'TWAS UNAI EMERY DERBY DAY EVE

THOUGHTS ON OPINION, STRIKERS, EMERY, AND A HUGE TOP-OF-THE-TABLE GAME TO CLOSE OUT 2024

There’s certainly a window in a man’s life where he would leave his family, fake his own death, source a fake passport, drain the 401k, and live on an island with no regrets or concerns for what happens to his family. That moment is the three-hour window from wheels up to wheels down on literally any flight with kids. After years of scoffing at parents with badly behaved plane brats, I am now ‘that’ family. This is karmic forces working against me. The Chinese family in front of me had two kids younger than mine, not a peep the whole flight. Man stood up at the end of the ordeal, in his unstained designer clothes, crisp like they’d just been dry cleaned, no crumbs, looking refreshed. How can I be him? What did I do to deserve two babies pushing to be on the no-fly list?

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of telling you that I am sorry for some of the intermittent blogging and misses on the podcast formats. I am back on fast wifi, my head is clear, and I am boxed in the house in the frigidness of Missouri weather. We are ready to roll with posting efficiency like you just would NOT believe.

Talking of podcasts, I’ve been getting some heat for criticising Viktor Gyokeres of late. Listen, can’t be having ‘I only come for toxic positivity’ comments. This is football opinion. If I shaped my views around the idea that I can only say nice things, I’d be a filthy fraud. I laid it out at the start of the season… no more forgiveness from a website that has been very forgiving of a project that has, largely, given us fans what we wanted… the ability to fight at the highest level every season.

My view up until this season is Arteta has had one hand tied behind his back with the squad. It’s been very goldilocks. Not quite deep enough, not quite enough quality, missing some pieces. Last summer was Josh K rolling in and saying, “Look Mikel, here’s the perfect porridge. No more excuses for you” (excuses is not an Arteta thing, obviously).

If Arteta isn’t rotating his squad, I’ll call him on it, earlier than everyone else.

The above table shows how players have been used this season, via The Athletic. There’s a clear bias for certain players and there’s some players who just aren’t getting much love. I think that has cost us at certain phases this season and maybe led to some of the more leggy performances, and it has certainly led to some of the injuries.

What I would like to see is the training schedule, and I would like someone to list out the amount of training ground injuries we’ve had this season. Hincapie, Timber, Saliba, and Calafiori are four I can think of off the top of my head. Rotation is one of the tools you can use to maintain freshness, but days off and lighter training sessions in crunch moments is the other. You could be rotating well in games and blasting teams in training sessions and end up with the same outcomes.

But, point here, I’m not letting these issues sleep this season because we have to maximize this opportunity in a must-win season.

As for the striker, we waited a very long time to sign an actual number 9. Did we sign the one I wanted? No. Does that count towards the criticism? No. I really don’t care who we end up with. I just want to know the scouting job was top tier and the player can come in and do the job I expect of them.

Viktor is not doing that right now. Do you really think I want him to fail? No chance. I want this guy to embarrass my rank amateur views on the game. I want him to take me outside the bar and spank me in front of a car park full of his ultras. Give me the humiliation of getting it wrong. The win on this website is not being right… the win is Arsenal being great in every aspect so that writing here every day is easy.

But, sometimes, you have to call a spade a spade. I’m not seeing enough from a striker who convinced Arteta the move was right for him because of the glint in his eye. I’m also getting a touch bored of reading the faux intellectualism about what he’s giving Arsenal that only special people can see. These things that are flagged aren’t backed by data and they’re not backed by the eye test.

A few weeks ago, the monstrous runs were the thing. Ok, I could roll with that. Gyokeres was a handful, he had been playing more like a typical 9, and he was running channels and opening up space for our wide players.

But goals were hard to come by and when our players found the runs, Gyokeres would find row Z with his first touch. I kind of felt the overarching view of the player was that he was really strong and he was occupying centre backs.

Then we had the story that Arsenal players weren’t finding his runs after the Wolves game before Nick Wright blasted open that idea by pointing out that Arsenal players have dropped the most central through balls in the league and Viktor actually gets better service into him than Ekitike, Woltemade, Haaland, and Danny Welbeck.

Arteta is also being accused of building a system that doesn’t create, again, another baseless comment not grounded in reality. Check out this graph from Louorns.

I don’t like the big chance creations stat, unless it works in my favor, but look at how many big chances we’re creating compared to our rivals. Only City have more and it’s one. I’m gonna go out on a limb here, if a system that creates that many big chances isn’t for a striker, maybe it’s not the fault of the system here?

But we’re now very deep into the season and defenders have a read on him. He lost 6 of 8 duels at the weekend. Managed 2 shots on target, one incredibly timid. Players were trying to find the runs, but he just doesn’t seem to have the super power or technique to break free of centre backs at the moment. Arsenal had 24 shots against Brighton and he was responsible for 3 of them. A game we were totally dominant, again, and his output was pitiful.

