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Arsenal, Pt. X: Boom-Xhaka-Laca!


Dr LBC

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What a job by the front-2 yesterday. 3-1 heading to Spain feels pretty good.

538 odds:
Arsenal has an 80% chance of advancing to final
Arsenal has a 35% chance of winning final
Arsenal has a 28% chance of qualifying for CL through PL

63% chance at CL still, somehow.

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  • 2 months later...

Josh Kroenke, at least, has already issued a response to the petition that had started up yesterday and hit 50K signees by noon PST.  It wasn't an outstanding response, but it wasn't a bad one either.  Likely not going to move the needle one way or the other, but it might put a temporary stem on the bleeding that ultimately will only be stopped by a signing or two.

Will be interesting to see. In a couple hours I'm going to an Arsenal-partner event the club is hosting (Arsenal America members were able to reserve a spot on the guest list) at the Ritz in Marina Del Ray, where there's supposed to be some form of Q&A so we'll see what turns up and who all is actually there to answer questions.

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Genuinely confused to come to the end of a transfer window and not really have anything to moan about. Have to say massive credit to Raul and the rest of the executive crew, they stared down a fan insurrection this summer and are coming out of it looking like heroes.

It's not to say the team is without flaws - the defense is still frail given it's hard to know how long it'll take for Holding and Bellerin to settle in after long layoffs, and lord knows the inevitable game when we have to start Luiz and Mustafi together in the center of defense is going to look like a slapstick comedy. But this very much looks like a squad that should make top 4 and I don't think Emery has any excuse not to achieve that. 

 

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We should use this thread more. Especially in light of this year's early success. I know there's more than a few arsenal fans here. ....and I need more people to talk arsenal with 😂😂

Next week's match with Pool will be interesting. They've not yet found their form and we're firing on all cylinders. This is the kind of match we'd lose easily last year. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 10/1/2022 at 12:17 PM, NickButera said:

We should use this thread more. Especially in light of this year's early success. I know there's more than a few arsenal fans here. ....and I need more people to talk arsenal with 😂😂

Next week's match with Pool will be interesting. They've not yet found their form and we're firing on all cylinders. This is the kind of match we'd lose easily last year. 

I’m starting to believe we will actually get top 4 lol. I keep thinking the wheels are going to come off and we will fall out. The underlying numbers don’t lie though, we are playing well. Don’t think there’s really a title chance, though.

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6 hours ago, packerstk7 said:

I’m starting to believe we will actually get top 4 lol. I keep thinking the wheels are going to come off and we will fall out. The underlying numbers don’t lie though, we are playing well. Don’t think there’s really a title chance, though.

Need to see how Jan goes IMO. I heard the Man City game is going to be rescheduled in Jan, alongside our normal games of Newcastle, Man U and Spurs. It's going to be a gauntlet. 

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On 12/5/2022 at 9:37 PM, agarcia34 said:

Very unfortunate with the Jesus injury. The fact that he went home is probably a sign that he’s gonna be out a while. Seeing 3 months. Just a gut punch man 

Yeah he’s been criticized by a lot of Arsenal fans on fan forums for not finishing chances, but what he has allowed us to do in attack overall compared to last year seems obvious to me. His pressing, hold up play, dribbling have really increased our level of attack.

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On 11/27/2022 at 1:09 PM, NickButera said:

Need to see how Jan goes IMO. I heard the Man City game is going to be rescheduled in Jan, alongside our normal games of Newcastle, Man U and Spurs. It's going to be a gauntlet. 

At this point, given the gaps we've built up, Top 4 is ours to lose.  I'm still holding off on considering us challengers for the title until we get get some sort of result off City; we have to take at least a point off them out of the 2 fixtures.

The silver lining to Jesus' injury is that we were winning and scoring in spite of him going through a patch of poor finishing, so if Eddie is able to (*fingers crossed* because he was showing good progress in that dept in the friendlies against Lyon and Milan) lessen the loss of Jesus' presence in terms of pressing, helping transmit the ball through the midfield (God-willing, having a fit Zinchenko, if and when that ever occurs will bolster this big time), we've shown the fire-power from the rest of our front 4 to still not be struggling to score.  Add in the return in January of our leading scorer from last season in ESR and the at least better-than-even odds that we add depth in attack in the January window and we should be able to survive till March when, if everything's on track, Jesus returns.

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On 12/20/2022 at 4:57 PM, Dr LBC said:

At this point, given the gaps we've built up, Top 4 is ours to lose.  I'm still holding off on considering us challengers for the title until we get get some sort of result off City; we have to take at least a point off them out of the 2 fixtures.

The silver lining to Jesus' injury is that we were winning and scoring in spite of him going through a patch of poor finishing, so if Eddie is able to (*fingers crossed* because he was showing good progress in that dept in the friendlies against Lyon and Milan) lessen the loss of Jesus' presence in terms of pressing, helping transmit the ball through the midfield (God-willing, having a fit Zinchenko, if and when that ever occurs will bolster this big time), we've shown the fire-power from the rest of our front 4 to still not be struggling to score.  Add in the return in January of our leading scorer from last season in ESR and the at least better-than-even odds that we add depth in attack in the January window and we should be able to survive till March when, if everything's on track, Jesus returns.

I’m not so worried about Jesus missing because of his goal scoring, it’s more about what his overall game has done to our attack. His dribbling, passing, pressing and close control is something I don’t think Eddie can replicate.

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Eddie can replicate it; not to the level that Jesus can - but there are next-to-no plug-and-play Gabriel Jesus type forwards in world football.  What a fit Zinchenko does give us though is a player opposite White who can play the inverted FB role on the opposite side, assuming a double-pivot-esque shape with Partey, which then allows Xhaka more freedom to push up even more so similar to how he does for Switzerland.  And in a system like ours that is predicated on compressing the opposition within their own half and forcing a clear delineation between their back line and their midfielders, and then capitalizing on the space created to create, flow, and run channels for opportunities on-goal (where this is most evident is in comparing and contrasting the two halves yesterday, West Ham and Moyes did a very good job in the first half fighting off being forced into that compactness through disciplined as-a-team movement to not allow us to create that space as easily... but we wore them down with upped-intensity - because sustaining that discipline against intensity for 90 minutes is extraordinarily difficult - in the 2nd half and when they broke, they broke completely).

Eddie doesn't need to do what Jesus was doing... all the time.  He just needs to be able to do it effectively some of the time, while others will pick up the slack (Odegaard was immense at this yesterday) at other times in the game.  I have no doubt we'll drop points at some point during Jesus' absence, but if we can avoid having those days where the whole forward or midfield unit is just having "one of those days (where they're just not getting anything right)," we should be able to keep those nicks from turning into gaping wounds.

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