{"id":10460,"date":"2024-12-10T19:39:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T19:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10460"},"modified":"2024-12-12T00:58:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T00:58:03","slug":"voulez-vous-chanter-avec-moi-ce-soir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10460","title":{"rendered":"Voulez Vous Chanter Avec Moi, Ce Soir?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Wednesday evening sees Arsenal at home to AS Monaco for the sixth game of this season\u2019s Champions League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Association Sportive de Monaco Football Club, commonly referred to as AS Monaco, is a professional football club based in Fontvieille, Monaco. Although not in France, they are a member of the French Football Federation and they have their training facility in la Turbie in France. AS Monaco FC was founded on 1 August 1920 as a unification of numerous local clubs based in France and the principality. Then, the multiple sports club of the Association Sportive de Monaco was founded on 23rd August 1924. AS Monaco FC was then absorbed by the latter and became the football section of the enlarged Monegasque sporting club. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During its history AS Monaco has developed a bit of a habit of firing and losing managers only to recall them to try to rediscover better but maybe unappreciated earlier times. The history is complicated so what follows is a very potted version of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club spent its early years between the amateur and lower professional French leagues before enjoying its first period of top flight success in the early 1960s when coach Lucien Leduc led the club to its first professional trophy, the Coupe de France. In the following year they won the French Championship for the first time in their history and qualified for the European Cup. The same coach led the club to its first League and Cup Double in 1963 after which he departed and Monaco spent the next decade or so alternating between the first and second divisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leduc returned in 1977 winning them immediate promotion back to the first division and the French Championship the following year. The 80s saw a steady stream of trophies before the next barren spell held through the 90s until the arrival of one Arsene Wenger who won them the title in his first season (in 1988).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wenger’s reign saw the club enjoy one of its most successful periods, with signings like George Weah, Glenn Hoddle, J\u00fcrgen Klinsmann, and Youri Djorkaeff. Youth team policies produced future World Cup winners Emmanuel Petit, Lilian Thuram and Thierry Henry. It all sounds a bit familiar, doesn\u2019t it? Wenger established Monaco as one of the top three clubs in French football as they won a Coupe de France and reached the final of the 1992 European Cup Winners Cup and the semi-finals of the 1994 Champions League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his success, things did not end pleasantly for Arsene at Monaco. It emerged that Marseille had been involved in match fixing, as Wenger had long suspected, and the Monaco board blocked him from discussing the vacant manager\u2019s job at Bayern Munich and so, in 1994, he left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monaco went on to record two further league championships under Jean Tigana in 1997 and Claude Puel in 2000. However, the club had got itself into a financial mess and in 2003 they were relegated to Ligue 2 by the French Professional League for amassing a \u20ac50 million debt. So there\u2019s hope yet that Man City are about to suffer the same fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They did achieve success again in the 2000s but amidst a certain amount of turmoil and many changes of manager. The current version of AS Monaco was \u201creborn\u201d, as they refer to it, in 2011 when 66% of the club was purchased by Russian oligarch and billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, becoming one of Europe\u2019s biggest spenders on players like Radamel Falcao and James Rodriguez. Like us, they have never won the Champions League but they did beat us in the Round of 16 in the 2013-14 season. Didier Deschamps, Philipe Clement, Claudio Ranieri and even Thierry Henry – briefly in 2018 – have featured, among others, as managers in their very up and down history. The current incumbent is former Bundesliga coach Adi H\u00fctter who was appointed in July 2023 and guided them to a runner-up finish in his first season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the weekend\u2019s matches when they beat Toulouse by 2- 0 – not a huge score but it\u2019s better to win than ‘Toulouse’ – AS Monaco sit second in Ligue 1 and are one place behind us in the ever changing Champions League table. Their Champions League results have been a mixed bag, actually beating Barcelona away from home and a name I assume from the badge that translates to Red Star (Belgrade) but losing some others which were probably easier on paper. But as we know \u2026\u2026..A face you might recognise – or not, maybe – in their squad is Folarin Balogun who left Arsenal for Monaco in August 2023 for a fee of \u20ac40 million. He felt he deserved a starting place for Arsenal having achieved nothing at the highest level, although in his own mind he appeared to have already won the Balogun D\u2019Or. His availability is uncertain as he is still troubled by a shoulder injury incurred earlier in the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong>
During the years of the Wenger – Ferguson rivalry I used to dream of Man Utd descending into the mess that they have now become. We have just beaten them for the fourth time in succession but the media continue to snipe. We won with two goals from a seemingly unstoppable corner routine after their defensive low block left no space to play through in the first half. Did we over celebrate – were we arrogant and under celebrated – did the manager get too excited and run on the pitch? No, none of those. We are apparently just Stoke, a team of six foot plus giants who can only bully teams at set pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arteta\u2019s reaction? To paraphrase slightly, \u201cGood ! I\u2019m happy to be compared with them doing that because they were very good at it. We want to be the kings of everything! Beautiful goals. Scrappy goals. Flowing goals. Quick breaks, long slow breaks. Set pieces. Best crowd, best atmosphere. Best coaches. Everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an answer ! Not an answer inviting derision like \u201cwe ARE the kings of everything \u201c but \u201cwe WANT TO BE\u201d, and who doesn\u2019t want that for their club? The club are seemingly trying to help to build the atmosphere in the stadium by fading the music to North London Forever to encourage the crowd to sing up on their own, so let\u2019s have a massive rendition of Louis Dunford\u2019s anthem to drown out the Edith Piafftts, Charles Aznovoices and Lady Marmalades in the away section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team <\/strong>Last December Mikel Arteta took the squad to Dubai for some winter sun and training that turned out to be transformative for the team\u2019s form. This season there is no time for such a break but the players will be taking a break from travelling at least. In fact, between returning from Lisbon at the end of November and visiting Wolves in late January, the team will have travelled fewer than 200 miles for 14 fixtures. Hopefully that will give us a bit of advantage over our title rivals who all have far greater distances to cover over the same period including, for Chelsea, an eight hour flight across five time zones to the south-eastern corner of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we seem to be picking up injuries to defenders on a weekly basis the back half of the team is hard to predict but we will hopefully see the return of Gabriel and Calafiori. Saka seems undroppable and \u00d8degaard appeared to be okay despite his early withdrawal on Sunday, so: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya; Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Calafiori; Partey, Odegaard, Rice; Saka, Havertz, Martinelli. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holic pound<\/strong>
Paddy Power are offering odds of 1\/4 Arsenal win; 9\/2 the draw; 9\/1 Monaco win. More enticing maybe is a 2-0 Arsenal win at 5\/1 or a 3-0 win at 7\/1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kick off is at 20.00 UK time with TV coverage on TNT. I will leave you with very best wishes for a successful, enjoyable Wednesday evening and a Monaco kiss. That\u2019s similar to a French kiss but a bit further south. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday evening sees Arsenal at home to AS Monaco for the sixth game of this season\u2019s Champions League. Association Sportive de Monaco Football Club, commonly referred to as AS Monaco, is a professional football club based in Fontvieille, Monaco. Although not in France, they are a member of the French Football Federation and they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10460"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10460"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10476,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10460\/revisions\/10476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}