So the season has ended and we can take stock of where we are and the way we’ve performed. I’ve decided to a player by player analysis of each player and assign them a mark, just like in school. I just need to find a red pen with which to scribble on their report cards.

It’s broken up into two parts (today and tomorrow), and we start at the back with goalkeepers and defenders.

Goalkeepers

Wojciech Szczesny: Established himself as number 1 and the fact that Arsene Wenger chose to play him when injured, and requiring pain-killing injections, says a lot about the faith he’s got in him and the other options he has. Made some mistakes but I think these are necessary for a young keeper and he’ll learn quickly from them. Perhaps needs some competition next season to push him on but overall positive. B-

Lukasz Fabianski: Played just 6 games, didn’t really do anything wrong, but obviously the manager prefers an injured Szczesny to him and that must spell curtains for his Arsenal career. D

Vito Mannone: Made one substitute appearance against Olympiacos in the Champions League and provided one of the comedy moments of the season when trying to scissor-kick a ball he could have picked up. Has had a good loan spell at Hull by all accounts but like Fabianski will probably leave this summer. D

Manuel Almunia: Sat on the bench a couple of times, didn’t play once. It’s over.

Defenders

Bacary Sagna: Mr Consistent but a season blighted by injury. He returned and immediately improved us but seemed to struggle a bit towards the end of the season before that Norwich bloke broke his leg again. All the same a crucial part of our back four, you could see how much more effective Walcott was with him back in the side, so let’s hope he makes a full and quick recovery. B

Carl Jenkinson: Thrown in at the deep end, struggled as you might expect then, when presented with a chance to fill in for Sagna, spent months out with a stress fracture of his back. Has plenty to learn but works hard, crosses the ball well and there are positive signs. C

Per Mertesacker: I like him and I think he brings an organisational quality to our defence which we missed, especially in the final stages of the season. He made a couple of mistakes as he adapted to English football but criticism of his lack of pace misses the point. Others have plenty of that and make errors. I think he’ll be important next season as we try and find proper balance at centre-half, and I think he was a good, steadying influence on a team that was all over the place at the start of the season. C+

Laurent Koscielny: Our second best player this season and makes a lie of those who say Arsene Wenger can’t sign defenders. Quick, committed, stronger than last season, and at times carried the defence. If this improvement continues he’ll be a real force next season. Deserves all the plaudits he gets. A

Thomas Vermaelen: I love his character and spirit, as well as his determination to get goals (6 league goals this season is a great return from a centre-half), but his forays forward have left us exposed at the back. Also guilty of a number of slips/errors for which others would be crucified. Am not fully convinced that he and Koscielny work as well together as they might. Should do better. C

Johan Djourou: Went from being reliable and strong to timid and flaky. Not helped by being asked to play at full back when he’s clearly not a right back, but will surely acknowledge that his performances have not been up to par. Now firmly fourth in the pecking order, he’s got work to do if he wants first team football. D-

Sebastian Squillaci: Started just four games (2 Carling Cup, 1 Fa Cup, 1 dead rubber Champions League game) and looks like a player bereft of any confidence whatsoever. It hasn’t worked out for him and I suspect he’ll be gone in the summer.E

Kieran Gibbs: Again a season affected by injury when he might have really kicked on, but I think there are positive signs. The competition with Santos is interesting and the block against West Brom may well be one of my favourite moments of the season. C

Andre Santos: The cuddly maverick himself. He’s quite something, left back/inside left/free-roaming playmaker. He plays with an enthusiasm that’s great to see and despite a torrid introduction to English football, improved as he adapted. The injury was a shame, but he’s capable of contributing high up the pitch, something we haven’t had from left back for some time. He’s also better defensively than given credit for and has a stabby tackle that’s very much his own. C+

Others (ungraded): Ignasi Miquel played 9 times and acquited himself quite well but you have to think he needs a loan spell next season in order to progress properly. Nico Yennaris had a couple of interesting and encouraging cameos but the same must apply to him too (he actually went to Notts County on loan but only played twice).

—

So, that’s it for keepers and defence. Tomorrow we can look at the midfield and attacking side of the team.

Other than that there’s very little going on this morning. I have nothing to say about departed players who criticise Arsenal fans for talking about him while he continues to talk about Arsenal. The hypocrisy and classlessness is stark enough for most people to see the true colours there.

And while the Invincibles have rightly been named the best team of the Premier League era, the whole concept of a ‘Premier League era’ is a load of old bollocks. It ignores the fact that football, and great football at that, existed long before Sky and the marketing men got their greedy hands on the game.

“We’ve never seen anything like this”, bleated the pundits after an admittedly exciting end to this season, but frankly anyone who thinks Man City struggling to beat off 10 man relegation fodder at home is more worthy than Arsenal having to beat the reigning Champions by two clear goals at their own ground – and doing so in the final seconds of injury time – is off their rocker.

Till tomorrow.

So, it has begun already. The season is barely finished and the summer transfer madness has kicked in. I say madness because there’s a lot of talk, a lot of hype, a lot of speculation and frankly, it should barely register on our Give-a-fuck-ometers because it’s nothing anyone who has even a passing interest in football couldn’t have predicted.

Obviously it involves Robin van Persie and there are two main stories this morning. In the first, the BBC report that the captain will have a meeting with Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis at the manager’s house on Wednesday morning. The second is in the Mirror who say that Manchester City would like to sign him.

Well blow me down. All season long Robin, and the club, have said that they will discuss his future at the end of the season. The season has ended, it’s time for discussion. It’s good to hear that the meeting is scheduled but this is something we all knew was going to happen. I suspect Robin is more than aware of what’s on offer from us, as he will be as to what’s on offer elsewhere, so the meeting will be about more than money and contract length.

As for the City story, well the only way I’d be surprised is if they weren’t interested. It wouldn’t be a summer without them trying to sign one what they think is one of our best players. The difference this time, of course, is that van Persie is our best player. He’s not a troublesome egomaniac, a rapidly slowing down centre half or a greedy bottler who would have moved to FC Mars if the money had been good enough.

There’s so much misinformation out there that the fear we have of not keeping him adds credibility to it. So van Persie’s agent met Brian Marwood three months ago. And? Of course the risible goal.com stick a headline on it to make it sound covert when it was anything but and the agent’s quotes confirm that. But we can’t let truth or facts get in the way of a good story, eh?

For me, it’s very simple. I think van Persie will stay if he feels his ambitions can be fulfilled at Arsenal. We cannot compete with what Man City (or others) can offer financially, but I don’t think Robin’s decision will be based on that. It might well be a factor but not the main part of it. That’s not to say he doesn’t deserve a bumper new contract, he does, and it ought to be head and shoulders above what anyone else is earning, for all kinds of reasons.

But it’s up to the manager and Ivan Gazidis to assure the captain that he can win things with Arsenal. They cannot do that with words and promises alone, they have got to improve the squad. It sounds simplistic, but some of the players who haven’t contributed need to go and some more productive ones need to come in. And not just in order to keep Robin, you cannot be held over a barrel by one player no matter how good he is, but for the good of the club as a whole. Yes, we have to respect the market and the situation many clubs find themselves in, but we also have go about fixing the problems we’ve created for ourselves.

If van Persie signs a new deal I think it would be a hugely encouraging sign because it would suggest that the improvements necessary for us to challenge for the title will be made. It goes beyond keeping him, it means that we’d become a better team, because we’d have better players. If he goes then it’d be another case of Arsenal seemingly lacking ambition and lacking the ability to hold onto its big name players, an all too familiar problem over the last few years.

Of course there’s another option, and that’s Robin staying, announcing that, but not signing a new deal which leaves him free to leave on a Bosman next summer – without ruling out the possibility of signing a new contract if he chooses too also. But while many are leaning towards that as the most likely option, I don’t feel that’s in the best interests of Arsenal as a club. We need some kind of closure, we cannot have another situation where a transfer saga drags on all summer and the speculation about his future continues throughout the following season. I can just imagine the ‘He’s got his eyes on a move, not committed anymore’ stories and discussions if he went through a bad patch.

One way or the other we’ll get something definitive soon enough, I’m sure of that. For everyone’s sake we can’t let it drag on. We can only hope that the lessons we needed to learn from last summer have been taken on board and that we do what needs to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s not just about making Robin van Persie stay because he’s Robin van Persie, it’s about making him stay because he’s confident and assured that the team he’ll captain next season can challenge for the title. It’s a not quite vicious circle, it could be a very friendly circle if we get it right, so it’s over now to the boss and the chief executive to do what’s necessary.

