Stoke I never felt that Stoke were a threat last weekend, partly because they have a terrible record against us at the Emirates, but mostly because they were without two of their best players in Affelay & Adam, whilst Bojan still doesn’t seem to have recovered from his injury last year and didn’t start the […]
Archive | Captain’s Log
Stoke shouldn’t be able to harm us at the Emirates if we find our goalscoring boots
Stoke At home against the Potters we’ve always been able to conjure up some magic and soundly beat them, (see what I did there), whilst away from home we tend to lose. We’re at the Emirates for our Saturday lunchtime kick-off so I would normally be more confident going into the game, but given our […]
Taming the Beast in the North East and the Transfer window slams shut – The Arsenal Week
Newcastle It was tough going against a resilient Newcastle side on Saturday. In the end, our top striker Own Goal came to the rescue. As long as we can keep him fit we’ll be in with a chance of winning the big trophies this season. On a more serious note, the two own goals that […]
Arsenal MUST score first to make the opposition play and time to try Gabriel and Koscienly v Toon
Liverpool I won’t spend long talking about the Liverpool game because it’s already been covered superbly by some of my fellow GT writers. We started badly and we were lucky not to be down by a couple of goals at half time, but unlucky to have had a perfectly good goal disallowed. I felt that […]
Arsenal deploy new boxy “Zonal Attacking” system to great effect in away games?
Crystal Palace Last week I wrote this; “…it wouldn’t surprise me if we played narrow again with the intention of forcing them to match our shape.” We did indeed play quite narrow, but with a very specific shape which Andrea suggested was very much like a 4-2-2-2. Watching the game back I began to notice […]
Arsenal Confidence Good but Over Confidence Bad as leads to COMPLACENCY
Complacency We were complacent. There was so much confidence going around before the game that no-one saw this result coming. Obviously the players felt it too and even when we went a goal down I was convinced that we’d pull one back and then go on to win the game. The problem is that whilst […]
3 into 2 Won’t Go — Wenger’s got a (golden) problem but Santi must play!
The monkey is off his back. Arsene Wenger has finally beaten Jose Mourinho and no doubt he’ll have walked into the dressing room after lifting the Community Shield and told his players to defend it next year as champions. The line-ups The goalkeeper and back four along with Cazorla and Coquelin were nailed-on starters for […]
Community Shield showdown: who’s the REAL ‘specialist in failure’?
Hello fellow Gooners. The weekend was very interesting and the season is almost upon us. I won’t dwell too much on the Emirates Cup because it’s already been covered so well, so just a few quick thoughts on the two games from me. Lyon The first half of the game was a demonstration of immediate […]
Arsenal’s newfound fear factor; Sp*rs to share Emirates? No way!
Singapore select XI We expected to beat them and we did. It was also by a score that reflected the difference in the teams and the occasion. I said last week that I was looking forward to watching Akpom and he didn’t disappoint. Three goals is also a good way to get the managers attention. […]
Arsenal are back -Chuba, Dan, Gedion watch and a new keeper to Cech on!
Arsenal are back! Wednesday. That’s when I can stop forcing myself to care about Cricket/Tennis/Golf and get back to normality. The mighty Arsenal have traveled to Singapore to compete in the Barclays Asia Trophy and will take on a Singapore Select XI in a match that really is only about gauging fitness levels and making […]
