Morning all.
Early match day kick off for Arsenal today as they take on Everton at 12.30. An opportunity to get three points in the bag before watching the other clubs play catch-up. I think Newcastle and Man Utd will win their home games but Liverpool, I’m not so sure. Tomorrow, one or both of Totts and Man City will drop points as they go head to head at Totts ground. With a bit of luck, Totts will nick a point just as Fulham did against Chelsea last night. Poor old Aubameyang eh, still, he’s very wealthy.
Team news:
Everton are without Ben Godfrey and Michael Keane and James Garner is a doubt. Nathan Patterson and Andros Townsend have long term injuries.
Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Jesus are still missing for Arsenal.
Everton are having a grim season with only a better goal difference than Southampton keeping them off the bottom of the table. Out of the 30 home points on offer during the first half of the season, Everton have only managed to win 8 of them. The other 7 of course came away from home. Their goal difference is -13, not the worst in the League by the way, but not good. Sean Dyche will have worked on sorting his team’s defending out all week I’m sure. I’m quietly confident there’ll be a double decker parked in defence as well as a few tasty challenges throughout the game.
What a fine bunch of officials in charge of the game eh: Referee: David Coote. Assistants: Lee Betts, Mark Scholes. Fourth official: Andy Madley. VAR: John Brooks. Assistant VAR: Darren Cann. Coote is/was the reason Arsenal were charged by the FA. He didn’t like his decision being challenged, although it’s fine when any other clubs players do the same. Honestly, he has to be one of the worst officials in the Premier League. Him and Jarred Gillet.
Mikel Arteta on Sean Dyche being appointed Everton manager:
They have tried to accommodate the right character for the circumstance the club is in. What Sean and the coaching staff did at Burnley speaks for itself. With the limited resources they had, they got incredible results very consistently in this very tough league. I like the character a lot, the presence and the clarity he brings to his team. Hopefully after tomorrow, he will be a great fit for Everton.
Hopefully not Mikel…
It’s hard to believe but Arsenal haven’t beaten Everton at Goodison Park since 2017, back in the days of Arsene Wenger, Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Aaron Ramsey and Petr Cech. Amongst others of course but it was they, along with Nacho Monreal who scored our goals. Five goals, five different scorers and here we are today, back to sharing the goals around instead of being reliant on one or two players.
It’s great to see Eddie Nketiah topping the list, especially as there was so much doubting his ability to step in for Gabriel Jesus and step up. As far as goals per minutes go, our number 14 is doing better than the Brazilian, but as we all know, there’s more to Gabriel Jesus than his goals. In fact there’s more to all our attacking players than just goals. Opposition players are doubling up, even trebling up on them because just one defender isn’t enough to stop the likes of Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard or Gabriel Martinelli and when that doesn’t work, they are fouled. Expect more of the latter today but don’t expect Coote to do anything about it.
The three winter signings could be on the bench at least. If Thomas Partey isn’t 100%, will we see Jorginho for the first time or Jakub Kiwior I wonder. Will Leandro Trossard get his first start? I’ve no idea either but what a big difference all three make to the depth of Mikel Arteta’s squad. I think we’ll now see the Spaniard use more of his five substitute options.
Catch up in the comments..
Good morning Rico.
If it’s been six years since we won at Everton then it’s high time we took all three points.
Arteta needs to impress on all our players the need to lay off the officials, mobbing them will gain us nothing. It’s up to Odegaard, as Captain, to politely query any perceived wrong decisions. Arteta needs to amend his own attitude as well as that of his players.
Morning Cicero, easier said than done I think when emotions are running high. Arteta can’t control his own emotions let alone the players. 😂
Partey fit, same starting eleven.
Interesting, another forward on the bench, Cozier-Duberry.
Good, we might need him at some stage this season. Especially in Europe.
Afternoon all.
Let’s go, at last we are starting at a good time in oz
Too many loose passes, we need to tighten up.
We’re quite fortunate not to be a couple of goals down.
And a couple of eyes gouged out.
Typical Dyche team, hold shirts and cheap shots at hitting their opponent in the eye, but saying that Arteta needs to change something for the second half.
Saka needs to stop turning inside and keep out wide, go past the fullback and get some decent crosses in. Both wingers are too predictable, therefore too easy to crowd out.
We may not see Odegaard in the second half, he copped a couple of kicks and looked to be limping a bit.
Oh dear. Big 30 mins now.
It’ll be difficult to get anything out of this now.
Yep, can’t see where a goal is coming from for Arsenal.
We still have not learned how to deal with corners,
Harsh Geoff, we don’t often concede from corners.
What a shit performance,
Disappointing…
Oh well, there were always going to be bumps in the road. 😀
😂 Adam, there was…
Good night all, off to bed before I say something I might regret about today performance.
Very poor, what chances we created were wasted with wild shots. Our defending particularly at corners was ineffective.
We can’t even blame the ref.
I blame Dyche…. 😆
Shooting was high and wide today, so many times. Worryingly, we had very few clear cut chances, and started to regularly give the ball away in the last 15 minutes rather than exert any pressure. Everton were allowed to make it scrappy, so no fluent football. Guess we were due a game like this, we have been hitting above our weight.
Partey fit, Don’t think he was ,
And when he is not on song and dominating Xhaka disappears , Today they doubled on Martinelli and Saka which meant that there should have been space for the centre midfield to exploit but they were so hyped that Xhaka and Odegaard hardly had any space which curtailed Nketiah’s play.
Dyche did a job on us and did it very effectively .
You can’t fault the Keeper or the back four or Saka and Martinelli but it was the centre 4 that were rushed out of it. We could have played until next week and not scored .
That’s the reason that we lost
Would like to see the tackle on Gabriel again as it looked like a penalty to me , although understandably not given.
I thought it was a foul on Gabriel but just outside their box.
Onana was man of the match and he was the type of player we needed.
It was a foul on Gabriel, I didn’t realize if it was inside or outside the area. Wrong in my opinion, is to score a free kick against Arsenal because Gabriel is fouled in the fall caused by the foul he was given
Hmm, Spurs versus City tomorrow. Can we really wish for a Spud win? 😕
Oh well, C’mon you Spurs! C’mon you Spur…no I can’t type that twice. 😉
Next morning still pissed at our performance.
Rico I thought it was a foul also, but I thought it was just inside the box.
As Cicero let’s hope Tottenham win or at least draw.
Ha ha Cicero, I can’t bring myself to type that once.
No wonder VAR couldn’t decide then Geoff. 😂
New post up.