{"id":10398,"date":"2024-11-30T09:31:37","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T09:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10398"},"modified":"2024-12-01T04:24:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T04:24:25","slug":"hair-today-gone-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10398","title":{"rendered":"Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Arsenal travel to the home of the former European champions and the fourth or fifth (or perhaps even sixth) biggest club in London on Saturday night. I am of course talking about the perennial mediocrity merchants, West Ham United. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think most Gooners will agree with me when I say there isn\u2019t really much needle between Arsenal and West Ham, at least not in the manner we share with Spurs and Chelsea. When you ask any West Ham fan who they consider to be their biggest rival many would say Millwall with healthy dollops of the marsh dwellers and Spartak Chelski 03. I don\u2019t think too many would say Arsenal. With the over saturation of London clubs in the Premier League, this is really just another London Derby. We play 12 every year making over 30% of our league games (if my maths is correct) London Derbies. The rest of the country must be sick of us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I\u2019ve never felt any deep resentment towards The Hammers. It\u2019s maybe risen a tad in the past 18 months with their tinpot champions of Europe chant and their obsession with Declan Rice but other than that they\u2019re an all right bunch I suppose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another part of it is they\u2019ve been pretty rubbish for an awfully long time, so we\u2019ve never really competed with them for anything. They did beat us in the 1980 FA Cup final, but CER had a full head of hair back then and 1980 is closer to Germany\u2019s invasion of Poland than it is to the present day so that just goes to show how long ago it was. West Ham came into this season on the back of a three-year European tour which yielded a couple of deep runs in the Europa League and a triumph in the Conference League, but their fans spent most of it moaning about the bloke who brought that about and eventually they got their wish as David Moyes left and in came Spaniard, Julen Lopetegui to much anticipation. They currently sit 14th<\/sup> in the table after 12 games with 15 points. Be careful what you wish for lads! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fairness, most people expected them to do a lot better as they do have a number of very good players such as Jarrod Bowen, Kudus and Paqueta. But they are often porous at the back and that has probably been their biggest downfall. However, they do come into this game off the back of an unexpected 2-0 victory over Newcastle at St James\u2019 Park which is not an easy place to go as we know all too well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did suffer that 2-0 defeat at home to West Ham last Christmas and that proved to be one of the games that cost us the title so we will need to be right on it from the off tomorrow. Having said that, we hammered them 6-0 at their place a few weeks later, a game I had the pleasure of being at so a repeat of that would be lovely! The sight of their fans leaving in their droves before half time was without doubt one of the most glorious sights to greet my eyes. There was hardly anyone left to boo them off at full time. That was a fun day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of the team news, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Arteta names an unchanged eleven from the side who ran riot in Lisbon although perhaps with fixture congestion in mind we may see one or two alterations. Merino for Partey and Trossard for Martinelli perhaps? Arteta did say in his press conference earlier that Gabriel\u2019s fitness was to be \u201cassessed\u201d but I am going to assume he will start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for West Ham, Edson Alvarez will return from suspension, but Mohammed Kudus is serving the fifth and final game of his own suspension for his red at Spurs a while back. That\u2019s a bit of luck for us because he really is a useful player. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for my prediction, I am going for a healthy 3-0 away win. We\u2019ve gone up several levels in the last two games, and that is no doubt largely down to the return of \u00d8degaard. I am backing him to get another assist tomorrow. We are very good and West Ham are largely mediocre so on paper this looks straightforward but football is in fact played on a field by 22 men so what looks reasonable on paper does often fly out of the window, but you can\u2019t not be confident for this game if you are of an Arsenal persuasion.  Let\u2019s see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

COYG!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arsenal travel to the home of the former European champions and the fourth or fifth (or perhaps even sixth) biggest club in London on Saturday night. I am of course talking about the perennial mediocrity merchants, West Ham United.  I think most Gooners will agree with me when I say there isn\u2019t really much needle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10398"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10411,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10398\/revisions\/10411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}