For an elite head coach who isn’t used to seeing his team lose, suffering a rare defeat on the weekend before an international break is particularly hard to take. With the vast majority of your players hightailing it out of Dodge to rack up more air miles than Santa Claus across a decade’s worth of Christmas Eves, the chance to quickly put things right simply isn’t an option. With the first lull of the season set to be longer than any before, the potential for introspection, self-flagellation and over-thinking has never been higher.
Luckily, Mikel Arteta has never struck Football Daily as the kind of intense, brooding and meticulous perfectionist likely to spend the next 19 days beating himself up over the monstering his team suffered from Brighton on Saturday. Whether it’s forlornly moving magnets around a tactics board or walking Win the dog around Arsenal’s largely-deserted training ground until her little legs are stumps, we’re confident the Arsenal boss’s every fleeting thought over the next three weeks will not be laser-focused on the manner in which the Seagulls viciously pecked his team of champions into submission and how best to ensure such a humiliation is never repeated. Of course, while Arteta is sitting on a swing, gazing into the middle distance like a sad Pablo Escobar, Fabian Hürzeler can afford to cut loose and enjoy his early-season hiatus by indulging in his passion for padel, a sport which our older reader may not know is a new-fangled version of tennis for people too lazy to run.
Slovenliness when it comes to busting a gut is certainly not an accusation that can be levelled at the German’s players, who tore into Arsenal like a swarm of angry bees and buzzed around them with such scrupulously-organised chaos that after 90 minutes their 3-0 margin of victory seriously flattered the beaten holders. I think they deserve it, I think they were the better team.” Wearing natty azzurri blue vintage shirts against Arsenal to mark their 125th anniversary, it’s difficult to imagine Brighton have played better since being founded in 1901. In the early Pathé News years, their first team was peopled by club legends like Peter Ward, Johnny Crumplin and a be-headbanded Steve Foster; the current lineup has a decidedly more cosmopolitan feel and, in the likes of Charalampos Kostoulas, Luka Vuskovic and Diego Gómez, boasts future Brighton icons and subsequent, overpriced, Chelsea squad members.
Over the coming weeks in London Colney, his Arsenal counterpart will be treating both with equal significance. Those were two clear red cards. Given the difficulties we faced playing 11 against 10, we can only imagine what 50 minutes of 11 against nine would have been like.
So I’ll just have to limit myself to hugging my players, who gave it their all and played a first half, showed great class and character, setting us up perfectly to win the second half. They’ve put a referee, aged 41, with no international experience – it’s certainly not because he’s a great referee. Then the poor chap has come here and hasn’t been able to cope with the pressure – and it really is intense pressure.
I call it ’80s-style pressure’ here in this stadium, which you hardly ever see these days” – judging by José Mourinho and his A4 printout, can you guess if Real Madrid lost the derby against Atlético? Speaking of which, here’s Sid Lowe with his verdict on it all. Oxford United’s decision to market an American college-themed ‘United 93’ kit shortly after the 9/11 anniversary, only then to have to recall it (Friday’s Football Daily, full email edition), is a tad unfortunate.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
