Morning all.
For the neutral, a great game, for an Arsenal fan, a bitter ending. Liverpool came out of the blocks hard and fast from the off, we were all over the place. A non existent midfield was soon clear to see and Liverpool loved it. The home team raced into the lead after some really sloppy stuff from Walcott whilst attempting to carry out his defensive duties allowing Can to fire in a shot. Cech saved but the ball fell to Firmino who fired home.
Ramsey soon made it 1-1 with a really well taken goal. Campbell’s pass was delightful…
Liverpool again went ahead through Firmino, a super strike which left Cech no chance but one has to look at the play further up the pitch, sloppy to say the least.
Sakho denied Ramsey from again making the scores level with a headed clearance which was destined for the back of the net. Ollie pounced, well, got something on the resulting corner and honours even again. The big Frenchman had a chance to make it 3-2 but he simply couldn’t get the right contact on a cross from Walcott.
He did make it 3-2 later in the game though with a super turn and strike – a very special goal.
Finally, we were leading in an end to end game, the only question was, could we hold on……..
After the game, Arsene Wenger confirmed that Mohamed Elneny was officially an Arsenal player which is great news, IF he’s as good as a few fans suggest he is. Having not ever seen him play, I’ve no idea what to expect but I hope he’s ready to roll up his sleeves and fill the gaping hole in midfield. He could start his new career at The Britannia Stadium on Sunday so talk about in at the deep end. I hope another midfielder joins him by the time the transfer window closes but I doubt that’ll happen.
But who is our new man?
Full name: Mohamed Naser Elsayed Elneny
Current club: FC Basel
Age: 23 (DOB 11 July 1992)
Height: 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)
Nationality: Egyptian
Excited? Me too.
Elneny is a holding midfielder, let’s hope he really does know what ‘hold’ means. Apparently he offers than Coquelin going forward – that’s not what we needed to hear but once Francis Coquelin returns, the two together could finally get a grip of our midfield.
Club career:
The 23-year-old began his career with Al Ahly in Egypt when he was an academy player – first playing for their youth sides when he was just five years old but having never managed to break into the first team he moved to El Mokawloon, where he did break through into the senior squad and became a first team regular.
Basel snapped him up in 2013 on a loan deal which after impressing the manager, was made permanent. Elneny knows what it’s like to win a league as Basel have won Swiss Super League for the last three seasons in a row.
Our new man represents Egypt at International level, making his debut in September 2011 against Sierra Leone – a game which Egypt lost. He’s gone on to make 40 appearances for his country, scoring three goals.
Of course I had to steal that information as I know nothing about him whatsoever but until he’s played, let’s give the guy a chance. Yes he’s cheap, but that doesn’t always equate to a player being useless. I’m actually looking forward to seeing just what he can bring to this team and Arsene Wenger must believe he’ll bring something good.
Anyway, back to last night, a draw which feels like a loss and all because we conceded at the death of a game.
I’ll leave the dissection of that to the comments section…..
Have a good Thursday guys….
we all wanted a DM, and now we have him.
Let’s hope he’s the right guy.
From the very little I’ve seen, seems the right type, which is a start.
Morning all.
Ginge, I’m with you on OG 🙂
He’s a bit short Scott…. 😉 😉
So is Alexis bahahahahahahahahaha
But he’s a forward… 😉
Good Morning Lovelies and Hunkies.
Claude Makalele was what Rico??? somewhere around 5ft 7. yet he still did a job and many would have loved to have him at AFC.
I personally like big guys. Like PV or Campbell. But sometimes small dogs can be nippier than bigger ones.
I have not seen him play much…..only a couple of matches. still need more to assess him. but his numbers are good.
Lol Rico.
Devil, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog 🙂
Wenger stays attacking and we concede, he cops it.
Goes defensive and the same applies.
It’s not about attacking it’s about holding the ball further up the pitch and making their midfield drop further back to cover. Taking off every bit of outball only leads to more pressure . Once Benteke came on they were preying on second ball knock downs and just hoofing the ball to Giroud was never going to stem the tide of high balls into our area.. Exiting match yes but poor result as well , we should have had the three points but with decisions not going our way it was going to be hard but we shouldn’t have made it harder on ourselves.
just remember that shitty and Leicester and spuddies still have to play the dippers. They will drop points as well.
Potter, and if the ref makes the correct call, and doesn’t buy the dive, we are 80 yards up the pitch.
If Theo doesn’t try and run it out from within the 18 yard box, we are 3-1 up.
If Clyne is sent off for any number of yellow card offences, they’re down to ten men.