If the early signing of Lukas Podolski is an encouraging sign, we have to remember we tend to do this every season. An early transfer is followed by a period where we don’t seem to do much business at all (Chamakh in May, Nasri in late June, I think, Gervinho early enough last summer), so while I am optimistic we’ve changed our spots slightly, the proof will be in how efficient the rest of our dealings are.

And speaking of Podolski, we’ve got our first sight of him in an Arsenal shirt and he says both Arsene Wenger and Per Mertesacker played a part in his decision to join us, and also says:

I’m now looking forward to the challenge at my new club and cannot wait to start after Euro 2012.

At which point we should know how central, literally, his role at the club will be next season. In the meantime we’ll await a van Persie update which tells us something we don’t already know because anything else is pointless.

Finally, the makers of the Arseblog iPhone app have a new app made for you transfer loving mofos, check it out here.

Till tomorrow.

Match report – Video – By the numbers

It was the 92nd minute of the game when Arsene Wenger, as fraught with nerves as I’ve ever seen him, clung to Pat Rice as a Robin van Persie chance went begging.

I think we all knew how he felt.  I’d have tried to cuddle Pat too if I were there. It was tense. One goal for West Brom would mean finishing 4th as Sp*rs were leading Fulham 2-0. We were sitting deeper and deeper and struggling to hold onto the ball whenever we did get it. We boffed it long, they’d come back at us, and when it opened up for the Baggies just after that van Persie chance, I thought we were done. Genuinely.

I could see the ball nestle in the far corner, a late repeat of what happened against Norwich, and with it our hearts broken again and our summer made complicated. Just as the West Brom player was about to shoot though, in slid Kieran Gibbs. It had be timed perfectly. Too late and it’s a goal, a little early and he might have given away a penalty. Thankfully, the timing was spot on and he produced one of the finest match-saving blocks I can remember. There were still 3 nail-biting minutes left but I think that moment it was sealed it for us.

And it had started so well. Yossi Benayoun had put us into an early lead when Marton Fulop, making his West Brom debut, dallied over a back pass. Instead of booting it clear he waited for it to come into the area and tried to pick it up. Benayoun’s reward for chasing him down was a tap-in on what’s likely to be his last game for the club. An early Benayoun goal, what could go wrong?

It was, in terms of scoreline at least, a repeat of Norwich. First the home side equalised when Shane Long was not given offside and he went clean through to shoot past Szczesny. The keeper went mad, Arsene went mad, and replays showed he was well and truly offside. I don’t think it’s fair to criticise us defensively for the first goal, although Szczesny might have done better, but for the second the gap between Koscielny and Vermaelen was criminal. Quite why the Belgian was that far up the pitch is anybody’s guess and when Dorrans beat Koscielny to the ball Vermaelen was nowhere as he fired a shot into the bottom corner.

So, 2-1 down, West Brom energised by our flakiness and defensive and it all felt a bit familiar. The script was being written but it was being written by Adam Sandler. Thankfully, Adam Sandler was also playing in goal for West Brom yesterday and when Andre Santos nicked the ball in midfield and lashed a shot from 25 yards, his touch could only help the ball into the back of the net to bring us level. A fine piece of play by the Brazilian but the keeper hardly covered himself in glory.

Ten minutes into the second half it became a hat-trick of Fulop assists when he came for a corner, tried to punch it clear when he could have caught it, and under pressure from his own man punched it back towards goal where Laurent Koscielny poked it home to make it 3-2.

I imagine I’m not alone in thinking another goal would be necessary, the idea of us hanging on for the best part of half an hour plus injury time didn’t seem reasonable to me. In a season full of drama, I was dreading us contributing to it further and it got hairy at times. West Brom had a sequence of about three hundred corners in a row, Szczesny was forced to make a good save from Andrews, Fortuné had the beating of Jenkinson who was a bit too grabby and shirt-pully for my liking, and with just one goal being so crucial it meant hearts were in mouths across Goonerdom.

Fast forward to Arsene clinging to Pat Rice, Gibbs making the block, and somehow being made play 5 minutes of injury time in a game with no injuries and just a few subs. Where the ref got that time from I will never know but for that reason alone I wish him pestilence and plague. Or at least a dodgy chicken sandwich. They had some throws, and a free kick, we boffed it down the pitch again until finally the final whistle went. Arsenal finish third, Sp*rs finish 4th, we get Champions League football no matter what happens in the final and they have to look on with fear, for all kinds of reasons. Happy St Totteringham’s Day, and Benayoun played a part again.

Afterwards, Arsene said:

I am still thinking of suing the referee for the five minutes of added time because my heart suffered immensely!

And of the season as a whole:

In the end we finished with 70 points, which is respectable, and we qualify for the Champions League for the 15th consecutive year. Of course we are very proud of that, especially this season having started where we started.

And today, we ought to enjoy that ‘achievement’ because it is one. It’s not a trophy, I know, but considering the mess we were in at the start of the season, and the bad spell in January, finishing in third is pretty remarkable. When we were 10 points behind Sp*rs in February, when they were 2-0 up at our place, it seemed far from sure that we could end up where we did, and although we ended up crawling over the line right at the death, we did enough to get where we needed to get.

The qualification for the Champions League is vital. We all know why. It means we have a stronger position with which to negotiate with van Persie, and others whose contracts are at that point. It means we can attract the calibre of player we need to improve us, and it means that the financial side of things doesn’t take a massive hit due to the loss of the Champions League revenue. Let’s enjoy that today.

However, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think this is a season that anybody will look back on with great fondness. Yes, the clawing back of the points on that lot will always be a chucklesome memory, but beyond that we can only hope that the mistakes we’ve made are never repeated. The shambolic start to the season must be a blueprint of how not to do things in the future and we know that the squad needs to be replenished and made more efficient.

There’s plenty of time this summer to discuss the intricacies of that but let’s hope that this time next year we’re talking about a team that has properly challenged. As I’ve always said, I can live without trophies if I feel we’ve done as much as we can, as a club, as a playing staff, to try and win. There was too much politics last summer, too little cohesion and that was apparent throughout as we struggled to maintain any kind of consistency. So, while we can be happy that we’ve finished third for all the reasons above, let’s not be blind to the fact that there’s a lot of work to do over the summer.

To be perfectly honest, I’m quite glad to see the back of this season. It can go and sodomise itself with a rusty spoon as far as I’m concerned. We can use the summer to recharge our batteries, take stock of where we are, and then make plans to improve. In the end there was a 20 point gap between us and the champions, and we need to work on closing that.

Still, for today I’m quite happy. The league table doesn’t lie and if we’re in third position it’s because we deserve it. We’ve had some dark times this season but some good ones too. There are plenty of positives, plenty of things we can build on, and let’s not forget that our joy is exacerbated by Sp*rs choking on their own misery. Balance of power shifting my hole.

Goodbye 2011-12, roll on next season.

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Right then, it all boils down to this.

Participation in next season’s Champions League hinges on our league finish which hinges on today’s game against West Brom at the Hawthorns. Win and it’s ours. Anything else and we’re looking for others to do us favours and, frankly, we can’t rely on that at all.

It’s all down us, what we do and how we do it. The players know what’s at stake. None more than Robin van Persie who has likened it to a cup final.

It might not be a day out at Wembley but I tell you it will feel like it at three o’clock this afternoon. Our biggest game of the season in our final match of the season.

And we all know what needs to be done.

There is nothing at all complicated by the task at hand and it’s how we cope with the pressure that will determine the outcome. I’m sure the manager will have drilled his players all week in the wake of the Norwich game. While you can give credit to them for the way they played last Saturday, all three goals were completely avoidable from our point of view.

Between individual errors and players not working hard enough for the team we were punished and any repeat of that today will end up the same way. They must be switched on from the first whistle to the last and anything else is, given the nature of this match, just unacceptable.

In terms of the team I don’t think there’s much that the manager can tinker with. I suspect Coquelin will start at right back and while I’m 99% sure he’ll stick with Gibbs at left back I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Santos get a start. The midfield picks itself. Song, Ramsey and Rosicky are the only real options and need to gel today. He could, if he was feeling brave, throw Jenkinson in at right back and move Coquelin into midfield to replace the out of form Ramsey but I think that’s unlikely.

The make-up of the front three will depend entirely on the fitness test Theo Walcott will have on his hamstring. If he comes through that then I’d expect him to play on the right hand side. He’s got a connection with van Persie which has been fruitful this season and we need all the outlets we can get today. In the middle, the skipper needs one more goal to break Thierry Henry’s Premier League record, but his focus is not on that:

All the goals I have scored this season, all the awards I have won — I would trade them all in an instant for us to win today. Football is a team game and if my team fails then I have failed.

