Arsenal midfielder Martin Odegaard celebrates
Arsenal smashed West Ham on Sunday to keep themselves firmly in the title race, and the fans want to know if they’re allowed to celebrate now…
Send your mails to theeditor@football365.com. Anything from Man Utd fans please.
 

The real victim here
Stewie must be gutted.
That is all.
James, Kent
 
Bottlers? This Arsenal will not be brushed aside
How can any neutral have any respect for Arsenal after that? Disgraceful! Is Carragher going to criticise us for not keeping it down to a couple?
An outstanding performance all around. Raya wasn’t called into action a lot but he made a number of high awkward catches today. He’s sound.
Do we need an out and out striker? Five different goalscorers today. Similar goal difference to Citeh and ‘Pool.
Arsenal are alleged ‘bottlers’ after last season but after the Christmas blip we are back in it after a winning streak taking the leaders’ scalp in the process. Are we bottlers?
This squad will not be brushed aside….well done Arteta, Edu and the rest of the crew.
Chris, Croydon
 
…So we’ve just given West Ham a well-deserved thrashing but remember lads, no smiling or laughing allowed! Just head down the tunnel, get your suit and tie on, bow to the opponent and go home to sit quietly and meditate for 12 hours.

F*** that, we love football because it’s fun. No-one can truly predict the future but we can enjoy our victories in the present. It shouldn’t be so hard to understand this so I can only conclude that our rivals are so rattled that they’ve lost control of basic mental faculties. And that makes us even more pleased.
Bathing in a waterfall of your tears,
Vish (AFC), Melbourne, Aus
READ: Arsenal steal from Liverpool yet again as ‘ruthless’ streak emerges against abysmal West Ham
 
Oh Villa
​It’s the hope that kills you.
Villa, why have you done this to me.
Paul
 
Blankety-blank
In response to Peter’s article about the retro jerseys.
I’ve always thought clubs should sell sponsorless shirts as an option.
There’s been a whole generation of Man Utd shirts I’ve never even considered buying due to the awful Chevrolet logo that was plastered on the front of them.
I’d happily pay a bit extra to drop the sponsors entirely and just have a nice shirt with the club badge.
Rob
 
You know it on Euros squad
After Southgate was at a few games this weekend I can see the press conference for the Euros squad already.
“As much as we would like to take Mainoo/Jones/Gallagher/any young decent English CM there time will come in the future. But for now Jordan and kalvin will be in the squad. The former will be his last chance”
It will be another chance wasted.
Jonny P, Hull

 
Liverpool won on Saturday but…
Blue cards – No one has mentioned the impact it will have on players that receive them. You can’t have professional athletes playing for say 30 minutes, sitting on their arse for 10 minutes then going back on to play. These are hamstring injuries waiting to happen. Also as per other mails, does the clock start once they leave the pitch, what if there are injuries or VAR decisions is the time then extended – Clusterf**k.
Covid Cup – People are still referring to LFC’s title win with an asterisk – Why? Liverpool where something like 20 points ahead of City when the league was stopped, I think we only needed one or two wins to clinch it anyway.
Man City and FA – These two go together. FA refuse to look into City’s alleged financial breaches but continue to look at another possible Everton discrepancy and Forest. Why have the FA been so lenient with City? Also why do they let City wear their FIFA world club badge on their shirts? When Liverpool won it, they had to beg the FA to let them wear it for one match! – don’t see any bias there then. About time you took some referees to Dubai for another Jolly.
Neil, LFC, USA
 
More on Man City
Wow, Mark, MCFC is bitter about these new rules with a ludicrous straw man argument to try and make his case about how wonderfully managed City are and how horribly managed every other club is. It’s not dishonesty to break the rules, it’s just being ahead of the curve!
Mark, the reason they are bringing in these rules is because it opens a massive door to conflicts of interest. We already saw how two unconnected teams could attempt to bypass FFP rules in Italy, to agree to higher valuations of players they sold to each other. By falsely increasing their total income they could offset higher losses. By allowing clubs to transfer players between co-owned teams all sorts of financial shenanigans are possible from under-valuing to over-valuing players whichever is needed.

