The Modern Gooner: An Arsenal Blog

5 Thoughts: Manchester United 1-1 Arsenal

2019-10-01T06:00:00.000-04:00

I didn't see the match because of that whole pesky "day job" thing, so these will be shortform.

1. Literally everything mentioned in the Tweet screenshot above - from both people.

2. I only saw one brief replay, but I'm 100% convinced that Granit Xhaka didn't duck out of the way of their goal, for a few reasons. First, people will do literally anything to twist any given circumstance into their own silly Twitter agendas. Second, if you're getting out of the way of something, you're not going to duck your heard *forward* like that. Trust me, in my long time as a goalkeeper I've admittedly ducked out of the way of some close-in rockets coming straight for my face. You would too. Anyway, when you do that, the natural instinct is to turn your head back and away from the ball, usually with your hands going up in some fashion.

If anything, my suspicion is that Xhaka was trying to head that away and was prevented from doing so when the ball's trajectory changed after it was deflected.

Occam's Razor, children. Look it up.

3. Despite everything above, I'm damn sure disappointed that we couldn't find a way to win it. Don't get this twisted, we're not anywhere near where we could and should be at this point. Long-time readers know that I loathe United more than any other club in the world, for a multitude of reasons. The last few years have been their lot somehow finding a lower nadir than the previous Worst United Side of the Last Three Decades, and we still can't consistently defeat them. It's maddening. It's like the same kryptonite that affects them has also done so to us. There's something Shakespearean in that, admittedly, though I'd much prefer a good murder mystery.

At the very least, for the love of Dennis, can we batter these fuckers at the Emirates? Please and thank you.

4. Apparently, our boy Matteo Guendouzi had another storming performance. Call me crazy, but I think that lad just might be a player. Also, no prizes for guessing that it was The Mighty Auba that got us out of jail again, huh?

5.

Aww, Hugh. Buddy. Pal. You're a good dude and all but this is fantastically spoken like someone who has refereed zero games.

Here is the screenshot he posted:

This is, once again, a case of armchair-refereeing a match based on a frozen nanosecond in time. It's hideously unfair.

As an AR myself, I can see exactly what went wrong here - notice how he's looking left, towards the player with the ball. Now, look at how the defender is running left at speed, and Auba is running right at speed. In real time, they will pass each other in, what, a second? Less than that? In the time it takes the AR to turn his head after the ball is played, Auba is probably a good 3-4 yards past him, and the AR has to recreate in his mind what he believed to have happened in at most a second before he pops the flag up or not.

If he pops it up late, his assessor will bollock him. If Auba WAS offside and he didn't put the flag up, his assessor will bollock him. Probably for this, as it happened, his assessor will bollock him. All I'm saying is that these guys live a reality that the public at large has zero fucking comprehension about. Less than none.

I'm not saying he got it right - obviously, the screengrab makes it abundantly clear that he didn't. But, to act like it's some unbelievably preposterous act of someone miles out of their depth is also absurd and unfair.

Ideally, as an AR you want to be looking straight ahead at that line and hear the sound of the ball being kicked. However, this isn't a Sunday-league kickabout at the local bog, there's 70,000 screaming people there - it's not exactly always possible. As an AR you have to be aware of the ball location, the line of the second-to-last defender AND in the back of your mind remember that if the ball goes out over the sideline in your quadrant, you're fully responsible for determining who it went out off of.

This is hard enough doing it for a U-14 match, let alone in the English Premier League. We always want them to get it right, but at the end of the day, they're human beings. This is EXACTLY the purpose that VAR serves when it's used correctly.

Anyway, hopping off my soapbox, I just want to again stress that we're now through a brutal stretch of the fixture list and we're right in the vicinity of where we want to be. Would you trade places with the guys we played today? I wouldn't.

PS - Nicolas Pepe will come good, Twitter-dorks. Have even the smallest bit of perspective, please.

5 Thoughts: Arsenal 3-2 Aston Villa

2019-09-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Photo: Getty Images

Just like we drew it up - right, guys?

The rest of the day on Sunday kind of got away from me, so I won't focus so much on what happened in the match itself - you've all read reports and seen highlights by now. Still, since I actually saw this one (won't always be the case during youth soccer season, with my referee duties and all), I wanted to get some thoughts down on the larger picture.

1. I genuinely do not get the fervor behind the Emery Out movement. How's that for a scorcher of a take?

I've been meaning to go on the record about this at some point, even in the knowledge that our defense is a Chernobyl-level event and every match against mid-table dross like this is much more of an adventure than we would like. I have eyes, I can see all that.

But, my god, no one on earth can take what Unai Emery inherited and turn them into peak-era Barcelona in three transfer windows - not without spending Oil Money FC levels of cash, anyway. I'm continually astonished at how people can see this Liverpool side annihilating everything in their wake and not connect the dots. You know, the one that *didn't* fire Jurgen Klopp when Simon Mignolet was chucking them into his own net for fun? The one that lost in the final of the Europa League in his first season? The one that finished in EIGHTH PLACE that season?

Look, I get it. Giving a manager time alone isn't going to guarantee that we're going to reach those heady heights. But, we sure as shit aren't going to by changing managers more than we change our clothes, either. We still have three out of our first-choice back four working their way back from injury, and we're still bedding in a fairly significant number of new players. I don't know if there's anything I hate about modern fandom more than this collective temper tantrum when we don't get a pony, and we don't get it RIGHT NOW. Get a hold of yourselves, for real.

The thing is, I do think we're trending in the right direction, but with reservations. We haven't brought in players like Nicolas Pepe or Dani Ceballos in a long time. But on the other hand, whatever is going on with Mesut Ozil is inexplicable. How Granit Xhaka hasn't earned himself some time on the subs' bench is beyond my comprehension.

But, I keep coming back to the Klopp example. This guy Emery isn't some random idiot - he's won things everywhere he's gone. My guy is chilling here with three Europa League rings, but Gareth from Twitter reckons that he doesn't know tactics. It's a lack of self-awareness on a galactic scale. Full disclosure, long-time readers will know that I used to say many of those same things about Arsene Wenger here at this very parish. I'm not sure that's the same thing, though...Wenger was two decades in the job by that point and there was ample evidence that he was refusing to change with the times. Also, I fully admit I could have made some of those same points more artfully - the one good thing about getting older is the perspective that comes along with it.

I'm also not saying we give him ten million years to figure it out - if we reach the end of the season and we're not making tangible progress, a clean break at that stage is eminently reasonable. Now? Absolutely bonkers.

2. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is The Dude. No one disputes this.

But, my word, someone has to tell me what Tom Heaton was thinking there. He had roughly 14 players in that wall, and still managed to position it in a way that gave Auba that entire far post to shoot at. Then, on top of it, Heaton's first two steps were back the other way, behind his own wall.

Don't take it from me, though. The best goalkeeper follow on Twitter:

Heaton killing any chance of saving that Aubameyang FK by stepping behind his wall to see the ball. If it goes over the wall and in from there, you take your hat off to the taker.
— David Preece (@davidpreece12) September 22, 2019

3. Also, giving that penalty to Pepe so that he could break his duck with the club was a boss-level move. I only wish we could have gotten our hands on him years ago.

4. The red card shown to Ainsley Maitland-Niles was...umm...not correct.

It's funny because right when it happened, I said to my girlfriend "I think that's a second yellow". In real time, it did look somewhat bad. And, if you were to ask Jonathan Moss, his defense would probably be some version of "it doesn't matter if you got the ball, it can still be a foul". That's actually true, speaking as a registered referee myself. The only criteria - the ONLY criteria - for foul-yellow-red is careless-reckless-excessive use of force. That's it. If you tackle someone, get the ball first but then bisect their leg at the knee on the follow-through, then you're taking an early bath and deservedly so.

But, and this is a Sir Mix-a-Lot sized but, I'm not convinced that AMN's tackle crossed over from careless to reckless. Also, Moss is notoriously on the lower end of the fitness scale and is often further away from these occurrences than he should be. This is all known. Looking back on it, it was a legitimate attempt to win the ball, the tackle itself wasn't wild or out of control, and in the end he was a fraction of a second late, at most. That's a difficult RC for me to justify, even as someone who gives the refs a lot more leeway than most, for obvious reasons.

For me? Assuming he wasn't injured and all that, you pull him aside, remind him that he's on a yellow, and in essence give him his final warning. If he does something borderline like that again, then it's a hell of a lot more justifiable to send him off. At that stage? I thought it was a harsh, on the border of ridiculous decision by a guy who I frankly think is at least one division out of his depth.

5. While I agree with literally 100% of the criticisms around our first half, at the end of the day, we took home three points on a weekend where the Nearest and Dearest, Man United and Chelsea all did not. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, we learned something about Matteo Guendouzi's character on Sunday. Maybe this comeback wasn't quite single-handed, but it wasn't miles away either. Our second goal happened entirely because Guendouzi fought like a demon to win the ball back, drove forward immediately, and then put in the cross that Calum Chambers was able to put away on the second attempt.

Beyond that, he - like Johnny Cash - was everywhere, man. He fought for the shirt, he gave Villa players and the referee what-for when it was required, and in general was every bit a future club captain in my eyes.

Oh, and Chambers should get more game time now.

Moving on, we've got Nottingham Forest in a League Cup diversion before next weekend's visit to Old Trafford. That one is going to be interesting. We've still got legions of issues of our own to address, and we do have a long history of gifting three points to modern-era terrible United sides. However...if we can go up there and do the business, that just may define our whole season. I mean it. That may just kill the Ole Era dead up there, and unless they hit some kind of miracle shot with the replacement, it'll be another season of transition for them. One less top four rival to worry about. Yes, please!

10 (actually 11) Thoughts: Arsenal 2-2 Nearest and Dearest

2019-09-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

Photo: Reuters

Well, I think my pulse has reached something approaching normal once again. It's never ideal for a North London Derby to arrive so early in a campaign, especially when we're a team this much in flux. Ideally, we'd have had a chance to have the new signings bed in and get some of the injured players back (more on that in a minute), but the schedule machine made it not to be. It happens. A point is a point, and I don't think this was an especially bad one, even if we could and maybe should have won it in the end.

1. Most outlets have noted how formlessly frenetic the match was, and in retrospect I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised. What you had here were two sublime attacking units (I hate to compliment them, but it's true), with grievous defensive worries and problematic midfield constructions.

We, of course, were down to both reserve fullbacks, a new signing at one center-half post and arguably our 3rd-choice at the other when Rob Holding recovers from his injury. Conversely, they've decided that Serge Aurier is such a liability at RB that they fielded Davinson Sanchez there - a man who had never found himself there in his entire senior footballing career.

Meanwhile, Unai Emery decided to field three almost identical midfielders (in style, at any rate) with Lucas Torreria furthest forward for some reason, backed by Granit Xhaka and Matteo Guendouzi. Their lot countered that with Moussa Sissoko, Harry Winks, and Eric Lamela - hardly a murderer's row in the center of the park themselves.

This was ALWAYS going to be a Playstation competition between the two sides' corresponding front threes.

2. I'll tell you, though. I wish to hell that Hector Bellerin and Kieran Tierney were available for this one. We kept getting in behind their fullbacks over and over and over again - Sanchez was predictably all at sea on his side, while Danny Rose took an earlyish yellow card, leaving them vulnerable there as well. Saed Kolasinac and Ainsley Maitland-Niles were game and they left it all out there - the end product was just not fit for purpose, though.

Give us our starting FBs and this would have been a goddamn massacre.

3. I will say that one of the big differences was that they were far more streetwise than our mob were. Quelle surprise, though maybe it's not quite fair when they're a largely settled side and we're still learning each other's names, metaphorically speaking.

I dogged them on Twitter for time-wasting from the opening seconds of the second half, but they're the away side with a lead in a local derby. I get it. Also, it was frustrating to watch them tactically foul anything that moved, but as far as I can recall, every one of the five yellow cards they got were purposeful. They broke up enough attacks that - one 20-minute period aside where we battered them from pillar to post - they did just enough to hold us to two goals. It should be noted, by the way, that both of those were down to individual moments of genius - defensively, they weren't that bad at all.

4. You've probably read all about it or watched it yourself by now, but since we talked about moments of genius, let's discuss the moments of brain-dead idiocy that handed the nearest and dearest two goals.

Somehow, Shkrodan Mustafi wasn't even involved.

The first saw Sokratis Papasthopolous go miles out of his way to contest a header that Xhaka already had covered - which, naturally, they BOTH lost out on to Harry Kane. That sent them away, Sokratis was glacially slow getting back, and David Luiz was left caught in two minds on who to cover. Either way, the first shot that came in was gently sent low to Bernd Leno's right, which he somehow daintily palmed back directly into Christian Eriksen's path for the easy tap-in.

Leno is a good goalkeeper - great on his day - but that was fucking abysmal.

The second was Xhaka showing us once again that he's 75% of an excellent footballer, with the other 25% missing along with every cell of brain matter that most humans possess. His challenge on Son-Heung Min in the penalty area was decades late, and utterly without purpose. There was no immediate danger, and loads of covering defenders.

Kane dispatched the penalty because that is a skill he does have. For the record though, that shot in the second half that went off of Leno's right post? The very best don't miss that. Sorry, but that's the real.

5. Speaking of Kane, that thing in second-half injury time - that's either a penalty or a it's a yellow card for simulation. Given that it was never a penalty in a thousand million billion years, it should have been the other one then! I thought Martin Atkinson had a pretty good game, but he bottled that one. I'm sick to my back teeth at how often these fuckers get away with this bullshit just because they're English.

Still, it's Sokratis in a nutshell. He gave the referee a decision to make for absolutely no benefit defensively, and this time the roulette wheel came up with "didn't buy the dive". There's several newbies in the Select Group this season from what I understand, and he won't always be that lucky.

Get well soon, Rob.

6. We looked like such a different outfit once Dani Ceballos came on. I can understand a thought process for not starting him with him being new, never being in a NLD, etc.

We're past that now. First name on the team sheet every week, please.

7. Conversely, we looked a different outfit again once Henrikh Mhkitaryan came on. It tells you everything you need to know that he was on a plane to Rome for his loan move nanoseconds after coming off the pitch here.

I appreciate that it was like one last, final reminder that he's not good enough for what our brain trust envisions Arsenal to be in the next season or two. The funny thing is, for once, I'm not being facetious when I refer to a brain trust - I actually like where we're going.

8. That leads me to my next point, and if you take nothing else away from this report, take this: We're doing fine. Half of Twitter wants Emery gone already, to which I heartily invite them to go support the guys in white. There's too much money sloshing around and too many good teams now for there to be instant gratification. Sure, Arsene Wenger came in for his first season and punched Alex Ferguson's rabble in the mouth in his first go. Great. That was also 1997-98 - I was still wearing flannels tied around my waist back then.

Whether you want to admit it or not, unless you're Dirty Oil Blood Money FC with Pep Guardiola's genius behind it, Liverpool are the standard to follow in this respect. Jurgen Klopp came in to the mess that he inherited (not just in squad composition but also psychically after the traumatic way they threw away the title with Steven Gerrard's slip and all) and built a team - to a plan, over time. They didn't go from that to Champions League winners and within a hair of displacing DOBMFC at the top right away. It took years and several transfer windows to do it. They made mistakes - Lorius Karius, anyone? I'll concede the point that it's hard to see us spending the GDP of Spain for someone like Virgil Van Dijk, but it's disingenuous at best to act like we're standing still.

This one transfer window alone, we cleared out an enormous amount of deadwood (Mustafi aside, though there's always January) and brought in a good amount of legitimate talent. Nicolas Pepe was a bit frustrating on the day but the INTENT was there. The fire, the spark, the attacking thrust was on full display. The goals and assists will come. Tierney is on the way. William Saliba will be here next season. Ceballos is an absolute baller.

Like, give it a second, will you?

9. Back at the ranch, our two goals were the kind of highlight-reel stuff we haven't seen in a while. Lacazette's goal was the most thoroughly Laca goal there is - the sashay through a million defenders in an impossibly tight space, the impossible angle to shoot, the thunderbastard finish that would have taken Hugo Lloris' head off clear into the 35th row if he had been stupid enough to get in front of it. I've always said in this parish that goals at the beginning and end of halves are so crucial - and in this case getting it back to 1-2 gave us our belief back for the second half.

As for the second goal, Aubameyang's little toe-poke past a stranded Lloris was an exquisite bit of skill, but it was all all all all all all about Guendouzi's raking cross-field pass to get it out to him. How does a 20-year old have that vision, that technique, the *chutzpah* to even TRY that?

10. And that, friends, is what we should focus on more than anything else here. Over the course of a long season, dropping two points here is not the worst thing in the world. The disappointment will fade. What will remain - indelibly so at that - is Guendouzi's arrival as a crucial part of this club as we build to the Arsenal team that is going to challenge for the big pots again.

He was everywhere.

Again, this is such a quintessentially Arsenal success story - a kid that came from France's second division (much like Laurent Koscielny, remember) to become an integral part of the club. He's got the heart, the fight, the balls, the spirit. He's everything we've been lacking over the last few years.

We can question why Ceballos didn't come on sooner, why Mhkitaryan came on instead of Ozil or Joe Willock, but years from now we're not going to remember that.

We're going to remember that Matteo Fucking Guendouzi become the dude on this day.

11. Awww hell, fuck it, let's do a bonus one.

If nothing else, this told me that Spuds' time is up. It's over. If this is the best you got when we're still scrambling trying to figure our shit out and you've got mostly your whole team here, well, from where I'm sitting, you've kind of blown your load, huh gentlemen?

I mean, never forget that the Champions League can be a crapshoot at times, like any knockout tournament is. Let's not forget that they Forrest Gumped their way through that thing last year and still couldn't get it done in the end, because you're Tottenham and you know you are. This shit is in your DNA. You can no sooner reverse that then I can make myself 6'5".

You honestly think your manager is going to stick around too much longer? Eriksen already wants to go. At some point SOMEONE will come calling for Son, who is really your best player at the end of the day. Kane might stick around out of some kind of misplaced loyalty - him and Winks and that overrated shitbird Dele Alli. Well? So what? That alone and maybe Lloris stays, and you're still like the 7th best team in England.

I can't wait for the clock to strike midnight on you, and I doubly can't wait to read the English press as they so so so so so wish it not to be true. And NBC Sports, while we're at it.

Sod you all. It's our time now.

Man of the Match: Guendouzi. Duh.

5 Thoughts: Arsenal 2-1 Burnley

2019-08-17T13:20:00.002-04:00

Photo: Shutterstock

Let's get this out of the way - this team isn't going to win the league. Letting Burnley of all sides have the most shots on goal in a first half since Liverpool a few years ago isn't exactly a portent of a side equipped to take on Manchester City's dirty oil blood money mercenaries.

On the other hand, who cares? At this stage of my life, all I ask of my football club is that they fight for the shirt, they attack and they play some good football. You know what? Our Arsenal has that in absolute spades now.

1. You can set your watch by Burnley, can't you? They played a modicum more of football than they usually do, but despite that they still are a festival of long balls and snide tactical fouls. I even think that Mike Dean had a halfway decent game by his graded-on-the-world's-biggest-curve standards, but some of what he let them get away with was absolutely shocking. Ashley Barnes went up for one header and kneed Matteo Guendozi directly in the back. I mean, he didn't even try to hide it, and somehow this went unspotted. Look, I'm a referee myself...I know what a red card is when I see it and if that's not excessive use of force then the term has absolutely no meaning.

But, I think there's an argument that this is a good thing. Nicolas Pepe, Dani Ceballos, some of our kids, some of our incumbents...they got through a game like this not only with no injury but they also saw out a result with professional aplomb. We haven't always had that, so I think it's worth mentioning and celebrating.

2. Ceballos is really, really, really good. WHAT a footballer.

I mean, I don't know what Real Madrid's situation is. I don't know what sequence of factors has led to this guy not being able to get in their team, but I hope it continues just long enough for them to agree to sell him to us on a permanent basis.

He's not only super-talented in his technique and his footballing brain, but he's got some fight in him too. Our second goal only happened because he won the ball back in Burnley's third of the field, and played in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang before the Clarets could get all ten of their center-halves back in position. Auba's finish was excellent, of course, but he never gets the chance if Ceballos doesn't put that on a plate for him.

And that, right there, is something different than we've seen in years past...even last season, which despite everything else was categorically a step forward for the club. This team now has verve and fight and a little bit of steel to them, and Ceballos embodied all of that just in his one performance today.

3. Even after watching all 90 minutes of this, I don't know if Alexandre Lacazette was specifically the striker with Auba on the wing, or vice versa. You know what? That's a damn good thing.

