Oleksandr Zinchenko – Everything Arteta wanted Xhaka to be for Arsenal.  by Victor

With Mikel Arteta clearly sold on the idea of being tactically unpredictable for opposition teams, he needed the crop of players he inherited from Unai Emery to be tactically flexible in unlocking opposition defenses, while maintaining a balanced tactical shape between defense and attack.

One of those he very much entrusted with such tactical flexibility is Granit Xhaka; a player who many Arsenal fans believed was never really good enough and should be escorted out the exit door at the Emirates Stadium. The gaffer, however, upon his return to the Arsenal saw what many couldn’t see in the Swiss, especially from a tactical point of view. Having modeled his coaching style after that of his mentor – Pep Guardiola, the Spaniard knew exactly the kind of football he wanted his team to play and Xhaka was of course integral to the system to be implemented.

Firstly, Arteta wanted to build a team capable of playing from the back while utilizing players that are naturally comfortable in possession under pressure, and also occupying positions where they can carry-out the aforementioned style with their preferred foot. Playing a left-footed Centre Back in Gabriel was one, with a left-footed Left Back obviously the second, while a left-footed Centre Midfielder was the third piece of the puzzle. The latter is where Xhaka comes in. Instead of a right-footed Centre Back or Left Centre Midfielder playing straight and short passes to a team-mate hugging the lines; but always coming deep to receive a pass, a left-footer occupying the same position on the pitch can easily curl a pass unto a team-mate in an advanced position on the lines to beat the opposition’s press.

Secondly, talking about tactical flexibility, we have seen from the manager’s first full season at the helm, the various tactical shifts he loves to employ during the course of a match: from full backs playing inverted roles which allows box-to-box midfielders take up more advanced roles, to the left-sided midfielder (usually Xhaka) taking up a role I personally call ‘the half-centre midfield role’ where he covers for the overlapping left-back.

Arsenal have been extremely busy so far in this transfer window with five new arrivals already here, and now Edu has given an interview, ostensibly talking about the arrival of Oleks Zinchenko, but he has already given a deep insight into the planning that has gone into making this window a success. “…Our main focus in the beginning of the transfer window is try to get the players that we target as soon as we can to enjoy and to be here and to be together and to start the season the way we planned it as well.”

The Arsenal general director also told us that there is still a long way to go, to find solutions for the players that are not likely to get any game time if they remain at the club, and also to keep their eyes on targets that are on our list to fill the positions that are still in need of reinforcement. “We have a plan for every single player in the squad, and that’s why I said there’s still a lot to do in this transfer window because we have to balance the squad in the best way possible. For the players who probably aren’t going to have a lot of minutes here, we have to expose the players to have minutes in another place to keep developing the player, keep the player’s valuation et cetera, so that’s the way we plan it.”

Edu was then asked about his impression on the way we have done our biusines so far in this window, and he replied: “I’m pleased, but to say how close is difficult because there’s still a lot to do, we are in the middle of the transfer window and things can happen. What we have to be is really focused and be prepared for every single situation, opportunities maybe can happen, clubs can sometimes come to us to see if there is a possibility to get players on loan or buy players. We just have to be prepared and I think we are very much prepared for almost everything.”

Considering the deals that have already gone through, and the promise of more to come, surely Arsenal fans should be excited that we are going to end up with a much improved and well-balanced squad for our assault on trophies this season.

I, for one, am VERY excited about our new season…..

Mikel Arteta has made it clear that, having secured a good amount of our incoming transfer targets, it is now time to start thinning out the squad, which has grown drastically over the summer with our new signings and our returning loanees.

We already know that Arteta has given a contract extension to Mo Elneny, who everyone expected to leave, and Rob Holding doesn’t sound like he expected to be leaving any time soon, and now we have the Portugese defender Cedric Soares making it clear that he has no desire to leave his “dream club”.

“Arsenal was always my dream club since I started to play in Southampton,” Cedric told ESPN. “I always had the goal to move to Arsenal, and this didn’t change.

“Of course you are more happy when you are involved.

“Being involved here in a massive club like this, with the project we have and the goals the team is fighting for, I want to be here.

Fabrizio Romano has told Arsenal to sign Lazio’s Sergej Milinkovic-Savic this summer.

