It wasn’t pretty but Arsenal got the job done at Old Trafford beating Manchester United 1-0 to take the title race to the final weekend of the season.
Facing a depleted side, the Gunners were tipped pre-game to beat the Red Devils comfortably. As it turned out, Arteta’s players delivered a below-par performance that hinted at nerves in the ranks. Given what was on the line, you can sympathise but it was still torture to watch.
Here’s what the managers, players, pundits and stattos made of it all…
Mikel Arteta on Arsenal’s performance…
Today we weren’t composed, clean enough, consistent enough and doing the simple things right. That doesn’t give you control of the game. Some of the players have not been in this position, they don’t know what is at stake and how you feel emotionally to have to win and win and win from December or January. It is a phenomenal thing they are doing.
Source: BBC Sport
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Erik ten Hag on his side’s defensive struggles
You see the fans are behind us. They fought with us. Today we gave them back but that should be the standard in every game. It starts always with the right attitude, you have to build that during the week and on match day you have to be spot on. Today we did and you see even when we miss seven starting XI players we are competitive with one of the best teams in the league.
Source: Sky Sports
11 – Arsenal have kept 11 away clean sheets in the Premier League this season; only Chelsea in 2008-09 (12) have ever recorded more on the road in a campaign in the competition. Resolute. pic.twitter.com/B7SERPnGxe
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) May 12, 2024
Jonny Evans on United’s performance…
We were more solid. We tested the opposition goal a bit more but still disappointed to lose. We changed the shape a little bit, a bit more defensive-minded in midfield. Every team would suffer with the amount of injuries we’ve had, we’ve lost a lot of experience, so we’ve had to rely on the young players a lot this season and give credit to them.
Source: Premier League
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William Saliba on a strong defensive showing
We suffered a lot. We didn’t play well as always, but when we are not at our best, we have to stay strong. We don’t want to lose or draw, and today we did very well at the end and we took the three points. It was another strong performance defensively from the team. I think it’s not only the defence, it’s everyone, the midfield and the attackers. We defend all together and we have to be happy to keep a clean sheet because it’s not every time they don’t score here.
Source: Arsenal.com
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Kai Havertz on watching Sp*rs vs City on Tuesday…
I’m going to be the biggest fan of Tottenham ever.
Source: Sky Sports
Arsenal have won 27 league games so far this season – they've only accrued more victories in two previous seasons – 1970-71 (29) and 1930-31 (28) – although both were 42 game seasons.
— Orbinho (@Orbinho) May 12, 2024
Arteta on Arsenal achieving a club-record 27 wins in a Premier League campaign…
It’s 27 wins in the Premier League. It’s the most in the history of this football club in 130 years. That’s not progress, that’s history, and that’s very, very difficult to do, especially in the league that we are playing now. Big compliment to all the players and the staff for what they have done.
Source: Post-game press conference
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Arteta on evolving as a coach…
You have to evolve in relation to one thing, how can you help the players, inspire them and make sure that they play full of confidence and connected. And that’s what we try to do every day.
Source: Viaplay Fotball
Whatever happens in the last game of the season, The #Arsenal will end up this season with the highest ever win% in their League history.
— 𝖍𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖊 (@hente_afsc) May 12, 2024
Gary Neville on Arsenal’s win…
The position Arsenal are in, we all say ‘do your own job’ and that is what they have done today. Winning at Old Trafford has never been easy for Arsenal, but they have done the job here today. They take it to the final day, and live in hope that their north London neighbours can do them a favour.
Source: Sky Sports
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Ian Wright on Arsenal’s winning goal…
It’s brilliant. The finish is easy but he’s made it easy. The amount of thought that has gone in to that, Kai Havertz’s pass has go to have the right amount of pace to get through past the players, past the ‘keeper. The timing of Trossard’s run when you look at Wan-Bissaka, who’s a very good one-on-one defender, is just brilliant. It’s one of those goals that will be taken for granted as a tap-in but there’s a lot of work that’s gone in to make that look as easy as it was.
Source: Premier League
Each of #Arsenal's last seven league victories at Old Trafford have been by a 1-0 scoreline in a run stretching back to December 1985.
— Harvey Downes (@HarveyDownes92) May 12, 2024
Paul Merson on United’s struggles…
They’ve just had 145 touches in the final third and two shots on target, the two shots on target, Casemiro has had one from 45 yards which I would have saved. It’s not good enough. You can’t lose nine games at home. This is Man United. I don’t care how many of their players get fit next season, there is no way they are finishing above Arsenal next season. Not a chance. No chance.