And that should be the mantra for today. It’s all about the team and today’s performance and result could have such a huge effect on how this team progresses, or doesn’t, in the next campaign. There are no individual points to be proved today, everything has to be done with the team in mind. That means if we need to just do the simple thing, then do the simple thing. It means that if a team-mate needs you to cover, you cover and don’t make a fuss about it.

We know what this team is capable of both from a positive and negative point of view and our unpredictability is what has me so nervous today. We could see the Arsenal that played soon to be champions Man City off the park, or we could see the Arsenal that contrives to shoot itself in the foot time and time again. The best way to avoid the latter is to work hard and do the basics properly. Our problems really aren’t difficult to identify or fix.

And our best performances have come when we have been a cohesive, communicative unit from front to back. The high pressure pressing game is tough going but why should it be easy? The prize at the end of today’s game isn’t tangible, it’s not silverware, but it’s more than worth 90 minutes of effort. People will point to the fact that we can beat City, beat Sp*rs from 2-0 down, beat Liverpool away, stick 3 past Milan etc. My worry is that these performances have come from a slightly under-doggish position. Today we’re expected to win, the same way we were expected to beat QPR, Norwich, Wigan etc.

However, as I said, the problems we had in those games are not a mystery. We weren’t played off the park but rather made it easy for our opponents. Today the manager will demand the maximum from his players, physically and mentally, and if he gets that then I think this is a game we can take three points from. Three monstrously important points.

As Robin said, it’s like a cup final, but a cup final that will have a direct effect on next season’s Premier League. It doesn’t matter how we do it, once we do it. I’ll take a fluke in the last minute if that’s what it takes, although you’d like to hope that just once this season Arsenal might make it easy for themselves and for the fans. Anyway, apologies if it’s all a bit rambly this morning but the stakes are so high it’s just not an easy game to preview. Come 5pm we’ll know what’s what.

No regrets Arsenal. Come on you reds.

—

For some bonus reading to help fill the time between now and kick off, Amy Lawrence talks to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain about his first season at the club. It’s striking how down to earth he seems, especially in comparison with some others around the team who have achieved far less, and that levelheadedness and intelligence is what I think can make him a great player. Fingers crossed.

Right, that’s just about that. Remember that if you want to keep up with the game this afternoon, we’ll have live blog coverage as with every game this season. It’ll work on all your devices (phones, tablets etc), so check back later for a post with all the details or bookmark the default live blog page.

Until later.

*boilk*

It was poker night last night down at Mugsmasher’s place. I lost everything in one hand some time around 2.30am to a bearded cardshark. Which probably wasn’t a bad thing considering I’m now of an age where I take a Vampiric approach to nighttime – I’m ok once it’s dark but I’m fucked if I’m going to let daylight hit me. I left them, and a rapidly emptying bottle of Canadian Club and headed oot the door for home.

I guess we could talk about tomorrow’s game a bit, considering it must be weighing heavy on the minds of everyone. Not least Arsene Wenger who, despite not scoffing at the prospect of Europa League, knows  what Champions League football will mean for the club. He said:

When you play Thursday night and Sunday it’s exactly the same as Wednesday night and Saturday. But if you ask me if we prefer the Europa League or Champions League then you are completely right, we want to be in the Champions League, we don’t want to be in the Europa League.

Yes, the timing is the same but the quality of the matches and the calibre of opponents certainly is not. There were some very good Europa League matches this season. Apparently. So they say. I think I saw a bit of one where Athletic Bilbao made mincemeat of Man Utd but the only thing it’s got in common with the Champions League is that it’s a tournament in which you play football against some European teams.

Not that the Champions League is the be all and end all either. It can often be as dull as dishwater but it comes with the top sponsorship, the money, the TV coverage, the corporate attractiveness and every so often you find yourself involved in a glamour tie against one of the elite clubs. I know people have suggested that a seasons out of the Champions League might not be the worst thing in the world but I genuinely don’t see how it would be of any benefit at all.

There’s also the fact that it will probably have an effect on the players we can sign (or be linked with an not sign) and the futures of those who are heading into the final year of their contract. Like, for example, Robin van Persie. Arsene was asked if he thought it would play a part in convincing him to stay, and said:

On my side I am inclined to think ‘yes’, but you should ask him. I don’t know whether it will have an influence on him.

And he gave another hint that the skipper would be staying, regardless of  happens tomorrow. We’re making noises to suggest that we’d hold him to his contract:

People speak like our position is not important. Our position is very important. Anyway, Robin is not at the end of his contract.

Ideally though, we won’t have to be worrying about these things come the final whistle tomorrow. We’ll have taken sufficient points to finish in third and we can let everyone else worry about what they’re going to do. We’ll look in more detail at the game itself tomorrow.

In other news, the boss spoke about his belief that the transfer market would be quiet, and doled out some of those quotes that nobody particularly enjoys when speaking about our business. He said:

We have already bought Podolski and we have bought five players during the season when it had already started. Our job will be focused on inside now we have Podolski.

That means to get Jack Wilshere and Abou Diaby back in a healthy situation and then I believe we have quite a big squad. It will be to trim a little bit and if possible add one or two players.

Interesting he says to ‘trim a little bit’ when he speaks about having 34 players and only being able to name a 25 man squad. Only 17 of that squad can be non-homegrown and with likely departures this summer likely to include a fair number of that 17, I think there’ll be more than enough room to add that one or two he speaks of. And while I’m not going to go down the road of analysing everything Arsene says about transfers, I do get the sense that the club are keen to put a lid on as much of the transfer chatter as possible in order not to go through another Mata situation, for example.

Clearly there’s work to be done to make this squad properly competitive again. Yes, it includes getting Wilshere back, while I have my doubts as to whether or not the work required to get Diaby back is worth the time (or if it’s even possible, for that matter), but part of that work is getting the cheque-book out and I think the manager knows that. Still, the summer is long, let’s see where it takes us.

In other news the dubious goals panel have taken Thierry Henry’s late goal against Blackburn off him, and it now goes down as a Scott Dann own goal. It happened so long ago I had forgotten there was any dubiosity about it and to do so now seems more than a little petty. Especially when you consider it would have gone down as his last ever Arsenal goal at home and that the shot itself was on target. That means his last ever goal was the one at Sunderland, the last minute winner, so that’s not a bad way to go out.

And that’s really about it for this morning. The sky is blue here, there’s this odd warm yellow thing in it too, so I might just go out and see what it feels like not have hailstones falling on me in May.

Have a good one.

Morning all, last night I dreamed that Google launched a thing called Google Cake, where you could download ready made sponge cakes but you had to do all the icing and filling and stuff yourself. It got messy.

Anyway, plenty to be going on with this morning as the club yesterday confirmed that Pat Rice would be leaving after 44 years. Arsene Wenger paid tribute to his right hand man, saying:

I am very grateful for his contribution to my period here. I would like him to forgive me for the bad moments I have given him as well! He has been a constant, loyal supporter and I’m just very grateful and privileged to have had him at my side for such a long time.

And there are some lovely tributes from some of the players and staff across the years here. I particularly like Tomas Rosicky’s:

Hi Pat, I am very sad to see you go. Every morning I will miss that 10 minutes before training starts when you come into the dressing room and shout at us!

Jokes aside though, Pat Rice was a presence at our club for 44 years. Those who dismissed him as a ‘yes man’ really hadn’t got a clue who they were talking about and clearly forgot that it was Pat Rice by Arsene’s side when we won doubles and went a season unbeaten. There didn’t seem to be any problem with him then and the way people have lashed out at times is an illustration of the thoughtlessness of some fans.

But Pat was a real Arsenal man, a gentleman and a man who represented us with honour. He knew what it was to be an Arsenal man and he passed that on to so many of those around him down the years. That kind of person is just so important to have at the club. Of course some players might not get it when he tells them what’s what, but you can’t win ‘em all. The best of luck to him and I hope he has a happy and long retirement.

Pat’s departure means the gap will be filled by Steve Bould. Arsene confirmed his promotion at his final press conference of the year yesterday and said it was something of a natural progression:

His qualities are that he has experience of the top-level game, he has managed here, he knows our football philosophy and therefore there will be a continuity. He has also chosen after his playing career to coach here at the Club and we always want to give an advantage to people who know how we work, how we want to coach.

