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Where can we finish 2023 part 1? Palace (a), Leicester (h) Bournemouth (a) Fulham (h) Aston Villa (h) Man Utd (a) Everton (h) Brentford (a) Ah, the bane of a sportswriters life, predicting results when anything can happen on the pitch. But it never stops me, I will keep on trying to enlighten or infuriate you with my take on the scores and position we will be in if we get those scores. This year I will start with the first 8 matches as the new part of the season is far more difficult. The transfer window is not over and Fulham might buy Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo throwing all predictions into the wind. I know that this feature is among my most popular judging by readership numbers and I will give it a go again. And, in fairness, I haven’t done badly, normally getting within 3 points of our eventual tally. My Crystal Ball says Arsenal First up, away to Crystal Patrick which is my new name for them as our boy seems to have put his own unique stamp on the Londoners. Truly I wish him well and would love to see them challenging for a European spot but we owe them. We owe them bigtime a true splattering for heaping indignity on us last year and I won’t even mention the score because I certainly didn’t predict it. So, I would love to beat them 3-0 (blast, I mentioned the score) but I doubt it. Their addition of defender Chris Roberts from Bayern Munich and midfielder Cheick Doucouré from Lens seem to indicate a tightening in defence so I am going for 2-1 in our favour after a hard fought match. 3 points to the Arsenal. Can these 2 give us a winning mentality? Leicester at home. In general we have a good record against them but sometimes in recent years they have caused us big problems. Schmeichel and particularly Jamie Vardy give us headaches but Schmeichel could be gone by then as he is going for a medical to Lens. Vardy is a hundred years old, still a big threat and we never seem to find an answer to him, but we are at home and we win with Tielemans scoring for us even if he isn’t our player by then. A tight, scruffy affair gives us 1-0 to the Arsenal with six points and we are starting to dream. Finally we play well Bournemouth away and this is last years Brentford who sent us home crying. Can they do the same? It is hard to see with their buys so far as nobody seems to be frightening. I see us hitting our stride after two hard matches and giving them a tonking of that fabled 3-0 that Crystal Patrick inflicted on us last year. 9 points, top of the league and all bets are off. We are the Champions of the world! Fulham didn't sign these guys Fulham at home. They don’t sign Messi, Neymar or Ronaldo but Solomon, Paulinha, Mbabu and Šekularac look like interesting buys. But we are the Arsenal, we blast away the Fulhams of this world…it all goes wrong! We start off spinning the ball all around them, watching them jumping around like demented puppets as they somehow keep the ball out of the net but they score from nowhere. A penalty from Xhaka and he argues so hard with the ref he gets sent off. They score and we go to pieces, blundering around shellshocked, only occasionally doing good things with the ball but we don’t score. 1-0 to the Cottagers and they do a Brentford on us. Still 9 points but now the whole atmosphere changes. Gerrards Gougers make us work And so to Villa again at home. Coutinho, Kamara and Carlos look the pick of their signings and they will surely be better than last year. Our team come out as nervous and tentative as rabbits, but Gerrard’s aggressive style (read dirty) wakens our boys up. We don’t allow them to bully us and a couple of our strong experienced boys show we know how to deal with a professional style. A bad tempered match ends 1-1 and we go, battle weary, to 10 points. The early season optimism now replaced with a dogged determination to at least always put up a fight. Ten Haag - I like this guy. A bit of a Guardiola look? Ah, Manchester United away. My favourite fixture and I will be there again this year. Ten Haag is good, he will get them playing well and with purpose. He can’t fix all their problems straightaway but I expect them to make a good start to the season. A lot of players have been cleared out and Martinez, Eriksen, and Malacia should be strong signings. This time Arsenal play well, as both teams stroke the ball about very nicely. We scramble a late goal for 2-2 after a very entertaining game. 11 points means we are not far off the top and this game seems to put us back on track. Thanks Frank Everton at home. I always liked Frank Lampard but I don’t think he has managed to solve his problems with Richarlison gone and Tarkowski and McNeil in from Burnley. They are good players and will certainly fight but unless he can make some strong signings he may still struggle. And Arsenal add to his problems with our best game so far. 4-1 brings back that winning feeling and the mindless enthusiasm of our fans. 14 points, pushing towards the top and Arteta is a genius. Yes, throw up your hands, Frank Brentford away. This match destroyed our team last season. They showed up our weakness against professional teams. We were bullied, we were outmuscled and Leno never recovered. This is not the same Arsenal. We go at them but they give as good as they get. They are tight, organised and get good breakaways. Chances are few and our supposed target Aaron Hickey who went there instead, plays very well as if he has a point to prove. But it ends as a dreary 0-0 and we have 17 points. Aaron Hickey - Could he have starred for us? Worldbeaters? That puts us joint third but we are ahead on goal difference courtesy of our two good wins. And so, we enter the next phase a bit more realistic. Champions League is within our grasp but only occasionally have we shown glimpses that we can maybe do better, be a real winning machine like Man City or Liverpool. The many hard matches are a testing ground for character, for improving our players self-belief. Last year some of our players wouldn’t dig deep when it mattered. Some are now gone. Are they replaced by battlers? I am optimistic that we will do better this year. Of course those astute fans out there will realise that the three monsters and the Spuds who finished in front of us last season are not on this list. They are the testers. We need some points on the board before we tackle them. Up the Arsenal! RIP To King Terry Neill of which I have written about extensively in these columns. A real Arsenal man, he could be found around the Emirates on match days reliving his glory days. And he did mastermind that amazing victory over Manchester United in the 1979 FA cup final which cemented Liam Brady as one of our greatest.

