Match Day Thread Arsenal vs Newcastle United - Matchday Thread

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Venue: Emirates Stadium
KO: 20:00
Date: Monday 1st April 2019


Head to Head:

Overall: 191
Won: 76
Drawn: 38
Lost: 67


Last Six Meetings:

Newcastle United 1-2 Arsenal
Newcastle United 2-1 Arsenal
Arsenal 1-0 Newcastle United
Arsenal 1-0 Newcastle United
Newcastle United 0-1 Arsenal
Newcastle United 1-2 Arsenal

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Team News:
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Granit Xhaka will be handed a late fitness test before the visit of Newcastle to the Emirates Stadium on Monday. Lucas Torreira is suspended, but Aaron Ramsey, Nacho Monreal and Dinos Mavropanos are both expected to be passed fit.

Schar will miss out through suspension. The central defender completes the second leg of a two-match ban after reaching 10 bookings for the season, but would almost certainly have sat out anyway after being knocked unconscious in a clash of heads during Switzerland's 2-0 Euro 2020 qualifying win over Georgia last Saturday.

Skipper Jamaal Lascelles has recovered from the knee problem which kept him out of the 2-2 draw at Bournemouth last time out, leaving only Sean Longstaff (knee) on the sidelines.
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I’m going so expecting a goal fest

#jinxedit

 

We will leapfrog Tottenham into third should we get the three points.

Need a big performance.

 

Tottenham have lost 10 games in the Premier League this season. Absolutely staggering.

We've got a huge opportunity tomorrow to leapfrog them into 3rd place. We absolutely cannot let Rafa and Newcastle be the coupon buster. The players need to be ready to throw absolutely everything into this.

We could never have imagined being in this position 6 weeks ago, yet here we are.

Let's make the most of our rivals slip-ups and do the business.

COYG!

 

Massive game for us tomorrow. If we win it's a huge 3 points that takes us up to 3rd above the Spuds.

Who the **** would have thought that possible a few weeks ago ? Spurs have gone #spursy just at the right time again

 

When you consider the fact that we haven't signed anyone of note in 2 years and have played in a half empty soulless bowl for nearly as long, it honestly isn't staggering at all. Spurs fans are the least surprised at this run of results. In more ways than one it has been a disaster waiting to happen for a long long while.

Obviously want you to lose (you'll win) but in a weird way seeing you move above us might just galvanise our team to turn up for the full 90mins of our remaining games, instead of picking and choosing one half or the other.

 

We must show big intent from the kick off tomorrow night and put this game to bed by half time! With Chelsea still in the mix it's vital we keep some daylight amongst our rivals and this is the game to DO IT! Some tricky away games remaining so anything other than 3 points will be a disaster! COYG!!

 

I see what you're saying. However, any top 4 side (which you are) that loses over 25% of their games, when the season isn't even over yet, has been shocking regardless of the circumstances. I'm not just saying this because you're Spurs, I would be saying this for any of the top sides in the division, too.
Also, I honestly didn't think the last 5 games would go as badly as they have done. 1 draw and 4 losses in your last 5 league games, if memory serves me right? With Kane and Alli back, Moura barely playing and Son who has been lethal, I thought your players would be well up for it going into the business end of the campaign. I suppose the lack of depth in midfield and errors in defence (particularly at fullback) have costed you a lot of points in the last few games. Which makes the Dembele sale all the more baffling, seeing as you've not got anyone who provides his drive and dribbling ability from the middle.

That being said, I've seen your remaining fixtures and I still think you've got an excellent chance of getting into the top 4. 5 of your remaining 8 games are at home, with only 1 left (in the league) against a top 6 side.

I'm still not sure that we will win the games we are supposed to, and United or Chelsea haven't been that convincing recently either, so it's still all up for grabs.

Wouldn't surprise me if it goes to the last game of the season.

