Bayern scored on one of the most pathetic, going nowhere clearances ever. There were like 6 fuckups to allow them in
Yeah I don’t think any of the players started aren’t good enough more that they’re out of form/havent seen many minutes. Also think starting a zinchenko and/or Jesus adds CL experience and might have cut out some of the stupid mistakes but obviously will never know/prove it.
And Jesus said he needs knee surgery this summer right after the season. Not sure why they put that out there now…….
I know LeGrove isn't a favorite here, but I thought he offered some great perspective on his blog this morning regarding last night
Spoiler: Full Blog, if interested Le Grove – The Arsenal Opinion Blog - [email protected] - Gmail By Pedro on Apr 10, 2024 05:00 am Well that was a very weird evening. Arsenal heads into the second leg of the Bayern game with a 2-2 draw and a sharp reminder that top teams, with top players, do not roll over to the new kids on the block. Things started well, Bukayo Saka created a wild piece of individual brilliance when he received a Ben White pass with his back to goal and with one smooth turn, managed to front up to goal and bang an unstoppable missile past Neuer. Everything was going well, Bayern had no answers, until they had two. Bayern did well to capitalise on two very dopey mistakes by Arsenal. For the first, David Raya was out of position, that threw Big Gabi into making a mistake with a pass that missed a flatfooted Kiwior, Bayern broke in transition, Goretzka turned Mesut Ozil and slipped the perfect ball into the diagnol run of Serge Gnabry and the rest is history. Last time I saw Serge do something in the Champions League it was when he was a teenager and he gave the ball away allowing Schalke to score. No such luck last night. The second goal was a Sane masterclass in power, pace, and tight control. He mugged off Kiwior, then zipped into our box uncontested until Saliba decided to smash him over. Kane, Arsenal, an inevitable goal. The changes flowed pretty fast. Zinchenko came on to give us more control and bravery out the back. Then Trossard and Jesus were brought on to bring more chaos and aggression in the final third. Those moves paid dividends when Jesus found his way out of a four-player crush, finding Trossard who did Trossard things with a perfect low finish. No player in Europe has scored 6 goals from the bench. What a way to spend £25m. Bayern still had time to hit the post late on, but that was it. Two shots on target, two goals… that was the night for Arsenal. So what did we learn? Champions League is really f*cking hard and we’re not equipped with the maturity to deliver like other clubs that remain are. Our manager lacks experience and so do our players. People don’t like that comment, but it’s a reality. Cup comps at this level are really, really tough. Don’t believe me? Look at this. That is the record of Manchester City since 2010. The most over-funded club in the world. The best players. The best manager. Taking 5 attempts to get to a semi final, taking another 5 attempts to get to a final (no semi finals during that phase), then taking another two attempts to win the whole thing. ‘Pep is a Galaxy brain’ Whatever, he’s the best in the business, and it took him a very long time to get City to where they needed to be with unlimited funds. That’s not an excuse for last night, it’s perspective for the crew of people who think football is easy, and we should be smashing Bayern. We are under-dogs for the return leg. Their ground is an outrageously rough place to go. Their big players will fancy themselves and not see us as invincible. Our players might have concerns after Bayern asked legitimate questions of us. But we still have to be real: They managed two shots on target and both came from Arsenal mistakes. We are more than capable of doing some damage at their gaff because if we’re focused, we can beat anyone on their day. A few additional notes: Thomas Partey looked like the bad dream I’ve been having about Arsenal choking the season. He was messy, off the pace, and very errant. He did not look ready. Not his fault, but it did leave me wondering if he’s going to be any use for the run-in. Zinchenko, whether you like his political views or not, was a big upgrade on Kiwior. He was calmer, better on the ball, and he gave us a bravery out the back we lacked in the first half. People need to stop hammering him, he wasn’t perfect, but he was relentless and he didn’t hide. Big Gabs and William Saliba didn’t look like the best two centre backs in the world. Regardless of Raya’s positioning, the panic on the ball wasn’t great for the first goal… and despite Johnny giving him a pass on the penalty, I