Dr. Gonzo

They should just disown the United fan

Apparently the Dutch kid we signed is partnering Gomez in defense tonight

Wait do you not want to see Iwobi starting? Or Sigurdsson back in at #10? Or both?

With Klopp he inherited a side that was absolute fucking crap and nowhere near as bad as you were ever under Wenger. But in his first season (which was a mid-season manager swap, which is never easy imo) we might not have always gotten the results we wanted... but the on pitch performances were SO MUCH BETTER than the shite Rodgers was serving us. And then after that season, it's just been gradual improvement to get us to where we are now. Like you say, you can stomach not consistently getting results if you're seeing improvement on the pitch. But if you're getting poor results and poor performances... like we're seeing this year from Emery it becomes much tougher to say "yeah, give him more time - he just needs more time to make it right." He's still got the rest of the season to turn performances and results around... but the way he sets Arsenal up to play despite your side's obvious strengths in attack and obvious weaknesses at the back make me think it's unlikely he's going to have any big tactical revelation.

Being a sporting director in Brazil is IMO a bit different to being sporting director at a European club - when Brazilian clubs sign Brazilians/other South Americans they're not necessarily looking for the same qualities as what European clubs, particularly those the size of Arsenal, are looking for when they sign players from Brazil/elsewhere. The sporting directors in Brazil are more like hunters (I guess miners is the better example) looking for rough stones they can cut up to make gemstones. A sporting director at a club like Arsenal's job is to look at the various gemstones and determine which ones he can bring in for a fair price that'll either be precious gemstones (those obviously class players) or... that will glisten the right way under the floodlights of the stadium (those players that fit in with the system that the sporting director/manager have built). Honestly looking at your transfers over the last two seasons, it's hard to tell how good of a job Edu has done in his role. There's been some good signings, some good signings on paper that haven't quite panned out, and some bad signings. It's really hard to tell though when you've got a manager that's struggled - because it'll make everyone, even the good players, look worse.

Honestly, I think whoever was going to come in after Wenger was going to have a hard time. Yeah, Wenger went stale and clearly lost his touch - but he's probably Arsenal's best manager ever, he's a club legend and also a legend to English football. I don't think Emery's a bad manager - but I also don't think he's the right manager to kick Arsenal onto the next level. He might take them far in cups, but once you get to the final that's always a bit of a crapshoot in most cases. I also question whether Arsenal fans are patient enough to allow their next manager to build a side. Because when you look at Arsenal in the last years under Wenger, it does seem as though they lost their identity. When you look at Emery's Arsenal in most cases... they don't play with a cohesive identity. I mean... it doesn't help that Emery's been a bit shit tactically in the league. It will take time for a new manager to stamp his impression on the side and give them some character. But just because I don't know if Arsenal fans are patient enough to wait... doesn't mean I think they need to be patient here with Emery. I think the on-pitch performances (not the results, just the performances), especially from this season, are not what I'd say indicate that this is the man for a long term project. I think first things first, though, Arsenal need to bring in a sporting director with a track record of some success at some other club in Europe.

Anytime Woodward speaks, all he does is string a load of corporate buzzwords together into a sentence to explain how things are good for Manchester United. Never understood how the Glazers haven’t said “Right, nice buzzwords but what about the constant regression since we’ve lost the guy who was here for decades?”

Look how much they’ve spent since he left too. The Glazers are a bunch of twats for putting shitload of debt on the club when they bought it. But they’ve spent money to be competitive - they just have an incompetent idiot in Woodward making decisions for them

Right, how many shots did you have?

No, Trent's obviously a more well rounded player - he was originally supposed to be a midfielder. He's playing as a fullback because in our system he's a top modern fullback.