It will be interesting to see how quickly Bouldie adapts to the new job. It’s high profile gig and a far cry from the youth team coaching/managing he’s been doing. Stepping up alongside Arsene will be so different but we know from his playing days that he’s a man of real character and if he brings some of the uncompromising nature of his defending to the assistant manager’s position then he should settle in pretty quickly.

He’ll have to adapt on the training ground too but I don’t see any issue there. He might be coming from the youth set-up but his pedigree as a player means he should command all due respect from the first team. Any one of them that has any doubts about him should read his CV, look at the tapes and realise that he was as fine a defender as we’ve had at this club. He was, perhaps, overshadowed by the aura that surrounded Tony Adams as captain, and wasn’t as ‘in your face’ as Keown, but he was a brilliant central defender and a massive part of that famous back four. Tough too, and hopefully he can add some of that to the way we defend next season.

As it was Arsene’s press conference yesterday there was a bit of team news ahead of West Brom on Sunday. The most significant piece of that is Theo Walcott faces a late fitness test on his hamstring and could play a part. I’d be surprised to see him start the game although if he’s fit, he’s fit and Gervinho has hardly been pulling up any trees since he’s been playing down the right hand side. And as hit and miss as Theo has been this season, we know he’s got a good connection with Robin van Persie on his day, which may just make the different. Let’s hope that if he is fit, he has one of his consistent patches.

And finally, before we get to the Arsecast, I’m left wondering about the true meaning of the word ‘exclusive’ after seeing this in today’s The Sun.

Somebody in there needs to consult a dictionary with their mayonnaise. You can read the full, properly translated interview with Laurent by Philippe Auclair on the official site.

Bonus reading: Tim Stillman’s latest column – Scott Tenorman Must Die (complete with non-breakfast friendly imagery in the first couple of paragraphs).

Right then, onto this week’s Arsecast and I’m joined by Tim Clark of Arse2Mouse and Andrew Allen of The Arsenal Collective to discuss the week that was. On the agenda, Norwich, our end of season troubles, transfers, Yann M’Vila, Pat Rice and more.

Also in the mix, Arshavin pops in, Internet Joe, Mick Bendtner (TGSTEL), plus your chance to win a signed copy of So Paddy Got Up.

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 (30mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

And that, my good old friends, is about that. We can spend the next two days previewing the game on Sunday, in the meantime have a nice Friday until it reaches Beer O’Clock.

Till tomorrow.

Such is the trepidation that third place is being regarded with by ourselves, Spurs, Newcastle and Chelsea, one wonders if hasn’t been contaminated with some kind of lurgy. Perhaps it has been seen accompanying Joey Barton and his entourage at a fast food outlet at 3am? Or maybe it’s been subject to a takeover bid from the Venkys? Who knows, but the chasing pack appear to hold it in the same regard as a teenage relative’s sperm encrusted sports sock.

Grotesque imagery aside, it makes Sunday’s trip to the Hawthorns a nerve jangler alright. The Norwich game showed that, though the personnel of the playing squad has slowly tilted towards experience and maturity, the self destructive tendencies still remain. When Mikel Arteta hobbled off against Wigan, it was like the bath plug had been pulled out of the team, revealing an unsightly straggle of stray pubes in the plughole.

It’s fine for the likes of Song and Vermaelen or the full backs to bomb forward, so long as someone in the team takes the responsibility to fill the void. Since Arteta and his Ken doll hairdo limped down the tunnel, nobody has been able to replicate that intelligence and team ethic. Of course, it also helps if those that have plundered forward like randy teenagers groping in the dark make an effort to get back when the attack breaks down. This may involve some running.

A fortnight ago I wrote about my disgust that Yossi Benayoun managed to outpace all of his teammates in an attempt to track back and prevent Wigan’s first goal. Norwich’s second goal on Saturday gave me even greater cause to flabber my gast. From my seat I was ideally positioned to see Kieran Gibbs directly beneath me yelling himself hoarse at Alex Song to plug the gap left by Vermaelen’s wander up field. Right in front of my face, I looked on with disbelief as Song turned, acknowledged his junior team mate’s instruction, then just ignored him.

Needless to say, when Norwich broke successfully, Song, Ramsey and Vermaelen were all barely above jogging pace as Grant Holt exposed Gibbs – by now covering three positions all by himself – to score. Song may have felt he found redemption by providing another through ball for van Persie for the equaliser. But I made that his 5th attempted through ball of the afternoon, the previous four having often been wayward with better, simpler options available. It’s fair to say he didn’t cover himself in glory for Norwich’s third goal either.

I don’t want to make this seem like a personal vendetta against Song. I think he’s a tremendously talented player and potentially one of the better rounded midfielders in the league. But he looks like a young man that’s forgetting himself at the moment. His through balls have been a valuable weapon this season and, as I’ve said many times before, there needn’t be an identity crisis about his position in the team because he doesn’t fit a stereotypical mould.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I have long begun to feel a touch of “The Big I am’s” from Song. Perhaps I’m prejudiced by his ongoing friendship with Adebayor, but with his contract up for renegotiation, I am left feeling wary. If his on pitch persona of late is a portent for when he steps into the CEO’s office, I fear we could be in for a difficult time. An entirely unfounded suspicion, I grant, but the feeling that we have groomed another diva is a hunch that prevails.

I think a quiet word in his shell like could be in order. But it’s difficult for the manager. Wenger’s players trust him implicitly because his success is reliant on granting them an environment in which they are free to express themselves. Like all managerial styles, it has its pitfalls. Some, such as Adebayor, Anelka, Cole and Hleb, have abused that trust and allowed it to inflate their opinions of their own worth. But it’s been responsible for liberating others who have become great players as a result of that freedom – Henry, van Persie, Fabregas and Pires for instance.

It ultimately comes down to a player’s intelligence and self motivation. But for Arsene to start issuing the hairdryer on a regular basis shatters that cocoon of trust and creates a climate of fear, which would be detrimental. In the words of Renton from Trainspotting, “eht’s a tightroap Spud, eht’s a fookin’ tightroap.” Last week I revisited the Arsenal museum and was struck by a quote from Wenger which had been embossed onto the walls. “The intelligent player realises that the team is the real star.”

It’s not necessarily that the likes of Song and Vermaelen require a back to basics approach; they just need to be more intelligent about when they try the Hollywood pass or the 80 yard dash forward. Even if he is the youngest member of the team, if Kieran Gibbs is telling you that there is a gap in the defence that needs filling, then you turn yourself into human polyfilla for the cause. If the scores are level and you’re still in the first half against a team finding great joy on the counter attack, ask yourself, “Am I of better use to the team in the opponent’s area, or at the edge of my own?” Failure to consider these choices at the Hawthorns on Sunday may very well see us into the Europa League next season.

On a more minor note, the club released images of next season’s home kit (which the club say they will be keeping for two years this time). I’m not much of an aesthete myself, so I won’t comment on design too much. I suppose it’s a symptom of the increased scrutiny in the internet age that kit releases generate so much debate. The manufacturers are aware of this, which is why so many “accidentally” leaked photos of these kits appear months before they’re released. It both generates discussion and allows people to fully circuit the “I hate it / actually I don’t mind it / hot diggity dog I’ve just bought it” circle of virtuousness.

But the disgust over the prominence of blue in the kit as some kind of violation of our traditions and heritage is a tad overblown and historically inaccurate. This link shows you that blue has featured heavily in home kits since knickerbockers were a feature of the strip in our Woolwich days. Similarly there’s always a lot of indignation if our away kits aren’t yellow and blue, but this graphic likewise shows you that we were using blue and white away kits long before our first yellow change strip rocked up in the late 60s.

In pure design terms, it’s all a matter of personal taste. But to sight history or tradition as a precursor to that distaste is short sighted in my view. The paradox of the traditionalist is that all traditions begin somewhere. Presumably, at their inception, they are argued against fervently by contemporary traditionalists! One wonders of the ire Chapman would have faced for changing the sleeves to white were the internet around in the 1930s.

In any case, we probably all have to accept that kit releases are an arm of merchandising and leisure wear. The increase of commercial activities has become a much articulated concern of the modern fan. We don’t have to buy the shirts if we don’t like them. I’d rather the club earned the extra corn through regular shirt releases as opposed to, ooh, I don’t know, raising silver membership prices by 73% over 2 years …

Personally, I stopped buying new shirts yonks ago. Not because of the sort of high minded reasons I should have stopped buying them. For instance, philosophical objection to being a walking billboard for an airline that doesn’t recompense me for my advertising services. But because I began collecting retro and vintage Arsenal shirts instead. Hmmm, on second thoughts, maybe that makes me less impervious to the charms of tradition and aesthetics than I’d previously tried to suggest? Ah well, till next week. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

Stupid rain.