 

You're 100% correct in saying that our problem areas are FB and CM...the handling of the latter position over the past couple of seasons has been appalling to be frank. At least we tried to add down the flanks by signing Aurier and promoting Walker-Peters to the first team. Neither move has helped but compare that to CM where we have just sat and watched the best CM partnership in the league in 2016/17 succumb to injury and then (in Dembele's case) leave the club without even an air of desperation is baffling. If Sissoko hadn't pulled a miracle season out of his hat we would be sitting no higher than 7th or 8th right now.

The recent run of bad form hasn't caught many Spurs fans off guard to be honest. You probably watch Spurs as often as I do Arsenal but the sad truth is we haven't played well all season save for the odd good performance here and there. The vast majority of the games we've won we've scraped across the line in. I can look back at at least 6 of them and think "could easily have ended as a draw". This slump has been coming for a long, long time. Since the beginning the season as a matter of fact. That's when we made the fatal decision not to invest anything in a first team crying out for investment. Not a splurge, not 100's of millions, just that one or maybe two names to freshen things up and keep incumbents on their toes. We failed disastrously and the consequences are now an inevitability - a mixture of overworked or overconfident players who as the season draws to a close are either exhausted, fed up or going through the motions.

I wouldn't dare say this on the spurs board but our forum is rapidly going the same way as yours did in Wenger's final years, with the camp neatly divided between fans who are seemingly blind to our obvious faults and those who point them out at every opportunity. It has been a toxic season with very few positives other than our improved showing in the CL and the new stadium (which granted is a massive positive). But screw it up on wednesday night and things could turn ugly. We learned from you lot that building a shiny new ground doesn't automatically guarantee an era laden with shiny new trophies. We enter this era in a financially stronger position than you did in 06 but from a footballing perspective - your global fanbase, team experience, squad strength and what your manager had achieved already with you - you were miles ahead of where we are now. And that makes me nervous that the fans who think the stadium will magically take us to that next level are worryingly naive.

 

Good post mate.

You're right that I haven't watched loads of Spurs this season. But, as I said, despite your recent poor form, your remaining fixtures are relatively kind, bar the City fixtures. You've lost 10 league games, yet you're still 3rd and even if we win today, you're not out of the top 4 race by any stretch. We have 5 games away from home, which is our achilles heel, whereas you have 5 games at home back at WHL, which could galvanise you going into the remainder of the season. This is why I'm not being so naive to write Spurs off just yet.

I agree you should have maybe signed a couple of players in the transfer window too, either for depth or cover, but it seemed both Poch and Levy didn't feel like it was necessary to spend based on the players you have available. This could prove to be a massive error in judgement or, if you do get top 4, could arguably be the correct decision, given that Spurs were never (in all likelihood) going to surmount a tangible title challenge. Top 4 was always the target. I think Poch has done exceptionally well to even have you in the position you're in, considering your net spend was -£46m.

As for your last paragraph, I hope you're right . But again, it's one of those things that remains to be seen. It could go better than you think. However, if Alderweireld, Kane, Eriksen, Alli etc leave, I think it will be hard to replace players of that calibre. We had to witness our best players leave us during the austerity years, I don't know if you would have to go through similar team transitions or not.

There were so many external factors that we couldn't have predicted when we agreed to move stadium. Chelsea being taken over by a Russian oligarch could not have been predicted when the planning was already in place for The Emirates, City being subsidised by a Gulf state could not have been anticipated by anyone, the massive influx of foreign investment and dodgy sponsorship deals etc...it's all changed the landscape of football. With Wolves and Everton now investing more in their squad, we could see them rocket up the table in the next few years too.

The sad truth is it is looking likely that, unless you receive huge swathes of cash for your assets like Liverpool did and reinvest wisely, or you have a wealthy benefactor subsidising you, it will be increasingly difficult to compete for silverware .

 

Schar being out is a huge blow for Newcastle. He is their best defender by a long way.

On the Subject of Spurs. They are following our form when we got The Emirates. If the follow in our footsteps, the real drop off in form will come in future seasons, after they move into the new stadium, and they have to replace this group of players, but can't afford like for like replacements.

As for Brunel's post. The more teams that invest big money the more even the playing field gets, So I welcome Wolves and Everton spending money, if Wenger's youth system legacy isn't allowed to fall into decline.

