Arsenal 1 Manchester United 2. Confirmation bias is alive and well.

Arsenal 1 Manchester United 2



In his book about Pep Guardiola’s first season at Bayern Munich, Marti Perarnau recounts asking Guardiola what the best performance was from his Barcelona side in the time he managed them between 2008 and 2011. Guardiola ponders for a while before answering.

You might think he would choose one of his two Champions League final wins. Perhaps the 5-0 win against Real Madrid in the Clasico. But instead, Guardiola names the first half of Barcelona’s 2-2 draw at the Emirates in 2010 as the best he ever saw his team play, a half which finished 0-0.

Here we have the man acclaimed as perhaps modern football’s greatest coach, thinker and tactician naming a half which finished 0-0 as the best ever performance from a team which won everything and dominated European football for three seasons. If this isn’t evidence that sometimes performances don’t translate into results - but you can still appreciate it as a good performance - I’m not sure what is.

Which is why I find criticism of Arsene Wenger based on Saturday’s Arsenal-Manchester United match utterly misconceived. Honestly, it’s reached a point where people are so keen to draw an artificial binary distinction in the Arsenal fanbase between “AKBs” and “#Wengerout” that every single negative event has to be spun in such a way that if you want the manager to leave, that negative event must be his fault. Presumably people are worried that it’s intellectually incoherent to argue that you want the manager to leave and then acknowledge that some of the problems with this team are not his fault.

As it happens, I’m for Wenger staying but that doesn’t mean I defend everything he does. But to watch the United game and say defeat was the manager's fault just proves that confirmation bias is alive and well amongst many Arsenal fans. Given that the team was set up perfectly to take advantage of United’s weak defence, didn’t have its goal threatened until a highly unlucky own goal, and should have been out of sight before half-time, I find it hard to blame the manager. I do wonder whether people who are criticising the manager for this result, would do so if you conducted a thought experiment where one team played in blue, one in yellow, and they didn’t know the wider context of the two teams. I’d hazard a guess they wouldn’t.

Personally, I’d blame the loss on the poor conversion rates of the forward players. But note that while Santi Cazorla, Danny Welbeck and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are going through barren patches in front of goal, only Chamberlain has a habit of pinging hopeful shots from distance and even his conversion rates are not that bad. In other words, in a normal season, you would write off Saturday’s match as a statistical anomaly and move on - even Arsenal don’t often lose games in which the opposition only had one shot on target.

Unfortunately, it’s not a normal season. I think most people acknowledge that a team can be unlucky in one game, but few would accept that as an excuse for prolonged poor form. Alas, they’re wrong.

I think that’s what happening to Arsenal at the moment, and the numbers bear it out. This Grantland piece details how Arsenal had the best underlying numbers in both defence and attack before this weekend’s match - a match in which Arsenal had nine shots on target to the opposition’s two.

This sort of thing has happened before. The reason Liverpool’s title run last season was actually reasonably predictable was that they were scoring far fewer goals than would be expected per match, based on the chances created in 2012-13. Over time, things regress to the mean.

A similar story is currently available at Newcastle, where a team which had been on an unlucky run starts to turn it around. And the ongoing bad run of form is similarly in evidence at Borussia Dortmund, who blew a two goal lead this weekend and continue to sit in the relegation zone of the Bundesliga, despite dominating match after match.

And this is the issue for me with claims of it’s “same old, same old” for Arsenal. Sure, Arsenal dominated the match against Manchester United and conceded a soft goal on the counter-attack. But claiming this was like the Arsenal of, say, 2009-10 is simply untrue. Then, Arsenal let teams counter-attack repeatedly, didn’t have significantly more shots on goal than the opposition against big teams, and had a defensive midfielder in Denilson who was dribbled past over and over again. When Arsenal lost 3-1 at home to Man United in January 2010, it was difficult to claim that was unrepresentative of the match.

More importantly, that was almost five years ago. In the meantime, Arsenal won a few games against big teams but never really dominated the game. That changed in an enormous way on Saturday. Last season, against a poor United team, there was very little pressure on them in either game. This time around, Arsenal created a hatful of chances and should killed the game by half-time. That it remained 0-0 was a result of extremely poor chance conversion but in the long-run, given these players aren’t shooting from sub-optimal positions, there’s little reason to expect Arsenal’s poor results to continue.