People, in my estimation, get too caught up in formations and what they think tactics are sometimes. It's almost like they envision this whole thing as a foosball table in real life. Football is, and always will be, a far more fluid proposition than that. Time and space are the currencies of this sport, and movement is how you acquire it. If we've managed to forge a style of playing where we have a more amorphous attacking line that could mean either or both are furthest forward at any given time, or our wingers are and the forwards arrive late at the top of the penalty area for a cut-back? Fantastic! That's exactly what we should be doing!

The knock on us in years past - and a legit one at that - is that we've been ponderous and slow and sideways and eminently predictable. It's hard to say that we're like that now based on today's evidence (though of course we're only two games in and there's a lot of proving still to do). Now? My read is that we have options and a range of different looks that we can give an opposing defense to try and pull them out of position.

I get that it's one thing to do that against Burnley and quite another to do that against Liverpool or the Nearest and Dearest, but my god at least we're bringing a gun to a gunfight now.

4. A casual observer may see the number of shots the Clarets had and the scoreline and somehow assume that they may have been hard done by today. Nah, fam. First off, their goal relied on a huge amount of luck with the deflection that took the ball past our back line and directly into Barnes' path for his finish. Other than that? Most of their chances (other than one mad 5-minute stretch in the first half) were long-range no-hopers that they skied into the Van Allen Belt. I genuinely cannot think of one top-class save that Bernd Leno had to make today.

Nick Pope, on the other hand, deserves some props for keeping this from turning into a cricket score. His angles, anticipation and positioning were all on point. You can see why he's in the England team these days, and on this evidence there's an argument for him taking Jordan Pickford's shirt. Replace him with his deputy Joe Hart, and we're probably having a much different conversation right now.

Even with Alexandre Lacazette's goal to open the scoring, I'm not sure there's much he could have done about that. Generally, keepers should never be nutmegged but there's always exceptions. In this case, as a keeper I wouldn't have expected the Frenchman to get a shot away while parked on his bum to begin with, and in this specific case he didn't have the cover on his far post that he should have had either. Laca was able to get that shot away so quickly. no human would have been able to react in time. Not David De Gea, not Manuel Neuer, not Ederson, not Allison. No one.

5. Another notable aspect of this game that strikes me as a sign of progress is how we saw out the game from 2-1 with a minimum of fuss. We got the winner in the 64th minute, and if you think back, Burnley never had that moment to make us have our hearts in our mouth. Even with their set piece prowess, the corner kicks and free kicks they had later on ended up presenting no danger whatsoever.

David Luiz, whatever we may have thought of him in the past, came in and seamlessly integrated himself into our defense. He was vocal, he got stuck in, and if you ask me he's a massively underrated reason why we won today.

Beyond that, it has to be said that Matteo Guendouzi had a performance that belied his youth and inexperience. He was asked to take on a massive responsibility in the center of the park, and he delivered over and over again. It's never easy for a literal child to go toe-to-toe with Stoke City's spiritual heirs, but he did so without complaint. More of this, please.

Also, a frustration that I always had with late-stage Arsene Wenger sides was how nice and clean and Boy Scoutish we were. Here, we did what we had to in order to win. We fouled when we had to. We cleared it row Z when we had to. Leno wasted time and even faked an injury once. I'm fantastically not interested in people who tut-tut about that sort of thing. Fuck all the way fucking off, your favorite team does it too.

Win the game. Do your job. Arsenal did that today, and I sure as shit won't apologize for it.

Things get much more difficult now with a trip to Liverpool next and a home North London Derby right after it. You know what, though? I think this team is up for the fight and even if we don't get 6 points out of that (spoiler alert: we're not getting 6 points out of that), we'll at least give a good account of ourselves. That's all we can ask for, if you ask me.

Man of the Match: There's an argument for their keeper, but for my money it's Dani Ceballos going away.

The Super-Belated 2019-2020 Arsenal Season Preview!!!

2019-08-15T22:57:00.000-04:00

Guess who's back...back again?

It's been almost a year since I took up my metaphorical pen in my capacity as Greek chorus to the doings of this amazing and infuriating collection of footballers. A year is a long time that goes in the blink of an eye, so let's take stock...what have we all missed since last we sat around the campfire of this here shebeen?

Well.

Me? I got a new job, I got a new relationship, and I've stepped down from the board of Arsenal NYC (amicably...it was time, and fresh blood was honestly required). I'm still reffing, and my hand injury has recovered enough where I'm back in goal on Sunday nights myself. I missed it terribly, as it turns out.

The Arsenal? We opted to not pay Aaron Ramsey the GDP of Luxembourg, so he went to Juventus. Our captain Laurent Koscielny threw his toys out of the pram and took himself and his 0.17 working ligaments to Bordeaux. Petr Cech retired. Carl Jenkinson and Danny Welbeck left for first-team football (and the official stance of this here blog is that both are top Gooners and we wish them well). Denis Suarez (remember him?) was blown away by a light breeze back to Barcelona. We sold young starlets Alex Iwobi and Krystian Bielik, which I'm sure won't come back to bite us in the testes at all (just like Serge Gnabry, Ismael Bennacer, Jeff Reine-Adelaide, etc and so on).

The boys had 9/10ths of a halfway decent season, undone in the end by a month or so where they all turned into lobotomized sloths.

They've started this season with a clean sheet away from home, an event notable for the fact that the last one of those occurred somewhere around 1894.

(Deep breath)

Hmm...what else? Oh, right? WE SPENT A ZILLION EUROS ON ACTUAL PLAYERS.

I saw a Tweet (wish I remember from who so I could credit them) that said something to the effect of "Arsenal are like that guy at the pub who has no money to buy rounds but then orders a tray of Jager Bombs for the bachelorette party that just came in". I was going to make a joke about where we found that money, but Swiss Ramble actually has a brilliant breakdown on how we used installments and the like to fit this within our modest budget. Go check it out, I'll wait.

Right, so it's been weeks now and I'm still in awe at this transfer window. What in the actual blue hell happened here? 73 million on one player? DAVID LUIZ is here? A player came to us voluntarily from Real bloody Madrid?

Welcome to the Upside Down.

I'll try and stop my head spinning long enough to break down the squad for you in the usual fashion, position-by-position.

GOALKEEPERS

Photo: Getty Images

In my blogging absence, we went and got ourselves a pretty damn solid custodian in Bernd Leno. Germany tends to be something of a goalkeeper factory in any case, so going out and getting a guy in and around the edges of their national team was a smart play in retrospect. You have to go back to the days of Jens Lehmann (surprise surprise, another Torwart von Deustchsland) for the last time we had a settled and obvious No. 1. Leno isn't the tallest or most imposing keeper, but he keeps mistakes to a minimum and he's especially good at saving 1v1s - a handy skill to have when your back line is a porous disaster like ours. Keepers tend to peak in their early 30s, so at 27 Leno probably has a fair bit of room to improve as well. Either way, he's the guy and I'm all the way here for it.

David Ospina has finally moved on, meaning that Emiliano Martinez is the undisputed backup for the shirt. My read on him is that he's never going to be at the level to challenge Leno for the big job, but he's a perfectly competent backup who we can play in the cup games and the unfortunate early-round Europa League trips to the outer reaches of Eastern Europe without much fear.

Dejan Iliev is out on loan to something called "iClinic Sered" (Sounds like somewhere you go to get your laptop fixed), leaving Matt Macey as our cover option. He's really tall.

DEFENDERS

Photo: No Credit Listed - also, HOLY SHIT THIS IS HAPPENING

William Saliba joined us from Saint-Etienne during the transfer window, but turned right around like the Grandpa Simpson GIF and went back there on loan. One for the future to be sure, though. Koscielny left as mentioned, so once everyone is fit, that likely leaves Rob Holding and David Luiz as our center-half pairing. Holding is of course coming back from that horrible cruciate injury, so it remains to be seen if and when he can get back to his best - though it bears mentioning that he was seriously improving before he ended up on the shelf. As for Luiz, I'm not sure what I can say that Barney Ronay at the Guardian didn't already get to so brilliantly. Yeah, he's got funny hair and got tonked 7-1 by Germany once. He's also one of the better defenders around and someone who will improve everyone around him. At 32 he's obviously a stop-gap until the likes of Saliba are ready, but this is exactly the kind of smart short-term cover signing that we haven't made in eons.

Once you get past that though, it's a return ticket directly back to the Island of Misfit Toys. Calum Chambers returns from his loan at Fulham, where he was their player of the year...although a) that's like being the nicest guy in prison and b) it was as a central midfielder. So, all the shrug emoticons there. Anthropomorphic yellow card Sokratis Papastathopolous is still here to make "who me?" gestures at referees directly after severing an opposing striker's leg at the patella. While we're on the topic of defenders with names worth triple digit Scrabble scores, youngster Konstantinos Mavropanos has remained with the club largely out of ~~desperation~~ necessity. Ideally, he'd be out on loan at Olympiakos or Panathinaikos or some other -kos somewhere, but, well, we need a fourth defender.

Wait, you mean Walking Calamity Shkrodan Mustafi is still here?

Look, I'm never going to be one of those bell-ends that harasses one of our own on Twitter or wishes him harm or anything, but my god would it be best for all if we could somehow shift him out in the international transfer window. If I remember correctly we have until September 2nd or 3rd or something. He didn't even make the bench for our 1-0 win at Newcastle to start the season (I don't think these things are unrelated), and that was with the population of Tokyo out of commission for one reason or another. He's obviously finished with Arsenal, and the sooner the divorce happens, the better.

At the fullback positions we're significantly bolstered on both sides - Kieran Tierney has joined from Celtic to man the left while Extremely Handsome Woke Man (now with a haircut!) Hector Bellerin has come back from injury to reclaim his post on the right. This is all fantastic news. At their best, both are solid defensively while providing width to the attack. We all know by now that fullback has become a critical position on the field, to the point where assists and the odd goal from there is mandatory in the modern game. Assuming no further injury, we have players good enough to give us that and more. It would also alleviate some of the burden on our wide forwards, which will open up tons of possibilities when we have the ball. I'm already salivating at the idea.

Nacho Monreal returns to provide cover both on the left and in the center in a pinch, though he showed last season that he's nearing the down slope of his career. A big part of our problem last term was that we signed Stephan Lichtsteiner to be occasional cover and a mentor to others and he ended up having to be the main man - hopefully nothing like that happens this time around. On the right, I think we can all agree that at this point Ainsley Maitland-Niles is a common-law right back. It may be the best thing for his career, when you think about it. We're so stacked in most areas of the pitch, but if Bellerin gets hurt again we've got an empty cupboard at RB. I don't think AMN is ever going to crack the first team in central midfield or at wide forward, but with some improvement on the defensive side of the game I can see him being a solid rotation option right where he is. Sometimes you just have to know what your level is, you know?

As for Sead Kolasinac - besides being the scourge of would-be robbers everywhere (and let's just take a second to marvel at the marriage of unbelievable stupidity and galactic-level bravery it takes to try and rob a man that we all call "The Bosnian Tank". Seems like a good way to get your internal organs rearranged in alphabetical order to me), what actually is his position? Is he the reserve LB and Monreal will be left out? Will he play more at left wingback when we go to 5 in the back? Will he play more as a wide forward? I don't know, but he's always good for two or three goals a season that nearly decapitate the opposing goalkeeper, and that's worth his presence alone right there.

MIDFIELDERS

Photo: The National

This, right here, is going to dictate the success or failure of this season.

Which Mesut Ozil are we going to get? (By the way, gonna stop right here and say that like any decent human, I know his family and his safety come first and he should take as much time as he needs to get his situation sorted out). What are our best options in the center of the park? How good is Granit Xhaka really?

Generally, I'm higher on both of those players than the average person, and significantly so more than the average Twitter mouth-breather. But, we can all agree that if we're going to crack the top four this season, both of them are going to have to provide more end product than they've done in a while. Ozil in particular now has no shortage of weapons at his disposal - does he have enough about himself in this stage to make full use of them? Will Xhaka cut out the two or three rough edges to his game and emerge as the fully-complete player that I believe is in there?

More questions than answers, eh?

Meanwhile, Ramsey's departure leaves more room for Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi to grow into their roles in the team. Both showed flashes last season, though both can also be excused to some extent with it being their first season in the Premier League. Guendouzi also arguably got thrown into the deep end before he was fully ready, though now he has a year under his belt. Both have excellent qualities, and I think to some extent they suffered from what seemed to this observer to be a lack of tactical consistency at times. The raw materials are there - can Unai Emery find the magic formula to unlock their next levels?

More questions than answers.

Dani Ceballos is an interesting one. I'll be the first to admit that I don't watch a lot of Spanish football (I'm not paying Spectrum a king's ransom every month for the privilege of BeIN Sports and I don't have tons of time for non-Arsenal football most weekends these days anyway). He couldn't get into the Real Madrid team but I suspect he'll have no shortage of first-team ball during his loan spell with us - especially if Emery decides to Krazy-Glue Ozil to the bench again like he did for long stretches last season. I imagine he's more of an offensive player and I've heard good reports from people I trust, but I mean we just had a Denis Suarez and I'm worried about repeats until proven otherwise.

Mohamed Elneny is still with us - though we'll see if that's still the case come the end of the international window. He's not a terrible player, but for me it's an an illustration of the harshness indicative of the uppermost levels of the game - the delta between good enough and not is infinitesimal at this level, and he's a shade under that bar. Some years back he would have fit right in with the Bendtners and Chamakhs of the world, but the Premier League is a money-soaked rock fight these days and it's no longer sufficient to just take nothing off the table.

Other than that, you want kids? We got kids!

Photo: HOMESTAR MOTHERFUCKING RUNNER

I already mentioned Guendouzi, who is younger than half my t-shirt collection. Beyond that we have Joe Willock, Reiss Nelson, and Emile Smith-Rowe. The conventional wisdom is that they may not play much, but I don't know if that dog hunts. Football is a squad game these days, and with injuries and suspensions you need minutes from this second and third tier of player. They're all young, they all have talent, and ESR impressed on loan to Leipzig last season. They'll get their chances, especially in the cups and in the Europa League. I've seen enough Carlos Velas and Jermaine Pennants in my day to know that not all the kids will make it, but I think this crop has a better chance than most.

FORWARDS

Photo: The Daily Star

WAKANDA FOREVER.

Ok, so look. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is the absolute truth and barring injury or a meteor hitting the Earth, he's going to bang in 30-35 goals and be the man again this season. He's already sitting in first place on our goal-scoring list within the first 50 appearances for the club (that would be above club deities like Thierry Henry, Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp). We don't need to spend much time drawing a topographical map of The Obvious here.

The question is, what will the surrounding landscape look like? We can be reasonably confident that Ozil or Ceballos will mostly play the No. 10 directly behind him, but out wide is where the interest lies.

As mentioned above, we just backed a dump truck full of money at Chez Lille and came back with a fresh new-model Nicolas Pepe. He scored ALL the goals in Ligue 1, though that isn't always an indicator of success in tougher competitions. Full disclosure? I've never seen him play. He arrives with no shortage of hype and with as good a CV as you can amass en francais, so it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts to the English game. One has to assume that an impact will be made - the level and severity of such will - in conjunction with our midfield questions - determine what heights this season can hit.

Alexandre Lacazette is another question. He's obviously a class player, but where will he be deployed? Will we go with two strikers? Will he force Auba out wide, which is emphatically not his best position? Will we just say sod it and play with 10 forwards in front of Leno? Your guess is as good as mine. I know I'm beating this horse down into its composite atoms, but more questions than answers.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Yup. He'll play some here and there and probably not do much. Happy to be wrong on this one but I'm not holding my breath.

PREDICTIONS

As usual, I'll stick my neck out and peer into my crystal ball. I won't do a full table anymore because, honestly, what I know about Norwich or Sheffield United or Burnley these days can comfortably fit inside a thimble. That said:

Arsenal will finish third. The galaxy-brain geniuses at the Guardian picked us to finish 6th, which makes me doubly sure on this point. I mean, Chelsea are a dumpster fire in Chernobyl, Man United bought no one and are managed by a troll doll, and Tottenham are starting to list under the weight of their collective stasis. You can only be nearly-men for so long before the mantle latches on to your shoulders, boys.
As said, Auba is going to score 30-35.
Man City will win the league. Again. Liverpool will finish second. Again.
Call me crazy, but I think City are going to finally win the Champions League this season as well.
One of the kids will break out this season - my immediate guess is Reiss Nelson.
I will make it to the pub more than three times this season.

Enjoy the season, everyone!

Merci et Au Revoir, Arsene (La Saison en Revue, Aussi)

2018-05-17T18:13:00.000-04:00

Photo: Getty Images

So, here we are, then. Finally, after a solid century or so (it feels like it, anyway) of tedious intra-fanbase warfare, we stand on the precipice of our next Brave New World: Anno Domini 1 in the Post-Arsene Era, etc and so on.

Well, until they get around to announcing Mikel Arteta as the replacement, anyway…a move that one half of the aforementioned warring parties is already taking with the expected levels of good grace and reasoned thought.

Sigh.

Now that the great man is truly being dragged off into the sunset, it feels anti-climactic in a way, much like this season did by Boxing Day or so. All of that in-fighting, all of the plane-borne banners, the angry Tweets, the gallons of ink spilled (virtual and otherwise) about whether this was the time to get rid, and it doesn’t feel all that different in the end. “We’re out of Coke, is Pepsi OK?”. Sure.

Still, had you told me that we’d be sat here discussing Arsene Wenger’s legacy and/or replacement at precisely the moment when Thibaut Courtois’ comedy Community Shield penalty was rocketing towards the stratosphere, I’d have sagely nodded while waiting for the best moment to call the men in the white coats.

Then again, if you told me that after we face-planted to two straight losses soon after – including against a dead-club-walking Stoke City side – I’d have been a more receptive audience.

The thing is, we all know the massive improvements that Wenger brought to the English game. In fact, I’d argue that all of this money and glitz and worldwide recognition wouldn’t have happened (at least not to this extent) without Arsene paving the way. In a sense, I don’t know if anyone in the history of all football has been so thoroughly hoisted by their own petard. Beaten by well-drilled pressing sides that would never have been fit enough to play that way 15 years ago, managed by foreign coaches who would have never gotten a look in back then either. It must drive him mad, in his private moments.

While most of us in Arsenal NYC have only ever known Arsene-nal, I do pre-date him…just. As one of our resident Old Persons, I remember what the football was like back then. It’s not something I’m desperate to relive in a hurry, that’s for sure. One game that always sticks in my mind from the 1997-98 Double season was a home match against Blackburn Rovers where we got absolutely tonked – 1-3 was a flattering scoreline on the day. Arguably the nadir of the campaign, against a club that finished a solid 6^th place in the end. The kicker, though? That Rovers team was AWFUL by today’s standards.

To wit:

(4-4-2) Tim Flowers – Jeff Kenna, Stephane Henchoz, Colin Hendry, Gary Croft – Billy McKinlay, Stuart Ripley, Tim Sherwood, Jason Wilcox – Kevin Gallacher, Chris Sutton

So, what we’re talking here is England’s No. 3 in goal, one upper-middle class defender in Hendry, massive thundercunt Sutton (who was a pretty good player, hate to say), and THAT’S IT. That lot would have been eviscerated by Huddersfield this season. THIS is what Arsene saved us from, even if it was to his own personal detriment later in his career. They should name the ground after him just for the fact that we don’t have to watch 2018’s Tim Sherwood equivalent play Premier League football alone. When you’re grading the man on his later years, remember that the mid-to-lower classes back then didn’t have players like Xherdan Shaqiri or Richarlison or Wilifred Zaha running around. It’s a different world now.

That brings me back to my point about his role in ushering in this modern era of Premier League football. Would the league have expanded its footprint to Asia, the US, and elsewhere to the extent that it has if it still featured the agricultural hoofball of days gone by? Would the league have been this attractive a prospect to TV partners (in turn bringing in the crazy money that allows a Watford to have a player like Richarlison) if Wenger hadn’t shown the way with Bergkamp and Henry and Pires and Vieira, etc and so on? Not bloody likely. Would Arsene have had it this rough in his declining years if the league hadn’t become this much of a rock fight mostly due to teams like Watford having players like Richarlison? Here too, not bloody likely.

