bUt thE REfs aRe BIaseD in FAVor Of cITy

Then do what I do. Just watch the matches. Ain’t that difficult.

Dude, our stadium is called The Emirates.

There is no morality in football, and there never has been.

People didn’t understand how useless they tended to be, probably. This is true of many, many, many sports strategies in almost every sport that were rarely subjected to rigorous analysis until the last 30 years. People get all upset about this, but it’s a fact, and being upset about it doesn’t change it.

Random chance. That explains almost everything of this variety. People can cook up all kinds of stories, but they almost never hold up to actual analysis.

This is the answer. Cruyff invented football as we know it.

Haven’t you heard? The answer is Jude Bellingham, even with those guys included.

This is not actually true, but hey. Whatever panders to anti-American feeling, I guess.

In the Arsenalverse, punditry moved from:

Who is this David Raya guy?

to:

Wait a minute, why did they go get David Raya when they already have Ramsdale?

to:

Which one of these dudes is going to be the #1?

to:

OMFG, Raya is terrible and Ramsdale is literally Oliver Kahn, why is he playing?

and now, finally, to:

I wish they would just make a choice so people could shut up about Raya and Ramsdale.

​

Now. Here’s what actually happened: Arteta and Edu saw the opportunity to get a keeper they thought was better than the one they had. They got him, and immediately began starting him. He has continued starting. Arsenal has the best defense in the league, some of which is down to Raya. At no point has the actual behavior of the Arsenal coaching staff or front office ever really shown anything other than that Raya is the top guy, and will continue to be, other than Arteta doing a little faffing about in press conferences so as not to hurt Ramsdale’s feelings.

Oh, and if you watched the Brentford match? Aaron Ramsdale ain’t no Oliver Kahn.

I feel like most people who come on here to bitch and moan about how some player is over- or underrated don’t have any clear idea of how people rate that player in the first place.

Also, these discussions are tiresome.

This is kind of what happens. The conventional wisdom is that highly gifted players in any sport, from football to basketball to baseball, burn out quickly once their talent dies. But when you study it, it’s almost always the case that the highly gifted players (a) retain some semblance of their gifts (absent injury), and (b) have a much longer time to learn and adapt as their gifts fade.

This is not always true, obviously. But it frequently is. Aging basketball stars turn into wily ball distributors. 30-something baseball stars stop hitting .330 and start cracking 30 home runs with 90 walks. Aging footballers may no longer press, but develop an innate understanding of their role that allows them to do it to the max (see, eg, Messi, who probably hasn’t covered more than a couple of km in a match in three years).

Dude is a lunatic in some respects.

Thanks for coming, we sell tinfoil hats in the lobby.

Sir Bobby. Unless you think he was too attacking to qualify.

They didn’t really play the same sort of game because it’s changed so much in the last 20 years, but Henry and Mbappé have similar skillsets: lightning fast, deft touch, excellent both passing and shooting. Henry started his career as a winger, too, though he didn’t really flourish till Arsene moved him to the middle. All of which makes me think that Mbappé could be the greatest striker in the world if he weren’t so stubborn.

Of course, Titi was magnificent at the public relations part of the game, which Mbappé apparently has no gift for.

The funny thing is that this guy is right and in twenty years you all will be either: (a) pretending you agreed all along, or (b) bloviating to your grandkids about how things were better when you were young.

I’ve seen this exact conversation play out in baseball and basketball. Guess who was right? Yeah, not the people who think certain teams have a magic formula. Luck plays a role. Grow up and get over it.

The fact that luck plays a role in the sport doesn’t mean that overwhelmingly superior talent won’t win out most of the time. But luck, or random variation, or any of a number of other names it goes by, plays a huge role in a sport as low-scoring as football.

Well, obviously Neves belongs in a real league. But what’s Arsenal’s motivation?

Partey is out for quite a while, possibly until summer. Arsenal’s signature problem at the moment is that they don’t have a #10 / left-sided #8 after the departure of Xhaka. They thought that Havertz was going to be able to fill this hole but he hasn’t, for the obvious reason that he’s a forward, probably a right winger, and not a midfielder.

Now, Neves isn’t a left-sided #8. But what he is, is a solid holding midfielder. This would allow Arsenal to do what is probably the optimal thing at the moment, which is push Declan Rice into that role, without having to have the reanimated corpse of Jorginho trying to manage the game from the back. Whether that’s a long-term solution or not is up for debate, but Rice has played the left-sided 8 a few times this season and is obviously Arsenal’s best option for that role at the moment, probably through the end of the season.

Why would the Saudis allow it to happen? I’m not sure they view Newcastle and Arsenal as potential rivals in the same way that most fans would. They’re trying to (a) make money and (b) get notoriety from their association with the Magpies. The real key to both of those is to be playing European football on a year-in, year-out basis, on TV all over the world, etc. Their competition for that, at the moment, is more like Manchester United, Chelsea, Spurs, Villa. Heck, it may even be to their advantage if Arsenal beats a bunch of their rivals for that 4th/5th slot that will get them into the Champions’ League. Whether Arsenal beats Liverpool is of no moment to them.

Plus, Arsenal’s American sugar daddy may well be willing to pay a bazillion pounds for Neves at the end of any such loan. And who can say no to that?

Last I read Partey’s done for the season.

It’s really, really hard to say no to Fabregas. But then I can’t have both Marty and Rice. So I guess I go Marty, Rice, Xhaka (but only if I get Xhaka from last year, not before then).