Billy Carpenter

@billycarpy.bsky.social

11724 Followers 185 Following

Write about Arsenal. I also write for SCOUTED. Here's my newsletter: https://billycarpenter.substack.com/

Christos Tzolis, Club Brugge: Belgium is my preferred destination to find attackers, and Tzolis is one of the best in the league. He dropped 22 goals in the 2. Bundesliga last year, and now he’s already at 14.2 non-penalty xG plus xAG. He’s quick and coordinated on comps, but I’m still feeling out his final level. I haven’t seen enough to be convinced he’s a top-four type yet.
For all the skill, though, you need to have the right temperament to deliver on that stage, and at that age. And what is clear is that Dowman has the right people around him. He was spotted at the age of four by Arsenal's part-time academy scout Johnny Knight, who was still by his side when Dowman signed professional terms at the club.
➡️ Off-ball runs Merino is a really good off-ball presence, which has a lot of overlap with his brains and his work-rate. Like Havertz, he offers those selfless dragging runs, and is happy to sprint when there’s a switch to pull defenders away from his left-winger. His false-9ing is weirdly good; here’s him serving as a backboard for a Spanish attack. He’s also adept and active at feeling for pockets of space in the box, especially in bouncing ball situations.
Convering turnovers into shots
The long shift
The squeezing league
Too many marginal gains still go unexploited. If Cucurella’s hair draws ~1 red a year, imagine what a full XI of mops could do.
Top 30 defensive midfield targets
The spreadsheet merchants told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Havertz goal
For the two remaining league games, I would be, at very least, interested in starting Zubimendi at right-back. This is not a new idea. It was something I wanted to explore as an option when he was signed. But if his superpowers are tactical intelligence, work-rate, spatial interpretation, quick combo play, and the ability to duel and generate chaos in final actions, I would greatly prefer to keep Calafiori in his best position (with Trossard and Lewis-Skelly to play with), the Lewis-Skelly and Rice partnership intact, and try something new on the right. Zubimendi seems almost agnostic to the zone where he plays, and his two-footedness helps everywhere. The obvious risk is the physical ask and the recovery runs down the line: it is not lost on me that we’ve just been talking about Zubimendi’s physical fatigue, and now I’m considering putting him into a position that can be super demanding. It’s marginal, but my hope is that Saliba and a deeper Rice can cover most of that against Burnley and Crystal Palace; and my real hope is that we have so much of the ball that there isn’t much running in the first place. If it were up to me, I think it’s the route I’d take. If we believe that the position now belongs to total footballers, Zubimendi is certainly one.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.
Arsenal fans are always explaining something
Arsenal lineups
Comparing MLS and Zubi
👉 What would “better” look like? It’s oversimplified, but in any outside trio, I’d like to see a few adjacent profiles: (Below) An orchestrator: somebody who can dictate play and pick apart the opponent shape with passes. (Beside) A dribbler: somebody who can drive at opponents and collapse the shape, starting a cascading effect. (Beyond) A runner: somebody who can interpret space and pull it apart: “decompacting” the shape horizontally, diagonally, or vertically. Ideally, a player has the flexibility to play multiple roles based on rotations.
You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.
fuck it we ball becomes far more weighty once we account for the preexisting axiom that is 'ball is life,' for the latter effectively transforms the former into 'fuck it we live.' and what maxim could be more gravely improtant than that which urges man to persist at all costs?
Arteta on Moyes: "It's more than respect"
Fotmob
Saka
secrets of an elite penalty taker
Triples is Best
While we get nostalgic about childhood and wax poetic about simpler joys in simpler times, those are simple joys. Simple joys are found at the beach, and there’s nothing wrong with them. But the deepest, most resonant joys are hard-won, and they come from a sense of responsibility, to our community, to our family, to our children, and maybe even to strangers on the internet. (Hi, I love you.) On a grand scale, the same feeling applies, I suspect, for the players. Whatever resonant joy they find, if they find it this season, will come from the deeper place, from the responsibility they have entrusted in themselves, that the club has entrusted in them, and that we’ve all entrusted in them to carry on our behalf for another month or so. I don’t know what will happen. So much depends on the lineups and the performance levels; from there, happenstance and variance will do their work. But I agree with Tom Hiddleston, and I agree with Amy Lawrence: what a fortunate place to be in, to feel the weight of such expectations. You can’t do something consequential without consequences.
Arsenal v Sporting
Hincapie v Sporting
Arsenal/Sporting momentum
4v2 midfield