Ifs, buts and maybes……..hindsight is wonderful, but I stand by what I said.
If we concede, he’s blamed.
I was being ironic Devil… lol
Coquelin is 5′ 11″ too and he’s pretty darn good….
Morning, considering Liverpool have beat Chelsea and City, a draw away from home ain,t bad imo. and could well be title winning form, we had a glorious chance missed by Giroud, but he made up for that mistake, with Stoke and Chelsea to come, if we can get through them games unbeaten I,ll be happy,
we,ve a lot to be optimistic about this season, not 1 team can say they,ve been better than us this season.
As long as we continue to grind out results, we should be there or there abouts come may.
I agree but I think the blame is justified . His subbing makes us too defensive , we have got away with it against poorer attacking teams. Last night we got caught !
Devil, teams are dropping points everywhere.
It’s ours to lose 🙂
Fair enough Potter, but was it the tactics, or the execution?
I thought Klopp killed Wenger early in the game, but later on, I reckon he got it pretty right.
Ahh well….next up, let’s smash Stoke and get on a roll.
Adam, some referees are control freaks, whilst others will trust their Linesmen, it’s all down to the individual personality of the ref, or lack of, as with Dean/Riley, two of a kind.
Referees will issue instructions to their Linesmen before the game, what they want them to watch out for and focus on.
Some referees want to have control of everything and tell their Linesmen to just do throw ins and off sides.
Other refs, the better ones imo, will give their Linesmen the latitude to flag for offences, even pens, that the ref may have missed.
I still believe a couple of ‘ray parlous’ in this squad would make all the difference. Right now our subs are often ineffective but if we had players who could come off of the bench and work as hard as Campbell, Alexis do, we’d wouldn’t be conceding goals as we did last night.
I agree Potter, it all starts further up the pitch and once Campbell went off, we lost that… But he was tired so had to be changed imo…
Does Walcot know you don’t run with the ball in your defensive 3rd? Rookie mistakes irk me.
Spot on match summary Rico.
potter- i am with you on the subs.
In my view if AW was going to bring on MA08, he should have brought him on 10 minutes earlier so that he could have settled the midfield and helped us retain the ball better.
With 5 minutes to go and back against the wall; maybe Gabriel would have been the better sub…
On a different topic, interesting no one is talking about Barca’s mega signing… their ban is not even over yet.
Dublin, I think it’s the missed sitter and timing of the goal which irks me…
Oh, and the fact that I detest the Dippers nearly as much as I do the neighbours. It’s very close… lol
Me too Marshall…
I’m off for the night, but I’ll leave you all with this………when we lost Coquelin, where did we all think we’d be right now?
I’d suggest we are all pleasantly surprised at present 🙂
Night all.
Agreed Scott but what it has caused is that our walking wounded are completely worn out. Too many of them are showing signs of fatigue . The predicted injuries and lack of squad depth is catching up with us.
Night Scott….
Alexis should be back this weekend Potter.
Arteta is back, Rosicky should be back in time for Chelsea or maybe Burnley…
Welbeck could be back by the first week in February.
Then we have Elneny who’ll freshen things up. What worries me is Ozil, he needs to be treated with kid gloves…
What we need is to see Walcott and Ox stepping up to the plate, but so far they haven’t..,
Night scott.
We have scored more goals on average without Le Coq too…
I wonder if AW will actually play Rosicky now he’s fit?
Bt and Dev- someone on twitter blaming AR16 for Alan rickman’s death.
Not surprised Ts as unlike some, Coquelin doesn’t bomb forward at every given opportunity…
Rico, Tomas is a perfect fit for the FACup and coming off of the bench, in situations like last night, to run down the clock…
Coquelin would have made the difference last night Rico
I agree Kev, he was last season too but for some reason, AW just wouldn’t play him…
RM and ATh banned from transfer… hooray!
The transfer window is going to heat up big time with this ban.hopefully
Agree again Kev, they wouldn’t have had such freedom from the off had he started….
It’s official… 🙂
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20160114/mohamed-elneny-joins-arsenal
Doing transfers are not banned it’s registering them is so they can buy but not played.
Like Barcelona
Tsgh do you know which player has scored the most goals in all competitions so far this season.
I feel it might be Giroud but not sure.
Sad about Alan Rickman loved he’s sheriff of Nottingham.
It won’t be Ollie Joe… 😉
Lukaku in the EPL only but OG12 in all comps…
Vardy in the PL Ts…
Oops, my mistake… 😉
Both Lukaku and Vardy on 15 it seems…
So it’s Giroud not bad for a striker many consider not good enough.