That shows that at least in terms of the tangible, Arsenal have improved and there’s a lot to be optimistic about. Ah, you might say, but the mentality of this team is one of underdogs against bigger teams, and Wenger spins a narrative of how Arsenal are fighting an uphill battle. In other words, there are intangible, statistically unmeasurable factors at work which are impacting on Arsenal’s form.

I don’t doubt it’s possible for statistically unmeasurable things to have an affect. Certainly, once Arsenal start to win a few games, confidence will rise and momentum will return. But I find it hard to believe that this manager is a block to that occurring. I appreciate this is more opinion than fact-based, but given the way Arsenal attacked United on Saturday in a manner which I hadn’t seen for years, I reject the contention that Wenger instills a negative mentality in the players. Quite the opposite in fact. Consistently, even when Arsenal were not very good, Wenger would be in the press bigging the players up and saying they could win the League. If anything, it’s the case that he goes too far the other way.

In terms of this season, winning the League title is almost certainly a write-off. But it was only a small chance at the beginning of the season - and that was without losing our best defender for a prolonged period, best striker for a prolonged period, and best player for several months.

For me, the manager is at fault for not bringing in another defender. But equally, Chelsea have exactly the same number of first-team defenders (six). Go and check their website if you do not believe me. Neither Koscielny or Debuchy’s injuries are the result of the dreaded ‘over-training’ but rather in one case, a trauma injury, and in the other, an ongoing medical condition, for which there is limited medical treatment.

What people fail to recognise is that the issue with the defence at the moment is less one of personnel, and more one of a lack of playing time together. That’s when players get the understanding necessary to defend effectively. In time - even were Debuchy and Koscielny to remain injured - I would expect the occasional defensive error which is drifting in (quite literally, sometimes) to Arsenal’s game to lessen in frequency.

Thus far this season, while missing a series of key players, Arsenal have still dominated almost every match they’ve played. In time, the goals will come, and Arsenal will move up the League table.

Keep the faith.

It's all about the money, money, money

Across Arsene Wenger’s 18 years in charge, there have been few consistent trends. One that does stand though is that Arsenal have pretty much always done better in seasons not preceded by an international tournament. The three seasons in which Arsenal have won the League under Wenger, he had a full pre-season. More recently, seasons in which Arsenal have challenged for the League title have tended to begin in odd years (07-08, 09-10, 13-14). The only real exception to this trend is 2011-12, and that’s fairly easily explained away by the disruption caused by the prolonged departures of Messrs Fabregas and Nasri.

Obviously, there’s a big difference between spotting a statistical trend and explaining it. As I am wont to say far too often, correlation is not causation. But in this instance, the sample size is large enough to argue with a reasonable degree of confidence that the cause of the trend is that Wenger teams do better when he has more time with them in pre-season. And that therefore, Wenger is - contrary to popular perception - good at coaching his teams.

The skill of great managers is to build a team which plays in a way that it becomes more than the sum of its parts. That’s particularly important for Arsenal: the club is simply never going to be as rich as Manchester City or Chelsea and so needs to overcome having weaker players by playing better as a team.

That’s something which is very difficult to work on during a season. I’ve really enjoyed reading ex-pro David Farrell’s blog in recent weeks, with his insider’s take on what it’s like to play as a professional footballer. This is his explanation of how training often works:

There is a general pattern most clubs will follow throughout the working week. Sunday/Monday will generally be recovery days. Light sessions of gentle exercise, five-a-sides, pool work and massage after the weekend game. Tuesday is the day when the main fitness work of the week is done. Aerobic work, strength and conditioning training, and more demanding possession and pressing sessions, alongside possible gym work in the afternoon. Wednesday is the traditional day off to allow for recovery from the exertions of the previous day. Thursday is usually when the technical work, practice matches and team shape is done, working towards the match and exploiting the opposition’s weaknesses, allied with some crossing and finishing and some small-sided games. Finally Friday, a light session, five-a-sides and possibly some set-plays. Some teams will also do some short, sharp sprint work to ready the legs and mind for the challenges of the match.

