Nov

30

Arsenal craven at the Cottage

Filed Under The Arsenal | 884 arses

We wanted a reaction after the Bolton game. We wanted a performance. We wanted to see desire, spirit, hunger. We didn’t get it, we got beaten 2-1 and it’d be a struggle to even suggest we deserved anything more from the game.

With important games on the horizon the manager made some changes but they do say there’s no game more important than your next one and there’s no question the team we picked underestimated Fulham. Like anyone who saw the game you’ll have seen Alex Song so far out of his depth that you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy. I know he’s not good enough, you know he’s not good enough - and it’s been fairly apparent since his first appearance - but for some reason Arsene Wenger thinks he’s good enough.

Arsene looks forlornYou can say what you want about Arsene seeing more of the players than us but that doesn’t mean fans don’t know anything about the game. Alex Song is not good enough to play for Arsenal, certainly not the Arsenal we all expect to see, but if he’s picked what can he do? The blame for his selection and subsequent bad performance rests entirely on the shoulders of the manager. When our own fans, whose support was excellent all night long, are singing for Fabregas after about 15 minutes then you know something is wrong.

As usual we let the opposition score first and once again it was from a corner. McBride got a good head to the ball but Jens Lehmann should have done better and it crept in at the far post. Then they went two up when Song was nutmegged by Boa Morte who crossed for Radzinski to tap it home after he’d gotten ahead of Flamini.

Our goal, once again, was a set piece as Robin van Persie lashed home a great free kick from 30 yards but that was pretty much the sum total of our first half threat. In the second we hardly created anything more despite Cesc coming on for the hapless Song and our task was made more difficult when Philippe Senderos was given a second yellow card by Howard Webb whose favourite colour must be yellow. His red and a yellow for Kolo means they will both miss the Chelsea game next month. Fulham hit the bar from a free kick, Hoyte made a great tackle when Boa Morte was clean through and the former Arsenal man had one disallowed for offside.

For our part Henry had a goal disallowed for what looked like a very marginal offside, Theo Walcott hit the post and Gilberto had an effort blocked by a defender when van Persie played him brilliantly in. However, that sounds like we were some kind of threat in the second half and we really weren’t. It was a massively disappointing performance and with Sp*rs coming up on Saturday I’m worried because we appear to be slipping backwards at an alarming rate of knots.

Afterwards Arsene Wenger said:

We’re playing many games at the moment but the team showed great spirit and reactions, we fought until the end but it just doesn’t seem to be going for us at the moment.

I can’t fault the team but it’s difficult when you’re 2-0 down early on.

Wouldn’t it be possible to fault the team for being 2-0 down in the first place? That was the 9th time this season we’ve let the opposition score first in the league. Only once have we come back to win and that was against Charlton (thanks to the man from East Lower for the stats). By any standards that is a major flaw in the team and at the level we expect this Arsenal team to be at it’s shocking.

Arsene went on to say:

The offside decision against Thierry Henry was decisive. The coincidence of the decisions against us at the moment is very peculiar. We can put this decision along with the penalty decision we had turned down at West Ham. This fixture was a farce. What is important is that teams like Chelsea, who have already qualified in the Champions League, will not be playing at the weekend.

Sounds a little like clutching at straws for me. Sure, two poor decisions but that’s football. Poor decisions aren’t what’s costing us at the moment and there is no great conspiracy against Arsenal.

What is painfully obvious now though is that this team needs some serious work. I spoke last season about how competition for places was vital for players to maintain their form but we’ve still got the same problem. Who is there to challenge Gilberto for his place? Why is there nobody pushing Henry and van Persie as strikers? They know that Adebayor is not good enough to keep them out of the team on a long term basis. Beyond him we have nobody.

And as I said before I’m right behind the manager’s use of young players but I think we have to accept that some of them just aren’t as good as we’d like to think they are. Or maybe they aren’t progressing as well and as fast as they might because they don’t have enough experience around them to bring them on.

We won’t buy anybody in January. At the moment we have enough players. If you look at the number of players we have on loan — Bendtner, Lupoli — we are not going out on the market at all.

Now, Bendtner and Lupoli look like fine players but they’re not the answer to our problems. Neither are Kerrea Gilbert, Seb Larsson (who must be so fed up he’s out on loan at Birmingham while crap like Alex Song gets the chances he was never given despite looking a far better player) or any of the others. We need to go into the transfer market in January in a big way in my opinion. We need a top class midfield player to make Gilberto work hard for his chances when they come because he’ll be on the bench with this new player alongside Cesc, we need a striker to bring competition for places up front and spark performances from the captain in particular and we have to realise that we can’t go away from home and play all three of Cesc, Rosicky and Hleb. I’m not sure we can even play that trio at home.

