Cannon Fodder

I'm not the biggest fan of the international breaks. Don't get me wrong, summer tournaments are great fun with plenty of competitive matches to enjoy, but World Cup qualifiers, Euro qualifiers and Nations League matches? They can just disappear in my opinion. Look at tonight for example. England are playing Andorra for what feels like the 20th qualifying campaign in a row. We never lose, we never concede, we never look troubled, I'm never interested. Maybe it's a touch of snobbishness being an England fan knowing, or believing, that we are far too good to have our time wasted with games which offer nothing but the opportunity for Harry Kane to stat pad even further on his inevitable march to England's record goal scorer.  I mentioned the Nations League can also disappear. This is a "tournament" that England very nearly won a couple of years ago. I say very nearly won. We made it to the semis, took the lead and then found out maybe our defenders shouldn...

I've never been a fan of going to the seaside in the Autumn. It's wet. It's miserable, It's just very far from enjoyable. And so it proved for Arsenal on Saturday evening. Riding the crest of a mini wave following three straight wins, including a derby win last week, I had high hopes going in to the game against Brighton. Even more so when it was confirmed that the home side would be without midfield lynchpin Yves Bissouma. In my preview I noted that the midfield battle would be key and that the presence or otherwise would go some way to dictating how that would go. As it turned out, \I couldn't have been more wrong. In the driving wind and rain, we never really got a grip of the game, as Brighton dominated us pretty much from start to finish. I say dominated, of the 21 efforts the hosts mustered, only 2 of them stung the palms of Aaron Ramsdale, but that just proves that stats don't really tell you the whole story. It was pretty much 90 minutes of concerted pre...

  It's been a funny old week supporting Arsenal. We've gone from being told that wins against "Norwich and Burnley meant nothing, it's all about beating Tottenham" to "Yeah but it's only Tottenham, they're awful" after we rolled them over in convincing fashion. This kind of contradiction is kind of expected from the media, who seem at pains to give us any credit. But when you see it from other supposed Arsenal fans, it's a little harder to comprehend. If you can't enjoy beating the lot from down the road, then you should probably give up watching football. But I digress. This week we travel to Brighton to face a side who have enjoyed a decent start to the season. In fact, if they had beaten Patrick Vieira's Crystal Palace (I think that's their name now. Kind of like when it was "Frank Lampard's Derby. Or Frank Lampard's Chelsea) they would have been sitting pretty at the top of the table ahead of tonight's game. A...

  Week 6: 52 Total points: 344 When I posted my fantasy update and preview last week, I was late doing so and the team was not in bad shape. The majority of my players had played with not many points accrued and the few left I wasn't expecting to bank me a decent total. But in a pleasant surprise, Bukayo Saka turned on the style against Tottenham, bagging a goal, assist and 3 sweet bonus points for a total of 13, making him my top scorer for the week. It wast the cherry on top of the icing on top of the delicious cake that was a wonderful North London Derby victory. Outside of Saka, there were 10 points for the debuting Andros Townsend. I mentioned last week that I was expecting him to pick up some of the slack in the absence of Richarlison and Calvert-Lewin in the Everton line up and he duly delivered with a goal, clean sheet bonus and 2 bonus points. The returning Michail Antonio also bagged respectably with 8 points. another goal for him and 3 bonus points, with a yellow card be...