Note that this weekly schedule is entirely contingent on playing one game a week. At the point you play twice a week, you still need at least one day off, you still need some recovery time, you still need to do fitness work, but you have an extra day devoted to playing a football match. That leaves far less time for players to build the understanding needed to play together, particularly playing at the sort of intensity which is actually helpful in preparing for matches.

You can see how having a shorter pre-season for most of the squad, but particularly for key players like Mesut Ozil and Per Mertesacker, would actively diminish Arsenal’s play. Without pre-season, at a top club playing twice a week, it becomes much harder to build the understanding necessary to make a team tick. It’s one of the reasons why Santi Cazorla’s first season was so exceptionally impressive, in that he didn’t have a pre-season with his team-mates but was still consistently superb.

This lengthy goes at least some way to explain Arsenal’s travails this season. The next question is to what extent is the manager responsible. While he was never going to get a full pre-season after the World Cup, have his tactical choices exacerbated the problem?

To be honest, I don’t really buy in to the narrative of some wholesale system change this season. Insofar as the midfield three might be 2+1, rather than 1+2, yes. But I struggle to see why that should be be the biggest causal link behind Arsenal’s poorer performances year-on-year.

Probably the biggest tactical change has to been to favour more wing attacks, pushing the full-backs higher up the pitch, and asking the defensive midfield player to sit a little deeper. I think that’s a change based on personnel, but one that Wenger would philosophically want to make.

He’s an attacking coach by nature, whose philosophy of wing play is that if the opposition push players forward that leaves us space to exploit, and if they don’t, then there’s no harm in throwing players forward. And I’m not convinced those have been misguided tactics. With the personnel available, I think we were always going to ship a few goals this season. Chambers does not strike me as a full-back and Oxlade-Chamberlain is never going to be competent enough defensively to protect a full-back. So the attempted solution has been to outscore the opposition.

It hasn’t really worked, but in my eyes it hasn’t worked for two reasons. One, profligacy: the most curious aspect of the draw against Anderlecht was the over-abundance of missed chances. Against Leicester, 24 shots and just one goal. Against Tottenham, 16 shots and one goal. Against Hull, 25 shots and a scraped equaliser during injury time. Heck, even away at Chelsea we restricted them to just three shots on target - problem is, we haven’t taken our chances.

And that for me has been the biggest issue. I don’t think that’s a failure of the tactical system. I think it’s a failure of certain player’s finishing (especially Oxlade-Chamberlain) and just a bad run which is unlikely to hold in the long run. Similarly, I think Szczesny is a good goalkeeper and we will concede fewer goals as the season progresses.

The second reason for Arsenal’s problems has been a quirk of the fixture list. Arsenal have thus far dropped ten points from six games following Champions League matches, all of which have been in away games. In my season preview, I suggested Arsenal repeatedly having to play away after playing midweek would have a knock-on effect and it has. When you have a smaller squad than your rivals - at least in terms of depth of talent - it makes it far harder to rotate, and this means that your players are carrying minutes in the legs the opposition aren’t. Couple that with the fact it’s considerably harder to play away from home and it becomes especially difficult to win.

It’s one reason I expect a noticeable upturn in form over the next few weeks. After the Dortmund home game, there should hopefully be no competitive Champions League games until mid-February. This added energy, combined with the return of key players such as Theo Walcott (who is rarely guilty of the aforementioned profligacy) should give Arsenal the chance to kick on.

Ultimately, you might say that every season under Arsene Wenger is ‘same old, same old’. I don’t agree. I think in terms of personnel, Arsenal have improved sufficiently that they might well be able to beat a bigger team in the Champions League, something they have struggled with for several years.

But more importantly, even if you believe that the manager is tactically bereft, would another manager also be able to overcome the vast resource disparity between Arsenal and the two better teams in England? Because if not, you should be exceptionally wary of throwing away the benefits having Arsene Wenger as manager brings. The aspects in which Arsenal’s seasons are similar is that they do not win the League: that’s not the fault of the manager.

Keep the faith.