Any look back at Arsene’s legacy also has to consider his mortal enemy. Batman and the Joker, Seinfeld and Newman, Ric Flair and Sting…whatever metaphor you choose, Arsene’s story is forever intertwined with Alex Ferguson’s. An entire era of Premier League football that reduced all and sundry else to mere footnotes, the slips of paper in the Playbill saying that such-and-such understudy will be playing the part of the Phantom for this Thursday matinee. I did an interview for the BBC World Radio right after the final whistle against Burnley, and all I remember saying is how Arsene was the only one who ever truly punched Ferguson’s teams in the mouth. People forget this now, but the rest of the league wilted in old Taggart’s presence to a preposterous and embarrassing degree. Referees, other teams, it was appalling. Thank you for visiting, sir. Here are your three points, sir. My god, it makes me so angry all these years later. Get fucked, all of you.

I thought about those days a lot as we were losing at Old Trafford yet again right after the capitulation in Madrid, just as I did earlier in the season when we lost to them at home, too. Just another little sign that Arsene’s powers, waning in these past few years to be sure, were well and truly gone.

It feels awful to say, but you can’t honestly talk about said legacy without pointing out the moments this season that showed just to what degree his continued presence was frittering it away. The FA Cup, long his signature competition on Albion’s shores, signed off on with a ridiculous defeat to an awful Nottingham Forest side at the first hurdle. Away draws to Southampton, West Ham and West Bromwich Albion, crisis clubs for different reasons. A nothing-doing away loss in the NLD. The 3-3 vs. Liverpool that we should have won. Away losses to Watford, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Swansea and even fucking Ostersunds. Hardly a murderer’s row, innit?

It feels almost like blasphemy to say it, but in some respects Arsene was never the same after Sam Allardyce’s Bolton teams sussed out how to beat him on the road. Yes, I just threw up a bit in my mouth, too. Even Superman had his kryptonite, I suppose.

Let’s not forget the now-customary false dawns, while we’re on the subject. The home win in the NLD, the 5-2 against Everton, the Europa League ties against AC Milan and CSKA Moscow…all made us hope once again that the corner had been turned for good.

Oh, and don’t neglect his reputation as something of a nearly-man…that CV updated this season with the League Cup final and the Europa semifinals, both ending in losses to clubs that personified just how past his sell-by date Arsene truly was by the end. The funny thing is both were not even close to his worst losses in either side of it (if we count the EL and the CL together) – neither within visual distance of THAT Birmingham game or THAT Barcelona game. Arsene will be remembered for the trophies he won, but he’ll be remembered just as much for the ones he didn’t (and, if you look back with a critical eye, he should have taken more off of Ferguson than he did, too).

On the whole, though, you have to mark down Arsene much further in credit than in demerit…and frankly only a churlish asshole would disagree. We do seem to have no shortage of those these days, however. That’s the funny thing, now that I think back some more on the past and where we’ve been. All we apparently wanted during the austerity years was money spent on big-name players – then Mesut Ozil comes in, and half the Gooner massive were conned by idiots like John Cross and Neil Ashton that he was nicking a living. You can only truly fathom the depths of Arsene’s love for the club when you consider how long he stuck around in the face of things like this.

Another point I find in his favor is that once it became apparent that the end was coming, he started making tangible steps to clear the decks for the next guy, to leave him in as good a nick as possible for what will be a challenging-at-best transition. Not bad for a guy who had the knock on him (mostly true) that we did the same old shit for too long. Bringing in first Alex Lacazette and then Pierre-Erick Aubameyang, both on silly money (and the second involving the departure of a favorite in Olivier Giroud) has left us with a potent attack for the next manager to leverage. Those two, with Ozil supplying them in the right system, can do a significant amount of damage.

And there, in the end, is the reason why I’m quietly hopeful for next season. As much as I love the guy and as influential as he was, my honest assessment is that Arsene himself has been the one holding us back for ages. Despite what the Twitter mouth-breathers will say, most of the personnel to me isn’t a problem (though I admit a shiny new goalkeeper would not go amiss). I can’t say who’s staying or going next season…but if they stick around, just wait and see with players like Shkdoran Mustafi and Granit Xhaka. A little direction, a more coherent system around them? I suspect that many of us will be surprised.

That, of course, brings it back to the likelihood that Arteta will be the next manager. On the face of it, I don’t like it. We’re a big club, and it’s been too long in my opinion since we acted like it. Back up a dump truck full of money at Max Allegri’s house, and I assume he wouldn’t be THAT bothered about working within our new management structure. All we can do as supporters, though, is *gasp* SUPPORT whoever does come in, whether we think they’re going to do the business or not. If we’re in 6^th or 7^th by Christmas next year? Great, have a moan! I know I will! But before a ball has been kicked? Fuck alllllllllllllllllllllll the way off with that, my guy.

Those are concerns for another time, though. A great man has left us at the end of this season – that is indisputable. But, the sun still comes up at the beginning of each day. There’s still an Arsenal Football Club, there’s still a Premier League and a Europa League to fight for next season, and there’s still a bloody great club for us to support. Thank you for everything, Arsene. We’ve got it from here.

Preview by Numbers: Arsenal v. Red Star Belgrade, Europa League Group Matchday 4

2017-11-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Emirates Stadium, London

Thursday, November 2

4:05 p.m. EDT, 20:05 GMT

Match Officials from Italy

Referee: Luca Banti
Assistants: Lorenzo Manganelli and Fabiano Preti
4th Official: Andrea Crispo
Additional Assistants: Paolo Valeri and Daniele Doveri

Reverse Fixture: Red Star Belgrade 0 - 1 Arsenal
All-Time in All Competitions: 1 Arsenal win, 1 Red Star Belgrade win, 1 draw
Arsenal's Overall Form: W-L-W-W-W-W
Red Star Belgrade's Overall Form: W-W-L-W-W-W

I don't have much to say here. Arsenal are through to the Round of 32 with a victory here on matchday four, with a possible two games to spare. Plus, they have a 100% record at home this season to maintain. Might as well get on with the job.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Kolašinac (hip,) Ospina (groin,) Welbeck (groin,) Mustafi (hamstring,) Chambers (match fitness,) Cazorla (Achilles)

There are doubts over Sead Kolašinac, who injured his hip against Swansea at the weekend; he'll be tested before Sunday's trip to Manchester City and is expected to be rested here.

There are no returns on the cards for any of Arsenal's injured players, including David Ospina, who was expected back from his groin problem. We won't see Danny Welbeck and Shkodran Mustafi until after the upcoming international break. Calum Chambers is, however, back in full training.

As has been the case with the previous Europa League matches, and with this one coming at home, you should expect to see a lot of rotation in the XI. On the other hand, without Ospina available, Petr Čech started in Belgrade on matchday three and might be required here to give Arsenal the best shot at qualification with games to spare. You can start Matt Macey all you want in dead rubber.

Predicted XI: Čech, Debuchy, Holding, Elneny, Nelson, Maitland-Niles, Coquelin, Willock, Wilshere, Walcott, Giroud.

Red Star Belgrade Squad News

Out: Jovicić, Cavalcante
Suspended: Rodić (one match, two yellows)

Milan Rodić will serve a one-match ban after he was sent off against Arsenal on matchday three. My sources suggest that Ricardo Cavalcante and Branko Jovicić are both out injured for the Serbian side, but those sources were wrong the last time, so unless I go ahead and learn Serbian to find more accurate team news, your guess is as good as mine.

Predicted XI: Borjan, Stojković, Savić, Le Tallec, Gobeljić, Srnić, Kanga, Donald (ić?), Krstičić, Radonjić, Boakye.

Current Form

Arsenal have lost once in their last 12 matches, across all competitions, since losing 4-0 at Liverpool on August 27. Their only blips have been the 0-0 draw at Chelsea, the 2-1 loss at Watford, and I guess you could add needing extra time to beat Norwich in the League Cup. Arsenal have won eight of their last nine and have won four straight for the second time this season.

They have won all of their home games; you'd have to go back to their 2-2 draw with Manchester City on April 2 for the last time they dropped points at home. The last team to win at the Emirates was Bayern Munich, on March 7, by a red-card aided 5-1 scoreline.

Red Star Belgrade have won five of their last six themselves, though that loss came against Arsenal in the reverse fixture. Their last league setback was on October 1 against Napredak Kruševac. Red Star are four points clear at the top of the Serbian table, ahead of their Belgrade rival Partizan.

Match Facts

Not much to say here that wasn't said in the last preview. Arsenal won the reverse fixture on matchday 3, 1-0 in Belgrade, when Olivier Giroud scored an audacious bicycle kick in the 85th minute. It was Arsenal's first win in three tries against Red Star Belgrade, having lost 1-0 in Belgrade and drawn 1-1 at Highbury in the 1978/79 UEFA Cup.

Arsenal's only other matches against Serbian competition came in the 2010 Champions League group stage, when they beat Partizan twice by 3-1 scorelines. Red Star Belgrade have six wins, six losses, and five draws all-time against English sides. They have only won once in seven tries on English soil. That was in Liverpool in 1973, 2-1, in the second round of the European Cup, to win the tie 4-2 on aggregate. They went on to lose to Atlético Madrid in the next round, who themselves lost the final to Bayern Munich.

The Referee

The match officials are from Italy; the referee is Luca Banti. As has been the case in other Europa League matches, Arsenal have never seen this referee before, since Arsenal have not played at this level in Europe in almost two decades.

Banti has worked two previous Belgrade matches. In the 2013 second qualifying round of the Europa League, Banti worked a 2-0 Red Star win, in Belgrade, over Icelandic side Íþróttabandalag Vestmannaeyja. Okay, some of those aren't even letters. They went on to lose to Ukrainian side Chornomorets Odesa in the next round.

Last year, Banti took charge of a Champions League qualifying match between Red Star and Ludogorets, which the Bulgarian side won 4-2 in Serbia. Of course, you likely know how that tie ended, since Ludogorets were in Arsenal's group.

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and is finishing this preview at the eleventh hour. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat to tell him that you know it was really the tenth hour and he is just exaggerating slightly.

Preview by Numbers: Arsenal v. Swansea City

2017-10-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

Emirates Stadium, London

Saturday, October 28

10:00 a.m. EDT, 15:00 BST

Match Officials

Referee: Lee Mason
Assistants: Harry Lennard and Derek Eaton
4th Official: Lee Probert

This Match, Last Year: Arsenal 3 - 2 Swansea
All-Time in All Competitions: 12 Arsenal wins, 8 Swansea wins, 3 draws
Arsenal's League Form: W-D-W-W-L-W
Swansea's League Form: L-D-L-L-W-L

For the first time in my six years of writing for this website, I missed two consecutive match previews, so I will start off by offering my apologies. On the other hand, I got married over the weekend, so I think the excuse is pretty legit. Also, Arsenal won both of those matches, so how much can you really complain? Arsenal are 3-0 in games where I have failed to write a match preview since I started here in February of 2011, so maybe every loss has been my fault?

Fingers crossed that the match at Watford was a blip instead of a derailment. Arsenal have responded well by winning in Belgrade and at Everton, then coming from behind with their reserves to beat Norwich in extra time of the League Cup. Since the 4-0 loss at Anfield, Arsenal have won nine, lost once, and drawn at Chelsea. Not too shabby for a club in crisis.

It's a big week for Arsenal as we steamroll towards the November international break: the Gunners have Swansea and Red Star Belgrade at home before a trip to Manchester City next weekend. City have yet to lose this season and Arsenal are nine points back of the top spot in the league. Winning the title is likely a pipe dream, but Arsenal are only four points out of second, so reclaiming a top four finish is completely doable.

But to do that, you have to win the games you are supposed to win and you absolutely must win your home games, so nothing less than three points on Saturday against the Swans would be acceptable.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Ospina (groin,) Welbeck (groin,) Mustafi (hamstring,) Cazorla (Achilles? Is that what it is? I keep forgetting)

Doubts: Chambers (match fitness)

Arsenal have no fresh injury concerns heading into this weekend's match and Arsène Wenger will be tempted to start the same XI that swashbuckled their way to a win at Goodison Park.

My absence in writing these previews meant that I had failed to realize that David Ospina was hurt until Matt Macey started against Norwich on Tuesday. The Colombian, who has a groin problem, is out for tomorrow but could start against Red Star Belgrade this coming Thursday.

Calum Chambers (thigh) is back in full training, but Arsenal are still without Danny Welbeck, Shkodran Mustafi, and, of course, Santi Cazorla.

Predicted XI: Čech, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal, Bellerín, Kolašinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis, Lacazette.

Swansea Squad News

Out: Olsson (hamstring,) Bartley (knee,) Sanches (thigh,) Bony (hamstring)

Martin Olsson picked up a hamstring injury in Swansea's League Cup loss to Manchester United on Tuesday. He joins a list of injured players that also includes former Arsenal defender Kyle Bartley. As a result, Àngel Rangel will come in at right back, pushing Kyle Naughton to the left.

Arsenal will avoid facing Renato Sanches, the Portuguese Wunderkind who is on loan from Bayern Munich and is out with a thigh injury, as well as Wilfried Bony, who transferred back to his former club this summer, and is out with a hamstring problem.

Arsenal will not, however, avoid facing their former goalkeeper in Łukasz Fabiański. So, you know, do what you will with that.

Predicted XI: Fabiański, Rangel, Fernández, Mawson, Naughton, Britton, Carroll, Fer, Narsingh, Abraham, Ayew.

Current Form

As mentioned at the top, Arsenal have nine wins from their last 11 fixtures, though that includes the League Cup win over Norwich City, which was 1-1 after regulation. So, if you want to get super technical, it's eight wins, two draws, and the one loss at Watford. But, really, nine wins sounds better, doesn't it? And they did win the game in question, so I'll allow it if you will.

As for Swansea, they were knocked out of the League Cup by Manchester United this week and currently sit 15th in the table, with eight points. They are out of the relegation zone on goal difference alone; their -4 is best among the four clubs sitting on eight points. It is worth noting, however, that the Swans have picked up two good road draws at Southampton and Tottenham, though maybe picking up points at Wembley isn't something worth writing home about? They also picked up a win at Crystal Palace, meaning five of their eight points have come on their travels, and that their road record is better than their record at the Liberty Stadium. Across all competitions, they have lost four of their last five since beating Reading in the League Cup's third round.

Match Facts

Swansea have often been a bogey team for Arsenal; however, the Gunners took all six points from the Swans last season.

Arsenal made it difficult at the Emirates last year, however. Theo Walcott put Arsenal up 2-0 with a brace within 33 minutes, but Gylfi Sigurðsson pulled one back for the visitors on 38 minutes. Mesut Özil made it 3-1, but Borja Baston pulled another back on 66 minutes and Granit Xhaka was sent off four minutes later. Arsenal were forced to defend their one-goal lead with 10 men for 20 minutes, but held strong and came away with the 3-2 victory.

Prior to that match, Arsenal had not won a league fixture against Swansea at the Emirates since Andrei Arshavin's fluke goal gave the Gunners a 1-0 win on September 10, 2011. They did win an FA Cup replay at home against the Swans in January of 2013, also 1-0, thanks to a late Jack Wilshere goal.

Things were much easier at the Liberty Stadium in January. Olivier Giroud gave Arsenal a 1-0 halftime lead, but the Gunners added three more in the second half, through two own goals and an Alexis Sánchez tally, to come out of Wales with a 4-0 victory.

The Referee

The referee is Lancashire-based Lee Mason. Arsenal have yet to see Mason this season, but Swansea have had him once, for their 2-1 home loss to Watford. Huh, losing 2-1 to Watford, what a novel concept.

Last year, Arsenal saw Mason only once, for their 3-1 home win over Stoke City in December. Swansea also had him only once last season; oddly, it was also a loss to Watford. I'm sensing a theme here.

Swansea have not won with Mason since November 28, 2012 and are winless in their last eight with him in the middle. Arsenal have not lost with Mason since April 18, 2010 and are unbeaten in 17 with him. Plenty of draws in both lists, however, though Arsenal have only lost twice in 24 matches with Mason in the middle, and Swansea have only won four out of 20.

Around the League

Saturday (early): Manchester United v. Tottenham Hotspur; Old Trafford, Manchester
Saturday: Crystal Palace v. West Ham United; Selhurst Park, London
Saturday: Liverpool v. Huddersfield Town; Anfield, Liverpool
Saturday: Watford v. Stoke City; Vicarage Road, Watford
Saturday: West Bromwich Albion v. Manchester City; The Hawthorns, West Bromwich
Saturday (late): Bournemouth v. Chelsea; Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth
Sunday (early): Brighton & Hove Albion v. Southampton; The American Express Community Stadium, Falmer
Sunday (late): Leicester City v. Everton; King Power Stadium, Leicester
Monday (night): Burnley v. Newcastle United; Turf Moor, Burnley

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and a fictional mad scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat to foil his fiendish plot for world domination.

Ten Thoughts: Everton 2-5 Arsenal AND Arsenal 2-1 Norwich City (AET)

2017-10-24T23:29:00.000-04:00

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

EDDIE! EDDIE! EDDIE! EDDIE! EDDIE!

1. Before we get to the new wunderkind du jour (I mix metaphors in mixed languages - beat that, professional writers!), we'll address the Everton match (AKA the one I actually saw). I hadn't had the chance to watch them yet before last weekend, though I had heard rumors about how unbelievably shit they were. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed. The fact that we went down to this lot after 10 straight minutes of carving them open for fun was annoying, but it was the sort of thing that didn't cause an undue amount of worry if you know this game. I remember saying at halftime "Give us another half like that and we'll massacre them". As we saw, that turned out to be prophetic.

Some will say that it's harsh that Ronald Koeman has been sacked already, and as long-time readers know, I am usually the first to defend managers from what I think is a batshit culture of short-termism from club chairmen. However, in this case, the coroner would file this under suicide. Just look at this lot. LOOK at them. A shambles defensively, poor old Jordan Pickford flying around this way and that in an often vain attempt to cover for the guys in front of him. Meanwhile, up the other end, they bought a small country's worth of natural No. 10s, to the point where a combined brain of Herbert Chapman and Stephen Hawking couldn't work out how to get them effectively into the same team, let alone this smug chancer who had one eye on Barcelona for his entire Everton tenure anyway. They're currently in the relegation zone, and frankly, better sides than them have found themselves hurtling through the trap door to the Championship.

It'd be a shame to see them go, much like it was when Aston Villa dropped down, and Newcastle United before them. An old man like me gets used to seeing the same clubs season in and season out, especially those of that size. But, if the Toffees do find themselves away at Brentford and Bolton next season, they'll only have themselves to blame. Oh, and the aforementioned smug Dutch chancer.

2. Like I said, we were all over them before they scored. Pickford had to bail his side out as early as the 2nd minute, and then a few more times for good measure in the interim. Then, as we've done so often before, one mistake gets ruthlessly punished. Wayne Rooney is naturally not what he once was, but people acting like he's a Conference-level jabroni are a shade off the mark. Put him where he can do damage, and that's what he'll do. He always has been adept at using a defender to screen their own keeper, and he did so masterfully against Per Mertesacker here. The BFG was much too passive on the play though, and we paid for it.

The usual banshee-screechers were probably having a field day right around this point, but there was never any evidence as the rest of the half went on that they'd build off of that and put us in danger. It was always a glitch in the Matrix, nothing more.

Still, the bit that did stick in the craw more than anything else was the fact that Everton got that chance in the first place because Granit Xhaka got his pocket picked in the middle of the park. Again. I do absolutely insist that he will fully come good this season, but the man needs to pull his finger out and find a level of consistency before he loses his place to Jack Wilshere for good.

3. Later on in the match, Idrissa Gueye was sent off for a second bookable offense - both were silly fouls, and he had to go. But, the Toffees were damn lucky that Ashley Williams (a sneakily-dirty little player himself) didn't make the long walk himself in the first half for the same reason. Frankly, I thought Craig Pawson was wrong there, but in fairness to him he was fine overall.

Some measure of karma arrived soon after though, ensuring that our boys went into the interval back on level terms. Alexis Sanchez didn't stamp his authority on the first stanza, but he did take the shot that started the passage of play leading up to our goal. That was blocked, it came out to Xhaka, who let fly from distance. A few pundits have slated Pickford for his rebound control there, but he had to go back across the grain to make a fabulous save after the ball had deflected off a defender's leg. He pushed it out to the side, which is all you can ask of your keeper there. Sometimes, you just have horseshit luck and an attacker is in that exact spot to clean up. Luckily for us, it was Nacho Monreal, who made no mistake in tucking the rebound past Pickford at his near post.

For the record, this is also a case that disproves the idiotic notion that a keeper should never be beat there. I try and stay away from "always" and "never" when talking about this game anyway, but that's one that drives me up a goddamn wall.

Good goal, scored at a perfect time.

