Different, more cynical, better …

Morning all.

There’s barely any time to process the weekend’s football before we face our next game. Luton at home on Wednesday night is the focus now, although the dust has barely settled on the draw with Man City on Sunday.

I found the scenes at the end of the game quite interesting, along with the comments from Bernardo Silva who spoke to Sky afterwards. He said of Arsenal:

This is a different team because they’re more experienced. Top side. Young players with one more year experience, and today they felt what it was like to play here last season and today I think they were much better.

Man City have had it easy too often against Arsenal, but this season is different. We beat them in the Community Shield (on penalties), beat them at home in the Premier League, and stopped them scoring at the Etihad which few teams ever do. I think you could see in some of those post-game interactions that it has dawned on a few Man City players that this is a different Arsenal, as Bernardo Silva said. You don’t win trophies for mutual respect, but it does demonstrate the perception of Arsenal is changing/has changed, and that can affect the dynamics in these head to head games, and beyond.

Then again, I found it very funny that Manuel Akajni complained about our ‘rotational fouling’ (not an April Fool gag), saying:

When we got through sometimes they stopped us with the fouls. If there’s no action to it from the referee, it’s hard. There were also some decisions against them that I didn’t understand why he gave a foul. There are some rules and I think there are clear yellow cards where it should be.

Hello Mr Pot, it’s me, Mr Kettle. Tactical fouling, rotational fouling, whatever you want to call it, has been part of the City playbook ever since Pep Guardiola took over. In their Amazon documentary, there’s literally a clip of Mikel Arteta – then an assistant there – telling players to make fouls if there’s a chance of the opposition winning…

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Author : arseblog

Publish date : 2024-04-02 06:25:10

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