This post is inspired by a comment put up by Rasp late last night:

“I’d take £80m for Auba if it meant we could buy our own Virgil van Dijk. After all, we have a lot of emerging young attacking talent. It should be noted that none of Auba, Laca or Ozil featured against Bournemouth…”

When I read it I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

Sell our best striker? Sell the player who is the only consistent goal threat in a team struggling to score? Has Rasp gone mad?

The context, obviously, is the torrent of rumours suggesting that Catalonia’s finest are set on prizing away our Gabonese crown jewel and installing him at the Camp Nou.

And yet… the more you think about it, the more there may be sense in cashing in now.

For a start, we know that despite having an owner with a fortune that would make Louis Quatorze blush (and who is married to a wife whose fortune would make Marie Antoinette green with envy), when it comes to splashing the cash on new players we tend to suffer from “long pockets, short arm” syndrome.

We aspire to be a “break even” club, so we can safely assume that there will be no big outlays on world class players until we get some world class wonga coming into the coffers.

Then there’s the question of whether Auba is currently irreplaceable. Our young up-and-comers have been one of the real positives of this season (Unai Emery deserves some credit for allowing several of them to break into the first team).  In Auba’s absence, could Martinelli, Saka and Nelson make up the goals we’d lose? It’s a big ask, but who knows… maybe.

But I think Rasp’s point was that given the quality of these young stars, we would be better deploying our resources elsewhere – with a Virgil van Dijk type of world class defender or, perhaps (as Rasp later suggested) a new Santi Cazorla?

My instincts are still to keep Auba for the remainder of this season but, if the likes of Martinelli and Saka continue to progress, consider selling him in the summer (he is under contract until 2022).

Have your say in these two polls:

RockyLives

Just a quick post to float a controversial idea that’s been running around my head.

Much as I love the FA Cup, our priorities this season are, in order: 1) win the Europa League, thereby getting ourselves into the Champions League next season; 2) finish in the top four thereby etc etc.

The FA Cup is very much in third place so I would like us to use it as an opportunity to play an almost entirely youth based team when we visit Bournemouth tomorrow night.

Here’s my proposed line up:

Martinez

Maitland-Niles – Mustafi – Holding – Saka

Willock – Guendouzi

Nelson

Pepe – Nketieh – Martinelli

It would make for a really fascinating experiment, would give a massive morale boost to what is emerging as one of the most exciting groups of young players since the Beckham-Scholes-Giggs-Neville generation at Manchester United and will give our more experienced players a proper rest.

I don’t expect Mikel Arteta to put out a team anything like this (check back in tomorrow for someone else on AA to propose a more sensible starting eleven in the pre-match Post) but I would love it.

Despite our billionaire owner we are clearly never going to be a club that spends our way to success like Chelsea and Manchester City, so nurturing our own young talent is the next best way forward.

Our young players seem to have a great bond with each other. Let’s reinforce that bond and watch this group grow together.

RockyLives

How many times have we all watched Gabriel Martinelli’s goal against Chelsea?

I’ve replayed it at least a dozen times and I know some supporters have watched it even more than that.

We were down a man and down a goal when our young Britalian* picked up the ball just outside our penalty area, ran the length of the pitch and calmly slotted it past Chelsea’s stupidly named ‘keeper, Kepa. Along the way Martinelli threw a voodoo hex on Kante forcing him to slip at the crucial moment when he might have intercepted the youngster’s run.

It was a stunning goal combining speed, strength, control and a degree of composure seldom seen in players at the tender age of 18. But those of us who have been watching his outings for Arsenal this season will not have been completely surprised.

He has looked like a class act every time he’s stepped on the pitch and is already our second top scorer after Aubameyang despite having only five starts and eight substitute appearances.

This is normally the point at which fans, media pundits and ex-players go around saying how it’s important not to get carried away, that we mustn’t start over-hyping the young man, that plenty of young would-be stars shine brightly for a while before fizzling out.

Well to hell with that.

I LOVE this guy and I am more excited about him than any young Arsenal player since Cesc Fabregas.

Even before that stunner at Stamford Bridge I found myself thinking unthinkable comparisons with Ronaldo and Gareth Bale: players who could change a game all on their own.

Like Ronaldo, Martinelli seems comfortable on either foot and knows how to use his head. Like Bale he can tear down the wing and deliver superb crosses as well as getting in the box at the right time to score himself.

At 5ft 9in he is shorter than both Ronaldo (6ft 2in) and Bale (6ft 1in), but he has a great leap and will only get stronger as his body matures in the next couple of years.

We have had young players make a splash early in their Arsenal careers and never live up to our hopes and expectations (David Bentley anyone?).  Beyond Arsenal there are many examples of “the next Pele” whose career ends up as a let-down (like Martinelli, Robinho came out of Brazil with a ton of hype but despite spells at Real Madrid and Manchester City the magic never quite took flight).

