Category Archives: Arsecast

Arsecast
February 15, 2013 posted by arseblog

Please let the quietness end + Arsecast 267

Please let the quietness end + Arsecast 267

Hello and welcome to Friday after what has been a seriously, seriously quiet week.

You would think we were in the depths of summer or the very belly of an Interlull, such has been the lack of news and goings-on. Of course much of that is all the fault of the team and Arsene Wenger for winning last weekend. Nothing destroys modern football conversation and coverage than not having something to complain vociferously and unceasingly about. Shame on them.

But now we should have stuff. There’s the FA Cup tomorrow. There’s Champions League in midweek. And both against teams we should enjoy beating. I know there’s very little in terms of genuine rivalry with Blackburn, but we’ve had some scraps down the years, and any club that can look back on a cast that includes Dalglish, Shearer, Sutton, Savage, Hughes, Allardyce and, of course, David Dunn (the man with the biggest head in football) deserves to be held in some manner of contempt. Even if they’re no longer an issue on a season by season basis.

These days their players are paid in metric tons of chicken wings which they have to sell to local takeaways simply to survive. Not that I have any sympathy, a man’s gotta eat. You sign a contract with Blackburn, you know what it entails.

And then there’s Bayern in midweek. People gush over them, talk about what a brilliant, well-run, self-funded, cheap season ticketed club they are, and frankly that gives me a right pain in my hole. They might well have cheap tickets but what kind of brilliantly run club lets a horrendous, spineless, old man looking bottler like Arjen Robben take a crucial penalty in the most important final in club football?

If they were so great they wouldn’t allow the blue Russians to win the Champions League. For that reason alone they have rocketed to the upper echelons of my ‘Most hated clubs’ list and they will stay there forever because they made John Terry happy and anyone, or anything, who does that is worthy of my disdain and scorn. They made nasty people’s dreams come true. I wish them nothing but the very worst until the end of time.

You see, while I get all the focus on Arsenal – this being an Arsenal blog, naturally – I think we’ve lost sight a bit of the fact that all other clubs, and footballers at other clubs, are there to be hated. I can find a reason to hate any club you can think of. Even the most inoffensive ones are guilty of something. The game needs an edge, Blackburn and Bayern are hardly traditional rivals, but I’ve got my reasons to hope we send them off with their deformed tails between their legs.

There’s some good news in terms of injury. Thomas Vermaelen should be fit for the weekend, and assuming he comes through that game without any problems, that should be the left back sorted for Europe. With Nacho Man Randy Savage cup-tied, and Andre Santos enjoying his local churrascaria back in Brazil, Vermaelen is the obvious candidate to play there.

It still depends on Laurent Koscielny, whose calf injury will require a test before Blackburn. Jack Wilshere too will have a test on his thigh, and I have a feeling both will more than likely be rested (bench at best), for the FA Cup game. Hopefully that’ll mean Koscielny and Mertesacker in the middle against the less-than-brilliant Germans, and Vermaelen doing the do on the left hand side. We do have to come through Blackburn unscathed first though.

I suspect we’ll see some changes for tomorrow’s game, although it’s not as if we can rotate the entire first team. The squad lacks the depth to do that, so perhaps there’ll be a few changes – players like Gervinho, Diaby, Rosicky and Oxlade-Chamberlain starting, and the bigger guns kept on the sidelines where hopefully they won’t be needed. The manager will be looking for ‘fringe’ players to step-up, to show they’re capable of contributing in a meaningful way, and hopefully they can add to the little bit of momentum we’ve got going.

Anyway, not much else going on this morning. After a quiet week comes a pretty quiet Arsecast in which I’m joined by Goodplaya to shoot the Arsenal related breeze. There’s not a lot more to it than that! It’s a short one this week.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here 18mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

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Ok then, that’s that. There’ll be more throughout the day on Arseblog News, so have a look or follow @arseblognews on Twitter for instant updates.

Till tomorrow.

Arsecast
February 8, 2013 posted by arseblog

Some Santi stuff + Arsecast 266

Some Santi stuff + Arsecast 266

Morning all, it’s still very quiet as we prepare for Sunderland tomorrow.

I suppose that’s because the players who were away came back yesterday in dribs and drabs, and after medical assessments the only real training session will be this morning. At that point the manager will have a better idea of who he’s got available for the trip to Roker Park.

