LAURA WOODS ON 26/27 ARSENAL VS INVINCIBLES, MAN UTD RELEGATION & BEAT LUKE LITTLER
ANFIELD WIN WAS MASSIVE FOR ARSENAL
Noni Madueke not being sent off for Arsenal against Liverpool on Sunday was really interesting.
I read that there wasn’t enough force in the head movement for it to be a red card, which really surprises me to be honest because I’ve not really heard that before.
No matter how soft it is, in a situation where a player goes in with his head first, I’ve always thought that it would be a straight red. He was already on a yellow card as well.
So the referee saw it and, when VAR got involved, they didn’t think it was strong enough to recommend a review.
Obviously I was happy because it’s my team – but I was quite shocked at that.
In terms of the rest of the game I reckon that last 10-20 minutes or so where Liverpool were just all over Arsenal was case of too little, too late. If you’re not clinical enough, you’re not going to score any goals.
That’s a massive, massive win for Mikel Arteta and the team. To go to Anfield and take all three points, limit them to no shots on target for the clean sheet (and not get anyone sent off)... you can’t underestimate how big that is.
Especially in the context of earlier in the weekend when Manchester City lost at home to Brighton. That’s like a six-pointer in itself, isn’t it?
I’m really chuffed with that.
Arsenal are 8/25 to win the Premier League with BetMGM
COMBINED XI: ARSENAL INVINCIBLES VS CURRENT TEAM
The prospect of doing an Arsenal Invincibles/current squad combined XI has been doing my head in!
I’ve gone for David Raya in goal – love him, think he’s brilliant and one of the best in the world. Then, with his distribution as well, I think he’s just a better player than Jens Lehmann.
I might get hammered for this but, at centre-back, I’ve gone with both William Saliba and Gabriel. I toyed with Sol Campbell – and there may be a bit of recency bias here – but they are just such a formidable partnership. I think Saliba is the best in the world.
I initially thought Lauren at right-back but I’ve ultimately landed on Jurrien Timber… and we’ll keep Ashley Cole at left-back.
I’d go Bukayo Saka over Freddie Ljungberg because I think he’s fabulous: creative, a goal threat, quick, our focal point basically.
Robert Pires has to stay in and I’ll go Declan Rice over Gilberto Silva, though that was a hard call too.
I love everything about Rice. He’s a total leader. He has attacking threat, ball-carrying skills and is just one of the best in the world in his position. He’s also becoming Mr Arsenal now – he links everything together and not just on the pitch.
Then it has to be Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. There’s no current competition up front for those two.
It was difficult not to fit Martin Odegaard in but I’m sticking with it!
MAN UTD WON’T GO DOWN BUT THIS HAS BEEN COMING
Are Manchester United a genuine relegation threat? I think it’s always arrogant to say no because you never know what can happen in the Premier League… and they are in a pretty precarious position.
But there is too much quality in this team for that to happen. They just need to get out of their own heads and start producing what we’ve seen from each of those players in the past.
I did say this about Tottenham last season and that was literally on a knife edge, wasn’t it?
But, no, United won’t go down.
This shock of their lives that they’ve had so far this season has been coming for a number of years; it’s just been building up to this point.
The Roma comeback said quite a lot about the fact that there is fight and quality left in this team but, if Bruno Fernandes hadn’t been able to retake that penalty, that would have been the nail in the coffin.
And then Matheus Cunha had that spell when he just ran around like a man possessed, scored two goals, took his top off, got booked, fouled someone and got sent off. It was so Manchester United.
Their ability to fight back from 2-0 down says a lot about them and it did Michael Carrick a massive, massive favour.
For me, he’s shown he can get a response out of them when times are really tough because their heads could have really gone down on Tuesday night.
Man Utd to finish top four is 7/1 with BetMGM
WIN VS VILLA WOULD BUY CARRICK TIME
It’s the nature of the Manchester United performance against Aston Villa that’s important.
If they lost against Villa but it was really well fought and there were really positive signs, I reckon he will still be there. The problem United have is this is a different Villa side to the one that started the season.
Take that Champions League performance where they got hammered by Barcelona. I actually thought they were pretty good after the first goal in that half. They created a lot of chances and they were proper chances as well, so they probably should have scored at least one.
I didn’t think it was a 3-0 game against Barca, let’s put it that way.
I also think Unai Emery has got to grips with this team now. Everyone knows their roles, it’s organised, it’s disciplined and that’s the type of team United do not want to play at the moment.
It’s a team in the ascendancy while United’s heads are in the gutter. But if they can take something from that win in Europe back into the Premier League and get something out of it, it could hold Carrick in that position for a little bit longer.
I feel sorry for him; it’s almost like death by a thousand paper cuts, like you know it’s coming unless he manages to completely turn the tables on this team and shoot up the table.
Do they let him go over the international break, with time to bring somebody else in and give them a week with the team? I don’t know, that could be an option.
Or do they limp to the break, get something out of Villa, have a break themselves and catch their breath and let Carrick continue his tenure?
It’s a really difficult one. I’ve got no idea what the hierarchy are thinking but they need to pull one hell of a performance out the bag at the weekend against one of the teams United fans probably wish they were.
They would have to be tone deaf to sack him if they were to win on Sunday because they know that, despite the fact Carrick has made mistakes in his management and been tactically naive at times, he still has the backing of a lot of United fans.
They need to be careful with that.
