Goonerholics Forever

This Saturday sees The Arsenal leave their own red streets of North London for the first time since early January and travel to Wolverhampton seeking three precious away points in our pursuit of the Premier League title. 

How do you think things are going?

Our last 5 games at home have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride in all honesty. A bit of everything in there and something for everyone to take away from it all. For the more pessimistic, we are out of both cups, the squad has been desperately depleted by the injury gods, we have struggled with our finishing, failed to close the gap on the leaders, and added no immediate reinforcements in the transfer window.  But me no buts, the season teeters precariously on the precipice of doom. But then we have the optimists. Maybe it is better to be out the cups as now we are getting a mini-break in early February, players like Saliba, Lewis-Skelly and White are close to returns, the players who are fit have given it their all, the NLD was gloriously won, we are still close enough to the leaders, we are already in the CL Top 8 (I know, I know, not mathematically but optimists don’t care about maths). Sing me no sad songs, there is all to play for in the competitions that matter and it could be a great, great season.

All of the previous paragraph is true for me, the good and bad, however it won’t surprise many of you to find I remain optimistic. Sure, we really do need a striker and Mikel said as much quite directly in his latest presser “we lack goals, we lack people, we lack options in the front line, it is clear”, however he also made the obvious point it doesn’t just depend on our will. Can we win anything without adding anyone in this transfer window? I’d prefer to pass on that question but that would be gutless, so to put my own objective tuppence on the line I would say yes to the CL and no to the PL. My usual answer would be an unthinking “absolutely yes, let’s go for it”, but the PL is really where we need the squad depth to grind out win after win over the final 10 games or so of a long, hard season. Not impossible with our currently limited resources but very tough. The cup on the other hand, well, many will remember the injury-ravaged defence that got us to the final in 2006. We have been noticeably more knowing in our approach to the CL this season than last, some lessons seem to have been learned that I hope will hold us in good stead for the harder tests to come in the later stages. This Arsenal team need fear no one. 

The Arsenal XI

Before any dreams of Champions League glory however we must return to the sadly mundane, otherwise known as Wolverhampton Wanderers. Who will play? The selection cards were once again close to the managerial chest today as Mikel delivered the good news that MLS (nothing serious on the scan) and Saliba were closer than previously expected and would be available for next week’s games against Girona and Cheaty. What about tomorrow you ask? Mikel said he needs to chat with the medical staff before he can answer that question (in reality of course, not Presser World, we know he would never actually answer that question even after chatting to the medical staff) and so, as usual, we will find out an hour and a bit before kick-off. My own expected XI is below…….

Raya

Timber Kiwior Gabriel Calafiori

Partey Ødegaard Rice

Nwaneri Kai Martinelli

There is an obvious talking point – what balance on the right of defence? Does the Zagreb game mean Mikel has changed his mind about playing Kiwior as a right-sided CB? I don’t know but my feeling would be yes. Have we given up on TP5 as RB? No idea, but I hope so. And then the attack. To be frank it wouldn’t surprise or bother me to see Leo on the left as he didn’t start midweek and Sterling on the right with Martinelli rested and Nwaneri eased back but it may depend somewhat on whether MA intends to leave anyone out completely for the Girona game. I should add that I am not quite of a mind to give up on Sterling. Just seems a bit hasty to me given how little he has played though I accept many have already seen enough and obviously he is struggling for touch and confidence at times. However, importantly, I don’t see or sense that he has given up – neither does MA ,I assume, as he today dismissed the idea of returning either Sterling or Neto to allow us to loan in anyone else. Anyway, time for the opposition.

Wolverhampton Wanderers

For those who don’t know it Wolverhampton is a place in the West Midlands, it was invented in the 19^th century and named after a local wolf pack who roamed the streets devouring the local peasantry and passing, well, wanderers ( Ed: You absolutely cannot just make stuff up, this is a respectable publication not a government!) . Oh, well, in that case, Wolverhampton was first mentioned more than a thousand years ago, named for some local landowner, and has had a long and deeply uninspiring history ever since. I shall leave it to Queen Victoria to summarise, “it is a large and dirty town, but friendly”. The football club on the other hand has had its moments in the sun, racking up three league titles in the 1950’s (which is amazingly more than some so-called big clubs in their whole miserable existence) and several successes in various cups through the 60s and 70s. The rain set in shortly after that however and relegation to the old 4^th division followed – on the bright side it did allow Wolves to become the first club to win all four division titles, if that is actually a bright side.  The last six or seven seasons had seen them initially established as a mid-table side that can be hard to handle on their day, but in a fairly familiar tale they’ve regularly sold their better players on for a profit and are now struggling in 17^th place.  At this moment they seem to be in a tussle with Ipswich, Leicester and hopefully Everton for the two spots to go down with Southampton. Their manager, Vitor Pereira, was appointed in December and had a couple of new manager bounces before the ball was punctured over their last three PL games with three defeats, nine goals conceded and one scored.  The one question we really want to know of course is not who they will play – the usual shower I suppose minus Lemina who’s sulking – but is this Cunha fellow any good and can we get him? They are of course playing hardball given our situation and their own need to stay up and so the chances do not seem great. As to whether he’s any good I will leave it to you to watch and make up your own minds. I am not that keen to be honest, excellent on his day but he seems quite choosy about when that day might be. We have beaten them the last seven times we’ve played them in the PL, home and away, even when Michael Oliver absurdly sent off Gabi Martinelli for two yellow cards in 10 seconds two or three years back. By the way, the referee for the game will be … Michael Oliver.

