Well, so says Lee Dixon anyway. To be precise, he says “Mertesacker has got a stature about him that is reminiscent of Tony,” while “You could compare Koscielny to Keown given his same dogged determination to do his job.” Of course this was said just before the Arsenal defence let in five against Liverpool, which…

Recently I posted this looking at Arsenal’s chances of winning the Premier League title based on a few recent statistics. And despite the odd setback, this is still the best League season and best chance of a title in years. But the bookies aren’t usually too far out with their projections, so what are the…

Some Arsenal history I found while looking at old programmes: in 1973 Arsenal finished second in the League, but weren’t allowed to enter the UEFA Cup the following season. Why? Because Spurs had won the League Cup! Confused? The ever-archaic and backward looking Football League and FA still had rules in place that meant more…

Lack of time means blog posts here are getting fewer and further between lately, but when someone gives me info like that below, I think why not share it.I just waited till the FA Cup fourth round was out of the way. I’m dubious about the value of many stats in football, at least in…

Ah, the transfer window – is it open yet? Hard to tell as an Arsenal supporter. Obviously there is considerably less angst among fans at the moment than there was last summer, but the papers still need something to talk about. A few days ago @arseblog tweeted this bit of news: I say news. Obviously…

I haven’t had much time for blogging lately – good thing too, you might think – but my last short piece questioned Arsene Wenger’s excuses for dropping points in the three games against Everton, Man City and Chelsea. Naturally by daring to question Arsene Wenger some people, possibly people of low intelligence, I don’t know,…

Here’s a quote from Arsene Wenger. “We have come out of some very difficult games in the festive period. We played Everton, Man City and Chelsea and then at West Ham and at Newcastle. While we dropped some points, I felt it was more down to the heavy schedule and short recovery time we had…

It’s Christmas time, and our recent present from major shareholder Mr E Stanley Kroenke is to send his only begotten son down to earth from Colorado. Yes, Josh Kroenke has joined the Arsenal Board. No doubt you’ll be wanting to know what young Josh looks like, so you can recognise him on his many, many…

So still Arsene can’t beat Jose Mourinho. I’m no ‘Wenger out’ shouter, but surely Arsene himself must find this embarrassing. Nil-nil at home with barely a convincing effort on goal does rather make it look as though tactically Arsene can’t handle the biggest matches. If this was a one-off then I wouldn’t be concerned, but…

Standing at football matches is back on the agenda. But we’ve had all-seater stadiums for a generation, and in that time we’ve had no major disasters at English football grounds. That proves all-seater must be the right thing to do then, doesn’t it? No it doesn’t. There is nothing inherently dangerous about people standing at…