Directing racist abuse at Toney? You're no Gooner. Jog on.

From a previous incident...

I'd like to say a few words about any so-called Arsenal fans who have directed racial abuse at Ivan Toney after his controversial late equaliser on Sunday: GTFO. Hand in your Arsenal shirts, posters, scarves and anything else. Sod off to Milwall or Chelsea. You're not wanted here. We'll set aside fancy words like hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance, for these are almost certainly too lengthy and polysyllabic for you to understand, and the last thing I want to do is to enrage someone whose idea of a legitimate reaction to conceding a goal is to hurl racist abuse at the scorer. If you doubt me, take out your sarcasm detector and check.

Arsenal 1-1 Brentford: Player Ratings & MOTM Poll Results

It really is a pity that I can't offer you negative numbers to choose in situations like this one when VAR got a decision so horribly wrong that you start to wonder about Lee Mason's IQ. Still, when you only score one goal while playing at less than your best, you really are rolling the dice. The result pegs us back to a mere three-point lead over Man City with a massive six-pointer to play on Wednesday. Do our recent struggles reflect a deeper problem, or have we been so eager to go toe-to-toe with them that we've looked past Everton and Brentford? Let's hope it's the latter. Well, 514 Gooners weighed in and denied No One a second consecutive MOTM award. 38.1% of us gave it to Trossard, suggesting that it might be nice to see a bit more than a half-hour from him sooner rather than later, especially how out of form Martinelli has been lately. Thomas Frank did say that the stability of our lineup does it make a bit easier to prepare for us... Well, enough pondering. Let's look at the results below the fold.

Lee Mason is an incompetent, bumbling dolt. That is all.

Well, there's more. It wouldn't be much of a blogpost with only a title and no actual post. I could go the way of certain poblications that will go unnamed for now, giving you roughly 100 words of text interspersed with about the same number of images and/or ads, but I know that you're here for more than that. You're here here, fine reader, for the same petulant, self-absorbed whining I dispatch almost daily. Let's get to it, it then. As I've already stated, Lee Mason is an incompetent, bumbling dolt. He's so incompetent that he makes me pine for Jon Moss. What'd he do this time? It's what he didn't do, and it was the only thing he really had to do: draw a few lines. A child could do it, really.  However, according to PGMOL representeative Chris Foy, the VAR referee simply forgot to check the offsidein the buildup to the Brentford goal. That VAR referee would be—you guessed it—Lee Mason. Lee effin' Mason. 

Gooners want Arteta OUT NOW after SHOCK loss to PSV!

Just so we're clear—I only capitalised "PSV" because it's already done that way. Don't shout it out like the other capitalised words. Go back and re-read the title again. I'll wait.

Welcome back.

Be careful what you ask for, or something like that. My match preview asked for rotation, even at a risk of losing the match, believing that Saka, Martinelli, Jesus, Partey, and Ødegaard were looking leggy. For a good hour, I got the best of both worlds: just two of these players started, and our new defensive strategy—let VAR bail us out—was working. However, it all went somewhat sideways soon after that, and we now occupy a precarious perch just two points from our hostile hosts. We now face much what amounts to a must-win against FC Zürich.

Bringing Broja down in the box? Penalty. Jesus? Nope.

To borrow from the inimitable Rodney Dangerfield, I went to a wrestling match but a football match broke out. More to the point, I witnessed our own Gabriel Jesus, uh, "volunteer" to participate in some Greco-Roman wrestling with various Southampton players (who give the lie to the moniker "Saint"), including not but two throat-grabs and two takedowns in the box. To be clear, it was Jesus on the receiving end of these completely legitimate, totally above the board, and not at all against the rules of the game, as evinced ex post facto by the fact that referee Robert Jones saw nothing in any of it to be worth a penalty or even a yellow card. We know that this would stand up in a court of law due to the inherent consistency, infallibility, and competence of Prem referees, the FA, and the PGMOL, among other esteemed and cherished institutions. We have some day find reason enough to revise this system of beliefs, but it is not this day.

Ding, dong, Mike Dean is—oh. Just retiring. Not...you know.

The Wicked Witch of Mirral is...retiring. It's true. Mike Dean, long the bane of Arsenal fans as well as those who believe in fundamental human decency and calling one's grandmum every Sunday, is calling it quits after 22 years of impunity, incompetence, and, let's face it, good old-fashioned bias. I wish I could say that the news is all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, but the dark lord may very well end up with his Machiavellian machinations from behind the curtain as a "permanent" VAR official—with that adjective sure to chill the blood of any who (like yours truly) are convinced that he is an honorary member of the Nazgûl and will haunt the Arsenal for eternity. 

[Title based on obligatory pun on Partey scoring a goal] oh, and a Player Ratings Poll!

This feels...weird. Not that we defeated Leicester. That's basically de rigueur these days. No, what I'm referring to is how we won. Thomas Partey scored AND we were awarded a penalty for a handball in the box. It's almost as if...I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's almost as if things are kind of, sort of, almost thinking about considering the possibility of going in a direction that to some degree might resemble a facsimile of being ours? Whatever it is is strange enough that I don't know how to describe it or even put my finger on it. I mentioned to the wife that it felt like it was on the tip of my tongue, but she said it looks more like a canker sore. So it goes. 

Arsenal 2-1 Brentford: Player Rating & MOTM Survey Results

Almost 600 (okay, 561) voters weighed in on our victory over Brentford, anointing Martin Ødegaard our MOTM with 54.5% of the vote. Somehow, Jon Moss managed a 2.85 despite ignoring three or four possible penalties (depending on how much stock you put in conspiracies). VAR fared somewhat worse with a 2.05. It was all in all a pretty comfortable performance despite a few chances that the Bees wasted. It's a shame that we conceded late on; we could have leap-frogged West Ham, if only alphabetically. We do have three games in hand over them and Man U, but they are tough ones. We'll have to keep getting results at every chance we get if we're to rise to fourth. One result at a time, though. Enough throat-clearing, however. Here's the breakdown of the survey: