Monthly Archives: August 2010

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
August 31, 2010 posted by arseblog

Dreadline day

It was late August 2006 when we moved back to Dublin from Barcelona (it was my Dublin DNA as my good pal … erm … Not Xavi used to say).

At that point Arsenal were still faced with the Ashley Cole situation. Would he go to Chelsea? Would he not? What sort of deal would we get with them if we did? There was also the Jose Antonio Reyes situation. Poor Jose had been tricked by nasty DJs, scowled at once too often by Thierry Henry and was hen-pecked at home by Mama Hen and Girlfriend Hen who complained to him all day long about living in England.

“Is too much raining, Jose”, they might have said had they chosen to complain to him in comedy English.

That year the transfer window shut at 12 midnight. At that stage I was a person with a life so I did what any normal person does and went out and got hopelessly drunk. The next morning I awoke to face a teenage shoe crisis and the news that we had been busy as bees. We had done a deal with Chelsea which saw them get Cole and we got Gallas and £5m. We also sent Reyes on loan to Real Madrid and got the mythical beast himself as part of the deal and on top of all that we signed a 19 year old Brazilian called Denilson who nobody had ever heard of.

What a transfer window. Three players in – Gallas, Baptista, Denilson. And if that isn’t proof enough that the transfer deadline day is a big load of old bollocks then I don’t know what is. So, just in case it was all tied in to my drunknness I will be staying entirely sober today.

I don’t expect much to be happening with regard Arsenal. A few youngsters out on loan, probably, and perhaps the arrival of Schwarzer. That deal might have been complicated yesterday by the decision of Shay Given to stay at Man City and pick up his enormous, recently increased, paycheque fight for his place. If Fulham can find an alternative to Given then it’s likely we’ll get Schwarzer but the injury to Stockdale and everything else means this is far from a dead cert.

The Sun says that we’ve increased our bid for the Australian to £4m, which I doubt, to be honest. We know that Arsene is never, ever willing to pay much more than what he thinks a player is worth. I just can’t see him paying that amount of money for 37 year old player. We’ll have to wait and see if a deal can be done today, Schwarzer is apparently ‘hopeful’ and has been up all night practicing the answers to a medical.

“No, it doesn’t hurt when I do that, but I do feel like a pair of curtains”.

“Pull yourself together man”.

And thankfully I’m here all week. I’m sure there are people who will spend today glued to Sky Sports News anxiously awaiting news on any potential deal. I’m sure there are even streams of it so you can see Bobby Two Phones and that Scotch twat cream themselves over some striker from Plymouth securing a loan deal to Stevenage Borough. If not Iraq Goals is missing a trick, let me tell you. And I’m sure the Arsenal blogosphere will be absolutely bogged down with new posts based entirely on the Twitterings of journalists with little or no credit given to the source – oh yeah, NewsNow is your friend today.

The window closes at 6pm so there’s no late into the night nonsense with this one. If we can get Schwarzer in, a few youngsters out and we manage to deport Fabianski or donate his body to science I think we can call this summer’s transfer business a success.

What’s not a success is Robin van Persie’s ankle. He was examined by Dutch doctors yesterday – you know, the same ones who said he’d be out for 4-5 weeks and then it turned out his ankle ligaments had been shredded like incriminating documents, meaning a spell of 5-6 months out. They say ‘up to 4 weeks‘ this time but I’ll wait until we get an official statement from Arsenal on the state of his injury. If the past can teach us anything though it’s that Robin is probably utterly bollixed and if he were a racehorse they’d have stroked his head gently before putting a bullet in it from close range.

Back to transfer business and while there’s reported interest from Birmingham in Armand Traore it looks as if he might well be off to Juventus. Traore turned down definite interest from Benfica last week after they couldn’t agree personal terms which is a bit sad really. He’s on the kind of money at Arsenal that makes him think he’s a better player than he actually is. Good luck to him wherever he ends up.

And speaking of Birmingham that’s going to be the new home of Alexander Hleb. I’m sure after finding London such a horrible place to live he’s going to love the quiet, gentile and picturesque surroundings of Birmingham.