The previous encounter with Martin O’Neill’s team came on the first day of the season, a 0-0 draw which we should have won really, but at that point new boy Olivier Giroud didn’t have his shooting boots on and put a good chance wide. At their place it’s been quite tricky in recent seasons, we’ve won just one of the last four meetings and that was down to a very late Thierry Henry goal last year. Anyway, we’ll get more on that game from the manager this morning when he meets the press.

We wait and see how bad Laurent Koscielny’s knock is, I’m hopeful that the lack of crisis/drama headlines means it’s not that bad, and hopefully Thomas Vermaelen will have recovered in time anyway. The captain is the only one making any headlines this morning with a couple of stories on the official site. The old ‘We can beat anyone’ and ‘It’ll be tough at Sunderland’ stuff isn’t really that interesting though.

Elsewhere Santi Cazorla says he feels comfortable at Arsenal because of almost Spanish way that way we play football (just missing the old ruthless efficiency and winning things). He says:

I have always been at ease on the pitch. In my case too, you do not notice much difference between Arsenal and playing in Spain, because we are also a side who like to play with the ball.

The boss has a philosophy of playing football, it is always trying to find attacking football, of having the ball and because of the characteristics of the players we have, it is what comes easiest to us.

Which is great but it’s implementing that philosophy on cold February afternoon on a pitch that looks like it has been churned up for a re-enactment of World War I that’s the issue. Last year the Sunderland pitch did for Per Mertesacker, a twisted ankle and he was gone for the season. I do think there’s more to come from Cazorla though; his effort is never in question but sometimes he’s a bit ineffective for a guy with his talent.

Given our position in the league, and the points required to finish in the top four, we really do need to start building some momentum. Guys like Cazorla, Podolski and Giroud have well and truly settled now. They know what to expect from English football and from their teammates, and vice-versa. We have to hope that this increased understanding in the final months of the season is enough to win the amount of games we’ve got to win to secure a top four position.

The competition is greater than it has been in recent seasons. Relying on Sp*rs being Sp*rs and collapsing is not going to do it, and even Liverpool are beginning to suggest that they’re going to be in the mix right until the end. Therefore, it’s incumbent on guys like Cazorla, one of the big talents in the team, to add a little more end product. Of course it’s not just down to him, it goes for everyone, but often it’s a player or two who drags a team kicking over the line they need to cross, and it strikes me Cazorla is one of those who could do just that. We shall see.

That aside there’s very little stirring until we hear from the manager, so a final reminder to get your questions in for Mikel Arteta if you’d like to win a pair of his new boots. We have to send the best questions in this afternoon, so there’s a lunchtime deadline. All the info is in this post, leave an ‘arse’ with your question and your Twitter account, and we’ll take it from there.

Right then, time for this week’s Arsecast and I’m joined by Gingers4Limpar to shoot the breeze about the week that was. There’s a play on an old theme, and the usual waffle. Please excuse my voice, it’s a bit wrecked, but for good reason which I explain in the ‘cast itself.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here 20mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Ok then, that’s that. There’ll be more throughout the day on Arseblog News, all the latest team news etc, so have a look or follow @arseblognews on Twitter for instant updates.

Till tomorrow.

Arsecast
February 1, 2013 posted by arseblog

He’s gotta be, so Nacho + Arsecast 265

He’s gotta be, so Nacho + Arsecast 265

So deadline day came and went and we bought somebody but it was somebody nobody had ever mentioned before but everybody was an expert and knew all kinds of stuff about him even though they didn’t seem to know it the day before yesterday and basically I’m glad the transfer window is over because it’s all a big distraction from the real thing.

Am I satisfied with our business? I’d have to say I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t do more. I still worry about our striking options but as I mentioned yesterday, given the way we defend perhaps a defender would have been a smarter move. And we got one. Nacho Monreal has signed from Malaga. A Spanish international, ex teammate of Santi Cazorla, and an experienced left-back.

Arsene Wenger says:

We are delighted that Nacho Monreal has agreed to join us. We have been monitoring him for some time now and are really pleased that we’ve been able to agree this move today. Monreal is a strong left-sided defender with good experience at both club and international level.

He is a technically gifted player, a good crosser in the final third and strong in the air. Monreal will add quality to our squad and of course, to our defensive unit. We all look forward to him playing for us

Now, I know Andre Santos fails to convince, and even if Gibbs is out for three weeks, I’m not especially convinced that a left back was that high a priority. I think I’d have preferred to see another centre-half come in which would have meant in the short term Thomas Vermaelen could have filled in there until Gibbs returned. And when you consider Gibbs has been one of the brighter stories of this particular season it seems a bit of an odd one, but hey, faced with the prospect of nobody coming in at all then I’ll take it.