Source: Sky Sports
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Clinton Morrison on Arsenal doing what was needed…
This was the banana skin game, but Arsenal come here and took care of business.
Source: BBC Sport
Arsenal in the Premier League this season:
⚔️ Unbeaten against the 'Big Six'
⚽️ Second-most goals scored
⛔️ Fewest goals conceded
📊 Fewest xG conceded
🧤 Most clean sheets
🥅 Fewest shots on target conceded pic.twitter.com/Yv7SerkdyL— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 12, 2024
Michael Owen on Arsenal’s nerves…
Definitely. Taking the ball to the corner flag, wasting a bit of time, their goalkeeper got booked for time-wasting. You’ve got to get over the line, it’s not easy. Old Trafford shouldn’t be an easy place to go to. Man Utd are always going to bombard you at the end. It’s one of those games where they say it’s a title-winning performance, you’re not at your best and you’ve got to grind it out. They did that.
Source: Premier League
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Arteta on Saka having to go off with an injury…
He should be fine
Source: Post-game press conference
🖥️𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧🖥️
Arsenal's win at Old Trafford sends their title chance up to 41.3% – the highest it has been all season.
Read all about the supercomputer's latest calculations here⬇️https://t.co/6x1sJpgjg4 pic.twitter.com/D9zwdGKraW
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) May 12, 2024
The supercomputer…….the computer that updates and changes its percentages every week based on the results……its not a super computer, its paddy power
I don’t think you know how predictions work. The program is predicting how a series of many highly unpredictable events will go and what the total outcome of that series will be. After each event in the series (each match that is), the program isn’t recalculating the odds it gave before but providing new odds based on the new reality of City having X points and Arsenal having Y points.
I’ve had a few beers today….I can’t work out if this is you being ironic 😂😂
The computer is only as smart as the person programming it and putting information into it and therefore will have its own biases. Trying to say that technology is impartial is ridiculous as it’s parameters will change with every interaction it has with a human.
Well said mate. The truth is these guys no nothing about how probability theory, AI, LLM etc works & how nicely it is interconnected. Too technical for these dinosaurs!
It’s a bit like some people that cannot understand the benefits of goalkeepers preventing chances through possession, sweeper actions and claiming crosses, am I right?
It’s all just marketing, and if you can’t see that, we’ll I have some ape jpegs to sell you.
as someone who has studied AI at MIT I have to say, you have not got a scooby about what an LLM is
It’s like that win probability nonsense they shoe in the game. Everton vs Liverpool, two minutes in win probability 15% 25% 60,% Boom! Everton score and they rush back with an update. Loose like men you idiots. We can all see pool are behind and don’t come to us with an update on the bloody obvious when the next goal goes in. Which you had also wrongly predicted.
EIGHTEEN clean sheets is mental — especially when you consider some of the silly goals we gave away at some points in the season (Nottingham X2, Brentford, etc). This gives me so much belief for next season. Just hoping we have the same luck we have had with injuries this season (Saliba, Gabi staying fit all season!)
This has already been one of the best seasons any Arsenal team has played in the history of our club, regardless of what happens next week. That it still might not be good enough to win us a title is absolutely insane.
I’m really sad about this. Going back to the early days of Arsene post Invincibles, it was the same. We were brilliant but couldn’t compete with the spending power our rivals had. Well we are at least competing now but it’s still not enough. It really hurts me. It really really hurts, especially that we are so close. It’s coming up on 20 years of this for me.
This one will hurt more than all of them, because while i enjoyed some of those other teams over the last 20 years none of them were as good as this one, not in terms of top talent in every position and certainly not in terms of mental fortitude and character. Even last season you could say it was one year too early and we were still missing that one or two pieces to really get over the line, but this year we have those pieces, this is clearly a championship calibre team, and in any year in which Pep… Read more »
Cheer on Liverpool tomorrow because of Aston Villa do not win, Spurs could qualify for Champions League if they beat Man City. Spurs would then be super motivated
Or super likely to shit the bed out of nerves.
Not that that is much different from their usual, mind you.
Is it legal to loan Declan Rice back to West Ham for 1 game?
Are you willing to lend him to Spurs?
That’s like getting the most delicious creme brulee, scooping shit on top and then expecting it to taste nice still… I mean the creme brulee is technically still there, but it’s completely trainted.
Spurs will need all of our first 11!
I thought the same thing 😜
If by some miracle Spurs can get a result against the 115ers, I promise to never call them Spuds, Sp*rs, Chicken on a Basketball team or sing that they get battered everywhere they go… until Sunday that is.