Arsenal v Man Utd part 2 Handbags, surely? A most serious war Fighting! That’s the key to Arsenal vs Manchester United. So many fights, and so spectacular. The thing is, though, it became the biggest derby in English football purely on football terms, which is unusual. Normally it is your local rivals who are your biggest opponents, not so these two. It was football, it was that mad scramble for superiority, to be better. Yes we had big games, the FA cup final of 1979 which I wrote about here being one. I also wrote about the brawl at Old Trafford in 1991 here. I was there in 1991 when Arsenal had a 20 man brawl with Man Utd at Old Trafford. As far as I am concerned, Man Utd were the instigators as any examination of the videos will confirm but Arsenal got the worst punishment. The beginning of the belief that Alex Ferguson always got better treatment from authorities. It was spectacular, with almost everyone involved although not really vicious except maybe for Brian McClair kicking Nigel Winterburn on the ground, for which Winterburn got booked! Arsene Wenger Vs Alex Ferguson But they were just tasters, little morsels to whet the appetite for the big battles first with George Graham and Alex Ferguson and then the supreme one, when Arsene Wenger arrived on the scene. He seemed straightaway to get under Ferguson’s skin and of course in his first full season he was 12 points behind and going nowhere when he did the impossible, reeled them in and essentially got the title with a Marc Overmars wondergoal at Old Trafford. From then on, they all knew, there was a new kid on the block and they were Arsenal. No wonder Ferguson was sickened and bitter. No more Mr Nice Guy Of course, Arsenal never quite managed domination under George Graham, but Man Utd, under Matt Busby, not that long past, were a great and dominant side just as Manchester United were becoming under Ferguson. They seemingly could just march to the title every season. Eh hello, Arsenal are here now. It was our first Premier League title. And the true start of what was to become the biggest rivalry in English football. They hated each other, hyped themselves up for every match as if their life depended on it and they were always feisty affairs. Both sets of players were desperate to win Now, Ferguson and Wenger seem friends. Ferguson, though, then, was far more responsible for the war. He liked to use any method to gain an advantage, mindgames, a sense of us against the world, firing players up, diving. Even the arrival of Arsenal he used to push his team to their first Champions league. They had to get better to beat Arsenal and that was also good enough to beat Bayern Munich. Wenger always wanted it to be about football, sporting competition, and doing things the right way. Thanks, Patrick, for the eye examination However his players didn’t see it that way. They also wanted to win in any way possible, Adams, Keown, Vieira and others would try to intimidate opponents, to fight as hard as they could for victory. Witness Patrick Vieira intimidating Gary Neville in the famous tunnel incident. This fired Roy Keane up so much that he wanted to fight Patrick Vieira before the match. I had never seen this before in football and kept expecting Keane to be sent off before the match had even started. Maybe that is not in the rules so he wasn’t and United went on to win 4-2. Keown was the hardest fighter of all Martin Keown’s most famous image is when he screws up his face at Ruud Van Nistleroy when he missed a penalty at Old Trafford after Diego Forlan had gone down soft. It ended 0-0 and all the Arsenal players celebrated wildly, so wildly that several of them got suspensions. Nothing for Man Utd. Ferguson, unbelievably said that Arsenal’s conduct was the worst he had ever seen in football. Ah, good old Fergie, always playing the mindgames. Get closer, Martin I have to mention Pizzagate as well. The next season, at Old Trafford, Utd ended our great unbeaten run with Van Nistleroy scoring a late penalty and Wayne Rooney scoring even later to give them a 2-0 win. Arsenal had played the better football, controlling the game to that point. It boiled over into the tunnel, and Mr Ferguson got pizza thrown over him by a young Cesc Fabregas, allegedly. This time, both teams kept shtum and no punishments were handed out. Surely not innocent Cesc Fabregas? So there were plenty of fights, red cards, yellow cards, wild tackles, squaring up, and sly grins when intimidation worked, as Wenger vs Ferguson, Keane vs Vieira, Keown vs everybody and lots of other battles raged all around us. It was a time of heightened emotions as the two great teams of English football battled throughout new players in a ten or so year yoyo war for supremacy. Every time a team got knocked down they got back up and knocked the other down. It was a fantastic football war as well But what about the football, I hear you ask? It was high class. Dennis Bergkamp had brought football to a new level as did Thierry Henry, Vieira and superb players for the Arsenal. Beckham, Scholes, Giggs, and others were world class for Utd. Ruud Van Nistleroy ramped up the