I am most definitely taking my goodly morning mug to work. Just have to rinse out the last traces of whiskey

You would think / hope. It is entirely possible they were blinded by the hunt for glory. But we don’t know that, which is your excellent point (coming from the other direction).

But I appreciate the overarching sentiment of your posts, and think there is a real and dangerous/unhealthy temptation to rush to say (and believe, somewhat to the credit if my fellow gooners here) “the right thing” at play here.

I have no clue whether that is the case or not. One valuable impact of MeToo was pointing out to the world that claimants - when they are actually victims - too often and brutally bear the weight of how complicated these cases are from a legal perspective.

In other words, the evidence may actually point to Partey’s guilt, but given (what should be) a convenient reason to look the other way, the Club elected to keep on playing him.

I do think that one powerful counter-argument to the line of thought in the thread is that another simple and very plausible explanation is that the club succumbed to the pressure/desire/need to win and took the cover of a reasonable defense to act against better judgement.

I liked a number of your posts in this thread, and I am grateful for it as a dissenting but important perspective amid the amen chorus in these replies.

…fond of all your work and have follows for years - I regret my first direct interaction is to lob criticism 😅

The rest of the piece did and was great.

I appreciate there is some complexity in that this is not going up on a fan site per-se, but honestly that adds to the gravity. Presumably the Athletic knows that they have in their fan correspondent model they will get the fan perspective?

You are pushing him out the door - or adding to the gravity of that pull with takes like “there is a certain ring to Saliba and Madrid” coming from “Gunnerblog.” Even if true, much prefer the ignore and only talk about how cherished he is at Arsenal / team is built around him, etc.

Take a bow, Billy 👏

Does the model control for absurd runs of bad luck (for example, in Arsenal’s case, the compounding effects of multiple bad red cards, including extra miles and minutes in the team’s legs, and multiple key injuries)?

Bahahaha 👏

Could it be that, despite our curtains, we are actually better for the relentless focus on control / dominance? Would it be a net benefit if Arteta let the current squad play a little more with the handbrake off?

This is great

This is disheartening. I love your writing and mean it in no way as a slight, but I feel like those gifs might be your super power. They are the super dopamine hits that keep my internet-withered attention span chugging through long reads and mega threads!