سوکر3

دسته: گزارش بازی

  • All I want for the new year is more of the same – East Lower


    Would Arsenal’s form survive a six-week hiatus, we all wondered? Is it possible to bottle momentum and uncork it again? We needn’t have worried – out came the Boxing Day fizz. 

    Will my ability to write blogs survive a six-month hiatus? Don’t put the champagne on ice.

    It’s been nearly eight months, truth be told (or three league defeats – it depends if your default calendar is Gregorian or Artetian) and I have no idea why. Other than one minute it was May, and the next minute it’s now. 

    You’d think that playing the best football in years would have drawn me to the blog like a moth to a flame, but no. The moths have got wise.

    This is the best football we’ve played in years though: a satisfying mix of proper structure, attacking fettle and youthful oomph has led to a love-in with the fanbase that has reinvigorated everyone. We can play tough and we can play pretty. 

    And we can play tough without, it seems, Xhaka ending up going Full Xhaka. Now that’s progress.

    Steady Eddie

    The big talking point since the World Cup has of course been the Gabriel Jesus injury. Like Alexis Sanchez before him, he’s one of those rare-breed attackers who has an internal dynamo that seems permanently set to 100. When he’s fit, everyone knows the pecking order: Jesus starts, and Eddie is for cameos and cups.

    We all know Eddie is a backup, and he’ll never – much like the Beatles – be more popular than Jesus, but some people do seem keen to write him off before he’s got his feet under the desk.

    This is the same Eddie Nketiah who, when given a run in the side last season scored five goals in seven league games.

    So if you ask me, as backups go he’s a pretty good one to have, and at 23 he will only get better. Yes, there were a few wrong calls against West Ham, but it’s hardly a crime to be rusty. And then, that goal. What a beautiful turn and shot; what a beautiful shot in the arm for him. And his workrate is always exemplary – any player not putting a shift in for Arteta wouldn’t be there very long. 

    Well done Eddie!

    As for the rest of it

    Yes, this is a lot of fun, but you won’t find me being swept up in any premature giddiness. We’re only 39% of the way through the season. 

    Doesn’t mean we can’t lap it up of course, or believe that we’re onto something good here, but *dons donkey jacket and talks earnestly to camera* we can only take each game as it comes. And… things do get a tad harder from here. In fact, January looks like an absolute assault course.

    Maybe we’ll have Mudryk by then? What’s not to like about a “lightning-quick forward”?

    Before then, to the south coast we go. 

    See you in another eight months. Or maybe sooner. 



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  • A week of goodwill… and now for the finale – East Lower


    On and off the pitch, Arsenal are barely putting a foot wrong at the moment. Top of the table, a smooth passage to the 4th round of the FA Cup and talk of an imminent (and expensive) reinforcement to whet the appetite. (Strong whiff of a saga about this, with breathless updates emerging even during the writing of this post, so who the hell knows).

    UPDATE: looks like that ship has now sailed. €100m is nuts.

    That’s a wrap

    There’s been a lot of hard work off the pitch too – some of it thanks to Arteta and the players, some of it thanks to the the club’s execs and some thanks to fan input – that has been well documented, resulting in a sea change in the matchday atmosphere. There’s a good, warm buzz at the moment, something that got another shot in the arm this week with the unveiling of the new stadium wraps. 

    How good are they? The collaborative nature of the project has paid huge dividends. Arsenal’s history runs through them, but they’ve also managed to bring all the different strands together that make up modern Arsenal. Really, really impressive and I can’t wait to see them up and running. Bravo to all involved.

    All or something 

    The feelgood factor is such that I’ve even started watching All or Nothing. Just the six months late then – you can always count on me being ahead of the zeitgeist.

    As everyone hoovered it in record time, I steadfastly and perhaps a little inexplicably couldn’t bring myself to watch it. I had a couple of doubts, I suppose. The first was that I worried I would find the reality of their existence a bit mundane, that it would smash the mystique and I might end up not warming to them especially. I was wrong about that, or at least I was if the three episodes I’ve seen are any guide. Everyone is for the most part quite engaging, some are quite quirky, and seeing their strengths and weaknesses is a nice window into the reality of being human.