Five thoughts on Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0

Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0

This was not “same old, same old”
For sixty minutes, Arsenal were very good. Playing a better team away from home, Arsenal were reasonably in control. One moment of skill from Eden Hazard had cut Arsenal open but for the most part, Arsenal were defensively solid and producing quick counter attacks.

In such matches, it’s the small margins which count - Jack Wilshere’s heavy first touch when in on goal, Santi Cazorla’s missed attempt to bring Hazard down, Martin Atkinson failing to send Gary Cahill off and letting Oscar kick the shit out of the Arsenal players for 70 minutes before finally deigning to show him a yellow card.

But if you don’t believe Arsenal were good, watch the game again and watch Cesc Fabregas off the ball - I won’t pretend to have watched absolutely every Chelsea game this season, or every Barca game for the previous three, but I watched enough (and 200+ games at Arsenal) to know that Fabregas normally does not work even nearly that hard. I was actually really surprised he lasted all 90 minutes given the amount of work he was forced to do. Similarly, look at how Branislav Ivanovic - one of Chelsea’s best attacking players this season, hardly ventured forward.

And that was in no small part down to the great movement of Arsenal’s front six. There were a couple of frustrating occasions when good opportunities to shoot were passed up, but in the main, Arsenal were patient and probing and looked very much like they would score at least one goal.

To some extent, that changed with the substitutions. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is a very talented player but I’m not convinced he’s the player you want when Chelsea are sitting deep, particularly given his telegraphed passing (in action once again yesterday) is exactly the sort of thing which gives Chelsea the chance to counter.

What does it all mean?
Pointing out Arsenal played well does not imply happiness with the result or diminished expectations. Only an idiot would compare with last season’s game to consider where Arsenal are at, given Chelsea scored two once-a-season goals and Arsenal had a player sent off before the game was even twenty minutes old. But what it does mean is that Arsenal can compete in this sort of game without surrendering the vast bulk of possession, like happened so often last season in away games.

Sure, you can make the case that it didn’t matter as Arsenal went to places like Swansea and hit them on the break. But it’s very hard to absorb pressure like that and that was borne out against better teams like Liverpool, Man City and Everton. By playing in a more positive way, Arsenal stand a much greater chance of getting results in games of this nature. That’s how the team has improved, for anybody who says Arsenal just replaced like with like this summer.

But it doesn’t mean you’re always going to win big away games - tight games swing on small margins, and yesterday those margins weren’t in Arsenal’s favour.

Incidentally, if you’re using this as a stick to beat Arsene Wenger with, check Barcelona’s away record in the Champions League under Pep Guardiola. Or that in eleven away League games to Arsenal since the Abramovich takeover, Chelsea have won just four times. Maybe it’s just quite hard playing away to good teams.

The Ozil narrative
Here’s the thing, Mesut Ozil wasn’t at his best yesterday. But there does seem to be a perception amongst a large proportion of Gooners that as he is our most expensive player, Ozil should always be the best player on the Arsenal team. And that if he’s not great - like yesterday - he should be dropped. In other words, he’s being judged by completely different criteria to everybody else in the team.

In Bacary Sagna’s penultimate season, he copped a load of abuse until people realised he was giving the ball away because nobody was offering him a passing option. There does seem to be a general trend for people only to blame the player involved in the last phase of an error. So Koscielny gets blamed for the Hazard penalty despite him going past three players first and Alexis giving the ball away for no reason, and Ozil gets blamed for losing the ball even if he has no passing option. It’s absolutely farcical. Ozil played okay yesterday - perhaps it’s worth remembering that even Lionel Messi went about three months without scoring a League goal from open play last season.

Complaints about the system is the new calling for a DM
By its very nature, a 4-2-3-1 with a double pivot transitions into 4-1-4-1 when a team is attacking. There’s certainly been a tactical tweak this season, but claiming that it has engendered an unnecessary season of transition is both completely premature and more importantly untrue. The actual issue is one of personnel and too many players who want to play in the same positions. It brings benefits - for example, Sanchez and Welbeck ensured Ivanovic couldn’t get forward yesterday - but it also means Arsenal’s attacking play can sometimes lack a diversity of options.

As ever, I’d encourage people to really think - you might disagree with the tactics on show, but there are usually intuitive reasons why a good manager would pursue particular tactics.