rivalry by trying to keep up with Henry, but eventually conceded Henry was better as he skulked off to Real Madrid. They fought on football skills though, I never remember them getting physical with each other. Nistleroy was beaten by Thierry Henry During George Graham’s time, Ferguson famously said that Ian Wright was destroying us and he did acknowledge that Arsenal players could play. He also thought that Tony Adams should have been a Manchester United player. And Ferguson learned from Wenger. All the modern ideas he brought were swiftly introduced at Old Trafford, diets, training methods and grounds, pitch technology, large squads, rotation, he was always one of the best learners in football. One thing both managers believed in was attacking football, always trying to score. They were never good at holding on to a lead, always wanting to increase it by preference. Hence the high scoring matches as both sides, once they fell behind, kept trying to win, leaving gaps for the other to exploit. The infamous 8-2 to Man Utd was not as one-sided as the scoreline suggests, as Arsenal continued to press forward, looking for a miracle. Watch it again if you don’t believe me. Are there battles to come? There is no doubt in my mind that Utd had reached an easy pinnacle until Arsenal arrived to challenge, winning title after title, and that push helped Ferguson to get his players to perform better. Both sides had managers and players who only cared about winning, battling and fighting to the end for that top prize of not losing. For trophies, they have the edge and we would need a long great spell to catch them up. It is not impossible, though. Can we overtake them on money, however? Probably not, they are at the top level of fan support with an income to match. They can pay huge salaries even as they are struggling at the moment. A long period for us in the doldrums makes it harder to get the owners to spend money. Again we would need that long great spell to match them for money. They do go in with an advantage, a bigger fan base, a bigger ground, owners who spend more money, and, of course, a stronger modern tradition. What do plucky little Arsenal have to offer? A potentially exciting young manager, who, if he tackles his weaknesses in dealing with players, could become a true great. We also have an extraordinary range of young talent, which, with improvement and some of that battling ability which I have written about here, could bring us that dream spell of dominance. I believe in this team, do you?

Arsenal vs Juventus What's black and white and red all over? This guy is sure happy he chose red Maybe a bit of a strange one as we haven’t played them much, but we have done very well against them and the last time I chose a European opponent it was Bayern Munich who destroyed us. The Italians are somewhat on a par with Bayern as they are the big champions although they at least have great competition from AC Milan. Juventus are, though, one of the biggest European names. They have won everything. They are feared worldwide and have had a list of some of the greatest ever to play the game. They took our best player Liam Brady but we took theirs (although they didn’t realise it at the time) Thierry Henry. So evens on that metric maybe. Brady: Great business for Trappatoni When it comes to trophies they are ahead. An incredible 38 Scudettos to our 13 league titles. 14 each for Cups so equal there. They have won the Italian Super cup (League against Cup winners) 9 times and we have won the Charity Shield 16 times so we are ahead. We have 1 European Cup-winners Cup apiece. Surprisingly, they have only 2 Champions league/European Cup but that is still better than us. Overall, though, our metrics are not too bad against them as you can see. Our selling was better Wojciech Szczęsny, Aaron Ramsay, Armand Traore, and Patrick Vieira are recent players we have sold to Juventus but with mixed results. Lord Nicolas Bendtner went there on loan on an option to buy. Juventus didn’t. Maybe we got the best of those deals. You should have stayed red, Wojciech Juventus life got blacker And on the pitch? In our head to heads? Surprisingly we did well considering it is fair to say they are above us in rankings. The first was the European CupWinners cup in 1980. The problem I have with writing this blog for a mostly Bulgarian audience is that most of you are a lot younger than me. From what I can see, under communism, few supported Arsenal. And a lot of you would have come onboard during the Wenger years, where we were regarded as one of the biggest teams in Europe. And so in your mind, Arsenal are a big team, ready to take on the Real Madrids, the Bayerns and the Juventuses of this world. But not when I was a young adult and a kid. Seems nobody wanted you, Nicklas Great names humbled We were average, even at times I was worried about relegation. The double was like a miracle in the context and that was well in the past at this stage. We had good players, yes, but not huge names like Dino Zoff, Marco Tardelli, Claudio Gentile and Roberto Bettega. Their manager was the legendary Giovanni