Monthly Archives: March 2012

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
March 20, 2012 posted by arseblog

Gervinho, Arteta and the Park mystery grows

Gervinho, Arteta and the Park mystery grows

Hello and welcome to Tuesday.

Encouraging news re: Fabrice Muamba last night. Obviously there’s still a long way to go for him but fingers crossed he can continue to make progress. All credit must go to those healthcare professionals who have done so much for him, and continue to do so.

I do wonder if this incident will have any long-lasting impact on the game, perhaps in terms of closer screening of players. The more you read the more you realise it’s not as uncommon as you would think, young, healthy sportsmen (not just in football), suffering catastrophic and instantaneous heart attacks. Thus far Muamba has been one of the lucky ones, but maybe there’s a need to do more, if that’s possible.

It might well be needle in a haystack territory in terms of the numbers of problems it might discover, but those would be very valuable needles to find. The worry, of course, is that sometimes these problems cannot be detected – Muamba has been screened four times since 2008.  In the meantime we can do little else but keep up the good wishes and let the doctors and nurses continue their excellent work.

Aside from that, the show must go on. It always does, and we’ve got to start looking ahead to tomorrow night’s game against Everton. It’s an evening on which Chelsea (away to Man City) and Sp*rs (home to Stoke) also play so there could be plenty of movement in the league table. We’ll have had nine days since our game against Newcastle and although there’s no team news just yet, I guess it’d be fair to say that the heavy legs will have been well rested at this stage.

Assuming everybody’s fit then we have to be looking at the same starting XI as began the game against Newcastle. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should keep his place on the left hand side. Despite a quiet first half last week he grew into the game more in the second, and he looks more likely to produce something at the moment than Gervinho who appears to have an African Cup of Nations of Africa in Africa playing for a Cup of Nations hangover.

The Ivorian says he’ll get over it though:

It was a disappointment with the penalty, as the team suffered, and in hindsight it was one of the toughest moments of my career. But I’ve had lots of other hard times. Missing out on a big title was hard, but I’ve had other setbacks in my career and come through them.

The challenge he faces now is winning back a place in the side from a revitalised Theo Walcott and The Ox who is showing his potential more and more regularly. Yet this is a far preferable situation for the club to have to deal with than players being selected by default because there is no other option. Competition for places is always healthy, in my opinion. It either brings out the best of those who want to play, or weeds out those who don’t have the heart for the fight.

Gervinho has been frustrating at times, but has also chipped in with some decent goals and assists for a player in his first season in English football. It’d be great to see him rise to this challenge and contribute more.

Meanwhile, the return to Goodison for Mikel Arteta will be bitter-sweet, and it’s something he’s looking forward to:

I really can’t wait to go there, and I hope I’ll get a good reception because I gave Everton everything I had in my time there and I love the club. Everyone there was great to me and, even though I left, hopefully people understood. There’s no reason for any of us to be unhappy with each other.

While I can’t speak for Everton fans, it hardly registers as one of the most acrimonious transfers of all time, and they got good money for a player approaching 30. Of course the only way he’ll really enjoy it is if Arsenal head back to London with three points, so fingers crossed on that front.

Elsewhere, a rather odd situation and story is developing regarding Ju Young Park. The story of him delaying his military service emerged last week and now his lawyer is quoted as saying:

Additional negotiations about his transfer fee between Arsenal and AS Monaco only concluded recently, and AS Monaco asked us to make it public after the negotiations came to an end.

There’s a suggestion in L’Equipe today that because of this delay in his military service, Arsenal will have to pay Monaco a further €3m. It all sounds very weird and perhaps there are other clauses that are based on the amount of appearances he makes, which might go some way to explain the reluctance to use a player that, on paper, probably should have played more this season.

I don’t know if there’s a press conference today ahead of tomorrow’s game, but I wish somebody with access to the manager would ask him the questions about this deal. Why hasn’t Park been used more (aside from the fact that van Persie’s form would keep most players in the world out of the team)? Why are Arsenal paying more for a player that we don’t play? Why weren’t the terms of the deal iron-clad at the start?

The more we discover, the more this appears to be one of the strangest transfers of Arsene’s reign. For footballing reasons it seems unlikely his future lies with us, yet we’re going to pay another lump of money now? Very odd. Somebody please ask the questions, the truth is out there.

Right, that’s yer lot, have a good one.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
March 19, 2012 posted by arseblog

Remember there’s an off button

Remember there’s an off button

Morning all,

it’s a late one due to the fact it’s a bank holiday here. There’s still no real update regarding Fabrice Muamba, although the situation itself has brought out the best of many and the worst of others.

Clearly the football world has been dominated by the story, and maybe it’s no bad thing that people reflect on behaviour and the lack of basic decency that plagues the game these days. Witness the fantastic gesture of Real Madrid, offering support to Muamba and Barcelona’s Eric Abidal, and compare with Derby fans singing about Nottingham Forest’s recently deceased chairman.

