Good morning to you. If you’re the cabbie I drove home last night, I hope your car breaks down and all your teeth fall out, you asshole.
Anyway, I didn’t watch our 2-0 loss to Juventus yesterday. I have not seen the goals either, one of which was an own goal. I’m not saying it’s the worst defeat in our history or anything like that, but I’m not interested in Juventus’ goals. If you like the masochism of old meta, go ahead, but it’s not for me.
However, Mikel Arteta did not sound too downcast and said:
It was also a good learning for us: the games are decided in the pits. I think they had one or two shots and scored two goals. We had 19 or 20 and we had two hits. That’s not enough. In general, I think everything else was very positive. But that last thing you need to win games wasn’t good enough today.
Hmmm, could he possibly be referring to ‘firepower’ and the need for it? Or just more of the players you have? I guess he would publicly say the latter while silently thinking about the former and whether we can do something about it in January.
Reading this morning, it looks like Reiss Nelson has been injured, and whatever role you can envision for him in the second half of the season, we need as many fit bodies as possible, so that’s not good news. Hopefully nothing too serious. The manager also spoke about some of the other absences, and he’s still not especially positive about Emile Smith Rowe:
He hasn’t been able to train in the last few days but hopefully he can start next week. He’s been out for a while now, he needs some time to get back up to speed. We need him very much and we are going to receive him with open arms, because he is a very important player for us. We need him fit on the field.
I was hoping he would be closer to first-team action at the moment, because it will take him a few weeks to get back to shape, but ultimately the most important thing is to make sure he is 100% and can keep it up going forward. There is also Tomiyasu and Zinchenko, of whom he said:
Alex is progressing well and Tomi is running on the field.
Albert Sambi Lokonga wasn’t there last night either, but I saw that it was described somewhere as a precaution. Still, with so much football to come when things resume, hopefully we can have a relatively clean bill of health by then. We will certainly know more during the week.
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Elsewhere today is the small matter of the World Cup final between France and Argentina. Will it be a Messi masterclass or an Mbappé… erm… Mbasterclass? To be honest, I don’t think there’s a clear favorite for this one. Both sides have their qualities, both sides have some flaws. From the neutral perspective, that could mean an exciting and entertaining game.
Or a monotonous 0-0 decision with a great goal that deflected off a defender’s ass on 83′. What defender? what ass? Let’s hope it’s the former though, and if we get some magic from one of the superstars, or anyone else, all the better.
I’m going to leave it at that now, but James and I are going to record the Arsecast Extra for you later tonight. Keep an eye out for calls for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra, or if you’re a member of Arseblog on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord. server.
Enjoy the game later, and we should have the podcast for you around 9:00 p.m.