There was a conversation being had after the game that Brighton pressed us harder after he exited the pitch. I don’t have the data on this, but can we be sure that was because Gyokeres left the field? A player who lost 75% of his duels left and Brighton were like, damn, it’s party time boys, let’s play some real football!

Or, did the game state change because they were trying to salvage a point in a game they’d done literally nothing in?

I asked myself that question, then I checked the data, because surely there was a massive jump in attacking play to merit a ‘Viktor exits, and things go to shit’ narrative… and guess what? There was no narrative. Viktor left the field and we conceded two attempts at goal. Arsenal had 6 and created one big chance. So once again, we’re living in this world where memetic narratives circle the web about all the indirect table-stakes skills he has that make us better… when they don’t.

Someone had a pop at me in the comments of Patreon.

‘Pedro liked Dominic Calvert-Lewin’

Not true. I can’t remember campaigning for him based on injuries and his love for the front page of fashion mags like Rashford. But… I hate to say it. DCL has 7 Premier League goals this season and more NP goals than Gyokeres. A guy, broken for his whole career, playing for Leeds, is outperforming a guy in his prime, playing for one of the best teams on the planet.

I’ll support any player wearing an Arsenal shirt. But my word, if you think I’m just going to write around this, you are in the wrong place, listening to the wrong podcast. Gyokeres is level with Chamakh for output at this stage of his Arsenal career. These are tough conversations to have at the table. Yeah, looking over at dad, with his Gyokeres shirt, it’s really hard right now. But if you’re not honest, how can you progress your relationship?

Now, you can bookmark this… come back when Big Vik has scored 400 goals, and say, ‘this dross is why you’re shit’ and I’ll take that.

But right now, my view is that it’s not been good enough, and I’m not seeing enough flashes of brilliance to convince me it’s just a phase. Low shot output, lack of involvement in the game, and Gyok Ultras telling you not to believe your lying eyes is generally a recipe for a duff signing.

What is the recipe for a duff afternoon at The Emirates? The biggest abuser of xG on the planet, rolling in with Ollie Watkins in form, in a top of the table clash for the ages.

Aston Villa should be 15th right now. They are scoring goals they shouldn’t be. They are keeping out goals they should be conceding. It has been an abomination to watch this season. Fun, but Emery is everything Arteta is not. Kamikaze, unstructured, wild… and very, very lucky.

This is my cup final. I did not write favorably about Emery when he was at Arsenal, another big swing I took that led to a lot of hate in the LG comments section. But, I saved you from him. The new deal was stopped. We moved on from him after 18 months. Now we’re in a better place and so is he. But there was a price… that this man would fuck us up more often than not. He did it last season. He did it when he was at Villareal. He did it a few weeks ago.

This record has to be stopped. Arteta needs to find a way to prize open that leaky defence and make sure the result is reflective of the result. Villa were so bad in the first half against Chelsea, they created 0 xG. Then Ollie Watkins took over and scored a dreadfully lucky one-on-one that was saved and then rebounded right back in off his shin. Then he was given acres in the penalty area from a setpiece and he scored a great header. Chelsea were dreadful, we can’t forget that. I just do not understand the model there or why they swapped out Madueke for players like Gittens and Garnacho. Estevao, a player I loved, also looked miles off the pace.

But… Emery got the scalp. Villa are within 3 points of Arsenal again. They can draw level with us if they do us again. This is a top of the table clash that means something. We haven’t got a good record against the best teams this season. Our two poor results in the league this month have been against 10-man Chelsea and Villa.

It’s time to change that.

There are a lot of exciting permutations for this game.

Gabi Jesus should now be fit to start a game and in my opinion, he should be starting after what we saw from Gyokeres. There’s also a chance we see Kai Havertz return to the bench which is great for rotation options all over the pitch.

Then we have the midfield. We don’t know what’s going on with Declan Rice and Timber. But we have Merino, Zubi, and a Martin Odegaard who looked back to his best. I have to say, I love Declan anywhere, but I do think Emery is very smart, and he will have a darker plan for him than Brighton would be capable of… praying to have Timber back in contention.

Eze and Madueke are both out in the cold a little right now, but this could be the sort of game that they could impact. Madueke has the power and speed to break in transition and he’s excellent in tight spaces Villa could create if they sit deep. Then you have Eze, a man not used to the bench, who can also do a big chunk of magic if asked.

Optionality all over the pitch with Big Gabs at the back. Also, did you see the reports that Gabriel complained we’re not mean enough to Saliba when he came on the other night? I love that. Get him in that starting 11 and let’s get back to our best!

Ok, that’s me done. Before the Whistle will be coming a little later. It’s me, Jacob, and Matt. Then we’ll be On The Whistle tomorrow. Then there will be ratings on Wednesday.

See you in the comments. x

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