This team needs more physical presence, it needs scrappers and battlers, someone who will get stuck in, make the opposition afraid and more than anything else it needs leadership. It’s so obviously lacking direction on the field, someone who will gee up his teammates, someone who isn’t afraid to give someone a good bollocking when required, someone who refuses to lose and drags his colleagues with every muscle screaming to the final whistle. At the moment this Arsenal team is a pale shadow of the brilliant teams Arsene Wenger has put together over the years, the balance between youth and experience is still all wrong despite the younger players growing up and unless he does something drastic to put it right I fear for us.

Arsene’s teams have always played nice, technical football, but we always had players who could put their foot in. Vieira, Petit, Grimandi, Parlour, Lauren, the ‘old’ back four, even Edu was a Brazilian with bite. Now we have a collection of wonderfully technical players who look, for the most part, like they couldn’t tackle their way out of a wet paper bag.

Yesterday the manager said this was a ‘moment of truth’ for this side and challenged his team to put in a performance that would silence the doubters. Sadly they couldn’t rise to the challenge. Not through lack of effort or because they don’t care but because fundamentally this team is flawed from front to back. The manager buys the players, the manager picks the team and the manager is the one who has to carry the can when things go wrong. If he insists on playing someone like Alex Song and resting Julio Baptista for a game we just had to win then I think it’s not unfair to question him and his methods.

The things we’re missing, the physical presence, the leadership, the organisation are patently not present in the group of players we have at the moment. There’s only one way to rectify those problems and that’s to get into the transfer market this January, bring in experience and quality because that’s what we need. The return of two 18 year old strikers is not going to turn things around.

A word for the Arsenal fans who went to the game, we could hear you singing all night long and you lot are a credit to the club. I hope, despite the disappointing result, the players acknowledged that this time.

So, another defeat to put behind us, we’ve got Sp*rs on Saturday and this time we really need to bounce back. Defeat to them is just unthinkable.

Finally, so as not to end on a down note, don’t forget Perry Groves will be signing copies of his book at Border’s bookshop in Islington this evening from 6pm. Tell him Arseblog sent you.

Nov

29

Fulham preview - squad rotation ahoy!

Filed Under The Arsenal | 1000 arses

So it’s Fulham tonight and a chance to put the disappointment of Saturday behind us. We welcome back Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie and Tomas Rosicky to the squad - and all three should start - but Julio Baptista is rested.

Explaining his decision to rest a player who hasn’t played very much the boss said:

There is no basic problem with him. He has just got to adapt to the pace of the game. He has just come back from six weeks out with injury, and I feel he needs to work, maybe he will play on Saturday. I am confident he will make a big impact here.

With the upcoming schedule pretty hectic it’s likely that there’ll be some ‘rotation’ of the squad tonight. With Sp*rs on Saturday, then Porto and Chelsea on the horizon the boss will be looking to use as much of his squad as possible. And he’s once again reiterated his belief in them and laid down the gauntlet to them, saying:

The period that comes up now for us is the moment of truth. We must not hide. There is a big obstacle in front of the players. I feel they are ready to jump it - and they have a fantastic leap.

We are the leapingest team in all the land. I know what he means though. We’ve seen flashes of what they can do this season. United away, Reading away, Liverpool at home - great performances, good results. The problem we’ve had is that there have been too many average results even though the performances have, in general, been better than the results would suggest.

A win tonight is vital but then so is a win against Sp*rs on Saturday, we must get a result in Portugal to qualify for the next stage of the CL and then it’s Chelsea where a good result could kick-start this team (but we might have said that before).

I don’t think this game is on the tv or if there are any streams so maybe following what happens tonight might not be easy. After making a Mylesesque prediction that we’d win against Bolton I’m keeping my mouth shut this time but I’ll have my lucky hat on, don’t you worry. I suggest you all do the same. No, not my lucky hat. It’d never fit all of us. Get your own lucky hats.

In other news Arsene Wenger has said giving Fabio Cannavaro the Ballon d’Or ahead of Thierry Henry was a ‘mistake‘ while the Mirror reports that Birmingham will bid £3m for Nicklas Bendtner if they get promoted.