Everywhere you look, rain. I am all for a bit of moisture, the world would be a much worse place without it, but this is ridiculous now. It’s cold, it’s wet and it’s supposed to be summer. How is a man supposed to scorch large chunks of meat over charcoal in this kind of weather? I think the IMF have withdrawn our climate and replaced it with perpetual October until we can manage our national budget better.

I don’t quite know why but I get these Groupon emails landing in my box every now and again and this morning there was one which said ‘Sardinia – €169′. I thought they were offering me a chance to buy the entire island, instead it’s just 5 nights at a ‘wellness centre’. No wonder people complain. And what the hell is a ‘wellness centre’ anyway? That sounds stupid to me and also sounds like the kind of place where booze is not allowed. Perhaps the wellness comes from all the exercise you need to go the local village to buy casks of wine to see you through the day. In which case they are clever bastards indeed.

In terms of Arsenal news it’s a bit quiet considering what’s coming up this Sunday. I suspect it’s kind of the clam before the storm. I know that’s a typo but I much the prefer the idea of gigantic mollusc being a portent of doom than eerie silence. You’d know what’s what then and no mistake.

Juventus yesterday declared their interest in Robin van Persie, calling him a ‘great player’ but it’s all a bit redundant, isn’t it? We know they, and every other club in the world, would fancy a bit of left-footed Dutch magic in their team next season. We can only hope that they end up with Royston Drenthe – that’ll teach them for stealing Liam Brady 32 years ago.

Yes, I hold grudges quite spectacularly. Just ask that lad I played against as an under 12 for Bushy Park Rangers. He pinched the skin at the back of my arm during the game and although I have no idea what his name is if I found out tomorrow I’d make it my life’s business to destroy him. And his family. And all of his friends. Or at least I’d send him an anonymous email calling him a cockspanner.

Anyway, the point is Arsenal are confident, apparently, that they can fend off the advances of the Old Lady, her droopy drawers and gummy gob are not so tempting for a man like Robin, and Chairman Peter Hill-Wood says Arsene Wenger seems quite sure that the skipper will stay. Speaking to the Daily Star, he said:

We haven’t talked to Robin yet, but I spoke to Arsene recently. He is very confident he will stay and I very much hope he will

Talks will take place as planned at the end of the season and it’s up to us on Sunday not to give van Persie or his people anything to think about other than the fact we’re going to be in the Champions League and we’re going to spend some money on players who will make us more competitive next season.

Interestingly he also says that there’s no discussion over the future of Theodore Plimsoll Walcott whose contract will enter its final year. That’s no big fuss either and whatever happens Walcott has given us the quote of the season where he has said he has been ‘consistent … in patches’. Which is just marvelous, whichever way you look at it, and could be applied to the team as a whole.

In other news, Per Mertesacker has hailed the arrival of Lukas Podolski, saying:

He is a fantastic striker. Everywhere he has played he has scored a lot of goals. I think he has good physical power and that is what is needed in the Premier League. He is very quick too. It is a challenge for him but he can cope with it.

The Mert is pretty much all set to go to the Euros after having his ankle exploded by Sunderland’s pitch back in February and he’ll be at close quarters with our new signing (actual signing too, eh? EH?). We all know the need we have for someone else to score goals so hopefully he can do just that. And who knows how else the Germanic influence at the club might grow over the next little while.

In slightly ironic news, the only Arsenal player likely to win a title this season is … Andrei Arshavin. Zenit have been crowned Russian champions and Andrei picks up a medal for his troubles. It’s a funny old game.

And other than that there’s not much going on. Further confirmation of Pat Rice’s departure emerged yesterday as a number of players Tweeted messages and a picture of them at a training ground barbecue yesterday (I bet it didn’t rain there). You can see the high regard in which they hold Pat, not only is Bacary Sagna there with his broken leg in a protective boot, you can see from the picture above that they made a nice drawing for him which they coloured in all by themselves (only Frimpong spoiled it a bit by going outside the lines).

I’m sure Pat will cherish it and hang it on his fridge and that. In seriousness though, his understanding of The Arsenal should never be underestimated. He loves this club and has always been a hugely positive influence at the training ground and beyond. Although it’s not official just yet, and with Sunday still to come that might not happen until next week, let’s hope the team can give him the send off he deserves. They made a bollix of his last home game, they owe him one against West Brom.

Right, that’s yer lot, have a sunny day and I’ll be back tomorrow with an Arsecast. Until then.

Distraction.

That is the word that springs to mind this morning as I look over the Arsenal news feeds and take on board all the stuff that went on yesterday regarding Yann M’Vila. Such was the ferocity with which the news was embraced that it makes you wonder if people really can’t bear to think about what lies ahead at the end of this week.

I’m not immune, Sunday is a vaguely terrifying prospect, and the idea that we might be on the verge of signing a very good player is a welcome relief from having to think about it. In the cold light of day I do wonder if the news would have been so widely accepted and unquestioned if one of the principal journalists had been a Julian Laurence working for The Sun telling us about Arsenal’s bid to sign the most exciting young midfielder in England. Maybe that’s just being a bit cynical.

However, I think the main point remains. As much as we all want to see the team improved this summer what we’ll be able to do this time around is so dependent on where we finish that I think folk have got the heebie-jeebies. Anything that provides a distraction from a) West Brom and b) what we saw against Norwich is jumped upon with great relish.

Not that I’m criticising anyone for that, I fully understand it. Who wouldn’t want to try and keep the nightmare scenario that could play out on Sunday out of their minds for as long as possible? And who wants to think about the Norwich game and how we saw the best and the worst of this Arsenal team in one ninety-minutes? Cocky and supine, capable of changing things around and performing well, before slackness and stupidity cost us two points which would have seen us clinch third in the light of Sunday’s results.

Gunnerblog described Sunday as a cup-final, and that’s exactly what it is. There’s no trophy to pick up at the end, but the prize is invaluable. Finish third and our summer is as easy as it gets. We know we have Champions League football with which to convince existing players to sign new deals and to attract new players. We know how our pre-season will play out, we know what finances we’ll have available to us.

Finish fourth and we watch the Champions League final in horror, looking for Bayern to do us a favour and prevent us from slipping into the Europa League. And even if they do we then face a qualifying round which, like it or not, could well have an influence on what we need to do. There’s no guarantee of CL football, there’s no guarantee of that income, and how many times down the years have we opined that we’re probably waiting to make signings until after that hurdle has been overcome?

So being distracted by credible sounding transfer stories is no surprise at all and I don’t blame anyone for that. At this point I’d happily be distracted by some shiny paper or a squeaky rubber giraffe because this is going to be as tense as it gets as the week goes on. By the time Sunday comes around who knows? I’d say nail-biting but I imagine I’ll be down to the second knuckle by then.

Arsene, on the other hand, has to ensure his squad remain calm and focused and don’t feel the pressure the same way we do. I wonder how much work will be done on the training ground to ensure we do the simple things correctly. If it were up to me I’d have them all connected to electrodes and the first player to over-elaborate when there was a better, but less showbiz, option available to him would get zapped. I can’t imagine this is something that’s not been said time and time again but perhaps aversion therapy is what’s needed to get the message through to some of them.

It’s rare enough that Arsene is so scathing about his players but he pulled no punches regarding our defending against Norwich:

We were absolutely poor defensively today. At the back everybody was absolutely horrendous for the third goal. It is just not acceptable. I feel that the way we conceded the goal was just unexplainable.

What was apparent on Saturday was the lack of defensive cohesion. While it’s possible to point out individuals whose errors contributed more to the problems we had than others, the fact is that it was a sloppy performance from the team in general. When we’ve defended best this season it has come when every single player out there is working hard for one another. That wasn’t the case on Saturday when we looked far more a collection of individuals than a team.

Alex Song might not enjoy sitting back when Vermaelen wanders forward but it’s his job to do so. If he’s got the hump with it (and it’s not the first time this season he’s seemed reluctant to do the dirty work when Tommy goes bombing on), take it up with the manager or the Belgian after the game but if you don’t do what’s necessary we get caught out – and we were for their second goal. Against Man City, for example, that didn’t happen and that was up there with our best performances this season.

Whatever the manager has to do to cajole, demand or, frankly, beat a repeat of the City performance out of his team he’s got to do it. The idea that anyone might put their own performance above that of the collective is not something we can countenance this week. If there are egos or clashes of personality, for whatever reason, they need to be put to one side.

For me, it’s simple enough – if this team is switched on and works hard, then they can beat West Brom. If not, if the focus is off even a little bit, we’re capable of making mistakes which any Premier League team worth their salt can punish.