4. The second wasn't too long in arriving after the restart, and it shouldn't be that surprising. Here's the thing, folks. As I recall, a really smart person wrote this just last week in the Red Star Belgrade report here at this canteen:

The other thing is, we haven't had a situation yet (I don't believe) where Mesut Ozil, Alexandre Lacazette, Alexis Sanchez and Wilshere were all playing. That's our best team, by miles, and it's absolutely a case where I believe the sum would be far greater than the parts. People will talk all kinds of nonsense about some of them, especially Ozil, but put them all together and let's see what they do.

Jacky Boy wasn't playing, but once the rest of those lads got going in the second half, it was a joy to watch. The passing and movement off the ball, even at times in the first half, were as dangerous as they've been all season. They were...gasp...moving *forward*! They took shots from distance! They tore a bad team apart, embarrassingly so at times, but you can only play what's in front of you.

Before I pull a muscle patting myself on the back, I will say that I didn't see "Ozil bullet header goal" anywhere in our future, that's for damn sure. But, there he was, smashing the unholy hell out of one over Pickford's dive and into the roof of the net. You can tell he enjoyed that one, too. We'll worry about next season when it gets closer to the time - for now, his importance to the team can't be overstated.

Hell of an assist from Alexis, too. But no, sure, let's sell them both in January. Capital bloody idea.

5. There were a couple of half-chances before Gueye's sending-off, but don't believe the narrative that the match only really got away from Everton once he walked. There were 20 more minutes left, we'd have bagged one or two more anyway, no question.

They were hilariously abject once they were down to 10, though. Gueye peaced out at 70 minutes, and Pickford was picking the ball out of his net on 73. It was simple enough - an attack down the left, a pull-back to Lacazette on the edge of the area, and a dead-eye finish from there. Seriously, my dude simply doesn't miss if you give him time and space in that part of the field. Oh, and by the way? That play was Alexis-to-Ozil-to-Laca. I'm telling you, shit's going to get real now if they all stay healthy.

6. I've seen some wacky 5-10 minute passages of play before, but my god, this one was right up there. From 84 minutes, we saw:

84' - Xhaka hits the bar.
85' - Wilshere, on as a sub, rounds Pickford but can't find the right ball to capitalize.
86' - Laurent Koscielny is booked.
90' - Wilshere does well to play in Aaron Ramsey, who makes no mistake from close range. 4-1.
93' - Monreal hits a dreadful back-pass to Petr Cech, who tries some sort of fancy clearance instead of hacking it into touch. Oumar Niasse picks his pocket and taps into the empty net. 4-2.
94' - Alexis takes advantage of horrid ball-watching from the Everton back line to slot home across the grain into the far corner. 5-2.

7. On to the League Cup and a home date with Norwich City, then. Full disclosure: I didn't get a chance to see this one. I've only seen the three goals, but there were apparently some talking points beyond that. I've read some bits about Mohamed Elneny apparently being lucky to stay on the field, and that the Canaries had a penalty shout turned down. Well, boo fucking hoo. Their goal would have never happened if the referee had blown for a foul when Alex Iwobi was scythed down in front of his eyes, maybe 6-7 yards away. Instead, James Maddison played in Josh Murphy with an inch-perfect through-ball that split our defense. Matt Macey, the young keeper making his first-team debut for us, rushed off his line, but got himself caught in no-man's land, allowing their man to chip him.

It's the sort of thing that, when you play an inexperienced keeper, you're going to have to deal with from time to time. What you're really looking to do is to time your run out so that you've closed the space between you and the shooter before they can make a move around you or chip you - as happened here. It's not easy. Maybe he'll learn, but more likely, he'll be turning out for Shrewsbury or Stockport in a year or two. No shame in that - not everyone can play for a top club.

8. For 85 minutes, that's all there was to trouble the scoreboard. At some point, that's the price you have to pay for rotating as heavily as we have...though that is exactly what we should be doing in this competition. It's the League Cup. We have much more pressing concerns this season, moreso this time around more than ever. Had we lost this, I would have been annoyed for roughly a tenth of a nansecond before getting over it and worrying about more important things - such as literally anything else, for example.

As it stands, we're in the last eight, and the kids get to play another game. And, even though it is a quarterfinal, it is the kids who should indeed play. Let's be real. Both Manchester clubs are still in this thing, and it's likely that Chelsea and the Nearest/Dearest should be after tomorrow. Maybe we get lucky, get Bristol City, and a few of these knock each other out. We get to a semifinal, and maybe it's a different story. Until then, this is a periphery concern and no more.

9. We're only having this conversation though thanks to one Eddie Nketiah. There hasn't been a properly ridiculous Roy of the Rovers moment in football recently that I can recall, but it's safe to say that this qualifies. I mean, are you serious? Local boy that we plucked from Chelsea at 14 years of age (Sidebar: HAHAHAHAHA you dumb fucks) comes on for his debut and scores less than 30 seconds later? Then does it again in extra time to win the tie? Come ON. If this were a movie, we'd all talk about how hackneyed it all is.

Both were off of set pieces, which makes it that much sweeter given our usual struggles scoring from those. The first corner kick slithered its way through several defenders to the back post, where Eddie was there to tap it home. Maddison was his marker and was marshmallow soft on it, but no complaints in that regard here. The kid went mental, as you'd imagine. What a moment. If you can find something to moan about there, I have serious questions as to the whereabouts of your soul.

The second was even better, though again, you have to ask questions about the defending once more. It was another corner, and maybe you can ask questions of their young keeper Angus Gunn for not coming out to claim. But, there were maybe five yellow shirts in close proximity, any of whom can and should have dealt with the set piece. Instead, Eddie rose highest to thump a cracking header into the top corner. What a goal. What a night for the kid.

But, let's not anoint this kid the new Ian Wright yet. Let's not fling torches at the manager if he's not in the XI against Swansea City at the weekend (and he won't be). Maybe we've forgotten about the Carlos Vela wondergoal against Sheffield United, or any of the zillions of other League Cup performances from kids who have since moved on. I'm not saying that Eddie has no chance, but one day at a time, one step at a time.

One other thing: This kid was born in 1999. Nineteen-fucking-ninety-nine. I feel so old. So very, very, very old.

10. Not a bad couple of days, huh? Five goals past Everton, last 8 of the League Cup. A reeling Swansea City come the weekend.

Of course, knowing us, we'll crap the bed against the Swans and then get tonked by Man City. Either way, I'm going to enjoy this for now. It's all you can do, really.

Five Thoughts: Red Star Belgrade 0-1 Arsenal

2017-10-19T21:49:00.000-04:00

Photo: Getty Images

Welp, that sure was 96:30 (counting injury time) of absolute dross, brightened by one moment of magic from someone who sure seems to keep producing them for a guy who, if you believe the Twitter/AFTV troglodytes, isn't any good at this game.

Funny how they seem to keep getting it so wrong. Also, Petr Cech was fucking great, too. Dipshits.

1. The second half opened up some and it became semi-watchable, but man alive, that first half was utter rubbish. Cech made a great save on one of their guys towards the end of the half, Milan Borjan made a better one earlier on to keep out Theo Walcott. That was honestly about it for any kind of excitement. The thing was, Theo really should have scored. Cech's save was more about his positioning and his reflexes, whereas Borjan just kind of made himself as big as possible and hoped Walcott hit him. The shot was so lacking in conviction, too.

I don't know if we're ever going to figure this guy out. All you remember is chances like this, or entire games spent on the periphery doing his Casper the Friendly Winger Ghost impersonation, and then the end of the season comes and he's got like 15 goals and 7 assists. Like, from where? Is this some kind of rip in the space-time continuum? It turned out not to matter today, but, well, look on the bright side. Theo Walcott is basically the talent ceiling for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, best I can figure. You can score against Slovenian wheat farmers all you like, bucko, it still doesn't make you worth 40 pee, let alone million quid.

Yeah, there's going to be petty-ass cheap shots at the guy all season. Get used to it, kids. It's not as hilarious as Alex Hleb-to-Barcelona, but it's up there.

2. On the other hand, Jack Wilshere looked as good as he's done in a million years. He was everywhere, pressing like a madman (and yelling at his mates to do likewise), picking out top-notch passes, and generally making a nuisance of himself to anyone in a red-and-white shirt (that's....weird to type, but we were in that awful raspberry-cola clobber today, so there you go). He clearly understands the opportunity that these Europa League games present to a guy in his position, and bless his heart, he's going for it balls to the wall.

Here's the thing - Aaron Ramsey's been hurt all season, Granit Xhaka has been hot and cold, Mohamed Elneny is a squad player, Francis Coquelin is fine in certain situations but not for 38 games, and I don't believe at this point that Santi Cazorla is ever coming back. Central midfield is right there waiting for him, if he keeps playing like this and can stay fit with any sort of consistency.

We all ought to hope that it happens, too. The balance of the team is better with a fit Wilshere in it, as he is one of the few who always, ALWAYS, wants to go forward and make something happen. Many of the rest of this lot default to slow and sideways. The other thing is, we haven't had a situation yet (I don't believe) where Mesut Ozil, Alexandre Lacazette, Alexis Sanchez and Wilshere were all playing. That's our best team, by miles, and it's absolutely a case where I believe the sum would be far greater than the parts. People will talk all kinds of nonsense about some of them, especially Ozil, but put them all together and let's see what they do. You gonna tell me that our team is any worse off than Chelsea's lot if they're all out there? Go ahead, fight me.

3. Sure, David Ospina was "injured." Also, I'm the Tsar of all the Russias. Even when things have gone wrong for him in a Gunners shirt, he's always been able to hang his hat on his international form. Colombia are no mugs, and he's their undisputed # 1. On the other hand, this last round of qualifiers? Woof. If we beat this same lot on Match Day 4, we'll be already qualified and then we can throw him in there and see if his case of the yips has left him yet.

Conversely, Mathieu Debuchy made his first start for us since approximately the Later Han Dynasty, and he looked all right. A few shaky moments here and there, but given how hard it is to just pop back into a team after that long out, and given the makeshift nature of his partners (Elneny in central defense? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?), you have to say the lad done good.

Still, I'm not too sure how much I'm in love with this idea of midfielders playing the fullback positions. Ainsley Maitland-Niles looks like a lost soul out there on the left, which I'm not sure is even his dominant foot. Reiss Nelson was OK as well, but, I dunno...is this the best way to develop these kids? Wouldn't it make more sense to have them go out on loan somewhere, play every week in their normal positions, and get some journeyman guys to play these Europa games? I know, I know, I've managed zero games, etc and so on. Just a thought. Either way, the kids handled one of the tougher away days in all of Europe with aplomb, so maybe I oughta just shut my word-hole.

4. By now, you've all seen Giroud's ridiculously amazing bicycle kick goal. Poor old Borjan just watched it go like he was watching his wife go out the door with the kids, the dog and the good set of china. Wilshere started the move, and to be 100% fair to the man, Walcott kept it going by getting stuck in amongst two or three of their big lads in the back to pop it back into play for Ollie to do his thing. I could watch a replay of that all day.

You do wonder, though, if the unbelievably soft second yellow their guy got had anything to do with that little bit of space opening up, though. My god, I'd be incandescent if one of ours walked for that. If I remember correctly the guy's first yellow was legit, but the second was a situation where he went up for a header with Coquelin, and his arm got away from him some. The referee did have an outstanding view of it so maybe it was the same kind of sneaky-on-purpose deal that I insist Bellerin's was against Watford. If so, fair play to the ref. In his shoes though, I might have pulled him aside for the final "Mate, you know you're on a yellow, yes? You so much as breathe on anyone again and you're off" conversation.

I did say in the Watford report that we haven't gotten any luck at all this season, so nice to see my conjuring spell worked. You're welcome, one and all.

5. So, onwards and upwards in the competition, as we're monstering a group that I thought might have a few tricky games in it. Considering it's been done with fringe players and fetuses, you have to file this way way way into the "job done" folder so far. There are big(gish) teams that are stepping all over their dicks so far, against far worse clubs than this. What Athletic Bilbao are doing should have seen their manager sacked already. Hertha Berlin lost to something called Zorya today. AC Milan drew 0-0 at home with AEK Athens. Everton are a dumpster fire in progress. Copenhagen and Villareal are punching below their historical weight.

We're doing more than OK, in other words.

It will be an interesting transition as we get to the knockout stages, and we a) start seeing better teams and b) probably start seeing more first-teamers in the starting XI. But, will they stutter as they have so often in the Premier League already? It's an interesting conundrum. I don't know if I'd want to start Nelson or Maitland-Niles or Joe Willock against someone like, say, Zenit St. Petersburg, or one of the clubs that drop in from the Champions League. On the other hand, maybe they've earned it at this point?

A bridge to burn when we get to it, I suppose. For now, nothing but positives out of this one. Moaners will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.

Preview by Numbers: Red Star Belgrade v. Arsenal, Europa League Group Matchday 3

2017-10-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

Rajko Mitić Stadium, Belgrade

Thursday, October 19

1:00 p.m. EDT, 18:00 BST

Match Officials from France

Referee: Benoît Bastien
Assistants: Hicham Zakrani and Frédéric Haquette
4th Official: Julien Pacelli
Additional Assistants: Benoît Millot and Jérôme Miguelgorry

All-Time in All Competitions: 1 Red Star Belgrade win, 1 draw
Arsenal's Overall Form: D-W-W-W-W-L
Red Star Belgrade's Overall Form: W-W-W-L-W-W

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Mustafi (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)
Doubts: Coquelin (hamstring,) Welbeck (knock,) Koscielny (Achilles,) Chambers (hip)

There are rumors that Mathieu Debuchy may get a start in defense. The Frenchman has not played since getting injured against Bournemouth on his only appearance of last season, nearly a year ago.
Danny Welbeck and Laurent Koscielny were both removed from Saturday's loss to Watford due to injuries, so I can't see either of them being risked.
Francis Coquelin appeared in some training photographs, so I've moved him into the doubts column. This would be an ideal match to get him minutes.

Predicted XI: Ospina, Debuchy, Holding, Monreal, Nelson, Maitland-Niles, Wilshere, Coquelin, Iwobi, Walcott, Giroud.

Red Star Belgrade Squad News

Number one goalkeeper and Canadian international (?!) Milan Borjan is expected to be out, meaning Damir Kahriman will deputize.
Defender Milan Rodić, midfielder Branko Jovičić, and defender Vujadin Savić are also all expected to miss out through injury.

Predicted XI: Kahriman, Stojković, Le Tallec, Babić, Gobeljić, Krstičić, Donald, Srnić, Kanga, Radonjić, Boakye.

Domestic Form

Arsenal went unbeaten between the September international break and October international break, then returned to blow a 1-0 lead and lose 2-1 at Watford.
The loss dropped Arsenal to sixth in the table, still behind Chelsea on goal difference after the Blues became the first team this season to lose to Crystal Palace. Watford, for their part, are now fourth.
Red Star Belgrade are four points clear at the top of their table; they've won 10, lost one, and drawn one in Serbia this year.
The loss came on October 1, 1-0, at Napredak. The draw was at home, 0-0, against Partizan in the Eternal Derby on August 27.

European Form

Arsenal have picked up a maximum six points from their group stage exploits so far and have not lost a European group stage match since November 4, 2015.
You have to go back to Arsenal's ridiculous 3-2 home loss to Olympiacos on September 29, 2015 to find the last time Arsenal lost a European match to a club that wasn't Bayern Munich or Barcelona.
Red Star started their European campaign in the Europa League's first qualifying round, meaning they needed to beat four teams to get to the group stage.
They racked up those wins 6-3 over Malta's Floriana, 3-1 over Kazakhstan's Irtysh Pavlodar, 3-0 over Sparta Prague, and 4-4 on away goals over Krasnodar.
They drew BATE Borisov 1-1 on matchday one before beating Köln 1-0 on matchday two. That leaves Red Star second in the group, behind Arsenal by two points.

Match Facts

Arsenal and Red Star Belgrade have only met in one previous European tie, in the 1978/79 UEFA Cup third round.
This might go without saying, but not a single player on either side was alive at the time of that tie.
Cvijetin Blagojević's goal gave Belgrade a 1-0 home win in the first leg of the tie.
Alan Sunderland put Arsenal ahead at Highbury in the second leg, leveling the tie on aggregate, but Dušan Savić's 87th minute equalizer earned the visitors a 1-1 draw, winning the tie 2-1.
Arsenal's only other matches against Serbian opposition came in the 2010 group stage of the Champions League, against Partizan Belgrade. Arsenal won both matches 3-1.
Red Star Belgrade have played 16 matches against English opposition. They've won six, lost five, and drawn five.

The Referee

The match officials are from France.
The referee is Benoît Bastien.
This is Bastien's first match for either team.
Bastien had the honor of working last summer's Under-21 European Championship final, in which Germany beat Héctor Bellerín and Spain, 1-0.

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and promises these previews will get better after his upcoming wedding. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat to pressure him on that, but only after this weekend.

Five Thoughts: Watford 2-1 Arsenal

2017-10-15T11:19:00.000-04:00

Well, that was pretty much the dictionary definition of how a match like this is decided on fine margins. I don't even think we were all that bad today, but the other mob got 100% of the rub of the green on the day, and we didn't have enough quality to overcome it.

1. This was never going to be a walkover, not with Marco Silva having these guys humming along so well in the league. It also doesn't help that our best players seem to all be crocked, "crocked", or knackered from the latest godforsaken international break. We weren't much at the races to begin with, as Watford used their pace and power on the flanks to excellent effect. They also tried to take advantage of our lack of speed in central defense - especially with Per Mertesacker pressed into duty - but we counteracted that by having Petr Cech play almost as an auxiliary sweeper. It was an interesting tactical cut-and-thrust, even if the chances weren't overflowing.

For me, the best player on the pitch was this Richarlison kid that Watford bought for a song from Fluminese. Everything he did was at pace, and always pushing forward. We were more ponderous than Gunnersaurus by comparison. The only one who was trying to make something happen was Granit Xhaka, who had one of his better games. He was raking long diagonal passes all over the place, but there was a precious little amount of movement from the forwards in front of him. He also took some pokes from distance in the second half, which was sadly some of the better chances we had in the game.

Long story short, Watford just about deserved this on the balance of play.

2. That said, we did take the lead right around the 40th minute or so. If you had told someone from 2007 that Watford vs. Arsenal would have a first half where the team with the quick, nippy forwards huffed and puffed and stretched the opponent, then went down in the 45th to a bog-standard header off a corner, they'd have asked who on the Hornets had scored. Instead, it was the BFG himself, taking advantage of a height mismatch with Tom Cleverley to nod home.

I don't know what Watford were playing at with that marking scheme, though. I mean, I know enough in my 7-a-side games to give a "Height on height!" yell on set pieces...why didn't Gomes?

Minutes later, Danny Welbeck (in about his only positive contribution of the day) picked out Hector Bellerin with a gorgeous pass, but the Spaniard could only screw his shot wide.

3. The second half kind of ambled along, looking for all the world like both sides had already downed tools. Welbeck looked to have picked up an injury, so on come Mesut Ozil. You know, for all everyone talks shit about this guy (and there was apparently a 1-v-1 chance that I missed somewhere in all of this - he's many things, but a dead-eye finisher is not one of them), his first touch of the game put Alex Iwobi in alone (not hearing too much about that one), and the second forced a corner. It was practically more positivity than there was in the entirety of the first half. Speaking of, Iwobi honestly should have scored, though you have to give credit to Gomes for an outstanding save.

The other thing causing much Twitter-screeching is Alexandre Lacazette coming off for Olivier Giroud in the 70th minute or thereabouts. Quick, name a chance Lacazette made or took in the game. Like, anything. The same people with cartoon steam coming out of their ears about this are, I'm guessing, the same ones that bitched about our lack of depth and options in seasons past. The truth is that a lot of players need time to adjust to the speed and physicality of the Premier League, and there's further nothing wrong with going with another look if what you're doing isn't working.

4. As we all know, though, the match went pear-shaped in the last 20 minutes. I was telling a few people yesterday that my homerism is just about dead now that I've joined the ranks of referees, and this is no different. It was a penalty, folks. Embellishing contact doesn't mean contact wasn't there - Bellerin slyly nudged their guy in the back when he was on the dead run. The worst bit is that it wasn't even that dangerous of a run - there were other defenders back, and it wasn't straight at goal. Hector's still a kid and all, but he has to get better at on-the-fly decisions like this.

Anyway, it was a penalty, and Cech was in goal for us, so of course Troy Deeney scored. I defend Cech a lot, and rightfully so, but he tips his dive on PKs as I've said on here many times before. It's frustrating.

It was basically all Watford from then on, the first warning shot coming in the 82nd when a deflected shot caught Cech going the wrong way, but rebounded off the post. Then, Laurent Koscielny went off for Rob Holding, having picked up some kind of a knock. Outstanding.