Finally for today it’s time to announce the winners of our Kolo t-shirt competition with thanks to Goalhanger.com. The answer to the very difficult question was that we signed Kolo from ASEC Mimosas (although like many of you I’d love to see a team called EPIC Boombastas) and the RNG did its thing so the winners are Emmanuel Kisiangani and Matthew Hume. I’ll be in touch with you guys to get your address and shirt size details. The rest of you will have to break out the credit cards so you can look Kolotacular this Christmas.

And that’s it. More tomorrow when hopefully we’ll have three points in the bag and at this point I don’t care how we get them.

Nov

28

Wenger, wrongly, blames the new stadium for our woes.

Filed Under The Arsenal | 479 arses

Waking up this morning was quite a relief as I was in the middle of dreaming about writing the blog except somehow my index fingers on both hands had fallen off and I was struggling to type. I was also talking to some bloke from RedAction who had a massive trunk where his nose should be and he kept pausing to blow his trunk because he had the flu. Every time he did it he’d make a loud trumpet noise and three of four people around him would shout ‘Arsenal’ at the end like it was some kind of chant. Weird.

Also weird is Arsene Wenger’s belief that moving to the new stadium has been a factor is our slipping out of the title race. He says:

Away from home this year we have done well. But we have gone to a new ground. Manchester United or Chelsea would drop a few points at the start if they did that - and that’s what has happened to us. It is not completely illogical. We have just moved in, and we have slipped up, four times we have drawn 1-1.

That’s true enough in a way. It does take time to get used to new surroundings but I have to take issue with the belief we’ve done well away from home. We’re unbeaten at the new stadium but we’ve lost three times on our travels so it seems a bit strange for the boss to blame the Grove, or ‘Groundy’ as I affectionately call her, for our troubles. I agree we could have gained more points there but that’s down to giving away silly goals and poor defending rather than because it’s a sparkling, brand new stadium.

Vitalfootball (link removed because of their insistence on spamming the NewsNow Arsenal feed) and Goodplaya both mention the fact that the Arsenal players didn’t take time to give a clap to the fans who travelled so far to support them, very vocally, during the Bolton defeat. Goodplaya’s idea about making madatory is a good one, if you ask me. I’m sure it wasn’t a deliberate snub and I’m sure it was borne out of disappointment at losing to Bolton again but Arsenal has always been a club that sets standards and expects certain behaviour from its players on and off the pitch. This should be the same.

More than one fan has emailed about Emmanual Adebayor as well. At the final whistle he came off the pitch with his arms around El Hadji Diouf laughing and smiling. That didn’t go down well so somebody might want to have a word with him about that. Nobody is telling him who he can and can’t be friends with and talk to but a little awareness that Diouf is widely detested by Arsenal fans might mean he keeps his cosy chats to the sanctuary and privacy of the dressing room in the future. Not quite as bad as Wiltord swapping shirts up there at half time some seasons back but it upset a lot of people.

Ahead of tomorrow’s game against Fulham Gilberto says nobody will be giving up while we should have Thierry Henry back from injury although the boss says we can win without him if we need to. Just not on Saturday. We’ll definitely have Robin van Persie back from suspension and Arsene Wenger says we must get the best out of the potential of this team, saying:

The target is to get the best out of our potential, keep going and see where we finish at the end of the season but I am just sad that the players do not get rewarded for what they produce.

Some, including I, might say the best way to get the best out of our potential would be to augment the squad with some quality and experience. I love the concept of the young team and I think we’ve got some classy young players but I also think there are some who aren’t as good as we’d like to think they are. Still, the manager has said he won’t buy in January so now it’s all down to him and his ability to get the maximum from them.

Gerrard Houllier says it’s a ’scanal’ that Thierry Henry didn’t win the Ballon d’Or which was won by Fabio Cannavaro. It’s a bit of a shame but hardly a ’scandal’. There are worse things in life.

And that’s about it. Don’t forget the Kolo competition to win a t-shirt from my friends at Goalhanger.com. See yesterday’s blog for details and if you want to leave an audio message for this week’s arsecast just click here and do your thing.

Right then, I’m playing football tonight and after Saturday I’ve had this burning desire in me to play and kick someone about 8 feet up into the air. Watch out centre-forwards.

Nov

27

Two must wins coming up, win a Kolo t-shirt!

Filed Under The Arsenal | 900 arses

Another Monday and time to put the Bolton game and their typically graceless manager behind us. We’ve got plenty to occupy us with a trip to Craven Cottage to play Fulham on Wednesday and then it’s Sp*rs at the Grove on Saturday.

