Cannon Fodder

It's been a lovely day to be an Arsenal fan. Waking up following a 3-1 beating of Sp*rs was certainly that bit easier, the day at work was that bit more relaxing. Even a night with my youngest waking up through it was much more bearable. I must admit, for the first time in a long time I didn't feel nervous going in to a North London Derby. It wasn't that I was massively confident in our ability. It was more that they, in spite of what the league table was telling us, are just much worse than us.  Back in March, in an interview Mikel Arteta spoke about how he felt his project was about to go "bang". This looked increasingly unlikely as crowd support was seemingly waning as Arsenal missed out on European football for the first time in 25 years, coupled with the worst start in club history. Yesterday, against Sp*rs, we may have seen the first explosion.  Most of the pre match chatter centred around the available again Granit Xhaka and whether or not he would come str...

  It's Derby day. Tottenham come to the Emirates with the landscape looking a lot different to how it was just two weeks ago.  Having won the league in August, Nuno Espirito Santo's men have suffered somewhat of a title hangover and come in to the game on the back of consecutive league defeats. Arsenal on the other hand have made something of a recovery following on from a worst ever start to a league campaign. Back to back 1-0 wins see us sit on 6 points, just 3 off the champions. We do of course have the mitigation of the opposition when considering those wins. Norwich look certain for the drop just 6 games in, and Burnley remain winless and may also be struggling to stay up. But it's steps in the right direction. We have kept clean sheets. All our new signings are bedding in and the line up is starting to look a little more settled and take the shape that it seems Mikel Arteta wants it to take. Having played an hour in midweek in an effort to increase his match fitness, ...

  Week 5: 50 Total points: 292 It was the worst week s far last week for Saka the net, with a seasons low score of just 50 points. Its far below the target average, but not to the extent that we're miles off the pace. In my main league the scoring wasn't too great anywhere, so not too much ground was lost. Not too much to write home about as far as star performers go. 3 clean sheets in the back line (Dias, Tierney and, somewhat surprisingly considering the opposition, Tino Livramento), a clean sheet for Ederson in goal and an assist and clean sheet for star boy Bukayo Saka in midfield. That's it. No goals anywhere in the team at all last week. To compound the disappointment, Captain Bruno only picked up a total of four points for completing the 90 minutes. Its part of a pretty worrying trend this season so far, with my captain picks really letting the team down. The total of 16 in week 4 for Bruno being the highest so far. Captain picks are where titles are won and lost in ...

Growing up, I don’t recall there being any visible division in the Arsenal fanbase. Now, it’s extremely likely that the lack of social media in my formative years contributed to that. You can easily imagine Twitter, knowing how it is today, exploding at the thought of Arsenal bringing in an unknown manager from Japan to run the club in 96! However, since the later Wenger years there has been a clear division amongst Arsenal fans, and it shows no sign of healing. If anything, it is only getting worse. It seems that absolutely anything at the moment starts of a new Twitter war amongst the fans. Take Wednesday, for example. We played AFC Wimbledon in the league cup, won comfortably 3-0 by all accounts, and moved on to the next round. Now, this game was not was not shown on tv and was available to stream anywhere (save for one hero who livestreamed the game from inside the stadium). So aside from those who were inside the ground to actually watch the game live, you would think it impossibl...

It's Sunday morning, and what a good Sunday morning it is. A second consecutive Saturday 3pm kick off resulted in a second consecutive 1-0 win for the Arsenal. It was by no means perfect, but when is a trip to Burnley ever that?  Mikel Arteta sprung something of a surprise with his line up by forgoing a second holding midfielder to partner Thomas Partey, instead opting to start with almost a front 5 of Odegaard, Smith-Rowe, Pepe, Saka and Aubameyang in a formation similar to the 4-3-3 that ended the win against Norwich. Although slightly surprising at first, I think it made sense. My predicted lineup had us with Lokonga in for Pepe in a 4-2-3-1 due to my belief that controlling the midfield battle would be key. But when you lookat the players that started I think it is clear that Arteta expected us to dominate possession and picked an XI best quipped to do that. The fact it didn't necessarily pan out that way is neither here nor there, but I think it offers an insight in to how...

Arsenal travel to Turf Moor to face Burnley this afternoon, looking to build on the momentum of last week's win at home to Norwich. There seems to be a weird misconception about Arsenal struggling against the clarets, but other than being stylistically different, the stats don't back up that thinking. Aside from the 1-0 defeat last December at the Emirates, we have not lost against these opponents in the league since 1974 - a run of 15 games. This includes a streak of 10 consecutive wins between March 2010 and August 2019, conceding only 5 in the process. When looking at fixtures exclusively at Turf Moor, it's 9 league games without tasting defeat, a run of 4 wins and 5 draws stretching back to 1973.  I mentioned the stylistic differences between the two teams, but it is also something that almost works as an Advantage, because with Burnley, you always know what you are going to get. It's going to be 4-4-2. Its going to be two big men up top. It's going to be crosse...