How would I like the game to go?

We rolled Wolves over efficiently enough back in August; it was 2-0 that day and exactly the same score would be perfectly ok with me this time round. 3-0 would be even more preferable. Wolves’ confidence is fairly low at this moment and it is good time to be playing them. An early goal from Øde would be just the ticket in the circumstances and another just before half-time to wrap it up. A third goal about 10 minutes into the second half and a cruise control finish to the game. That is how I would like the game to go. I can’t really see any good reason why it shouldn’t, so fingers crossed for three precious away points and a safe trip for all our Goonerholic friends. 

Come On You Gunners!

I understand that there is no such thing called the Eduardo derby. Well, at least, not yet. But in the noumenal world of all footballing possibilities, surely this too must exist. And we can simply bring it into the domain of phenomenon by remembering a player of both style and substance, a player who was equally loved by supporters of Arsenal and their opposition in this seventh matchday of the new format Champions League, and taking just a moment to realize that despite all the fierce rivalries and uncompromising competitiveness that fuel our beautiful game, football is also a great unifier as it connects people across time and space through shared stories, experiences and histories. 

Dinamo Zagreb – officially, Građanski nogometni klub Dinamo Zagreb, or “Dinamo Zagreb Citizens’ Football Club” – has experienced their own history through a series of transformations and mutations, including changing their name a few times, that mirror the monumental upheavals of Croatia and Croatians in the last century. And somewhere in the middle of that journey, their trajectory – even if obliquely – was once influenced by Arsenal. 

The great Hungary national team of 1940s and 50s – the “Mighty Magyars”, the “Golden Team” – that won gold in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and missed out on winning the 1954 World Cup (most likely) because of injury to one Ferenc Puskás, was managed by Gusztáv Sebes, who fine tuned a revolutionary WW (3-2-3-2) formation to great tactical benefits, perfectly suiting the creativity and inventiveness of Puskás, Kocsis, Czibor and the midfield prowess of József Bozsik, possibly the first genuine defensive midfielder as we understand the role today. This WW was the inspiration behind the first iterations of 4-2-4 first discussed and put in practice by Béla Guttmann, Gusztáv Sebes and one Márton Bukovi when they were coaching the Hungarian champions MTK Budapest. 

The story goes that the idea of WW first arrived in Bukovi’s mind, while the Hungarian was touring England in 1936 with the club side he was managing. Name of the club side? Građanski Zagreb. Inspiration behind WW? The WM formation immortalized by one Herbert Chapman. 

The 4-2-4 system was later perfected by the Brazillians and used successfully in their first world cup victory in 1958. Flávio Costa, the Brazilian national coach in the 1950s, and Béla Guttmann – who had survived the Holocaust in a labor camp and moved to Brazil in the 50s – were the key contributors towards the development of the tactical nuances of 4-2-4, a system that required great tactical awareness from its players and courage on the ball, but once mastered can be wonderfully flexible, effective and creative of swashbuckling teams. 

So, WM, starting from Herbert Chapman and his Arsenal, moving through Zagreb and Budapest to Santos and Brazil, morphing in the process to a fluid and dynamic tactical system that was precursor to so much of the tactical inventions in later years…a journey later traced in the other direction by Eduardo’s career as he moved from Brazil to Zagreb to Arsenal… 

Dinamo Zagreb is the most successful of all the Croatian clubs in the current Croatian first division league, Prva HNL, which was formed in 1992 after Croatia formally declared its independence in the summer of 1991. They have won 25 HNL titles, the next best being their arch-enemy Hajduk Split, with 6 titles. I am a Split supporter myself, and the last time they won the league was in 2004-05, since then it has seen complete dominance by Zagreb, who missed out on the title only once since then to Rijeka in 2016-17. 