And something just reaching me here at Arseblog Sports News, Sebastian Frey has been spotted in a taxi on the way to Arsenal’s training ground. He was overheard muttering ‘Sign me, Arsene. Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please …’

More when we get it. Which will be tomorrow.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
August 30, 2010 posted by arseblog

Deal or no deal? Transfer deadline looming

Welcome to a brand new week and welcome to the first Interlull of the new season.

There’s the small distraction of the transfer window to keep us vaguely interested for the next 36 hours or so. It closes tomorrow evening at 6pm. Sky Sports News will be sending reporters to stand outside training grounds, stadiums, club toilets and anywhere else they think they might find a scoop.

Arsenal interest in the window centres around Mark Schwarzer. Will he? Won’t he? I loved East Lower’s line on Twitter – Must be weird being Mark Schwarzer. Term has started but you’re still not 100% sure which school you’ll be at.

Fulham don’t want to sell even though he doesn’t want to play for them and the deal may be more complicated now due to a possible injury to his stand-in. That said, they always said his move to Arsenal was dependent on them getting in a replacement. There’s talk of Shay Given going there on loan which I’m sure will have some people wondering why we don’t go for the Irishman but there’s no way City would loan or sell him to us.

If Schwarzer is to come it would mean we’d really have be thinking of shifting one of the existing keepers out, probably on loan. It could one of the youngsters, Mannone or Wojscez©®, but personally I’d like to see Fabianski go. Almunia would be a solid number 2 (no jokes please).

There might also be a few deals involving fringe players. Armand Traore is interesting West Ham and, somewhat bizarrely, Juventus, while the likes of Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Henri Lansbury and a couple of others could  go out loan. There’s interest from Blackburn (boo), Leeds and Swansea for Lansbury while talk of a return to Doncaster for JET.

The manager has made his intentions as clear as mud on the official site saying:

It is dead at the moment but maybe not finished. At the moment I would say, as it is today, it is finished.

The thing is, the today he was referring to was yesterday. Or possibly the day before. So today’s today might be an entirely different today than the today he was talking about. I think, should we manage to sign Schwarzer, this will have been a pretty good transfer window for us. Two defenders, a striker and a goalkeeper would certainly show that the issues we’ve all been so concerned about have been addressed.

Of course it remains to be seen just how successful the new boys are going to be but the two we’ve seen so far have looked promising. Squillaci will be in contention for the next league game – Bolton at home on Sept 11th – and if the Aussie arrives then he’s likely to play in that game too. Let’s wait and see what happens. I wouldn’t put it past Mark Hughes to make life as difficult as it can possibly be, so let’s hope City are willing to let the ‘very unhappy’ Given go Cottaging.

For more on the transfer window I’ll be on Twitter 24 hours a day with inside information, reliable sources, up to date gossip, rumour and fact that my team of monkeys with typewriters will be churning out. I think I need to fine tune them though:

shcwarzer having medical fail now eeeeh eeeeeeh eeeeeh aaaaahhhh

I’m a stickler for correct spelling and grammar, dontcha know.

Moving on to matters football and Arsene has spoken about Cesc and his performance on Saturday. He says:

I don’t think he is the type to give anything less than his best, just because he didn’t get a move. He may have wanted to join Barcelona but he loves Arsenal as well, and that’s why he made his decision. There is a trust and confidence on both sides. He has given enough to the club and the club has given a lot to him in return.

It is inevitable that every time he doesn’t play as well as we know he can people will magically become psychic and state will great confidence that his mind is elsewhere. As I said yesterday it was his first start of the season and he’s nowhere near as sharp as he normally is. If the Barcelona thing didn’t happen this summer we’d be talking about him getting fit properly after a long summer at the World Cup. I have no doubts over his commitment. Every time he pulls on an Arsenal shirt he’ll go out to do his best for the team, the way he’s done since he made his debut as a 16 year old.

As I don’t have any psychic powers whatsoever and am unable to read minds I will refrain from speculating about what’s going on inside his head.

