Morning, a very quick Sunday blog for you, as I overslept. Not much. Waking up at 8am isn’t exactly inconsiderate behavior, but I feel like I’m a little behind schedule, and as we all know, it’s feelings that matter, not facts.
Looking around I see that England scored seven (7) ahead of Croatia last night. Bukayo Saka scored two of the goals and made it 4-0 with an assist from Jude Bellingham (see here) and it’s interesting to see him in that position. It was something we talked about last week on the Arsecast, two of his Arsenal goals this season were mainly from there, from close range and dead centre.
Some poor play at the back gave Saka his second (see here ), which made it 6-0, and hopefully those goals will do him good. He was guilty of a few bad misses in our first cluster of games, but overall I’ve been very encouraged by what we’ve seen from him this season. He looks sharper, fitter and constantly moves into dangerous positions. Only Erling Haaland has had more shots on target in the league, and while his finishing certainly lets him down a bit, I’d be more worried about him if he wasn’t involved as much. The goals will come for him, I’m sure.
Anyway, a great win for England and although we are always worried about injuries, let’s hope these games are good for some of our players. Elsewhere, David Raya started for Spain as they beat the Czech Republic (played by England on Tuesday) 3-1. Martin Zubimendi and Mikel Merino were second-half substitutes and the latter got on the scoresheet with an 89th-minute strike (see here). He has a knack for being in the right place at the right time and made no mistake in the finish.
There are possible moves for Jurrien Timber today as the Netherlands face Serbia, and with such a long absence, some competitive minutes could be good for him. Martin Odegaard is also likely to start against Portugal and face Bernardo Silva again after what happened in the previous game. I’m saying this to my face, but if we know anything about the former Man City player, whose former club was guilty of the biggest and most horrific financial fraud of all time, tarnishing everything he earned there and falling short of the biggest star in football history – he will probably avoid this direct confrontation. Silva would shoot a man in the back, then claim he was attacked first and acted in self-defense.
Fingers crossed that the abuse he inflicted on the captain won’t happen again, and if a very localized hole opens up during the match and swallows Silva and sends him to the hell where Maroon5 plays 24/7 forever, no one can argue that he didn’t deserve it. Personally, I’d love to see it in hell with two Maroon5s playing at the same time, but each playing a different horrible song, so the contrasting nature of the clashing sounds makes it crazy, but if that’s just the way it is, I think I can live with that.
Well, I’ll leave it at that for now, but we’ll have Arsecast Extra for you later today. We have already called for questions BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com so stop firing using the hashtag #arsecast added – or leave your question here if you’re an Arseblog member on Patreon #arsecast-more questions Channel on our Discord server.
The pod should be about 1 or more out. Until then, good luck.