didn’t think Saliba needed to give away a penalty in that moment. Let the forward work for the goal, don’t gift Harry Kane a goal with a silly challenge. Declan Rice did not have his best game. He looked part tired, part concerned about his yellow, part not very good. He’s played all the games this season, is he suffering from the realities of human physiology? Who knows.Get him in a cryogenic chamber and get Edu to heat up some BBQ’d horse placenta. PERSPECTIVE FC SAYS: We’re still in the mixer, don’t be too downbeat, plenty to play for. P.S. There was some unsavoury action in the comments last night. Thanks to those who let me know. We’re a blog for all, and shitty behavior will come with a suspension order or a ban. Check out the latest podcast. BOYS MUST BECOME MONSTERS By Pedro on Apr 09, 2024 03:17 pm The quarterfinals are finally upon us, Arsenal are back in the big time, and we’re playing one of the giants of European football. Bayern Munich, the club Ivan Gazidis held up as the model he wanted to adopt at Arsenal 10 years ago, are coming to town. They elicit Bavarian pride, they are competitive, and they dominate the cultural landscape in Germany. Arsenal kinda move like Bayern these days. We’re hoovering up the best talent in the league, we play expansive football, and we’re getting close to dominance on the pitch. This evening is a chance to show that we can be dominant on the biggest of stages. Major questions around selection are all over the pitch because we have a fully fit squad to choose from. Main points of contention are at left-back, where we could choose from Zinchenko, Tomiyasi, and Kiwior. Arteta favors the Ukrainian overall, but his load has been heavy, and that usually ends in injury when we roll the dice. Tomiyasu makes sense because he can look down pace merchants… but how would that impact Kiwior if he was unceremoniously relegated to 3rd place after some monster performances? In midfield, the conundrum is whether Arteta opts for Jorginho on a run of big games – or he takes a punt on Thomas Partey. The Ghanaian at his peak is a monster match for any club. The worry is we haven’t seen Partey peak all season. He looked good in some of his cameos, but his pace isn’t there, nor is his game fitness. This is a game where his athleticism and incisive verticality could be very damaging for Bayern… but the same could be said for Jorginho’s ability to set the rhythm of a game we need to win. What do we fear? Bayern Munich’s individual talent coming together to bury a green Arsenal time in the home leg of a game we really need to exit with some goods. What do we hope for? A disjointed team with a manager on a long notice period showing up with unwarranted arrogance and getting their backsides handed to them. A team like Bayern simply doesn’t have the tools or the desire to play like Porto. They’ll come to play. If they come to play, in the form Arsenal is in, it could be a very sorry evening for them. Our secret sauce is we’re really f*cking good right now… and our atmosphere. Arsenal is encouraging fans to show up early, show up in red, and make some noise. We need to make this atmosphere feel big and give our players the edge they need to do their jobs to perfection this evening. I’m excited. We’re back in the big leagues. Let’s see if the boys are ready to show they are MONSTERS when it matters.
I don’t take issue with the result or the lineup/tactics. Just disappointing to concede as we did, especially the first one, and to not take advantage of a couple of golden opportunities. Second goal is more along the lines of one I would chalk up to inexperience in this stage of the tournament.
i’m not sweating this season too much. we have a great opportunity in champions league (and the epl) this season. we had a great opportunity last season as well in the league, but know how that ended. if you’d given me the choice of where things currently stand going into this season, i would’ve taken it and not thought twice. if we win either of those comps this season, that’d be great, but we’re still a bit inexperienced in champions league and juggling both comps this late in the season isn’t easy. we’re playing some great soccer the last two seasons, we’re here to stay, and i’m all here for it imo.
if we calm the hell down at the back (and don’t play Kiwior) we should beat them. They have good wingers but we just gifted those goals and deserve the uphill battle we’re in against Bayern
He's struggling to get into a team down the table in the Championship. Don't think he's thought of as an Arsenal-calibur talent anymore. A move to Spain or Italy would probably be good for him. Transfer fee won't be much, but it's pure profit and we need it.