Finally, at the death, they scored. It was one of those pinball deals - Cech brilliantly saved the first shot, BFG deflected the second, but it came out to another of their guys to hammer it into the empty net. Bugger. The worst bit, though? The first shot was offside. I mean, if Lacazette was off earlier this season when his big toe was beyond the last defender, then this one was too.

We just don't seem to be getting any luck this season...like, at all. I hope this shit evens out, and quick-like.

5. Like I said, this was never going to be an easy match. While you need about 10-12 matches for the table to reflect any kind of objective reality, Watford are currently in 4th place. Their goal differential is 0, meaning this isn't entirely sustainable, but on the other hand they're not Sutton United or anything, either. We saw it yesterday - they're a fairly decent lot who play good football at times. Losing away to these guys isn't some kind of international disgrace.

On the other hand, that's now three losses on the season for us, two of which were utterly preventable. However, when you ask yourself what our realistic expectations are for the season, you should get some perspective out of that. We're not winning the title - the second we re-signed Arsene, we were condemning ourselves to two more years without being seriously in that conversation.

Going back the last few seasons, as far as fourth place goes: Liverpool lost 6 last year, Manchester City lost 10 (!) the season previous, and United lost 8 the year before that. We're not doomed as far as that goes, but we are losing a little bit of our margin for error.

But, we truly need to shit or get off the pot where it comes to Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, and if they are no longer the answer, we need some kind of creative force to take advantage of the talent we have at forward. I mean, that first half was *dreadful* - workmanlike, almost Stoke-esque.

There's work to do.

Preview by Numbers: Watford v. Arsenal

2017-10-13T00:00:00.000-04:00

Vicarage Road, Watford

Saturday, October 14

12:30 p.m. EDT, 17:30 BST

Match Officials

Referee: Neil Swarbrick
Assistants: Scott Ledger and Adrian Holmes
4th Official: Graham Scott

This Match, Last Year: Watford 1 - 3 Arsenal
All-Time in All Competitions: 14 Arsenal wins, 11 Watford wins, 1 draw
Arsenal's League Form: L-L-W-D-W-W
Watford's League Form: W-D-W-L-W-D

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Mustafi (hamstring,) Coquelin (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)
Doubts: Alexis (match fitness,) Kolašinac (hip,) Koscielny (Achilles,) Chambers (hip)

The worst news out of the international break comes from Germany, where Shkodran Mustafi hurt his hamstring in a meaningless qualifier against Azerbaijan. He'll miss four to six weeks, so eight weeks.
To make matters worse at the back, doubts remain over Laurent Koscielny, who you may recall will forever be dealing with a chronic Achilles injury, and now Sead Kolašinac has a hip concern.
Calum Chambers, who might be in line for an appearance if both Mustafi and Koscielny can't play, has been hobbled by a hip injury all season himself and is doubtful.
So, at the worst, it'll be Nacho Monreal, Per Mertesacker, and Rob Holding.
In good news, Mesut Özil (knee) and Danny Welbeck (groin) should both be back to full fitness.
Arsène Wenger was unsure about the status of some of his players as of yesterday's presser, as Alexis Sánchez, for example, had not yet returned from international duty. At least Welbeck could start in his place if he's short of fitness.
I didn't hear anything about Francis Coquelin's hamstring injury, so I'll assume he's still out.

Predicted XI: Čech, Holding, Koscielny, Monreal, Bellerín, Kolašinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Welbeck, Lacazette.

Watford Squad News

Out: Kaboul (thigh,) Hoban (knee,) Cathcart (knee,) Chalobah (knee,) Success (knee)
Doubts: Carrillo (match fitness,) Prödl (hamstring)

Sebastian Prödl picked up a hamstring injury on international duty back in September and is about a 25% chance to return to Watford's lineup here.
André Carrillo is a late return from international duty with Peru and is a doubt in the same way Alexis Sánchez is.
Younes Kaboul is out with a thigh problem. In September, a specialist determined that surgery was not necessary, but the rehab may be extensive.
Watford have four players out with knee injuries: Isaac Success will be out for four to six weeks. Tommie Hoban has no timeframe for a return. Nathaniel Chalobah is expected back some time during this calendar year, but it's at least January for Craig Cathcart.

Predicted XI: Gomes, Femenía, Kabasele, Britos, Holebas, Doucouré, Capoue, Carrillo, Cleverley, Richarlison, Gray.

Current Form

Arsenal rebounded nicely from two losses in August to climb up to fifth in the Premier League table. They trail fourth place Chelsea on goal difference.
Don't sleep on Watford, though. They are only a point back of Arsenal, sitting eighth in the table. They trail Burnley and Liverpool on goal difference themselves.
Arsenal are unbeaten across all competitions since their 4-0 loss at Liverpool, but they still have not scored a goal away from home in the Premier League this season.
Watford have only lost one league game so far this season, but it was by six goals at home to Manchester City. So, you can see why they might trail on goal difference.

Match Facts

Arsenal and Watford split their league meetings last season, with each side winning away from home.
Arsenal won 3-1 at Vicarage Road last August. Santi Cazorla put Arsenal ahead from the penalty spot within two minutes and the Gunners led 3-0 at halftime. Watford pulled a goal back on 57 minutes, but that ended the scoring.
Watford returned the favor at the Emirates in January, taking a 2-0 lead inside a quarter of an hour. Alex Iwobi pulled a goal back on 58 minutes, but the Gunners could not find an equalizer.
Overall, Arsenal's record against Watford is mixed; in 19 league encounters, both sides have won nine with one draw.

The Referee

The referee is Lancashire-based Neil Swarbrick.
This is the first time Arsenal have seen Swarbrick this year.
Last year, Swarbrick worked only two Arsenal matches, both against West Brom. Arsenal won 1-0 at the Emirates and lost 3-1 at the Hawthorns.
This is also the first time Watford have seen Swarbrick this year.
Watford split their matches with Swarbrick last year as well, winning 2-1 over Leicester, but losing 2-0 at Stoke.

Around the League

Saturday (early): Liverpool v. Manchester United; Anfield, Liverpool
Saturday: Burnley v. West Ham United; Turf Moor, Burnley
Saturday: Crystal Palace v. Chelsea; Selhurst Park, London
Saturday: Manchester City v. Stoke City; Etihad Stadium, Manchester
Saturday: Swansea City v. Huddersfield Town; Liberty Stadium, Swansea
Saturday: Tottenham Hotspur v. Bournemouth; Wembley Stadium, London
Sunday (early): Brighton & Hove Albion v. Everton; American Express Community Stadium, Falmer
Sunday (late): Southampton v. Newcastle United; St. Mary's Stadium, Southampton
Monday (night): Leicester City v. West Bromwich Albion; King Power Stadium, Leicester

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and sixth planet from the sun. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat for information about his many, many moons.

One Thought: Tangentially Related At Best to Arsenal 2-0 Brighton & Hove Albion

2017-10-02T21:16:00.000-04:00

"Just a second where we're leaving all this shit behind.
Just a second but it's leaving just this much in mind:
To resist despair, the second makes you see.
To resist despair, because you can't change everything.
To resist despair in this world is, what it is what it is what is to be free..."

- Operation Ivy "Sound System"

A few weeks back, I said on here that match reports are going to have to...evolve...shall we say, due to my ongoing adventure in refereeing soccer matches all over the lower New York area on the weekends. Along those lines, the only bit I saw from this one was a clip of the second goal, featuring that other-worldly back-flick assist from Alexis Sanchez. My general plan for these over the next few months was to talk less about the actual things that happened in the game in question, and more using what happened in the match to talk about some larger point about the team, football in general, that sort of thing. I had a rough outline in mind for this particular edition, centering on Brighton hitting the post early on - I will at some point definitely get back to that idea about luck and how much it determines outcomes in a low-scoring sport such as this one.

But, then, Las Vegas happened.

Given that I possess some degree of perspective and humanity, I can't bring myself to drone on about statistical variance and how this sort of thing clouds supporters' judgment of the team and of individual players at times. This football lark is so damn important and central to our lives, right up to the point where it doesn't fucking matter at all.

Well, on second thought, that might be artlessly stated. The nuts and bolts of football - who won, such-and-such is ace, that referee is a wanker - of course, that's the bit that recedes to insignificance when the darker side of real life roars into the forefront. The other aspects that we often take for granted, however, matter an unbelievably great deal.

The thing is, it's difficult at times to see the point of keeping on when it feels like evil always wins. We live in exhausting, troubled times...times that I can't say I could fathom five or ten years ago, when the world felt more centered. I fully understand how imperfect humans are. Hell, I am one, after all. But the sequence of events and decisions that can occur in a person's soul to get them to a point where they're capable of doing what that man did? It's incomprehensible. It's the kind of thing that makes one feel helpless, small and insignificant. At the surface, it makes a mockery of the idea of any kind of balance in the fabric of the universe.

But, take a breath. Stop. Think. We come back to football, now, to those seemingly-auxiliary features of the experience. The picture I used for this post is old, done by design. It was taken in front of the Blind Pig after some random match on some random day, an indeterminate number of years ago. One moment in time, among the uncountable number that have made up the ten years of our supporter's club's existence, and the formative years before it at Nevada Smith's. At that bleak and gray surface level where despair perpetuates, it doesn't register as worthy of a second glance. However, go back to that breathe-stop-think bit, and look for it. There's power here.

There are two people in this photo who are about to be married later this month. They met here, doing this, screaming in unison at the latest Manuel Almunia clanger or Denilson midfield disasterclass. Just a bunch of people going to watch the football, and all of a sudden it's the rest of two peoples' lives. Fight past the seeming banality of that and *think* about it for a second. It's astonishing. It's awesome. It resonates. Holy shit, I was there as that happened and evolved.

There are some in this photo that I haven't seen in years, or once or twice at most. I miss them terribly. But, thanks to the magic of social media I know they're out there doing their thing, as disparate as that may be. Some are now married, some are killing it at their jobs, some are off exploring the far corners of the world. Whatever it is, it's a great comfort to know they're there, and that they're happy. I'm proud to say that they're my mates, whatever geographic or chronological distance they may be away.

Conversely, there are two different people shown here that I recently ran into again after a significant amount of time. One came to O'Hanlon's on a trip back up to New York, where he became engaged to a lovely woman. The other, I turned up to referee a few matches and there's his mug standing there in one of the goals. You know, it gets lost in the immediacy of the act, but catching up with old friends is a joy matched by few other things in this life. It buttresses a part of the soul that romance or money or slices of NYC pizza leaves unattended.

One woman here, who I also miss terribly, is about to give birth. We also like the same baseball team, who just had the type of horror-show season that we as Arsenal supporters are lucky to have not experienced in our lifetimes (in most cases). I truly hope she hasn't been able to see the games out there in Leeds.

One man here crossed the finish line to parenthood a bit before, and has been a father for a little less than a year. New life! Here! Existing and breathing and...well...pooping everywhere, unless I miss my guess.

Then for something completely different, I almost literally came to blows with one guy here over an NHL playoff game, but I type that with a smile on my face. That's just so fundamentally HIM, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes brothers gotta hug, and sometimes brothers gotta fight.

The woman in the top left is as Arsenal as it gets, the torch passed down to her from her father, who supported the club himself going back to when he was a child. It's a literal connection to our history, to the earliest days of the club. It lives and breathes in us. I think about it sometimes, as I'm watching our current lot...it's not that different from the sepia-toned pictures of the folks in suits and flat caps packed like sardines on the old terraces.

There's so many more stories that this picture can tell, stories of amazing people and shared camaraderie, of title wins and the corresponding jumpy screamy beery celebrations, of shared heartbreak. THAT night in Paris. THAT night in Copenhagen. The stunned silence and welled-up tears in the aftermath of THAT fucking League fucking Cup fucking Final. The Bar End of O'Hanlon's, linked arm in arm to will Lukasz Fabianski and the boys to see off Wigan in that FA Cup Semifinal penalty shootout. The Invincibles. Our songs for the bartenders pouring our pints, or the songs sung by the band that the punk kids over there in the corner formed. Going to Papaya Dog or Artichoke at halftime. Oh god, that awful man at Nevada's who hounded you if you didn't have a new pint in your hand every 2.4 seconds.

OK, I get it, I'm taking you down some winding side roads here. Enough with the scenic route, I can hear you saying...what's the point? Despair...bleakness...evil....hopelessness...these things are monolithic. They're big and brash and rage with hurricane force all at once. It seems like an unwinnable fight because of the size and scope of it all. But, goodness and light and hope and love, these are manifested in small, everyday things. You don't even notice them if you're not looking for them. It can add up awfully quickly though, if you let it. It's like that old saw about how much a ton of feathers weighs compared to a ton of lead.

Again, it's just a bunch of people turning up to watch a bunch of dudes kick a ball around. One infinitesimal part of life, but with the power to contain this much. Friendship, love, a shared sense of purpose and identity. These are things you can cling to in times like this. This is what matters.

These may be scary, awful times, but I got all of this, and that ain't nothin'.

Preview by Numbers: Arsenal v. Brighton & Hove Albion

2017-09-29T14:18:00.000-04:00

Emirates Stadium, London

Sunday, October 1

7:00 a.m. EDT, 12:00 BST

Match Officials

Referee: Kevin Friend
Assistants: Stuart Burt and Ian Hussin
4th Official: Roger East

This Match, Last Time: Arsenal 3 - 1 Brighton (February 5, 1983)
All-Time in All Competitions: 11 Arsenal wins, 2 Brighton wins, 2 draws
Arsenal's League Form: W-L-L-W-D-W
Brighton's League Form: L-L-D-W-L-W

Arsenal slide into the international break with a tricky home fixture against Brighton, tricky in that they will have just sent 18 players to Belarus three days prior. Of course, many first team regulars were left behind in London, so Arsenal will hope that they can pick up full points despite the club's travels and enter the oncoming break by extending their winning streak to four and their unbeaten run to seven, across all competitions.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Iwobi (thigh,) Chambers (hip,) Welbeck (groin,) Coquelin (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)

It's "as you were" with the injury list, though without rotation for this match, there's even less to talk about now as there was on Thursday.
Arsenal made nine changes to the side that beat West Brom before the trip to Belarus, retaining only Shkodran Mustafi and Mohamed Elneny.
Mesut Özil has not started a match since the Bournemouth victory due to injury. If he comes back to the XI here, then Aaron Ramsey will slide back in the formation and Elneny most likely drops.

Predicted XI: Čech, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Bellerín, Kolašinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis, Lacazette.

Brighton Squad News

Out: Kayal (leg,) Baldock (calf,) Sidwell (back)
Doubts: Murray (ankle)
Suspended: Hemed (first of three, violent conduct)

Glenn Murray has returned to first team training after an ankle ligament injury.
However, Tomer Hemed will serve the first match of a three-match ban after he was seen on video review to stomp on DeAndre Yedlin. Match officials missed the incident at the time. Hemed had the only goal in Brighton's 1-0 win.
Beram Kayal, out with a leg injury, is hopeful of getting a run out with the Under-23's soon, but he's short of fitness for this one. Kayal suffered a leg break in Brighton's final pre-season friendly.
Steve Sidwell (remember him?) is out until possibly November with a lower back injury.
Sam Baldock won't be back until after the international break. His timetable was described as a month back on September 14.

Predicted XI: Ryan, Bruno, Dunk, Duffy, Suttner, Knockaert, Stephens, Pröpper, March, Groß, Brown.

Current Form

Arsenal have not yielded a league goal since they forgot they had to play Liverpool back on August 27.
They have now kept Premier League clean sheets against Bournemouth, Chelsea, and West Bromwich Albion.
Arsenal's only goals allowed during their current unbeaten run, which now stands at six, have come in Europe.
Brighton did not start off life in the Premier League on the right foot, losing their opening fixtures to Manchester City and Leicester.
They've cobbled together seven points since then, with a draw at Watford and wins over West Brom and Newcastle. Those seven points are good for 13th in the table.
They did, however, lose at Bournemouth twice in five days, first in the league and then later in the League Cup.

Match Facts

Brighton's most recent season in the top flight, prior to this one, was 1982/83.
Brighton won their match at home, 1-0, but lost 3-1 at Highbury in February of 1983.
Arsenal and Brighton have met in three FA Cup ties since then, all of which were played in Brighton.
In 1988, Arsenal were 2-1 winners.
In 2013, Olivier Giroud scored twice and Theo Walcott had a late winner, as Arsenal won 3-2.
In 2015, Walcott, Mesut Özil, and Tomáš Rosický scored, as Arsenal were again 3-2 winners.

The Referee

The referee is Leicestershire-based Kevin Friend.
I haven't made the "more like Kevin Enemy, amirite?" joke in a while, so I figured I'd just slip that in there.
Arsenal won two and lost one with Friend last year, though the loss was a League Cup tie against Southampton.
The first win came 3-1 at Watford early in the season; the second was the 5-0 win at Southampton in the FA Cup.
Brighton had Friend very recently (10 days ago to the date of this preview, in fact.) Friend took charge of their aforementioned League Cup loss at Bournemouth, which came in extra time.

Around the League

Saturday (early): Huddersfield Town v. Tottenham Hotspur; John Smith's Stadium, Huddersfield
Saturday: Bournemouth v. Leicester City; Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth
Saturday: Manchester United v. Crystal Palace; Old Trafford, Manchester
Saturday: Stoke City v. Southampton; Bet365 Stadium, Stoke-on-Trent
Saturday: West Bromwich Albion v. Watford; The Hawthorns, West Bromwich
Saturday: West Ham United v. Swansea City; Olympic Stadium, London
Saturday (late): Chelsea v. Manchester City; Stamford Bridge, London
Sunday (early): Everton v. Burnley; Goodison Park, Liverpool
Sunday (late): Newcastle United v. Liverpool; St. James' Park, Newcastle upon Tyne

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and an organic compound. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat for... okay, there's nothing too organic about the Twitter account, I guess...

Five Thoughts: Arsenal 2-0 West Bromwich Albion and BATE Borisov 2-4 Arsenal

2017-09-28T20:19:00.000-04:00

As a general point of information, these may unfortunately become more spotty over the next several months. I've mentioned on here before that I'm a new referee, and Saturdays/Sundays are where the games are, oddly enough. Since I don't have TV, and in turn have no DVR, I won't always be able to see all these things.

1. I didn't see a minute of the West Brom game, for the reasons outlined above, but from what I read it was one of those bitty old matches where luck was somewhat on our side for once. The clip I saw of Shkrodan Mustafi's tackle in the penalty area looked like a fairly stonewall penalty to me, but I can see why the referee thought advantage was on there - it took a brilliant save from Petr Cech to stop them from scoring anyway. Things also may have been different had Nacho Monreal not apparently studied in the Bruce Lee School of Acrobatic Goal Line Clearances.

On the other hand, fuck Tony Pulis in the face.

As far as the good guys go, we can't complain with Alexandre Lacazette finding the net two more times. It's funny how people expect any new player who cost a few bob to immediately send goals raining from the heavens, like these aren't humans who need time to adjust to a new country, new language, new teammates, new manager, new everything. If Laca is scoring this frequently now, I'm kinda excited to see what he can come up with once he's settled in.

2. Moving on to today's match, the win against Koln was always going to give us a little leeway to deprioritize this one. Arsene's team selection showed it too, as the starting XI were basically all the first-team guys that never play, and the bench looked like recess at the local middle school. Given how difficult it is to go away to these far-flung corners of Eastern Europe and get results, I honestly would have been OK with whatever happened today.

I mean, Red Star should be at least 4 points, preferably 6. Away to Koln might be tough, but these dudes should be a win at home. Getting out of this group shouldn't exactly be neurosurgery, is what I'm saying.

3. Anyway, if this lot have won their league 11 years on the spin, which they apparently have, the other mobs must be worse than the pub teams north of Hadrian's Wall. Theo had already hit the post by the time 8 minutes were gone, and a minute later he had the ball in the net. BATE were all over the place, and were undone by a simple attack culminating in a Jack Wilshere cross to the back post, where Feo was unattended. Easy peasy.

Not as easy as the next one though, where, my god, we got on David Ospina's case for his poor clearance. At least that was on the dead run after coming miles out of his area to deal with something his defense couldn't. I can kind of understand it. This time, the lad in BATE's goal just kind of shoveled a crap ball to Walcott, under no pressure whatsoever. Theo won't have an easier goal in his career, I imagine.

4. A minute later, Rob Holding scored his first goal for the club, shinning one in off a corner kick. Honestly, this one was largely over as a contest after that, even though they annoyingly scored a couple of goals later on. He's had a rough time in the beginning of the season, so this will surely do the kid's confidence the world of good.

