ARSENAL: BRUTE FORCE DESTRUCTION
Let’s kick things off with a very simple truth: That was a stunning performance from Arsenal.
There’s a lot of drama that flowed around the game that I’ll talk about, but when you boil it all down, we’re angry because that’s the sort of game Arsenal have dropped points in historically because we haven’t had the tools to cope with:
A referee who wanted to shape the course of the game
An opposition that was allowed to do as they pleased to bend the rules
An away day under the lights
It had all the hallmarks of that Brentford game a few years ago and countless others you could no doubt reel off.
But… we did have the tools. Arsenal used their experience, brute force, technique, team camaraderie, and final-action tools to squeeze out three points. This was a farmer trying to slaughter a sheep with his bare hands; we were always going to be able to manage the job, but it just looked a little harder than it perhaps should have.
I mean, think about Brobbey. The eye test suggested that he’s everything we want from Gyokeres. Not particularly great from a tekkers perspective, but very rough around the edges, and a total pain in the arse in a true occupier kind of way. Then you look at his numbers.
That’s the ‘total blowout’ against a top team I gripe over with our number 14. Arsenal dominated him. He was swarmed out. Sure, he had a few moments where he didn’t lose the ball, but largely, he was controlled by the excellent Gabriel, and even more impressive Ezri Konsa.
Arsenal managed the battle, despite the ref losing control of the game with cards galore. You knew we were in for an afternoon when Arteta was booked early on for technical are infringements. When Odegaard wasn’t protected by a clear stamp. When the elbow to Gabriel was ignored. When the ref was happy to let things roll, until Arsenal started looking after themselves, then it was all about controlling the game. Even the time-wasting stuff that Arsenal were called for was absurd when you run the numbers (Scott runs the numbers).
The biggest absurdity was the penalty. Daniel Ballard, a huge sack of meat by meat-sack standards, rolled Konsa over his shoulder in the penalty area. It was absolutely clear he played John Brooks. The penalty was called, checked, and cleared. There’s no way of forgiving such a call. It was a ‘yeah, we hate you, how about I show you who runs the show’ type of call. I don’t like to harp on this, but how many more atrocities do we have to see with PGMOL before we can say, yeah, they just don’t like certain clubs, and sometimes, they do mad shit just because they can. It was only a few weeks ago that Mike Dean went on a Jamie Vardy podcast to reveal he’d play games like not blowing the whistle for 19 minutes just for fun. A crazy thing to say, especially when sports players around the world are being charged in scandals where similar behavior is not done just for fun. Besides the point, PGMOL is not run well, and games that are refereed like that have all the feelings of games being run on emotion, and that is not the job.
Enzo Le Fée stepped up, buried a non-stutter step penalty into Raya’s left, and somehow one of the greatest saves in history happened; the Spaniard kept the ball out with a wrist as strong as Valyrian steel. It was an incredible feat. What a save. Did VAR go back in for it? You bet they did. Hunting for reasons to get a retake.
That started a sequence of events that led to Bruno having his moment. The man the Sunderland fans were calling a fat rat before the game picked up a Declan layoff on the edge of the box; he looked up and unleashed an ungodly amount of power at the ball, and Tony Yeboahed it in from 25 yards. A f*cking SCREAMER of a strike. Only one that can be achieved when fueled by local derby HATRED. The celebration was so funny.
Getting mauled by the Hull fans is bad, but getting the rat-ears cele from Bruno in an Arsenal shirt is the next level. Their fans must have needed another 14 pints of Boddingtons to get over the humiliation.
It must be noted that the goal was all because of Raya. His save boosted our boys, deflated the Sunderland players, and gave Bruno the power-up he needed to say, f*ck it, I’m going to do something very wild here. Pure Premier League theatre.
Killing the game off was starting to worry me… it had ‘Mukiele pulls one back out of nowhere in the 93rd minute’ written all over it. They nearly had that moment when a loose ball was awkwardly put towards Raya’s goal when he was moving the other way, but he somehow managed to reorg his feet and deal with the boy.
Down the other end, the quick, incisive thinking of Bruno released Saka through on goal; his speed and composure were too much, and he was dragged down into the box, and John Brooks had no choice but to call a penalty and send off Mandava.
Saka didn’t make the same mistake as Le Fée. He hit his shot low and too hard for the floppy wrists of Roefs.
Arsenal weren’t going to be caught on 98 minutes. The game closed out. Sunderland and their 12th-man accomplices had failed. Three points were for Arsenal. The Premier League table had us at the top. 4 wins on the bounce, the best goal difference, a perfect record in the Champions League, and a Community Shield win. Starts don’t get better, do they?
