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Marseille (a) – Iron Man Match Thoughts

Aaron Ramsey seems to have enough to spare at the moment after yet another goal this season.  Following Walcott’s opener, the Welsh Wizard secured the victory with a driving run and shot that took the slightest deflection to zip past Steve Mandanda in the Marseille goal. It’s safe to say that this was not the kind of run the Aaron Ramsey of 12 months ago would have made and his improvement since then has been astonishing. 6 goals (from just seven shots on target this season apparently) from midfield as well as his overall performances suggest he is going from strength to strength and will hopefully only get better. It’s been well documented how poor he has been in the past and while I will argue that a lot of the criticisms of were warranted, the vitriol he received from certain quarters was just bang out of order. Ramsey’s

Everton (a) – Ignore The Bigger Picture, Just Enjoy The 90 Minutes

Marseille (a) Thoughts & Line Up: Giroud fit (we knew that) & Ozil to start too

Arsenal, Arsene will go for his strongest possible line up and if rotation is needed then you'd imagine that at home against Stoke City would be a better time to do it. Per Mertesacker will return to the heart of the defence, shoving Bacary stumbling over to right back. That aside I don't think there are anymore returning players even if Mikel Arteta and hopefully Santi Cazorla

West Brom (a) – Thoughts & Predicted Line Up: Rotation, Youthful Defenders & Away Form

Signed Da Ting shoots his load prematurely

On at least three occasions Signed Da Ting was provided with silver service delivery from Giroud and Gunner Galatico Ozil. The German national put in a quality shift, whilst looking like he was waiting for some pre-match Pepto Bismol to take effect. That must have been a hard core sickness bug going round Colney, because Ozil looked like he was about to spew like Liam from One Direction. Nausea aside Ozil’s delivery was very precise, but the end product from Theo not so much. Like an excited, sweaty- palmed, boy teen about to wave goodbye to his virginity, Theo shot his load too quickly.

The Void In The Middle

Can Theo Walcott be our plan b?

We are currently on a 5 game unbeaten run due in no small part to our superb French centre forward. We have based our game on quick movement and passing with Giroud holding the ball up, looking for the lay off to the on rushing man or, as seen on Saturday, slipping a ball through the defence. His hold up play has been fantastic and his finishing excellent. Whilst last year he was more than satisfactory, this year has seen a real step up in quality and confidence. He seems to have a great understanding with his team mates and is clearly enjoying his football at the moment. That’s why his injury is all the

The Void In The Middle

In Defence of Arsène Wenger – why it’s time to give the Manager the respect he deserves

£70 million! That’s some serious cash. But let’s register a few caveats. Firstly, we’ve not had anything like that kind of money for the entire trophy-less period. Back in November 2006 the cash balance was £53 million. Well, if a balance of £154m only gives us a transfer kitty of around £70 million I think we can assume things were pretty tight back in 2006! Furthermore, as recently as 2009 the club took a pretty big hit on its property profits – selling a set of flats at a £10m discount to a real estate group to free up some funds. This is not the act of a club rolling in cash, it was a fairly desperate act of a club trying to keep all its financial balls in the air.

The Void In The Middle

Your Vision – 28 Days Later

Other things are falling into place as well now. Despite a loss to the United under 21 team, the kids have started the season fairly well and the promotion of Gedion Zelalem and Serge Gnabry to the first team squad as well as the first team bow of big Chuba Akpom yesterday implies that we still have faith in our academy. Crucially, the team has also kicked on from the disappointment of four weeks ago to record 5 wins on the bounce, a couple in really trying circumstances. Additionally, to say our two form players of pre-season, Olivier Giroud and Aaron Ramsey, have hit the ground running would be to do an injustice to the both of them. They have exploded out of the blocks this season and I also find great satisfaction noticing how superbly Giroud’s English has improved with his play over the last year.

Your Vision – Transfer Frenzy

Sunderland (a) – Iron Man's Post Match Thoughts

Özil's debut at Sunderland. Excitement levels were off the scale and we weren't to be disappointed as within 11 minutes, the Gelsenkirchen born midfielder took down a raking Gibbs pass on the left hand side of the penalty area and squared the ball to Olivier Giroud to open the scoring. Much has been made of his ridiculous assist numbers over the past five years so one suspects this maiden effort in an Arsenal shirt will be the first of many. He could have had a couple more on the day too had Theo Walcott decided to play football rather than whatever it was he was doing out there. Özil then had a hand the decisive third goal and apparently completed more passes in the attacking third

The Void In The Middle

Sunderland (a) – Too easy for Özil, Ramsey to the rescue & Koscielny lesson

Ramsey replaced Cesc Fabregas in the team, he ghosted into many goal scoring positions but lacked the composure to finish time and time again. Hi Aaron Ramsey, meet confidence and development. Ten minutes later it was Ramsey once more who got on the end of a sweeping move to slide the ball between the keepers legs and into the net. Ramsey's 5th goal in 6 Arsenal games this season. Long may that continue I say. Unfortunately it was not all plain sailing for us though, we should have been comfortable at half time but that is not a problem because Walcott will score goals even if he is going through a slight sticky patch. What was an issue was us shooting ourselves in the foot. Regular readers of this blog will know how much I love Laurent Koscielny, one of the best centre back's in the league for me without a doubt but he really has to learn when he should attempt to go for a tackle in the box and when not to. We've seen so many fantastic last ditch stretching tackles that we almost take it for granted but whether Johnson dived or not, there was no need to take the risk. Johnson was heading away from the goal on his weaker side, Gibbs

Everton (a) – Ignore The Bigger Picture, Just Enjoy The 90 Minutes

Signing Özil was better than signing a striker

This is why many preferred someone like Suarez or Rooney over Higuain, who is more of a pure finisher than a creator, and (when the deal still seemed a possibility) there was plenty of talk of playing Suarez with Giroud rather than instead of. This is really a killing-two-birds-with-one-stone scenario (the two birds being the need for a creative player and the need for a striker), albeit with one of the birds more being important than the other (the need for a striker). I’ve heard Özil described as the “icing on an unfinished cake” but this is just plain wrong - he helps to both partly complete the cake and provide the icing. To carry on the slightly convoluted two birds example, with Özil’s arrival we’ve absolutely incinerated one of them (the need for a creative player) and managed to partially wound the

The Void In The Middle