We’ll have Henry and van Persie back which will certainly add something to our attacking play and hopefully Tomas Rosicky will have recoverd in time to take part. Again, I hope the manager goes to 4-4-2, uses the strikers to the best of their ability and after the Reebok there will be some players with a point to prove.

There’s no question it’s a game we have to win not only for the points but to restore some pride, build some confidence and set us up for the visit of the old enemy at the weekend.

Other than that there’s not much happening this morning. Yesterday’s 1-1 draw between the red cunts and the blue cunts was probably the best result we could have hoped for but as they drop points we have to ensure we don’t drop any more between now and 2011.

Win a Kolo shirt from goalhanger.comAnyway, to try and cheer you up this morning I’ve got a little competition for you. I have two of these fantastic Kolo t-shirts to give away thanks to my good chums at Goalhanger.

All you have to do is answer the following question:

From which club did we sign Kolo Toure. Was it:

a) ASEC Mimosas
b) OPEC Tungrastas
c) EPIC Boombastas

Answers to kolo@arseblog.com and the winners will be announced on Wednesday morning when the Randon Number Generator will do its thing.

And that is that for now. More fallout, discussion and previews tomorrow.

Nov

26

Another horrible pay per view evening in Bolton

Filed Under The Arsenal | 560 arses

You know what, dear Readers, I have a fucking pain in my hole losing to Bolton. I especially have a pain in my hole losing to a Bolton side that really isn’t much fucking good. Maybe I was being overly optimisitic in the lead up to this game but I wasn’t expecting us to lose which is probably why the 3-1 defeat really upset me.

We were, let’s face it, pretty poor in the first half. When you know a team is going to get into you from the start you’d think you’d do the same but after 9 minutes we gave them a goal. They had a corner, Adebayor decided to run towards the centre circle instead of marking his man and Faye thumped home a header at the near post. Just fucking horrible defending. We did fuck all really and not long before half-time Nicolas Anelka scored a really outstanding goal, lashing it into the top corner from 25 yards. I suppose you could say he could have been closed down quicker but you can’t legislate for such a brilliant strike.

Arsene Wenger looks as happy as I feel..At that point you thought 2-0 at half-time would be too much but Gilberto got on the end of a Cesc cross to make it 2-1 and all to play for in the second half. And to be fair we were much better in the second half. We showed good spirit, some enthusiasm, we got involved physically and we made chances. We hit the woodwork three times and generally acquited ourselves far better but it only begged the question why we couldn’t have played like that in the first half. Sadly it was Anelka who made the game safe for Bolton with a very smart finish after being put through by Ivan Campo. I’ve seen offsides given in the past but while he was ahead of Toure there was no ‘daylight’, if that’s even a factor.

There was obviously no way we were going to come back from there despite Adebayor and Cesc hitting the woodwork after that point. Another miserable away day at the Reebok and if you were the bloke in the goalie’s top beside your mate wearing a blue Arsenal hat you were on TV more than some of our players today.

Afterwards Arsene Wenger wrote us out of the title race, saying:

We are too far behind. If you look at the number of points we have dropped and the way we have played it is really difficult to take. You feel on one hand there is a lot of quality in the side, but on the other hand we cannot transform that into points, so it is very disappointing to be such a long way behind because I feel we have a good chance to play with the top teams.

I suppose that’s a nod at the fact that we dominated games we should have won but ended up drawing or losing. He’s right though and while I have always talked up the quality that the young players have I feel we’re really lacking something in the side at the moment.

Anyone who has read Arseblog since it started will know I’ve always been a big fan of Freddie Ljungberg and it pains me to say this now but he’s pretty much finished. He contributes nothing, he can’t beat a man, he loses the ball and I lost count of how many challenges he pulled out of yesterday. After what he said about the young players this week it was a shockingly bad performance and we haven’t seen anything approaching decent form from Freddie for well over 2 years now. Surely this can’t be lost on the manager. I wanted him off the pitch after 20 minutes yesterday. Sadly it took Arsene 70 to put us out of our misery.

Honestly, I would be so happy to see the old Freddie back or at least a Freddie that could bring something to this team but getting caught in possession then sitting on your arse complaining to the referee isn’t what this team needs. To perform like he did today just makes a mockery of his pathetic attempts to lay the blame for the team’s woes at the feet of the younger players when it’s shite like he dished up today that causes us far more problems. I would be more than happy to be proved wrong and see Freddie back performing and amongst the goals but I’m not optimistic.