Very random but when I went to preseason game I saw a few different patterns in the home jersey which I already felt like it was a cheaper type of material than usual. Initially thought it was a bunch of people bought fakes(they were selling them all over DC) which seemed unusual if you were paying $200+ for a meaningless game. Remembered I bought it off fanatics which I didn’t know had a piece of the jersey business till like a month ago so questioning if I have a different 1 than Arsenal sell tl; dr kinda pointless. Boycott fanatics
I never really thought of them as similar players who would block one another. (not saying I think Patino is making the first team any time soon)
Watched Europa yesterday and didn’t put two and two together that we play Villa this weekend. 48 hours more rest for us.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/insider...team-premier-league-invincibles-arteta-wenger Anyone have insider to post?
Spoiler The last Arsenal team to win the Premier Leaguewas, according to many, the greatest Premier League team of all time. They're called "The Invincibles," after all, and they did something that no other Premier League team has ever done. Or, rather, they didn't do a thing that every other Premier League team has done: lose. Led by Thierry Henry's league-leading 30 goals and a league-low 26 goals conceded on the other end, Arsene Wenger's team won 26 matches, drew 12 and lost none in 2003-04. They're the only Premier League team to go undefeated over a full domestic season, and only two others have done it across Europe's Big Five leagues during the sport's modern era: AC Milan in 1991-92 and Juventus in 2011-12. In fact, only two other Premier League teams have even managed just a single loss: Chelsea in 2004-05 and Liverpool in 2018-19. All of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City teams have lost at least two games. The Invincibles were -- and perhaps are -- the iconic Premier League team. Henry cutting in from the left and just generally being the coolest person you'd ever seen; Robert Pires hunched over the ball, unable to lift his legs off the ground and still making it work; Gilberto Silva and Patrick Vieira gobbling up all the space and all the loose balls; Ashley Cole bombing forward and creating the modern full-back position; Jens Lehmann bordering on a nervous breakdown at all times in goal -- to a certain generation of fans, which includes me, this team defined an era, defined a league. The Invincibles might be the most important Premier League team of all time, but here is where I must say: the current version of Arsenal might be even better. Who is the greatest Premier League team ever? In most sports, "going undefeated" is the equivalent of "winning every game." Not so in soccer, where a win is worth three points and a draw is worth two. Just ask Perugia. In 1979, the Italian club went undefeated in Serie A ... but still managed to finish second. Across a 30-game season, they won 11 matches and drew 19. Back then, it was only two points for a win, but that didn't matter. AC Milan won 17, drew 10 and lost three en route to their 10th league title. Despite going undefeated, the Invincibles didn't win as many games as you might expect. The Premier League record for wins was set and then matched, three seasons in a row: Manchester City won 32 games in 2017-18, then did it again in 2018-19 and then Liverpool did it in 2019-20. Since the Premier League was formed in 1992, 23 different teams have won more matches than the Invincibles did. Of course, it's not just about wins, either. It's a combination of the two and by pure points accrued, the Invincibles rank 12th all time with 90. Of the 11 teams ahead of them, nine won the league. The two that didn't: Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool in 2018-19 (97 points, fourth most ever) and Klopp's Liverpool in 2021-22 (92 points, eighth most). The point is to win as many points as you can. But even then, not all points are created equal. Take this example. Team A win nine matches and lose one. Their nine wins are all by a goal, while their one loss came against Team B, by a score of 5-1. Team B, meanwhile, tied two other games and won their seven other matches, each by two goals. Team A would finish with 27 points and a plus-five goal differential. Team B would finish with 26 points and a plus-18 goal differential. Who's better? Team A won more points, but given the information, Team B is much better. So, another way to compare teams across seasons would be to look at the magnitude by which they're outscoring their opponents. play 2:15 Why Jurgen Klinsmann was 'very pleased' with Bayern's performance vs. Arsenal Jürgen Klinsmann reacts to Arsenal and Bayern Munich's 2-2 draw in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals. The top 10 seasons consist of six by Manchester City, two by Liverpool, and one by Chelsea. The best ever is Manchester City's plus-79 goal differential