But there seems to be something different about Martinelli.

There may be a clue to what that “ingredient X” is in the interview that Arseblog conducted with a Brazilian football journalist in his Arsecast podcast on Friday. The journo said that even though Martinelli was playing his football at a fourth tier Brazilian side, he stood out from an early age because of his dedication and seriousness of purpose.

He does not drink alcohol or even fizzy soft drinks apart from water. He started learning English while still in Brazil and had already set his heart on the Premier League. Since arriving at Arsenal he is the first into training and is utterly single-minded about improving his skills.

It’s the sort of dedication that reminds me of Dennis Bergkamp. When he joined the jolly band of alcoholic, chain-smoking, drug-toting cavaliers at Highbury in the 1990s they were stunned to see this world class star staying behind every day for extra practice. Along with Arsene Wenger’s arrival, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Dennis’s example helped completely change the culture at the club.

Martinelli needs to get plenty more game time for the rest of this season. In my eyes he is already ahead of Pepe, Nelson and Saka in the pecking order and arguably should even be selected ahead of the non-scoring Lacazette.

That said, we also need to manage him properly and not burn him out or place expectations on him that he can’t possibly deliver. Right now though he looks capable of shouldering any responsibility we place on him.

It also behoves the club to lock him up contractually for as long as possible, because if he continues this rate of progress he will become one of the most sought-after young players in the world.

Am I getting “over my skis” here? Am I buying into the hype and ignoring the usual hurdles that get in the way of a promising youngster becoming a star (injuries, ‘second season syndrome,’ fame going to their head and so on)?

What do you think?

And if he does develop as we hope, which players’ styles (past or present) do you think he’s most likely to echo?

RockyLives

*Apparently Martinelli has not yet decided whether he wants to play his international football for Brazil (where he was born and raised) or for Italy (his father has Italian heritage as the surname indicates).

Liverpool are surging towards their first league title since 1990 with the unstoppable energy of a car full of scallies racing a stolen Range Rover through the backstreets of Toxteth to pick up a load of smack.

The way they’re going no-one would be surprised to see them finish the season unbeaten, thereby matching the astonishing achievement of our 2004 Invincibles – a feat which at the time was described as “once in a lifetime.”

But Liverpool haven’t done it yet, and there is one chance to stop them.

On April 5^th they play away at Manchester City, who have the best coach in European football and the firepower of strikers like Aguero and Sterling. But that won’t be the game where they suffer defeat.

On March 14^th they’re away at Everton in the Merseyside derby. The red-blue rivalry runs deep in Liverpool, but that won’t be it either. Despite the best efforts of Walcott and Iwobi Everton just won’t be good enough.

Nor will it happen on May 9^th, when they entertain Chelsea. Young fat Frank may turn the Blues into champion contenders in the future, but this is a season of rebuilding for them.

So when will it happen?

The date to keep in your diary is May 2^nd 2020, for that is when Liverpool head to the Emirates stadium to take on the Arsenal.

You think I’m kidding? You think we have no chance of beating Liverpool? I beg to differ and I have my reasons:

• We can all see the steady improvement in play and confidence that is happening under Mikel Arteta. It’s encouraging us now – how will it look in over three months’ time?
• Everyone at Arsenal is rightly proud of our amazing Invincibles and we all want to keep their achievement unsullied by being equalled by another team, so there will be strong desire throughout the club to inflict defeat on ‘Pool.
• By the time they visit, Liverpool may already be champions or so far ahead that becoming champions is all but guaranteed. No matter how you square it, players have a different mentality when they know the job is done (that job being winning a title). Yes, they would love to go unbeaten, but that pales beside the glory of becoming champions for the first time in 30 years and, psychologically, they are bound to slacken off a little.
• Don’t ignore the Arteta factor. There are two teams who have the biggest incentive to stop Liverpool becoming Invincibles. Arsenal, for obvious reasons, and Everton, as their fierce local rivals. Mikel Arteta embodies both those clubs. He will want an Arsenal win more than anyone.
• While Liverpool are streets ahead as the best team in the EPL this year, we all know that our squad is good enough, when fit and functioning properly, to pull out a win against anyone.
• The battling 10-man draw at Chelsea – coming from behind twice – showed that a resilient core is beginning to form in the team.

Naturally the bookies will give long odds on us beating Liverpool when they visit, but some things are just written in the stars and this may well be one of them.

Of course there’s a whole other hypothetical to consider: how would Liverpool of 2020 fare against Arsenal of 2004? Don’t get me started…

RockyLives

Here’s a thought experiment: how would you feel if Mikel Arteta’s record for the next 21 games was as follows: Won 16, Drawn 5, Lost 0?

Most of us, I think, would feel that we finally had a manager who had put us on the right track after several years of drift and missed opportunities.

