Chris Burr

@slappyhead19 @NorthBankNadim @spencermorgan93 Standards?? Our record in Europe is worse than Tottenhams. Arteta and this team are actually threatening to win the CL for the second year in a row. Wenger had over 20 years and achieved nothing in Europe. Those of us (like me) remember how GG won a European trophy.

@NorthBankNadim @spencermorgan93 If youre paying money and taking time out your day to go to games etc, then surely you're allowed an opinion (especially when he's right) Maybe he holds the team to higher standards than the kids on here who've started watching football 2 seasons ago but think they are experts

It’s very simple: if you went to The Emirates last night and have moaned about the quality of Arsenal’s football (like @spencermorgan93) - put your ticket on Exchange, don’t come to the Semi Final, and stay the fuck away. Plenty who’d gladly be there and back the team.

@BowesChay @georgegalloway The well worn phrase ‘rage against the dying of the light’ feels particularly apt for the US at the moment….

The US could impose secondary sanctions on any country buying oil from Iran. Treasury Secretary Bessent said two Chinese banks have already received formal letters. "If we can prove that there is Iranian money flowing through your accounts, then we are willing to impose secondary sanctions."

@adxmp_21 @NYboateng @786drf I’m just sorry you are finding a season where we are top of the league and into the semi finals of the CL again such a disappointment. But that’s the difference between real fans (me) and social media ‘fans’ (you). Goodbye.

@cburr72 @NYboateng @786drf We’re not a good attacking outfit and that is what wins you the big things. Strikers get paid the most money for a reason. Winning at the business end of the season is what matters not October

Wenger was here for 18 years and only gave us 2 semis, but let's chop off Arteta's head for the same in 6 years and just *3 years* of playing CL football with us. Amazing people.

@adxmp_21 @NYboateng @786drf I’ve been following Arsenal since 1977. I know a good football team when I see one. Wenger lost to teams we should have been beating on a regular basis in Europe. I don’t mean Barca/Bayern. We haven’t had an easy run either. We won the group beating Bayern, Atletico and Inter.

@cburr72 @NYboateng @786drf But you have to understand the context around that yes it was poor but look at the teams he was coming up against - European football was a much higher level and we’ve had an easy run to the semis this season

@adxmp_21 @NYboateng @786drf Wengers record in the UCL was poor considering the talent he had available. Even when he was winning titles he regularly underachieved in Europe. With Vieira etc he was beaten by pre Mourinho Chelsea, Valencia and didn’t even get out of the group on four occasions.

@NYboateng @786drf You man are embarrassing, look at the level Wenger was competing against and the resources he had compared to Arteta who’s a loser and plays awful football. Getting gassed about reaching semi finals when they just threw up the worst performance you could imagine in a final lol

@TerryTransplant I think those of us that have been round the block with our club for decades would agree with you. We have got it good at the moment and this has not always been the case. Most of the Arteta outers are social media engagers or kids who don’t remember Mariner at centre back etc 😂

If Arsenal don't win the title this year, I will blame nobody. The owners, Arteta, his staff, and the players, have been great so sometimes you just have to congratulate the opponent and admit they are better. Scapegoating with debatable substance is a worthless exercise.

@RobertBramley @GuillemBalague Maybe It’s not enough if you are Real, Barca or Bayern. But if your only period of real dominance was back in the 1930s and you have never even won the European cup then actually what Arteta is doing is very good. And who’s to say we won’t win the PL or CL this year?

