There’s a theory that Arsenal needed to start playing like that as the only way to beat the cheaters of Man City.

We also have a lot more on that penalty and we’re really hoping the Champions League stops all that. Mail us at theeeditor@football365.com

Man City guilty of making Arsenal boring
I’m an Arsenal fan of a certain George Graham vintage so I obviously love watching Mikel Arteta’s current team. I’ve read lots of people talking about how we’re ruining football with our negative style of play, dark arts blah blah blah but has anyone actually thought about how this team and more importantly, why this team has been conceived in this manner?

I know City are guilty of a lot of things over the years, but are they also to blame for our style of play? (a style of play I enjoy might I add, but I’m fully aware that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea).

Anyway, here is my reasoning as to why City might be to blame. Arsenal has risen amidst the backdrop of the biggest financial cheating this country has ever seen. Yes, the football played by City was brilliant, but it was artificially manufactured. To create a team to pip them to the title was nearly impossible, Klopp nearly went bald twice having tried so hard.

So, when you can’t compete in the same manner against such a financially doped juggernaut, your only approach is to adopt a different style of play that doesn’t take hiding 1 billion through mischievous accounting practices to succeed.

Arsenal have adopted an approach that looks to maximise all of the attributes that City aren’t particularly well known for excelling at, things like set pieces, taking a defence first approach, having wingers track back, encouraging goals from all players and not being overly reliant on a Norwegian cyborg. Of course, there are similarities that can be attributed to both teams but it’s easier to spot the differences than the things they both have in common.

Let’s not forget that a Liverpool team in their pomp tried to play them at their own game and Klopp only ended up with one league win to show for it considering the high number of points his team accumulated across multiple seasons. Yes, they played different styles, Tikka Takka vs. high press direct football but both were still deemed offensive styles of play so you could argue they were just different attacking patterns cut from the same cloth.

In this current Arsenal incarnation, I don’t think anyone would describe it as attacking, controlled maybe, certainly on the front foot, but its not like we’re smashing teams 4s and 5s every week.

Remember back to Arteta’s early years at Arsenal when we started to challenge for the league and narrowly missed out. We were much more attacking back then, I remember one season when we ended up scoring more goals than the Invincibles, but we ended up with nothing to show for it.

I don’t blame Arteta for adopting this approach, especially when you consider it’s actually paid dividends and it looks very likely that we might retain the league playing in a similar fashion this season. Don’t lament Arteta for creating a team that can topple City across successive seasons, in my very humble opinion he should be praised for his approach, and he’s certainly offered a more repeatable blueprint for sustained success against City than any other manager since they started their cheating ways.

So next time you reach for your keyboards to write an angry email about our style of play, maybe reserve some of that ire for your manager and ask why they don’t adopt a similar approach to us. You may not like it, but this approach offers us our best chance of succeeding (against a team that has been playing by different rules for the best part of 20 years) and when you boil it all down, isn’t that what football is about?
Liam, Clockend Gooner, London

Not Arsenal fans
Didn’t even need to mail in about El Monotone, Gabriel Jellyknees, Declan Gerrard, or Arsenal’s assault on the beautiful game, mailbox did it for me. Which is just as well, because I’ve been busy washing/hating myself having spent Sunday afternoon cheering Liverpool on. General point of order too, prime Mourinho oozed charisma and only deployed spoiling tactics when he needed to. Arteta doesn’t have a personality and only deploys football when there’s nothing at stake. Destroying is infinitely easier than creating, especially when your squad spend would make King Solomon blush.
RHT/TS x

(Can’t wait for some mope to claim Saka “just shades it” as best right winger of PL era)

…“…if they were playing football down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.” could be the best line I’ve ever read in this Mailbox. Take a bow Dan, London, that is absolutely spot on. I hate what City have done, it’s cheating, but I’d still rather they won the league over this Arsenal team.
Sam, Guernsey (pretending to be neutral)

Did Liverpool get a penalty?
Can someone please confirm if Liverpool got a penalty on Sunday? I’ve not seen anything mentioned about it. Maybe they didn’t? It’s so hard to know.
Stu – Gooner in France (of course I saw the game. As an Arsenal fan, it was bloody brilliant!!!)

…I have never been one for rage baiting, but I admit the circumstances around the Arsenal win, and the non-penalty from Timber etc was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. So I am happy I got at least one bite from YNWA (+ a bit of chatter/banter in the comments)

But ultimately I looked in the mirror and saw Stewie Griffin looking back. And I didn’t like being the troll.

So I will concede.

Timber pulled Isak’s shirt. Not a little. A lot. Enough that it really should have been a penalty.

What I will continue to pedantically argue about however, is the fact that the narrative and discussion is being made using the incredibly incorrect still image. The one where the ball appears mere inches from Isak’s forehead. The ball is well past Isak at that time of that frame, and in the ‘foreground’ of the image. If you view timestamped feeds from various angles, you can clearly see that the ball crosses Isaks general area well above him, and pull or no pull Isak not getting near it.

Was the pull still a foul? Penalty? Probably, yes.

We got away with that one.

But Isak’s reaction itself is evidence to the fact that deep down he knew he wasn’t getting to that. Even with no pull and a clear run at it.