That’s not to single out Derby fans but it’s surely illustrative of how the line is crossed far too often these days, by fans of every club. Nobody can claim to be whiter than white. After the Everton game in December I cringed listening to (admittedly drunk, as it was quite late in the day) Arsenal fans singing about how it should have been Adebayor shot to death in Angola.

I have no time whatsoever for Adebayor, I think he’s pretty dislikeable as a player, as a person he sums up all that’s wrong with the modern mercenary footballer, but although it might be ‘just a song’ and part of the black humour that has always been a part of football, couldn’t we do without it? The same way that Liverpool and United fans could probably do without reminding each other of people who have died. Does it really matter why or how?

Online we see people say the most outrageous things. You can call it trolling if you like, but that tends to suggest there’s a modicum of intelligence involved. And what happens is people react, people repeat what has been said to inform others of their outrage, providing oxygen to the original idiot and it all spirals from there.

It’s good when people are held accountable for what they say. What seems to be missed by many of these idiots of the permanency of the Internet. You can delete your account all you want but re-tweets, screenshots, caches and all kinds of things will ensure that there’s a record of what you said or did. In that sense the name and shame stuff works well.

That said, there is a part of me that wishes we could evolve to a point where we simply learn to ignore people whose only motivation is to wind others up. That’s not restricted to football, by the way, but it’s human nature to react to a newspaper, a columnist, a TV or radio presenter, a shock-jock, a politician etc that says something that goes against what we would consider decent and even human.

The Howard Stern effect. More listeners hate him than like him but the ones who hate him can’t help but listen so they can be offended and complain. Without this significant portion of the audience they become less effective. The same way that if the coverage of a particular newspaper offends you, the best way to deal with it is not to read that newspaper. Writing about it, directing people to their website etc, seems counter-productive to me. If you know it’s a piece of shit with less morality than a room full of child killers, why allow yourself to be wound up by it and, in the process, wind up others?

It’s a Utopian thought, I guess, that we can simply choose to ignore that which we find reprehensible, and in some cases it’s probably not the best way to deal with it, but the simplest and most effective way of existing without these people is not to pay any attention to them. If there’s a website you don’t like, don’t visit it. If there’s a Twitter account you hate, don’t follow. A radio show you can’t stand, choose another station.

Free speech is great but the ability to not listen to free speech is even better. We have that choice and we should use it more often. And I say this as somebody who believes there’s a sanitisation of football which is not always positive. There is a need for rivalry, for tribalism, for wit and humour borne out of that, but at the end of the day these people are just pantomime villains.

There are people in this world who I would happily see chucked under a bus. And I mean actually chucked under a bus. Those who do harm to others in all kinds of ways, who peddle and thrive on hatred, who refuse to treat all people equally, the list is pretty much endless to be honest, but somewhere along the way we’ve got to remember that we should have an expectation of decency and manners and human dignity from each other.

For all the words and songs and everything else that goes with Arsenal v Sp*rs, remember when David Rocastle died. The silence was perfectly respected by both sets of fans, the way it should be. And while Sp*rs fans deserve credit for the way they behaved that day, isn’t it sad that we should even have to worry that somebody, or some small group of people, might spoil it, might think it all right to use football as a way to disrespect a man who has died tragically young?

As I said, no set of fans is whiter than white, there will always be those willing to cross a line. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes because they don’t believe there is a line, or the line is somewhere further down the road. It’s hard to imagine it changing, but things have down the years, just slowly.

There now (in 2012!) appears to be a much wider awareness and criticism of racial abuse – although those in charge of the game still seem to fudge the issue in many ways when a stronger message could, and should, have been sent years ago. There are still many taboos which football needs to overcome, and hopefully will do in time.

It’s a cliché to say what happened to Fabrice Muamba puts things in perspective, but maybe it’s also a moment where we stood back a bit and really took stock about the way the game is going and how we talk about it. Regardless of his situation, it’s long been a bug bear of mine that so many people think disagreement = argument = abuse. It is possible to disagree with somebody without calling them names, without resorting to the kind of crap you wouldn’t tolerate from kindergarten kids.

There might well be a worldwide recession but people should remember that manners cost nothing.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
March 18, 2012 posted by arseblog

On last night

I wasn’t watching Sp*rs v Bolton last night but followed events via Twitter. It was heartening to eventually hear that Fabrice Muamba was stable, despite being critically ill, because it’s one of those situations where it’s easy, and sadly usually accurate, to fear the worst.

All we can do this morning is hope that the fight he has shown as a young man, and a player, to get where he did in football continues and that he pulls through this fully. If you read Daniel Taylor or Amy Lawrence in The Guardian you’ll get a clearer picture of him and how he’s made his way in the game, against so many odds.