Perhaps there’s some method to the manager’s madness. I remember in the 2009 transfer window almost everyone was crying out for a centre-half, so Arsene went out and bought Andrei Arshavin. This time, with folks looking for a striker or a bit more midfield solidity/creativity, he’s bought a left back who will, at the very least, spawn an immeasurable number of puns based on his name.

NACHO MAN SAVES ARSENAL WHEN CHIPS ARE DOWN

M-UNREAL – NACHO’S 45 YARD ROCKET SLAYS VAN PERSIE

And so on. And while I welcome him and hope he does well, I also have to ask how much of an impact we can seriously expect him to have on the way we play and the fact that this team isn’t strong enough to maintain a title challenge. We’ve spoken many times about how January is not the ideal time to try and buy the players you want. Look at the David Villa situation – we were in for him in a serious way, I believe he was very interested in the move, but Barcelona refused to sell in January (and we surely refused to pay so far over the odds that they’d have a change of heart).

Now that was a signing that you could envisage impacting the team in a bigger way than a left back, and I say that with all due respect to our new boy. Did we have back-up targets? I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything about a striker beyond Villa, so perhaps not. Maybe there’s nobody out there the manager fancied or who was available.

And as frustrating as all that might be, there’s little point in spending for the sake of spending, but maybe some work needs to be done behind the scenes so that all our transfer eggs aren’t put into one basket. I’d also ask if we’d have signed Nacho Monreal if Gibbs hadn’t been injured on Wednesday night. I suspect he’d have stayed in Spain for the remainder of the season – and I’m not convinced this is a summer signing brought forward either. It seems reactive, rather than planned, and ultimately that’s a worry.

It means there’s great competition for the left back spot now, but somebody’s going to lose out: it’s either the new £10m signing or part of our much-lauded ‘British core’ who has just signed a 5 year deal. Que sera, sera and all that, but again I’m struggling to believe this was part of a deliberate strategy. We’ve spent a lot of money because of a thigh strain and the fact that Andre Santos has probably gone past the point of no return now. Maybe that’s as good a reason to spend as any, the proof will be when we see this guy play and how Gibbs responds. I’m sure it will be a positive move, but it does feel like we’re scratching around in the dark a little bit.

Update: Arsene Wenger has revealed that Kieran Gibbs could be out for up to a couple of months, which certainly puts the move into better context. May the best man and, more importantly, Arsenal, win.

Beyond that nothing much happened from an Arsenal point of view. Chuks Aneke will spend the rest of the season on loan at Crewe and I was a little surprised that the likes of Eisfeld didn’t go out for a spell to get some first team football, but it was a fairly quiet day all round. I think it’s still possible for loans to lower leagues too.

So, what we have, we hold. This is the group of players who are now tasked with having a go at Bayern Munich, stepping up the chase for a top four finish and going the distance in the FA Cup. It’s going to take some improvement to do that; they need to find consistency above all else, cut out the crap at the back, and then we’ve got a chance. Yet every failure, every dropped point, every silly goal conceded, is going to be played out in the light of Arsene talking about having a ‘top, top’ squad, a ‘complete’ squad, the relative lack of January investment, and all the rest.

Tedious, it might be, but that’s the reality. I believe this is a group of players who are certainly capable of more than we’ve seen from them this season. There’s no lack of experience, there’s a fair amount of quality, and this isn’t a situation which is alien to us. We’ve been here before and we’ve shown the stones to get it done. It is really a matter now of digging deep, for those who can lead to do so through words and actions, and let’s hope it’s enough for us to achieve what we need to between now and May.

Once that’s done (fingers crossed), then a serious discussion needs to take place about how we improve the team and make it competitive enough to challenge for the league title again. As I’ve always said, winning the league isn’t the requirement for me, it’s knowing that we’ve done everything we can to try and win it. If we lose out to a better team, then that’s football, but I don’t believe we’ve done as much as we can this season (amongst others) and that’s the big frustration.

Anyway, without being blind to the failings, my glass tends to be on the half-full side. I like to believe that simply pulling on the red and white shirt gives them powers beyond those of mere mortals, and I sincerely hope that’s the case between now and May. I want us to win every game, play well and be in a position to improve come the summer. The alternative does not bear thinking about.