Man Utd to beat Aston Villa is 23/20 with BetMGM
DON’T BLAME THE APPEAL FOR CITY’S FORM
I don’t think this run of poor form from Manchester City is an appeal thing at all because I think the appeal was always going to be lodged and there is a genuine belief behind the scenes, among people connected to the club and their fans, that they’re going to get out of this.
I don’t share that belief at all. I don’t think they can get out of this – but that’s not the line coming from the club.
So it’s not the appeal that’s causing them problems. And when the actual guilty verdict came out their mentality was not affected by it.
It was almost like a bounce-back from it. It was quite amazing watching a team going through all of this and still managing to perform brilliantly on the pitch.
Villa beat them because they’re quite smart. It was an Unai Emery masterclass and they played over the top of them to beat the press; that’s actually been a problem for City this season. I don’t think that’s down to the appeal. I think that’s just Unai being smart.
In the Brighton game they had 21 attempts and six shots on target and still lost 1-0. So it’s not like they were outplayed in that game. They just had a problem with finishing and being clinical.
These are football problems that Enzo Maresca has to figure out. Maybe they had a bit of a new manager bounce when he came in and that’s wearing off a little bit now. But Villa and Brighton are two very good teams as well.
Also, the legal uncertainty has been there for a while. Remember when they had a really low patch last season before they kicked on towards the end of the campaign and nearly took it away from Arsenal.
I feel like something was known back then and that’s when they all started to worry. So I don’t think you can connect their form to those uncertainties. They’ve just been beaten and need to come up with the next plan.
If you look at the Community Shield game and the high line they’ve been playing, those defensive frailties have been there since the beginning.
And it’s only when they come up against bigger teams with more of an attacking threat, or smart teams that know how to beat their press, that they come up against a problem.
Man City to win the Premier League is 7/1 with BetMGM
PARKER IS A NO-BRAINER FOR WEST HAM
I feel bad because I love Nuno and think he’s great but obviously the club has come to a decision and the results weren’t good enough.
The problem with West Ham is that, when things start to go sour there, the reaction from the fanbase is pretty large.
So I understand why they’ve done that and understand even more so why they’ve gone with Scott Parker due to his appreciation and understanding of the club from being there. He loves it as well.
I was reading his comments when he got the job about how close he feels to West Ham given the history.
He’s also been promoted out of the Championship three times so he’s a bit of a specialist.
I think the top half of the Championship and bottom half of the Premier League is his level. It’s never seemed to completely go his way in the top flight with the relegations, sackings and stuff like that.
But what West Ham need right now is for him to get them back on track with promotion in mind and reconnect the fanbase, which is what Scott will do, with Mark Noble working closely alongside him.
Having Noble in there with him is a no-brainer for me – it’s Mark Noble, he’s Mr West Ham. I totally understand why they’re doing it.
West Ham to win the Championship is 3/1 with BetMGM
MY GOLDEN GOALS MATCHDAY 10 SELECTIONS
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- Arsenal 4-0 Hull
- Fulham 1-1 Newcastle
- Nott'm Forest 1-2 Man City
- Crystal Palace 0-2 Liverpool
- Brighton 2-0 Brentford
- Man Utd 1-2 Aston Villa
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NETFLIX/LITTLER
You have to look at multiple sides of the argument when it comes to the ‘Beat Luke Littler’ Netflix furore.
I think what Netflix showed was maybe a lack of understanding of darts, perhaps. The premise of the show may have been wrong; I’m not sure you can imply you’ve invited 15/20 amateurs to face Luke Littler because you know what people expect from that.
They’d expect it to be a bit like the UK Open. I used to work at that competition and you’d have a builder, a full-time builder, who just played darts on the side.
Fallon Sherrock, I don’t think, is a full-time hairdresser with darts on the side. I consider her to be much more valuable in the world of darts than that.
That’s part of the reason I struggled with the concept so much. I was there in 2019 when Fallon broke through at Ally Pally and, after getting a lot of criticism for supposedly not having the right to be there and compete against the men, she went and beat Ted Evetts and Mensur Suljovic. I covered her games and just thought ‘wow!’
But now we’re calling her an amateur? She doesn’t have a PDC Tour card but I’d still regard her as a pro darts player – and respect her as one because she really is that good.
Does that mean she’s too good to play against Littler in this format? That totally depends on what you’re billing it as but what a lot of people perceived it to be was something different to what they gave to the public, hence why people are a bit angry and a bit confused.
Fallon hasn’t broken any rules, by the way, so I’m not blaming her at all. I feel sorry for her because all she’s done is what she was asked to do: gone there, competed and beaten him. We should respect that in itself. She’s taken home £501,000 tax-free. Good on her.
But she’s that good, she’s essentially a pro darts player as that’s where she earns her money, so that’s what makes it such a difficult one. She’s got the experience on a big stage, she knows how to win games at Ally Pally – there wasn’t the element on expecting an amateur to come up and be thinking ‘I have never done this before, it’s wild, how am I going to deal with the crowd and all that?’
I mean, Fallon’s going to play at the World Championship again at the end of the year so I can’t really get on board with the way it was billed versus the way it played out if I’m honest.
Ultimately it’s on Netflix; if you’re going to do it, then do it properly. But we’re all talking about it, aren’t we? So maybe that was part of the whole thing.
Fallon Sherrock to win the PDC World Championship is 1,000/1 with BetMGM
Odds correct at time of publication but subject to change. Please note: This week's Golden Goals deadline is Saturday 7th November 15:00. Opt-in is required and you can find out more here.
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