That reminds me though...is Calum Chambers still here? Is he hurt or something? You'd figure this should be the kind of game he's playing in.

Then, of course, we fall asleep at 0-3 and fail to contest a simple cross from the byline. Nothing Ospina could do about a point-blank header with that kind of pace on it from 10 yards out. Unreal.

The home side may have gotten themselves back into it before the half was over, but Ospina made a couple of decent saves to stop any of that nonsense from happening. Once we got a penalty early in the second half, this really was over.

5. The second half otherwise just kinda...happened. Yep.

On to the next!

Preview by Numbers: BATE Borisov v. Arsenal, Europa League Group Matchday 2

2017-09-28T00:00:00.000-04:00

Borisov Arena, Barysaw

Thursday, September 28

1:00 p.m. EDT, 18:00 BST

Match Officials from Poland

Referee: Daniel Stefanski
Assistants: Krzysztof Myrmus and Dawid Igor Golis
4th Official: Adam Kupsik
Additional Assistants: Bartosz Frankowski and Zbigniew Dobrynin

All-Time in All Competitions: First competitive meeting
Arsenal's Overall Form: L-W-W-D-W-W
Borisov's Overall Form: W-W-W-D-W-W

Work and fixture congestion are slamming me hard right now, so you're getting the bullet point version of these match notes.

I'll try to remain as sardonic as possible.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Iwobi (thigh,) Welbeck (groin,) Coquelin (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)
Doubts: Chambers (hip)

Mesut Özil only appeared from the bench against West Brom on Monday. However, he won't be on the trip anyway.
Francis Coquelin remains out through the international break with the hamstring injury he picked up against Bournemouth. Fixture congestion could start to become a bit of an issue for the players forced to go out every match in the center of midfield. As such, I'd expect Jack Wilshere to slide in here.
Calum Chambers likely remains unavailable, having picked up a hip injury against Doncaster last week.
Wenger is expected to go with a mix of first-teamers and youth, but Arsenal don't have enough depth at certain positions. Ainsley Maitland-Niles should start, but Alex Iwobi has a thigh knock.
Laurent Koscielny, Aaron Ramsey, Mesut Özil, Alexis Sánchez, Granit Xhaka, and Alexandre Lacazette were all left behind.

Predicted XI: Ospina, Holding, Mertesacker, Monreal, Bellerín, Maitland-Niles, Wilshere, Elneny, Nelson, Walcott, Giroud.

Borisov Squad News

Out: None

There appear to be no injury concerns for Borisov, at least according to my sources.
As such, it would be a surprise if they made any changes to the side that drew against Red Star Belgrade on matchday one.

Predicted XI: Scherbitski, Rios, Gayduschik, Milunović, Polyakov, Volodko, Dragun, Ivanić, Gordeychuk, Stasevich, Rodionov.

Current Form

Arsenal appear to have righted the ship since their 4-0 loss at Liverpool; they're unbeaten in five since then and have conceded once across all competitions.
That one goal was, of course, David Ospina's adventure outside of the box against Köln on matchday one.
In the process, Arsenal have climbed from 16th in the Premier League table to 7th. They are three points back of Chelsea for 3rd.
Belarus's season runs from April to November, so Borisov are 23 matches into their domestic season already.
They have a four-match winning streak in the league, but currently sit two points back of top spot with seven matches to play.
Borisov originally qualified for the second qualifying round of the Champions League, where they defeated Alashkert from Armenia before falling to Slavia Prague on away goals.
They then fell to the play-off round for the Europa League, where they book their group stage ticket by defeating Ukrainian side Oleksandriya.

Match Facts

This is the first time Arsenal will face BATE Borisov in UEFA competition.
Indeed, Arsenal have never faced a side from Belarus at all before tonight.
Borisov have only once faced English competition, in the 2009 Europa League group stage against Everton. In a bit of a twist, the away side won each match.

The Referee

The match officials are from Poland.
The referee is Daniel Stefanski.
Stefanski has never worked a match for either side and has never worked any UEFA-level match involving a Belarussian side either.
The only English sides Stefanski has seen came in the UEFA Youth League, where he worked a Chelsea win over Schalke in 2013 and a Manchester City loss to Juventus in 2015.

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and a a diagnostic instrument for measuring the curvature of the anterior surface of the cornea. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat if you think you might have astigmatism.

Preview by Numbers: Arsenal v. West Bromwich Albion

2017-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

Emirates Stadium, London

Monday, September 25

3:00 p.m. EDT, 20:00 BST

Match Officials

Referee: Robert Madley
Assistants: Lee Betts and Marc Perry
4th Official: Stuart Attwell

This Match, Last Year: Arsenal 1 - 0 West Brom
All-Time in All Competitions: 70 Arsenal wins, 38 West Brom wins, 31 draws
Arsenal's League Form: W // W-L-L-W-D
West Brom's League Form: L // W-W-D-L-D

We're in the middle of a heavy run of fixtures right now, which is what happens when you're competing on three fronts. Since coming out of the last international break, Arsenal's fixture list placed matches on Saturday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, a list we are currently halfway through. Arsenal's regulars will have had a good amount of rest between last week's trip to Stamford Bridge and this week's Monday night home game against West Brom. From there, they'll travel to Belarus on Thursday before a trip to Brighton at noon on Sunday (that's at something like negative 2 a.m. in New York, FYI.) That takes us into another international break.

Arsenal have climbed from 16th in the table to 12th since their loss at Anfield, but they are only three points back of Chelsea for third place.While the table has made for some bleak reading so far this year, I've been encouraged by other results. Arsenal were in with a shout to take a win from Stamford Bridge for the first time since the Mesozoic Era; that's enough to convince me that Arsenal are still in contention to be a top four club, regardless of what the media's #narrative will try to tell you.

But, to finish in the top four, you have to win the games you are supposed to win. West Brom at home is one of those fixtures, where nothing less than three points will suffice.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Chambers (hip,) Welbeck (groin,) Coquelin (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)

Doubts: Walcott (knee,) Özil (knee)

Jack Wilshere completed 90 for the first time since... well, maybe the later part of the Mesozoic Era? Or the early part of the Cenozoic? It's been a while. That's really it for the "good news," though.

Calum Chambers came off against Doncaster with a hip injury that will keep him out for a week or two. Elsewhere, from the weekend, Danny Welbeck hurt his groin against Chelsea. Arsène Wenger has said, "his target is Watford," which means Arsenal will be without him through the next international break and it appears England will be without him as well.

Theo Walcott has some concerns over a knee injury, but was not likely to start the league fixture anyway. Mesut Özil is back in full training from his knee problem and should be ready to feature by Monday.

Predicted XI: Čech, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Bellerín, Kolašinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis, Lacazette.

West Brom Squad News

Out: None

Doubts: Chadli (thigh,) Burke (thigh,) Livermore (personal,) Brunt (calf)

A lot of doubts in West Brom's injury list, as they have no players ruled completely out, but four who about 50/50. Jake Livermore could return after he was given an extended break by Tony Pulis after the last international break, with Pulis saying, "physically he is fine but mentally, he just feels a little bit tired." It's been a difficult few years for Livermore, who tested positive for cocaine in 2015, which he had begun using to cope after his newborn son died during birth the day after he started for Hull City in their FA Cup Final loss.

Oliver Burke, Nacer Chadli and Chris Brunt are all doubts for this match, though Gareth McAuley has returned to West Brom's XI. Kieran Gibbs will be given a start against his former club in this one, while Gareth Barry is expected to break the Premier League record for appearances when he starts in this one.

Predicted XI: Foster, Dawson, McAuley, Evans, Gibbs, Krychowiak, Barry, Phillips, Rodriguez, Livermore, Rondón.

Current Form

Arsenal have responded decently well after the international break, following that 4-0 thumping at Anfield. Since then, the Gunners have racked up a 3-0 win over Bournemouth, a 3-1 win over Köln, a 0-0 draw at Chelsea, and a 1-0 win over Doncaster in the League Cup. There have been positives in the league fixtures, but the midweek cup ties featuring heavy squad rotation have left quite a bit to be desired, even though they both ended in victories. It feels like Arsenal are currently doing just enough to keep their heads above water, even though their performance at Stamford Bridge was better than our admittedly low expectations. On the bright side, since shipping four at Anfield, the only goal Arsenal have conceded was David Ospina's first half adventure against Köln.

In the league, West Bromwich Albion are ahead of Arsenal in the table by two positions and a single point. Their League Cup campaign ended on Wednesday night at home, at the hands of Manchester City, but they did open their Premier League schedule with two straight victories, over Bournemouth and Burnley. The Baggies are winless since then, however, with draws against Stoke and West Ham as well as a loss to Brighton; that was the Seagulls' first top flight win since their last relegation in 1983.

Match Facts

Both sides split the two league meetings between them last season, with both clubs winning at home. The sides met at the Emirates on Boxing Day and Arsenal left it late before winning 1-0. Olivier Giroud, making his first league start of the season, nodded a Mesut Özil cross past Ben Foster in the 86th minute to give the Gunners a very difficult three points. Ben Foster made 10 saves in the loss.

The reverse fixture at the Hawthorns was one of Arsenal's low points of the season (they proceeded to get lower at Crystal Palace, however.) Arsenal seemed completely unprepared for how West Brom came to play, despite the fact that they've been facing Tony Pulis for years across a variety of teams. You'll recall that this was the game where the Wenger Out airplane banner was followed by the Wenger In airplane banner. Craig Dawson scored twice from corners as the Baggies won 3-1. It was Arsenal's fourth defeat in five league games.

Arsenal have won seven straight at home against West Brom, dating back to September of 2010, when Manuel Almunia injured himself saving a penalty, stayed in the game anyway, then conceded three goals.

The Referee

The referee is West Yorkshire-based Robert Madley. Arsenal have already seen Madley once so far this season, for their Community Shield win over Chelsea. On that day, Madley showed a red card to Pedro in the 80th minute. Madley has already shown four red cards in five matches so far this season, two more than any other Select Group officials.

Madley took charge of three Arsenal matches last season: the 2-1 win over Southampton (aided by a late Arsenal penalty,) the 2-1 FA Cup win over Preston North End (aided by another late Arsenal goal, though not a penalty,) and the 3-1 loss at Anfield (aided by nothing.)

West Brom have also already seen Madley once this season, for their season opening 1-0 win over Bournemouth at the Hawthorns. However, West Brom did not see Madley for a single match at all last season. Prior to the season opener, Madley had not worked a West Brom match since a 1-1 draw with Liverpool on the final day of the 2015/16 season.

Around the League

Saturday (early): West Ham United v. Tottenham Hotspur; Olympic Stadium, London
Saturday: Burnley v. Huddersfield Town; Turf Moor, Burnley
Saturday: Everton v. Bournemouth; Goodison Park, Liverpool
Saturday: Manchester City v. Crystal Palace; Etihad Stadium, Manchester
Saturday: Southampton v. Manchester United; St. Mary's Stadium, Southampton
Saturday: Stoke City v. Chelsea; Bet365 Stadium, Stoke-on-Trent
Saturday: Swansea City v. Watford; Liberty Stadium, Swansea
Saturday (late): Leicester City v. Liverpool; King Power Stadium, Leicester
Sunday (late): Brighton & Hove Albion v. Newcastle United; American Express Community Stadium, Falmer

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and a four-act play. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat for the dramatic conclusion.

Five Thoughts: Arsenal 1-0 Doncaster Rovers

2017-09-21T11:31:00.000-04:00

This is, err, not going to be super in-depth. If we're being honest here, I've already forgotten 99% of what happened in that match. Who'd we play again, anyway?

1. I didn't get to the pub until about 10 minutes into the first half - enough to miss Olivier Giroud's wonderful scissors-volley that smashed against the crossbar at any rate - and then was distracted for much of the second half, as well. In other words, I'm not going to have much in the way of in-depth analysis this time around.

Thing is, an old mate from the Nevada's days and on through until a year or two ago was back up around these parts from North Carolina, and he happened to pop into O'Hanlon's to see if anyone was around. Truth be told, I missed large swathes of the second half catching up with him, meeting his new fiancee, etc.

It's a bit cliche to say it perhaps, but it is a reminder that some things are more important than a game of football. Having been in and around the Arsenal NYC setup since the beginning (and before that, to be fair), I can say with confidence that the friends that I've made and the moments shared with them far, far, far outweigh what happens in any one given game.

2. That said, what a starting XI this was, eh? If we thought the Koln game was darts-at-a-dartboard, this was more throwing the names of the squad into a blender and hitting "puree".

I literally had no idea that Calum Chambers played in this one, though unfortunately for him this is the last we'll see of him in a while, as he aggravated an injury somewhere in this one. Meanwhile, Rob Holding got though this one without calamity, as did David Ospina.

Meanwhile, those clamoring for Reiss Nelson to be more involved were granted their wish, though he didn't make much of an impact on the proceedings. There'll be better days for him, I'm sure.

The main headline, though, is that Jack Wilshere made it through 90 minutes and looked generally pretty good in doing so. He's been remarkably patient in waiting for his chance, especially given that even his loan spell at Bournemouth last season wasn't especially fruitful for him. There's still the makings of a truly great player in there, and it's not like our central midfield positions are locked in by players in mega-awesome form. All he can do is take his chances while they come, and you have to think this one was mission accomplished.

Consistency is now going to be the key for him.

3. On the other hand, Alexis playing in this thing was more than a little weird, especially as he's only been a sub in the Premier League games. The journos are already having a field day with this whole thing, too.

Typically, when Arsene goes to great pains to say that Thing X isn't true, then usually it means Thing X is *absolutely* the case. If so, honestly, I'm not as bothered about it as you might think I'd be. Competing on all fronts is going to be difficult in any case for us, but even assuming this is only a temporary demotion, the Chelsea match showed that some of our depth players are better than the more hysterical of us have given them credit for. And, if it means we have a world-class player to help us through the early rounds of the cups, then even better.

Really, the main goal was keeping him out of the clutches of an already-rampant Manchester City, anyway.

4. The first half was largely tolerable, and the goal was well-taken once it happened. Alexis crossed one in to Theo Walcott on the back post, who then dribbled past a few dudes and dinked it over the onrushing keeper. Easy peasy. Watching their # 8 go utterly into screensaver mode was especially enjoyable. Poor lad's brain was broken. But, and maybe I'm wrong here, we didn't really create a whole hell of a lot else against a club struggling in League One, and that was honestly kind of annoying.

If the first half was annoying, the second was downright problematic. I know we ended up throwing on Alex Iwobi and Chris Willock at one point, but I don't think either managed to pull up any trees, to put it diplomatically. Meanwhile, they saw a lot more of the ball, and I did see one bit where one of their lads either hit the crossbar, or Ospina had to tip it onto there. My god, can you imagine the Twitter meltdown if this thing had to go to extra time?

Hell, that goes double given that Man City, Man United and Chelsea all had easy wins. But, let's give ourselves a little credit here - we played an "experimental" line-up here, but take a look at how...regular-ish...these are:

City: Bravo - Danilo, Stones, Mangala - Delph, Yaya Toure, Gundogan, Sterling, Bernado Silva - Sane, Jesus

United: Romero - Darmian, Smalling, Lindelof, Blind - Herrera, Carrick, Lingard, Mata - Martial, Rashford

Chelsea: Caballero - Rudiger, Christensen, Cahill, Zappacosta - Fabregas, Bakayoko, Kenedy, Musonda - Batshuayi, Hazard

It's bizarre how seriously they're taking this, aren't they?

5. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't fun to watch, but we're through to the next round of the League Cup and we gave some players some minutes. I think we learned that Jack is starting to get more ready for prime time, whereas perhaps Nelson might need a bit more seasoning first.

Other than that, don't sweat this one. It's the League Cup, and if the other big teams want to throw strong lineups at it, that's their prerogative. Us, we'll take three points on Monday against West Brom and then worry about bigger things as they come. That's all.

Five Thoughts: Chelsea 0-0 Arsenal

2017-09-19T17:04:00.002-04:00

Only five thoughts this time around, as this is days late (my bad) and there were a relative few number of talking points in a match that was open, exciting, but in the end an utter stalemate.

Not that it was a bad thing given the circumstances, mind you.

1. Both sides had their spells of domination and their weak moments, but neither side can honestly complain about 0-0. There's a bit of "what if?" that either club could point to - the Chavs could only bring on the excellent Eden Hazard as a late sub as he works his way back to match fitness, while we could say the same about Alexis Sanchez...and Mesut Ozil didn't even make the 18.

Gun to my head, though, I think we just about shaded it over the 90 minutes were you to score this on points like a boxing match (though it's probably a blessing that we don't, given Adelaide Byrd's reality-challenged 118-110 card in the Canelo-GGG fight...anyway, I digress). Antonio Conte is a brilliant manager and his record speaks for itself, but there may have been a little hubris involved in playing Cesc Fabregas in central midfield instead of in some kind of shadow striker deal, or just behind the target man. Then again, I don't know if anyone could have predicted that Arsenal would be set up properly for a tough away match, and that the guys would do their jobs to perfection. Aaron Ramsey and Granit Xhaka look like they may finally be building some chemistry in the center of the park, as they often overwhelmed Chelsea's 1.5-man unit of Cesc and N'Golo Kante.

There's been a bunch of takes out there about this being two dropped points for us, about how we never really went for it, etc and so on. You'll note that, ten times out of ten, these are the same people losing their minds at our "tactical naivety" when we're bombing men forward in matches like this. You take your chances in a game like this if they're presented to you, but most of the time if you come away with a point from a place like Stamford Bridge, you've done exceptionally well.

2. That said, pardon me while I continue to gush like a Justin Bieber fan about Sead Kolasinac. This guy...THIS GUY...I think is my favorite Arsenal player since, hell, Dennis Bergkamp? The Guardian just did a piece the other day about how jarring it is to see this guy play for Arsenal precisely because we've been screaming out for a player of this ilk for so long. Seeing Chelsea guys just bounce off of him is about as much joy as I can have short of a night with Scarlett Johanssen.

Don't think for one second that David Luiz's cowardly challenge was an accident, or that it was a coincidence that the Bosnian Tank was the man targeted. A streetwise club like Chelsea are going to try and nip something like this in the bud before it ever really gets going, but, well, you're going to need heavier ordinance than Sideshow fucking Bob to bring down a tank, now aren't you? Let's all watch the tape of the World Cup 7-1 again and watch him cry some more. Fucking muppet.

Speaking of, it was refreshing to see the straight red card come out with no hesitation by referee Michael Oliver. Again, as I begin my journey in the referee game myself, I'm beginning to appreciate games like this much more. Even when he called fouls on us, I found myself nodding in agreement. He had a *storming* game, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

3. Alexandre Lacazette missed the one real presentable chance that we had, but, he is a human after all. My dude is a deadly finisher but even the best miss a few here or there. Nothing to really worry about. But, on a day of generally good performances, Alex Iwobi's stinker stuck out more than it might otherwise have done, perhaps.

I don't know if this is a blip or if this is an indicator that he's seriously stalled out, but either way stick a pin in this one. I don't know if he's going to get the consistent number of minutes that he'd get out on loan somewhere, but he also hasn't shown enough (in my estimation) to make a case for keeping others out of the team. Danny Welbeck can be frustrating at times with his end product, but he has other qualities that help his case a lot - his pace and power stretches defenses, which in turn opens up space for other players. We can work with that. But, Iwobi doesn't offer one-tenth of that right now, and it's concerning.

It was also a little unfortunate that Lacazette was the one to come off when Alexis came on, but I get why Arsene did it. Again, away match at Stamford Bridge, the balance of the team has to be right. They'll get their day to play together, and I for one am looking forward to it.

4. While Chelsea didn't exactly overrun us like they've typically done at their gaff, it should be noted that Petr Cech had two excellent saves in there (I believe both were in the second half) to help keep it at 0-0.

I know I can get tedious with this at times, but it's my damn report, so:

Petr Cech was never the problem.

Petr Cech was never the problem.

Petr Cech was never the problem.

Petr Cech was never the problem.

Petr Cech was never the problem.

Petr Cech was never the problem.

Petr Cech was never the problem.

5. We go from one extreme to the other, as we safely take our haul of a borscht-flavored point from Stamford Bridge and go directly from there to a League Cup match against Doncaster Rovers. To give you an idea of what a black hole club that is, I legitimately thought they were still in the Championship - as it turns out, they were in League Two last season, where they were promoted up to League One for this campaign.

If a tree falls in Doncaster, etc and so on.

I mean, I am a Football Manager addict, which includes often playing in the lower leagues. Give me any box score from any game in the top four divisions in England and I can generally at least recognize 2-3 players and tell you a little bit about them. With Donny, however, they don't have one...in the entire squad. I swear this has to be the most anonymous football club in the country, even if their club crest of "guy with a sword" is pretty damn badass.

