PSG LOOMS...
LITTLE PREVIEW OF MY THINKING ON OUR FIRST UCL SEMI IN A LONG TIME
Arsenal vs PSG is set to be a matchup for the ages, I can’t wait. It’s a shame before all these massive games, the narrative is always about the ballot process. I’m not deep enough into it to really give a full-on perspective, the only thing I will say is this: the idea that new people get the chance to see the team is a valid one. You want to build the fan base, give the world the chance to see the club.
But… it’s also kind of mad that the people who stuck with the club during the really drab years aren’t able to get tickets at all because the lottery system is so overstocked with, I guess, the jolly-come-latelys who weren’t interested when Mustafi and Rob Holding were on the front of the program.
All of these problems are complex and layered. The byproduct of being successful is that things cost more, more people want them, and it’s really hard for the business to do something fair and just.
But… to scrap loyalty to the degree they have feels like a miss.
I’d say there will be a cost to this… but in England, you can treat fans however you want, and they’ll still show up. It’s the beauty of our game. In America, fans are treated with far more care, because their attention is more elastic. The Premier League? You might get a drop-off, but very few clubs in the league have to run ticketing campaigns… the main thing that drops is Premium seats.
I hear you… ENOUGH of the ballot chat, it is boring.
Ok, let’s chat about the game.
PSG warmed into the weekend with a rough outing… conceding 3 goals from 3 shots on target. They rolled with a VERY strong team, which was surprising considering the game was a Friday nighter. They rotated heavily for Tuesday, so I’d imagine the hope from Lucho was a confidence-building mega win. The underlying results were good… they created 3.16 xG, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up.
BUT… the vulnerabilities were there for all to see. Nice waltzed through the middle for the first goal, their Italian keeper caught flatfooted. The other two goals were poor marking in the box. Donnaruma is getting hammered in the French media.
The key for Arsenal in the home leg is to get at PSG early on and try and break up some of that fancy football they like to play. Madrid were hammered because they couldn’t do the things they wanted to do. Their midfield passes were eaten up by our midfield, they couldn’t play out of the back, and we molested them in midfield.
It’s basic, but Arsenal has done a great job making brilliant teams lose their confidence. Teams like City, PSG and Madrid are a little like the tall handsome kids at school that go their entire lives getting things their own way… then they get in the real world, their athletic abilities mean shit, and suddenly… they feel vulnerable and have a total meltdown. When you’re the best, week after week, and suddenly, the ugly kid is smacking you up… it’s hard to find the tools to get over that.
Maybe calling Arsenal ugly is unfair… we’re high-class bullies. Rich parents, no doubt. But we have the sort of rich parents that make you work in the garden to clear apples or build crazy paving for 7 hours. We have resilience because dad is walking up the stairs at exactly 6am yelling ‘THIS IS NOT THE FOGGING A-STANDARDS.’
In games like the two we’re about to face, I don’t want to be the family with the parents who were hippy beat poets or NGO board members. There’s a clear delineation in styles and strengths, but for once in the last 20 years, we have the strength of power, resilience, and brutality.
There aren’t really that many questions that need to be answered. Trossard, a player in fine form, will play a false 9 role, rotating in and out with Merino who will act as a false 8. We’ll have power dropping into midfield to clog up PSG’s rhythm, and we’ll have options around the box when we try and break them down at speed. Arteta needs Arsenal to be a vortex of power and speed in the home leg so they are whimpering for the second.
All of this, on paper, sounds like incredibly bullish prose, spat out by someone who knows what he’s talking about… but, this is Champions League. The competition is fucking crazy, and when you’re down to the final 4, the biggest indicator of success is usually geared around how many individual freaks with ‘I WANT TO BE A HERO’ mindsets you have in your team.
PSG has a lot of those freaks… Dembélé, Barcola, Doué, Ruiz, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Neves… those are players who just do wild things. Arsenal has fewer of those artists and that was the difference last season against Bayern. They had bang-bang and we… didn’t.
So, it’ll be an unpredictable night. The game likely won’t be decided in the first leg. We can overturn anything. They can overturn anything. It’ll be pure Champions League and I honestly can’t wait.
Ok, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I am going to watch a hockey playoff later. The Blues are playing the Winnipeg Jets. Should be fun. If you want to check out a Before the Whistle, we’ll be doing a special one for PSG that’ll be a freebie. So keep your eyes PEELED for that one. Isn’t the idea of peeled eyes gross?
Also, get the latest Therapy session.
This year the semifinals in CL are absolutely brilliant. Four different clubs with four different styles and strengths from four different countries, each with absolutely realistic chance to win it.
Can’t remember when was such case the last time.
Of course there were a couple of incidents of players kicking the ball away yesterday and delaying the restart - nothing was given, and the players weren't even on a yellow already.
https://x.com/footalyse/status/1916111536805859774
https://x.com/footalyse/status/1916101124345446464
Same exemplary referee Canavagh btw, who said "I have no other choice" to Declan about his second yellow against Brighton, nowadays doesn't give the slightest of fuck about it and says play on.
Par the expectation though. Nobody gets booked for it, just Arsenal players already on a yellow.
I'm replaying that Dec 2nd yellow and I'm still shocked that it was Rice who was sent off and not the pos who kicked the living shit out of Dec.
It's a fact we were slaughtered early on and it kept going game after game after game. Same refs, so similar situations, vastly different outcome. I've talked about it quite extensively though, so yeah. While one team was fucked beyond belief for stuff not even one other team got punished for, while another team was given all the benefit of the doubt in the world... I cannot congratulate them, it's a PGMOL title.
Tom posting stats about xG and xGA. I wonder what the stats would have been if deserved red cards were given to VVD and Konate, half the laughable pens they got weren't given and some legit goals and pens against them were actually allowed like they should have.
Now, apply the same logic to us - minus the red cards and the laughable pens and the removed goals. The stats will be so vastly different.
Just remember that in the first 9 rounds, we won 5 games. Just 9 games and we had lost 9 points. Wanna know how?
Red against Brighton, red against City, disallowed goal against Liverpool, red against Bournemouth.
That's the 4 games we didn't win in our first 9 games. The refereeing was also scandalous against Wolves on opening day when their player Mosquera could have been sent off twice but didn't get even a single yellow card but we managed to win just like we did against Wolves in the return game, again with 10 men for another absurd decision.
There were also the game away at Brighton and that Saliba pen...
The pen Everton got at the start of this month.
The disallowed goal against Palace last week when Newcastle were allowed that goal against us last season.
It's absurd. That's what it is. We've not been judged equally from the first round of the campaign. They tried to kill us in the first 1/3 of the campaign, and they did.