Adebayor played as the lone striker and we might as well have played Inanimate Carbon Rod for all he did. He was useless and while I realise he hit the bar, the same way Freddie’s one contribution was to hit the woodwork, once you get beyond Henry and van Persie we don’t have another striker to speak of. Adebayor is not the answer. Arsene Wenger spoke before the game about how he brought a physical presence to the team. In a very literal sense that’s true - physically he actually exists and takes up space but he doesn’t put himself about, centre-halves aren’t worried about him, he doesn’t scare anyone. We need better than him and having a player whose idea of marking at a corner is to run the opposite way from the ball is a fucking joke.

As well as that I think people have, in the wake of the Cuntley Cunt situation, remembered Gael Clichy being far better than he actually is. He has some fine moments but gives the ball away too much, makes some very basic errors defensively and put him in an attacking position he’ll put the ball over the back of the stand before he’ll put in a decent cross. Maybe he’s still just rusty but how long can we wait for him to pick it up (and that’s assuming he can)? On the other side Emmanuel Eboue showed he’s not learning how to defend fast enough and whatever you might think about the Davies incident I was embarrassed to see him writhe around then ‘need’ three or four minutes treatment to his head after a push in the chest. We have good centre-halves but we’re weak in the full back positions. I really hope Lauren can get fit and get back in this team because his character is what we need on night’s like last night. His determination, his willingness to get involved physically, his experience and leadership would serve us far better than Eboue’s constant whining and rolling around. He can defend too.

Anyone who thought we might be better off without Thierry Henry today was living in a dream world. Henry and van Persie are the only two strikers we have. After that it’s reserve stuff. Aliaidere is patently not going to make it, Theo is a winger and Adebayor is just not good enough for all his effort. He’s just not somebody you would have any faith in to score at any time in any game? He works hard and I like him but I really don’t think he’s the right player for us. The boss might need to rethink playing Baptista as a midfielder and get him up top where his physical presence and strength might make a difference.

All that aside for the manager to rule us out of the title race at the end of November is tremendously disappointing.

He says he’s not going to buy anyone in January because of the players we have on loan but can anyone honestly see Bendtner, Lupoli, Muamba, Larsson, Gilbert or Carlos Vela solving the problems we have? I know we have Diaby back but would he have made any difference today? I don’t think so. What we do need is a physical presence in midfield. Gilberto covers and does defensive work very well but he’s a ‘nicker’, he’s not the kind of man who’ll crunch into tackles. I felt sorry for Cesc trying to win anything in midfield with little help from anyone.

In conversation with the man from East Lower we agreed there are too many small men in the team. Cesc, Rosicky, Hleb, Ljungberg, Flamini etc. Barcelona, for example, also have lots of small men (Deco, Xavi, Iniesta, Gio, Messi, Giuly) but they nearly always play one of Edmilson, Motta or Marquez to anchor the midfield, win the ball, not allow them to get bullied and then give the ball to little guys who can use it well. Would Djourou in midfield be an option?

I try and stay positive for the most part and I know this is only the third league game we’ve lost this season but it’s left me feeling very low. Maybe it’s because it’s Bolton and we all hate Bolton and wanted some measure of revenge but I think it goes a bit deeper than that. It’s because we should have played for 90 minutes like we did in the second 45, it’s because it’s now apparent that some of players are no longer/never were up to the task and it’s because the manager has said we’re not in the title race.

Maybe that’s his way of taking the pressure of his players but it’s more likely to be an honest call from a man who knows his team isn’t capable of winning the league. What makes it more disappointing is that this season’s Chelsea look more vulnerable than they ever did and United, despite their great start, don’t look as good a team as United teams we’ve seen in the past. Sadly our team hasn’t been able to make the step up to put the pressure on them that might have made them crack a bit.

What’s worse is that if we’d played in the first half with the spirit and effort we did in the second half we could have won this game. We really did play well in the second half but why did it take two Bolton goals or a half-time teamtalk to spark us into life? Maybe we’re dreaming of halcyon days but there was a time when we had leaders who wouldn’t have accepted a below par first half like that. We’ve got excellent players now but we lack leadership and inspirtation on the pitch.

Certainly players and captains of the past would not have moved one travelling fan to comment on the Arses yesterday:

My biggest gripe is that only Theo and then Gilberto even acknowledged some great support at in a sold-out Arsenal end, when we’ve all travelled 4 hours to see us get fucked up the arse one more time.

That is a shame. I’m sure the players were pissed off too but 30 seconds to give a nod to the fans who have travelled so far wouldn’t have been too hard, would it?

Anyway, I thought last season’s game at Bolton was the low point of last season. Let’s hope this is as bad as it gets this time around.

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