    The second thing holding me back was my innate dislike of cheesy management and motivational techniques. And I have to say, I do find Arteta’s methods in this show a bit awks. 

    Strong memories of going to pre-natal classes with Mrs Lower (many years ago now) and worrying about being asked to sit in a circle and take my shoes off. Yes, I am that bloke.

    Well anyway, it is cheesy but who’s having the last laugh? Six months on and you can see how together they are and how much everyone (except the FA) loves Arteta. Perhaps I should rub my hands together and stand in a circle with my friends a bit more. 

    The elephant in the room 

    Hand-rubbing vibes all round, basically, but tomorrow looms large and has the capacity for the week to be seen through a slightly different prism. A bad result wouldn’t dent the general mood for long, but it is a huge game with an awful lot at stake.

    Given City’s loss today, with Utd scuttling up the rungs, a win tomorrow would be giant. But history tells us that will be a big ask – we’ve drawn twice in eight seasons there and lost the rest. We need to hit the ground running and it would be nice not to be on the wrong end of soft decisions. 

    Looking forward to it? Yes and no. Not much if I’m honest, just because. Ask me again at 6.15pm tomorrow. I might love it, I might hate it.

    Come on you reds!



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  • Seize (the moment, not up)


    Everton 1-0 Arsenal

    Typical really. Rather than blogging right after one of our recent high points – the first away win at our neighbours in nine years, or the Platt-like last-minute winner against Utd – I’ve picked up my pen after our second league defeat of the season. A genius move. Rough with the smooth and all that.

    To say I’d had a premonition about this would be a tall story: to be fair, my default position before most games is ‘potential banana skin: treat with ultimate caution’. But in hindsight it had all the ingredients for a slip-up, and slip up we did.

    I suppose the worst thing you can say is that had you parachuted in from another realm, you wouldn’t necessarily have known which side was top. Which given there are 16 places between us is telling.

    Everton played with – to quote Ian King in Football365 – “a shot of Vitamin Dyche” and we, while not quite lacklustre, lacked a bit of lustre. Ben White and Thomas Partey’s passing was off-whack, and most of our players seemed to be wearing sand-wedges rather than boots. The amount of ballooned shots was almost comical. When we aren’t on our game, doubling up on our wide men (as Newcastle did) is very effective.

    It is a bit disconcerting, because – credit to Everton aside – our levels have rarely dropped this low, not this season. Leeds away is the nearest we came to that performance, and this time we didn’t have it in us to get close to nicking a win. 

    A dose of smelling salts too, for Arsenal, I hope. The second half of this season was always going to be harder than the first. Partly because people have sat up and noticed us, which makes us even bigger scalps than normal. Partly also because the pressure is only going to ramp up from here. You felt ill with worry yesterday? It’s only just begun and for all the admirable sang-froid this team has shown to date, most of them won’t have experienced this before.

    It’s going to be fun, but it’s going to be very hard. 

    As an aside, I never forget how lucky I am to have started following Arsenal when I did, from the George Graham years through to early Wenger years. It’s easy to forget that most people under 25 have no recollection of us being in a position like this. They are willing it along (my 17-year old is convinced if we beat City we will go on and do it – I’m trying to inject some realism but maybe that makes me a killjoy), but they have very little to compare it to. 

    By that age I’d seen us win the league three times, and come close a few more times than that. 

    If you’ve not experienced this before, you will soon learn what it feels like to edge through spring like this. It could go either way. It might send you to heaven, but it might break your soul.

    Strap in for the ride.



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  • So close, yet so VAR


    Arsenal 1-1 Brentford

    As if one goal in three games combined with a new-found defensive hesitancy wasn’t enough to get you biting your nails, along comes a VAR decision that took three or four minutes to get the decision… wrong. “I forgot, guv” is not a good enough excuse, but don’t hold your breath for meaningful change from the PGMOL. Omertà then business as usual. Penny for the thoughts of the Premier League, an organisation that prizes its brand above anything, because inconsistent officiating is a blot on its slick landscape.