It wasn’t mismanagement that other clubs didn’t do this, but because they knew it was fundamentally wrong.
But the fact you are willing to publicly flog such nonsense shows that one area of City works very well – their propaganda machine.
Paul McDevitt
 
Has Pep underperformed?
As a person who loves football, has a 40min drive home from work 3 days a week and runs at the weekend I have quite a bit of time to listen to podcasts. I frequent the main ones, Guardian Football weekly, Totally Football show, the Times and on occasion one from the Athletic. Barry Glendenning ripping the p*ss out of Chris Wilder for “sandwich gate” had me in tears the other week.
But as Man City have now won their 10th Game in a row and most media think that this all-concurring team will now juggernaut to another trophy filled season, we are hearing, reading, and watching the annual copy about Pep’s greatness, how he overcomes hurdles and that he tinkers in a way no other manager does to get them over the line. Yes, we are entering the yearly Pep w*nk fest.
Pep is undoubtedly successful, trophy wise, but no-one really states that he has operated in quite literally the most optimal conditions anyone has ever had to work in. Here is the line up from his first Barcelona game: GK: Valdes – Defense: Alves, Puyol, Marquez and Abidal – Midfield: Yaya T, Xavi and Iniesta – Forwards: Messi, Eto and Henry
They lost the game, but that’s not a bad team to coach – I don’t see a Robert Huth, Igor Biscan or Tomas Brolin there.
I agree that he got them to change how they play, and it was a very impressive, new approach. But he was doing it with some of the worlds the best players, on the best pitches with the best coaches. He did not reinvent football. It would have been more impressive if he’d done it with Valencia, or Getafe.
After Barca and a year out Pep goes to Bayern Munich. A team where only Jurgen Klopp has managed to break up the dominance by rolling six sixes first go. Remember, he took over a team that had won the treble the year before. He then fails to get close to repeating this, despite the massive financial advantage that has led Munich to win 11 out of the last 13 Bundesliga’s. He gets spanked in the Semi’s in the first and second year and misses out again in his third. Does this equate success? Does it merit genius status and the general level of fawning we witnessed?

And during his final year in Bayern, the petrol funded Man City prepare for his arrival. They handpick a backroom team to make him feel comfortable and no doubt start to buy the players he requests.
On this website we have had contributors, both mailbox and staff stating that Jurgen Klopp has not won enough. But when you stop and really think about this question your only answer is, should Pep have won more?
City fans will argue that up until recently they never broke a transfer record on a single player. However, when Pep arrived in the Summer of 2016, City paid over 50m Euros for both Stones and Sane, the year after it was more than 50m Euros on Laporte, Mendy, Walker, and Silva; Continued to this season, they have paid 50m Euros or more on 16 players.
Their closest rivals over the last few years, Liverpool, have bought 5 players for over 50m Euros in that same period. Now, spending money is no guarantee of success, but if like Liverpool you lose a player like VVD to injury it leaves a hole in your squad.
In his 8 years in the UK Pep has won 5 Leagues, 1 CL, 2 FA cups and 4 ELF cups – with arguable the wealth of a nation behind him and a (financial) sword of Damocles hanging over his, and Man City’s legacy.
In 3 years in Germany, it was 3 leagues and 2 cups – with undoubtedly the strongest team with the biggest budget in the entire league.
After 4 years in Spain, it was 3 Leagues, 2 CL and 2 cups – with quite possibly the greatest player of all time, 2 world class midfielders an armada of generational talent to support.
So, in my opinion Pep’s a bit meh!
Ian H
 
Just to be clear
So just to confirm what I’ve read on here recently…
Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Spurs blackmailing the league to hoard gate receipts and create a massive financial advantage – that’s football, that’s fine.
Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Spurs and Everton blackmailing the league to create a new division that hoards all the TV money and create a massive financial advantage – that’s football, that’s fine.