Checked expectations
Last season, Arsenal were very lucky with how the fixture list stacked up until December and the momentum gathered was definitely worth an extra few points - how many is pretty much impossible to quantify, but at least four or five. In other words, just to stand still this season (i.e. to get 79 points again) Arsenal needed to noticeably improve over the summer. Probably the squad did get better - injuries to Mathieu Debuchy, Nacho Monreal and Arteta (as well as Theo Walcott’s continued absence) have not helped Arsenal. But regardless, it was always asking a lot of a team who were widely tipped to finish fifth last season, to kick on this year and win the League?

Add in Arsenal’s tough start to the season - already played four of last season’s top six within the first seven games - and there’s a lot to be encouraged about. I think people would be a lot happier if three points had been taken away to Leicester, and that was basically a freak result. Ultimately, your perception of how the season is going probably depends on whether you expected a serious title challenge.

Keep the faith.

It Ain't So Bad

A couple of years back Arsenal had a Dutchman playing up front who scored lots and lots of goals. So people drew up pointless League tables showing “Arsenal without Van Persie” to show the team’s dependency on him.

In case you were in any doubt, this was an immensely stupid thing to do. Because - here’s something amazing - if Arsenal hadn’t played Van Persie, they would have played somebody else in his place. In fact, the sheer ridiculousness of this so-called thought experiment was born out the following season when Arsenal were indeed without Van Persie but finished fourth, rather than the fifteenth the tables indicated. Funny that.

I mention this because the latest one was this weekend people tweeting that not only were Arsenal doing worse than last season but “imagine where we’d be without the late goals against Everton and Palace”. Apart from anything else, this is a facile thing to tweet because it doesn’t require much imagination.

But much more importantly, football matches last 90 minutes. It’s a drum I’ve banged relentlessly but to reiterate, having good stamina is something incredibly valuable in football. Arsenal scored those late goals because they were fitter than the other teams. Which was partly a consequence of tactics in the Everton game, despite those tactics being feverishly criticised, probably by the same people.

If you watch the closing act of Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist” on its own, it’s impossible to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the farce ongoing. Watch the whole play and it sort of makes sense. At risk of a very stretched analogy, most of the discussion around Arsenal has reached the point where people are so determined to be ‘proved correct’ that they stretch the bounds of logic to breaking point and beyond, and it is just a constant farce.

To be clear, it hasn’t been brilliant so far this season. But the way idiots come out of hiding with the slightest sign of a bad result is ludicrous. The other one so far this season (back, in case you’d missed it since April) is that “Wenger is done at the top level”. The evidence for this seems to be that Arsenal took a bit of a shellacking against Dortmund.

This was then coupled with the untruth that Arsenal had consistently struggled in the biggest European games to ‘prove’ some sort of point.

But here’s the problem: on matchday one of this year’s Champions League, ten home teams won. One away team out of sixteen won, and they played against ten men for 75 minutes. All PSG’s money couldn’t get them a win away to Ajax. Atletico Madrid (with the manager many seem to want for Arsenal) lost away to Olympiakos. And yes, Arsenal lost to Dortmund.

But if you want to spot the odd one out, it’s that Dortmund are much better than Ajax or Olympiakos. And that this result was a rare aberration: Arsenal have consistently had an excellent away record over the last three seasons, roughly the life-span of the current team - seven wins, three draws, and four defeats, two of which came in dead games in Athens. It doesn’t exactly strike of being done at the highest level.

For all Arsenal’s relative lack of success in the Champions League, you’d be hard-pressed to claim Arsenal had been knocked out by an inferior team since 2007. Since 2005, only three poorer clubs have reached the Champions League final: Liverpool, Atletico Madrid and Dortmund. Liverpool have since endured four years outside the Champions League and now appear to have a manager who isn’t much cop at signing players. Dortmund have done well in big games but struggled to beat smaller teams - I think Klopp is an excellent manager but struggling to beat Mainz (etc) is an issue for a top manager. Diego Simeone has done brilliantly so far but is also batshit crazy.

But it’s also a bit of a moot point - I think very few people would deny that there are some managers who are tactically better than Arsene Wenger. It doesn’t mean he’s completely useless, or anywhere close to it.