    Sometimes you need to cling on to win, and yesterday was one of those days. We could really have done with VAR doing its job properly because, truth be told, we struggled to score the one and we never really looked like scoring another. Brentford were excellent, caused us trouble all day, had the best chances and enacted the ‘how to frustrate Arsenal’ playbook’ to perfection. Sit deep, break the game up, waste time and stifle us on the wings. It worked for Newcastle and it worked for Brentford here too, so Arteta has plenty of dressing room light bulbs to plug in over the next few weeks. 

    In short though, we just couldn’t find the answer to the questions Brentford asked, and when we needed calm heads the most – in the minutes right after we did score – we didn’t get them. 

    To be fair to our defenders, in the ground itself I didn’t notice anything too awry. I didn’t really spot the lack of aerial duels won. They did struggle against Toney, but he really is a nightmarish bundle of physical power and they wouldn’t be the first to find him a challenging opponent. 

    Fatigue, pressure kicking in, a predictable lineup or opposition that have worked on nullifying our strengths? It could be a bit of all things, but the pressure of being top this side of Christmas cannot be underestimated. We looked a little off the pace in the first half, which could be fatigue, mental or physical. We went up a gear in the second, aided by the fresh legs and ideas of Trossard.

    No reason to panic either, of course. It makes the City game on Wednesday absolutely giant, but we’ve been better against the bigger sides than we have against the rest. And not having beaten them in the league since December 2015 has to end sometime, right? Right? 

    We also set ourselves a ludicrously high bar with our first half of the season, one that was going to be almost impossible to replicate. As the stadium announcer reminded us as we shuffled out, “we’re still top”. 

    It’s not a bad place to be.



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  • Reiss unleashes, I’m in pieces – East Lower


    Arsenal 3-2 Bournemouth

    Mere seconds divide desolation from ecstasy in this most glorious of sports. There is nothing that compares to it – nothing at all.

    This is why we go through it

    East Lower (@eastlower) March 4, 2023

    It really is why we go, why we go again, and why we keep doing it to ourselves.

    It’s a sport where scoring happens less than in many other sports. How many goals do you get in a game of football? Sometimes none at all, other times maybe a maximum of five. Often somewhere in between. Goals are like gold dust. They are each and every one of them moments of real meaning, much more so than many other sports.

    Combine that with the tribal, quasi-religious nature of football, and you have all the ingredients for the moment that engulfed us all in the 97th minute of yesterday’s game.

    And, oh boy – ay caramba, hell’s bells – were we engulfed by it. Come about the 85th minute I had resigned myself to suffer the kind of mixed emotions that I can only describe as a ‘spirited disaster’. A nod of approval at the sheer courageousness of our response and a dogged will to win, combined with a sense of frustration at the foot-shooting that had got us into the mess in the first place.

    Then Odegaard fires over the final corner in the final moment of this most breathtaking of games. I see it spin out to Nelson – whose presence on the pitch is a whole other story in itself – and the next thing I see is the ball arrowing like an Exocet towards my actual head. This clip was pretty much our view. Had there been no net, the blog would currently be being written by a headless man.

    As it was, the net saved me from being a headless man only momentarily. Let’s just say there were limbs aplenty, limbs akimbo – it was unremittingly limbtabulous. There have been moments of ecstasy like this at the Emirates Stadium, even this season. But in these circumstances, at that time, having been two down and with a goal that would grace a World Cup final? I don’t remember anything like it short of going back to Platt and Henry v United. I will never forget this moment. 

    “The best game I’ve ever been to”, said my 14-year-old son. And who can argue otherwise? 

    Want to see it again? Who am I kidding – you’ve all watched it a trillion and twelve times but if you want more and haven’t seen it, this thread from Dan Critchlow covers all the bases. Arsenal fans the world over hurling themselves everywhere, going utterly mental, jumping into pools, gyrating. Imagine Reiss Nelson watching a thread like that? This is what your left foot did. You reduced – or is elevated? – us to this. It doesn’t matter how the rest of the season pans out, or his Arsenal career, because that strike has gone down into folklore already. 