Sorry to come back to this again but this is the reality that we face this week, not who we might sign next.

Good morning,

bank holiday is over and we now get on with the task of waiting out this week until Sunday’s final league game of the season. There’ll be plenty of time to preview that in the days ahead, and a few decisions will have to be made by the boss in terms of the team, but let’s get closer to kick off before we do that.

The big news this morning is that Steve Bould is set to replace Pat Rice as Arsene’s number 2 next year. The news broke over the weekend and still isn’t official but it’s done and dusted and the man who was such a big part of the famous back four will step up to first team action next season. It’s a move that has long been rumoured and one that some of his former colleagues have been championing in recent months.

A few weeks back he spoke about his happiness doing the job he was doing, developing young players and getting them ready for the first team, so what lies ahead of him is a real challenge. Quite how much input he’ll have into the coaching etc remains to be seen but we can only hope that his grounding by George Graham means he bring some of that defensive discipline to the side next season.

While I think some players don’t need too much work (Sagna, Koscielny, the underrated Mertesacker), it’d be fantastic to see him work on players like Gibbs and Vermaelen, who clearly have room for improvement on a defensive level. The Belgian in particular could really do with sorting his game out. His forays forward are great but his goalscoring masks some of his deficiencies and he makes errors that others get slaughtered for.

And that’s not to criticise Vermaelen, a player and a character I really like, but if he could find the right balance between his defensive duties and his desire to contribute further up the pitch then he’d be an even better player and that can only be a good thing, right? Hopefully that’s something that Bouldie can bring to proceedings next season and there’ll be a further addition to the coaching staff as Neil Banfield will move up from Reserve team manager to first team coach.

For a long time people have said we needed to freshen up our coaching staff and, along with doing the Podolski business early, this is a further sign that our stubborn French leopard might just be changing his spots. I don’t want to suggest that things have gone stale in that department, I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of it plus I don’t want to sound disrespectful to a man like Pat Rice who I admire greatly, but a couple of fresh faces and voices on the training ground every day might just be what we need.

It’s also interesting that Tony Adams was considered for the job but ultimately overlooked. Whether there was a reluctance on our side because of his greater ambition – he still says he’d love to manage Arsenal – or his, I don’t quite know. However, for all he did for us as a player he has yet to suggest he’s got what it takes as a manager and the reality is some ex-players are far more suited to an assistant role than the leading man.

Anyway, the reality is that Arsene has turned to the man who has got no hair – not that we care – and good luck to Stevie Bould in his new role next season.

In other news, Yossi Benayoun says there’s a chance he could stay at Arsenal next season. In an interview with Israeli radio, he said he didn’t yet know what his future holds but Arsenal was a possibility. And of his stint at the club, he said:

You can divide it to two parts. Extremely unhappy from the earlier months, I could have given up, but I didn’t. Gladly, I started playing and scoring goals again, which for me is the most important thing.

I have to say I like him as a squad player and adds depth and experience to the playing staff. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Arsene used him in the home games against City and Sp*rs when he wanted to play a possession game. I also think he was unlucky not to feature more when we were going through our bad patches.

However, I’d be very surprised if he were with us next season. He’s 32 years of age now, Chelsea will want a fee for him, and he himself spoke about ‘dropping down’ to a mid-table team in order to play more regularly. He’s made a decent contribution this season but with Podolski’s arrival and the manager more likely to look to Oxlade-Chamberlain his second season, I think his chances would be limited. Let’s hope he can play a part on Sunday against West Brom and he’ll leave with everyone’s thanks and good wishes.

Aside from that there have been a number of transfer stories floating about the ether, in particular Yann M’Vila’s name has been mentioned. Him being linked with us so strongly is no surprise but I’m reluctant to engage in speculation at this stage. Not simply because much can happen with transfers – a deal 99% done and ready to go can collapse at the last minute for any number of reasons – but also because we’ve got to keep our minds focused purely on Sunday’s game. There’s a whole, entire, gigantic summer ahead which will be filled with transfer news, so let’s hang on until then (less than 7 days!).

And that’s about that, finally for May 8th, on this very day 10 years ago, Sylvain Wiltord did this at Old Trafford.

Here’s a match report reproduced from Arsenal World. “Oh, a mistake by Silvestre …  Wiltooooooooooooooooorrrrrdd!”

Heady days indeed and who could ever have known the first part of that commentary would come back to haunt us?! Till tomorrow.

Well, well, well. Somebody up there clearly likes us because yesterday’s results mean that we’ve gone one more chance to secure third place.

Our trip to West Brom on the final day of the season will provide us with one more opportunity to finish in third and thus qualify for the Champions League next season. Yesterday, Arseblog Tom texted me just as my plane was taking off to tell me Villa had scored. By the time I landed back in Dublin they’d held Sp*rs to a 1-1 draw while Newcastle had been beaten 2-0 by Man City. Saints alive!

The double edged sword is that Na$ri is close to a league title but I guess I can live with it under the circumstances. Whether or not we ‘deserve’ the chance isn’t in the slightest bit relevant, and although I don’t feel hugely confident that we’ll take advantage of it, I’d much rather have it than not.

I’ve read elsewhere, Goodplaya expresses it well, the argument that perhaps a lower finish might wake things up, change our outlook and so on. For me, however, I don’t know that finishing 5th would make any real difference other than make our lives a lot more difficult, both in terms of attracting players and keeping ones we want to keep, not to mention the financial hit we’d take.

People point to Newcastle this season as an example of how you can bring in quality players despite not being in the Champions League. The difference for me is that Newcastle were a team from whom nothing much was expected this season. If they’d finished mid-table nobody would have raised an eyebrow in the slightest, so while their season has been excellent, and credit to them for it, the way they did business last summer would be very different from the way we’d have to do it this time around.

And the bottom line is that I always want Arsenal to win. Beating West Brom and finishing in third won’t just paper over the cracks and allow the status quo to continue – it will provide us with the best opportunity to do something about it. The frustration and anger that has been felt this season has hardly gone unnoticed, because that frustration and anger has reflected events on the pitch.

It is blindingly obvious that we need to do something about the problems we have with the team. Having Champions League football to attract better players is a far better platform than the inevitable and horrendous summer we’ll face if we’re in the Europa League or not in Europe at all. I don’t think there’s any need for a short, sharp shock to the system, we’re feeling it already. If the club aren’t a) scared shitless about finishing outside the CL places and b) determined to improve things if and when we do finish in third then we can be very worried indeed.

This whole season has been a wake-up call, from the slipshod way we let last summer impact on the entirety of this campaign, to the way the team plays, the way we’re reliant on one man to score our goals and how our defensive issues and individual errors have cost us points time and time again. I really don’t think we need anything else to tell us we’ve got problems and the club has to work cohesively to solve them.

Already we’ve seen a signing made before the season ends, one the manager admits will take the burden off Robin van Persie when it comes to scoring goals. We know there will be a new number 2 for the season ahead when Pat Rice hangs his shorts up after West Brom on Sunday. Perhaps that will bring something new to the set-up, especially from a defensive point of view, but while those things can make us very, very cautiously optimistic, there’s still a lot of work to do.

At this moment there’s little point speculating on players or grading the ones we’ve got. That can wait until the season is over and we’re in a better position to know how our summer business is going to be conducted, but ultimately it comes down to goals. We don’t score enough (compare our haul of 71 in the league to United’s 88 or City’s 90) and we concede too many (47 to City’s 27 or United’s 33). It sounds simplistic, I suppose, and how you impact both of those tallies is the complicated part, but that has to be the focus.

How do we become a more efficient attacking unit (add players who can score and create goals) and how do we concede fewer (better defenders/defensive midfielders/defensive coaching etc etc)? Arsene says of Norwich:

Again we are punished because Robin had to score and many times we do not get enough goals from elsewhere. We had so many obvious chances that you would want somebody else to score one. That doesn’t happen enough.

Yet when you score three goals at home you should expect to win the game. We were not punished because other players didn’t score, we were punished because of our defensive frailties. It’s not something he’s blind to either, citing Alex Song’s concession of the ball for their third as ‘absolutely unbelievable’ but we cannot and should not bemoan missed chances when we’ve allowed a newly promoted team to stick three past us at home.

And while I’m very much of the opinion that other players in the team should contribute more to the goalscoring, the manager can’t really complain too much when his only other striking options are a man who has scored 1 league goal in 18 months and the other is a guy he signed and has deemed not good enough to play more than a couple of minutes of Premier League football all season.

