Hey, those things don’t apply to *us*!

Morning all.

Now we know that it’s going to be Man City in the Carabao Cup final after they beat Newcastle 3-1 last night, making it a 5-1 win on aggregate over the two legs. I was going to watch a bit of it, but when I turned on it was already 1-0 and then I just couldn’t be arsed, so I played Arc Raiders on the PS5 for a while.

I was fully expecting City to win, so it’s no surprise, and it means we’ll play them in the final in March, and in the Premier League in April. I think it’s also possible we could face them in the Champions League, depending on how the draw works out, so if you were already sick of them, you might need to get a prescription for some Pepto-Bismol. Pep. Gettit? Sorry.

It is quite funny how Guardiola is complaining about the fact Marc Guehi, cup-tied because he played in this competition earlier in the season, won’t be available. They’re even talking about an appeal:

Hopefully we can convince the Carabao Cup that Marc can play in the final. Because it’s difficult to understand that the club makes a big investment to take one player, he belongs to us and I don’t understand why he cannot play in the final. Honestly.

I don’t understand why he could not play today and in the final in two months’ time, of course we are going to ask if he can play, it’s pure logic. Why should he not play? Why not? We pay his salary, we hire him, he’s our player, why should he not play?

Tough one, I know, but there’s a really useful book, available pretty much everywhere, which explains it quite clearly. It’s also really handy to look things up, because it’s organised alphabetically. So, Pep, get your dictionary out, head to the ‘R’ section, and seek out ‘rule’:

rule | ruːl |

noun

one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct or procedure within a particular area of activity: the rules of the game were understood | those who did break the rules would be dealt with swiftly.

I know, it’s hard to imagine Man City thinking that a set of long established rules or regulations might apply them! I can barely get my head around it. Man City, when they spent the money on Marc Guehi in January, fully understood that he would not be permitted to play in the Carabao Cup. They didn’t raise that issue then, they knew it fine well, but decided to splash the cash anyway.

In general, there probably is a case to be made that a player who joins another club should probably be allowed just play in whatever competition that club is involved in, regardless of previous appearances, but if Pep and Man City were so concerned about the potential for one of their players to be impacted by this, they could have been lobbying for a rule change for years. Not just when it suits them.

Arsenal have had experience of this in the past. In January 2018, when we spent twice as much on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as City paid for Guehi, he was not allowed play in the Europa League, having already featured for Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League – an entirely separate European competition. But, you know, rules are rules. It was a shame, maybe he could have found a goal or two along the way that might have helped us to the final, but we knew that when we signed him. The rules have since changed, I think, so there’s precedent there for Man City, a club we all know have protecting the integrity of the great game of football as one of their core principals.

Let them strike a blow for all the Marc Guehis of the future, the downtrodden footballer on hundreds of thousands of pounds a week who have found themselves excluded, through no fault of their own, by a lucrative deal and a set of circumstances that might apply to 0.00000001% of professional players in their career. I think we can all sympathise. Fight the good fight, eh?

Wankers.

Beyond that, today feels like a kind of quiet day. The day where we’ve done our work in midweek, we don’t yet need to start looking ahead to Saturday. A rare respite from the pressures of this season. I think I might make some pizza dough ahead of the weekend. I should probably tidy my office up a little bit. There are some emails I need to answer, and then tomorrow we can pick it all up again.

As ever, thanks for being here folks. It’s always much appreciated. The Arsecast from yesterday is below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. Till tomorrow!

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