Also, according to Wikipedia, Doncaster and its environs should technically belong to Scotland because of the Treaty of Durham, circa 1136. That's amazing - they should push for that immediately. I don't care where they are in League One right now, put them in the SPL and there's a pretty good chance they could be runners-up. I'm serious, the SPL is a Chernobyl fire.

Still, I could give a toss what happens there, though. Maybe we go a few rounds in and get our kids some playing time, but other than that I'm not that bothered. We have bigger fish to fry, yes?

Preview by Numbers: Chelsea v. Arsenal

2017-09-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

Stamford Bridge, London

Sunday, September 17

8:30 a.m. EDT, 13:30 BST

Match Officials

Referee: Michael Oliver
Assistants: Simon Bennett and Stuart Burt
4th Official: Neil Swarbrick

This Match, Last Year: Chelsea 3 - 1 Arsenal
All-Time in All Competitions: 75 Arsenal wins, 62 Chelsea wins, 54 draws
Arsenal's League Form: W-W // W-L-L-W
Chelsea's League Form: W-W // L-W-W-W

It got there in the end. By full-time, quality (in one half, at least) beat out quantity (of away supporters in the ground), 3-1. With that, we'll set aside the Europa League for two weeks before traveling to Belarus for matchday two.

That brings us to the task at hand ahead of us: Chelsea away. Stamford Bridge has not been a happy hunting ground for Arsenal, even if the media would like you to forget that Arsenal have handled the Blues well otherwise since the start of last season. Antonio Conté has bested Arsène Wenger just once in four tries, but that was the sole meeting at Stamford Bridge out of the four.

This match is going to tell us a lot about how the rest of the season is likely to unfold. If Arsenal win, then reports of their demise would have been greatly exaggerated. If Arsenal lose a close one, it's probably still going to fit straight into the media's #narrative. If Arsenal perform like they did at Anfield three weeks ago, then the media's drum-pounding about the club will never end, ever again. If it's a draw, well, nobody really wants that. Draws don't sell newspapers.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Coquelin (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)
Doubts: Walcott (calf)

It's obviously not ideal to play a Sunday afternoon match after a Thursday night match, especially one that started an hour later than it was supposed to. However, that's just something we're going to have to get used to this season. It's not like the Saturday lunchtime kick-offs after Wednesday European nights that we've had in the past are much different.

Still, Arsenal was able to rotate the squad plenty on Thursday, which means the likes of Mesut Özil, Alexandre Lacazette, Danny Welbeck, Aaron Ramsey, Granit Xhaka, and Laurent Koscielny (though, he was also suspended in Europe) can come back into the XI. I've heard rumors of Theo Walcott picking up a calf injury (I believe the TV cameras showed him with an ice pack on the bench after his removal.) There are some doubts on the fitness of Özil and Ramsey as well, but Arsène Wenger said earlier that they should be available.

I think the biggest question is how many defenders Wenger chooses to start. Twice this season now, Wenger has switched back to a back four at halftime. The switch worked on Thursday, but seriously did not at Anfield last month. The beauty about the predicted XI I pick below is that I'm hedging my bets and, depending on where Kolašinac slides in, it could work for either formation.

Predicted XI: Čech, Monreal, Koscielny, Mustafi, Bellerín, Kolašinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis, Lacazette.

Chelsea Squad News

Out: None
Doubts: Drinkwater (calf)

When the hell did Chelsea buy Danny Drinkwater?

...

September 1, apparently, for £35 million! Anyway, he's struggling with a calf problem and is likely not yet fit to make his Chelsea debut.

Chelsea, of course, rotated plenty in midweek as well, and the likes of David Luiz, Eden Hazard, and Álvaro Morata are likely to come back into the starting XI. Davide Zappacosta is making a push to start in place of Victor Moses after scoring on his full debut Tuesday night.

Predicted XI: Courtois, Azpilicueta, Luiz, Cahill, Zappacosta, Alonso, Bakayoko, Kanté, Pedro, Hazard, Morata.

Current Form

Arsenal maintained their 100% record at home with their 3-1 win over Köln yesterday, but they have nothing to show for their travels so far this year. The Gunners are winless away from the Emirates, though the sample size remains small: just the losses at Stoke and Liverpool to consider. Arsenal played well at Stoke and had an equalizer ruled offside, but they didn't show up at all in the other road game.

Chelsea have won 11 of their last 14 competitive fixtures, across both seasons and all competitions. Two of those non-wins came against Arsenal at Wembley, in the FA Cup Final and Community Shield; the latter, of course, was a draw decided on penalties. Chelsea then lost their opening match of the league season to Burnley, but have won every match since. They've beaten Spurs, Everton, and Leicester in the league and Qarabağ, the top club of Azerbaijan, in the Champions League. (Today, I learned that the Azeri language has that G with the hat on it from Turkish, but they're not pronounced the same.)

Match Facts

Arsenal have picked up three wins in four tries against Chelsea since the start of last season, including two wins at Wembley, mentioned above. Though, again, if you want to get really technical, it's two wins and a draw.

In last year's FA Cup Final, Alexis Sánchez opened the scoring early with a controversial goal in the fourth minute. Chelsea were reduced to 10-men on 68 minutes when a Victor Moses dive in the box was rewarded with a second yellow card. Even shorthanded, Chelsea had an equalizer through Diego Costa on 76 minutes, but Aaron Ramsey gave Arsenal his second FA Cup winning goal in four years just three minutes later.

In the Community Shield to open this season, not-sent-off Victor Moses opened the score just after halftime, but it was Pedro who saw red in the 80th minute. Sead Kolašinac opened his Arsenal scoring account on the ensuing free kick to send the match to penalties, where Thibault Courtois idiotically went second and skied his spot kick. Arsenal won 4-1 on penalties.

Both sides split their league meetings last season. Arsenal ran riot over Chelsea at the Emirates last September, jumping out to a huge lead, with Alexis Sánchez pouncing on a Gary Cahill error in the 11th minute before Theo Walcott doubled the lead three minutes later. Mesut Özil added a third before halftime and Arsenal coasted to a 3-0 win.

At Stamford Bridge in February, Chelsea bludgeoned their way to an early lead, quite literally, as Marcos Alonso used his elbow to beat Hector Bellerín to a header on 13 minutes, forcing the Arsenal right back out of the game with a concussion to boot. Arsenal did well to keep the match close, but Francis Coquelin did not do well to keep Eden Hazard close on 53 minutes and the Belgian scored a wonderful individual goal to double the lead. Cesc Fàbregas made it three from a Petr Čech error on 85 minutes and Olivier Giroud scored a consolation goal in injury time.

Arsenal have not won at Stamford Bridge since that time John Terry fell down, which was October 29, 2011, a 5-3 Arsenal win. Chelsea have scored at least twice in eight consecutive games against Arsenal at the Bridge. Arsenal have only scored in three in those eight matches; one of them was the aforementioned 2011 win, another was in January of 2013, in which Theo Walcott scored a second half consolation goal as Chelsea won 2-1. The other was last year's match, where Arsenal scored a meaningless goal at the death.

The Referee

The referee is Northumberland-based Michael Oliver. Arsenal's record with Oliver, overall, is quite poor. In fact, he was in the middle for many of Arsenal's worst moments this calendar year: 3-3 at Bournemouth, 0-3 at Crystal Palace, 0-2 at Tottenham. In the league, all-time, Arsenal have a record of four wins, seven draws, and eight losses with Oliver in the middle. Arsenal did win their most recent match with Oliver, 3-1 over Everton on the final day of the regular season, though they did not escape a red card to Laurent Koscielny in the process. To be fair, that call was correct, so you can't blame Oliver for it.

Michael Oliver was in charge of Arsenal's league win over Chelsea last season, however, though that came at the Emirates. It's on the road where Arsenal tend to struggle with Oliver, even as their road record in big away games has, by and large, improved in recent years.

Chelsea saw Oliver five times last season, winning four and losing only once, at the Emirates as mentioned. They defeated Tottenham 2-1 in November, Bradford City 4-0 in the FA Cup in January, Manchester United 1-0 in the FA Cup in March, and West Bromwich Albion 1-0 in May.

Around the League

Friday (night): Bournemouth v. Brighton & Hove Albion; Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth
Saturday (early): Crystal Palace v. Southampton; Selhurst Park, London
Saturday: Huddersfield Town v. Leicester City; John Smith's Stadium, Huddersfield
Saturday: Liverpool v. Burnley; Anfield, Liverpool
Saturday: Newcastle United v. Stoke City; St. James' Park, Newcastle upon Tyne
Saturday: Watford v. Manchester City; Vicarage Road, Watford
Saturday: West Bromwich Albion v. West Ham United; The Hawthorns, West Bromwich
Saturday (late): Tottenham Hotspur v. Swansea City; Wembley Stadium, London
Sunday (late): Manchester United v. Everton; Old Trafford, Manchester

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and a retired midfielder. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat to debate whether or not that just means he played in high school.

Ten Thoughts: Arsenal 3-1 FC Koln

2017-09-15T00:49:00.003-04:00

You know, when we signed up for this Europa League lark, I don't know if anyone told us that we'd be the only club in the history of the competition to have four away games in a six-game group stage. What a bloody revolutionary idea. Or, maybe for the return leg, the population of London can descend on Koln and we can have our home leg there.

Fuck me, what a world we live in.

1. Anyway, yeah, still COMPLETELY alien to play in this thing. Mega-weird. The Sutton United match last season feels like a typical Boxing Day clash against Stoke or something by comparison.

2. It sure felt like a matchday squad that we'd turn out against some 12th-division club from the hinterlands of nowhere, though. David Ospina was in goal, Per Mertesacker was in the center of defense, and there was a rare Mohamed Elneny sighting. Alex Iwobi was on the left, and our bench had an average age of about four...to go along with the prodigal son, Jack Wilshere. All that was missing was Mathieu Debuchy - that'd have really have put the fear of god into their lot. THE POWER OF THE SULK COMPELS YOU.

Alexis Sanchez got what I think was his first start of the season as well, with Olivier Giroud up top. It wasn't the League Cup selection, it wasn't the starting XI with a little rotation...this was "darts at a dartboard" territory. This is the other "big" team in our group too - just you watch, poor old Charlie George will get yanked off the stadium tours and into a No. 10 shirt by the time BATE Borisov rolls around.

Can't imagine why our guys played the first 45 minutes like 11 blokes who had just been introduced to each other just before the opening kick-off. It's like the old territory days in pro wrestling where, because the good guys and the villains couldn't been seen together, they'd often meet for the first time after the opening bell of a match. "Hi, I'm Eddie Gilbert. Grab a headlock." Think back to the first day of your job, and imagine that in front of the population of western Germany banging drums and singing in that crap beery voice we football supporters do. Fuck me, I don't care how much you're paying me, I'd turn around and go home.

3. Speaking of, I have stayed off of Twitter today because my god, all I can envision is like 149,875 terrible war jokes about 20,000 Germans invading London and yeah, that'd end with me driving a railroad spike through my brain.

4. Anyway, what a clown show this was, huh? At the end of the day, is anyone at all surprised that this shambles of a football club wasn't able to handle crowd control for something like this? We can't work out how to do transfers, we turn a decision on the manager into a year-and-change-long soap opera...guess it stands to reason that they had no idea on how to handle the Great Koln Invasion of 2017.

In the end, I don't know whose fault this really was. Is it the club, who apparently have no conception on what supporters are like when they're not over-fed hedge fund managers and their trophy wives, there to slum it with "the lads", that is, if the lads weren't priced out back in 2006? Is it the season ticket holders who *clearly* flogged off their seat because my son, what would Muffy and Biff think if we were seen at...gasp...the Europa League? Because, and I hope I make myself clear with this, that lot can go get fucked sideways as well. They're probably the same ones who get the best viewing spots on the parade route when the boys are showing a big silver pot to the sky. A plague and a pox on all of their houses and clans.

It's astonishing. Try this shit in Eastern Europe and some carved-of-granite ex-Spetznaz guy is caving your skull in with a baton. Meanwhile, these guys are buying Arsenal shirts and getting into the home sections.

What a world we live in. Truly, madly, deeply.

5. As mentioned, the first half was a humanitarian disaster of Alderaan proportions. Rob Holding, poor kid, was the best Koln player on the pitch. Yes, that includes Ospina - I'm getting to him in a second. We're lucky that today's referee was both sensible and a bit on the lenient side, as our kid probably could have been booked twice inside of the first three minutes. You have to credit his useful enthusiasm, though...should have had two bookings in the time it takes me to eat a candy bar.

The Germans were oddly disinterested in attacking with any kind of numbers, but whenever they did you could safely assume that there was Holding, desperately fouling after getting beaten again. Meanwhile, poor old BFG was like next to him like the buddy in a cop movie who a) at one point says "I'm getting too old for this shit" and b) gets ventilated by a few dozen bullets the day he's set to retire.

Now, as for our goalkeeper. Dear sweet holy hell, he had himself a bit of a mare today. The guy is perfectly fine on your average day...lest we forget, he was in goal in the FA Cup Final just four months ago. Then again, Holding was immense in that one as well. Makes you wonder if someone's sticking pins into voodoo dolls of our squad players or something. What an episode of Law & Order that'd be. Never had to deal with this shit down at the south coast, huh Jacky boy?

Anyway, I nicked this from the Guardian's MBM, and this sums up the Colombian's day better than any words I could type.

In fairness to him though, a bunch of other things went wrong on the play other than his one poor clearance. It all started when our mob thought the ball went out over the touchline, to which they all had the brilliant idea to completely stop playing. Line up a bunch of action figures and hit the off switch on all of them concurrently, and you'll get the idea. Ospina had to take the law into his own hands - coming off his line was 100% the correct decision in this case. The issue was that once he got there, he didn't get his feet set correctly and he fluffed his clearance. Happened to me just this past Saturday too, but he's paid a bit more money than me to get those right. Also, when your keeper comes out like that, a defender is supposed to drop back to at least attempt a goal-line clearance should the worst occur. But, you know, we're Arsenal. We don't do football intelligence 'round these here parts.

So, yeah, naturally Jhon Cordoba got the ball and arced it into the net from 40 yards out. Of course he did.

6. The rest of the half was dire, an absolute dog's breakfast of the most revolting football you've seen this side of the bottom half of League Two. Giroud had a few tame headers easily saved, Walcott ran around in the headless chicken style and Sanchez was a sentient version of the "Homer Simpson backing into the bushes" GIF.

And then, a savior came. Familiar with the methods of today's enemy, a Bosnian tank emerged from the shadows to rally the Arsenal and damn near take Timo Horn's hand clean off his arm in the process. Holding was taken out back to see the rabbits, and on came Sead Kolasinac in his place. Wouldn't you know it, Horn would have been fishing the ball out of his net three minutes later had it not rocketed through the net, through the back of the stand and roughly out onto the Hornsey Road somewhere.

I didn't think it looked like much, either. Elneny clipped a lovely ball over the top, but Walcott's first touch was...how do I put this diplomatically..."agricultural". Theo did manage to collect it and send a cross in, but the defender blocked it. The ball spun up in the air and out a bit, directly into the path of the Bosnian Tank. BAM! POW! WHACK! You may not see a volley struck more sweetly all season, right on the button, and with his tank strength it was past Horn before the poor bastard could react. Seriously, with as much useless faffing around that this team does sometimes, to have a guy like this who refuses to use a scalpel when a sledgehammer will do, bloody hell it's refreshing.

7. That wasn't even the best goal we scored all day, and what odds you could have gotten for that on halftime. You'd be reading this from your yacht moored at the docks in Marbella. Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who had a bit of a mare himself today (understandable given that I have scars older than him), fired the first warning shot with a lovely mazy run through half their team. He did the hard bit, then forgot the minor detail of "shooting" at the end, allowing Horn to nick it off him in the end.

Alexis, though, had a look at that and figured to himself that it just might work if one actually pulls the proverbial trigger at some point. Five minutes later, he did the same thing. The Koln defense had him surrounded, had to have been 5-on-1 or so, but Alexis just casually slalomed through them like the skiing bit you see at the Olympics. He was still a bit far out and didn't have a ton of time or space, but he got a little bit of back-lift and WHOOOOSH, there it went into the top corner. Normally, I react to a goal with a scream of some sort, "Yes!" or "Yeaaaah" or something, typically while getting out of my seat and raising my fists in the air or something. This one? I couldn't move, I couldn't emote, I couldn't speak. I just had my hands to my mouth, stock-still, like I just saw God.

Maybe I had.

Meanwhile, O'Hanlon's was all like:

8. That was it, really. The Billy Goats were never coming back from that one, not with the team they have. Ospina had to make a few easy saves in the second 45 but they never looked like scoring. The Europa League is, let's face it, a hell of a lot more forgiving than its big-boy cousin.

9. There was one more goal to come, and wouldn't you know it, the Bosnian Tank was in the center of it once again. Now, I'm no neurosurgeon, but I'm beginning to think that maybe we should find a way to get this guy into the team more often than not. Anyway, his cross was perfect, Wilshere dummied it to Walcott, who went in alone. He normally even scores from there, but he did that newborn foal thing he does sometimes and shoveled a weak shot directly to Horn. The German keeper, not to be outdone, spilled it into the path of Hector Bellerin. For a right back, he does seem to pop up with the odd goal here and there, and he dispatched the rebound cool as you like. Game, blouses.

10. All in all, a satisfactory end to a strange day, and one that could have been damaging to whatever hopes there are of us winning this thing. One would hope that our team selections will get more serious once this first group stage bit is over (if Koln can't beat us, you have to think we can see off the other two mobs in this thing). But, despite that and despite Ospina spotting them an early one, you kind of have to think that it's a case of job done here.

You also have to think that there will be UEFA sanctions and the like for the events of the day, but then again they're an organization that could screw up a one-car funeral, so who knows?

All you can really take from this in the end is that we got three points, we're wholly unprepared for the apocalypse, Wilshere looked OK in his cameo and Petr Cech has literally zero to worry about anytime soon. That, and the Bosnian Tank is really, really, really fucking great at football and a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

MOAR BOSNIAN TANK, PLZ.

Preview by Numbers: Arsenal v. 1. FC Köln, Europa League Group Matchday 1

2017-09-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

Emirates Stadium, London

Thursday, September 14

3:05 p.m. EDT, 20:05 BST

Match Officials from Spain

Referee: Xavier Estrada Fernández
Assistants: Miguel Martínez and Teodoro Sobrino
4th Official: Pau Cebrián Devís
Additional Assistants: Jesús Gil Manzano and Ricardo De Burgos

All-Time in All Competitions: First competitive meeting
Arsenal's European Form: W-W-D-W-L-L
Köln's European Form: W-W-W-D-W-L

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Thursdays.

Tonight, Arsenal will play their first Europa League/UEFA Cup match since losing the 2000 final to Galatasaray. It might be a second-rate competition, but that's no reason to fail to take it seriously. Because, let's face it, losing repeatedly in the Champions League was getting a bit stale, while here, the club have a legitimate chance to, you know, win a European trophy. Finishing in the top four might be a huge ask this season, but winning this gets you the same result. Just ask Mourinho.

Arsenal open their group stage with the Lukas Podolski derby as they host Köln at the Emirates. The German side finished fifth in the Bundesliga last year, though it was a distant fifth behind Hoffenheim by 13 points. They did some good business in the summer, signing Jhon Córdoba from Mainz, Jannes Horn from Wolfsburg, and Jorge Meré from Sporting Gijón, but they haven't been able to find goals yet this season and sit dead last in the table. That's in part because of their big sale, of Anthony Modeste to the Chinese league for £31.23 million. Their winter loan of defender Neven Subotić from Dortmund ended as well.

There's no reason to overlook these European nights, even if they're not on the usual nights of the week. Let's have some fun with this.

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Coquelin (hamstring,) Cazorla (ankle)
Doubts: Wilshere (match fitness)
Suspended: Koscielny (one match, denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity)

Up 3-0 against Bournemouth, Arsène Wenger decided to make a double substitution to bring on forwards Olivier Giroud and Alexis Sánchez; these were Arsenal's second and third substitutions of the match. Bringing on attackers when you're up three is one thing, but losing a holding midfielder to injury in that situation when you're out of subs is another. Arsenal were forced to finish the match on 10 men for 10 minutes after Francis Coquelin injured his hamstring. The French midfielder is expected to miss about three weeks.

Meanwhile, you may recall Laurent Koscielny was sent off for a foul on Robert Lewandowki in the second leg of Arsenal's crash-out against Bayern Munich last year. Since this is Arsenal's first European match since then, the center back is suspended tonight.