@GuillemBalague Challenging isn’t enough over 4 seasons. Every team in history has its peak seasons for clubs/managers. You MUST be winning titles in that timeframe! Liverpool under klopp didn’t get enough arguably but far more than this arsenal

Two things bother me about the narrative building around Arsenal. First, we're told constantly that the Premier League is the most competitive league in the world. Fine. So what does it mean to be consistently fighting for the title in that environment? You can't celebrate the league's brutal competitiveness and then dismiss sustained title challenges as not good enough. Pick one. Second, and IMO this matters more, failure in elite sport is not losing. Luis Enrique said it. Many others have said versions of it. Failure is not trying again. It's accepting the ceiling. It's going through the motions. Arteta has never done that. Every setback has been fuel for the next attempt. The problem is social media runs on binary outcomes. Win or fail. Hero or fraud. No room for nuance. No room for the manager who rebuilt a club into genuine title contenders and is still hungry for more. Simeone has been at Atlético for over a decade. Two league titles, two Champions League finals. Still no European Cup. Nobody serious calls that failure. They call it one of the great managerial tenures in modern football. And I'm convinced that given 14 years like Simeone, Mikel will win more leagues than him. Arteta may or may not win the league this year. He may not lift the Champions League this year or next. But as long as he keeps pushing, keeps trying, keeps competing at this level, failure isn't what this is. Find another name for it By the way, if City wins the league, the achievement would of course be enormous.

@Halliwell1986 @DougieCritchley Playing poorly domestically. But struggled at Sporting? Against a team that had won 15 straight home games including beating PSG? Actually did pretty well there. UCL form has actually been significantly better than PL all season. Is that because there is less pressure?

Probably because Arsenal are playing shite. Lost a Cup final, getting dominated. Booted out of the FA by Championship Southampton. Struggled away to Sporting. Beaten at home by Bournemouth. Recent form is absolutely shocking and you have City away this weekend. The context is via the very recent form being absolutely abysmal.

Points won last 5 League games: Arsenal: 12 Man City: 11 Points won last 10 League games: Arsenal: 20 Man City: 21 Points won last 20 League games: Arsenal: 41 Man City: 42 Arsenal aren't playing particularly well right now, but the level of panic online is crazy to me!

@YankeeGunner And that has always been true. Fergie famously said that several times whilst in his pomp. If you don’t have most of your best players available for the title run in it becomes very hard to win. Happened to United vs us in 97/98 and vice versa in 02/03.

I just don’t think you win without your stars. If saka isn’t back. If Timber doesn’t get fit. If at least one of Eze or Odegaard isn’t regularly available down the stretch, I just don’t think there’s enough elite quality among the squad players to see this through.

I’ve said for a while that squad depth doesn’t win you things. You win with with top-end talent and a bit of injury luck. if you’re relying on your squad players in crunch-time, they’re unlikely to get you over the line. Well, we’re gonna find out whether that’s true or not

@HarrySymeou Watch us beat Sporting Lisbon Wednesday and not play like we have just run a marathon. I really wonder if the mental pressure of winning the PL is overwhelming us but given we are not expected to win UCL (Bayern/PSG are) the demons take a break those days…..

We stunk the place out today. So many questions regarding the manager’s role in this, too many individuals performing at quite frankly unacceptable levels & rather than talking about how we’re going to respond, we need to actually go out and do it. This season it’s shifted from hope to expectation as far as I’m concerned and we simply have to deliver. You can lose games from time to time but we were lacklustre and disappointing in so many aspects of our game. Issues that have existed too long are yet to be rectified & as for the ‘narrative’ around us, we’re fuelling it ourselves at the minute. Recording the pod in the morning, any thoughts, questions or topics you’d like to hear discussed? Let me know.