And here’s the key point - Arsenal haven’t changed their system this season just so that Wenger could save some money and not buy a defensive midfielder. That’s the argument of the people who genuinely think the manager gets a bonus for not spending money and is desperate to wallpaper his downstairs toilet with fifty pound notes.

The reality is that on a base level, Arsenal’s system last season went against the manager’s principles. It was, truth be told, a little boring. And so by playing a 4-3-3, Arsenal have greater fluidity, greater attacking purpose, and more bodies who can pile forward. Ignoring the Dortmund game as a freak game (the team was knackered from playing City), the stats show the team having more shots and more possession. Exactly the sort of stats you look for as positives. As it happens, I think Santi Cazorla needs to play more to give us greater defensive balance higher up the pitch, but in general there’s a lot to be optimistic about.

Because here’s the key thing: without playing particularly well (except for in patches against City), Arsenal are still fourth in the table. The only people who are really down are those who expected Arsenal to win the League this season. I was never one of those.

Keep the faith.

Six thoughts on Arsenal 2 Man City 2

Arsenal 2 Man City 2

This was good fun
Social media has seen a great democratisation of football analysis, with every man and his dog able to have a view on things, but it’s also led to a 24/7 discussion of all things Arsenal, leading to people taking football far too seriously.

I’ve never held any truck with the ‘philosophy’ Jose Mourinho espouses of win at all costs. I think football should be enjoyable, and I don’t derive enjoyment solely from winning at all costs. Football should be fun and if you don’t enjoy it, you’re doing it wrong.

So sure, were there tactical tweaks which might have made Arsenal’s life easier? Yep, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a highly enjoyable way to spend a Saturday lunchtime.

And to a large extent, that’s because this was the most entertaining display I’ve seen from Arsenal in a long time. Scintillatingly quick transitions from defence to attack allowed Ozil, Sanchez et al to really stretch the City defence. Arsenal’s reputation as entertainers (built in the era where Cesc Fabregas was the fulcrum of the side) stemmed from brilliant possession football in the opposition half and shooting from good positions.

This was different, but arguably more entertaining, with the ball zipping from one end to the other in just a few seconds. And at the heart of all that was Mesut Ozil. No doubt he will face criticism once again – a quick skim of my Twitter feed (and I like to think I largely follow sensible people) indicated that’s the case. But I don’t really see why; the difference between him and Fabregas is that he makes the ball move so much quicker, only ever taking one or two touches. A style based on quick transitions simply can’t contain Fabregas, and on the basis of yesterday’s performance, my hopes for the season are much higher. This was not just an entertaining performance – it was also a very, very good performance.

The curious case of Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil
Attacking players like Sanchez and Ozil are ultimately judged on goals and assists – but it’s only really fair to judge them over the course of the whole season. Some woeful decision-making from Alexis was one of the main reasons Arsenal trailed at half-time. Conversely, Ozil makes the right decision almost every time he gets the ball. But because he hasn’t really supplied any goals and assists so far this season – whereas Alexis already has three goals, the narrative is one of Ozil underperforming. I’m sure by the end of the season that wrong will have been righted. For the record, I thought Ozil was very good yesterday.

The Aaron Ramsey paradox
Ramsey has been miles worse than he was last season. I never expected him to score 30 goals this season, but his defensive work is lacking and he is taking up some bizarre positions. And yet because he is plausibly the fittest player in the team, you can’t really take him off after 70 minutes if he’s having a bad game, because it’s so likely that his stamina will tell towards the end of games. His goals against Palace and Everton are testament to that.

To lose the first half was a travesty
Ignore the bollocks about it being “so very Arsenal”. That’s only if you discount the last three years where Arsenal have rarely dominated big games even for ten minutes, let alone 35-40 minutes. It’s a completely different team from the one which used to get hit on the counter-attack, and the first City goal stemmed from a sensationally good piece of play from Jesus Navas.

But to dominate territory to such a great extent – presumably this was the last big game start ever for Frank Lampard – and to go in 1-0 down was incredibly harsh on Arsenal. Danny Welbeck must take some blame – sure he’s only had two training sessions but you don’t need team practice to finish the chance he had. Just imagine the reaction of Gervinho had missed it.