Croatia, for a nation of less than 4 million people, is quite the sporting success. Especially when it comes to football, where they qualified for all the world cups since 1998 except once in 2010, and in these six appearances earned a runners-up finish and two third place results. A significant contributor to this extraordinary record has been Dinamo Zagreb’s system of identifying talents and helping them grow. The greatest Croatian Striker of all time (sorry, Eduardo) Davor Šuker, came through the Zagreb system. He too, of course, played for us, even though by then his career was coming towards an end and we only saw just a few glimpses of his abilities while playing for the Arsenal. 

We have met Zagreb four times in Europe, in two different double-legged ties. In the 2006-07 CL 3rd qualifying round we won both away and at home, by scores of 0-3 and 2-1. In the 2015/16 group stages, we lost away to them 1-2 on matchday 1 before beating them 3-0 at home. That match, taking place towards the end of November 2015, presented us with some truly unusual moments: Mesut Özil scoring a diving header from an Olivier Giroud cross (a perfect replica of many such goals where the provider and the scorer had changed places), and Sanchez scoring his second, and the team’s third, goal of the evening from a sumptuous defense-splitting reverse ball from Campbell, Arsenal’s sole Costa Rican player until now. Typical of late-era Arsène teams, finding any clear narrative about the team from that performance is impossible. We were capable of sublime and ridiculous with equal propensity, while consistency was our obscure object of desire, enigmatic and elusive. 

Nearly a decade from then, the current incarnation of the Arsenal team embodies principles founded on a far more pragmatic basis of defensive solidity, off-the-ball workrate, and tactical discipline of a Roman legion. So, even when the famed automatons break down, or the individuals lose their form or musculoskeletal integrity, or invariably the video assistant referees produce infuriating attempts at drama masquerading as sport, we somehow manage to put together an effort that is good enough to see off most oppositions. 

And it is vitally important for our season that we get all the three available points out of this match. We are currently on 13 points from 6 matches, with a goal difference of 9. We are fifth in the table but all the four teams ahead of us have played an extra game. If we win against Zagreb, given the goal difference of other teams we will most likely move up to the third position in the table. The top 8 may or may not be mathematically assured by the end of this matchweek 7, but we will be in a very strong position to ensure that on the final day away at Girona. Finishing in the top eight and earning automatic qualification for the second round will allow fatigued legs and minds greater rest in February, and maybe even the possibility of some sunny sojourn away from the gloom of the English winter to lift the spirits towards an unstoppable run at the final stretch of the season. 

As Zagreb themselves are only one position outside the second round qualification play-off for teams in positions 9-24 in the league table, they will take it equally seriously. They will also be well rested, as Croatian domestic football is currently in its annual winter break, and more importantly are likely to enjoy some new managerial advantage as Italian legend Fabio Cannavaro replaces Nenad Bjelica as the manager.  Dinamo’s last competitive match was on December 22, and while it is possible that Cannavaro will already bring in some of his own ideas and tactics to the team, for an important CL match away at a famous opposition he is likely to keep his faith in the 4-2-3-1 formation Zagreb has been using this season, and as well as in the experienced stalwarts of the team, like Zagorac in goal and Stojkovic in the midfield. They are missing a couple of key players with main striker Petkovic and talented young midfielder Petar Sucic out with injury. But the Swiss born youngster Martin Baturina – already being thought of as a potential successor to great Modric – will definitely try to impress the watching world, including one Mikel Arteta, in his playmaker role. 

The Arsenal is of course injury ravaged to a degree eerily reminiscent of Eduardo’s first season at the club when the magnificent young Arsenal side’s league challenge evaporated in the final months with a series of injuries, including one suffered by Eduardo who was maimed by some northern thug masquerading as a football player. The home draw against Aston Villa last weekend saw our attacking quartet running on the proverbial fumes towards the end of the match. A team that was designed to be efficient and ruthless in transitions – in both directions – has now started to find itself being outpaced in counter attacks as the injury depleted squad has started to feel fatigue seep into their minds and limbs. The welcome news of Calafiori and Nwaneri returning is unfortunately dampened by Saliba’s injury, even though thankfully he is expected to return after only a short hiatus. Technically versatile ball-playing defender with an uncanny ability to read the game? I am sure Fabio Cannavaro knows exactly what Arsenal would be missing. 

We are one of the best out-of-possession teams in world football, and if we can use our pressing and interception to force turnovers early in the game, create uncertainties and take one or two of the few inevitable chances that we will carve out in the first thirty odd minutes, we will be able to manage the match better. On the other hand, if we let them grow confident in possession and we fail to score early, we may end up finding it a surprisingly difficult encounter, similar to the one we experienced against Shakhtar Donetsk earlier in the autumn. 

