Daily Archives: April 26, 2012

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April 26, 2012 posted by Tim Stillman

Uncomfortable steamers

Uncomfortable steamers

Last week I wrote about my perception that results become more variable at this stage of the season, as pressure and fatigue begin to lay siege on players. Lactic acid grips limbs and coils itself tightly. This is why plucky little minnows Chelsea, with their £50m substitute striker, can slay the behemoth of Barcelona and their Barcisssistic ballet of passing and write the kind of David and Goliath script that causes British journalists to writhe in Nevillegasm.

In all seriousness, there can be no moralising about the manner in which Chelsea won the tie. The only “right way to play” is within the rules of the game. Thereafter, everything else comes down to personal taste and to privilege one style over another borders on snobbery. The reason I mention that pack of oil funded, mob handed fuck weasels is two fold. Firstly, it’s instructive for our visit to Stoke. It’s not their long throws, long balls or their distaste for possession football that makes them worthy of loathing.

Frankly, percentage football has its place. It can be exciting, positive even. Though I wouldn’t encourage Arsenal to start playing percentages (we don’t have the players for it anyway), a long throw into the box can get the heart racing and create incident. It can also be very effective. We needn’t get too precious about that. What makes Stoke worthy of our contempt is their contravention of the rules with the shirt pulling and the leg snapping. Plus, their manager wears that annoying fucking cap. Without wishing to get all Trinny and Susannah on your arses, any man over 50 that wears a baseball cap and a tracksuit needs to be slapped. Repeatedly.

Secondly, it refocuses the objective of finishing 3rd. It now becomes more than just avoiding an inconvenient qualifier, Chelsea’s participation in the Final makes 3rd the new golden ticket. Spurs and Newcastle in the chasing pack, now know that 4th might not be enough, which could make them compete that bit harder. I have the uncomfortable feeling from players and supporters that 3rd place is being taken for granted.

I’m still of the mind that there is plenty of evidence for anxiety. Maybe I need to bosh a Diazepam and get in touch with my inner Eno, but a season of relying on a core of 15 or so players pretty constantly looks to be taking its toll. Two of our most regular players are now injured for the rest of the season in the shape of Arteta and Walcott (the latter has as many games as van Persie under his belt this season). Alex Song has 43 Arsenal appearances this season and it’s beginning to show in some of his decision making. But most chiefly the signs are that, after a season which has deservedly reaped individual reward, van Persie is out of steam.

This piece, written prior to the Chelsea game, provides an excellent forensic study of his form of late. Defences have become much more perceptive about his favoured positions, but the chances he missed against Chelsea showed a rare lack of poise in his decision making too. The worry here is that our second most likely scorer on current form is a centre half.

Ramsey, though overly criticised, currently enjoys the shooting precision of the ghost of Kaba Diawara. Gervinho has joined the likes of Yaya Toure and Demba Ba in a post African Nations funk. That tournament seems to provide enough latter season funk to fill a couple of Parliament LPs. Walcott is now banjaxed, probably for the remainder of the season. As frustrating as he can be and as infuriatingly negligent as he has been in protecting Sagna over the last few weeks, he is both our second top scorer and the main supply line to van Persie.

It’s no coincidence that van Persie thanked Walcott explicitly in his PFA Player of the Year award acceptance speech. There is a lot of talk of buying new players in order to convince van Persie to stay, but with Walcott in the self same contractual position, it could hinge just as much on keeping what we have too. In any case, we are now missing players that are vital cogs in our side and others look fatigued. It looks to me as though we will crawl over the finishing line.

Moving on and having attended the latest Arsenal Supporters’ Trust meeting this week, it would appear a slight change in general admissions ticketing policy will be announced by the club very soon. It seems as though supply and demand will be at the heart of it. Category A admission prices could rise. Realistically, the club knows they can pack out games against Manchester United, Spurs etc twice over even if the donation of vital organs was part of the cover price.

On the flipside, the pricing categories for less attractive games will stretch and more matches will be effectively downgraded in recognition. So Bolton at home on a Wednesday night would, logically, be cheaper next season. The ultimate upshot would mean there will be more cheap tickets around next season and a better value for season ticket holders, who will be unaffected by the Category A price rise. I’m not a huge fan of category based pricing, @timbo_slice1991 puts together a good argument against that here. Incidentally, in attending all 19 Premiership away matches this season, I have paid £168 more in total than a supporter of Wolves or Wigan making the exact same commitment.

It also looks as though the club will resist the call to move away supporters to the pricier environs of the upper tier. I have to say I applaud the club’s stance here. As an away supporter myself, I don’t think it’s right that travelling fans are made to pay higher prices when no choice exists as to where to sit. I understand the objective of making more of the cheaper seats available to home fans, but to do so at the expense of the away support, which is a captive market, is inherently unfair. I think for matters such as this, which serve a general interest, our parochial selfishness should be put aside and we should all recognise the commonality of the football fan. (Hey, I think that Diazepam is kicking in).

