Arsenal Against the World

I spent yesterday writing about the new artwork that will adorn the Emirates Stadium and how it exemplifies how classy a club Arsenal is. Today I have to write about how the FA seem to be doing everything they can to create a narrative to the contrary. Arsenal were charged again for failing to ensure its players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion during the 34th minute of the FA Cup match against Oxford United.

This charge is straight up laughable – it’s a complete joke. It was a penalty shout, that had there been VAR would have been closely looked at and likely, in my opinion, given. The players did what quite literally every single team in the entire world does in similar situations and would have done in this one, which was appeal to the referee that it was a handball. The ref waived the claims away and everybody moved on without much of a second thought. To receive this charge was obviously a shock to us supporters and unfortunately is bordering on an agenda/conspiracy at this point. I can’t even begin to imagine what Arteta and those at the club are thinking, but it must be a concern. Not a concern because of how our players conduct themselves, if anything I’m sure they’ll use this as more fuel to the “us against the world” fire, but rather because of the worry that refereeing decisions might go against us even more moving forward. When asked about it by the press, Arteta intelligently said “I prefer not to comment on that.” He’ll know there’s nothing to gain commenting publicly, but you do have to wonder if the club will appeal this charge unlike the previous one against Newcastle. Let’s see what happens with this one, but I would much prefer to play against 11 men as opposed to 12.

In positive news, Martin Odegaard was voted Premier League Player of the Month for the November/December period, while Mikel Arteta received the Manager of the Month award. Both awards are extremely deserved. The Norwegian was on fire during this time period and was clearly the right choice between both the statistics and the eye test. The same can be said of Arteta, who continues to keep the club performing and deservedly at the top of the table. Congratulations to them both.

The last bit of news is that is seems the Mykhaylo Mudryk transfer saga is getting closer to a positive conclusion. Late last night Fabrizio Romano reported that Arsenal’s new official proposal for Mudryk is close to €70m fee plus add-ons and that negotiations are ongoing with Shakhtar Donetsk to discuss on the add-ons package. It’s a massive sum for the player and one that seems to be satisfactory to the Ukrainian club. I’ve seen rumors the add-ons could go as high as €25m. That’s close to the €100m number they’ve publicly pined for, so one has to think we’re basically there. Fingers crossed we can knock this out, integrate him into the squad quickly and spend the rest of the month on other transfers. I’d really like to see us bring in one more central midfielder and perhaps one more attacker who can play on the right wing. It’s tough to know the next time we’ll be in this position in the title race, so I truly hope they can move some summer business forward to this month and push on.

Back tomorrow with a preview of the NLD.

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