AFCON/Asian Cup update + Sunday not as annoying as it might have been

Happy Monday.

Arsenal news is still in short supply, but at AFCON, Mohamed Elneny played as Egypt needed a late, late penalty from Mohamed Salah to rescue a 2-2 draw against Mozambique. Our Mo got 78 minutes under his belt in this game.

Meanwhile, at the Asian Cup, Japan beat Vietnam 4-2 without Takehiro Tomiyasu. He wasn’t in the team or on the bench, so that does make you wonder about his fitness levels. He did come on for the second half against Fulham back on New Year’s Day, but maybe he still has a way to go in terms of his match fitness. Let’s see if anything emerges on this one. Japan’s next game is on Friday morning against Iraq.

In the Premier League I watched most of a fairly boring 0-0 between Everton and Aston Villa. The main talking point was the lengthy VAR check to disallow a first half Villa goal. To me it looked clearly offside, but I was left wondering why the officials didn’t rule it out for the obvious foul on the Everton man in the build-up. As they pushed up to play the offside, Danjuma was prevented from doing so by Lenglet holding onto him. Surely that should have been enough straight away to disallow it? Anyway, four minutes later they figured out the clearly offside guy was clearly offside.

Good process, well done.

Then I endured Man Utd v Sp*rs. It was a good goal from Rasmus Hojlund to open the scoring, but defensively United are an absolute shambles. Richarlison equalised, before Marcus Rashford made it 2-1. Early in the second half, another Sp*rs goal made it 2-2, and that’s how it stayed.

This was genuinely an awful game of football. It was like watching a pair of hobos drink a jug of moonshine each and career around trying to swing punches at each other. Aaron Wan-Bissaka is to defending what Shkodran Mustafi is to defending. Young kids watching, never give up on your dreams of being a professional football because if these guys can do it, so can you. Yes, even with one leg 7 inches shorter than the other and the eyesight of a retinally-challenged mole. You can’t be worse.

United had a great chance to win it at the end, but Scott McTominay thought he was Gabriel Jesus and headed over the bar. A draw was probably fair though, neither side deserved to win that game. I also enjoyed Roy Keane afterwards:

"Everyone relax."

Roy Keane says we shouldn't 'go overboard' with praise for Tottenham as they still drew the game. pic.twitter.com/hvcBtIObsZ

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 14, 2024

So, what could have been an annoying Sunday wasn’t quite as annoying as it might have been. Leaving us a chance to make things even less annoying when we face Crystal Palace on Saturday, but more on that as the week progresses.

Here’s another interesting thing:

Everton + Nottingham Forest expecting to be informed on Monday that they’ve been found in breach of PL profitability & sustainability rules for 3yr cycle to June 2023. Both have prepared mitigation & will launch robust defences @TheAthleticFC #EFC #NFFC https://t.co/Rrz5YDSPIk

— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) January 14, 2024

I’m curious to see how they deal with these charges, or whether there might be any repercussions in terms of what they have to do in January in the transfer market. Our links with Amadou Onana are, I’m led to understand, more speculative than concrete – at least this month – but maybe that changes with this situation and Everton are forced to sell. As for Forest, didn’t they bring in 20+ players in one window? That was eye-opening at the time, so let’s see how their mitigation goes.

As ever, the shadow of City’s 115 charges looms over the lesser-lights, but I suspect the Premier League’s lawyers are being tied up in all kinds of ways by the Abu Dhabi funded legal team. Ultimately, that many charges, and the complexity of them, are always going to make things more complicated, but it does feel a bit like the police sending all the squad cars after someone for an unpaid parking ticket while letting Charles Ponzi run wild and free.

Right, let’s leave it there for this morning. We are recording an Arsecast Extra for you this morning, so keep an eye out for the call for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re on Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Podcast should be out around midday. Until then.

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