    The celebrations on the pitch were no less pandemonious. Men down, men shooting off in competing directions, other men coming on the pitch. Everyone lost their absolute shit and I am completely here for it.

    There were other goals too, should I mention them? I won’t talk of Bournemouth’s, why ruin the moment? But a hat tip to Nelson (again) for his cross and another hat-tip to Ben White for a magnificent strike to level it. Just. 

    What does this mean for our season? Had we drawn it would have been another momentum-swinger. But we won and what that says about this team is the kind of thing that, if you could bottle it, would make you millions. Can we do it? Hold your horses. There are 12 games to go, and trust me every game is going to feel as decisive as this. 

    I am here for the challenge, whether we make it or not. This team is magnificent. We’re there for them, they’re there for us, and that they’re there for each other is unquestionable. Just enjoy the ride. And try to breathe.

    (I told you I’d write a blog Mr C – hope your hangover subsided, and that you have another one today).





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  • My blogging hiatus has not served Reiss Nelson well – East Lower


    Clearly, Reiss Nelson’s goal was all a bit much for me. Surfing on a wave of excitement, I extolled the virtues of his winning goal against Bournemouth that kept our title challenge alive. 

    And then… nothing. I don’t know why. But I stopped blogging again, thereby missing recording the agony of falling short (along with the glee at coming second and getting back into the Champions League).

    And then I missed it all again, swerving the quill for the entirety of this season, during which we came second again but only by several points, and were better in almost all discernible ways. Almost.

    But enough about me, what about poor old Reiss Nelson? His cameo may well have sealed his place in the Arsenal hall of fame, but at the time you’d have been forgiven for thinking that it may have been a kick-start for his Arsenal career.

    And then what? He played just 257 minutes of league football this season, starting just once, and had one shot on goal. His sole goal came in the League Cup.

    His rocket that day in March 2023 turned out to be his high-water mark for the club – I think we can say that now, barring some unlikely change of fortune. I suppose it’s not a bad way to be remembered, but his career has hit the buffers and at 24 years old, he desperately needs regular football. It seems almost impossible to see him here next year (and it would be a waste of his talent too).

    As we sit back and enjoy the glow of a season that, as a fan, was about as enjoyable as it can get, we see many winners, from this season’s new boys Declan Rice, David Raya and Kai Havertz, to the rock solid partnership of Gabriel and Saliba, and beyond to White, Saka, Odegaard and Trossard. 

    Reiss Nelson, sadly, was not among them, and that is the brutal reality of competing at the highest level. 



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  • Roll on the Euros 


    If there’s ever a good time to be out of work, it’s probably now.

    With the Euros, the Olympics and Wimbledon all locked and loaded, rather than networking, putting out feelers and seeking new employment I can sit on my arse and watch sport until the cows come home. I’ve not relayed my plan to my wife yet, but I feel fully confident she will agree.

    It is but a minor hurdle that I know very little about any of the teams or their players unless they play for Arsenal or are big names in the Premier League. In fact that makes it better, I think. My ignorance and lack of curiosity lend a certain exoticism to the whole thing that more earnest students of world football might not possess.

    (I digress, but I remember my mum and dad had a book on the shelf in the loo when I was young called something like ‘What men know about women’ and there was not a word of print on any of the 250 pages. I feel this way a bit about Euro 2024.)

    And there’s nothing better than the early stages of a big football tournament when there are three games a day on the telly. Especially when you don’t need to pretend you’re working. It doesn’t matter what they are, not one bit. If it’s on at 2, I’m in at 2. That’s my new mantra.

    Everyone says England have a great chance, and maybe they do, but I’m not falling for that – it sounds disturbingly like optimism. Lord no. Disappointment is England’s middle name, and underachievement its sobriquet. I will approach with caution.

    Plus, have you seen the French lads? They are so achingly hip. We cannot compete with this. 

    Just bring it all on. I cannot wait for the wall-to-wall football and to bond more firmly with my television. These relationships need nurturing, and nurture them I shall. 

    Can’t wait.