The Gunners have already made moves in the transfer market, bringing in Matt Turner, Marquinhos, Fabio Vieira and Gabriel Jesus, as well as now landing Oleksandr Zinchenko.

It remains to be seen if we’ll still be in the market for a central midfielder after the Ukrainian’s arrival, but Fabrizio has told us to sign the ‘underrated’ Milinkovic-Savic.

“At the moment, Lazio have received nothing for Milinkovic-Savic. So I know Lazio so well because here in Italy we know how they work on the market and the president Claudio Lotito is really strong in negotiations when it’s about his top players.

“And he said a few weeks ago that he would only sell Milinkovic-Savic in case one of the best clubs in the world will put one of the best proposals for Milinkovic, and from what I’m told they want around €65-70m.

The amount of changes that Mikel Arteta has introduced since his appointment as manager at Arsenal has been incredible, and we are expecting to see a further exodus of players that are surplus to requirements in the next month or so. But one stalwart is the defencer Rob Holding who has always been in the squad available to replace any injured or suspended defenders at a moments notice.

AS Holding himself told the Athletic: ‘I’ve seen centre-halves come and go. I’m still here, I must be doing something right’

But now Holding has admitted that he very nearly left the Emirates when Steve Bruce was trying to take him on loan to Newcastle in 2020, but Arteta persuaded the ex-Bolton star to stay and fight for more game time. Holding said: “It was always going to be a loan. I was just back from my ACL injury and thought I needed a full season of playing.

“But after the Community Shield against Liverpool, the boss said to me, ‘You’re going to play here, I don’t know why you’re planning on going on loan’.

“And I said, ‘If I’m going to play here then yeah, I’m happy, no problem’. And I ended up playing 35-odd Premier League games that year.”

In his decision to help gut Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell”—cases that enshrined Americans’ right to contraception, to intimate same-sex relationships, and to marriage equality. In the past week, Democrats have raced to codify same-sex marriage, culminating in Tuesday’s passage of the Respect for Marriage Act in the House.

Now, the bill rests in the hands of the Senate, where it’s not yet clear if enough Republicans will support the bill and help it avoid a 60-vote filibuster. What would happen if it doesn’t pass? Currently, there are at least 32 states—Arizona, Louisiana, and Ohio among them—that have either constitutional amendments, state laws, or both that prohibit same-sex marriage. The Obergefell v. Hodges ruling rendered these defunct in 2015, but if the Supreme Court were to overturn that decision, same-sex marriage would be instantly banned in at least 25 of those states—putting thousands of couples at risk.

Marriages, of course, are more than just white cakes and wedding rings. Everything from child custody to property rights can depend on whether a couple is married. In fact, a 2004 study from the US Government Accountability Office found that there are 1,138 statutes and provisions where marriage status is a factor in receiving benefits, rights, or privileges. Before the legalization of same-sex marriage, gay couples often would face discrimination and have their rights denied by various legal bodies.

“We’ve heard all sorts of all sorts of stories about families that are treated as though they are not families.” 

“From taxes to Social Security benefits to retirement benefits,” said Mary Bauer, the executive director of the Virginia ACLU. “(There are) all sorts of things that are built into our kind of structure of laws and systems. Spouses have a legal privilege that is incredibly important in many practical and moral ways. We’ve heard all sorts of all sorts of stories about families that are treated as though they are not families. ” 

“There’s kind of a million ways that this plays out…people have to fight for the right to be recognized as their child’s parent,” she added. “That is, as we all regard now, nonsensical, discriminatory, bigoted, and unacceptable.” 

Chelsea had a very turbulent end of season with the sanctions imposed on the club when Roman Abramovich was the owner, but they still managed to hold on to Third Place in the League.

They now have a new billionaire American owner (like Arsenal) who has many franchises in the American sports market in Todd Boehly, and perhaps there may be a little rivalry brought into the mix, as Arsenal are aiming to overtake their neighbours in the coming season.

So now the two giants are set to meet on their doorstep in America, and I am sure both owners will be very keen to win the boasting rights as Arsenal take on Chelsea in the Final of the Florida Cup tonight (Okay 1 a.m. on Sunday!).