Given all the injuries, and likely some more players on the margin, it is hard to guess the team Mikel will likely start with. Even though Calafiori is back in full training, I think, given his fragility, it would be best to let him come back up to speed by playing him the last 20-25 minutes of the match. Zagreb doesn’t have any flying wingers on their right, and Zinchenko will bring experience, technical nous and probing forward passes to the midfield, allowing MLS some much deserved rest before the weekend’s league match. Next to Gabriel and Saliba almost all central defenders pale in comparison, and that explains the lukewarm reception Kiwior’s solid performances receive. I think he is a fine enough second choice center back and should be able to deputize for Saliba in this match on the right side of the central defense, with Timber to support him on his right. The temptation to start Jorginho as the pivot will be high, but given how Rice has been performing lately – seemingly fully fit after the niggles of early season – and given how much of a spatial dominance he offers, I will start with Rice in the DM role, play Kai on the left sided eight, and have Martinelli play down the middle as the striker with Leo and Nwaneri on the wings. To add to the tactical flexibility, Ethan and Gabi can switch positions and create different challenges for their defense.  

My preferred starting eleven:

Raya

Timber – Kiwior – Gabriel – Zinchenko

Rice

Ødegaard – Havertz 

Nwaneri – Martinelli – Trossard 

I understand this won’t be to everyone’s liking, and I will be very surprised if Mikel actually starts this way. But much of the joy of being an armchair expert comes from presenting controversial tactical ideas that have the advantage of requiring no validation on the field of play. 

Mikel is likely to start with a more obvious line-up:        

Raya

Timber – Kiwior – Gabriel – Calafiori 

Jorginho

Ødegaard – Rice 

Nwaneri – Havertz – Martinelli  

I am sure the team understands the value of three points in this match, and I am optimistic that a confident and convincing victory here can signal a revival from our recent doldrums. I think if we score an early goal, we can then focus on seeing this match out without stress. I am hoping for a routine 2-0 victory, with a fair amount of rotation in the second half offering some key players a much needed rest.   

Come on Arsenal!

And so the Stadium of Stone for our 205th competitive match with Aston Villa in the Tailend Charlie event of Saturday’s Premier League programme. This match will bring together the two PL managers with the most luxuriant, glossy and immovable heads of hair. It must be a Basque thing.

Unai Emery, once of this parish, has won three of the six encounters between the two men. There has been one draw, which means — not the most testing of arithmetic — that Arteta won the other two. Ours is the man in form, winning the most recent game at their gaff earlier this season.

The very first game at ours was also the inaugural meeting of the two clubs, as it took place in our debut season in the old First Division. On a sunny but windy October 8, 1904, we won 1-0 before a crowd of upwards of 30,000 at the Manor Ground, Plumstead. In the 65th minute, Bill Gooing, who had notched up more than 80 league goals over the previous three seasons in the Second Division, scored from close range after Villa’s keeper, Billy George, had got a foot to a shot from Tim Coleman. 

Coleman’s footnote in football history was to be one of a handful of holdouts who maintained their membership of the Players Union, formed to fight the Football League’s recently imposed maximum wage of £4 a week (£628 in today’s money; not £628,000 a week, please note, Mr Haaland). The league was supported by the ever-progressive FA, which banned players from being members of the union, and Coleman’s stance probably restricted his England caps to the one he got in 1907.

‘Following [Coleman’s goal], the Arsenal showed great dash, quite overplaying the Villa, who never settled down’, reported The Umpire, a Sunday newspaper that billed itself, splendidly, as a ‘Sporting, Athletic, Theatrical and General Newspaper’. Its successors, one of which bore the even more splendid masthead of The Empire News and The Umpire, would eventually be absorbed into the News of the World. One could detect an inkling of that fate in the small ads on the back page of the October 9, 1904 edition, one of which was for ‘Rubber appliances…for both sexes, sent free in plain cover…All communications strictly private’. Nor was it the only ad of that ilk. The monks made their excuses and left.

We digress. It was the Daily Mirror’s report that echoes down through the years. Let me quote its second paragraph:

All the draughtboard-like work between the forwards and half-backs; the cunningly-contrived schemes to defeat, first half-back, and then back; all the finesse that one could wish to see were there, but on top of all, just like the ‘Spurs of Tottenham, the Villa forwards, after leading up the most elaborate openings, simply could not shoot. How often this defect occurs in ultra-scientific sides. I often think that in cases of this kind it would be well to sacrifice some of the combination, and have a rough diamond in the side in one of the inside forward positions, who could be relied upon to shoot hard, and at every opportunity.