Trappatoni, one of the greatest ever. Italian football was the height. Players from the English league scrambled to get into this league as the rewards were far greater than in England. And so Trappatoni saw Liam Brady and said, I’m having him and he did. It was Brady’s last season with us. Nowadays, if a top team comes in for our player, we are angry, but honestly, all the fans knew then, they would have done the same in Brady’s shoes. He was nowhere near the best paid at Arsenal, despite being a step above all of them in talent. Probably the best player in the league yet trailing way behind even average players at the Liverpools and Man Utds. So our dismay at losing our best player was directed more at the management than Brady himself. Why did you go to the dark side, Patrick? But we laid down a marker in these games. Our first match against Juventus was at Highbury. And, to be honest, when Antonio Cabrini popped in a goal on 11 minutes, we looked dead in the water. Somehow we got an own goal late on from Roberto Bettega on 85 but still we were out. Nobody went to Turin to win and certainly not this Arsenal team who were behind the best in England let alone Europe. And so it seemed. Until the ultimately tragic (a story for another day) 18 year old Paul Vaessen was sent on late in the game with instructions from Don Howe – “Score a goal for us” – and the poor guy did on 88 minutes. A miracle had happened. We had beaten Juventus in our first tie against them. The pub I was in erupted. Arsenal had arrived in Europe. We had beaten a huge name for the first time but Liam Brady was snatched away from us. Red suits you better, Aaron Blacker and Blacker The next time was a tie most of you will remember as we were well into the Wenger era in 2001. We were now Arsenal. Teams were starting to be frightened of us. We had players at their peak like Henry, Bergkamp, Kanu, Pires, Llungberg, Campbell although we had Stuart Taylor in goal and Matthew Upson in defence. They had replaced probably the most famous Italian goalkeeper ever, Dino Zoff, with possibly an even greater legend, Gianluigi Buffon. They had Lilian Thuram, Pavel Nedved, Edgar Davids, David Trezeguet and Allesandro Del Piero among their greats. It was the second group stage and we sent them home crying from Highbury 3-1. Freddie (2) and Thierry Henry rattled in the goals. Get back to Italy quickly or we will score more against you. And the second leg in Turin? They didn’t manage to score till the 76th minute from Marcelo Zalayeta and it was ciao Juventus. We were becoming their nightmare. Red is the winner, Armand And so on to 2006 and our incredible march to the final where every top team in Europe lined up against us and we swatted them away like the flies they were. Multi Champions league winners Ajax in the group stage. Real Madrid in the knockout. And now Juventus. Again they had a team packed with stars and they now had our own Patrick Vieira and a young Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Again we had them first at Highbury and again we sent them home crying, 2-0 this time. A young Cesc Fabregas showed Patrick Vieira he wasn’t missed with a goal on 40 and then a player called Thierry Henry scored on 69 to seal their doom. You wake up at night in sweats over the Arsenal, Juve, don’t you? 0-0 in Turin meant we would march on towards Villareal in the semi’s. Your darkest nightmare And so Arsenal are Juventus’s daddies. They must hate the sight of us. 3 times we got them in Europe, each time they are sent home in tatters. It’s written in black and white – Turin is red. We love you Arsenal, we do, We love you Arsenal, we do, Oh, Arsenal, we love you

2005-2006 We won trophies at this stadium The end of Highbury. Highbury was a great ground. I loved it and I cannot say I get the same buzz from the Emirates. To go on to the terrace and mingle with the real fans, listen to the banter, get shoved around whenever something exciting happened, sometimes struggling to see what happened when being shoved, all added to the fizz in my belly as I watched my team becoming close to being a great one in the late 80’s under George Graham. We were finally able to go toe to toe with the giants of English football, Liverpool and I was able to go to Highbury to watch them climb that mountain. People accused it of being the Highbury Library but it never seemed that way to me, there was always a noise, lots of singing, and sometimes some very witty comments. And, something that might surprise people who only watch on tv is the negativity of a lot of the crowd. Cries similar to “The team is fucking useless and always have been”, “the manager is an idiot” and many others came out of the lips of fans regularly from the terrace. That has died out dramatically since we changed over to the stands. There is still a little banter now but nowhere near the same. Football is worse for that, although I have to say I do like being able to sit and have a bit of comfort watching Arsenal, I miss the connectness of the terraces. But not at this one And I miss Highbury. The financial argument was inescapable. Roman Abramovich had altered the