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  • And so it begins


    The curtain is raised on the 2024 US tour, and indeed pre-season proper. I am not counting the behind-closed-doors friendly against Leyton Orient if that’s alright with you. If something is behind closed doors it basically never happened. Sorry Emile and Gabriel but that’s just facts.

    Frankly, the Bournemouth show-starter might as well not have happened either, given it started at 3.30am here. It was less behind closed doors and more beneath warm duvet. With the best will in the world (which I do not possess, my will is distinctly middling to sub-par) I was not going to arise from my slumber at that time.

    We won it on penalties after a 1-1 draw, and if you want some proper intel on that you’ll get it somewhere more professional than here. 

    My admiration for anyone who does follow Arsenal from afar is enormous, though. I went to Australia for a couple of weeks earlier this month (long way, would recommend) and my almost impeccable hoovering up of Euro 2024 immediately fizzled out. 2am and 5am kick-offs are not conducive to anything. I happened to be awake at 430am for the England v Switzerland penalties, then went back to sleep. I woke up for the second half of the semi-final at 6am, which was just about acceptable. I watched the final in the actual air, many miles over the Indian Ocean, which is a form of wizardry I cannot begin to fathom. Not that it was magic enough to conjure up an England victory. 

    But if I moved to somewhere that was 9 hours ahead, or 8 hours behind, would I honestly keep following the games live? I don’t think I would and from the conversations I had with various Gooners whilst out there, the Premier League is best consumed on a Sunday morning as highlights. So hats off to all of you who are mad enough to get up in the dead of night or the crack of dawn to follow the mighty Arsenal. You are all better people than me.

    Green for Rowe and Calafiori dreaming

    The investment we made in the squad last summer – £200m give or take, with only about £40m in sales – was never sustainable or repeatable, at least not with regularity. So this summer always felt like one where investment would come on the proviso that we made more sales. (As James said on the Arsecast, it feels like we are operating using the nightclub technique – one in, one out…)

    So to buy Calafiori it is logical that we will need to sell Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Nelson and other ‘pure profit’ Halenders. Similarly I expect others to go between now and the end of the window to help balance the books with any other incoming players. Given how little all 3 have played, it’s no surprise they are being sold. Perhaps there will be room for regret for Smith Rowe, as we have rarely seen the best of him. But he needs to play, and we need to generate money, so it works for all parties.

    As for Calafiori, I am fascinated to see where he will fit in. A rising tide lifts all boats, sure. But I cannot see him displacing Saliba or Gabriel, and if he does play left-back what does that mean for Tomiyasu, Zinchenko and Kiwior. (Kiwior feels like the obvious casualty here).

    I am also fascinated to see how he does, as we’ve never really had a big-name Italian at Arsenal. I know we have Jorginho, but he was born and spent his formative years in Brazil. And, unlike the Spanish, Germans, French and many other Europeans, Italian players have never come to the Premier League in huge numbers or with unqualified success. I have no idea why this might be. Zola, Di Canio are the obvious stand-out ones. But the list is not huge. So I am excited and intrigued to see where he fits in and how he settles in.

    Exciting times though. My son has a Premier League countdown on the homepage of his iPhone and he tells me we are 22 days away from the league opener.

    It’s like it never went away. Forza!



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  • Reasons why August is the best football month – East Lower


    August, for the football fan in general, is very hard to beat. Here’s why:

    It’s high summer

    Picture the scene. It’s January and the weather hasn’t risen above zero all day. It’s basically already dark. It’s a league game against someone northern (I don’t actually remember who it was against, and perhaps it wasn’t against someone northern but I just associate the cold with the north). Not a lot is happening, but almost in unison the north bank starts bouncing up and down on the spot. Not as some kind of choreographed terrace spectacular, but because we all implicitly know that if we don’t start frenziedly hopping up and down we would all expire from frostbite.

    And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I would prefer football to be a summer sport. Just think how much more pleasant it would be in the warmth of summer, or what passes for it in the UK. We could all noodle outside a bit, perhaps in a beer garden, then enjoy the dappled sun on the pitch before going home to plenty more hours of sunlight. The season could end just before the bleakest months of the year and recommence with spring just round the corner.

