R-a-t-t-l-e-d

Hook it to my veins 🙃😂😂

Exactly. Important to hold him to the same standard as Raya and not pick favourites.

Stats speak for themselves, son.

Kept a clean sheet, deserves to keep his spot 👍

runs

Raya stans absolutely begging for Brentford to score there, that’s where some of our fanbase have placed themselves.

Arsenal have a large support base, which probably means the “hate” towards our rivals, spurs, is more pronounced. Other big teams don’t have the same relationship with their smaller local rivals. United and Liverpool hate each other, so that cancels things out, Chelsea have no rivals and City have no fans.

Worth noting that Arsenal and Spurs “hate” is largely Batman and the joker type rivalry. We need each other. Obviously some morons fail to grasp this and take it too far, but broadly it is a “love to hate” type rivalry.

Raya has played like 20x more passes per game than Ramsdale averages,

This isn’t necessarily a good thing. From where I sit, it very much seems like Raya has trouble playing a pass into areas that allow defenders to progress, or breaking the press line and getting the ball to midfield. The increased number of passes seem to be from playing Saliba and Gabriel into trouble and needing extra attempts to get out of trouble.

and is playing riskier with the ball than Ramsdale ever did.

Do we notice any significant improvement to make this risk worth it? We’re player much poorer than we did last season, I don’t think anyone would deny. I appreciate that on paper a keeper taking more risks might achieve better results, but we aren’t actually seeing those results yet.

If you’ve ever watched Man City over the last decade or Liverpool with Allison you will see these moments happen multiple times each season. It comes with the territory.

Again, the theory is there, but is it happening In practice with Raya? The entire point of the post you were supposed to be counting is that the stats are redundant because Raya isn’t passing the eye test at all yet.

His long distribution is also like 10x better than Ramsdales

Ten times better? Hmmm. This narrative seems to come from the final minutes of the game against City where he pinged a few long ones against a defence we’d already mentally broken. Ramsdale had good long ball distribution, so this feels a bit revisionist. Perhaps Raya does edge him on this one, but claiming 10x is really silly and harms any argument you want to make.

People downvoting you, but completely unable to counter the points you’ve made.

He’s certainly the third most decorated manager in the league and this season he’s probably got the most over performing team so far now Spurs have hit their bump.

That being said, his record at a big club in the premier league wasn’t great. Decent night watchman job for one season, marred by bad decisions that didn’t pay off, followed by completely losing the dressing room and getting fired by a club who are not known for pulling the trigger on managers quickly.

Basically he’s doing really well with Villa and has all the credentials to be considered a top manager, but the most important factor would be that no club in the top 3 would take him right now.

The lack of diversity in the current crop of Arsenal and England players is down to the same thing that has held women’s football back: access.

The sharp rise in popularity of women’s football has coincided with a huge increase in quality, which came about because more people are given access to play at a younger age.

There are still issues where lack of facilities mean that girls’ teams effectively get disbanded at a certain age, but what is currently available is a significant growth from the FA literally banning women for 50 years, but it is far from universal. You don’t need to be a sociologist to understand that when you’re in the process of improving access to facilities, the richer schools in areas with more space will get there first, and poorer inner city schools will be behind.

The result of this will create a skew where the currently crop of elite footballers are disproportionately white. As access increases in communities that are more mixed, in part because of these commitments from clubs like Arsenal, you’ll see things start to balance out and start to look more like the men’s demographic makeup.

Anyone posting obscure paywalled athletic articles about the stats behind Raya can be quiet for a bit. Ramsdale needs a chance now.

We have a lot of absolute dickhead fans that dream of being twitter ITKs and will drag this out for a long time.

We have a lot of absolute dickhead fans that dream of being twitter ITKs and will drag this out for a long time.