Morning all, a very quick Sunday round-up for you.
After our win on Friday night, some other teams won yesterday which, frankly, I find despicable. I cannot even begin to find the words for the contempt I hold them in. I was in a bar before dinner last night and they had the Everton v Chelsea game on. I went to the bathroom and came back to find all the screens showing a close-up of Jorginho.
‘Of course’, I thought to myself. ‘How could football truly be back unless this Mr Tumnus looking motherfucker gets a penalty?’, and I had to sit there and watch him score it. When will his reign of terror finally be brought to an end?
I watched a fair chunk of Fulham against Liverpool, and two things struck me. One is that I wonder how it’s possible to produce the kind of consistency that the Mugmsashers have in recent years but not feel somewhat beaten down by the lack of success. Their points totals have been genuinely incredible, but just one title. It must be so hard to try and keep the players fully motivated, and while one game isn’t a big enough sample size because every team can have an off day, it did occur to me that perhaps that played into their performance.
The other thing is that Darwin Nunez looks very good indeed. He’ll score lots of goals … until he comes up against William Saliba.
Elsewhere, Mikel Arteta was in attendance at Meadow Park to see the Arsenal U21s beat Man Utd 3-1. Marquinhos started and did well by all accounts, but 45 minutes for Takehiro Tomiyasu is a positive step for him as he makes his way back to full fitness. You’d imagine that Emile Smith Rowe and Fabio Vieira might also get some minutes in games like this as they get closer to first team action again.
All this info comes from the @ArsenalAcademy Twitter account by the way, because there’s literally nothing about it on the official website. The last Academy match report is from August 1st. After sanctioning some big transfer fees again this summer, perhaps Stan and Josh might splash out for an intrepid junior reporter who could provide basic coverage on arsenal.com?
In transfer news, it looks as if Lucas Torreira will finalise his move to Galatasaray, bringing an end to the most tedious saga of the summer. Apparently he would have preferred Valencia but there was a slight complication in that they don’t have any money for a transfer fee. To be fair, you can understand why he might have thought that wasn’t any kind of impediment to making a move happen after Arsenal’s ‘Buy none, get one free’ exploits in recent times, but hopefully he has a very happy time in Turkey.
Finally for today, I realise when it comes to ‘Lord’ Amstrad it’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but still …
There is nobody better than @IanWright0 pic.twitter.com/Vx4RzrxXf3
— arseblog (@arseblog) August 6, 2022
If you’re looking for something to listen to for this morning’s dog walk/chores, we have a run down of Episodes 1-3 of All Or Nothing over on Patreon.
But, with our game having taken place on Friday night, James and I will be recording the Arsecast Extra this afternoon. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re on Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
We’ll have the pod for you around 2pm or so. For now, take it easy.