Again though, this is stuff we can go over once this season (one which I’ll be mighty glad to see the back of, I have to say) is over and done with. This week we’ve got to sort ourselves out ahead of the trip to West Brom. As capable of this team are of shooting themselves in the foot then shooting themselves in the other foot a couple of seconds later, they’re also capable of a lot more and we’ve got to give it one last push.

The summer will give us time to sort things out and for me finishing third is our best chance of doing that. Falling out of the top four doesn’t mean we’ll consolidate, fix every problem and come back stronger. Just look at Liverpool to see the damage it can do. Our best chance of a return to the high standards this season is being judged on is taking three points at The Hawthorns.

Till tomorrow.

Match report – Video – By the numbers

Even in the cold light of a rather hungover day it’s hard to put into words what we saw yesterday.

As others have suggested it rather summed up our season, we fought hard to get back into a good position, then let it slip through carelessness and over-complication. Yossi Benayoun’s beautiful goal in the 2nd minute should have been a platform for us to go on and really take Norwich to task. The finish was top class, our reaction to it was that of a team who thought it was going to be easy from then on.

And if we could see it from the stands then Norwich could see from even closer quarters and they took advantage. Wojciech Szczesny had a bad day at the office, his fumble for the equaliser was the kind of mistake other keepers get crucified for, but the lack of effort and tracking back to allow the chance in the first place was played a big part too.

Then, when Thomas Vermaelen made one of his forays up-field nobody bothered to cover for him. Less than a week ago he was talking about how his understanding with Alex Song made it safe for him to venture forward, shame nobody told Song yesterday because he was nowhere to be seen as Grant Holt was put through. The finish had a bit of luck it, looping over Szczesny from the bottom of Gibbs’ foot but they exploited space that shouldn’t have been there.

We then lost Bacary Sagna to a broken leg (he went down with nobody anywhere near him) and Norwich were by far the better team in an appalling Arsenal first half. They might even have been further ahead but for a late Koscielny challenge in our area.

The second half was a bit better but the atmosphere was unforgiving until we got the equaliser. It was, I will happily admit, a fantastic pass from Alex Song to Robin van Persie and he made the side-footed finish look easy when it was anything but. It came in the 72nd minute when until then we’d looked allergic to shooting. Chances came but we did that thing where nobody seemed to want to take responsibility.

The goal changed the game, we could sense a winner and we got what should have been the decisive goal when the ball rebounded to van Persie for him to finish with his right foot to make it 3-2. There were 10 minutes to go. A goal up against Norwich and all we needed to do was play sensible, percentage football.

Inexplicably, we seemed to lose our shape entirely. We became stretched when Norwich did little to trouble us, and were ultimately the architects of our own downfall. Song had possession in midfield, he could have played a simple pass to the left back, he could have turned around and played the ball backwards, instead he tried something too clever in the wrong area and gifted Norwich the ball.

Gibbs was caught by the through ball to Morison, I thought Szczesny should have kept coming, the Norwich striker fired home the equaliser into the bottom corner. It was, in every sense, a fucking stupid goal to concede. Song’s insistence on trying to make every pass the Hollywood pass is no longer just a frustration, it’s costing us points. Yes, the assist for van Persie was fantastic but because it was the right pass at the right time in the right area.

The way he gave the ball away for their equaliser was unforgivable at this level and it’s about time somebody pulled him to one side and told him once and for all that the simple pass is nearly always the most effective. Especially when we’re trying to keep possession in our own half.

That sparked a response from us, in fairness, and van Persie really should have had his hat-trick when put clean through but his shot hit ruddy. There was a chance for Gibbs, Song back-heeled one straight at the keeper and quite how the penalty wasn’t given when van Persie was pushed over as he was about to tap-in was a mystery to everyone. If I could see the Player of the Year, with a tap-in, suddenly fall over with the goal at his mercy from the other end of the ground there’s no reason why Anthony Taylor couldn’t from much closer in.

Still, as terrible a decision as that was, and it really was, we can’t point fingers at the referee for yesterday. The dropped points were down to us and us alone. Afterwards, Arsene said:

We have to analyse the reasons why we were not sharp enough in the first half. There is no obvious reason because we prepared normally as we always do, but maybe subconsciously [we thought] we would win it. Norwich played well, you have to give them credit.

In the end we got punished for our mistakes.

The idea that subconsciously we thought we’d win it would be laughable if this wasn’t a situation we’ve been in before. Underestimating teams whose profile is lower than ours is something we’ve done time and time and time again. But even then it was more down to not getting the basics right. A sloppy, casual first half cost us two goals and then, when we’d worked so hard to get into a winning position, we gifted them a third goal when a truly focused and professional team would have just seen it out, passing them to death instead of ourselves.

Now, we have to look to others to do us a favour, third is no longer in our hands, and even fourth might not be enough to qualify for the Champions League next season. We have won just once in our last five league games, and the end of season jitters have kicked in yet again. The frustration of seeing this team work their way into a brilliant position, where third could and should have been wrapped up by now, then chuck it away hoping for favours from others is hard to express.

More than that, you have to question why this happens every season. The players are different, yet the weaknesses remain the same. Season after season the pressure of the final stages becomes too much for us. I thought we had more about us, more maturity, more professionalism and were better able to cope this time around. I was encouraged by that sequence of seven straight wins, yet it seems like it was that which was out of character for us before we’ve reverted to old, familiar, maddening type.

We have bottled it, big time, and I think the weakness in our mentality is so hard-wired into us we’ll keep repeating this mistakes time and time again. I have no real hope that anyone will do us the favour we need, and even if they do I can see us choke again at West Brom. That seems to be what we do, and does a team that has picked up 3 points from the last 12 really merit Champions League football?

Of course we can’t say it’s over till its over, this season above all others should tell us that nothing is impossible, but to have it in our hands and let it slip the way we did is just so frustrating.

The chance was there – a chance we made for ourselves it should be added – and we blew it in heartbreaking style.

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An early start this morning and an early kick off for Arsenal as we face Norwich in our final home game of this challenging league season.

The situation we’re in in simple and requires little explanation – win both games we have left and we finish third and qualify automatically for next season’s Champions League. The importance of that cannot be understated for reasons we all know, players with dwindling contracts and the need to bring in new signings who can improve us. If we finish third you can look at it as improvement in basic terms from last season, but we were no closer to winning the league this year than last and we need to be a team that challenges next time around.

There’s nothing new in terms of the team news with Diaby missing and Park coming into the squad to replace him. I suspect the line-up tomorrow will be the same as the one that started against Stoke, although if it were up to me I would play Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on the right today. Gervinho didn’t impress last week, hasn’t impressed since he got back from the African Cup of Nations of Africa in Africa, and while I’m cautious not to heap pressure and expectation on The Ox, I just think this is a game that could suit him.

We’ve won just one of our last four league games, which is what has made this run-in so tight, and that’s something we need to turn around today. From what I’ve seen of Norwich this season they’ve looked a solid, impressive team. Some might say they go into this game on their holidays, with Premier League football assured next season, but it also means they have no pressure, nothing to lose and it could be a positive thing for them.

Some of our most frustrating results this season have come against teams you would, normally, expect us to beat. Swansea, QPR, Blackburn etc have all taken three points from us and we’ve got to be careful we don’t fall into the familiar trap of underestimating our opponents today. I’m pretty sure that Arsene will have been stressing that very thing to the team all week but with this Arsenal team you never know.

However, if we’re up for this – and there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be – then I think this is a game from which we can take three points. The manager has asked Robin van Persie to drag us over the line, a tacit admission that the skipper is the best chance we have of scoring goals, but there are others in this team who could, and should, be able to contribute.

Rosicky, Ramsey, Benayoun, The Ox, Vermaelen are all capable and if we win this game it won’t be because of one man. Or at least it shouldn’t be. We need the team to remember that they are just that, collective responsibility will be what wins us the game, not ten men looking to one remarkably talented one to make something out of nothing. It’s more than likely that 6 points out of 6 will be necessary to achieve our final goal this season, fingers crossed the first three of them come tomorrow.

In other news, Arsene spoke about Robin’s contract situation, and pretty much said what we all hoped he say:

My desire and my wish is to find an agreement with Robin van Persie, extend the contract and stay with us for a longer time. Hopefully we can reach that.

If that wouldn’t happen, we’ll still want him to stay but I am more focused on the first situation. I think what is important for us is that we find an agreement with him to be happy and to stay and finish his career here.