There's a toxic atmosphere around Arsenal right now - it's been building up over the years (I actually think the popularity of that ArsenalFanTV or whatever the fuck the name is on youtube has actually played a big part in swaying large parts of the fanbase online - and they go to matches getting peoples reactions, so I think they've fanned the flames a bit). But that toxicity will affect the players, so you can't just go around reacting to the boos like that when you're the captain and there are already a lot of people questioning whether or not you even belong at the club... let alone are captaining it. I always thought Xhaka was a weird choice for Emery to give the captaincy to - aside from quality on the pitch, which I'll just say is inconsistent at best, he's never really struck me as someone that'll stand up and be counted when Arsenal need it - he doesn't visably act like a leader like some of the players previously mentioned, where they're a general on the pitch. And with the inconsistency, he's not the sort of player you can count on to lead through inspiration. And on top of that, he's obviously not been popular with the matchgoing fans. It's tough for Xhaka, because going off to a chorus of boos like that cannot feel good. But right now he's the controversially appointed captain of a side that's got a manager under pressure and not really handling that pressure all that well, so he's got to expect some of that stick from the fans. It's part of his job, even if it's difficult. Emery's caught between a rock and a hard place, because I think under normal circumstances at any club you take the captaincy away from a player that reacts like that. Were the fans right to be booing? Probably not - but he's the captain he can't react and put up another point of contention between the fans and the players. The fans and players should be pulling together and any barriers to that are just going to keep this toxic atmosphere going. But now he has to walk a tightrope between pissing off the captain he's newly appointed and placating the fans. Personally, I'm not sure the toxicity of this season at Arsenal will subside until Emery's gone. The tactics on display for Arsenal in away matches this season don't demonstrate a man that's going to take Arsenal anywhere in the league - cup runs are his best chance of success. Boring football with low energy and low effort from the players are not going to keep any fans happy. But it'd be a good story for him (and Xhaka) if they can get some redemption for themselves this season. So I hope that happens. I don't think it will, but it'd be a nice story for the season.

And ever since he came through at Palace, I've said he's a very good defensive minded fullback. Not all systems and clubs use defensive fullbacks though. And in modern football, we've seen over the years a rise in fullbacks that are asked to do just more than fullbacks are traditionally for - and at clubs employing those systems, fullbacks are supposed to be incredibly well rounded players. Also is it surprising that a fullback at a club where the manager likes to set up fairly deep and the side is most comfortable on the counter has more tackles than a fullback at a club where the defensive line is typically very high and the club usually has 60-70% possession (or more) most games? I'd say, no - not really. That's sort of a product of how the sides are set up to perform.

Well ones an attacking midfielder with the most expensive and probably most high powered attack in the country, and the other is a fullback at the best club in the universe. Still impressive as fuck for that kind of creation coming from a 21 year old fullback.

Which player in the league has the most key passes this season? I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking "KdB" at City... but they'd be wrong. It's a young defender who's had 2 full seasons where he's reached the CL final.

Joemez against City seems like a better option

Or just say “don’t be a fucking Nazi like Kel”

That's not great news

You know the problem probably lies in the hierarchy of referees. Why do I say this? Because Mike fucking Riley is the managing director of PGMOL. Mike Riley was a terrible referee - his career as official was marred with a mix of incompetence and controversy, why the fuck is he in charge of implementing VAR in this country (probably the biggest structural change to the sport since the backpass rule)? Step one to fixing VAR would be binning off Mike Riley, he should never have been the managing director of PGMOL, it's a disgrace he's been there this long, and he's certainly not the right kind of mind we want to have implementing VAR in the country. Secondly, we should compare how it's implemented here (after this season with our current rules) to literally every other league that uses VAR around the world. Then they need to look at what leagues have the lowest "error" rates with VAR and investigate the differences between their VAR interpretations and our own VAR interpretations. Binning off VAR is an easier solution, but it's here to stay. So now we should be looking at how to use it as a tool to increase referee competence and fan's competence in the officials. Rather than what it is now, which is a fairly divisive implementation of video review that many of us question "what's the point of this?" outside of when it's used for offside decisions.

