It is a period of turmoil. Last season, Arab billionaires, with pharmaceutical aid, took the Premier League title. During last season, rebel fans managed to bring down the legendary Arsenal manager, ARSENE WENGER, with whining powerful enough to bring down Twitter. Pursued by the sinister Citizens, new manager Unai Emery sets out to rebuild a team at the Emirates, and so bring hope to fans in North London . . . Location: Emirates Stadium Date/Time: Sunday, August 12, 2018. 1600GMT/1100AM ET/8 AM PT (you may want to wake up for this Llama). TV: NBCSN?
I'll be up and ready for the new Premier League season, on both Saturday and our Matchday, ready to catch our boys in action, COYF'n'G!!! Haven't decided on what Matchday breakfast will be quite yet, but come Premier League LIVE on NBCSN I'll have it ready, with my home kit on ready to rock!!!
Downloads of myself in all 4 kits (I chose the green Goalkeeper kit for the shoot, as it is the best of the three GK strips) coming later on this week on both here and also my Official BIGHMW Facebook page.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't buzzing for this. Regardless of what happens these first few weeks of the season, we finally have reason to be excited about the future of the club. Hopefully things don't take a turn for the worse! If we get 6 points from these first two games I'm willing to make some crazy predictions. I'm rational here and think we get 2-4 points against City and Chelsea. However, wins in both and I don't see why we can't finish in the top 4 easily and potentially challenge. Our defense is still dreadful, but we can probably outscore just about anyone.
I put the ceiling on our points from the first two games of the season at 3. Can't see us avoid losing both games. We might escape with a draw in one, or win one out of sheer luck, but that's about it.
You don't think we can beat Chelsea without sheer luck? I'm going to have to disagree there. There's nothing in the past couple of seasons that makes me pessimistic when we play Chelsea, especially with big Willy in goal.
I know that Petr Cech is our #1 goalkeeper but how many of you think that Bernd Leno is gonna get more than his share of starts in the XI, David Ospina has shown vulnerability in some of his later starts last season and I wonder if Arsenal may be moving him during the summer transfer window now that we have Leno. David Ospina is a top goalkeeper in just about any other club out there, but even he knows that he is not going to get very many starts here with Arsenal, and that can wear on you mentally, and even effect your play, besides while he has been solid in his limited playing time, mainly in Cup matches, he just might be expendable now that we have a proven top-flight netminder like Bernd Leno as our backup. And we can't possibly be carrying 3 potential starting goalkeepers all season, one of them has gotta go, and unfortunately, that odd man out just might have to be David Ospina.
I'm catching up after some vaca, and just finished watching our pre-season match against Chelsea in Dublin. As much as I really liked our ball movement at times, and especially liked the dangerous incisive play from youngsters like Guendouzi, I think that match was a contradictory example of your belief in our ability to outscore people. We controlled much of the play, we're "pleasing on the eye" and yet couldn't buy a goal... until the last minute of the match. In my mind we've got significant work to do in all areas of the pitch, and for me it's mostly in our back line, and our striking.
I get that, but I'm also willing to chalk that up to the fact that the main units didn't get to play a lot together in that game. Emery rotated pretty heavily. Give that main group a few games and I think the goals will come. The dominate play is there. I think we are clinical enough to really do some damage in the goal scoring department. Maybe we can't, but I feel like we could easily do what Liverpool did that season under Rogers. All out attacking in favor of an absolute dogshite defense.
Much better distributor of the ball just going off of the sample size we have so far. Also seems much more incisive on the dribble. Frankly, he just plays the game more vertically. Elneny is a stagnate pass machine in the middle of the field. So most things. Again, just going off of the sample size we have.
This going to be a properly hard match, I'm expecting a loss, but if it's only by the odd goal then I won't be happy, but I won't be tearing my hair out (and I can't afford to lose much more!!!). Assuming Ramsey is fit, I'd go with: Leno Bellerin---Mustafi---Papastathopoulos---Maitland-Niles Elneny--Torreira--Ramsey Ozil--Aubameyang--Iwobi Subs: Cech, Monreal, Holding, Lichtsteiner, Xhaka, Lacazette, Mkhitaryan. Obvious slightly contentious selections there: 1. Leno - I just don't see us going out and buying a new keeper for £20m or so and not playing him. If Emery wants us to play out from the back as we have been doing in pre-season he's much better than Cech with his feet too. 2. Mustafi - If Chambers was still here I'd have played him. Mustafi will probably gift them a goal, but there's nowhere else to go at the moment. Holding hasn't overly-impressed in pre-season and Mavropanos has hardly featured at all. 3. Maitland-Niles - Monreal would be my first choice, but he hasn't played a single minute in pre-season and I'd expect to see him on the bench. Kolasinac would have played I suppose, but his injury has scuppered that and I would have shown him the door anyway as he's a left-back who doesn't seem to be able to defend at all. 4. Elneny - Just for the energy he brings and he's less likely to do something stupid than Xhaka. He's had more game time in pre-season to get up to speed too. We'll be chasing the ball a lot I would imagine so he gets the nod over the Swiss. 5. Iwobi - Like Elneny, energy and he brings a bit more defensively than Mkhitaryan. He played the defensive wide role perfectly away at Chelsea last season, that performance would be perfect in this game. Keeping it tight and hoping to get one on the break or through a bit of magic from Ozil has to be the name of the game here. Discipline is key to this one.
16:00/11:00am Arsenal v Manchester City ……….LIVE: NBCSN ……………..Telemundo Arlo White and Kyle Martino commentating
-------Leno------ Bellerin---Mustafi--Papa--Maitland-Niles ---------ElNeny----Torreira------ -----------------Ramsey---------- Ozil------------------Mikhitarian -------------Auba----------
Interesting. Is Martino "moving" to UK from CT? Or are they commentating from Stamford (I hope they don't start doing the latter... sure it's cheaper but the commentary really suffers when you're not actually in situ)
Aha. It's one of NBC's special on-site weekends. Presumably most of them will be coming back stateside afterwards.
Properly stoked for this one. Been a long time since I've said that. Even if they get spanked 5-0 I'm not going to get too down about it. In past seasons "WENGER OUT!" would've been burning through any Arsenal thread. Now? "Yeah, Emery needs to wring out the Wenger from that defense." Doubt they'll get beaten like that; who knows, they might pull out a win because of Emery. But yes...my body is ready for the new season.
They beat us 3-nil in this fixture last year. I'd certainly like to see us do better than that. A one goal loss wouldn't be horrible result, given the opponent. But 5-0? It'd be hard not to get a little "down" about that.