{"id":4028,"date":"2021-10-01T22:53:24","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T21:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=4028"},"modified":"2021-10-02T20:54:50","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T19:54:50","slug":"the-seagull-has-landed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=4028","title":{"rendered":"The Seagull Has Landed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Landed on me again, actually. The preview for last season\u2019s away fixture at Brighton and Hove Albion in late December 2020 fell to me, and coincidentally the Seagulls have landed on me again this time around. Being just after Christmas, last season\u2019s effort was a fairly pantomimic piece where Neal Maupay was cast as the villain having, in the previous fixture in June 2020, nobbled Bernd Leno and then added insult quite literally to injury by scoring their winner in the fifth minute of added, sorry, injury time. As if he needed to get any more annoying, Maupay repeated his 95th minute scoring trick against Crystal Palace on Monday night and robbed Patrick Vieira\u2019s reinvigorated side of the extra two points they reportedly deserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1935 until the early 1980s, Arsenal dominated in games against Brighton. Three league games in the space of nine months in 1982 and a FA Cup defeat in 1988 saw Brighton repairing the balance sheet, and then after 1988 there was a pause of 25 years before the teams locked horns again in 2013. Our record against them since then has been W5, D2, L3, maybe a little too close for comfort against a supposedly much smaller club. The losses in that run occurred unsurprisingly between 2018 and June 2020. Hopefully our recent improvement will continue this weekend although it\u2019s unlikely to be easy pickings as Brighton currently sit an impressive sixth in the table and have lost only once in the opening six games of the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally I have found them a bit of an irritant in recent seasons despite the fact that they have been playing some decent football under manager Graham Potter. Maupay is the real problem, an annoying little cheat of a player who does sadly have talent and will have to be carefully managed on Saturday evening. It does feel though that we should be beating the likes of Brighton without too much trouble, but they have been obstinate defenders and tough to overcome. They also score the majority of their goals from set pieces, so we will have to be well organised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A much less irritating man to come from Brighton is comedian Simon Evans. I did include a clip of his in the above mentioned preview, about Brighton and Hove in general. This next clip reveals his opinions on football, and while not entirely complimentary about the fans, it does include a piece about another player which all Gooners will enjoy \u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/Up7L0xvR45o<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Teams<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a very difficult and disappointing start to the season, our recent improvement has coincided with the introduction of some of our new players and the return to fitness of some older ones in crucial positions. Tomiyasu looks to be an excellent buy at right back \/ centre back, Ben White and Gabriel have the makings of a good partnership at centre back. Thomas Partey, on his return from injury, is finally looking like the player we thought we had signed from Atletico, and the promising Albert Lakonga is going to get a chance to establish himself alongside Thomas as Granit Xhaka has now been diagnosed with a \u201csignificant injury\u201d to the medial ligament in his right knee and will be out for three months. Aaron Ramsdale has very quickly confounded his doubters and looks to have swiftly reduced Bernd Leno to second choice keeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tavares has looked interesting too with lots of pace and determination to get forward from the full back positions, and should be good support, if not yet competition, for Kieron Tierney. These young, energetic and skilful players, when combined with \u201cold hand\u201d Martin Odegaard and the rapidly developing likes of Smith-Rowe and Saka already, and Azeez, Patino, Balogun and Martinelli waiting in the wings, are beginning to offer hope that we can begin to challenge again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mikel Arteta has come in for a lot of stick over the last twelve months with many already calling for him to be sacked. While some of his tactics have been extremely conservative and some of his selections – and substitutions – have driven us to distraction, last Sunday\u2019s win against Tottenham was a revelation. Hopefully it was a sign of things to come as the manager begins to work with the squad that he is now overhauling. It is a cliche but the manager sees the players every day in training and maybe he genuinely didn\u2019t believe they were capable of the kind of play that blew Tottenham away until he had made his own additions. At any rate there didn\u2019t seem to be any lack of spirit or togetherness on Sunday and it was good to see some smiles back on the players\u2019 faces. I would love to see Arteta turn things around and achieve success with the Arsenal. He took over a club that was a mess from top to bottom. The latest signs are that he deserves a decent chance to make things work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope there won\u2019t be a lot of changes to the team at present. We are six games into the season and need to develop partnerships and understandings. I would like to see the team that beat Tottenham, minus the injured Xhaka, given the chance to start this one. For once we have no other injuries or illnesses to prevent it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramsdale<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomiyasu, White, Gabriel, Tierney<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partey, Lakonga \/ AMN<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka, Odegaard, ESR<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aubameyang<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Brighton, Danny Welbeck is seeing a specialist about his hamstring injury, while Steven Alzate, Enock Mwepu and Adam Webster are ruled out. Yves Bissouma\u2019s knee injury is \u201cmaking progress\u201d and will face a late test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly both Mikel Arteta and Graham Potter have been nominated for the Premier League Manager of the Month award for September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holic Pound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typical odds for this game seem to be around 11\/5 for a Brighton win or a draw, and 7\/5 for an Arsenal win. Better returns are available through betfair.com<\/a> for things like Martin Odegaard to assist a goal at 5\/1; Aubameyang to score first at 11\/2; Saka to have 2 or more shots on target at 7\/1. You pays your money \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it helps to make a decision the head to head record in all competitions is P23, Arsenal wins 14, Draws 4, Brighton wins 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The referee for this one is cuddly Jonathan Moss, and manning the VAR will be Chris Kavanagh, for anyone who holds strong views on him \u2026\u2026 Kick off is at 17.30 UK time and is live on Sky Sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game, all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Landed on me again, actually. The preview for last season\u2019s away fixture at Brighton and Hove Albion in late December 2020 fell to me, and coincidentally the Seagulls have landed on me again this time around. Being just after Christmas, last season\u2019s effort was a fairly pantomimic piece where Neal Maupay was cast as the […]<\/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\/4028"}],"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=4028"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4046,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions\/4046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}