Morning all. We live in strange times. Sorry to start your day with this shocking revelation, I realise this is a bit of a bolt from the blue, but it’s fact. All across Europe supermarket fridges are being hacked. What a time to be alive. They used to hack, I dunno, mainframes and banks and shit, but now they’re hacking fridges. Maybe they just got bored taking billions of made-up money from CryptoSloth and BitWomble and needed a challenge. I feel like fridges ought to be the kind of thing you just can’t hack – beyond unplugging it – but what do I know? Anyway, it’s an example of how the inter-connectivity that brings us all together every day is being weaponised and now the sliced meats in your local store are gone off because Neo pwned some large cold cupboards. As if we don’t have enough to deal with. Such as all the people who hate the way Arsenal play. Let me be very clear, my days of caring what other people think about this football club, or pretty much anything else that’s important to me, are gone. It’s a waste of time. It’s a bit like quote that’s often attributed to George Bernard Shaw, which says ‘Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.’ I don’t think he actually said that, but I think we can all connect with the meaning. It applies so much to social media, and to many of the ways we’re exposed to punditry and ‘expert’ analysis in football these days. Like one of those shows where you have a couple of ex-pro pigs bleating on about this and that, and then a collection of other little pigs who support all the clubs argue with them and amongst themselves, and it’s just a pigstravaganza of pointless, inane bollocks but it does #numbers on socials so is seen as valuable #content. I understand why opposition fans go on and on about how much they hate how Arsenal play. It’s because we win a lot of games. That’s the thing that really irks them. That’s just so basic though, you can’t appear to be clever and an aficionado of the game if you just say ‘I don’t like it when they win’, so it’s dressed up as dismissal of style or something else. And look, here’s where the strange world we live in comes back into focus. You can, and really should, be able to hold more than one thought in your brain – about football or anything else – that holds true. I absolutely love how good we are defensively. LOVE IT. The commitment with which we are determined not to give the opposition anything is truly something to relish. Players laser-focused on their one on ones; putting bodies on the line to block shots and crosses; 11 players moving like a murmuration of birds because they’re so well drilled and organised; off the awareness and discipline; brilliantly timed tackles and headers and clearances; lads sticking up for each other when the opposition get a bit snide, as we saw on Sunday with Jurrien Timber and Noni Madueke refusing to allow their captain to be treated that way; it’s all part of a brilliantly defiant defensive attitude that runs right through this team. Creating that is not easy. As Arsenal fans we have endured defences that were porous and feeble and, at times, very, very stupid. I do not long for a return to those times. Over the years Mikel Arteta has assembled a collection of players who cannot wait to go out there and do the dirty work of defending, and it runs from front to back because that’s what he demands. If it was that easy, everyone would do it, so to castigate a team’s brilliance in one department because you just lost to them without a shot on target just comes across as sour grapes. Here’s the other thought though. I’d really like us to be a bit better from an attacking perspective, and when I look at this team and what it’s capable of, there’s no question the forward line remains the area where you can see the room for improvement. We defend as well as we do because, more often than you or I might like, we have to – because we live through games of fine margins. A 1-0 to the Arsenal is part of our history, hard-wired into our supporter DNA (particularly if you’re of a particular vintage), but I can’t lie and wish there weren’t a few more 3-0s to the Arsenal. I’m absolutely certain Mikel Arteta would like that too, and I think it’s a bit too easy to say that this is a team that plays precisely the football he wants it to play. He is, as we all understand, an arch pragmatist, so what we get is a team that leans into its strengths, as laid out above. He is characterised as a defensive coach, which I get, but a few seasons ago we found an attacking cocktail that drove a title challenge, and saw us score more goals that year than the Invincibles did when they won the league in 2004 (91 to 73). I think he wants both. He wants that parsimony at the back and the firepower up front. Unfortunately, forward line recruitment is the most difficult part of transfer business, and while he as manager has a part to play in that, as a club our track record is quite poor in that regard. This summer’s window was a complete bust from an attacking perspective, not a good look when you’re pursuing players like Morgan Rogers, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez. When you then let three forwards go and add just one, there are questions to be asked of the people in charge. Arteta among them, of course, but he’s not the one whose job it is to get the deals done. It’s why there are so many conversations around January, and what we might do. We see other clubs recruit forwards who produce on a consistent basis, while ours too often struggle to find that end product. Is it our system? Would these players find it hard to get those goals for usr Reasonable questions, but the bottom line in my opinion is that we have A+ options at the back and in midfield, while in that front three we’re a bit C-. That’s where the room for improvement is, that’s where the recruitment needs to be better (certainly better than no recruitment at all), and that’s how the games we currently win by a single goal margin, often by virtue of our defensive strength, become a bit more routine. Simplistic? Yes. Easier said than done? Quite probably. But necessary? Absolutely. Until then though, expect more defensive masterclasses, more pig wrestling, and perhaps someone could hack our own Swedish fridge into scoring a few more goals. Worth a try! — Right, I’ll leave it there for now. I just have a small favour to ask. Arseblog has been nominated for Best Fan Media (Fran Merida) in the 2026 FSA Awards. We’re trying to retain our title, so if you could take a moment to give us a vote that would be much appreciated. You can do that here – https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/fsa-awards-2026 Till tomorrow. The post Fridges and pigs and scoring goals appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.