I’m not sure he’d want to go into another club where he’s not #1 or clearly #1. United don’t have the money to completely give up on Onana. If we are to sell him, there’s a few clubs I wouldn’t mind seeing him going to, if he goes to a rival like Chelsea/United it would be harder to wish him success.

Saw the news of the Man City charges verdict might not be decided until 2025… when Pep’s contract is up anyways. Could they just deal with charges piece by piece? Like take 3-4 charges they 100% can prove, dish out 10 point penalty immediately. It seems insane you have charges hanging over you for 3 seasons without penalty and then maybe one season you get 40 point deduction. City can literally just cheat as much as they want and have success, then take a season off where they won’t get CL and then back on the horse again. How is that a penalty?

Even if the penalty in 2025 was demotion to League 2. Why the fuck are they allowed to continue like nothing happened? I get that there is due process and there is a protocol but this would be like a sprinter took so much drugs, it was difficult to prove for sure which he had in his system. So he was just allowed to compete for 3-4 years and go to the Olympics while it was being investigated, then they win gold and when it’s proven, they say ok you can’t compete for one year now :)

Bit harsh but also true. I like Ramsdale and the Raya thing hasn’t been an absolute triumph or handled brilliantly. He just needs to get some perspective, he’s in a situation where it’s been acknowledged he hasn’t done much wrong and is still widely regarded as a good keeper. If he wants a move or his place back, he just has to keep his head down and keep working. Nobody should really expect to be the #1 for years. Maybe he had that in his head but he went from a relegation keeper, to EL/Top4/Challenging for title team.

He just needs to get his head right, those two mistakes could be have been costly as fuck at Brentford. You don’t want to turn into another Karius because you just lost your head at the wrong time, played badly and your options for a move disappeared. I also think is it REALLY that bad to be the #2 at Arsenal in the short term? You never know what happens in football, maybe Raya just has a really bad run of games and is dropped or gets injured.

He just needs to keep his head down and work hard, it’s his only option now. I think the media stuff is reinforcing Arteta’s decision a bit.

I feel this is how everything is going. There is no longer ownership and accountable, it’s just denials and gaslighting. It’s less effort to get sky to back them and ignore the issues than to fix the issues and let go of some shit refs.

What is actually a fair penalty if clubs are found breaking rules? Reading about the Chelsea thing and Man City charges. I can’t help but feel unless the penalty is absolutely huge it’s worth breaking the rules. Let’s say we did some underhanded shit to sign Declan Rice, then we go on to win CL/PL in the next 5 years, then in 6 years times we get a 10 point penalty. You’d take it.

If there was a real penalty like, you get demoted down a tier and audits are done more regularly. You’re probably not going to risk doing something underhanded to sign someone if in 2 years you could be dropped down a division. Obviously it depends on the scale of the rule breaking too, Chelsea and City are absolutely systematic financial doping. If you’re on the extreme end of the scale (115 for City for example). We should be talking about expulsion from the football league and stripping of trophies and titles.

I just don’t see the penalties ever being too harsh though. It’s basically in the interests of the PL that these clubs overspend and bring in the best players and managers to the league. If Newcastle signed Mbappe by making up deals and sponsorships etc, the PL would probably act in 10 years time because they want him in the league and more people watching.

I wouldn’t have minded him leaving in different circumstances, he really fucked us on price by being so adamant he only wanted Barca. I’m sure we could have got a lot more money for him if he didn’t say he’d only leave to join Barca. The whole thing with Spanish teammates putting a barca jersey on him too, it was so distasteful and disrespectful to a team/manager that put him on that stage.

I don’t hold any hate to him, but how he left was still badly handled. Losing Cesc + Narsi same summer was a dark day for us.

Feel bad for Wrighty, you could tell how much it meant to him to be involved and play for England.

Still can’t really forget Keane walking out on the Ireland team. I can’t help but feel if we EVER had the slimmest chance to win it or go far it was that world cup. I find it interesting he talks about how he didn’t play for Mick McCarthy, he played for his country but it’s strange he would then walk out because of Mick McCarthy.

He was probably totally right about standards in the Ireland setup and in the last few years, we’ve seen how dodgy the FAI as an organisation actually were. There were reports that executives would be flying first class while the players were in cramped economy seats. They also had to be bailed out by the Irish government because of just gross mismanagement. So it’s no surprise to hear that players didn’t have the right food/equipment etc.

Saying all that, I still think he could have sucked it up. I think he probably just felt betrayed nobody had his back and McCarthy tried to throw him under the bus. Such a shame though. He would have made a huge difference.

Meanwhile they’re asking us to fly Jesus out to them because they think we’re lying. I’ll never forget last season too, Foden and Grealish jump out of England duty, not a word. Meanwhile Saka is being played in every minute and made go.

Honestly I’m fine with Saliba going under the radar. He’s incredible. I don’t really buy into all this shit that we need to argue Saka is better than Rashford or it makes any difference if people think Bruno Fernades is better or worse than Odegaard. I’m happy with our players, other teams have good/better players. Doesn’t make any difference. Like Chelsea are closer to relegation than us, I’m sure you got some people debating how Colwill is streets ahead of Saliba.