If Tottenham somehow draw and the final game comes down to goal difference you better ready the hospitals because I think both Blogs and James and half of all Arsenal fans might have cardiac arrest on that final day
Thought about that, how mental would that be… I can’t believe they’ve closed that GD to 3 by the way. Wasn’t it 16 or something? And we’ve been undefeated except for Villa… nuts.
And they’ve scored more than us which means we are just essentially + 2 on GD
This looks like 1989! I was a toddler then.
Gutsy strategy from Arsenal to flatter United in the hopes of keeping Ten Hag in the job. Three points all that matters at this stage. COYS!
Today was quite a big thing for me. Result aside, it’s one of five times we’ve played poorly in the whole season in the PL in my opinion. It’s the first time we’ve played poorly and achieved maximum points (with minimal stress). Like everyone, we have off days. You have to turn those into points and today we learnt how to do that. Kudos.
As nervy as it was at the end, they really didn’t create that much. Saliba, Gabriel, and tomi were immense. White struggled a bit with garnacho, but he did enough.
Great win, great win! Still, I refuse to hope. The cud Spunts are going to get battered, there fucking rubbish.
Don’t know if it’s a learn thing or more of a make the best of a bad situation thing. Yes we can defend really well and that’s great but I don’t want to see this again.
You gotta guts out these games. Really impressive stuff. And Fuck £ity…
No minimal stress for me though. I threw a pillow when I saw Jesus trying to do unecessary tricks and losing the ball on the right wing. Absolutely infuriating.
Be the best ever PL version of Arsenal but strive to be even better than that, because we can be. This season had nothing to do with luck and there is still so much room to improve. These are the foggin standards.
Well said. Last season we were lucky in some games, this season all points are deservedly gained, and we lost a couple of games with shit VAR.
It’s extremely frustrating to look at those amazing Arsenal performance stats and accept that we probably won’t win the title. City have taken everything to another level. You now probably have to win at least 90 points to snatch the Premier League trophy. That’s crazy. Even though we took 4 points off City they are going to overtake us. We lost the title at the back-end of last year. Those two defeats to Fulham and West Ham over the Christmas period were critical. And remember that very dodgy goal which led to the defeat at Newcastle? That point would be… Read more »
The best way to support Spurs is to say they’re shite and have no hope of containing City. Only then will they deliver another Spursy moment and not meet expectations.
This! Also, go Liverpool! Give Spurs hope and more incentives to perform.
Extraordinary comment, Fats and you are spot on. I believe we will win the league this season, ushering in the new Arteta dominance, with the bald fraud leaving in 3 seasons.
Fats is now officially Arteta in!! Pigs can fly and maybe this is the moment where the positivity from Fats was all we needed to push us over the top. COYFG!!!
He’s been unusually positive for weeks now despite us looking unlikely to win anything. This is a new era in Goonership, if Fats can change his mind about Arteta and Havertz then surely anything is possible, the sky’s the limit, might as well get ready for an Arsenal quintuple in 2025…! we’ll see your undefeated treble Bayer Neverlosen and raise you two more!
All I’ve ever wanted to see was a high-quality Arsenal team consistently playing great football. We are finally here.
As I’ve said, the trophies will come if we keep the standards high.
Fair play mate. It took some trusting of the process to get here. Some of us were more trusting than others at times 😉
Not bigging myself up mind you, I completely checked out for the entire Emery era. But when I saw what Arteta was building I started believing again. And yes I agree if we keep like this trophies will come, especially if we strengthen this team even further in the summer which I imagine we will do.
Whatever happens on Sunday we have to keep improving the squad. That means at least 6 fringe players gone and replaced with quality.
We’ve been lucky this season with injuries and certain players have been overplayed. Greater squad depth will allow more rotation and insurance against injuries.
Me too, Kai
Gotta love Paul Merson
He’s like a bag of Revels.
The robot overlord says we have almost a 41.4% chance to win the league! WOW!
Someone hacked the robot into believing spuds are actually good. When the Ai becomes sentient and realizes is mistake, that will likely be the moment that triggers Skynet.
The singularity effect when AI and Spurs both realize Spurs are shite at the same time.
I just want to thank the whole team and of course Arte for giving us all the chance to dream.
Well put
It wasn’t pretty, we ground out the win but I never expected us to batter them nor could I see United actually scoring. 1 nil or 6 nil it’s another big six *monkey* off our back!
Whatever happens we did not crumble this season and can be proud!