Manchester United and Spurs going to the Stock Exchange and giving themselves a massive financial advantage – that’s football, that’s fine.
Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United getting together with their mates to create a “Champions League” designed so that they would qualify in perpetuity and hoard all that cash to create a massive financial advantage – that’s football, that’s fine.

Arsenal steal from Liverpool yet again as ‘ruthless’ streak emerges against abysmal West Ham

Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice had a lovely time at the London Stadium
West Ham were truly dreadful against Arsenal but were made to look so by a ‘ruthless’ visiting side, who took clear inspiration from Liverpool yet again.
 
And so Arsenal’s run of senseless thievery continues. Liverpool won a Premier League away game played around Valentine’s Day 6-0 against an opponent in a claret and blue kit once; it was kind of their thing.

The Gunners’ immaturity, much like their lack of killer instinct, knows no bounds.
No club sets the agenda and decides the discourse quite as effectively. Arsenal countered accusations of over-celebrating through the ingenious method of scoring so many goals that their joy eventually evened itself out and morphed into mild apathy. If Mo Elneny had scored then there might be a case to answer but this was a routine dispatch.
The Celebration Police might even drop their case entirely after Declan Rice marked his stunning strike with an embarrassed show of respect and sorrow towards those few West Ham supporters who remained by a stage so late as the 65th minute.
Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice refused to celebrate his goal on his return to West Ham.
And therein lies the latest talking point, fuelled by those narrative-driven Gunners: is leaving a match early ever justifiable as a fan?
Plenty of West Ham supporters stayed until the full-time whistle to avoid the crowds and beat the traffic; those who departed in their droves even before the first half had come to a close missed such spectacles as Gabriel Magalhaes at one point after the break losing his boot, waiting patiently for Leandro Trossard to recover it and slowly putting it back on. West Ham had the ball throughout that entire passage of play and deserve immense credit for showing the utmost respect and not at any stage looking even vaguely like they wanted to take advantage.

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They offered what can technically be described as resistance for about half an hour, but their tactic of letting Jarrod Bowen chase shadows and relying on Arsenal being wasteful for an hour and a half had some drawbacks if you looked close enough. No approach is perfect and David Moyes cannot be faulted for only remembering to check the fixture list on Sunday morning before panicking and realising they were scheduled to actually play as association football match.
William Saliba scored from a corner. Bukayo Saka had two free headers from about six yards, set up by crosses from either side, then wasted another glorious chance before winning and converting a penalty. Gabriel Magalhaes scored from a free-kick. Trossard added a fourth. Half-time.
Moyes had seen enough by then. A double substitution told the whole story and a sequel; Kalvin Phillips and Konstantinos Mavropanos were sent on to shore things up, albeit a little belatedly. Off went Edson Alvarez and Kurt Zouma, and out West Ham were sent with a strict directive to sort this mess out. Still 0-0. Keep it tight.
Within a minute of the restart, a Gabriel Martinelli cut-back was skied by Trossard, who was waiting unmarked on the penalty spot as Martin Odegaard lurked behind him.
It felt like both sides would have probably shaken hands on ending the game then. For West Ham, the humiliation was practically complete. For Arsenal, those energy reserves could happily be saved for tougher tasks down the line of this title race.
The mentions of the last time Arsenal scored four goals in the first half of a Premier League away game – the Cheick Tiote 4-4 Newcastle draw – were a desperate attempt to inject any sort of jeopardy and intrigue into a laughably one-sided spectacle.
West Ham didn’t so much as conjure a shot on target, their only one of the game, until the 82nd minute. Those impressive consecutive 2-0 victories over Manchester United and Arsenal feel like a lifetime ago, particularly after losing the return fixtures by an aggregate score of 8-0.

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