Jude Bellingham is incredible. It was clear long before tonight, but this just adds more evidence.

Spence was very good, full credit.

I am fully expecting one of Declan Rice’s legs to spontaneously turn to ash like in Infinity War.

This game isn’t even close to over, either. Probably 8-10 mins of added time. It looks way later than it says on the game clock.

I realize with Kane that Tuchel is pretty much stuck with at least 9% Sp*rs heritage on the pitch at any given time but he electively just doubled that. Seems…unwise.

Hydration break

Yeah, that’s a penalty I think.

Is Kane offside, on top of a handball?

The key question is, if England moves on, does Andy Burnham have the juice (and the rolodex) to get Quansah’s suspension thrown out.

That’s incredibly sloppy from Quansah. I think he misses his target on the ball, his foot slides up off the top half, and into the leg. He’s responsible for the action regardless of intent. Just poor technique and the proper ruling.

That’s a good couple of minutes for England.

Hydration break!

“That touch has to be better” says Hargreaves as Saka can’t make what would be an insanely amazing play.

Can someone explain to me why Guehi, Saka, and Bellingham specifically keep getting booed?

Whatever result gets the most Arsenal players into their (late) summer vacation is the result I desire.* *in every remaining match

Uhhhhh these aren’t two different sides

And…it’s done. Anything that touches our depraved leader in any way is forever infected.

There’s every chance our depraved leader didn’t make a single call and is just taking “credit” for something he didn’t do. Or he did make a call. He’s a crude, degenerate liar. It doesn’t matter.

Bad day for the “sports isn’t political, don’t drag the players into it when it’s not their fault” crowd.

Sorry, but I can’t buy a lot of what is being sold on my TL about the Balogun decision. The original call split opinions, including many smart people’s opinions. The blatantly corrupt rescinding of the suspension is not ok just because you like Flo or you thought the original decision was flawed.

I find it quaint that people think the World Cup is a measure of anything. It’s just a spectacle providing football obsessives with more football. The players are pawns. And while some of them derive (deserved) financial benefit from the exposure, mostly it’s just a political/capitalistic circus.

Oh look an organization run by a morally bankrupt snake did something that nobody can trust as honest. No way.

In Massachusetts for the weekend and spied an insane column from Ben Volin of the Globe about the WC and US sports. Sometimes I wonder how people get and/or keep jobs. Imagine typing this, including the parenthetical at the end, and not recognizing the self-negating thing you JUST wrote.

Everyone likes teams that strangle opponents when they want the opppnents to be strangled. When the team they don’t like is doing the strangling then, well, that team and those tactics are a scourge.

Arsenal keeping up the supporters’ mood by following up getting gazumped by selling a relative key player!

Trossard infuriated me at times. He was also one of the best purchases we’ve made while I’ve followed the team. We have some very serious work to do to replace him.

Beckham going the full late-stage Travolta? Never go the full late-stage Travolta.

Ah, so science that detects something happened (contact, vibration) is the same as people who just say that it didn’t happen or that a machine can’t be trusted. Football both-sidesing is here!

There’a been a lot of “that wasn’t the reason the offside rule was made, it was to prevent goal-hanging, there was no impact on the action, what are we doing?”. Yet, that player on the far side 30 yards away, who smartly traps a center forward off, didn’t stop a goal hanger. So where does it stop?

We have to weather the first five games. AV/CFC will have their squads impacted by the WC. Brighton, Coventry, Leeds won’t as much but I hope we can handle teams like those. Get to the international break decently and things will settle with the roster (presuming Rice and Saka aren’t permacrocked).

If you thought Jonathan Wilson (and others) were out over their skis after last season’s early loss to Liverpool just wait until you see their (eventually) clownish proclamations over the World Cup dust settling in the first six weeks of the new campaign. Brace yourselves.

One other thing: how can any of us say that a ball (barely) nicking a player didn’t affect a play? This is not a game of inches, but of fractions of inches. The slightest of touches can change everything. There is a real butterfly effect from every action, even seemingly inconsequential ones.

I have admittedly not watched the entirety of the World Cup. Even so, I have to say that the speed with which (most) offside decisions are made has been great. The faster the better, and the faster this quicker system is implemented in the PL the sooner more people will be ok with the tech.

“I am ok with a team I don’t like getting shafted by a missed (or bad) call” is exactly what we Arsenal supporters decried when it came from rival supporters in 24-25, after Rice and Trossard were sent off and Saliba got the red for a DOGSO. We should all want the right calls to be made.

Per Mike this seems precisely what tech is for, to make sure a team doesn’t have a valid result changed by an unseen offense. Now, if you are ok with occasional miscarriages of justice in the name of drama (and/or preferred results) then yes, I guess you might think the tech is bad or unnecessary.

Are people upset that the call was correct, are they upset that the call was made by VAR, are they upset just that it wasn’t actually a goal (and the correct call), or are they upset for other reasons? If that happened to Arsenal to ruin a result and wasn’t called offsides we’d be absolutely livid.

Show me the full sequence on the CR7 Isocam please

Best moment of the match so far

US quite lucky to be playing these feckless dolts.

Maybe I will miss something special, but I’ve got 8 minutes and stoppage time left with this match unless something changes. I have bad spy shows to watch that have more intrigue than this dreck.

That’s such a lame dive. Card Balogun, FFS.

Hydration break

One of these two teams try to do something remotely interesting challenge

Lots of time left, it’s only been 18 minutes, but this has been the most dreadfully moribund game I have seen yet in this World Cup. A terrible watch.

Hard to believe there are still people out there who have this kind of view of the club.

The Tonali deal is like needing a really decent car for work and offering the dealer three times the sticker price for a mid-level Lexus.

Laugh at 100M for Tonali all you want but you gotta do what you gotta do when are trying to stay out of the drop zone.

I would normally lean into the goalie being flat-footed there but that was a laser beam from Kane.

It's a shame Nico O'Reilly plays for that lousy crime syndicate.

That was beyond dreadful, flat-footed defending. Good god.