Toss-up NLD as usual
Well good evening to you ALL.
Big news on the bond front. Stan has paid of Arsenal’s debt foooooooor… stability moving forwards. It doesn’t affect Mikel Arteta’s bleak summer ahead. I mean, really, did you think Stan was just going to drop a cool £100m on the squad to take advantage of the lowest market since the great depression of 1929? Absolutely not.
The AST have an excellent assessment here. My take is that Stan is now getting paid by the club and probably taking a lower interest rate over a longer period of time. Helpful that we don’t have to keep cash in the banks and great that our interest rates are much lower. Still doesn’t mean we’re balling out with the big names this summer.
The North London Derby is coming this week. I expect a proper Mourinho performance. Forget about the bleak football, lack of shots, and general misery around our rivals. He’s coming to party this weekend and the team had best be at their very best otherwise we’ll get beaten and the post-match story will be ‘never underestimate Jose.’
Arteta and Jose have had a similar season. Both picked up teams at low ebbs, both have had a mixed bag with results, injuries and luck. Our man acknowledged as much.
They have had some ups and downs but overall you can clearly see what he wants to bring to the club. He manages the energy, the momentum and establishes a really strong culture in every football club. As well, he makes sure that he wins and he’s won in every single club that he’s been at. Obviously the situation and the timing when he arrived is different than starting a new project right from the summer, but I’m sure he will be successful because he always finds the right way to do it. It will take him a bit of time but I’m sure he will do it.
Still, what can’t be denied is we’ve looked pretty decent and on the up… and they haven’t. We still haven’t had a great 90minutes start to finish. Is there a better time to demonstrate that we are capable? No. The moment is now, so let’s see what we have.
Mikel Arteta was goaded about 7 times into calling Jose a past-it-melt, but he held back, basically saying he’s a world-class manager. Smart move really.
I think a derby has a completely different context to what is happening with the current form and anything like that. I have huge respect for Jose, for what he’s trying to do there, and we know to go there and get a win we’re going to have to do everything really, really well. I’m expecting a really tough game.
I agree. Spurs could be at the bottom of the table and this would still be a tough game. They have a great squad of players and elite talent built to make your weekend miserable. Harry Kane, Son, and Bergwijn can all do damage. I’m quite pleased Alli and Celso are out.
So what can we expect? I think it’ll be a similar approach to the one we saw from Wolves. They’ll defend deep, expect a mistake, and try and kill us on the counter. They obviously have more quality, so we need to be careful. They won’t need many chances to kill us.
This will be another huge game for our midfield and wide players. We need to play smart and stick to the game plan. Hopefully, the team is a little more confident after the first half against Leicester and we take the game to them. It’s a big away game, if we win there, who knows what we might take to the Liverpool game.
Before I go, interesting that some outlets are saying Matteo wants to stay but not apologise, whilst Canal+ is running with the idea of letting Aouar go with an eye on our bad boy replacing him. Swap? I mean, it’d be rude not to have a chat.
Short post today, have a great evening, see you tomorrow! x