{"id":8856,"date":"2023-12-01T20:45:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T20:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8856"},"modified":"2023-12-02T23:19:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T23:19:12","slug":"of-love-and-strife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8856","title":{"rendered":"Of Love and Strife"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Arsenal players celebrate Arsenal’s Norwegian midfielder #08 Martin Odegaard scoring their fifth goal during the UEFA Champions League Group B football match between Arsenal and RC Lens at the Arsenal Stadium in north London on November 29, 2023. (Photo by Adrian DENNIS \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Philotes and Neikos, love and strife, are the two forces \u2013 in the cosmogony of Empedocles \u2013 that are continuously forming diversity, harmony (and disharmony) of all forms, out of the four eternal elements of fire, air, water, and earth that pervade our universe. Like a few other original such ideas from ancient Greece \u2013 from Anaximander to Democritus \u2013 that still resonate within our modern scientific worldview, this version of the universe is not completely dissimilar to the Standard Model of fundamental forces and elementary particles interacting to form all matter and energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love and strife, one can also say, are the two primary psychic forces shaping the world of football, giving births to moments of such intense elation or despondency that if we were to wander into the land of memories, those moments stand out as guideposts of our lives lived in what may feel like someone else\u2019s elusive past. Football is not so much escapism from life but a distilled, miniaturized but maybe for that reason also a more tangible version of life itself.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Arsenal walk into this weekend sitting proudly at top of the EPL \u2013 and already qualified, with a game to spare, as the group winner in their return to the most prestigious of the European competitions \u2013 the love in and around the team is palpable. Smiles and praises and good vibes. I don\u2019t know about others, but not for a moment I am taking any of these for granted. The current upward trajectory has been achieved neither by accident, nor by profligate megalomania, but strategy, discipline, hard work and patience supported ably by leadership and judicious usage of financial prowess. And some dose of good fortune, for nothing is ever successful without that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back just half a decade \u2013 when our opponents of this Saturday had returned back to the Premier League after six years of absence \u2013 reinforces the well-known adage about things changing very fast in football. In 2018 strife was all around Arsenal, the clouds of despondency looming over the club and its fractured angst-ridden fanbase. We drew our home match 1-1, before losing away at Wolves 1-3, one among a series of listless, rudderless performances that more or less guaranteed that we won\u2019t finish in the top four, and was really the beginning of the end of the short-lived Unai Emery era.   Since then the head-to-head results have started to improve in our favor: 1-1 (home), 2-0 (away);  1-2 (home), 1-2 (away); 1-0 (away), 2-1(home); 2-0 (away), 5-0 (home).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While our managerial reign was handed to Arteta after Emery \u2013 with the invincible Freddie Ljungberg temporarily stabilizing the team for a few matches in between \u2013 and the Arsenal ex-captain of death stares, immaculate hair, and press conferences that are an enigmatic cocktail of mischief, misdirection and authenticity rapidly established himself as the football brain that he was always known to be in the inner circle of friends and colleagues, Wolverhampton Wanderers went through a few managerial rotations. They were noticeably successful for a mid-tier squad \u2013 but never getting close to any of the peak years in their long history \u2013 and sometimes playing attractive football, often on the strengths of the various Portuguese internationals that dominated their squad upon their return to the top tier.  They also had a pragmatic and enterprising Portuguese manager who was doing well for himself before he was lured away to a club well known for destroying the reputation of talented managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their current manager, the Englishman Gary O\u2019Neil, too demonstrates such a combination of pragmatism and enterprise. After taking over the responsibilities just before the season started, he brought in tactical variations and intensity that has served Wolves well. Their current 12th position in the league doesn\u2019t truly tell the full story, they can consider themselves unfortunate to have lost out on otherwise well-deserved points by the vagaries of VAR. In that arena at least they are Arsenal\u2019s fellow sufferers.  O\u2019Neil has used multiple formations in the season so far, but mostly either a 3-4-3 or variations of 4\u20134-2 in 4-2-3-1 or 4-4-1-1, sometimes even switching between formations in a game. In Joan Gomes and Mario Lemina (who I think is disqualified for this match because of yellow cards) they have two highly competent footballers in the midfield. In Nelson Samedo, Cunha, Neto and Ait-Nouri they have fast ball carriers that can hurt any opposition in counter attacks, and a very good finisher in Hwang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though most teams come to Emirates nowadays planning to sit in deep low blocks, hoping to deprive our frontline any space and time on the ball in the final third, Wolves are likely to try to draw us in with an eye on launching rapid counter-attacks. Our defense has been mostly imperious this season, and Saliba-Gabriel will need to play at their very best to keep our run of clean sheets going.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our front started for the first time together against Lens at home last Wednesday, and ably supported by Rice-Tomiyasu-Zinchenko they eviscerated the opposition defense in moments of collective and individual brilliance. Havertz especially looked like someone that has started to figure out how to play with his new teammates, and stay in tune with their tireless positivity. Given our first half performance in the midweek, Mikel will be tempted to start the same eleven this weekend and I think that would be the best option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya
Tomiyasu \u2013 Saliba \u2013 Gabriel \u2013 Zinchenko
\u00d8degaard \u2013 Rice \u2013 Havertz
Saka \u2013 Jesus \u2013 Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game everyone. We should win, but I don\u2019t think for a
moment it will be anywhere as easy as our last season\u2019s home victory
against them. A hard-fought but assured 2-0 will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Philotes and Neikos, love and strife, are the two forces \u2013 in the cosmogony of Empedocles \u2013 that are continuously forming diversity, harmony (and disharmony) of all forms, out of the four eternal elements of fire, air, water, and earth that pervade our universe. Like a few other original such ideas from ancient Greece \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"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\/8856"}],"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\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8860,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions\/8860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}