when they won a league-record 100 points in 2017-18. The second best was Manchester City's plus-73 in 2021-22 and the third best was their plus-72 in 2018-19. The only other Premier League team to reach the plus-70 mark was Carlo Ancelotti's underappreciated Chelsea side from 2009-10. After that, numbers five and six are Liverpool in 2018-19 (plus-67) and 2021-22 (plus-68). Liverpool outscored their opponents by a margin greater than all but four other teams in the history of the league. And they did it twice. And they didn't win the league either time. A similar fate could be lurking ahead for Arsenal this season. On a per-90-minute basis, Mikel Arteta's team is outscoring opponents by 1.6 goals. Over a full season, that would put them 10th all time in the Premier League, and yet they still have only about a 30% chance of winning the league, based on most projection systems and the betting markets. That's because they're now in the same league, at the same time, as the only teams and managers who appear in that top 10 multiple times. However, if you remove Arsenal from the will-they-or-won't-they context of this season's title race, you're left with a truly excellent soccer team. In fact, it might be the best one that Arsenal fans have ever seen. Right now, the Gunners have outscored their opponents by 51 goals. The Invincibles, meanwhile, outpaced the opposition by 47 goals. The big difference: This season's Arsenal team still have seven games left. Why Mikel Arteta's team is even better than you think The Invincibles snuck in their undefeated season right before the Premier League changed forever. For their prior season, 2002-03, Arsenal had the second-highest revenues in England after Manchester United, who were the richest team in the world, and the seventh-highest revenues in the world, after (in order) United, Juventus, AC Milan, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Inter Milan. In 2003, a relatively anonymous Russian billionaire named Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea and immediately spent his way to the top. Over the first two years under Abramovich's ownership, Chelsea spent €336.1 million on player transfer fees alone. The next most spend-happy team was Manchester United at €117.8 million, while no one else in the Premier League even broke €80 million. Over that span, Arsenal spent just €39.9 million on transfer fees. FC Porto, who were managed by a cocksure Portuguese 41-year-old named ... Jose Mourinho. Abramovich hired Mourinho immediately after Porto became European champs, and in 2004-05, Chelsea won their first-ever Premier League title, losing just one match, besting the Invincibles' previous-year point total by five, and conceding only an absurd 15 goals across 38 matches. The following year, Chelsea won more points than the Invincibles again (91), winning the league again behind a totally-but-not-quite-as-dominant defense that conceded just 22 goals. The Premier League had decided to welcome in whatever kind of capital wanted to be involved, and there was no going back. Five years later, Abu Dhabi took over Manchester City and, well, you saw how many of the highest point totals and goal differentials were produced by that club. For the most recent accounting year, six of the 10 richest teams in the world played in the Premier League, as did 14 of the 30 richest. For Arsenal, they no longer had the second-highest revenues in England, as they did in 2003. No, they ranked sixth, bunched up right around Chelsea and Tottenham. And although Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has purchased Newcastle, making the club -- by some measure -- the richest professional sports team on planet Earth. So, this is the environment in which Arsenal are doing this. What are they doing exactly? Well, since Guardiola took over Manchester City, the club have produced the best expected-goal differential in the Premier League -- in every season. On balance, City have created a bigger margin of chances than every team in the league, year after year. Conversion rates in front of goal, on both ends, have occasionally prevented them from winning. That is, until this season: It's borne out in the total goal differential, too: What's more: Arsenal's average age, weighted by minutes played, is 25.7 years. Liverpool are 27.0, while City are slightly higher at 27.3. The average age of the past 10 Premier League winners is approximately 27. So, City and Liverpool are built to win right now. Arsenal are winning right now, but they're also built to win in the future. The only real question mark about this team comes from their Champions League performances. They handled a very easy group, but then needed penalties to get by a Porto team who are 13 points off the pace in the Portuguese league. And then, in the first leg against a wobbling Bayern Munich in London, they conceded more expected goals than they had in any match this season: This has been the best defensive