The Prophet

Potentially in terms of pure finance, but Howe hasn't faced anywhere near as much pressure as Arteta did because he's yet to finish significantly below par. In footballing terms, it was a very rare show of support from the Arsenal board.

True, that manager was also given a lot of patience and resource to get his team where it is today though.

I'd be amazed if we let four first team players leave in one summer.

Man City are so drawing Port Vale.

YAR is very influential, but he's a non-exec chair who rocks up about once every three or four months for high-level talks.

I don't think there interest has either intensified nor been lost. They are a Public Investment Fund who were convinced by Stavely that we were a high profile, low maintenance Investment. It's just the nature of the beast. For it to work long term, we either need a conduit between PIF and the club, which we had and lost in Stavely, or we they need to appoint an individual that they trust enough to delegate significant decision making power to.

If we're comparing him to the market. Kudus, Gittens and Madueke all went for similar amount. Only Kudus has put up numbers this season, but Spurs fans aren't enamoured with him. There was also talk of Monaco demanding daft money for Akliouche. Not at all a defence of Elanga, but the right wing market last summer was hideously overinflated.

Good question. Err, wouldn't say confident, but I think they'll be much better. Wissa will have a full pre-season under his belt and Wolt should have had about half of that. I don't think it's any more risky than relying on a new striker from abroad for example.

Howe commented post-match that he didn't want to chuck Joelinton into a second game this week, so the midfield picked itself. I agree, I don't think his medium to long term future is in the middle, it's papering over the cracks while Bruno is out, to allow us to return to familiar patterns of play. Many said in the summer that Woltemade would require patience while he built up his understanding of his position and the English game. For me the issue in that regard is Wissa. We overpaid for him specifically to hit the ground running and buy Woltemade time. Unfortunately, as both him and Isak have discovered, next to zero pre-season can absolutely fuck your form and fitness beyond a few weeks. The best case scenario there is he rediscovers a bit of form over the next season and we rekindle that move to Saudi.

Depending on who leaves of course. GK CM Defensive cover.

Touche.

Aren't Thiaw, Ramsey and Woltemade all quite technical players?

Felt inevitable after Wednesday, the ref shafted us. The only saving grace is no extra time tonight.

By any chance, is a reshuffled and tired outfit chasing shadows against a vastly superior squad, who are extremely good at keeping the ball?

That ref on Wednesday did an absolute job on us like. Not only did have us down to ten on the night, he ensured we'd be absolutely fucked tonight. Great work all round.

Long term, he won't be a midfielder.

Could be more of the same second half given over half of the side played with ten on Wednesday. If we want even a sniff against Barca, anything but extra time.

VAR denying Wrexham an equaliser v Chelsea. Fancy celebrating, these lads in the Championship don't know just how finished football is yet.

Thought he was good in both legs of the League Cup SF.

Cheers, I'll give that a read. I wasn't being obtuse, I'm genuinely clueless about the commercial revenue side of things, in terms of how we've done and how well we should be doing. I just looked s though we were growing at quite a healthy rate.

We haven't been in the Champions League every year though.

What is? I'm very much a total novice in anything to do with that side of things.

Aye, especially with other experienced squad members like Trippier and potentially Schar leaving.

Willock is pretty much a certainty to leave and even if Tonali decides to stay we should probably be listening to offers for Joelinton. A first team CM should be a priority. Granted I think Edward will want to keep Big Joe.