Ladies and gentlemen … The Weekend

Morning all.

Apologies if you’ve been unable to visit the site overnight/this morning, we had some server issues. I don’t know exactly how to describe it in technical terms, but things went a bit like Man City’s form at the moment.

What is going on there? It’s fairly unprecedented for them to lose five in row. I think it’s the first time it’s ever happened in Pep Guardiola’s managerial career, and they’ve taken a couple of fairly substantial beatings in that run too. The ignominy of losing 4-0 at home to Sp*rs is bad enough, but that’s the second time they’ve lost to them in a few weeks.

Talk about a double-edged sword for Arsenal fans. We all want to see City lose, but never want to see that lot win and be happy. I watched that game on Saturday evening, and all I could think of was we just needed them to be that bad once in the second half of last season, but no. They couldn’t manage that, could they? ‘Oooh, look at us being all consistent’. Pathetic.

There’s lots of chat about how they’re an aging team, which is undeniable. Walker and Gundogan are 34, de Bruyne is 33 and injury plagued these days, and then you have Stones, Akanji, Ederson, Ake, Silva etc who are all around 30 but have played a lot of really high intensity football for a long time. They’re obviously missing Rodri too, and even if I think that’s too simplistic an explanation for their current woes, we know how much of an impact missing one key player can have on performances.

Anyway, the key point is that I hope this run continues forever. I know it won’t, and there’s sufficient time left in the season for them to pick themselves up and do what they’ve done year on year and win a load of games in a row, but we can but hope. As Liverpool keep winning, all we can do is keep going ourselves and hope they drop some points. Next weekend they host City at Anfield, and there’s another double-edged sword, as we need City to get something from that one. Not everything, just something.

Elsewhere in the Premier League this weekend, Wolves win over Fulham was impressive, not least because of the two goals scored by Matheus Cunha. I know names get thrown around all the time as we think about how to bolster our own forward line, but he’s a really interesting player. His first goal was just outstanding. The sort of finish you’d get if you fused Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry together. I’m sure there are going to be plenty of clubs looking at him, if not in January but certainly next summer. I wouldn’t be at all unhappy if Arsenal were one of them.

There was also a sacking, with Steve Cooper dismissed by Leicester. Some people might find that strange after just five months in charge, but to me it makes perfect sense. He kept picking Wout Faes, who is possibly one of the worst professional footballers I have ever seen. I don’t think the big woolly David Luiz head does him any favours, but every time I see him he’s awful in all kinds of ways, and that was certainly true of their game against Chelsea at the weekend. Graham Potter seems to be the man lined up to replace him, but he’d better hope there are funds available in January for a new centre-half.

For more on the weekend’s Premier League action and stories, you can join us over on Patreon for a new episode of The 30 – our weekly round-up podcast.

Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We will have an Arsecast Extra for you in a little while too. We’ve put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Pod should be out around noon. For now, have a good one.

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