Dinamo Zagreb 2-1 Arsenal Aftermath

Hello Internet, It’s Your DailyPickMeUp and it’s time for my aftermath regarding the humiliating loss for Arsenal against Croatian side Dinamo Zagreb! 2-1 was bad enough but the bloody dance that ensued left all Arsenal fans scratching their heads and ripping Giroud shirts to shreds! chanting Wenger Out and going onto the internet to have rants…Yes I know that’s what this is!

No, I haven’t calmed down yet! What do you expect after a performance like that?! first game of the UCL and you’d think we would take it very seriously and no disrespect to Ospina here but why did Cech need resting? He’s a goalkeeper and no offense but he hasn’t had a lot to do the last Three games…what is it to much to ask him to stand in the net for two games….rest him for the Capital One game, not the UCL one! that made no sense to me at all…if I was there at the stadium and heard that announcement, I’d have realized that I just wasted my one trip abroad for the year away!

I feel horrible for all those fans that traveled out to Croatia, it’s a long way to go and for a performance like that, I’d feel robbed…robbed of money, time and sleep! The main thing that annoys me is I don’t understand the reason for this weakened squad! Why play Arteta if you have Sanchez and Chamberlain on? Coquelin would have been the better choice, bring Arteta on after you’ve scored 1 or 2 goals and then Coquelin can rest before Saturday but not the other way round, it makes no sense! Isn’t Wenger taking the UCL seriously or something? In his mind, he probably is but not for me, I didn’t see anything seriously about the first half, especially from Giroud! At least Walcott showed fight! Ozil did in the end and as for Sanchez, that was his worst performance in an Arsenal shirt last night! I said before that I felt bad for all those travelling fans, well I’ll show you an example of one

Does Wenger owe the Arsenal fans an apology? Think of all the money Arsenal fans spent to go out there for a team you would expect in the Capital One Cup! Maybe not an apology but the team had better show a lot more fight at Stamford Bridge on Saturday! Or it’ll be a humiliating week for Arsenal, a very humiliating one and I know many fans will want Wenger out because they don’t see what having him stay will achieve if this is all we have to look forward to for the foreseeable future! But who else is available to manage Arsenal that can take us further then we’ve been for many years now, minus the 2 FA Cup wins!

• Klopp?
• Ancelotti?
• Guardiola?
• Henry?

Now here’s my issue….who is really behind Arsenal’s lack of spending…is it Wenger who’s tight with the cheque book or…is it higher above that causes all of our dilemmas every Transfer Window? Gazdis or Kroenke not wanting Arsenal to pay the same amount of the teams above us? Do we really have that much money? I don’t know but clearly, Arsenal are keeping something from us and I don’t know how much longer they can before Arsenal Fans just give up because the way things are going under Wenger who has a quality squad…4th place and perhaps a FA Cup every now and then! Personally, I’ll support Arsenal no matter what, every team has good and bad times, we can bounce back, I believe that! A win against Chelsea would be nice and if not…I’ll take beating Spurs at White Hart Lane but if we lose all these games in the next week…I just don’t know…how hard would it be to remain positive if you lose to TWO of your main rivals in the space of a week and have lost against the lowest rank side in your UCL group! utterly humiliating…I don’t want that scenario to happen and I believe that we can beat Chelsea or at least get a well earned draw!

COME ON ARSENAL!

Dinamo Zagreb 2 Arsenal 1 Final Score Review

Oh…what fresh hell have us Gunners just witnessed tonight?! I am struggling to come to terms with this shocker…mainly because…I’m still unsure if the Arsenal team even turned up tonight in Croatia or just sent some lookalikes to play tonight’s game so the REAL team is prepared for Chelsea on Saturday…I WISH! the sad truth is that tonight, that was the real Arsenal who just handed Dinamo Zagreb their first ever win in the UEFA Champions League! You heard right, the first team they have ever beaten at this stage which is humiliating, not that I’m taking anything away from the Croatian side here! I just don’t think Arsenal bothered to show up against to be honest, the lowest ranking side in this group! Albeit, we did fight…I’m not saying that we didn’t but when you know what Arsenal can do and some of the stuff they did, they might as well not have turned up you sometimes feel! I try not to but darn it Arsenal, you don’t make it easy!

