (having been told so many times) are a failure, because after a record-breaking run of appearances in European competitions, this year they are not in Europe.  Utter, total disaster, a washout, a wreck of a club, a flop, a decline, a collapse, a mess, …

Read More “Arsenal are a failure without Europe; Spurs would be better off without Europe”

By Andrew Crawshaw I was intending to do a scouting report on PSV Eindhoven, our opponents on Saturday, but the stream of their match wasn’t licensed to be shown in the UK (or that was the message I repeatedly got).  What I thought I would do instead is clear up some questions I had regarding …

Read More “Women’s Champions League – How the competition works”

By Sir Hardly Anyone This is part two of the current list of players Arsenal are said to be chasing.  Part one can be found by looking at the Recent Posts list, at the top of the right column on this page.  Or by clicking the post above this one. So, what we find it …

Read More “The players Arsenal are tipped to buy this summer: from 70 to 136.”

By Sir Hardly Anyone Arsenal have now been tipped to bring in 136 players this summer, the largest number of transfer rumours we have found since we started counting summer transfers some ten years ago. Here’s the list for players 1 to 69, with the rest to follow shortly. Curiously all the main action this …

Read More “Arsenal break their all time record for transfers: numbers 1 to 69”