team in Europe basically since the start of the 2023-24 domestic season. The reason they've recovered since their stumble in December, caught both City and Liverpool while also blowing past them in goal margin is that the attack exploded right around the turn of the year. This is their five-game rolling average for non-penalty xG created, i.e. games one through five, games two through six, and on and on: I'd been waiting for the attack to cool off because it wasn't paired with any kind of defensive drop-off ... and then I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. Now, the average has dropped off recently, but I'm not even sure I buy that. It's because there was one game on the road against Man City, and then a game against Luton with a rotated squad where they scored two early goals and then took their foot off the gas. The idea that a team with a forward line that includes Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz could be better than the one with Henry and Pires and Dennis Bergkamp just does not compute. And they do still need a signature Champions League performance to really mark their arrival at the upper-most echelon of the sport. But the Invincibles themselves were knocked out in the Champions League quarters by a significantly worse team than Arsenal's current opponents. Plus, no one in the Premier League at the time was at the level of Liverpool or Manchester City, while the teams throughout the rest of the league weren't able to attract the same level of player and managerial talent that they are now, either. At a certain point, the numbers and the performances and the context just don't lie. Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice, William Saliba: these guys are really that good. Now, Arsenal probably won't win the Champions League and they probably won't win the Premier League; that's just how these things work when there are so many other great teams to compete against. Somebody is going to win, but the field is more likely than any individual side in either competition. But given how good Arsenal are and how young they are, it seems like only a matter of time until they win at least one, if not more, of those titles. If this isn't the best Arsenal team we've ever seen, then just wait. We'll probably see them next year, or the year after that.
Spoiler The last Arsenal team to win the Premier League was, according to many, the greatest Premier League team of all time. They're called "The Invincibles," after all, and they did something that no other Premier League team has ever done. Or, rather, they didn't do a thing that every other Premier League team has done: lose. Led by Thierry Henry's league-leading 30 goals and a league-low 26 goals conceded on the other end, Arsene Wenger's team won 26 matches, drew 12 and lost none in 2003-04. They're the only Premier League team to go undefeated over a full domestic season, and only two others have done it across Europe's Big Five leagues during the sport's modern era: AC Milan in 1991-92 and Juventus in 2011-12. In fact, only two other Premier League teams have even managed just a single loss: Chelsea in 2004-05 and Liverpool in 2018-19. All of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City teams have lost at least two games. The Invincibles were -- and perhaps are -- the iconic Premier League team. Henry cutting in from the left and just generally being the coolest person you'd ever seen; Robert Pires hunched over the ball, unable to lift his legs off the ground and still making it work; Gilberto Silva and Patrick Vieira gobbling up all the space and all the loose balls; Ashley Cole bombing forward and creating the modern full-back position; Jens Lehmann bordering on a nervous breakdown at all times in goal -- to a certain generation of fans, which includes me, this team defined an era, defined a league. The Invincibles might be the most important Premier League team of all time, but here is where I must say: the current version of Arsenal might be even better. Who is the greatest Premier League team ever? In most sports, "going undefeated" is the equivalent of "winning every game." Not so in soccer, where a win is worth three points and a draw is worth two. Just ask Perugia. In 1979, the Italian club went undefeated in Serie A ... but still managed to finish second. Across a 30-game season, they won 11 matches and drew 19. Back then, it was only two points for a win, but that didn't matter. AC Milan won 17, drew 10 and lost three en route to their 10th league title. Despite going undefeated, the Invincibles didn't win as many games as you might expect. The Premier League record for wins was set and then matched, three seasons in a row: Manchester City won 32 games in 2017-18, then did it again in 2018-19 and then Liverpool did it in 2019-20. Since the Premier League was formed in 1992, 23 different teams have won more matches than the Invincibles did. Of course, it's not just about wins, either. It's