  Week 4: 62 points Total points: 242 Consistency is key in this game, and I am absolutely nailing it on that front. I'm made reference before to wanting to hit an average of 60 points over the course of the season. So far, I am exceeding it by a whopping 0.5 points per week! It was a pretty solid week of scoring last week, with Saka the net debutant Romelu Lukaku bagging himself 13 points  for his pair of goals, 3 bonus points and the appearance points. It's a shame that he wasn't captained, but Bruno bagged me 16 points in his role for his goal, bonus point and appearance points. Elsewhere there was the expected clean sheets for Ruben Dias, Ederson and Ferran Torres, with the former also banking a bonus point for 7, 6 and 1 points respectively. There was also the hoped for clean sheets for Keiran Tierney and Bukayo Saka, although disappointingly nothing on the attacking front for either. A combined 10 points for the Arsenal men providing a decent return to the fantasy lin...

For the first time in a long time, European football kicks off in earnest with no Arsenal involvement. So with nothing Arsenal-centric to discuss, here are some of my thoughts on other topics in the world of football at the moment: Rough justice I found myself watching the second half of Everton v Burnley last night. From what I could gather the first half hadn't been up to much and the second half hadn't started much better. But then, on 50 minutes, with  the game deadlocked at 0-0, James Tarkowski came steaming over to the left hand corner and ploughed straight through Richarlison, taking a little of the ball and all of the man. He escaped with no punishment. Not so much as a free kick.  Even Andy Hinchcliffe, the notorious old schooler, on commentary said that even though Tarkowski got the ball, that doesn't mean it is a good tackle. A couple of things irked me about the challenge. The first thing , and the same point that many an Arsenal fan jumped to on social media, w...

  Well that was a refreshing change, wasn't it? After three consecutive goalless defeats to start the season, Arsenal tried these weird things called scoring and winning yesterday. It was by no means perfect, but there's not many a better feeling than waking up on a Sunday morning after your team has picked up the three points.  5 of our 6 new summer signings started the game, with only Nuno Tavares missing out, adding a sense of freshness to a team that had started to feel somewhat stale. This no doubt contributed to the atmosphere inside the stadium which was nothing short of excellent for the most part. It was wonderful to hear the crowd fully behind the team, a display that is somewhat at odds with the constant media narrative of Arsenal fans being negative and against the team. It was lovely to hear and be a part of. As far as the game itself goes, I won't cover it in great detail, but I do have some thoughts on what was hopefully a turning point for Arsenal's seas...

  After a less than stellar first three games of the season, Arsenal return to Premier League action this afternoon against fellow pointless side Norwich City.  We may already be three games in, but this is the first time this season that Mikel Arteta has all of who we would assume to be his first choice players back from injury or illness, so there can be no excuses. Without wanting to minimise the three defeats we have already suffered, the season really does start here for Arsenal. Norwich are a side that we have a a very strong record against in the Premier League, with 9 wins and 7 draws from our 18 total meetings over the years, with 6 of those victories coming from the 9 times we have hosted the Canaries. It is also a fixture which usually delivers goals, with 31 in the last 10 league meetings. Aside from the number of goals, there also seems t be a high level of top quality goals against these opponents. Who could forget the Jack Wilshere tiki-taka goal of the season i...

Week 3: 53 points Total points: 180 It was another solid but unspectacular performance for Saka the net last time out. Top scorer was again captain Mo Salah with a total of 10 points. The highest non-double point scorers were Aaron Wan-Bissaka, whose clean sheets and 2 bonus points netted him a whopping 8 in total, and Patrick Bamford who also scored 8 for his goal and 2 bonus points. Really not a lot else to write home about apart from that. The expected clean sheets for Ederson and Dias and a goal for Ivan Toney were the only other notable contributions. It’s all change this week tough, as the wildcard has been played! It’s almost a tradition for me to play it three games in now. The transfer window has closed, so any new signings can be added where necessary, and you kind of have a better idea of how managers are setting themselves up to play and who fits where. You can also pick up some “cheat code” type players such as Ferran Torres. On the game he’s a midfielder but plays as a st...

This Saturday Arsenal return to Premier League action at home to Norwich. It is also be the first time that I have been back to the stadium since 27 February 2020. If that date sounds at all familiar, it is because it just so happens to be the day that Mikel Arteta caught COVID from a member of the travelling Olympiakos party, an incident which all but spelled the end of football in this country for a few months. Now though, football, and in particular football in full stadiums, is back and I can’t wait. I never got to visit Highbury. In fact, I don’t recall ever being taken to football anywhere growing up. I know that a lot of the old school Arsenal fans will say that Highbury can’t and won’t be beaten. That the soul of the club remains there. I will not argue with them as I have no point of comparison, but Emirates Stadium does hold a special place in my heart. On a personal note, trips to what I consider my second home has helped me through some tough times as sitting amongst the cr...

Over the weekend Edu fronted up to the media, talking about how the transfer window played out, the project that Arsenal are in the midst of and goals for the season. To me, this was excellent. As a fan base we have been crying out for more engagement from those in charge of the club and this was exactly that. Other technical directors across the Continent do this as a standard. Yet as with most things around the club these days, this has just led to further anger and division. As I have mentioned previously, it didn't take much to see what the strategy was this window, unless you are Gary Neville. All six players signed in the summer were under the age of 23. Edu confirmed that this is with the aim of laying a foundation for the future, with players signed ready to step in when experienced players move on. He used the example of Sambi stepping in for an injured Thomas Partey on the opening day of the season, but it's not hard to imagine him replacing Xhaka permanently, perhaps...