 

The bigger problem with lack of spending in recent windows is the fact that the shopping list just gets longer year on year, to the point where I think we now need a minimum of 5 new players to come in the summer. And I can't see us doing that because to sign 5 success stories you either need to get really, really lucky or sign 8 players and hope that 5 of them come good: New RB ready for 1st team immediately, new left-footed CB as a long-term replacement for Vertonghen, new CM ready for 1st team, new CM as a long-term replacement for Wanyama, and a new AM as a replacement for Eriksen. Of those 5 players, the RB situation is excusable as we couldn't foresee how bad Aurier would be or how far Trippier would regress. AM is excusable because it has only become clear in recent months that Eriksen wants out. But the other 3 could and should have been signed ages ago. And what's more if we had done so, we wouldn't now need to pay through the teeth for in-form, peak-performance players: we could've moved for younger prospects a year or two ago and given them time to develop - much like we did with Sanchez and Foyth.

The flipside of the shopping list getting longer is that the deadwood list is also longer now. GKN, Janssen, one of Trippier/Aurier, Wanyama, Lamela have to be moved on this summer as there is little to no sense in retaining them year after year. Can't see a clear-out like that happening either tbh, especially if Toby and Eriksen leave as expected.

I think the move to partner with the NFL and to ensure that the stadium is a top-class corporate and entertainment venue were extremely wise and will maximise the profit we make on the place. If we do eventually secure a franchise deal with the States (rather than the odd event here and there as currently agreed) that profit increases exponentially and, which I believe has been ENIC's long-game for a decade now, greatly increases the chances of a yank billionaire buying the club. But for every John Henry there's a Stan Kronke, so we have to be careful what we wish for.

 

You don't think that it already has?

We will need to spend big money if we want to compete for league titles and Champions League, in my opinion.

 

I would point out that all of the symptoms you showed in the years leading up to your move were conspicuously absent in ours. You already started reducing your wage bill from 2002 and stopped spending big on players as early as 2003. The much-maligned season-ticket bonds and year-long delay to your move due to lack of funding were further indications that all was not well from more or less day 1 of your construction, years before your actual move.

By contrast, our wage bill has increased year on year, since launching the new stadium project we have broken our transfer record 4 times, zero bonds and no finance-related delays.

 

Mustafi starting because Kos injured. Let's hope when he conceivably gives the ball away in a dangerous area, or dives into a poor challenge, they don't capitalise on it.

Guendouzi starting as Xhaka did not recover in time.

 

ugh = double post

 

Spending big money is no guarantee of success, surely Sanchez, Ozil and Leicester have proved that. it seems to me that our most successful players and teams were built around a team indoctrinated and committed to single game-plan and style of play. The minute the players lose faith, and the players start playing individually, they start losing. Obviously having a successful manager that can immediately focus the players on his style, predicting success, is a plus. A player that plays to the game plan, even if he is a tactical sacrificial lamb and it makes him look bad, is better than a player with 20% more ability that doesn't play to plan.

I also personally believe that negativity from the fans destroys the cohesion in the team. The more the players read about this player or that player letting the team down, the more they start to believe they have to play for themselves, and the worse it gets.

The worse the fans started clamouring for Wenger to go, the worse the team's performance got. Coincidence? Maybe.

So, for me, the best players to get are young players that made their reputation at your club, are committed to the club, and are taught to play in a style that fits the manager's philosophy, bolstered with perhaps a few players that are solid team players.

That should give both Spurs and Arsenal fans hope.

 

(very) soft free kick for newcastle when arsenal scored. Very harsh.

 

That Cross from Mustafi earlier was one of the wierdest ****ing things i've ver seen. He ran past two players then blasted the ball a good 40 yards off target.

 

GREAT RESULT.

Up into third. Thought Ozil was class today my MOTM for sure. Makes you think was Emery a genius to drop him? - seems to have lit a fire under his arse again.

Ramsey took his goal well also.

Guendouzi again looked incredibly composed for a player of that age.

Good stuff!