And speaking of speculation there was a lot of that flying around regarding the arrest of Jack Wilshere. The facts as I can gather are he was arrested, then bailed, with regard to an late night ‘fracas’. And that’s about as much as any of us know about it. Until there more facts then I think it would be unwise, and unseemly, to comment.

And for a Monday morning that’ll have to do. More tomorrow as the transfer window enters its final mind-numbing, tedious, hyped up load of bollocks exciting few hours.

Arsenal match reports
August 29, 2010 posted by arseblog

Blackburn 1-2 Arsenal: Job done

A fine away win yesterday will go some way to backing up the manager’s claim that this team is more mature and better able to cope with the threat of teams like Blackburn. It was a little nervy towards the end but I thought Arsenal’s second half performance was intelligent and disciplined and that made the difference.

In the first half we gave away four free kicks which allowed Paul Robinson to hump the ball into our box from just inside the Blackburn half. I don’t care who you are and how good you are at the back, when it’s being lumped like that towards big men like Samba and Nelsen then it’s difficult to defend. And early on we struggled a little bit. Nelsen had a header cleared off the line by Cesc Fabregas and Samba headed just over – both chances came from corners.

Add Pedersen’s long throw into the mix and it was an aerial onslaught, just as we expected. In the second half, however, Robinson had just one free kick, in the 49th minute and Koscielny won it in the air. It seemed we were happy to let them have it in the centre of midfield, pressing them but not giving away silly fouls. They tried to spread it wide and for the most part their passing was poor so their big threat was limited to a few throw ins. Late on they threw Samba on up front and his most meaningful contribution was to throw himself to the ground, screaming for a penalty which the referee rightly ignored.

It was a good response from Arsenal to what had been a much more open first half. Their early chances had us on the back foot a bit but we opened the scoring with a lovely goal. Song played it from the centre of midfield to Arshavin who rolled it to van Persie. His through ball with the outside of his left foot was perfect for the onrushing Theo Walcott who took it on and buried it in the far corner. It just shows you what a bit of confidence can do for a player, last season that would probably have ended up in the stand. In Burnley.

What’s ironic is that Blackburn’s goal came about when they put together their best move of the match. Samba played it to El Hadj Diouf down our right, he was too quick and strong for Koscielny and he crossed for his namesake, Marvin Diouf, to tap home the equaliser. Double-Diouf, what did I say? It was shoddy defending from Arsenal really. Sagna, who otherwise had a really good game, was caught too high up the pitch, Koscielny should have done to Diouf what Lauren did to Ronaldo, and Clichy showed why doubts remain about him as he had no awareness of the arriving striker.

We lost Robin van Persie to an ankle injury after about half an hour, he was replaced by Chamakh. Five minutes into the second half we had the lead. Sagna made a brilliant run down the right hand side, he squared it for Cesc whose first time shot hit Theo’s arse, Andrei Arshavin was on hand to drive home the rebound.

After that Arsenal controlled the game. Blackburn had one chance I can remember when Dunn shot straight at Almunia. Other than that the keeper was untroubled. That’s not to say we created a lot either. Arshavin had a half chance after his goal but he fired it well over, Theo stuck one not far over the bar and that was about that until Jack Wilshere had a chance to seal the game in the final few moments, unfortunately for him he slipped when striking the ball.

In the end though I think we merited the three points. The game did not plumb the depths like others against Blackburn, there was only yellow card as far as I can remember and not a bad challenge in the game. Afterwards Arsene said:

In the first half we were a bit too nervous dealing with Blackburn’s game. In the second half I felt we were calmer, put the ball on the ground well and controlled the game much better.

Some other thoughts – I don’t for one second buy into the stuff about Cesc looking like he wanted to be somewhere else. Typical and hysterical nonsense started by media outlets who crave the attention and look to generate their own headlines, regardless of the truth. Arsenal fans shouldn’t fall for it. I thought he looked committed yesterday and played quite well, however it was his first start of the season, he’s clearly lacking a little bit of match fitness and his touch isn’t quite there yet. It’ll come and I think if we’d had a 100% fit Cesc we’d have won that game by a couple of goals yesterday.

