Morning all.
Arsenal take on Manchester Utd later today and yesterday, or overnight, Mikel Arteta faced the media. One of the questions he was asked related to Thomas Partey.
On if we expect Thomas Partey to stay:
Yes.
On if there’s been any conversations on where Thomas’ priority is:
No, every time I spoke to him, every time I’ve had conversations with him, he’s wanted to stay with us, so there’s nothing there at all.
On if Thomas Partey and Declan Rice can play together:
Yeah, they can play together and that was in my plans. If you want to improve the squad and have more quality, we need players that can play together, but we need players in the same position that have to fight for their places. It’s something that we haven’t had over the last few years and we wanted to improve that, and that’s why we brought Declan as well.
Of course Mikel Arteta was not going to come out and say Arsenal are looking to sell Partey etc because that would knock any potential transfer fee for him down. Similarly, he’s not going to tell the world that his player has asked to leave either. I’ve said all along that I hope Partey stays, even if it’s just for one more season because when he’s fit and firing on on cylinders, there are few better midfield players in this league.
Like a number of players last season, he faded after the turn of the year but I still believe fatigue played a big part in that. Rice, Jorginho and even Elneny should allow for more rotation throughout this coming season meaning that by the time we get to February/March, players are still full of energy.
On whether there will be more transfers:
I don’t know. Obviously there will be movements still. There will be ins and outs. It’s still very early, the market seems to be a little bit quieter in the last week or so. If we can improve the team we will try to do so, but we don’t get any weaker, so we have to be really cautious of that as well.
Of course he knows if Arsenal will make further signings, just as he knows who will be departing before the transfer window closes but quite rightly, he’s not telling us. We don’t get any weaker he said – in my opinion, selling Partey would make the squad weaker than it looks today.
Thomas Partey is in the USA, as is Emile Smith Rowe and Leandro Trossard has recovered and will be in the squad for the game later.
Alongside Mikel Arteta in his press conference sat Oleksandr Zinchenko who was asked:
What it’s like to play with Mikel Arteta again and the new signings that have joined the club since last summer:
Well, it’s not a secret that I’ve known Mikel for a while since City. I said to myself that if one day I was going to leave City and stay in the Premier League, it was only going to be under one manager, and that’s Mikel Arteta. The way he sees football, his decision [making], he’s a winner and he has a mentality that you cannot love [enough]. It’s a dream to be in this kind of team for every football player around the world and you can see the way we enjoy every single day, the way all of us are working so hard, probably during last season I don’t remember one day where the staff wasn’t at the training ground. This is the right way to work if you want to achieve something big, that’s how you need to behave.
I’m sure that’s why players want to join Arsenal. Not just because of Mikel Arteta but because of how he, along with his fellow staff and board members have turned the club from being a bit of a laughing stock in relation to how it’s been run, to a club which is serious about everything – both on and off the pitch. Something I don’t think the club has had since the David Dein and Arsene Wenger partnership.
I’m not trying to take anything away from Mikel Arteta by the way because he deserves the credit he gets but as we saw with Arsene Wenger, any manager is often only as good as the team he has around him.
“Team Arteta” – come on, we are in the States….
Catch up in the comments.
Good morning Rico.
A chance this morning to get a look at our newly signed striker Russo. First game of England’s Women’s World Cup has just kicked off.
Morning Cicero, I’m watching. Seen her play before though and she’s quality.
Just watched Japan too, really quick football from them.,
When Arsene Wenger was in his pomp we had players wanting to come to Arsenal because of him and I feel that under Arteta we are seeing a repeat of that.
There were many reasons that Declan Rice turned down Man City but you can be sure that a major driver for him was working with Mikel Arteta, the culture Arsenal had under Arsene Wenger was driven by him and that’s the same today under Arteta, both surrounded themselves with good people and they had smart guys in the Boardroom but all this only comes together if the manager is special.
Can you believe it Kev, I disagree. 😂
It’s a bit of a chicken v egg scenario.
I promise Rico that I won’t be upset. 😉
Phew Kev. Lol
That was a lot closer than expected..
Haiti have some half decent players, particularly the goal keeper. A couple of the England girls looked a bit “rusty”, no doubt we’ll see some improvement as the tournament gets going.
