Last night I dreamt that Mike Dean gave Granit Xhaka a second yellow card this weekend. That in itself isn’t so surprising, but when you consider that it was for a foul throw and that in his infinite wisdom Mike had decided that he’d had enough of foul throws, it seemed a little harsh.
Especially when I had to go back to my Auntie Lyn’s house afterwards and explain to her of the injustice, only for her to be having a cup of tea with a scouser who looked suspiciously like Mike Dean.
He wasn’t though. I could tell because as soon as I relayed the injustice, he seemed more angry than me at said official, even pulling out a VHS tape (lord knows how he got it to work on a modern TV) showing half a dozen examples of how Mike Dean laughed at the exact same incident with United players.
And with that story, we have unequivocal proof that Mike Dean is bent, that he loves United and hates us.
Now I don’t want to alarm anybody…but this weekend’s referee for the home game to Bournemouth is none other than…..
Anthony Taylor.
Oh well, you can’t win em all, and with referees most of the time you can’t win at all. So expect the joint worst ref in the league (along with Mike Dean) to absolutely, well and truly, screw us over this weekend.
In Arsenal related news we have had the Europa League squads announced and unsurprisingly there are few surprises. The papers are playing up the inclusion of Debuchy in there, but given that we’ve just sold a player playing at right wing back, it doesn’t really surprise me that Debuchy should be named. Let’s not forget we seem to have Bellerin and Nelson as our only options right now, which suggests that an experienced international – albeit one who has barely played since signing – would be useful.
I actually don’t think Debuchy is as bad as everyone makes out. He was a top name when we signed Gina bad one of Newcastle’s better players. He’s had a horrific time with injury but as a back up I actually have no problem with him. But it wouldn’t really be a back up with any view to him having a chance to play again, so I expect we’ll only see him if Bellerin gets crocked and if that happens it will take him a few games to get up to speed, but I still think he could ‘do a job’ so to speak,
We also need to remember that the Europa League is a 45 man squad. That’s massive and shows – hopefully – that Arsène is going to use the full depth of his resources for this competition. We play Cologne just before we play Chelski next week and the idea of a full strength team playing in that game seems mental to me. That means full rotation needs to happen which will include a mixture of youth and squad players. We hope.
Nelson may be a fans choice to play in those sorts of games, but I wonder if – depending on who else is playing – he might not make the starting XI in favour of an experienced head such as Debuchy. Let’s face it, given our recent history of ‘breaking’ young footballers, we could do a lot worse than ease in a clear talent like Nelson.
Hopefully this time next week the talk is of which fringe players will get their chance and I have a feeling that Chambers, Mertesacker, Maitland-Niles, Walcott, Iwobi and Giroud will all get look-ins. At least I hope they do anyway.
The other news has been the appointment of Ivan Gazidis to a UEFA committee that includes about 12billion people in it. Quite what the point in this group is I’m not entirely sure, but these sort of committees are always designed to be CV bolsterer’s than anything else. Old men (and some women) from footballs establishment sitting around talking and talking and talking. Looking at each other and suggesting things that will probably never make it out of the room, followed by a nice, expensive, dinner courtesy of UEFA and a plane journey home.
So we can add that to the list of reasons why Ivan isn’t driving the football club forward, given that he’s shown this summer he has no power and is beholden to manager and owner in a position that feels more and more ceremonial as the day goes by. Congrats Ivan. Hope the Chateuneuf-du-Pape is to your liking in your meeting of the football fat cats elite.
There’s not really a lot else going on I’m afraid. We wait patiently for Arsène to tell us all is rosy in the Arsenal garden tomorrow.
Catch you then.
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