It’s still a foul. Just not a ‘DGSO’.
VAR obviously didn’t use 3 dimensional knowledge of time and space.
They just ballsed it up big time.
Hats

…It’s a dreamy time to be an Arsenal supporter, what with being regularly told to stop complaining about referee decisions, injuries, essentially anything that involved a bit of bad luck or subjectivity that didn’t go our way in previous title races with the Cheats, to now getting to read mail after mail from rival supporters unable to help themselves from doing exactly that, even trying to redefine what constitutes a shot on target. The dopamine addiction is real and becoming a problem.

Anyway, the penalty – Arsenal were lucky, and surely would have conceded it had Madeley been able to make the call in real time (he was 30+ yards away and likely in line with Timber/Isak so surely missed the shirt pull). It comes down to whether you want VAR to re-referee any and every controversial point in the game (like, say, Trey Nyoni raking his studs down an opponents’ calf). VAR surely had a look at the view from the camera on the Main Stand side, which makes it look a much less clear and obvious error, versus solely using the angle we’ve seen on repeat since Sunday.

And contrary to those writing in to re-litigate it with Hats, impact actually does matter, it’s in the Premier League’s interpretation of the rules. From that other angle, it’s more subjective. I can see the case for a penalty, but is the error obvious given the shirt pull didn’t start until the ball was almost at Isak’s head? Not really. Interestingly. that angle also shows Isak and five other Liverpool players tracking the flight of the ball, none of whom thought much of it. I mean, it’s weird Van Dijk came out saying it was a clear penalty after the match, given it happened right in front of him and he didn’t say anything at the time (a rare show of restraint for VvD in not taking an opportunity to berate a referee). I’m open minded and I suspect we’ll hear the audio from it, such is the moaning from pundits, Dublin-based Tik Tokers and keyboard warriors. But I’m guessing that’s why it wasn’t ultimately given. Unlucky!
TG

…Very much enjoying all the Liverpool fans’ collective clutching of pearls, it’ll be less fun next week after Hull get a late equalizer of course. I learned a couple of things this week. The whole “Anfield tax” thing is hilarious – the obvious solution is to simply stop making Anfield such an intimidating place to go, sit on your hands and keep quiet and watch all those DOGSOs and red cards for the opposition roll in.

The second thing I learned is that some shirt pulling is allowed, why? I see no reason why pulling someone’s shirt is a legitimate action in football. Make it always a foul and if there is mutual shirt pulling then favour the defender. Personally, I’d go further and make it a yellow card offense which would stamp it out quickly.

Regarding the tug on Isak. It SHOULD have been a penalty (see above) but given that the rules allow brief shirt pulling then there is by definition now a grey area. I haven’t measured it (can’t be arsed) but I guess it was a second or two at the most. Is that brief or “prolonged” and “extended”. If 1 second is “prolonged” then why allow it at all (again see above). It is also noticeable that the “best” angle of the incident does in fact have the ball coming at the camera and the freeze frame of Isac with head close to ball and having his shirt pulled can’t possibly show if the ball is in fact in front of his head or significantly past him at that point. To reiterate, should probably have been a penalty and I’d have been shouting at the tv had it been VVD on Havertz – but given the rules, the referee/VAR has too much room for interpretation.

We are all myopic at times regarding our own team, but it is fascinating to see the levels some fans go to. Multiple Liverpool fans using the Isak pull as evidence that they NEVER get referee errors in their favour and wanting someone to point out if that has ever happened. When it the first 10 minutes of the very game they are complaining about Nyoni commits 2 yellow card fouls, the first of which was decidedly orange, and doesn’t even get a single booking.
Ozzy AFC DC

Man Utd and ‘special’ clubs
Reading Andy H’s mail saying Manchester United’s mythology revolves around Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson, and that “this is a football club that has spent around 100 years of its 148-year existence being nothing special at all,” I thought I’d comb through the records to see which clubs had periods of dominance in English football. My arbitrary criterion: at least three first division titles in any five-year period. Some dominant periods lasted longer.

Here’s the list:
Sunderland (1892-95)
Aston Villa (1894-1900)
Newcastle United (1907-11)
Huddersfield Town (1924-26) (Winty dreams about these at night)
Arsenal (1931-38)
Liverpool (1973-90)
Manchester United (1993-2013) (hiatus from 2005-06)
Manchester City (2014-24)

In addition, several clubs won consecutive titles without extending their dominance over a longer period:
Preston North End (1889-90)
Sheffield Wednesday (1903-04)
Liverpool (1921-22)
Sheffield Wednesday (1929-30)
Portsmouth (1948-49)
Manchester United (1956-57) (probably longer without the Munich air disaster)
Wolverhampton Wanderers (1958-59)
Chelsea (2005-06)

The most interesting thing about the first list is that in more recent years the periods of dominance have grown longer. This may be random, or it may reflect a more enduring influence of money, or something else I can’t figure out.

In any case, football clubs rise and fall all the time. Mythologies only grow up if you want them to. The obvious truth: if it’s your club, it’s special no matter where it finishes. All football clubs are at all times equally special.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA (except for my beloved DC United, the specialest club of all)