Remember when we beat Manchester United?

Feels like just yesterday

Hello,

And what a joyous Monday it is.

The week started off with some news that Rob Holding completed the move to Crystal Palace. I accidentally wrote down in my notes for the podcast this week that he retired, which is not true. I think this is an ideal move for him, gets to stay in London and most likely get regular playing time. I will always think of him as the man that got into Diego Costa’s head.

Extremely accurate drawing of the event

Aaron Ramsdale, Martin Odegaard, William Saliba, and Bukayo Saka were all rewarded this week for their performances last season by being named in the PFA Team of the Year. Ramsdale posted photos afterward of selfies with his reward with each of the Arsenal players in the reflection of his reward, so only seemed fitting to draw this for the Arseblog Poorly Drawn Month round-up over on the Arseblog Patreon.

As for the match, I always get really nervous for this match. It must be from past trauma when facing them because I genuinely think we are a much better team. But, when Rashford scored against the run of play, a lot of past memories flooded my mind in that moment. Thankfully those memories had a very short-term stay in my head when Odegaard scored a minute later.

I'd really like to go a few matches with the refereeing not being the main talking point at the end of each match, but I think it’s impossible to not talk about it here. I didn’t watch a good angle of the Arsenal penalty that got overturned. I was writing down notes and missed the good angle so I can’t in good faith say if it was or was not a penalty. That being said, to my naked eye (well actually I wear glasses now so to my protected eye) I will say that Garnacho looked offside.

Did that ease my anxiety in that moment? Absolutely not.

But what an amazingly high IQ by Gabriel to hold his run to force Garnacho into the offside position at the last second

Gabriel holds his run

Thankfully, everything went the right way after that. Maybe it was the wake-up call that Arsenal needed. Declan Rice hit the ball into Johnny Evans which caused the ball to sneak into the net.

And then Gabriel Jesus sent a man into a deep depression by making a quick cut before slotting the ball into the net to give Arsenal the win.

Jesus scores as the Manchester United player contemplates his life decisions that led to this moment

I can’t say it wasn’t stressful. I can’t say that I didn’t hate sports at certain points. But, I will say that I would do it all over again.

Poorly

Podcast:

This week on the Poorly Drawn Arsenal Animated Podcast we discuss Rob Holding’s “retirement", Marcus Rashford’s goal for Arsenal, plus we asked AI to come up with an Arsenal quiz and it was impossible. All that and more. Watch it below and listen to it on the podcast app of your choice here.

I Illustrated a Book:

This a reminder that I’ve illustrated a book! It is about the invincibles and was written by Dave Seager who was written five Arsenal books. There are 39 drawings in the book; if you pre-order now, you get a free calendar, which is a fun little treat.

Olive and Velma update:

Oliev and her support Moose can’t watch the United game

Velma and Olive look out the front door together