Rico you didn’t look at the link I posted to the BBC top scorers in the Pl that hurts. 🙁
Ops it’s on the last post but still 🙂
Joe- stats and damn stats. 😛
.. on this form OG12 could score 30 goals… in all competitions but 22 goals in EPL…
Still short of the TH14’s and Drogba’s of the past world I guess. 😉
Apparently Rico, Elneny has the lung capacity and stamina of a long-distance runner…
Now if Arsene can only just sign Rabiot and bring in Hernandez, we’ll be rocking…
Good Afternoon Lovelies and Hunkies.
RIP Alan Rickman.
Yep…..Ramsey’s hex strikes again. He scored yesterday.
There’s a very stat heavy article in the telegraph on Giroud entitled arsenal already have £40m striker.
Seen it on newsnow
And he wants to win the triple
http://news.arseblog.com/2016/01/is-elneny-arsenals-first-egyptian-player-no/
Lets hope so Kev…
He hasn’t played enough games and so how he recovers will be crucial if he goes straight into the team.
Still AR16, Cj25, Hector, Monreal hold the top 4 spots with Og12 as 5th, since TR07 did not do the summer assessment due to injury.
Ozil, MA08, Gibbs were in top 10 of the senior squad.
Coach, anymore rumours on those two Nigerian kids?
I’ve seen some headlines, usually from dubious sources on NewsNow that suggest that we’ve got them…
Good to hear that Kev. I’d love both the other two too but this is AW and Stan Kroenke we are talking about…. 🙁
Joe, Campbell is very good, but £40 million?? 😉
Indeed Ginge indeed…
At least he won’t be in the red zone…
🙂 Joe, you’ll get over it…. lol
Kroenke has confirmed the move to Las Angeles for the Rams , he’s all caught up with that at the moment.
You are mean Dev.. leave Ar16 alone. 😉
Joe- little known fact. Chelsea tried and agreed to sign OG12 for over 32m Euros before we signed him. We only got him for cheap because OG12 told Nicollin he would only move to Arsenal as Di Matteo did not know him and if the low bid was not accepted by Montpellier he would stay and move to us free the following summer.
Reason he left euros early to undertake medical even before Montpellier had accepted our bid…
Potter – I heard him talking on SS’s yesterday. Think it’s the first time of hearing his voice for me…
Tsgh the telegraph article shows how good a striker Chelsea missed out on 😀
Elneny won three league titles during his time in Switzerland, but admitted that moving to the Emirates was a huge step up.
“It is one the biggest clubs in the world, I know everything about it and its players,” he said.
“It is an indescribable feeling, I am really glad of course. Arsenal is one of the world’s greatest teams, and I am very keen to participate positively with my new team, God willing, and to give my best for the team and for myself.
Speaking to the club’s website, he added: “Arsenal is one of those teams that everyone enjoys watching and of course I would love to play for such a great team.
“Mr Wenger is a highly respected manager and one of the world’s best managers. It is my honour to be trained under his management.
“I would like to tell [the fans] that, although you have not seen much of me, I promise I will contribute positively with the team. I am hoping that we win the Premier League and cup this season, and the Champions League as well.”
Wenger, meanwhile, is confident his new signing has what it takes to be a success in north London.
“Overall I believe he will be a good addition to the squad,” said Wenger. “First he has not come in straight to a big club, he had an intermediate stay in Europe so the adaptation is less of a question mark.
“He is 23 years old and has already got Champions League, Europa League and Swiss League experience. He is a player who is adaptable in midfield.
“He can be box to box and be a holding midfielder so that is for us very promising. We wanted a versatile player and I wanted a player who can play defensive but can as well play to box to box.
“His strengths are his technical level, his vision, his intelligence, his disciplined attitude and his physical attitude to compete at a high level. I think he has the physical qualities to play at the top level.”
Now now Rico we all know Campbell is a £50m striker 🙂
You never know in a couple of years Joe… 😉
Kev, tbh I have never seen them play. so cannot say much. and only read about them.
Joe- Do you have the link to the article.
Basel have a high co-efficient fitness level for distance covered per game so it is promising…
He scored a very Edu-esque goal against fiorentina in the UEFA cup recently.
Seeing as AW has never won a title without a left footer as his pivote; Elneny signing fixes this…
Tsgh I can’t copy it on my phone but it’s on newsnow I’ll try when I get back to a tablet
Work blocks NN… they are trying to sabotage my ability to skive off.. 😛
My human rights come into play i suppose. 😉
Seen it on telegraph…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/12099524/Arsenal-already-have-a-40million-striker-its-Olivier-Giroud.html
Good thing to tsgh 🙂 you’d do very little work like me today 😀
ha ha joe.