a combination of the two and by pure points accrued, the Invincibles rank 12th all time with 90. Of the 11 teams ahead of them, nine won the league. The two that didn't: Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool in 2018-19 (97 points, fourth most ever) and Klopp's Liverpool in 2021-22 (92 points, eighth most). The point is to win as many points as you can. But even then, not all points are created equal. Take this example. Team A win nine matches and lose one. Their nine wins are all by a goal, while their one loss came against Team B, by a score of 5-1. Team B, meanwhile, tied two other games and won their seven other matches, each by two goals. Team A would finish with 27 points and a plus-five goal differential. Team B would finish with 26 points and a plus-18 goal differential. Who's better? Team A won more points, but given the information, Team B is much better. So, another way to compare teams across seasons would be to look at the magnitude by which they're outscoring their opponents. The top 10 seasons consist of six by Manchester City, two by Liverpool, and one by Chelsea. The best ever is Manchester City's plus-79 goal differential when they won a league-record 100 points in 2017-18. The second best was Manchester City's plus-73 in 2021-22 and the third best was their plus-72 in 2018-19. The only other Premier League team to reach the plus-70 mark was Carlo Ancelotti's underappreciated Chelsea side from 2009-10. After that, numbers five and six are Liverpool in 2018-19 (plus-67) and 2021-22 (plus-68). Liverpool outscored their opponents by a margin greater than all but four other teams in the history of the league. And they did it twice. And they didn't win the league either time. A similar fate could be lurking ahead for Arsenal this season. On a per-90-minute basis, Mikel Arteta's team is outscoring opponents by 1.6 goals. Over a full season, that would put them 10th all time in the Premier League, and yet they still have only about a 30% chance of winning the league, based on most projection systems and the betting markets. That's because they're now in the same league, at the same time, as the only teams and managers who appear in that top 10 multiple times. However, if you remove Arsenal from the will-they-or-won't-they context of this season's title race, you're left with a truly excellent soccer team. In fact, it might be the best one that Arsenal fans have ever seen. Right now, the Gunners have outscored their opponents by 51 goals. The Invincibles, meanwhile, outpaced the opposition by 47 goals. The big difference: This season's Arsenal team still have seven games left. Why Mikel Arteta's team is even better than you think The Invincibles snuck in their undefeated season right before the Premier League changed forever. For their prior season, 2002-03, Arsenal had the second-highest revenues in England after Manchester United, who were the richest team in the world, and the seventh-highest revenues in the world, after (in order) United, Juventus, AC Milan, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Inter Milan. In 2003, a relatively anonymous Russian billionaire named Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea and immediately spent his way to the top. Over the first two years under Abramovich's ownership, Chelsea spent €336.1 million on player transfer fees alone. The next most spend-happy team was Manchester United at €117.8 million, while no one else in the Premier League even broke €80 million. Over that span, Arsenal spent just €39.9 million on transfer fees. It's not like Chelsea were funding their spending with player sales, either. The club's net spend -- transfer fees paid, minus transfer fees received -- was minus-€331.9 million. The next biggest loss was Tottenham's €64 million. It didn't take long for all of that money to show up in success on the field. During the Invincibles season, Arsenal were knocked out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals by Chelsea 3-2 on aggregate. Chelsea then lost in the semifinals to Monaco, who lost in the final to FC Porto, who were managed by a cocksure Portuguese 41-year-old named ... Jose Mourinho. Abramovich hired Mourinho immediately after Porto became European champs, and in 2004-05, Chelsea won their first-ever Premier League title, losing just one match, besting the Invincibles' previous-year point total by five, and conceding only an absurd 15 goals across 38 matches. The following year, Chelsea won more points than the Invincibles again (91), winning the league again behind a totally-but-not-quite-as-dominant defense that conceded just 22 goals. The Premier League had decided to welcome in whatever kind of capital wanted to be involved, and there was no going back. Five years later, Abu Dhabi took over Manchester City and, well, you saw how many of the highest point totals and goal differentials were produced by that club. For the most recent accounting year, six of the 10 