I didn't watch the Champions League final last night. I'm in Yorkshire with some of The Management's family over from New Zealand and we're doing a little bit of a holiday and, frankly, I didn't want to spoil it by watching a game that I feel we could/should have been in. Give me an Arsenal [...]
In what will inevitably now feel like the longest end to a Premier League season ever, Mikel Arteta will today be subjected to quite a painful press conference experience, I'd wager. Not only does he have to sit in front of the press and talk about the fallout from the PSG defeat and exit in [...]
I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that i'm supremely confident about tonight. In truth, that home defeat to PSG rocked me a little, because I thought we would give a better account of ourselves. We've known about our profligacy in front of goal all season and I saw that Donnarumma made [...]
Some days it's really easy to just brain dump a load of Arsenal thoughts on to the page. Today is not one of those days. I'm still kind of reeling from the defeat to PSG in the first leg, but what has struck me as interesting is how many Arsenal fans are actually quite positive that [...]
This one felt different to Real Madrid. I don’t know why, I sort of know how, but pre game I didn’t have the same vibes. Pre Madrid I was very much “ahh we’re underdogs and probably won’t win, so I’m here for the craic” but, as the game played out, things changed. Real sat off, [...]
It's the big one tonight. The season-definer (until, maybe, next week in Paris), the one in which glory could be found like Madrid at home, or gut punch can be received, like the home defeat to Man United within the first few minutes in 2009. Arteta knows he will need the home support to replicate [...]
Liverpool have been rolling the dice and getting so many sixes this season, that when I went to bed at 10pm with it into extra time, I just expected to find out this morning that they'd won 5-0 on penalties. But they're out, the media fawning over them winning the quadruple that we were witnessing [...]
Last season I wrote about Arteta's archetypal 'perfect' game being against Brighton; it was complete dominance against a team who wanted to have possession of the football, wanted to control the narrative of the game on the ball and Arsenal allowed Brighton to create basically nothing. We got two goals, albeit slightly later than Arteta [...]
Here we go again folks - match day! This is a big one because it's PSG at home and I think I'm right in saying it is the first time we've faced PSG since they became one of the financially doped football clubs backed by an Arab state. We welcome them tonight for an 8pm [...]
Losing isn't fun and I'm still smarting a bit from that needless defeat to Lens last night. However, I wonder how PSG fans are feeling this morning, having seen their side battered (scoreline-wise) against Newcastle at St James' last night. I was thinking about that result and how much of a big thing for Newcastle [...]