The game had it all; the most impressive Arsenal parts for me stemmed from the subs. A Myles Lewis Skelly midfield was open and stretched. So we changed him out for Bruno, who gave us more intensity and threat. Ben White hit his 6-game max and had to exit for Jurrien Timber, who is the best right-back in world football. Arsenal have the ability to play any game, any time, without multiple training sessions. We have all the codes to crack any puzzle.
The signings of Konsa and Bruno don’t represent long-term thinking. We paid over the odds for two players that’ll have no resale value. A story that flies in the face of a club hiring an expensive consulting group to get to the bottom of wastage on the 15% of operating costs that are non-sporting. But not my point… my point is that we’re shooting for the stars now and we’re worried about how much greatness can be squeezed out the next three years we’ll have with Arteta before he goes or the squad needs a serious turnover. Based on that sort of thinking, you can’t knock what those two are offering. Now impact. Konsa was brilliant yesterday. He’s a warrior; it might have looked ugly at times, but it’s always going to look ugly against incredibly physical players. You think Mosquera could do what Konsa is doing for four months? No way. Bruno wanted to be on that pitch so bad; he’s a 28-year-old with a small window to win it all. He has no time to adapt, he needs to be the now solve for Arsenal, and he proved it with a goal only he could have scored.
There is no next season of Netflix, the jam is for eating today, we’re on Logan’s run and we’re 28 years old. This is it. Games like that show how good we are, but also demonstrate how f*cking hard the Premier League is. Playing Sunderland is going to be rougher than 90% of our Champions League games this season… of that, there is no doubt. You give a breather to your players in the week, then suit up for battle at the weekend.
This sort of a game is a reminder to Arteta and his staff to disrespect the League Cup to the max this week. Don’t suit up the boys for the culture. Keep our best players at home. Give it to the kids. No one cares about the League Cup. It’s a waste of time, no one remembers winning it with fondness, our focus should be on the League and Champions League. Availability is all that matters; keep the top guys on the couch playing Dawnwalker.
“I’m very worried and sad because this can never be a penalty. It’s a judo roll from the opponent. Ezri does nothing. We have to take responsibility to protect the game. Today the game was unprotected and it could have cost us the win and our momentum. I’m really sad. It should never have happened.”
This comment is a test of Arteta’s powers. He’s now the big dog in town. The best in the game. He has moved into Mourinho, Klopp, and Pep territory. How do those powers translate? Are we at the aura phase… or has Arteta blacklisted us. Put all margins against us? Caused himself drama that we largely avoided last season?
Who knows… but on paper, he’s right. I don’t give a f*ck about the KMI panel. Who cares if they judge the incident after it happens. What I’d like is that if a ref makes a diabolical decision with a diabolical performance… they get punished with the same vigor as a manager does for telling the truth. Who is going to sit down with John Brooks and his team and show him the errors, tell him it’s not acceptable that people are talking about him, and set the standards with a punishment? It won’t be Howard Webb doing that. He cares more about bad press than solving for the root cause of the bad press. Michael Owen will do a little puff piece, that absurd journalist at the BBC who is the ITK for refs will defend him, and that’ll be that.
‘I find it hard to believe bias when it was Sunderland who finished the game with 10 men’
Then we just move on. We don’t get many thoughtful pieces on what Mike Dean’s comments mean… but we do get them when it comes to being kind through monumental moments of reffing incompetence. Where is the scrutiny? Where are the years-long investigations? Why do we only find out about the ineptness when the refs snitch on themselves for podcast fees or at after-parties? The fairness of Premier League football has never been under more scrutiny, and the key offenders, with the biggest profiles, are on podcasts saying, yeah, we do fucked up shit just for the laughs. Can you imagine any other serious profession where that sort of carry-on wouldn’t merit an investigation and some public-calming actions to assure people of its seriousness? Crazy. Even crazier that my biggest worry is now that PGMOL will avenge the Arteta comments because we know at the root of their organization sits a deep unprofessionalism.
Hey ho, we won three points; we can worry about that next week. Until then, get on the On The Whistle podcast.
P.S. I have had some complaints about the AI moderator I have on the comments. I am sorry if it is zapping some legit comments, but the alternative is bad-faith actors swarm the comments; I don’t see them, and then I’m positioned as an enabler of the bad faithness. I cannot manage thousands of daily comments or the nuance of the chatter. My apologies to the good faithers. x