Loving De Zerbi giving out about refs, and poch going crazy. Really need all teams to pressure for change and standards for improve. I was watching back the highlights of City/Chelsea against yesterday with Sky commentary. Carragher going on about how City’s first pen was wrong. Just immediately pisses me off and I think ‘Aren’t we suppose to give refs a break and support them? they all make mistakes it’s fine’. Now suddenly Carragher is calling out a bad decision and how VAR can’t give that. PGMOL obviously didn’t call him fast enough to cut it out.

It was so refreshing playing in the CL, I don’t have that fear that we’re going to get fucked by VAR or there will be 20 unnecessary checks for random shit.

Apparently, Serhou Guirassy has a 15m release clause in January. If we’re short on cash, surely he would be a good shout to boost striking options and maybe save a bit of money to pick up a CM in Jan too. Rather than spending 60m+ on Toney. I’ll openly admit I’ve just watched some youtube highlights of him, but for 15m seems well worth the gamble.

Seems like a lethal finisher. He hasn’t played a lot of minutes throughout his career though. He has only played above 1600 minutes 3 seasons in his career. Something I’m missing with him?

I was looking at the fixture list in the league before the transfer window opens. Would be nice to get another CM with some legs in January. We have Burnley (H), Brentford (A), Wolves (H), Luton (A), Villa (A), Brighton (H), Liverpool (A), West Ham (H), Fulham (A). Out of those games where having a midfield pairing of Rice/Partey would have been nice is Liverpool and Villa, potentially Brighton but that is at home and we might be able to control it better.

After the window opens, our games where we might want two energetic/defensive midfielders are Liverpool (H), Newcastle (H), Chelsea (H), City (A), Brighton (A), Villa (H), Spurs (A), United (A).

Not sure who we could get or if we have the money. An injury to someone like Joringho as well would mean El Neny coming in potentially, or playing midfield of Rice, Havertz, Odergaard. Which I’m not sure works in the big games.

Win also bought some cones, a mini goal and a few balls. Going to let in every goal to build Kai’s confidence.

Ya I also don’t get if Chelsea’s biggest problem has been breaking down low blocks, why spurs didn’t just sit in as 9. Their plan just to give Jackson/Sterling/Murdky half the pitch to run into seemed insane. Like Chelsea just need one good pass over the top and Spurs were countered.

Like I found all this talk of how brave Spurs were etc a bit mental. Isn’t it just bad tactics? It didn’t almost work, it instantly looked super dangerous and if Jackson was a better finisher, it’d be 9-1 or something. If we decided to be galaxy brain and were playing Zinny at CB, then he loses the next 10 headers to whose markers. It’s not brain or smart if it doesn’t work, at all.

I have to say after the Newcastle game, it was as pissed I’ve been over a result in a long time. The gaslighting from a lot of pundits over their goal too I found unbelievable. I liked the CL game last night, cos although Saka was fouled a lot. I didn’t really fear them chalking off our goals or pens being denied or sending offs.

The Spurs Chelsea game was an absolute joke in turns of VAR. Every goal felt like ‘ok let’s load up VAR now to find a reason to disallow this’.

I genuinely have a fear around a lot of games that VAR is going to fuck us over. This might not be accurate in stats or reality, but my perception has completely changed. If I see us score a goal, that isn’t 100% clean. I’m worried it won’t be allowed. Any kind of shirt pull or anything, or a toe offside.

Calling it now, our goal of the season is going to be one of those Rice runs through the middle but he just smashes it top corner at the end.

I’m a bit conflicted about how I feel about Vieira taking the pen from Eddie. It was a nice gesture but was it kind of shit for Vieira to ask for it too? The captain should decide who takes the pen. I know Vieira might be pissed if he was told ‘you can’t take the pen’ but for Eddie it was also a chance to join Henry/Arshavin with 4 goals in a game. Fairness to Eddie, he handled it well.

The Havertz pen I understood, and he has a very good penalty record. I just think we should draw a line under who takes pens. Have 2/3 people in the pool. If those aren’t on the pitch, captain decides. Then again Eddie was the captain at the time, Vieira asked and he gave him the pen. So I guess that’s his decision too.

Ya expectations are through the roof. I’ve seen people talking about us ‘getting revenge’ for heavy defeats in the past too. Like the Man United game , I saw a few people talking about we should pay them back for the 8-2. Or the Chelsea game too, Chelsea have improved a lot from last season (probably the worst team we faced when they were under Lampard). Yet people were talking about it like an easy 3-0 win. There really has been much to suggest we should walk most games too. So then people’s expectations are these easy wins and it’s never the case.

It’s a bit like Odegaard too, he has 2 poor games and people want him dropped but there’s no real alternative for him. Vieira seems to be dropped down the pecking order a bit and I’m not sure you really drop your captain for 2 poor games.

Haha, ya I think growing up as an Irish Arsenal fan, you were surrounded by United and Liverpool fans. I get on well with the Liverpool fans I know because I think we know what it’s like not to win shit for a while. The United fans would know fuck all about football but declare themselves huge fans anytime they won something.

I used to hate Man United more than anyone, but I really want Chelsea to fail miserably this year. It would be good for all of football if Chelsea becomes a case study in what not to do. There are a few teams that get fucked over by ownership and it’s sad to see them drop down a tier or get into serious financial trouble over it.

Chelsea are the opposite, fans were only brimming with glee about getting one over on rivals and buying everyone. They don’t give a shit about youth players and are only happy to get rid of them so they can buy whoever is the next highest rated player on Fifa if you filter by u23 bracket.