    Instead, we enjoy about 6 weeks of warmth before it all goes to pot. Only in early May (or April if we are lucky) does the sun make any form of contact with any part of our body that isn’t our face or hands.

    Optimism is universal

    August is the only point of the season where every single football fan isn’t at least a little bit optimistic. Squads are being remodelled, the slog of the previous season has retreated into the past, everyone has had a bit of time off and hope is in the air. I have no empirical evidence to prove it, and can’t be bothered to find it, but I suspect attendances on the first day of the season are at their zenith. 

    It’s the hope that kills you though. If you are lucky, as Arsenal have been over the years, then August folds into September with the minimum of bumps, and you can look forward to building some momentum and having a good season.

    This is not the experience of most football fans, though. By September, an awful lot of them will have already realised that hope has not sprung eternal. In fact, it’s not sprung at all. Hope is a mirage; a fickle beast. They will look back wistfully at August and probably sigh.

    The chequebook is well and truly out

    As we know, new arrivals are like paraffin on a bonfire. All of your team’s ills can be cured – or so it seems – by millions of pounds being dropped on some new players, and August (especially after a summer tournament) is the time when this all gets turbocharged. It’s breathless and silly, and reporting on it is an entire industry in itself, with its own language, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement.

    A cursory glance at NewsNow confirms it. The current favourite is to put everything into quotes – ‘incredible’ player wants out, contract agreed with ‘world-class’ star, ‘transfer clause agreed’. Then there are the old classics, when players become wantaway stars, teams start swooping and – my favourite of all time – when players issue come-and-get-me pleas.

    I’ve always wondered how you issue a plea. It probably involves a trip to the Post Office.

    I fall for it all, hook line and sinker. Even though the Euro final was only 15 days ago, it feels like ages since the final game of the season (it’s 73 days and that feels as long as it sounds). I have forgotten the disappointment, and armed with a Calafiori I am ready to go into battle again.



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  • Winning ugly is beautiful – East Lower


    Spurs 0-1 Arsenal 

    In line with tradition, before all north London derbies I am filled with a sense of dread. The things that have been evident for so long leave my mind and I assume the footballing equivalent of the prone position. I just can’t help it.

    Turns out I should trust what my eyes, and the league table, have been telling me for several years. For as well as knowing how to win with beauty, we are also experts at digging in and winning pretty much any other way.

    For the record I don’t think we won ugly, I just liked the headline. But I do think that, shorn of two of the players who make Arsenal tick in the middle of the pitch, we just dug in and won a different way. 

    One of the abiding mysteries of the post-Vieira Wenger years was how we eschewed height and strength and leaned in on technical ability. We went from a big team to quite a small team, and it worked a lot of the time, but when the chips were down we also struggled to impose ourselves. 

    Now look at us though. At 5’ 10” Jurrien Timber was our smallest defender yesterday, but what he lacks vertically (he is hardly small anyway) he makes up for with the horizontal skills of strength, determination, positioning and canniness. Look, I know that line doesn’t work very well. But I’ll leave it in anyway.

    We have the best defensive unit in the Premier League, and yes, I do say this with my red and white varifocals on. I wouldn’t want anyone other than Saliba and Gabriel marshalling my defence. I wouldn’t want anyone other than White causing psychological merry hell and – sorry Zinny, Riccardo and Tomi – but Timber is going to take some shifting at left back.

    I also wouldn’t want anyone else when it comes to seizing opportunities at the other end. Nicolas Jover’s set piece army won it for us again. We keep doing it. And yesterday’s opponents keep falling for it. 

    Shout out to Trossard and Havertz for working their socks off and helping out Jorginho and Partey, and while the final decision didn’t quite work for Martinelli (as it hasn’t for a while) you cannot fault his lung power.

    And that’s the thing I love about this team. We will lose a few times this season, of course we will, and things will go against us – they already have. But we really hate losing, and I’m prepared to wager that there won’t be many – perhaps any – games this season where we will look at them at the end and wish they hadn’t left something on the pitch, or squeezed every last ounce of willpower out of themselves. 

    Desire and togetherness is a magic gravy. I love it.



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