Robin van Persie just cannot catch a break. He injured his ankle in a routine challenge, Arsene Wenger hopes it’ll just be a couple of weeks – and a handy couple of weeks too due to the Interlull which is now upon us – but you worry if he’s ever going to stay fit at all. That said, when you have a replacement like Chamakh it’s easier to cope with. I thought the Moroccan was fantastic yesterday, particularly in the second half. He held it up well, looked stronger and more confident on the ball, and was a big part of Arsenal’s controlled second half performance.

So, it’s a very good three points. Going into the Interlull on the back of this result keeps confidence high. Going to a place like Blackburn and laying to rest some of the ghosts of last season this early is a good thing.

A word as well for Blackburn’s fans who are a pack of pig-ignorant gleet-hounds. Quite apart from singing that reprehensible song about Arsene they are hypocrites of the highest order. They love to talk up their reputation and their physical ‘style’ of football yet the moment one of their players is so much as tackled they’re screaming and moaning like a pack of hysterical piglets. ‘Same old Arsenal always cheating’ when we’re awarded a free kick. If you can work out how a foul by one of their players is us cheating then you’re a better man than I am.

And as for their manager, just the sight of him with his gaping maw, chewing great wads of gum, is enough to turn your stomach. He complained that Arsene Wenger isn’t the kind of manager to share a drink after the game. The last section of this Ian Holloway article just proves that he’ll share a drink with you if you’re not an enormous, wind-up merchant, egomaniac Walrus looking cunt. Something for Fat Sam to dwell on, if he has the self-awareness to do that.

And speaking of enormous cunts, Tony Pulis’s comments are hilarious. Apparently he’s rather put out by Arsene’s suggestion that fouling a goalkeeper with no intention of playing the ball is more suited to rugby rather than association football. Talk of him suing Arsene or Arsenal is quite fantastic, it just shows what a deluded moron he is. I would love to see him try.

There’s nothing new on the transfer front, Arsene said on Sky yesterday that ‘at the moment’ everything is dead for us, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be revived … which would make any new signing some kind of zombie, right?

Mark Hughes says Schwarzer has made it clear he wants to join us but no deal will happen unless they can get a replacement. I’m sure things will be going on behind the scenes over the next couple of days and I’d be 99% sure that we’ll have a new, flesh eating keeper on our books before the window closes.

Right then, time for the Sunday papers and Match of the Day. Have a good one folks.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
August 28, 2010 posted by arseblog

Blackburn preview – it's a game of football, you know

Early Saturday morning blog due to an early Saturday afternoon kick-off.

It’s quite funny that so much of the build-up to this game has focussed on the fact that Blackburn are the kind of team that pose a physical threat Arsenal find it tough to cope with. Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce has chipped in to remind everyone that Arsenal used to get some red cards back in the day, as if it has some kind of relevance to today’s game.

What’s not being really spoken about is that this is a game of football and not some late-night cage fighting extravanganza. Yes, Arsenal will have to cope with the physical side of Blackburn’s game, we know this is an area in which they’re particularly strong. They’re a big, tall team who like to use that to their advantage and like all of Allardyce’s teams down the years their first job is to stop the opposition playing.

He was the same at Bolton, for a very brief period at Newcastle (haha) and now at Blackburn. They set out, especially against the bigger teams, to prevent them from getting into any kind of rhythm. They are the masters of the tactical foul, disrupting the flow of the game, and I think it’s that, more than anything, that makes life difficult for us.

Last weekend Blackpool sat off us. Blackburn will not. They’ll be in our faces from the start, putting us under pressure when we have possession. To cope with that we need to be at our sharpest. It means our movement and passing has to be perfect. If we do that well then they’ll tire. When they have it we have to prepare ourselves for an aerial bombardment. Free kicks from their half will be launched long towards our box by Paul Robinson, corners and free kicks will be a threat because they have players who are good with the dead ball, and we know all about their size.

