ARSENAL LOOKING SMARTER BY THE WEEK

I have been spending the last week rolling around in my own Spurs slander glory. Arsenal beat them at the weekend. Spurs looked shite. They were held to a 0-0 draw away from home in Frankfurt… yeah, a back-door Europa League team that has been AVERAGE this season. Spurs fans are now waking up to... Read more »

I have been spending the last week rolling around in my own Spurs slander glory.

Arsenal beat them at the weekend.

Spurs looked shite.

They were held to a 0-0 draw away from home in Frankfurt… yeah, a back-door Europa League team that has been AVERAGE this season.

Spurs fans are now waking up to the truth: all the little teenage football twitter accounts with Del Piero avatars just might have been over-egging how good the Italian is… because they’re calling for his head now.

You know what makes this all a little sexier? Yves Bissouma, the Twitter favourite from last season is fit, and he’s only managed 180 minutes of football this season. It can’t be because he’s failed to adapt to the pace of the league, can it?

Remember all the folk telling us how amazing Perisic is? How youthful did he look next to Saka?

Unreal. So much winning right now. Even though it could be short-lived. The big hope is Spurs get battered by Brighton at the weekend because a week like that only means one thing: A Conte meltdown.

Bring it on baby.

The big journos are reporting a new bit of sexy information on the contracts of Bukayo, Martinelli, and Saliba…

All of their deals are expiring BUT Arsenal has options on all three.

• Saliba 1 year
• Martinelli 2 years
• Saka 1 year

That means we don’t really need to panic next summer because if they opt to not sign a deal, we can keep them on the cheap until the season after.

The more likely scenario with all three players is they’ll accept those fat NOW wages and maybe ditch the options in the process.

There’s a lot of heat that Bukayo will sign for £200k a week. I have no doubt Gabi M will sign, those Chelsea links look pitifully sad. The big question with Saliba isn’t whether he’ll want to bump his £40k a week deal… it’s to what level.

All these problems are good ones to have. Arsenal are run well these days. It pains me it took so long to get here, but whatever.

The Europa League – the greatest of the continental tournaments – is back with a BANG.

There’s a crap ‘Martin is Norwegian’ narrative. For me, the only story worth telling is this needs to be an Arsenal win + a good performance.

We have to remember it’s hard. We’re not massively into these games, nor are the players, and that can lead to a drop-off. But… we aren’t footballers. We don’t have careers to play for. Mikel Arteta will be looking at his starting 11 to see who has what it takes.

Reiss Nelson is the one we’re all going to be focused on if he starts. The English winger has failed to grasp his chance. He’s had attitude issues home and on loan. I’ve been told by people in the game he has all the ingredients to be what Jadon was in Germany. He’s looking a million miles from that. But sometimes, a loan to a smaller division can sharpen the mind, could we see something from him?

Who knows…

The game is at home. Arteta needs to avoid the temptation to go with a first team, especially considering Liverpool went all in on their normal first team yesterday. Fresh legs is the only way we do anything against the Scousers this weekend. I don’t think we’ll go all kids, but we can afford to leave at least 70% on the bench.

Smashing teams in these games means you don’t have to field a first team to rescue yourselves in the drab months. Spurs are fucking up their CL group. There’s no chance their last game will mean nothing. Same for Chelsea. That could be painful for fatigued legs.

Ok, that’s me done on the football stuff. So how about a treat for the Patreon crew? We are dropping our David Dein EXCLUSIVE interview on Patreon here. It’s a wide-ranging interview, but needless to say, the guy is an absolute LEGEND of Arsene Wenger-like proportions and the content is not to be missed.

I’ll do a deeper dive on David AND his book tomorrow, but if you want a fix of something special now, get on that Patreon.