@PremSportsIRL @No1shaygiven I presume Cunningham is Kellehers agent?? Weird takes……

"I think he's one of the reasons they are 9 points clear at the top of the league" 🗣️ @No1shaygiven and Kenny Cunningham on the importance and ability of David Raya for Arsenal 🤔🔴

@GoonerRichB @JonSpurling1 Yeah I was very down after Derby. As a 14 year old in 86/87, us leading the league for a chunk of time (8 weeks?) constitutes a title challenge in my book 😂

@cburr72 @JonSpurling1 The Old Trafford defeat was in January so doesn't really constitute a title challenge. I think most of us were happy to be challenging in 89 and I don't think there'd have a melt down if we hadn't won it. I remember being pretty upset after the Derby and Wimbledon games though 🤬

#Arsenal Twitter from May 17th 1989. ‘If we can’t beat Neanderthal Wimbledon we don’t deserve it. George must go. One poxy League Cup in 3 seasons. The football is terrible and our form at Highbury is too. Why didn’t we sign Barnes or Gazza? This club lives in the past.’ #COYG

@RohanJivanAFC I remember them all the way back to Pat Jennings and I wouldn’t disagree. Raya is world class yet curiously underrated still by many

David Raya Best GK I’ve ever seen at The Arsenal

@GoonerRichB @JonSpurling1 Not really true. We challenged in 86/87 but fell away after the 2-0 defeat at Old Trafford. Later home defeats to Everton and Liverpool sunk us completely. At the start of the 88/89 season many felt we would challenge and they were right. It was a different game then though

@JonSpurling1 The thing was in 89 we had a young team with a manager in only his 3rd season. None of us expected a league title as we'd finished 6th the season before. We had bought in bargain basement In fact we hadn't challenged for a title since the early 70s. Expectations were different

@GeoffArsenal City were apparently back before dropping points to West Ham and Forest…..

Got some bad news boys & girls. City are back. Think we’re going to have to buckle up, keep as calm as possible, back our boys to get the PL trophy back and embrace the chase for what may occur in the other comps that we’re competing in. Good Luck All. Up The Gunners!

@Alan_Alger_ Worth reflecting that the media have stoked an agenda against White but at the same time don’t seem to be able to clarify what happened. Likely because it reflects badly on Holland and therefore Southgate who the media much prefer to Tuchel due to inside access granted to players

Henry Winter - actually beyond a joke or parody now!

@DougieCritchley Worth reflecting that the media have stoked an agenda against White but at the same time don’t seem to be able to clarify what happened. Likely because it reflects badly on Holland and therefore Southgate who the media much prefer to Tuchel due to inside access granted to players

I do think it's slightly weird behaviour from the England fans that booed Ben White at points last night... No one knows the ins and outs of what happened with Steve Holland... The biggest loser of his self-imposed exile was Ben White, with the Stones-Maguire axis unlikely to be shifted. He doesn't owe England anything, it was a personal decision. Not sure booing him is the right course of action for an introverted character re-entering the international stage.

@Graham_Brooks1 And the non selection/too late substitution of Calafiori exacerbated this issue.

Much debate on Arteta's Kepa/Raya keeper call. The big issue for me was Pep pushed 4 high when Kepa had the ball & pushed 2 on Rice & Zubimendi, which stopped Arsenal playing through City. This was where Raya's elite ball distribution & ability 2 go long over the press was missed

@YankeeGunner Start Raya and Calafiori yesterday and it’s a different game. We do miss both Ode and Eze. That’s a lot of technical quality gone against a team whose strength is technicality. Plus Guardiola outcoached Arteta imo

And we’ve seen it coming. Against Brighton. Against Chelsea. These aren’t elite teams. But we have the capacity to just lose control of games because we are short of players who are elite on the ball. Short term we just have to get over the line. Longer term we have to address it

The technical level today was shockingly poor. I think about the team we were when we played Bayern earlier this season. A Bayern team that’s much better than this city team, including in possession. And we handled that challenge brilliantly. We are a shadow of that team atm

@TomCantonMedia But Donnarumma isn’t key to City’s build up. Raya is. He is more important to us than Donnarumma is to City. To compound that by not starting Calafiori especially with no Odegaard was critical. Game was won on the touch line imo.

Would I have rather started Raya? Sure. But Guardiola also picked his number two keeper and won. Kepa, and his selection, is not the story. How City outplayed Arsenal and their lack of an answer is, in addition to how they now respond, of course.