richest teams in the world played in the Premier League, as did 14 of the 30 richest. For Arsenal, they no longer had the second-highest revenues in England, as they did in 2003. No, they ranked sixth, bunched up right around Chelsea and Tottenham. And although Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has purchased Newcastle, making the club -- by some measure -- the richest professional sports team on planet Earth. So, this is the environment in which Arsenal are doing this. What are they doing exactly? Well, since Guardiola took over Manchester City, the club have produced the best expected-goal differential in the Premier League -- in every season. On balance, City have created a bigger margin of chances than every team in the league, year after year. Conversion rates in front of goal, on both ends, have occasionally prevented them from winning. That is, until this season: It's borne out in the total goal differential, too: What's more: Arsenal's average age, weighted by minutes played, is 25.7 years. Liverpool are 27.0, while City are slightly higher at 27.3. The average age of the past 10 Premier League winners is approximately 27. So, City and Liverpool are built to win right now. Arsenal are winning right now, but they're also built to win in the future. The only real question mark about this team comes from their Champions League performances. They handled a very easy group, but then needed penalties to get by a Porto team who are 13 points off the pace in the Portuguese league. And then, in the first leg against a wobbling Bayern Munich in London, they conceded more expected goals than they had in any match this season: This has been the best defensive team in Europe basically since the start of the 2023-24 domestic season. The reason they've recovered since their stumble in December, caught both City and Liverpool while also blowing past them in goal margin is that the attack exploded right around the turn of the year. This is their five-game rolling average for non-penalty xG created, i.e. games one through five, games two through six, and on and on: I'd been waiting for the attack to cool off because it wasn't paired with any kind of defensive drop-off ... and then I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. Now, the average has dropped off recently, but I'm not even sure I buy that. It's because there was one game on the road against Man City, and then a game against Luton with a rotated squad where they scored two early goals and then took their foot off the gas. The idea that a team with a forward line that includes Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz could be better than the one with Henry and Pires and Dennis Bergkamp just does not compute. And they do still need a signature Champions League performance to really mark their arrival at the upper-most echelon of the sport. But the Invincibles themselves were knocked out in the Champions League quarters by a significantly worse team than Arsenal's current opponents. Plus, no one in the Premier League at the time was at the level of Liverpool or Manchester City, while the teams throughout the rest of the league weren't able to attract the same level of player and managerial talent that they are now, either. At a certain point, the numbers and the performances and the context just don't lie. Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice, William Saliba: these guys are really that good. Now, Arsenal probably won't win the Champions League and they probably won't win the Premier League; that's just how these things work when there are so many other great teams to compete against. Somebody is going to win, but the field is more likely than any individual side in either competition. But given how good Arsenal are and how young they are, it seems like only a matter of time until they win at least one, if not more, of those titles. If this isn't the best Arsenal team we've ever seen, then just wait. We'll probably see them next year, or the year after that.
Who is the greatest Premier League team ever? In most sports, "going undefeated" is the equivalent of "winning every game." Not so in soccer, where a win is worth three points and a draw is worth two. analysis null and void
Miss Jill Ellis. Possibly told story and forgot because I drink too much but her dad was my club team's trainer for a few years. Super intense guy, best I ever had by a mile. Was struggling with PT somewhat over a bit of favoritism but he'd take me aside and talk to me after practices. Loved that guy, said absolutely bonkers shit during practice but great man
I think I was right about those new home kits. Not happy with them. The adidas logo is fucking massive* *allegedly
I still remember Puma following a perfect 2 decades with Nike, this is fine. You’re not wrong about the logo though, fucking huge
Will be flying for a work trip during most of the match on one hand I’m sad, but at least it’s an easy win against a banter club