has been yes, but he started scoring just now…..would be just our luck that kickstarts things for him starting with us.
Much better that he just got a couple than we’re facing him of a narrative of him needing to break a scoreless streak.
Him grabbing a goal feels far less inevitable now.
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Think this game may be the hardest we have up till now. They’re very good.
But so are we. Think it’ll be a draw, but I want 3 points!
I don’t feel obliged to waste a score betting on him to break his duck against us 
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Emery is always like that.
That graphic gives me zero extra confidence. On the contrary, it just says he needs little to get a result.
Will Odegaard get his annual miss in front of semi-open goal at Villa Park?
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Double the short conversion % from outside the box Vs inside is absolutely wild…
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Despite all that, I feel the quality of Aston Villa squad went down and I don’t think they will be able to be consistent beyond this season.
Emery always spreads his legs for City yet seems to find three extra gears for Arteta and Arsenal. Can see a hard fought draw here.
Didn’t Villa beat City not too long ago?
They did. It because of a monstrous performance from Villa but because Haaland missed a couple of sitters. City were all over them.
Looking at the stats that seems to be the case in all of their games. xG has them 14th! Hopefully mean reversal starts this Saturday.
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xG is slightly flawed, particularly when it comes to long shots. One player might be able to hit the top corner from 25 yards regularly whereas for another it’s a 1% shot.
xG isn’t taking that player’s ability from range into consideration, it’s an average.
Yes this applies to close range shots too, but a player with almost no finishing ability still has a high chance of scoring from 5/10 yards.
In Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Rogers, Malen(?) they have a lot of players with great long range ability.
My key take from this is we need to avoid giving away free kicks, and close down those players as early as possible
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Very nervous ahead of this.
Emery is always a tough opponent and seems Villa are in good form now, but there is no excuse not to get a good result with the squad we have at the disposal now.
Saliba and Tross returning would be a massive boost.
We need to go back to those Bayern/Spurs performances. Let’s finally smash them convincingly.
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Mikel Arteta has delivered his latest fitness update on a host of players, including Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard and William Saliba, ahead of our trip to Aston Villa.
Rice went off with 10 minutes to go against Brentford, with Trossard and Saliba missing the last two matches through injury.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference, Mikel said that every hour counted when considering the fitness of his England midfielder and the rest of his squad.
He said: “Well, let’s see. We have another training session in the afternoon. Every hour is going to be very important to see the availability of the players. After that, we’ll decide which ones.”
On assessing the fitness of William and Leo, he added: “It is a matter of days with those two, for sure. After the training session, we’ll know more.”
Cristhian Mosquera also went off in the victory over Brentford, coming off for Jurrien Timber in the first half. Mikel confirmed our defender suffered an ankle injury, adding: "That’s the more complicated one, but again, we have another test today to see where we are with them.
“We need to know, because the feeling that we had after the game and yesterday, we need to corroborate with what happens with all the testing that we do today.”
We won’t know until we see the team sheets an hour before kick-off.
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Yeah.
https://youtube.com/shorts/EhnDBJ0E7m4?si=MRvqDxFTNfTjQe8H
Real shame for Mosquera if he’s out for a bit longer. He was performing really strong since the start of the season and now would be getting a lot of time on the pitch with Gabriel and Saliba out. You know he won’t be getting that much time once they’re back.
See Villa have replaced chelsea as the pretend title rivals.
Who are we playing next?
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Shame for Arsenal to be missing all 3! Can’t keep occurring injuries at this rate and win the league