To lose like that, wow! just…wow! yes we scored tonight but the fact that it came quite late and after many Arsenal fans had already slagged the team off online! It was like watching a guy play on his FIFA game, choosing a lower league side…putting the settings to beginner and playing against Arsenal but the Gunners still possessed the ball more…just that the shooting was terrible, so much that if you scored 1 goal and left the game running, you’d win 1-0! I know what many Gunner fans will start saying, That we should have bought a class striker in the Transfer Window, Nope! I doubt tonight’s result with have been any different at all! If you can’t win against Zagreb with Sanchez and Ozil in your team then will having Benzema have made that much of a difference? OZIL and SANCHEZ should have been enough themselves! I would say Giroud but he got sent off! Oh well, at least we know who starts up as striker on Saturday! Although Walcott scored and showed fight, it makes me wonder why he isn’t our main striker sometimes and Chamberlain on the right?! what a duo that would be and with Bellerin, the speedy trio! I’m sure Chelsea are shaking right now…despite their bad form in the Premier League, they tore apart their opponents tonight!….will Arsenal get anything this weekend?

I’m not sure, of course I’d LOVE a win against them but remember when Manchester United were managed by David Moyes and they had a bad spell, we all thought that it was the perfect time to beat them but what happened? THEY BEAT US! even if a team goes through a rough patch, they still somehow beat us! Look, I don’t mind losing, it’s a game you have to lose sometimes but what gets me tonight is the manner in which it happened! We lost to the lowest rank side in the group badly! Our main striker sent off, an own goal! Nothing positive whatsoever!! That’s what annoys me…the worst start we could have had and with the daunting task of Bayern Munich and Olympiakos ahead…it’s going to be testing times for us as Gunners indeed!

I’m so glad I didn’t fork out extra and get BT Sport this year…would have been a massive waste of money to see us be humbled so badly and another frustrating  performance by a team that sometimes never even ”turns up” like the first leg against Monaco, Arsenal was missing that night and they seemed to have vanished tonight because it’s either a good win for Arsenal or a humiliating defeat…never a hard-fought loss or anything!

Bad game, disappointing but think positive…hopefully that was the worst we see of Arsenal in this competition…they had better SHOW up this weekend though! Deby game against Chelsea, I want a performance out of the team, not what we saw tonight!

Man of Match: Walcott (FOR SHOWING UP!)

UCL Points: 0

Next Match: Chelsea (This Saturday)

COME ON ARSENAL!

Dinamo Zagreb 1 Arsenal 0 Half Time Talk

Ok…wow…no idea what has happened in Croatia so far but we are losing 1-0 due to an own goal but not only that but…GIROUD IS SENT OFF? Not the start I was hoping for to be honest…really far from it to be really honest…I put 1-3 as my final score with Arsenal winning but with 1 man down and only 45 minutes to go, it’ll be tough but I believe that we can still win this game, keep the faith Gunners, IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL THE FINAL WHISTLE BLOWS!!! Do not lose heart and start the #WengerOut chants!!

WAKE UP LADS, This is the Champions League, not the Capital One Cup! Turn domination into a win and shoot the ball! enough of the passing it in!!

Second half to come, we can score 2 goals and still win this…I know we can!!

COME ON ARSENAL!!!!

Dinamo Zagreb vs Arsenal Prediction

Hello Internet, It’s Your DailyPickMeUp and it’s Champions League time and this time, we look at Arsenal’s first venture into the group stages as they go to Croatia tonight to take on Dinamo Zagreb and after a somewhat rocky start for the Gunners in the Premier League, I’m positive that all Gunners will want 3 points by the end of the game. The Champions League has been an ambition, if not an obsession for Arsenal ever since 2006 when they finished as Runners Up in Paris, only narrowly losing to Barcelona and apart from making it to the Last 16 most of the time after that, Arsenal have never come that close to the Final, apart from one Semi Final Appearance. Albeit, we have been in this competition for 18 consecutive

Arsenal tonight are likely to be without Per Mertesacker, Danny Welbeck or Jack Wilshire although they’ll be without the two latters until Christmas at least but we still have a very strong force that should be enough to secure the victory, as long as we do not underestimate this Croatian team tonight, we should win this quite comfortable, despite playing away from home…I don’t see Arsenal struggling tonight, even though we have Chelsea in a few days time, although I would expect early substitutions in the second half by Wenger to get the likes of Sanchez and Ramsey rested. Should be a good game hopefully, we won’t end up like the two Manchester clubs last night.

