The State of The Arsenal

The Arsenal
3032

We’ve got 16 senior internationals in this international break. Would’ve been more had it not been for injuries. Would’ve been even more if White didn’t fall out with Southgate and his staff.

And there’s also the U21s internationals to count as well in ESR, Fabio, etc.

Just a couple years ago we only had a handful of international players in the team. So much quality in this team. Arteta will have to do with just a couple senior players and predominantly youth guys in these international breaks now.

3033

Saka & Ödegård listed nominees for ballon d’or on the men’s side, Ramsdale for the Yashin trophy, and Ilestedt and McCabe for the women’s ballon d’or :v:

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3034

Wanted to pick up on something mentioned during today’s derby by smudged and Neville. Yes, an out an out striker could have made the difference today, but we nearly won the league playing the same way.

I would have preferred jesus stayed on instead of nketiah. Eddie didn’t seem to have much strength or his touch on him.

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3035

Eddie’s game to run around but it’s wild that he stayed on and Jesus came off unless the medical staff had a word with Arteta.

3036

after Timber’s freak injury, better to be safe than not.

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3037

We’re unbeaten but the PSV game is the only one where I’ve felt we were at our best.

3038

It’s probably the only time we had a real balanced XI, no stupid mistakes and space to play.

Forrest at home got tight because we let a goal in, Palace away was turned on its head because of the red card, Fulham was both a slow start and dropped points due to a mistake, United was a good first half but still no space to really play, Everton was all deep block Brexit nonsense and today was both a bunch of enforced changes and big mistakes. So PSV was the only time we had all three things: solid XI, space to play and no mistakes.

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3039

True. We need to find another couple of gears if we want a top 2 season and not a top 4 one.

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3040

Unfortunately up until March last season we had a pretty gravy run with injury and ultimately we couldn’t find a way to win the league, as others said at the time we may rue the missed opportunity.

It seems this season the injury gods aren’t being as kind, Timber done for the season, our 1st two LW choices unavailable for a September NLD and in the 2nd half we have our 3rd choice DM.

Think this season might just be about trying to finish top 3 and getting healthy 2nd half of campaign for hopefully a UCL run. Can’t see us getting the 90-95 points we’ll need to be a title chance.

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3041

Agreed, I don’t see it in the league for us, I don’t see a see a side capable of consistently reaching the performance level necessary to topple Pep’s City.

Top 3 and deep cup runs would be a great basis for next season, where we would have figured things out in the 11.

5 Likes
3042

I really just want to see what the team can do when healthy and especially when we can have some stability on the left side for a while. The three left sided players plus the CF are really the group that is responsible for making things happen over there and so far we’ve had:

Martinelli, Havertz, Timber, Nketiah
Martinelli, Havertz, Tomiyasu, Nketiah
Martinelli, Havertz, Kiwior, Trossard
Martinelli, Havertz, Zinchenko, Nketiah
Trossard (came on after 20 min), Vieira, Zinchenko, Nketiah
Trossard, Havertz, Zinchenko, Jesus
Jesus, Vieira, Zinchenko, Nketiah
Nelson, Havertz, Kiwior, Nketiah

So basically…

-We haven’t repeated the same quartet yet this season. Its eight matches and eight different groups.

-We’ve played four different LBs and four different LWs.

-We’ve played only one game with Jesus starting at CF, who may be key to getting the best out of Martinelli and Havertz.

Its good to have depth but due to a combination of rotation and mainly injury we’ve had this weird situation where the right side is relatively stable and the left side is changing every single match. I think its throwing the balance of the team off. I want to see a run of 5-6 league matches with Martinelli, Havertz, Jesus, and Zinchenko all starting together (or maybe Vieira coming in for Havertz at times).

4 Likes
3043

An Arsenal data analyst named Karun Singh gave a presentation today at the Stats Bomb conference that offered a pretty crazy look at some of the stuff our data group is doing - basically building a massive unified model that takes vast data on individual player locations and events from every match across all leagues for which video feed is available and then uses neural networks (a la ChatGPT) to answer all kinds of questions about threat level, tactics, scenario analysis, etc. Some of the functionality seems just for analysis and recruitment but some of it is actually usable in real-time during matches. What these guys are doing is basically a completely different universe of data analysis then crap we have available to us on the internet as fans. I can’t judge how well we do this but the guy comes across as pretty impressive and I’m glad we’re at least trying to be cutting edge.

You can find it here but you need to rewind pretty close to the beginning, its one of the first presentations.

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3044

what a great timing we have…
International break for Saka, Saliba, Trossard, Martinelli… and all the ones with nigging injuries.

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3045

This is impressive stuff, and really highlights how important all the staff at Arsenal F.C. are for us being able to compete. The manager, owners and players matter a great deal, but these guys all play a huge role too. Good stuff!

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3046

Been seeing the reaction to our wins and it seems like allot of opposition fans are immediately downplaying the significance of us beating City. The usual retorts are ‘oh they didn’t have Rodri or De Bruyn’ or ‘oh it was a boring game from two unremarkable teams’ or ‘oh Arsenal won off deflected goal at the end’.

Imagine if the game had played out the same way but City scored a late deflected goal? Imagine if it were one of our players that made Kovacic’s tackles? It would be a whole other narrative lauding City for a measured and mature win while Arsenal were naive and weak once again.

This a treble winning City side. One of the best teams of all time. AND WE BEAT THEM!

COYFugginG!

4 Likes
3047

and this is precisely why I’ve been harping on here for months on end about how the media is 100% biased against Arsenal.

It’s been like this since before the George Graham days, he always said it best. To be hated is what it means to be Arsenal, it’s part of our history.

Secretly, they all want to be us — no amount of trophies our rivals attain can ever match the class we exude as a football club.

We’ve been “missing” from the biggest honours for 20 years, and we’re STILL the 3rd biggest club in this country.

I think we are officially back, long may it continue.

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3048

We don’t have to imagine it happened with Spurs when they won with deflected OG vs Liverpool.

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3049

If your opponents are unhappy it usually means you’re doing something right.

If they want to point to rodri, ask them where the other billion or so was on Sunday.

3050

I have a niggling feeling we’re going to go the entire season unbeaten.

I don’t know what it is, but this feels weirdly similar to 03/04. I’m honestly very surprised we haven’t lost at least 2 games so far — we’ve already played all the good teams apart from Liverpool, Newcastle & Villa.

This team appears to have a ‘never say die’ attitude, and it’s taking us places.

Do I think we’ll win the league? Unless we get January correct, No. But I can see us being in another 26 Wins, 12 draws, 0 losses season w/90 points.

The only away ground I’m worried about is the Etihad, but we have more than enough to take on the rest of the league without losing. Especially if these extra stoppages being given.

3051

Haha bold call, we’ve still got away trips to Etihad, Anfield, St James, Spurs, Old Trafford, Brighton and Villa.