Thomas Vermaelen claims Spanish giants and Arsenal are similar

The Gunners are murmured to play the same attractive brand of football as European juggernauts Barcelona and Thomas Vermaelen seemed to reiterate the same whilst talking to their official website on Friday morning.

 "Arsenal and Barcelona share the same philosophy. They are teams, who want to play football to entertain, to avoid long balls, to keep the ball on the ground, scoring as much as possible and create a lot of chances."

The former Arsenal skipper put an accent on the desire of the club to play entertaining football and their determination to avoid dirty or perhaps, cheap aspects of the modern game, but also stated that the London side always try to score as much as possible. Let us say that Belgian was not stating that banteringly.

Mark Hughes fears the might of the Emirates Stadium no more

Even though the Potters never fail to impose threat at the Britannia Stadium, they have always been the second best team when the two sides face off in London, but Mark Hughes believes that his side actually have a chance when they visit the Emirates Stadium tomorrow.

The former Manchester United talisman claimed that Stoke could emerge victors given the mediocrity of the displays and results Arsenal have had at home this season and added that the visitors would surely have their chances in the event of them not conceding early goals.

“Maybe in the past teams would fear going to the Emirates Stadium. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Certainly on their own patch they’ve had an indifferent start, maybe it’s a good time to play them.

“The key is you’ve got to give yourself a chance to win the game. When you go to the Emirates, they invariably start quickly, the demand is on them to take onus of the game and you’ve got to be ready for that. If you stay in the game, at some point, they will give you chances because they do play quite open.”

Arsenal shall not pay heed to the words of the Stoke boss, but what is slightly concerning is the change in mentality of the teams that visit us. If our players could maintain the momentum throughout the game and not shut down after a vibrant twenty minutes, we could be unstoppable.

Petr Cech becomes the first Czech player to complete 10,000 minutes

Petr Cech has always been the first-choice goalkeeper for his country since his senior debut in 2002 and has now become the first player to complete 10,000 for Czech Republic, despite playing two games fewer than record holder Karel Poborsky, who has 118 caps.

Dan Crowley set to choose Ireland over England

As the Jack Grealish saga nears culmination, Barnsley loanee Dan Crowley becomes the latest youth player to get sandwiched between England and Ireland. The teenager has made appearances for youth sides of either nation and the Irish media now claim that he could go on to choose the green strip, but the report, however; fail to provide proof to support the claim.