It would likely be too late to achieve much this season (apart from scraping into the Europa League places) but it might well fill us with optimism for the 2020/21 season.

Well, and here’s the kicker, there is a manager in Arsenal’s recent history who had a run of W16, D5, L0 early in his career. That man, as you may have guessed, was Unai Emery. And we all know how that turned out.

We started the 2018/19 season with two defeats under Emery (home versus Man City and away at Chelsea), but from August 25^th to December 8^th (three and a half months) we had an impressive unbeaten run in the Premier League, the League Cup and the Europa League.

The run ended with a 2-3 loss at Southampton on December 13^th and a period of inconsistency and slow decline set in from them onwards.

Here’s my point: after the woeful final months of the Emery regime, we supporters have been quick to laud the obvious improvements in team shape, discipline, effort and confidence under Mikel Arteta.

But how can we be sure this improvement will last?

As that 21-game spell early in Emery’s stewardship of the club shows, false dawns are common in football, and fans (who are always eager to clutch at any straw) are in danger of placing too much hope in what may turn out to be a temporary uplift.

Was Emery’s unbeaten run a result of what he brought to the party? Or was it simply a group of players who had become demoralised in the final Wenger years going up a gear partly to impress the new boss and partly because ‘a change is as good as a rest’?

And if it’s the latter, who’s to say that we’re not experiencing exactly the same phenomenon now?

In fact, Arteta’s record in the short time he’s been in charge doesn’t even have the sort of clear up-tick in results that Emery achieved. Yes, we’ve stopped losing so often, but we are having a great deal of trouble pulling out wins.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on how and why we should feel more optimistic about early Arteta, although I have some ideas of my own.

For a start, I well remember that, in that long run of unbeaten games under Emery, we seldom felt we were playing well as a team. We were getting results, but usually it was as if we had ridden our luck to come away with the points.

Supporters responded to this is two different ways: the ‘glass half full’ types like me thought: “This is great! We’re getting results even though we haven’t properly hit our stride yet. When that happens there’ll be no stopping us.” The ‘my glass just smashed’ types thought: “We’re getting lucky wins, but you can tell from the way we’re playing that the underlying problems are still there.”

It turned out the pessimists were right.

In this happy morning of the Arteta era, the feeling is exactly the opposite: we are playing well, but not getting the results. That makes me hopeful and explains why some who were pessimistic during Emery’s good run are now optimistic during Arteta’s average run.

Another big factor is the demeanour of the head coach. Emery seemed a decent man, but he never came across as a strong one. Language difficulties clearly didn’t help, but his personal qualities seemed ill-suited to delivering a kick up the derriere when required or for wrangling a difficult and fractious bunch of individuals into shape.

Arteta, on the other hand, has been virtually faultless in all his public statements since taking over. He exudes confidence, strength and authority in a manner that appears to be communicating itself to the players.

Finally, I would hazard that the tactics Arteta is employing seem more likely to work with our squad in this league than those of his predecessor (although the more tactically astute among you may wish to weigh in on this point).

Am I deluding myself again with falsely-grounded optimism?

Over to you.

RockyLives

 That was exhausting, in a kind of reaffirming way. All the passion and desire that had been missing from this Arsenal team was on show last night.

We didn’t win but boy it felt like we’d moved into a new era. Coming from behind against 10 men is about as good as it gets when you’re on a run of drawing games. This was a good draw.

Arteta’s decision not to add Holding when Luiz got sent off was so important for the confidence of this team. If we want them running through brick walls for each other and Mikel then they can look back on this game with pride.

Player ratings from RC78

Well well well…2 shots in the whole match, all in the second half and 2 goals and an unexpected draw playing 10 vs 11 🙂

MoTM = Martinelli

Sub of the match: Guendouzi

Opponent of the match: Hudson-Odoi

Player ratings

Leno  6; good on his line but poor in the air (tale of his season)

Bellerin 7; a goal and a shift but needs to gain defensive sharpness.

Mustafi  4.5; a first half to forget but played fine in the second half

Luiz  not fair to rate him…although he could have done better

Saka  6.5; what a shift and he is really good going forward

Xhaka  6; did well in the second half as CB

Torreira  6.5, we have our defensive pitbull.

Ozil  5; totally absent for 30 mins and then played ok

Pepe  5.5; poor first 30 minutes and then a good shift but he could have done better in some attacking situations. A talent that needs more time than expected to shine

Lacazette  5.5; A for effort and then the rest was not there

Martinelli  9. A goal, a shift and a constant threat.

Subs

Guendouzi  6 – did well and added grit to our team. Needs to be better when defending set pieces…

Holding  5. He comes in and we concede a goal. The guy needs to play in reserve for a few games to regain sharpness.

Willock  N/A

Arteta  6.5. His grit is now rubbing off on the team but thought he did not set up the team properly until we had a player off.

RC78