Mark Clattenburg was atrocious
And I don’t say that as a partisan point – I thought there was quite possibly a foul in the build-up to the first Arsenal goal. But its pretty galling to read criticism of Arsenal’s “lack of steel” when every time Arsenal players committed a slightly bad foul they picked up a yellow card. James Milner’s foul on Mathieu Debuchy in the City left-back position just before half-time should be shown at conferences as the dictionary definition of a yellow card foul. Clattenburg’s decision? Just a free kick. Rotational fouling is something that happens and I can deal with. But Milner committed three yellow card offences and emerged from the game without a caution to his name. Farcical.

Arsenal’s Carling Cup line-up will be very interesting
Presumably with yesterday’s injury to Debuchy, the team against Southampton will be a mix of a comically inexperienced defence and then a very experienced midfield and attack, with Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky and Lukas Podolski desperately in need of game time. And the way Wojciech Szczesny’s been playing, it will be a good opportunity for David Ospina to show what he can do.

Keep the faith.

5 thoughts on the Champions League draw

Most fans’ views on Twitter are very odd
Of all the bizarre complaints, people who were asking not to draw Olympiacos were the strangest.

If you’re somebody who actually goes to matches, every person I know who’s been to Athens (whether for Arsenal or just for a holiday) has said what a great city it is - even if they’ve been multiple times.

If you don’t go to matches, you should have wanted to draw Olympiacos because they were one of the weakest teams in their pot and so were a plum draw for Arsenal.

The conclusion I’ve come to is simple: people are talking rubbish on Twitter. Who knew?

The fixtures could have fallen better
Although the draw was a favourable one which Arsenal should qualify from, the way the fixtures fall is not. Playing away in Dortmund just three days after a tough Premier League game against Manchester City is not ideal. Similarly, having the most important fixture (Galatasaray at home) sandwiched between games against Spurs and Chelsea is not what I would have chosen.

As I wrote in my season preview, Arsenal have an atrocious record playing away after playing Champions League midweek. It’s already been born out by dropped points against Everton. Playing away after five out of six of the group games could well be what kills any small hope of Arsenal winning the League.

The TV pairing system is patently ridiculous
I find it very strange that people complain about the coefficient system but not about UEFA’s use of TV pairings when making the draw. Because Dortmund are paired with Schalke for TV coverage, once Chelsea had drawn Schalke there was a one in three chance Arsenal would draw Dortmund again. That’s not a random draw and it’s why we keep seeing the same fixtures over and over again.

Sure, hate on the coefficient system for reinforcing the status quo - but the Champions League would be more interesting if the groups weren’t so similar. And the worst part it is that the TV pairings are done for TV, but it actually makes for worse TV. It’s hard to get people excited about Arsenal vs Dortmund for the fifth time in three years.

The Nouveau Riche have changed the Champions League
It used to be the case that winning your group would have you nailed on for a favourable draw in the last 16. Now, with Bayern Munich and Man City in together, along with PSG and Barcelona, it’s eminently plausible that Arsenal could win the group and still find themselves up against one of the best teams in Europe in the last 16. Incidentally, Arsenal really need to get to the last eight this season - one more season of PSG and Dortmund doing well and Arsenal will almost certainly lose their spot in pot one.

There’s going to be a lot of ticketless Gooners in Brussels
Take everybody who ever goes to a European away game tweeting about how much they’ve enjoyed it, very cheap train tickets midweek to Brussels, and a small Anderlecht ground and what do you get? Far too many Gooners planning to go to Anderlecht.

It’s lucky that British people are so fond of the EU as I’m sure people will enjoy exploring the EU institutions instead of watching Arsenal!

Arsenal 2014-15 season preview

It feels slightly weird not to be going into the new season wondering at what point Arsenal might actually spend some money and strengthen the playing squad. For the first time in years, the Arsenal squad looks at least somewhat better than when the season ended.

What’s more, positive feeling in the stands tends to help on-pitch performances and there’s no doubt that Gooners are buoyant, with many even talking of winning the League. I’m just unsure we really should be.