On a final note, if you are attending / have attended (depending on when you read this), the Arsenal Ladies game with Chelsea at the Emirates on Thursday night, they play the same opposition in the Women’s F.A. Cup semi final at Brentford’s Griffin Park on Sunday. Admission is a recession busting £3 for adults, £1.50 for phogeys and nippers. Why not go along and support? Arsenal Reserves also play their last match of the season at Underhill on Wednesday evening too and admission is totally free. Until next week, hasta mañana Arse bandits.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
April 26, 2012 posted by arseblog

Penalties, discipline and shop windows

Penalties, discipline and shop windows

I’m not much of a betting man really. From time to time I’ll get a tip and throw a couple of quid on it, win a few quid back, then fritter that few quid away betting on stuff I really have no clue about. But I’m sorry now I didn’t have a pop on both Spanish clubs going out of the Champions League this week. I’d have said the odds would have pretty generous.

Last night it was Madrid’s turn and after a great first half the away goals rule stifled the second, and extra time, and then penalties. And if there was ever an illustration of how much of a penalty shoot-out is in the mind you saw it last night. Professional footballers, paid tens of thousands a week to do nothing else but kick a football, turned into hungover, Sunday League hackers.

Nueur made good saves from Ronaldo and Kaka but Munich made it easy for Casillas with two of the worst penalties you’ll ever seen, before Sergio Ramos, a man with all the mental strength of Timmaaaahh blasted his over the bar to more or less send Bayern into the final. Is it wrong to expect players to do better? Penalties aren’t really that difficult and the reason there’s pressure is because they’re at the very top of the game. Which is why they’re paid so much, these guys are supposed to be able to cope with that.

Look, we’ve had our share of penalty misery down the years but if I were a manager and one of my players hoofed one over the bar like that to cost us a place in the Champions League final I’d box his ears. To those who say ‘Well, at least he had the balls to take one’, that’s what he’s fucking well paid to do. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t also box the ears of strikers who stood by or refused, but still. Bayern’s penalties were slightly less shit and so they went through. Great drama, I guess, and shoot-outs are always fun for the neutral, but let’s not pretend it was a classic or anything.

Anyway, it is off-topic I know, and this will be the last mention of the Champions League this season. Unless Bayern win it.

Considering we’ve got a rather important game with Stoke on Saturday it’s pretty quiet in terms of Arsenal news. Arsene is talking about sin-bins in football, an idea which isn’t a bad one at all, but because it would require some thought and intelligence to implement, as well as having to make some changes to an antiquated disciplinary system, is unlikely to happen.

That said, with much talk recently about the triple-whammy punishment in situations like the penalty we got at Wolves it might make sense. Wolves punishment was a penalty against them, a red card for their player and that player then being suspended for the next game, all for the slightest of contact. In these situations maybe a yellow card and 10 minutes in a sin-bin would be more than adequate.

It does seem ridiculously harsh for a relatively trivial offence, particularly when the more serious offences carry a maximum three game ban. Again though, we’re reliant on people who are clearly resistant to any kind of change to make decisions they simply don’t want to make, content to muddle through with things the way they are, burying their heads in the sand until any temporary fuss blows over when the limitations of the current system are exposed.

What’s that about late, studs-up challenges to the knee which could be punished retrospectively? Can’t quite remember? You need to quit living in the past old chap. We’ve all moved on now.

Speaking of discipline, The Sun reports that Arsene Wenger has decided against appealing his ban for racism match-fixing corruption bribery tapping-up players bringing the game into disreptute speaking to, and about, a referee. Perhaps he just thinks it’s more trouble than it’s worth, given the fact you’re dealing with idiots who consider what he did was worse than racist chanting. And who would blame him?

UEFA continue to be soft on things which really need a firm hand, yet their schoolmarm approach to trivial matters mean they undermine themselves. There’s no real harm in being strict when it comes to applying the rules, but when the rules themselves are nonsense then it does nothing to provide a solution to of any of the issues the game has. Everyone who has been through school will know that strictness only works if combined with fairness. When you’ve got a seemingly arbitrary system of punishments which makes light of the worst offences then you don’t solve any problems, you just create more.

Meanwhile, two of our on loan players talk about their futures. Both Carlos Vela and Nicklas Bendtner were considered surplus to requirements last summer and nobody had any real complaints. In hindsight, considering the contributions of both Chamakh and Park, we might have done better to hold onto them, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. The first successful fortune-teller/football manager hybrid will be the most successful man ever.

Bendtner says he doesn’t think he’d sign with Sunderland even if they offered him a deal. Which I doubt they will anyway, so he’s got the Euros as a nice big shop window, while Carlos Vela is quite sanguine about his prospects, admitting Arsenal have a right to get some money for him but he says:

The decision is Wenger’s. If he says he’ll sell me, then I’ll have to find another team for next season. If he says that I’ll stay then I’ll need to speak to him and ask him to let me go because it’s clear my intention is not to go back.

He’s having a good time in Spain, 11 goals this season, which might well help us get a decent price for a player who I think we have to accept is never going to do it in England. Some will say he didn’t have the chances at Arsenal to prove himself, I think he had plenty and perhaps with more application on the training ground he’d have had even more.

It is easy to suggest he and Bendtner would have offered more than Park or Chamakh this season, but then so would Tony Woodcock and Paul Mariner. We had to judge them on what they did last season, not what they might have done this time around.

Right, that’s yer lot. Back tomorrow with an Arsecast.