Arsenal have won all their preseason games well, while Chelsea have not been so successful, with a 2-1 win over Club America and a loss on penalties to Charlotte, but the Gunners are wel aware how difficult the Blues are to beat in preseason.

This will be our fourth meeting since 2017 with Chelsea winning the first one 2.0 in Beijing that summer. The following year we met in Dublin and Arsenal only managed a 1-1 draw with a last-minute Lacazette equaliser.

Mikel Arteta changed half the Arsenal team last summer, and despite a few hiccoughs on the way, we improved so much that in the end we were disappointed in not succeeding to finish up in the Top Four.

Now we have even more talented additions in the squad in Zinchenko, Jesus, Turner, Vieira, Marquinhos and William Saliba retuned from loan like a new top class arrival, and once they all get integrated into the squad we should be even more of a force to be reckoned with this season.

One of our arrival’s last summer was Martin Odegaard and he has quickly become an important player for the team and he has been impressed with how the new contingent are settling in during pre-season.

“The new signings have been really good so far,” Odegaard told Arsenal.com. “They are working hard and are all good personalities. They all bring something good to the team.

“Fabio has been injured but we’ve seen Matt and Gabby play well in the games, so I think they are all going to be good for us. Especially for me, playing close to Gabby up front, I think it will be really fun.

Arsenal’s newest signing Oleksandr Zinchenko has given his first interview with the official Arsenal website and he has made it clear that he supported the Gunners since he was a kid, watching players like Thierry Henry, and he says its a “dream come true” to finally wear the famous Red & White jersey.

His first words in the interview were: “Thank you so much. First of all I would like to say this is a boyhood dream come true, because I was a massive fan when I was a kid. Since Thierry Henry and young Cesc Fabregas was playing here, I was just enjoying watching those games, that Arsenal. And obviously I started to love this club, so I am so excited and I cannot wait to play for this amazing club.”

When asked about this picture from when he was a kid, Oleks said: “Yeah, I remember that was in Donetsk, when I was at the Shakhtar academy, and like I said already, it’s a dream come true.”

The deal was very quickly agreed between the player, Man City and Arsenal, and Zinchecko was asked if Mikel Arteta was instrumental in his decision to choose Arsenal. “I would say it’s the most important role in my decision because I’ve known Mister for a while, I used to work with him at Manchester City. Since the first day at City I knew that he’s going to be a very good manager. The way he can see football, especially I was watching the last season of Arsenal’s games and I was really enjoying it. You can see in the style, the picture of the game, so I would love to see it (while) playing and being involved.

“The way we were working together, I was so impressed because I remember how many times we were working hard in the training sessions and then straight after with individual stuff and I took a lot from the manager and I hope I can take even more.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A quarter of Europe’s breeding seabirds spend spring in the UK, turning our coastline into a giant maternity unit. These noisy outcrops usually stink of bird poo. However, this year has been different. “Instead of the smell of guano, it’s the smell of death,” says Gwen Potter, a National Trust countryside manager working on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland. “It’s completely horrendous.”

This annual congregation of life has turned into a super-spreader event, as a highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1—also known as bird flu—sweeps through populations of breeding birds, causing devastating losses. More than 300 outbreaks have been reported in UK seabird colonies, and dozens of coastal sites have closed to the public.

The Farne Islands are home to 200,000 seabirds, including Arctic terns, Atlantic puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes, and razorbills. Potter is one of many conservationists swapping binoculars for a hazmat suit, picking up the bodies of birds she has spent her career trying to protect. Birds will sit on the ground, unable to move, twisting into unnatural positions, before dying. It is happening with chicks, too, still gently trying to flap as they die. “It sweeps through, takes everything in its path. It doesn’t seem to spare anything, really…We’ve collected thousands of dead birds, and that’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s just the scale of it which is hard to grasp,” she says.

Early observations suggest that how closely the bird’s nest is a key factor in how quickly the virus is transmitted. Guillemots nest quite densely, and kittiwakes are often next to them, which makes them vulnerable, although there is more space between them. Terns also nest densely and already 25 percent of the 350 sandwich terns on the Farne Islands are thought to have died, according to Potter. Some seabird chicks jump into the sea prematurely if their parents have died, while others starve in the nest.