The medical team at White Hart Lane deserve massive credit for their reaction and brilliant work, and best wishes go to everyone there last night, at Bolton Wanderers, and of course, to Muamba’s family and friends – many of whom are at Arsenal because of his previous association with the club.

To those of us who play football despite not being as fit and healthy as a 23 year old professional, or even those who do not, it’s a stark reminder for us to be thankful of the health that we have, and that for all the passion it generates and the rivalries we enjoy, it is just a game at the end of the day. There are lots of things more important than football.

Get well soon, Fabrice Muamba.

—

It seems rather churlish now to blog about the little there is going on about Arsenal this morning. Have yourselves a good Sunday, spend it well with friends and family.

Back tomorrow.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
March 17, 2012 posted by arseblog

Happy St Pat Rice day

Happy St Pat Rice day

Good morning,

and a happy St Pat Rice day to you all. Today is the day when we celebrate the fact that Pat Rice got rid of all the snakes in Ireland and invented whiskey. Did you know the Irish for whiskey is ‘Uisce beatha’, which literally, and actually literally and not Jamie literally, means ‘water of life’?

Anyway, the legend goes that many years ago Pat Rice was walking along a quiet country road when he was confronted by a gang of ne’er do well snakes who slithered up beside him, surrounded him, taunted him, then tried to bite him and steal his few gold coins.

“What are you doing?” asked Pat Rice. “I am a mere servant of god, heading to my friend Liam Brady’s house for he has had a whopper crop of spuds and we’re going to try this new recipe that has come from the land of France in which you chop them into tiny sticks and fry them in lard.”

“That will never catch on,” said the head snake, trying to chomp on Pat Rice’s leg, a job made handier by the fact he was wearing football shorts. “Now give us your coins that we want even though we don’t have any pockets to keep them in or anything.”

“I’m tired of your serpenty ways,” said Pat Rice. “Always going about the place munching on folk, then swallowing them whole making it look like you’ve eaten a Scooby-Doo sandwich which gets stuck in Shaggy’s throat. It’s time someone put an end to your nefarious bullying of the Irish people.”

And lo, Pat Rice took a detour into the woods, fashioned for himself a whacking stick from the finest birch, and traveled the length and breadth of Ireland ridding the nation of these belly-sliding beasts. When, at last, he arrived at his friend Liam Brady’s house, quite starving and looking very much forward to this new potato recipe, he realised he’d been whacking snakes for the best part of three decades and Brady had died of consumption some sixteen years previously.

“Oh for fucks’s sake,” said Pat Rice, and went to his local hostelry for a carvery lunch and a few pints. And so was born the custom of St Pat Rice’s day when everyone goes to the pub and gets shitfaced.

So, whatever you do today, have a good one. It will be without Arsenal of course because there’s no Arsenal this weekend. The players will be resting – once they get back from the shindig Pat Rice is having for Pat Rice day, of course – and getting themselves set for the game against Everton on Wednesday.

Arsene has been talking about the team’s recent form and how there seems to be a much more focused approach when we don’t have the ball. You would think that the stats show we’re running more, putting more effort in to closing people down, but that’s not the case as the boss explains:

No [they are not covering more ground] but it is not only about distances, it is about doing it together. It is the timing of doing it [pressing] together that is vital, because you can run even more if you don’t do it together.

It’s very interesting because it goes directly to what Lee Dixon said on the Arsecast a couple of weeks back, that if the team worked more coherently when the opposition are in possession, we’d be better for it. That’s certainly been the case in the last few games and it obviously means that this is something that has been worked on at the training ground. It’s something many have wanted to see from us on a more regular basis and fingers crossed it’s the blueprint for every game from now on.

There are a couple of interesting bits from Martin Keown over on Arseblog News. He talks about the importance of Robin van Persie and how he believes that Arsenal’s first choice back four is as good as any other in the Premier League. The issue he sees with the defending is that the players a little further away from being first choice are a bit too error prone, meaning they have to cut those mistakes out or the manager has to find more reliable back-up.

What is clear though, is how much it helps to have natural full backs in the side again. We were so unbalanced and it’s the equivalent of asking central-midfielders to play up front. Just because a player is a defender doesn’t mean he’s going to be an effective full back.  I think anyone who regularly plays centre-half, whatever the level, will tell you how much more difficult it is to play at full back because of the extra running, the fitness needed, the positional differences etc, and to have the full complement again can only be a good thing between now and the end of the season.

And that’s about that. Finally, and I don’t normally do this kind of thing but seeing as it’s for my brother, he’s in London today for England v Ireland at Twickenham and has been let down, last minute, by his ticket guy. I know it’s needle in a haystack stuff, especially given the day that’s in it, but if anyone knows of a spare ticket, please drop me an email (thearseblog @ arseblog dot com). Any help would be much appreciated.

Right, have yourselves a good one, go easy on the water of life, back tomorow.