The refs for the match against Villa are... Jon Moss (regular ref), and Martin fuckin' Atkinson (VAR ref). Jon Moss is too fat to be a ref and Atkinson put in a shambolic performance on the pitch not too long ago for me to want him doing the VAR review. Not too happy with this.

I think I'm beginning to understand why I disagree with VAR referees so much. The other guy did matches in Australia and various Asian leagues, whenever I watch Asian football for international qualifiers I'm always thinking "lol where did they find these officials." And now I'm hearing of these inexperienced VAR refs and I've seen some VAR decisions and thought "lol where did they find these officials."

Well this was the VAR ref for Arsenal-Crystal Palace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarred_Gillett He's only done nine football league matches in England. The rest of his career was in Australia (and as part of an exchange he's done various Asian league refereeing - which tbh isn't that great of a standard of officiating).

Whooooaaa if the UK ends up with anywhere near same shite system of healthcare as the US, that's not good news for anyone. American drug prices are an absolute fucking scam and the American pharmaceutical industry is so incredibly predatory. You couple that with private health insurance and the entire healthcare industry looks like an awful awful scam here. Here I get my health insurance through work, but I still have to pay a fraction of it out of my wages - I think I pay about 4% of my paycheck into my insurance. I have good coverage, but it still feels like a ripoff. And in the U.S., I think most people don't have their employers pay for their insurance (I think it's 51% have their own insurance) - for them the costs are higher because they're paying 100% of that bill. Right now even drug companies in the U.S. give preferential rates to Medicaid - their state run health system. For everyone else in the country, the rates are significantly higher for drug prices because they've negotiated with individual health insurance companies what the values of each drug costs. So @Stan is absolutely right, if the rate NHS pays for drugs is on the negotiating table, it is CRITICAL that the information about the pricing is made public. If drug prices in the UK get anywhere near what they are in the U.S. - the NHS is absolutely fucked. The austerity goons will point to how expensive it is to maintain the NHS after these new drug prices come into effect, and then all of a sudden there will be a huge push for the dismantling of the NHS and selling facilities to private caregivers. This is after a bus was driven around the city saying the money we pay to the EU will go towards the NHS - so this is a pretty big betrayal to Brexit voters who may have believed that load of shite, and surely by now must have come to terms with the fact that NHS would in fact probably be working with a smaller budget after Brexit than what as promised (although those people were fucking true). If we move to the U.S. model of healthcare, it's not going to be good for the working class - just like it's not for the working class in the United States (source: https://www.apexedi.com/medical-bills-the-leading-cause-of-bankruptcy-in-the-united-states/). It's also not good for business generally - there's lots of evidence that shows having a well working public health system (like NHS) means that employers don't need to provide expensive health insurance for their workers (because in a business perspective, a healthy workforce is a productive workforce - if you've got people that are constantly ill, that's people that you either need to replace, which costs money, or those workers are less productive because they're constantly ill, which costs money). And it's particularly bad for smaller businesses, as health insurance can be very costly - so that's a big chunk of capital that smaller businesses would be otherwise using to grow their businesses. So really two opposite ends that feel the biggest brunt of that... assuming that these pharmaceuticals are interested in having UK prices be closer to what they are in the US. And even if it doesn't come close to US prices and is just a minor increase, any price increase means a higher cost to maintain the NHS at it's current standards. As said above, the NHS should not and should never be a part of a trade deal with any nation. Especially not the one developed country with the predatory form of healthcare.

That's mental

I think the worst thing about VAR is now fans don’t have to deal with one idiot referee that doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. They’ve got to deal with 2 idiots now - and the one of the idiots gets to defy reasonable expectations of competence by getting to watch a replay to make the wrong decision

Yeah but now it’s very obvious when a ref fucks up and controversy is probably higher when VAR doesn’t fix the error. And what I saw with that James dive yesterday was totally fucking ridiculous. The referee correctly said no penalty, VAR stepped in and said “nah its a penalty.” After reviewing the fucking video! That should NEVER happen, it’s an absolute joke.