Oops! is it wokay to say “girls”? 😉
I think part of the attraction of playing for Arsenal, at this time, is not just the “Arteta” effect but also the realisation that the club are on an upward trajectory. It is also a fact that there are fewer “first name on the sheet” types who consider themselves un-droppable. The whole squad is comparatively young and Arteta only targets players of a similar age so prospective recruits can see a clear path to building a good career.
With all the added pressure of CL football, members of an enlarged, and better quality, squad can expect more minutes as Arteta will have to rotate his starters much more than in the past.
I reckon the other reason why players are happy to join is that we don’t change managers every year like other clubs, just because we are not winning trophies
All at sea at the back chasing shadows . United look so much sharper . Ramsdale and Gabriel at fault for goals 2 nil down after 40 minutes.
If you didnt watch it dont bother if you want to enjoy your Sunday.
I dont remember their keeper having to make a save .
Once United tamed Saka and Martinelli after about 20 minuttes we just huffed and puffed with no penetration.
To be critical Nketiah is not up to it and replacing him with Jesus was no better.
please take Any offer for Vieira he is wasting a shirt .
I am off to bed now and not happy, It may be only pre season but we badly need some focus up front . Jesus putting in late tackles on the halfway line just isnt good enough.
Morning Rico and all.
I should have taken Potter advice and not watch the highlights on club web site, hopefully it was just a bad day in office.
Good morning all.
I’ve nicked this from Thom Gibb of The Sunday Telegraph……
Everyone is talking about the new Arsenal men’s away kit. This is great news for Adidas, until you hear what they are saying.
The traditionalists hate it, the kit cognoscenti are not convinced, nor, most worryingly for Adidas, are many younger fans. This seems a shame for a usually well-presented team with a proud away kit history. Charlie George in Wembley yellow, Dennis Bergkamp resplendent in gold and navy for Wenger’s first double and Andre Santos, in 2012/13’s proto-banter era, wearing the purple and black stripes of a suburban My Chemical Romance fan.
How will this kit be remembered? It is an aggressively ugly colour, the polka dot and wavey-lined patterning is obnoxious and no-one aspires to look like a new rave zebra. Perhaps it is in the lineage of kits which seem deliberately terrible, so bad they are good. Care to spend £80, or £110 for the body-shamingly tight “authentic” version, to test the theory?
Of course there is the usual spiel from Adidas and Arsenal which reaffirms the need for some sort of polyester guff ombudsman. “The design features fluid black lines inspired by the map of Islington,” we learn. Ah yes, Islington, the only place where maps use black lines to denote roads. These also represent “the journeys supporters make out of the club’s home borough for away days on the road.” Sure. Sure they do.
Then an inevitably excellent launch video which adds a radio theme. This is an excuse to wheel out musical Arsenal fans including Rapper AntsLive, DJs Sherelle and Scratcha DVA, the Islington Youth Choir, the bassist out of Wolf Alice and Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp. No, that last one is not a joke. No demographic itch has been unscratched.
As something of an afterthought the kit was then seen in an actual football match, against the MLS All-Stars on Wednesday night. Predictably it looks far better on professional footballers than the nice chap from the indie band. But how often will we see it in that context? Man Utd had a similar shade of luminescent green on their third shirt last year. They wore it twice in their opening four games then put it away before one final outing at Bournemouth in May. Wolves wore their away kit twice all season.
Aside from whether you despise or merely detest this new Arsenal shirt, the galling thing is the gap between the brilliance of its promotion and the abjectness of the product. Really that is the central conceit of advertising, that spending 80 quid will make you as cool as AntsLive, when actually you look like a tribute band version of a minor Spandau.
No great tragedy there, but it is the fans to whom kits really matter. They literally pay for the excesses of crass designs. Football’s independent regulator may have more urgent business like malevolent owners, ensuring Southend do not become an Essex Bury and gambling advertising persisting like Japanese Knotweed but there is a change it could make here with no clear downside.
Force clubs to stick to two-year cycles for their kits. Alternate between home and away each year so there is still something new to sell, but give each kit a chance to make memories. Watch the designs improve when clubs and makers know that they are stuck with shirts for more than a handful of games.
Maybe given time this new strip could be another ‘bruised banana’, the fabled yellow and black 1991-93 kit which was reviled at the time but is now so beloved the Arsenal shop sells 42 products in the pattern. But the ‘traffic warden marble cake’ will have such little exposure we will never know. New kits are ever more shocking, but now leave as much lasting impression as Watford managers.
Morning Geoff, all.
Potter, I watched it live too. Grim. 😆
New post up.