For Villa 1904-05, read Arsenal 2024-25. Beyond the gratuitous dig at the neighbours’ incompetence — some things clearly never change — the Plan B hoped for by the Mirror’s anonymous correspondent could apply to our modern team. It matches the sentiments expressed of late by any number of the denizens of this fine establishment. What price an Edwardian Delap, Sesko or Osimhen?

Emery

Since taking over in November 2022, Emery has elevated Villa from 16th in the PL to Champions League football. Only Pep and Arteta have won more PL points in that time. However, this season, Villa has blown hot and cold. It sits seventh in the table, having won ten, drawn five and lost six of its 21 games, although it is unbeaten in its last three. On Wednesday, it won the latest edition of the most frequently played fixture in English top-flight football, grinding out a 1-0 win at Goodison Park over an even more vapid Everton to ruin Moyes’s return. 

It was Villa’s first away clean sheet of the season. Some commentators have suggested that Villa is struggling to cope with the additional strain of CL football. 

Another reason could be the summer sales of Moussa Diaby to Al-Ittihad and Douglas Luiz to Juventus. Both were key components of Emery’s midfield last season. Half the £110 million the pair raised was spent on bringing the giant DM Amadou Onana in from Everton, but he has taken time to settle. Ollie Watkins’ form has dipped this season, too, although he found his shooting boots on Wednesday.

Emery has settled back into playing 4-2-3-1 after some early season experiments with playing two banks of four; he went 4-4-2 when we visited Villa Park in August, for example. Who knows how he will set up on Saturday, but the fashion is to flood the centre with bodies to stop us from working through the opponent’s final third.

The opposition

Emi Martinez, another formerly of this parish, will be the glove butler. After a minor injury, he returned for Villa’s midweek game.

First-choice centre-backs Pau Torres and Diego Costa are off games, so the back four will likely comprise the familiar names of Matty Cash, Ezri Konza, Tyrone Mings and Lucas Digne or Ian Maatsen, another summer arrival who has struggled to cement a place in the starting line-up. 

Onana will likely be partnered in the double pivot in front of them by Boubacar Kamara, with Ross Barkley missing because of injury. Ahead of them, the likely starters are the pacey winger Leon Bailey, Belgian international Youri Tielemans and Morgan Rogers, who is having a breakthrough season.

Emery has good midfield options from the bench in Emiliano Buendia and young Jacob Ramsey, who is being eased back into the team after injury. However, the feisty Scot, club captain John McGinn is out with a hamstring injury, and Ipswich has bought Jaden Philogene for £20 million. That has paid for Dutch winger Donyell Malen, newly signed from Borussia Dortmund for a reported £19 million plus £2.5 million in add-ons. We sold Malen as an 18-year-old to PSV in 2017 for £500,000. Emery hints that Malen will get some debut minutes on Saturday.

Up top, Villa will have Ollie Watkins, who is starting to recover the form that made him such a potent striker last season but has been missing for much of this. Colombian super sub Jhon Duran, available but unused against Everton after a three-match ban for violent conduct, will undoubtedly come on at some point. 

The Arsenal

The rosy glow from Wednesday’s NLD still lingers, but on the principle that you are only as good as your next game, the team will have to knuckle down to another stiff test that again must yield all three points.

Despite no relief on the injury front — i.e., none of Jesùs, Saka, Nwaneri, Tomiyasu or White will be available, nor Calafiori by the sound of it — I still fancy Arteta to rest and rotate where he can. Thus:

Raya

Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly 

Ødegaard, Jorginho, Merino

Sterling, Havertz, Martinelli

This might be a game to start Tierney at left back, with Lewis-Skelly allowed to rest that smile. I pencilled in Sterling for a start, not so much because his Wednesday performance justifies it, but because, in fairness, he probably needs a run of starts if he is to get up to full speed — and Arteta doesn’t have many alternatives unless he throws in a youngster like Ismeal Kabia or Nathan Butler-Oyedeji. They both trained with the first-team squad pre-game, as did striker Khayon Edwards. Nonetheless, Sterling does have to start showing that he is not a spent force.

I expect Villa to be well-organised and combative. Emery will aim for a successive clean sheet and to score on the counter, as his team did so devastatingly during their last visit. Some Villa fans suggest that a draw would be a satisfactory result. However, we cannot afford to let any points slip (and we shall know the Scousers’ result at Brentford before kick-off). 

If we can recapture the vim and vigour of Wednesday and the crowd is as loud, a 2-0 victory seems achievable. North London Forever again sung to the rafters in celebration after the final whistle would be simply splendid.

Enjoy the game, ‘holics, near and far.