Right then, onto this week’s Arsecast, and due to the day that was in yesterday, it would have been out of date and stuff if I’d recorded early in the day. So what I did was record all day. I’m sure some of you would rather eat your own eyeballs, but it’s a journey through transfer deadline day with guest appearances from Gunnerblog, The Man from East Lower, Arse2Mouse, some poetry with Tony Adams and a bit of Amaury Bischoff PI at the end.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here 24mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

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News throughout the day on Arseblog News, a column from Tim Stillman here later. Back tomorrow with a Stoke preview.

 

Arsecast
January 25, 2013 posted by arseblog

Delicious quietness + Arsecast 264

Delicious quietness + Arsecast 264

Morning all.

I slept it in a bit this morning. I was dreaming I was playing in the Champions League final for Arsenal against Bayern Munich but 85 minutes of the game was taken up by an extended version of the Champions League music while Michel Platini was carried around on a throne like a Roman emperor. By the time the game kicked off I was so furious I got sent off within 10 seconds.

It’s pretty quiet from an Arsenal point of view and I have to say it’s quite welcome. Winning games, and winning them in the style we did on Wednesday night, means less discourse. There’s only so many times you can say Podolski was fantastic or that Giroud’s goals were great or how cheeky Cazorla’s finish was. There are, as most of you will well know by now, endless ways in which players, manager, board, club, the colour red, the colour white, cannons, all the letters of the word ‘Arsenal’ and pretty much everything else to do with us can be criticised after a defeat.

It is Critical Infinity. Just when you think there’s no way somebody can come up with something new … well, they don’t, they just re-hash a catchphrase or a theory and it all kicks off again. None of which is to say there isn’t merit to criticism when we don’t play well, when squad weaknesses are exposed and results are poor, I just prefer it when we win. The same way I prefer a pie filled with steak and Guinness to one which contains the worm-infested poo of sickly hippo and gravy made from the dirt found under the talon-like fingernails of hobos.

For those interested in transfers and what have you, there’s nothing doing. There’s a bit about the guy Diame at West Ham but it is the classic story of how Arsenal have ‘missed out’ on a player that we probably had no interest in whatsoever. It’s curious that all these stories emerged about his release clause, almost as if an agent were feeding that information into the public domain just in case it might spark some interest. Although that would suggest that the whole transfer market is nothing but a cynical merry-go-round of people trying to make as much money as possible and, frankly, I’m not in the mood to besmirch our beautiful game like that.

Ahead of the game against Brighton tomorrow, a couple of the new boys have been talking about their roles in the team. Firstly, Lukas Podolski says he’s got no problem playing on the left:

I played on the left for Cologne sometimes and also for the national team. It is not something special. When I play as a No 10 or a striker, I am in the position to score more goals and I can shoot more. But with the style of game at Arsenal, I do well on the left side and I am happy to play there.

What’s interesting to me is that you can see how he could do it down the middle. He’s quick enough and he’s got a left foot like Thor’s hammer, but the quality of his delivery from the left hand side is fantastic. The ball all the way across to Walcott on Wednesday night could not have been more perfect, and with someone like Giroud in the middle, who looks as good a 6 yard box poacher as we’ve had for some time, then it makes a lot of sense to play him out there.

And speaking of Giroud, he’s happy with what he’s done so far but is looking for more:

It is good thing to reach this number, but I want to keep going and score more goals. I know my team-mates very well, so I feel really good in games. I have scored 11 goals and I have nine assists but I know I can do more.

I think he’s a decent player, one who seems to be finding his feet in English football now, and while people will always compare him with the Dutch Skunk (just because he’s the one who replaced him), I think that’s a bit unfair. It was obvious the jazz-handed, traitorous gleet-hound had something special underneath the layers of bandages and knee braces, and Giroud is a bit more conventional. But he was brought in with Podolski to replace those goals and they’ve done ok.

The bigger issue, of course, is that he’s the only central striker we have, and thus becomes a lightning rod for criticism when we don’t play well or drop points. It’s not his fault he’s the only option. Still, I think there’s more to come from him, and Podolski, and if by magic we actually bring in another forward then perhaps it’ll be good for all concerned.

Right then, onto this week’s Arsecast and I’m joined by @thegoonerholic to shoot the breeze about West Ham, Chelsea, Theo Walcott and a trip to the seaside.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here 24mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Right, there’s a press conference this morning, we’ll have news and updates on Arseblog News (and on the Twitter account), so check there for all the info you need.

Finally for for today, the winner of our Dennis Bergkamp print competition is Amelia Chan. Well done to you, I’ll be in touch to get all the details – and don’t forget to check out Dan’s store where you can buy your own or one of his other Arsenal related prints.

More here tomorrow with an FA Cup preview. Till then.