landscape of football as he transformed Chelsea into a contender for the best team in Europe. A seemingly bottomless supply of money and an aggressive attitude towards managers not achieving it meant that even Mourinho got sacked after toppling the 2 giants of English football, Manchester United and Arsenal, both with far greater resources at the time in terms of fans worldwide and ability to coin money from that fanbase. The big teams of Europe, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, the Italian giants, and several within England had much bigger grounds. And so the plan that had started several years before had come to fruition and Arsenal would spend their last year at the hallowed and exquisite turf of Highbury. Arsene Wenger and David Dein, along with the board, set it all in place. A new ground, close beside Highbury so fans are not discommoded, with around 60,000 fans, a huge increase on what was there before, and a far greater amount of corporate boxes to cater for the sexy image football had garnered for itself. Arsenal needed that money to be able to take on the big boys. The banks insisted on Arsene Wenger The banks got that call right Perhaps not so well known is that the banks insisted that Arsene Wenger had to remain at the helm to guarantee the loans.This was certainly prescient as, although attendances have not been hit too badly since Wenger moved on, they have certainly taken a hit now that we are no longer challenging for honours. The shiny new stadium did come at a price on the pitch though. Although lots of new players came that year, none had the impact of Bergkamp (believed to have been a Wenger choice), Vieira, Henry, Petit, Overmars, Campbell, Pires, Llungberg and others that became legends. Adebayer, Walcott, Diaby, Song, and Hleb did come on board and made various types of impressions but none are contenders for greatest player in their position for Arsenal as those previous players I mentioned are. It looked like Wenger could get us good but not great players now. Our greatest midfielder gone This guy frightened players And so we lost one of our greatest this season. Patrick Vieira finally left for Juventus after grumbling for a few seasons about a move. Cesc Fabregas came through from the academy finally as first choice but he was no like for like replacement. He did not have the aggression or the physique of Vieira but he did bring a superb skillset to the team so that Vieira’s loss was not so keenly felt. Fabregas almost bridged the gap Lots of teams sent us home crying Still, on the pitch, we weren’t so good, 11 defeats in the league meant we finished a distant fourth to Chelsea. We fielded understrength teams in the FA cup and the League cup because Wenger concentrated all efforts on winning the Champions league which meant we went out to Bolton in the 4th round of the FA cup and Wigan in the semi-final of the League cup. We played lower teams in the league cup and got away with it until the semi’s where Wigan drew 2-2 over 2 legs but went through on the away goals rule as they scored a goal at Highbury in extra time of the second leg. We were beaten at Highbury by Chelsea and West Ham in the league, our only 2 defeats there that season although Wigan got a sort of a victory in the League cup. Highbury was always a difficult place to come to and the Emirates has never quite managed to achieve that. At least I got to feel it throughout my whole body And so we got our send off. Every match had a theme like players day, European night, 49-er’s day, Wenger day etc. and there was a party type atmosphere all season. Highbury was no more and I could never recreate my days of younger as we moved into our new giant stadium with its dizzying heights. Impressive, yes, and lots of interesting parts around it but without that buzz which so many of you will never experience. I am so glad that I got to feel it all through my body as I looked around at all the fans, strangers yet family, buzzing and fizzing and erupting as the goals went in. Next week I will talk about our Champions league campaign that season. It will be the final, for now, of this series My life as a gooner. The 49 has significance. The Champions league is the title I have always wanted and we came so close. List of themed matchdays at Highbury Matchday Date Players Day 14 August 2005 Goal Celebrations Day 24 August 2005 European Night 14 September 2005 2 November 2005 Doubles Day 19 September 2005 Internationals Day 2 October 2005 Wenger Day 22 October 2005 Memorial Day 5 November 2005 49-ers Day 26 November 2005 League Cup Night 29 November 2005 24 January 2006 Boxers v Jockeys Day 7 December 2005 Great Saves Day 18 December 2005 Hat-trick Heroes Day 28 December 2005 Back Four Day 3 January 2006 FA Cup Day 7 January 2006 1913 Day 14 January 2006 London Derbies Day 1 February 2006 Home Grown Players Day 11 February 2006 Managers Day 8 March 2006 Captains Day 12 March 2006 Junior Gunners Day 18 March 2006 Decades Day 28 March 2006 David Rocastle Day 1 April 2006 Dennis Bergkamp Day 15 April 2006 Records Day 19 April 2006 Kits Day 22 April 2006 Goals Day 7 May 2006