Reports have indicated that many first team regulars were out of training this week, indicating that they will be rested in advance of Arsenal's trip to Chelsea on Sunday. Those regulars include Mesut Özil, Danny Welbeck, Alexandre Lacazette, Granit Xhaka, Petr Čech, Aaron Ramsey, as well as the suspended Koscielny.

The biggest question is, with rotation and the injury to Coquelin, will we see Jack Wilshere tonight? Wilshere has not been in the starting XI in a competitive fixture for Arsenal since the final day of the 2015/16 regular season.

Predicted XI: Ospina, Holding, Mertesacker, Mustafi, Kolašinac, Bellerín, Elneny, Wilshere, Iwobi, Walcott, Giroud.

Köln Squad News

Out: None
Doubts: Sørensen (knock,) Risse (match fitness)

Danish defender Frederick Sørensen was removed at halftime from Köln's 3-0 loss to Augsburg at the weekend, but I can't quite tell if it was through injury or total ineffectiveness as Köln's porous defense spotted the hosts a 2-0 lead in the opening 45 minutes.

It's perhaps a bit surprising that Köln have been so weak at the back this year, considering they have Olympic silver medalist (Germany's number... five?!) and Arsenal fan Timo Horn in goal plus Confederations Cup winner and full German international Jonas Hector at left back.

Otherwise, manager Peter Stöger has no fresh injury concerns in his XI and will likely name a largely unchanged side, with perhaps the exception of Jorge Meré coming in for Sørensen.

Predicted XI: Horn, Klünter, Heintz, Meré, Hector, Zoller, Lehmann, Höger, Bittencourt, Córdoba, Osako.

Domestic Form

The good news is Arsenal have maintained their 100% form at home, after Saturday's 3-0 win over Bournemouth. The bad news is, they still have a 0% record away from home. But, that's not relevant until Sunday's trip to Stamford Bridge, so forget about it for now!

Arsenal will have the benefit of playing their second straight match at home against a side that has lost all of their league matches so far this season; Köln have zero points from their first three Bundesliga matches. They are the only German top flight club without a point. They've opened the year with a 1-0 loss at Borussia Mönchengladbach, a 3-1 home loss to Hamburg, and a 3-0 loss at Augsburg. Their schedule doesn't get any easier after tonight; they'll play at Dortmund on Sunday.

As with Bournemouth and their League Cup win over Birmingham City, Köln also do have a domestic cup win to their credit; in the first round of the DFB Pokal, they defeated fifth division Leher Turnerschaft 5-0. My rudimentary German tells me that that's some sort of gymnastics club.

European Form

Last year, Arsenal won their group for the first time since 2011 and were rewarded with a Round of 16 tie against Bayern Munich for some reason. Arsenal went unbeaten through the group, beating both Ludogorets Razgrad and Basel twice while drawing twice against their main competition, Paris St. Germain. PSG's matchday six draw at home against the Bulgarians from Razgrad handed Arsenal the group victory and the unfortunate draw against the German champions. To be fair, PSG drew Barcelona in the Round of 16, built up a 4-0 lead after the first leg, then managed to lose by five at Camp Nou.

Köln are back in European competition for the first time in 20 years. The Billy Goats last appeared in Europe in the 1997 Intertoto Cup, which you might recall if you go way back, was a summer tournament which earned qualification to the UEFA Cup. Köln advanced to the semifinals that year, where they lost on away goals to Montpellier. So, yeah, that "European form" of theirs at the top of the preview is actually 20 years old.

Match Facts

Arsenal and Köln have never met in a competitive fixture. You may recall that the most recent meeting between the clubs came in a friendly in 2012 as part of the transfer of Lukas Podolski. The German scored twice on the day, including once from the penalty spot, as Arsenal ran out 4-0 winners against the German side who had recently been relegated to the 2. Bundesliga. Two years later, the Billy Goats finished top of die zweite Liga to return to Germany's top flight.

You have to go back more than a dozen matches to find the last time Arsenal faced a German side that wasn't Bayern or Dortmund; in the 2012 Champions League group stage, Schalke took four of a possible six points against the Gunners, including a 2-0 win at the Emirates.

Köln have not played an English side since an 8-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur (!) in the 1995 Intertoto Cup. The Billy Goats have never won a match on English soil, in five tries; they've drawn two and lost three.

The Referee

The match officials are from Spain; the referee is Xavier Estrada Fernández. He's never worked a match for either of these clubs, since Arsenal and Köln have both not been at this level of European competition in about 20 years, one way or another.

Estrada has worked Europa League matches for English and German sides in the past, though not many. He took charge of Tottenham's 2-1 win at Asteras Tripolis in 2014's group stage as well as Schalke's 3-0 win at PAOK in last season's Round of 32. I guess it's a little strange that those two matches both took place in Greece. That's very coincidental. And Olympiacos wasn't involved at all!

Estrada's biggest honor to date in his career was working the final of the 2014 Under-19 Euros, in which Germany beat Portugal 1-0. Each of these clubs had a representative in that Germany squad at the time: midfielder Serge Gnabry for Arsenal and goalkeeper Daniel Mesenhöler for Köln. Neither of them played in that final, however, and neither of them remain with their respective club; Gnabry is at Hoffenheim, on loan from Bayern Munich, and Mesenhöler is now the number two keeper at Union Berlin.

Around the Europa League

Thursday (early): Slavia Prague v. Maccabi Tel Aviv; Eden Arena, Prague
Thursday (early): Villarreal v. Astana; Estadio de la Cerámica, Villarreal
Thursday (early): Dynamo Kyiv v. Skënderbeu Korçë; NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev
Thursday (early): Young Boys v. Partizan Belgrade; Stade de Suisse, Bern
Thursday (early): İstanbul Başakşehir v. Ludogorets Razgrad; Başakşehir Fatih Terim Stadium, Istanbul
Thursday (early): Hoffenheim v. Braga; Rhein-Neckar-Arena, Sinsheim
Thursday (early): Austria Wien v. AC Milan; Ernst-Happel-Stadion, Vienna
Thursday (early): Rijeka v. AEK Athens; Stadion Rujevica, Rijeka
Thursday (early): Apollon Limassol v. Lyon; GSP Stadium, Nicosia
Thursday (early): Atalanta v. Everton; Mapei Stadium, Reggio Emilia
Thursday (early): Copenhagen v. Lokomotiv Moscow; Parken Stadium, Copenhagen
Thursday (early): Fastav Zlín v. Sheriff Tiraspol; Andrův stadion, Olomouc
Thursday (late): Steaua București v. Viktoria Plzeň; Arena Națională, Bucharest
Thursday (late): Hapo'el Be'er Sheva v. Lugano; Turner Stadium, Beersheba
Thursday (late): Red Star Belgrade v. BATE Borisov; Red Star Stadium, Belgrade
Thursday (late): Vitória de Guimarães v. Red Bull Salzburg; Estádio D. Afonso Henriques, Guimarães
Thursday (late): Marseille v. Konyaspor; Stade Vélodrome, Marseille
Thursday (late): Zorya Luhansk v. Östersund; Arena Lviv, Lviv
Thursday (late): Hertha Berlin v. Athletic Bilbao; Olympiastadion, Berlin
Thursday (late): Vitesse Arnhem v. Lazio; GelreDome, Arnhem
Thursday (late): Zulte Waregem v. Nice; Regenboogstadion, Waregem
Thursday (late): Real Sociedad v. Rosenborg; Anoeta, San Sebastián
Thursday (late): Vardar v. Zenit Saint Petersburg; Philip II Arena, Skopje

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and a man of letters. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat for letters such as F, N, Q, Ø, and Ý.

Ten Thoughts: Arsenal 3-0 AFC Bournemouth

2017-09-09T19:51:00.000-04:00

It's been a sadly common occurrence over the last ~~few~~ many seasons where we've been badly in need of a functional, workmanlike, drama-free win. It's been a sadly uncommon occurrence over the last ~~few~~ many seasons that we've actually gotten it. Today, thankfully, we did.

1. Wouldn't you know it - today we had a left back at left back, a right back at right back, center-halves at center-half, etc and so on. Funny what you can accomplish when people are playing in their actual positions!

2. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has the Reverse Midas Touch and I love it - because I'm a simple and petty man. 0-9 against in his last two games...stellar.

3. As mentioned, this was a largely easy three points other than the odd moment here or there. Part of that was an uncharacteristic fluency in our game, given that it's the first one back from an international break. Part of it, though, was down to how aggressively awful the Cherries were.

I mean, everyone on the planet knows to play ten center-backs against us and hit us on the break. It's left cliche behind miles ago. Bournemouth looked like they were trying to play football against us some and they failed miserably at it. Sure, they defended in numbers at times - usually when we were playing keep-ball - but it wasn't systematic and they didn't have the required commitment.

One wonders if this is the season where they find themselves in serious relegation trouble. It'd be a shame, in one sense. I'd much rather have a team that tries to play a little around rather than the West Broms of the world.

4. Still, as bad as they were, all it would have taken was a period of time where they held us off before some of the worst of the crowd would start howling. Danny Welbeck was not here to mess around today though, and his goal six minutes into the match was exactly what we needed to settle those post-Liverpool nerves.

It was so so so easy, too. Sead Kolasinac, who had a storming game again today, had the run of the left wing. I don't know who was supposed to be marking him, or who was attending to Welbeck on the back post, for that matter. Kolasinac's cross was true (taking notes, Ox?), and Danny easily nodded it in past the stranded Asmir Begovic.

Come to think of it, it looked like every one of the more annoying goals that we concede during the course of an average season. Man, it's nice to have it be some other mob's problem for once.

5. Speaking of, we've had our comedy moments over the last few seasons, but Nathan Ake's fresh-air swipe when attempting to clear out a pass from Mesut Ozil arguably puts the lot to shame. I'd lose my mind if a U-10 player did that, let alone a guy who just moved clubs for 20 million GBP (inflated prices in the TV deal transfer market or otherwise). The German will get an assist out of it - not that it will shut up the more knowledge-deficient of our constituents - but how an allegedly professional defender does that is beyond me. Can't imagine why Chelsea wanted to get rid.

Either way, we're not having this conversation were it not for a gorgeous finish from Alexandre Lacazette once he was presented with the opportunity. He had a preposterous amount of both time and space, but we've seen some of our lot gifted those chances and either sending it into the Van Allen Belt or shoveling it tamely at a grateful goalkeeper. Not going to name names here, but one guy that springs directly to mind rhymes with "Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain." Take another look at the highlight of the goal, though. Lacazette is a cold-eyed killer in the Serbian gangster style. Hell, if he keeps going like this, maybe he'll get killed by Viggo Mortensen in a movie, too. No rush, no fuss, just takes a second to collect himself and bends his shot in a perfect parabola over and around Begovic's dive. You can stuff your poetry or paintings, that was the real art stuff right there.

6. Speaking of, once again, I admit my mistake in ever doubting that Lacazette could make the step up from Ligue 1. Much like the Dutch league, you have to keep in mind the utterly rotten opposition that they see outside of the top teams (in this vein, you'll note Monaco got tonked 4-0 by Nice today).

Lacazette, though, clearly has skills that translate. Composure and a deft strike of the ball will go far, regardless of geography. That first one especially, that's the key. Go back and look at a bunch of horrid misses from some of our guys and note what the common denominator is in most of them.

7. Having gone through most of their cover version of Arsenal's Greatest Defensive Error Hits, what with the open back-post header and the horrendous individual mistake, the Cherries decided to go with Miss an Easy Chance and Get Done on the Counter as their second-half encore. Hell of a show - frankly, I like the cover version better.

Petr Cech, other than one fantastic save towards the end of the match (thanks to his top-class footwork, not bad for a supposed old guy), had little to do throughout this one. But, had Jermain Defoe managed to find the back of the net instead of the woodwork on one of the few defensive lapses of the day from our boys, maybe this one may have been different. Instead, he missed, we went right up the other end, and that was it. Aaron Ramsey, who along with Granit Xhaka was much improved in the center of the park today, created the chance with one of his best passes in ages. All Danny had to do was run onto it and finish.

I'm still not sure that Welbeck is good enough to play game in, game out for us...but if he keeps this up I'll be the first to admit I was wrong. Your move, Mr. Welbeck.

8. Frankly, this probably should have been the proverbial cricket score by the end. I've long held the belief that Begovic is one of the more overrated goalkeepers of this recent vintage, but fair play to him, he was outstanding today. One save in particular that stands out was his recovery on a horrid backpass played back to him, where he first had to clear it out and then had to dive at full stretch to make the save when his clearance deflected off of one of our guys.

He had a few others, too. The talk in the past linking him to us was never anything serious, thankfully...and there's a reason why he never got off the bench at Chelsea. This is about his level, but he is capable of the odd performance like this one. Thankfully, we beat him enough times for it not to matter.

9. I just read that Eddie Howe called his team "wasteful, negative and slow" in the post-match media scrum. Shit, Eddie, tell us how you really feel.

Where's the lie, though?

10. So, Chelsea away next in the league, albeit with a minor diversion in the west of Germany on Thursday.

I was saying in the pub today how utterly alien it feels to be in the Europa this season, though it's tempered somewhat by how fantastically pedestrian our group is. I kind of feel cheated in a way. If we have to be in the Europa, I wanted us to have that little head-rush that comes with exploring new places and new things.

Shit, why couldn't we have gotten someone cool like Athletic Bilbao and their Basque player-only policy? Why couldn't we have played someone exotic like, I dunno, FK Vardar? Sounds like a Star Wars villain, if you ask me. Nice is in this thing, going up against Mario Balotelli would have been a fucking hoot. Or, what about Konyaspor? I mean, I fancy myself a football Renaissance Man - I watch a LOT of games from a LOT of places - but if you told me that they were in the Turkish Seventh Division, hell, I may have believed you.

What we got was a decent Bundesliga team you can see 10 times a year on Fox Sports, the 1991 European Champions and Ukraine's representative in the Champions League five times, all of a recent vintage. How bloody boring. Just a bunch of teams banally playing a little bit below their station.

That crunch tie against Skenderbeu Korce will have to wait until next season, I guess.

Anyway. Right...the Chavs.

I don't know what to think about them. We turned them over easily enough in the Charity Shield but they did bring in a few new faces right at the end of the window. Stamford Bridge, despite our best ditties about its' structural integrity, has never been a land of milk and roses for us, either. I'd be just fine with a point out of that, thank you very much. I reckon they wouldn't be, though.

Either way, join us at the Barleycorn for that one. Your humble match reporter - along with much of the rest of our Board of Directors - will be there selling Arsenal NYC season memberships (you can check out the benefits of the same here). It'll be rad!

Preview by Numbers: Arsenal v. Bournemouth

2017-09-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

Emirates Stadium, London

Saturday, September 9

10:00 a.m. EDT, 15:00 BST

Match Officials

Referee: Anthony Taylor
Assistants: Gary Beswick and Adam Nunn
4th Official: Darren England

This Match, Last Year: Arsenal 3 - 1 Bournemouth
All-Time in All Competitions: 4 Arsenal wins, 1 draw
Arsenal's League Form: W-W-W // W-L-L
Bournemouth's League Form: D-W-D // L-L-L

Arsenal Squad News

Out: Cazorla (Achilles)

Doubts: Alexis (ankle,) Chambers (groin,) Iwobi (thigh,) Wilshere (leg)

Oh, I guess it's not that bad.

Santi Cazorla has been left out of Arsenal's Europa League squad and won't be available until Christmas with his, what is it, Achilles? Foot? Ankle? I don't even remember anymore. I miss Santi.

In his press conference yesterday, Arsène Wenger said "we have no injuries," which omits Cazorla, but I see what he means. Jack Wilshere is short of match fitness, Alexis Sánchez had an ankle problem while on international duty with a Chile squad that lost two critical World Cup qualifiers without him, and there are still doubts over the available of fringe first-teamers Calum Chambers and Alex Iwobi.

As for the predicted XI, well, we saw at Anfield that Wenger could put anybody anywhere for no reason. It's not like we have a square peg (Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain) to jam into a round hole (wing back) anymore.

Predicted XI: Čech, Holding, Koscielny, Monreal, Bellerín, Kolašinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Welbeck, Lacazette.

Bournemouth Squad News

Out: Wilson (knee,) Stanislas (groin)

Doubts: Aké (ankle,) Francis (hamstring)

Callum Wilson suffered two separate cruciate ligament injuries inside of 16 months, first in September of 2015 and again back in February of this year, ruling out the Coventry-born striker. Wilson had two of the four goals Bournemouth scored against Arsenal last season, both from the penalty spot. Midfielder Junior Stanislas is out with a groin strain.

Eddie Howe will be sweating on the fitness of Nathan Aké; the center back, who sealed a permanent transfer from Chelsea this summer, has an ankle injury. Aké spent the first half of last season on loan with the Cherries before being recalled by Chelsea in the second half. Meanwhile, Simon Francis, the captain, is a doubt with a hamstring problem.

Speaking of players who transferred from Chelsea this summer, the Cherries now have Asmir Begović and switched to playing three at the back just before this last international break. If Aké doesn't pass fit, however, Eddie Howe may revert back to their 4-4-1-1 formation.

Predicted XI: Begović, Cook, Aké, Mings, Smith, Daniels, Gosling, Surman, Arter, King, Defoe.

Current Form

And that goes for both teams! Arsenal are 16th in the table, but Bournemouth are 18th and have lost all three of their fixtures. Only Crystal Palace and West Ham are worse on goal difference.

Match Facts

Bournemouth have never beaten Arsenal across five matches all-time, though they did hold a 3-0 lead in last year's meeting at Vitality Stadium.

But let's start with this corresponding fixture last year, which Arsenal won 3-1. Alexis Sánchez opened the scoring on 12 minutes by pouncing on a poorly hit pass from Steve Cook that failed to reach goalkeeper Adam Federici. The Cherries, however, were level from the penalty spot on 23 minutes when Mike Jones ruled that Nacho Monreal fouled Callum Wilson. Arsenal were rattled, but did not concede another, and Theo Walcott scored the go-ahead goal from the back post on 53 minutes. Alexis added his second and Arsenal's third in the 91st minute.

The match at the Vitality, however, was insane. The Cherries struck twice in four minutes, with Charlie Daniels scoring the 16th minute and Wilson again converting from the penalty spot in the 20th, this time from a clumsy Granit Xhaka challenge. Ryan Fraser made it 3-0 to the hosts just before the hour mark.

20 minutes from time, Alexis Sánchez pulled a goal back for Arsenal after a flick-on from Olivier Giroud. Five minutes later, Lucas Pérez curled a volley inside the post (also from a Giroud assist) to make it 3-2 and in the 82nd minute, Bournemouth captain Simon Fraser was sent off. Two minutes into the six minutes of added time, Olivier Giroud headed in an equalizer.

While Arsenal battled resiliently to take a point from a 3-0 deficit, that match was the first sign that 2017 was going to be a dreadful year in Arsenal's world.

The Referee

The referee is Cheshire-based Anthony Taylor. You're likely well aware that Arsenal have had what I call "a colorful history" with Taylor, though their overall record stands at 13 wins, five draws, and only two losses.

Last year, Arsène Wenger called Taylor "dishonest to [his] federation" and then shoved him, but Taylor was the fourth official that day. In the three Arsenal matches that followed in which Taylor worked as the referee, Arsenal won all three: 5-0 over Lincoln City, 2-1 over Middlesbrough, and 2-1 over Chelsea in the FA Cup Final.

Bournemouth did not see Taylor last year, but were unbeaten in their two matches with Taylor the season before that, including a 2-1 win over Manchester United and a 0-0 draw at Watford.

Around the League

Saturday (early): Manchester City v. Liverpool; Etihad Stadium, Manchester
Saturday: Brighton & Hove Albion v. West Bromwich Albion; American Express Community Stadium, Falmer
Saturday: Everton v. Tottenham Hotspur; Goodison Park, Liverpool
Saturday: Leicester City v. Chelsea; King Power Stadium, Leicester
Saturday: Southampton v. Watford; St. Mary's Stadium, Southampton
Saturday (late): Stoke City v. Manchester United; Bet365 Stadium, Stoke-on-Trent
Sunday (early): Burnley v. Crystal Palace; Turf Moor, Burnley
Sunday (late): Swansea City v. Newcastle United; Liberty Stadium, Swansea
Monday (night): West Ham United v. Huddersfield Town; Olympic Stadium, London

John Painting is a contributing writer to the Modern Gooner and a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. You can follow him on Twitter @zorrocat for signs of alien life.