With the latest EU ruling allowing bosses to read personal messages it is worrying…
Our FA Cup match is a 3pm Saturday ko, no television screening for us….
Must mean the FA don’t think we’ll slip up, either that or Riley has things in hand….
Mesut Ozil has won Germany’s best player of 2015 award…. 🙂
How do rico, still miffed about last nite, still on the bright side we have our favourite away fixture to look forward to the weekend I suppose.
Tsgh that’s why I have my own phone even though work has given me a phone for years.
Hi Micko – you and me both. Play like that again on Sunday and we could be in trouble….
Rico- so yanited get their 29th straight FA cup screening, even though old Fergie is no more; whilst the record cup holders get a 3pm k.o?
Aaron’s Hex deaths……….
1 May 2011 Arsenal 1-0 Manchester United Osama bin Laden
2 October 2011 Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Arsenal Steve Jobs
19 October 2011 Marseille 0-1 Arsenal Muammar Gaddafi
11 February 2012 Sunderland 1-2 Arsenal Whitney Houston
30 November 2013 Cardiff City 0-3 Arsenal Paul Walker
20 April 2014 Hull City 0-3 Arsenal Rubin “Hurricane” Carter
10 August 2014 Arsenal 3-0 Manchester City Robin Williams
23 August 2014 Everton 2-2 Arsenal Richard Attenborough
9 January 2016 Arsenal 3-1 Sunderland David Bowie
13 January 2016 Liverpool 3-3 Arsenal Alan Rickman
Kev, I wouldn’t worry too much about Ozil, Arsene sends him off on a cruise after every game now, it’s a hard life.
I don’t mind Ts, the longer we stay under the radar the better….
Real are not immune to bans anymore, they’re collecting them this season like raffles. Suddenly Cavani is available, he’s 28 and if he’s still worth £50m don’t see Wenger considering him.
Was nice to see Giroud proudly showing the badge after he scored. He gets slack for lots of stuff but you can never question his love and commitment towards the shift color he wears.
Don’t they all Marshall when enjoying themselves.. Adebayor once kissed the badge… I think… Lol
I’m off guys, night all…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/01/14/who-is-rams-owner-stan-kroenke-besides-the-most-hated-man-in-st-louis/?wprss=rss_blogsandcolumns
Beware the Syrup…
Night Rico (casualty on TV?)
Arsenal sign a player, just had a chunk of tasty turkey and now it’s snowing…..must be Christmas….lol
Morning Rico and all. Cold and bright in London.
Brass monkeys…
Brudder.
Brudder
Brudder, I’ve been looking at a 430D Xdrive…..sweet bit of kit!
The 435D X drive is a flying machine…
Morning Lee, Adam and all.
Very icy here but a lovely sunny start to the day….
BT, turkey and snow in January…
Get your skis out mate…
Morning All.
Morning Rico.
I feel a great post a-coming.
I just know I’m gonna luv it… ?
Morning Curry Clubbers…
It’s cold, crisp and sunny out…
Great Hackney Marshes weather…
Brudder. They are nice for sure but I wouldn’t buy a diesel myself. For a family though I would check out the 4 series Grand Coupe with its 4 doors. One of the nicest looking BMWs I think.
Morning Rico and all,suns out,snow on the ground,snow boots at the ready.
Morning Kev. I’ve no idea what it will be about yet… 😉
Morning Bt, I am quite envious…. lol
That’s the one I’ve been looking at Grand Coupe 330D Xdrive…. 50+ mpg!
Lovely car, especially with the 8 speed auto.
Brudder. Just sent you a text. 🙂
Morning all. Cold and crisp here, no snow…….yet!
Elneny, bought! It’s a long time since Wenger ventured back into Africa! If this player turns out to be a good ‘un we’ll lose him every time the ACN comes round. Not ideal. Really thought he’d got over buying from that continent! But give him his due, he doesn’t usually buy duff players, does he???
Well we’ll soon see, won’t we?
Lee, I would take the 50mpg wissth a pinch of salt.
BT with my right boot it’ll be half that….
Agreed 🙂
Should be with…..
Lee, your like my Mrs, speed awareness course next month for her…..lol
Mine’s a week on Saturday…. fucking 79mph in a 70mph A road! My Golf R needs to be driven quickly! 😉
***in = on***
What’s a speed awareness course?? 😉
New post up now…