Isn’t it beautiful when you’ve already won, your hate-watch is going great so far this weekend and you have a win-win-win game coming up. I might unironically buy popcorn to watch big Ange go gung-ho at the Etihad 😭

It just updated about 30mins ago, I’ve had it update as late as 4hrs before the game.

I would say, be patient but also make a plan B to visit the ticket office ~2hrs before kickoff in case it just refuses to update

For any red members, tonight is gonna be your best chance to grab tickets for a game this season. Lots still available on the exchange, haven’t seen so many since before last season honestly. Remember the ticket exchange closes at 5pm tonight and good luck!

There’s no way for you to get official away tickets, the prices you’re seeing are from touts or even worse, completely fakes.

You get an “away point” for going to an away game, and away games are only sold to fans who have enough away points. Your away points are your tally of games you’ve been to in the current season and the 2 seasons before it.

Here’s the details for the Aston Villa game, allocation was sold out to fans with 10+ away points.

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll most likely never reach 10+ points in the next 3 years unless we get some difficult to reach draws in the CL + domestic cups. Here are all the games in the last few years that went to 0+ away points to plat and gold members (season ticket holders) that had no points accumulated.

------------- Chamakh - Sanogo - Gervinho -------------

-------------------- Denilson - Frimpong --------------------

A. Santos - Mustafi - Silvestre - Squillaci - Jenkinson

-------------------------------- Almunia -------------------------------

I’ve done it a few times at the London grounds, you get used to it but I would be lying if I said it was easy.

Big Gabi is the most underrated player in our squad, our duo really make each other shine but that’s not appreciated enough.

To get past them you either need to be faster and tricky enough to cause Saliba issues (who is?) or stronger and more aggressive than Gabriel (who is?). Such a perfect combo.

And now we’ve added Rice, we’ve completely nullified the opposition’s ability to beat us going long or beat us in transition or beat us in set-plays. Only alternative left is to go toe to toe with us but then Saka & Martinelli are left 1v1 all game, good luck with that.

Or you could do what almost every team in the PL has tried so far, two banks consisting of 5-3 or 4-4 or even a 4-5 and just hope desperately something falls your way while you defend for your lives for 90mins.

I have full trust in Arteta, he’s shown time and time again an ability to evolve his team to counteract, once we start to unlock these ridiculous low blocks with ease, it’s game over. For now we have to settle for top of the PL.

When Kai said “I am thankful for the fans to keep supporting me”, he wasn’t talking about a lot of you, you know who you are. I was at the ground yesterday (in the home end which was absolutely torture when the goal went in) and our away fans went ballistic, limbs everywhere for 5mins straight singing his name and then it started soon after again at the final whistle. Everytime I have been fortunate enough to go to a game this season, the fans have backed him. Always back the boys.

The UEFA statement on INEOS is bullshit btw, it’s just posturing. All Ratcliffe has to do is follow the footsteps of Red Bull and he won’t have an issue. Red Bull Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg have both been in the CL at the same time.

Leipzig is owned by “Red Bull GmbH” (with a very blatent and hilarious workaround of the 50+1 German rule) but the same company bought SV Salzburg first in 2005 before switching their focus on their German project. This was all fine until 17/18 when they both qualified for the CL.

After an investigation in 2017, UEFA cleared both clubs to participate in in the CL because, while being owned by the same parent company, they were controlled by distinctly different “management structures”. UEFA said Salzburg removed “certain individuals” linked to Red Bull and simultaneously involved with Leipzig from Salzburg’s general assembly, while another person linked to the soft drink company resigned from his position as chairman of the board, and the club also terminated “certain loan agreements” with Red Bull. Furthermore, both clubs terminated a cooperation agreement and Red Bull amended its sponsorship agreement with Salzburg, leading to less financial backing and fewer rights for the sponsor, which lost its membership in the club’s general assembly.

Once all of these changes were made, UEFA then accepted that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ that the clubs had a “shared ownership” and they were both allowed to compete in Europe.

Basically you can own two clubs, just don’t have the same people work at both, have different structures in place and don’t allow the clubs to give each other too obvious of a feeding structure (ignore ~20 loans/sales between the two Red Bull clubs since 2010).

Silvestre, Gallas, Squillaci were all worse than Mustafi, change my mind

This best XI isn’t helping my agenda. I had my little cousin who is a football fanatic ask me how good RVP was, I replied with “meh he wasn’t anything special, a more injury prone Gakpo but defences were shit back then”

It’s my personal job to make sure he’s completely forgotten to anyone who hasn’t seen him play

I have come to the realisation that I actually respect RVP more than this snake.

At least RVP is man enough to live with the consequences of his decision, he’s not deluded, he’s a Man Utd pundit now and has the decency to not bring up Arsenal.

This idiot seems absolutely clueless, he truly thinks that if he says enough nice words will make a statue for him and welcome him back to the Emirates for a testimonial.

Fuck of Cesc, go fuck off to Chelsea

They haven’t been beaten into submission yet. Until the arrogance of their fans is replaced by pure desperation, we won’t be satisfied. Years of Man City and Liverpool dominance, winning the PL and CL, embarrassing them on the pitch, hasn’t done it yet. Hopefully we can put them to bed.

Can’t wait until the majority of their fanbase didn’t even experience the Ferguson days, I want their subreddit and Twitter feeds filled with “new-ish fan here, what was the glory days like?”

???

Our abysmal European record is in a lack of silverware. Getting to the QFs has never been an “accomplishment” and shouldn’t be now.

We always fell short against European greats, usually in an embarrassing manner. We have the team and manager to overcome that. Then it’ll be down to luck really.

Wait for the chickens to hatch and then count them

No not really, we were enamored by the beautiful football, the majority of the fanbase still believed in the vision of winning with very technical diminutive players. I think the cynicism kicked beginning of 11/12 for the majority. Nasri and Cesc leaving late in the window, losing to Liverpool and then that infamous 8-2 loss, the desperate incomings on deadline day. It was the nail in the coffin for Wenger’s dream and exposed how far we had fallen and how unorganised the club was.

The ballot for the game was a long time ago. Become a red member if you aren’t already, jump on the exchange, that’s how everyone does it. If you need wheelchair access, then your best bet is to contact the Disability Liaison Team at Arsenal or the Arsenal Disabled Supporters’ Association for more information.

You could also try and get tickets through authorised Overseas Agent Ticket Sellers, info is on the Arsenal website. I don’t know much about them other than how extortionate the prices are, I think that tickets get sold months in advance, but I’m not sure.

Whatever you do, don’t go through touts, they’re scammers and you’ll be enabling shitty behaviour that ruins it for all of us.

I came across a hilarious comment recently I can’t find and I can’t stop thinking about it. It went something like this:

Some of you were worse at watching the Chelsea game and understanding it then our players were playing it.

A lot of us here would get 0/10 in the post match ratings from Mikel and his team based on our takes 😭

It was ridiculously heavy rain, my jeans were still wet midday the following day.

I was relatively close to Fulham last night, I don’t think the rain was comparable tbh.

Having said that, we got rained on after the PSV match ended on our way home, maybe it was lighter rain during the game? As for the Chelsea game, it was pretty dry after half time.

Two issues, firstly it was too late and secondly we lost Rice’s presence and solidity further up the pitch.

Rice in 6 was an improvement but having Partey come on at halftime and keeping Rice at LCM would have been much better imo.