The truth is that to get 79 points last season was a remarkable return from that squad, particularly considering the injury problems in the second half of the season. Sagna was nowhere near as good as he used to be, Kieran Gibbs was improved but nothing special, Flamini is superb at kicking people but less good at kicking the ball and Szczesny was better without ever being brilliant.

And that’s just defensively. Offensively, you have a choice on the left wing between Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (yet to consistently deliver in goals or assists), Lukas Podolski (yet to actually ever sprint in an Arsenal shirt) and Santi Cazorla (not really a left winger). Combine that with question marks over Jack Wilshere, Mikel Arteta and Tomas Rosicky getting no younger and a great deal of uncertainty about how Theo Walcott will recover from his ACL and the optimism around the Arsenal camp seems more misplaced. That’s without even mentioning Olivier Giroud’s pretty average finishing.

I’m not trying to destroy the whole squad here, I’m just making the point there seems to be an awful lot of pressure on Koscielny and Mertesacker staying fit once again, and an expectation that Aaron Ramsey will continue to excel and Mesut Özil will kick on from an impressive first season.

So, the question is can Alexis Sanchez, Calum Chambers and Mathieu Debuchy push Arsenal on to greater things? I think there’s no doubt that Sanchez is an excellent signing for Arsenal, especially with Walcott injured. Even when Theo returns, Sanchez could fill the troublesome left-wing spot or provide an alternative to Giroud up front. With Özil delivering through-balls for both Walcott and Sanchez, Arsenal could score many, many more goals, as they really need to.

When I was previewing last season I said there needed to be more goals from midfield to really challenge - while Aaron Ramsey provided them, Theo Walcott’s injuries meant that the team was still short of goals. 68 goals scored is not nearly enough to win the Premier League these days, especially considering the number of shots on goal conceded last season. I fully expect Sanchez to help address this and I’d be surprised to see Arsenal score fewer than 80 goals over the League campaign.

Of the other signings, Debuchy is a good player but it’s not exactly inspiring and I think very few people would pick him over either Cesar Azpilicueta or Pablo Zabaleta. Calum Chambers is a lot more exciting and was secured for an excellent price, particularly in the context of the English player premium and the way transfer prices seem to have spiked this summer. Even so, I’d be surprised to see him start more than 20 Premier League games unless Koscielny’s achilles injury is worse than feared. I don’t expect David Ospina to play in the League unless Szczesny is injured.

Given that there have only been two major departures (Sagna and Vermaelen), its certainly fair to say that this Arsenal squad looks better than last season. And I should add that I’m basing my predictions on no there being no further major additions to the Arsenal squad.

So why my lack of shared optimism? First, to get 79 points last season was the squad massively outperforming itself. Momentum is incredibly important in football and Arsenal definitely benefitted from having easy fixtures stacked together in the first half of the season. The fixture list doesn’t allow Arsenal to (easily) build up momentum in the same way in the season ahead. In other words, just to stand still the squad needed to get better.

Not only that, but Arsenal have a very poor record playing away after Champions League games: over the last four seasons, Arsenal have played away 19 times after Champions League games, winning just seven times and losing eight of those matches. Providing progress is secured against Besiktas, the Gunners will play away after seven of their first eight Champions League games: that’s a minimum of 20% of League fixtures in which you can expect Arsenal to only win one out of three games. That’s going to be a major stumbling block to winning the League.

Most importantly, I just think Manchester City and Chelsea have superior squads to Arsenal. Chelsea have filled the obvious defensive holes in their squad while at the same time signing Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa. I certainly think its plausible that Costa could struggle - I’m just unconvinced it matters. Chelsea were pretty good last season without a decent striker and have now added one of the best playmakers in the world. City only got better as last season went on and if Sergio Aguero can play over 30 games will probably win the League again.

There’s definitely some important caveats I should add here: an easy Champions League draw for Arsenal (assuming qualification) would diminish the importance of playing away repeatedly after playing in midweek. But equally, if you want more pessimism, Arsenal haven’t made a serious title challenge in a year after an international tournament since 1998-99.

So, realistic predictions: 3rd in the League, Champions League quarter-finals and maybe a domestic cup.

Keep the faith.