Morning.
Like many of you, I’m sure, I watched last night’s game between Newcastle and Liverpool with half an eye on our trip to Anfield next Sunday. It was a bit of a sickener in the end, with the Mugsmashers snatching it with a late goal, but if you were looking for ‘positives’ it’s that they didn’t look very good at any stage. Maybe it’s the mark of champions to play badly and win, but to struggle the way they did against a Newcastle side down to 10 men for the whole of the second half would be a worry for their fans.
As for the red card, how thick is Anthony Gordon? They don’t have Alexander Isak available because he wants to go and join Liverpool, so he loses his head and gets himself sent off and picks up a three game ban in the process. There’s no question it was a red card, he deserved to go, and it was good use of VAR because the replays showed just how nasty that challenge was.
I will say though, the referee announcing VAR decisions to the stadium is a toe-curling development (and I know it’s not just this season). Before he’s even spoken to the player, he’s telling the crowd and those watching on TV through his crappy headset mic, which cut in and out like he was the guest on a podcast in 2008. Maybe it’s just me, but I think even if a player has committed a bad foul and is about to see a yellow upgraded to red, he deserves to hear it from the referee first, not stand there like he’s a contestant on some crappy quiz show waiting to see if he’s eliminated or not.
We often hear it said the best refereeing performances are those when you don’t notice the official, but Howard Webb wants his bald men to be stars, and that’s the only reason it’s done like this now. It doesn’t add any authority to the official, and when the technology acts the way it did last night, you could argue it just makes them look like twats. A decision made on the basis of augmenting the Premier League as an entertainment product rather than the game itself.
TV pictures showed the Newcastle owners sitting in the stands, and pre-game footage came out of the home fans roundly booing the Liverpool team as they got off the team bus. Let me just state it here now for the record: if they sanction the sale of Isak to Liverpool before the end of this window, with the depth of feeling that exists within that fanbase, they are the biggest LOSERS in the history of the Premier League. Ever.
Anyway, I’m sure Mikel Arteta will have looking at last night’s game, and thinking about ways he might trouble Liverpool at the back where they have looked vulnerable so far this season. And speaking of the manager, many thought the arrival of Eberchi Eze would be the end of our incoming business this summer, but it looks as if we’re active again.
Andrea Berta called him up and said ‘Are you sure you don’t fancy a left-back?!’, and Arteta was all ‘Oh, go on then!’, and Berta was like ‘I have just the man for you!’. The story is that we’re after Bayer Leverkusen’s Piero Hincapie, possibly beating Sp*rs to the punch on this one too after it was reported they were interested in the 23 year old Ecuadorian international.
It does seem linked to at least one departure, with Porto’s interest in Jakub Kiwior ramping up, and if he goes then we’re going to looking to bring in this guy as a replacement. It’s interesting to note that last season he played more games at centre-half (34) than he did at left-back (9), and over the course of his career in Germany, he’s played 50% more in the middle than as a full back. However, we know how much Arteta likes a versatile defender, and it’s been a recurrent theme in our defensive recruitment. So, this guy fits the bill in that sense.
Update: Lewis Ambrose, with his Bundesliga knowledge, was in touch to say ‘In Alonso’s back three he essentially was like an ordinary left-back, overlaps and all.’
It does make you wonder how much football there is to go around between him, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Riccardo Calafiori, but it seems clear that Arsenal want a squad with complete redundancy for this season. We’ve already had four injuries (White, Saka, Odegaard, Havertz), and maybe they think the best way to cope is to have a really, really deep squad. Not just in terms of how it enables you to replace players when they do get hurt, but also how you manage them throughout the campaign. It was obvious that the Timber/Calafiori changes on Saturday were about managing their load, and another defensive player means we’re likely to changes like this over the course of the season.
If this deal did go through, it’d take our spending north of £300m this summer and if you link a club’s ambition with how much it spends in the transfer market, there can be few complaints about what we’ve done. The need to sell remains, the window is closing in just under 6 days, and we’ll see what Berta can do in that period, but in incoming terms we are going for it in a big way. Let’s see how it pans out.
Ok, I’ll leave it there now. A little later we’ll look back on all the weekend’s Premier League in The 30, a podcast exclusive for our Patreon members, and there’s a fun Arsecast Extra below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. Have a good one!