Declan Rice has "agreed terms with Arsenal ahead of summer switch"

They'll learn to get along, right?

If you're the credulous sort, you may not know what the word credulous means, in which case, mail your wallet to me (best to overnight it) after making sure your credit card is there and you've recently visited an ATM. The normally creditable site FourFourTwo is out with a report that states that Rice has agreed a five-year deal at £200,000 per week, more than triple his current £60,000 per week salary. If true—and that's a bigger if than I know how to display with any keyboard shortcut I have available—it would make for massive news and a validation of our decision to sign Jorghino (who's been somewhat of a revelation thus far) at a mere £12m.

Partey? Who needs Partey when we have Jorginho?

Those of you still disappointed that we didn't sign Declan Rice or Moises Caicedo may have to check your credentials at the door, for you are about to get bounced. Jorginho is not just another literal pensioner in the mold of Čech or Luiz or Willian, looking for a decent paycheck without the pressure of performing to the highest levels. I'm not here to say that Jorginho is the answer to our dependence on Partey, but I will suggest that he's more than adequate to meeting our needs. He's earned two consecutive MOTMs in our post-match polls, for one. He may not be able to do all the things that Partey does, but he's shown in his three short stints since joining that he's more than up to the task of deputizing for the oft-injured Ghanaian.

Villa 2-4 Arsenal: Results of Ratings & MOTM Poll

Jorginho claims his second-straight MOTM, at least accorindg to the 492 Gooners who weighted in. I gotta say that you've been a bit harsh on Nketiah. No, he didn't score, but he again put in a decent shift, fought hard to win balls and drag the defense out of shape, came close to scoring from a tricky header, and should have had an assist for for the winning goal but for Ødegaard's fluffing. Speaking of the Norwegian, it's too bad that we don't offer a first half/second half option because he was absolutely unplayable in the second half. On the other hand, we're being a bit generous giving Zinchenko a 6.96. Aside from scoring, he put in only an average-ish shift and was culpable for Villa's first goal. Still, these polls are not offered in the spirit of scientific, objective reasoning. They capture a mood and are therefore a bit prone to excess for good and for bad. I feel like I'm supposed to use the word "vibing" but also suspect that I'm too long in the tooth to do so. Anyway, enjoy the nifty l'il graphic...

Let's all laugh at Emi (and other reactions to the Villa win).

I don't know if you could have scripted a better scenario than the one we witnessed on Saturday. Twice going down a goal, twice pegging our hosts back, and then...madness. Absolute madness, courtesy of none other than Emi Martinez. By the time Simon Hooper finally booked him in the 84th minute for time-wasting, he had seemingly wasted a similar amount of time, and so it was all too fitting for us to find not one but two goals in stoppage time—both of them also attributable to Martineze's own numbskullery. The lyrics to a certain 2 Live Crew song bubble up from the memory, but we'll leave that alone for the moment.

Aston Villa 2-4 Arsenal: Vote for Player Ratings & MOTM!

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I reached a point at which I wanted us to score a third not so much to beat Aston Villa or take all three points or get back to the top of the table but to humiliate Emi Martinez, and, boy, did Jorginho deliver with a cracking shot from distance in the stoppage-time Martinez created with all of his time-wasting. The fact that it hit the woodwork and then went in off of Martinez himself made it all the more delicious. What can I say? I'm a spiteful, petty man. For Martinelli to then net a fourth with Martinez having come forward to try to score from a late Villa corner added some sumptuous schadenfreude.

Click here to get to the poll. The infographic will be available tomorrow, but real-time results can be seen here.

Arsenal 1-1 Man City: Player Ratings & MOTM Poll Results

Well, more than 800 voters weighed in after our latest setback and, while we were harsh on several individual players (Tomiyasu, Gabriel, and Nketiah in particular), the broader trends suggest we saw some silver linings or even outright reasons for something resembling shreds of optimism. Arteta's tactics received a solid score, and Saliba, Saka, Trossard, and Jorginho seemed to acquit themselves well enough to escape our wrath our disappointment. Speaking of Jorginho, he nabs his first MOTM with 35.4% of the vote. Saka followed hot on his heels with 32.6%, relegating No One to a distant third at 19.5%. For as glorious as a win would have been, the loss is not as thoroughly damaging. Take two of City's best players out and we're talking about a different result altogether. Despite the loss, we're level with City and have a game in hand. Rumours of our demise are somewhat exaggerated.

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Gooners BLAST "unreliable" Partey in wake of Man City defeat...

Arsenal's wobble has reached calamitous levels, with the club now having failed to win in its last four outings, crashing out of the FA Cup and falling from the top of the table. Fingers are being pointed and questions being asked about the increasingly unreliable Thomas Partey, who was a late scratch from Wednesday's lineup after a hamstring injury. The Ghanaian has now featured in just 36% of matches since joining the club, and our record in those matches is a woeful 10W 1D 10L. While we can credit wins over Man U and Chelsea, the other wins came over such fodder as FC Zurich, Oxford, Watford, Everton, Southampton and West Ham. 

Arsenal 1-3 Man City: Vote for Player Ratings & MOTM!

Despite the late injury to Thomas Partey forcing him out of the lineup just hours before kickoff, we went toe-to-toe with City and more than held our own, shaking off the lethargy of the last few weeks. Yes, de Bruyne pounced on a risky pass from Tomi back to Ramsdale to score a clever goal, and Ake's accidental flick from Dias's header hit the crossbar, but Saka equalised from the spot, sending Ederson the wrong way and Ederson had clobbered Nketiah. From there, it was back and forth, with each side creating chances. In the end, though, it was really our own mistakes and not anything City did that led to this result.

Anyway, click here to vote. That nifty graphic will be available later; if you want real-time results, click here.

Trossard? Jorginho? Worst. 10th Anniversary. Ever.

31 January 2013. It was late in the evening, and a furious Gooner took to the web to launch a blog that would rattle a few feathers, shake a few cages, upend a few tables. I would be a latter-day Jonathan Swift, using an acerbically satirical voice to speak truth to power, to afllict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. The target of my inescapable ire? The deadline-day signing, the only signing of that window, of Nacho "La Cabra" Monreal. That signing was accelerated from the ensuing summer due to the injury of Kieran Gibbs. I look back on that first post with a mix of pride and humility. I was so young back then, so full of...well, knowing me, scotch. And pizza. In any case, here we are now on the tenth anniversary of this l'il blog, and so much has changed and so much has remained the same...

Arsenal make SHOCK £12m move for Brazilian DM!

It's Jorginho. I tried to put lipstick on this pig, but I just can't summon the energy. If the rumours are true—and they're flying too fast and too furious to be false at this point—our deadline-day singing is 31 year old Jorginho, not 21 year old Caicedo. To say this news is underwhelming would be the understatement of the year. It feels somewhat like we've been offered really really old sausage when we had been promised caviar. I'm torn between hating this move because of what it isn't and hating this move becauase of what it is. I'm trying to tell myself that it's a sensible, pragmatic move, but I'm having a hard time doing so.