6 January 2020

#ARSLEE - FAC3

Tonight's the night.  Arsenal under new manager Mikel Arteta face "Dirty" Leeds United.  

Of the "Big Six" clubs we have the most difficult lower league opposition and a potential banana skin as Leeds are top of the Championship and going well.

Hopefully tonight we put put out a full first team and beat them.

After the morale boosting win over Manchester United on New Year's Day we will kick on and regain the level we have come accustomed to under Wenger.  Consistently in the top 4 and once again we start winning the league and cups!

Fingers crossed that we are taking this cup seriously.

Aftermath - January 7th.

I have had time to calm down and so the expletive laden post has been past by!

Another game of two halves. A bit like the West Ham game a month ago. At least the excuse then was we were away to a team near us in the Premier League table.

Last night we were terrible in the first half. Leeds were by far the better team. All the armchair experts viewing across the globe must have thought the team in light blue were the Premier League team and the others were the Championship.

Admittedly Leeds are top of the Championship and they played a mixture of pace, pressure and a little of the old "Dirty Leeds" in a first half where if they had been better in front of goal they could have been ahead at the break.  Instead it was all square thanks to the crossbar, Martinez in the Arsenal goal and some last ditch tackling from the Sokratis and Xhaka.

Arteta seemed very animated unlike his predecessor "Dick" Emery.

At half-time it must have been Fergie-Time in the dressing room, with Arteta getting out the "hairdryer".  A different Arsenal came out.  Loads of pace and attacking from the whistle.  With a little more self management Reiss Nelson could have bagged a hat trick.

In the end, it was he that scored the only goal of the game from close range. Appeals for offside pointless as there was a Leeds defender on the goal line as well as the keeper.


Not the best performance over 95 minutes. VAR intervened twice to investigate possible red card incidents and then did nothing. At least it didn't eff up the game like it has done so often since introduced in August.

The fourth road draw was made before kick off and Arsenal or Leeds would play away a Bournemouth.  At least no replay this time, unlike our North London rivals who could only draw at Middlesborough despite having Jose "The Special One" Mourinho as manager....  Hahahaha.


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