My predicted score- Zagreb 1 Arsenal 3

My team for the game (Not in their accurate positions)

GoalKeeper- Cech

Defenders- Monreal, Bellerin, Koscielny, Gabriel

Midfielders- Ozil, Sanchez, Ramsey, Chamberlain, Coquelin

Striker- Giroud

Come on Arsenal!

Road To Europe 3

Now this is only a 1st Draft of what is likely to be the list of countries I am going to in August but I thought I’d explain which ones were chosen and all that and talk a bit about them, so here we go you globe trotters!

• France– Now this is one that I can’t wait to go to, I have always meant to see France and I really hope that when the Final Draft is done, France is still on the list, I’d love to see Paris with the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, River Seine, Lovre and the Arc De Triomphe not to mention fine French Cuisine. I have been to Euro Disney and briefly saw a bit of Paris but not enough to say I’ve really been there so it’ll be great to say that I’ve finally visited France.
• Italy– I went to Italy last year and it was a good place to visit, minus Rome but I’ll get into that in another blog…probably be the next thing I write so keep an eye out for that and I’ll explain why Rome was the worst place I’ve ever been to and I hope that when I go this year, Rome will redeem itself! The place isn’t a bad place, don’t get me wrong but a lot of bad stuff happened on that day but we’ll get into that later, I’m still excited to be going back regardless and give it a second chance.
• Germany- Another place I’ve always wanted to visit and cross off my destinations list! Berlin, Stuttgart and the Black Forest are places I’d love to see and explore for sure, it’s a country I assumed I would not get around to seeing because…I think for me anyway It’s not a place I’d go to for a week’s holiday or anything but that’s only because I’m not a massive expert on German Tourism, I’m more of the hot destination or really exotic on the other side of the planet kind of guy, mainly why I’ve been to America and am going to Japan next year but if Germany is a part of the Inter Railing then yes, I will love to see this place and maybe have a reason to go back on a holiday one day, who knows but I won’t pretend or lie that I know that much about all of Germany that I would be interested in doing so at this moment in time but that can all change!
• Croatia- Now I don’t know much about Croatia and this is the one country I will have to do a lot of research on before I go there, I know where it is and all but have no idea about the culture, language and so on so this country I’m most excited about because I’m going to learn so much about a new place and that excites me greatly. This country appears to be the furthest one in the journey so it’ll take the longest in getting too and that means it will likely be the turning point as well where we turn around, I don’t know what the schedule is of what order we visit these countries so we’ll have to wait and see on that one but I can’t wait to get here and see it all or some of it, must remember that It’s a 10 day journey, maybe 12 so will only get to see so much but if I like any of the destinations to come back again then I’ll deem this a successful holiday because that’s what I like, you like the place so much you want to come back for more!
• Belgium- Now I have been to Belgium before, well to Bruges before which is like the most special place for me in the world right now, pretty much where my life was determined, you can read all about here in an old post of mine- http://mwhitehouse22.com/2015/02/27/true-love-in-bruges/ I’d love to go to Brussels this time about and see the capital, why not? I love Belgian Chocolate and I love History so I’d love to learn a little more history about Belgium.

• Austria- Austria, for years I have always said, I’d love to see Austria but never thought I would ever get around to going so I would really love it if we went here and see Vienna! Birth place of Mozart, Apple Strudel which I love, one of my favorite deserts! and it’s a place that likes it sports so that will be cool to see as well. I’ll be happy to know so much more about this country along my travels but as of right now, it’s more important for me to learn to how to sleep on a train all night!
• Poland- Along with Croatia, this is a place I don’t know so much about so I’ll have to do some research on it, learn about the culture and what not before I get there so I can appreciate everything that I see when I’m there and everywhere else, I don’t want to miss a thing when I arrive in Europe, I want to make the most out of it but Poland, I can’t wait to get there and see it and learn about it.

For now, that’s it, I can start researching and getting ready for it all, I am going to aim to purchase one thing from each country to bring back with me and keep forever! hopefully it won’t just be key chains of each country or something but we’ll see, I’ll have aims to achieve and all that like eat  a well known food in each country and all that, I can’t wait.

If you’ve been to any of these countries, maybe you’d like to talk a bit about your experiences and what I should look out for and not miss or what sort of gift I should get myself, feel free to comment bellow, I do read them. 

Until next time.