Arsene Wenger’s very pointed comments in his press conference regarding protection for goalkeepers were interesting. Chris Foy was the ref who did Stoke v Sp*rs and Stoke got away with murder at set-pieces. Of course you should be able to challenge a goalkeeper, you should not be allowed foul him. If your sole intention is to impede the keeper then that’s a free kick. Whether Foy takes that on board and pays closer attention remains to be seen – he might well react to the implied criticism by choosing to look the other way.

Blackburn will try to impede Almunia today. They did it last season to Fabianski and the bloke was rattled all day long. We need the ref to be fair, we need Almunia to be strong, and we need our team to offer our keeper the protection he needs. As ‘holic points out we know what’s going to be dished up today, it’s unthinkable that we haven’t prepared for this during the week.

Leaving aside the physical aspect of the game though the manager has some difficult choices to make in terms of his team. Two players who were excellent last week, Theo and Tomas Rosicky, might well find themselves ‘rewarded’ with a place on the bench. The return of Laurent Koscielny means Alex Song can move back into midfield. I think we’ll see Cesc’s first start of the season today so a midfield trio of Song and Diaby as the two deeper-lying players with Cesc in front of them might well mean a place on the bench for Rosicky.

In the forward three I think Chamakh will keep his place as the centre-forward with Arshavin on one side of him. Then the boss has to decide if Theo can do to ‘burn what he did to ‘pool. His sheer pace would give them plenty to worry about, the new found Billy’s Boots in front of goal too, but should the game become a physical battle then Theo is a little lightweight. Robin van Persie is itching for his first start of the season too and has a brilliant scoring record against Blackburn while Emmanuel Eboue might be considered for a bit of defensive solidity and muscle.

He’s got plenty to think about, that’s for sure and he wants his players to stand-up and be counted today, saying:

We have more steel because a few years ago we were a bit too immature for this kind of game. I don’t feel any more that we are

It is important that we are strong away from home and deal with their strengths. We have put more steel in our game and I will tell my players to be committed.

It’s not as if we don’t have players who can’t ‘mix it’. Song, Vermaelen, Cesc, van Persie, Sagna, none of them shirk a physical game. We’ve yet to see new boy Laurent Koscielny in a game like this but he’s talking the talk. I don’t see Chamakh being bullied, Clichy’s experienced enough to cope, and then you want to see Diaby get stuck in, Arshavin not stroll through the game, and if we really give it everything we’ve got then we’ll win this game.

Last season at Blackburn was depressing, it was a sad performance from a team who had the stuffing knocked out of them in the weeks previous. Perhaps it was self-inflicted to an extent but there’s a chance today to put it right. Arshavin and Rosicky both referenced last season’s game, hopefully it still hurts and we see a reaction today. As Rosicky said we have to go there and win if we want to win the league title.

I don’t think a draw would be a bad result but it’ll be interesting to see if this team has kicked on from last season. Have they learned their lesson? Were they suitably shamed by the defeat last time around A good performance and three points today might go some way to dispel the idea that Arsenal are a team that can kicked around – and that’s an important barrier to break down early in the season. Regardless of how you view the kind of football Allardyce’s teams play we have to be able to stand up to it.

It’s a big test but one I think we can pass.

In other news the signing of Sebastien Squillaci was finally confirmed. There’s the usual guff on the official site about him but it looks, on paper at least, like a very good deal. A fee of just £3m for an experienced international centre-half is good business. He’ll wear the number 18. It really doesn’t matter who wore it before him, it’s just a number.

The Sun reckons Mark Schwarzer will leave Fulham on a free next summer if they don’t let him join Arsenal. I’m sure they’re quaking in their boots at the thought of a 37 year old moving on when his contract expires. Of course that doesn’t do us any good whatsoever. However, the article does mention something that a couple of Aussie fans have mentioned to me in the wake of our interesting in Schwarzer – the Asia Cup in January.

If we sign him is he really going to bugger off for the month of January? I do wonder if there’s anything in our potential deal with him which requires him to stay in England instead of going to play in some meaningless international tournament.

Beyond that not a lot else happening. Here’s hoping for a performance that will make FatSam the glummest Walrus in all the world. He deserves it.

Till tomorrow.