And again, this is why third is so crucial. At his age, and with his talent, Robin needs to be playing at the very top of the game, so again we come back to the collective responsibility that the team has. Our efforts to keep him aren’t fully dependent on finishing third but they’d make a big difference, obviously.

Meanwhile, the other strikers at the club are still an issue. The manager hinted at something of a cull while praising what Podolski will bring to the team next season.

And finally, in terms of news, we’ll travel to Nigeria in the summer for a pre-season game, another attempt to widen the fanbase and a great chance for the many fans in Africa to get to see the team.

—

It’s also worth noting that today is Pat Rice’s final game at home after so many years working for the club. In 1979, he became the first man I ever saw lifting a trophy as Arsenal captain when we won the FA Cup. He’s a real Arsenal man, a proper legend and far from the ‘yes man’ he’s been portrayed as by some of the clueless who love to make their voices heard.

Let’s hope he gets the send of he deserves today after all he’s done. Thanks, Pat!

And that’s about that. I’m heading over this morning so I’ll see some of you pre-game, and post-game, in The Tollington whose landlord has urged to me remind you that as well as tasty, delicious pints there are also a limited number of copies of So Paddy Got Up behind the bar too.

See you there pre and/or post match for a beer and hopefully a good celebration of three extremely valuable points.

Morning all, a busy Friday ahead with our last home game of the season coming up tomorrow against Norwich and after a quiet week there’s a glut of stuff to get through this morning.

We’ve been talking all week about how important third place is and the manager is quite well aware of that, especially in light of results in midweek. Sp*rs and Newcastle won to keep the pressure and while Chelsea lost that brings a different kind of pressure, according to Arsene:

What we learned from Wednesday night is that Chelsea is in a very difficult position to get back into a Champions League position, other than through the final. Therefore third place becomes vital.

You want to win the last two games to make sure. We have one advantage – we have our future in our own hands.

It could happen this weekend if results go our way. A win against Norwich with both Newcastle (playing Man City) and Sp*rs (Aston Villa) failing to win would secure third for us. We can’t take that for granted though, and chances are we’re going to have to go the final day of the season and the trip to West Brom, which means making sure we get a result tomorrow.

In terms of the early team news there’s nothing radically different from the squad that made the trip to Stoke, only Abou Diaby misses out and, in news that will surprise absolutely nobody, he’ll also miss the West Brom game. More on that game and the way we might line-up in tomorrow’s blog.

Meanwhile, the boss says that Lukas Podolski has been signed to complement, and take the pressure off, Robin van Persie, rather than as a replacement. He says:

He can fit with Robin van Persie through the middle or on the sides. That is for sure. That was an important part of the decision making. How many times have we been accused this season of being too reliant on van Persie? He can score goals and provide, and he is the class that we want.

Interesting that he’d mention Podolski playing through the middle with Robin, perhaps a change of formation being mulled over? Maybe it’s just to have that option if we need it, we shall see next season no doubt. Meanwhile, the skipper himself was full of praise for the new arrival:

He is a great player and a great character to have around because he’s a winner. When we played against Cologne in pre-season you could see that he’s a winner.

Even though it was a friendly he was doing absolutely everything to win and we are very happy that he’s coming to Arsenal.

Whether Podolski’s signing has any influence on whether or not Robin stays remains to be seen. Perhaps he’s been asking the boss for somebody who can take some of the burden off him and Arsene has duly delivered. Perhaps this is the manager’s reaction to a season in which our wide players have, it would be fair to say, lacked consistency. We tend to be a bit lop-sided as a team as an attacking force, with most of what we do coming down the right hand side.

Podolski’s arrival would give us a real outlet on the left too – which is kind of a return to the way we used to be when Pires, Henry and Cole combined so well down that side of the pitch. Anyway, on paper it looks to be a signing which provides us with better balance as well as giving us somebody you’d feel more confident about scoring than Chamakh or Park do at this moment in time.

As for further signings it doesn’t seem as if anything is imminent, despite getting Podolski done before the season has even ended. Arsene says:

We wanted at least one target to be sorted out early.  Now we are in a position where the second part of our signings will be to take care of the players who are injured and to get them back for the start of next season.

I think of course about Jack Wilshere, and about Abou Diaby.

Somebody should keep a LANS count this summer. Again, Jack Wilshere’s return is not like a new signing, it is an existing player returning from injury. That’s all it is. It’s not like anything other than that. It is not like a tree, it is not like a monkey on a unicycle, it is not like a new signing. Yet the manager makes a good point about the size of the squad and it’s one that I think every Arsenal fan is aware of.

We can only name a 25 man squad and when you take into account the current set-up and all the loan players who will come back, we have far more than 25 players. So it’s nothing too alarming or worrying to hear that this is something we’re going to have to cope with when it comes to our transfer business. You would hope that at the season’s end Arsene will assess the squad, see who has contributed and who has not (for various reasons – injury, form, age, lack of talent), and make his decisions about who needs to find pastures new.

There’s an element of ruthlessness required, it has to be said. It sounds as if he’s not ready to give up on Abou Diaby but the harsh reality is that when we have a squad restricted in size it’s a massive gamble to count on him being fit enough to play on a regular basis. Could we more efficiently fill that space in the squad? Anyway, these are decisions the boss and his team will have to make and the more quickly and more decisively we act this summer the better shape we’ll be in come the start of next season.

Right then, that’s about that so finally onto this week’s Arsecast. I’m joined by Amy Lawrence to shoot the Arsenal related breeze and there’s usual load of guff and waffle in there too.

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 (22mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

Arsene’s pre-Norwich presser takes place later, so we’ll get more from him on Podolski and the race for third, coverage and stories on Arseblog News.

Till tomorrow.

Psychology can be a very peculiar science. Last week I wrote about my increasing impression that Arsenal were crawling over the finishing line in the manner of a man searching limply for water in the desert. The game at Stoke did little to stymie that suspicion. Then the boss admitted, rather candidly, that we were almost totally relying on van Persie to nudge us over the line (Because he clearly hasn’t contributed enough already this season).

Nobody with a set of functioning eyes [insert generic Premiership referee gag] would deny that this is very much the case. But it still seemed like an uncharacteristic admission for the manager to make. When we so desperately need others to step up to the plate and accept some of the goalscoring burden, here Arsene was publicly pleading for his talisman to be a one man show just until the final curtain. “Why not openly encourage the supporting vast to get all vaudevillian on us too?!” I thought to myself with furrowed brow.

Then less than 24 hours after that news item appears as the banner headline on Arsenal.com, the signing of Lukas Podolski is announced. Maybe I’m overanalysing, but I can’t ignore the chronology. Now Arsene’s plea looks slightly different. It’s a tacit admission that our other forwards aren’t being as assertive as they could be, followed up immediately by tangible action. Now it reads almost like a warning. Robin’s support cast are now fully aware that the new boy is waiting in the wings and that the manager is not satisfied with their work. Two important games now become a mini audition of sorts.

As for Podolski himself, it looks like a very positive signing. Though many will try, nobody can judge how good a signing is until he has represented the club a fair number of times. There are so many factors that govern whether a signing is any good that are not realised immediately. Sometimes good players still turn out to be bad signings because of circumstances unallied to their quality. I remember when Liverpool signed Fernando Morientes. It looked like an outstanding signing on paper. But for whatever reason, it didn’t really work out. There are countless other examples.

As with any other decisions taken by the club, with transfer dealings it’s important that supporters at least appreciate the thought process behind it and why decisions are taken at the time they are. Hindsight can cast us all into the role of the know it all at times. For instance, certain contract decisions – both player and commercial – taken by the club in the recent past can look ridiculous in hindsight. But the levels of complaint at the time those calls are made are usually notably lower in both volume and ferocity.

All that accepted, the signing of Podolski looks to be a positive one. It’s an assertive attempt to correct a big deficiency in our squad. He’s a player at a good age with excellent credentials. He has the capability to fit into our system, either as a wide striker or as a centre forward, having played both roles before. He can both back up and partner the overburdened van Persie. He only need put the cones out at training to be an upgrade on Chamakh and Park.

Speaking of which, it looks increasingly likely Pat Rice’s retirement will be confirmed before the end of the season. That means Arsene will have an appointment to make and an important one too. I’ve speculated on possible successors elsewhere, but for the time being I hope that Pat’s legacy is treated with the respect it deserves. The “cones on the training ground” crack above accepted, I think it’s unfortunate that Rice has been portrayed as a “yes man” over the last few years. I think it was a germ of a theory raised on an internet message board that somehow went viral and passed into received wisdom.

Firstly, since training sessions at London Colney are guarded more closely than the crown jewels I’m not sure how people would have the first idea as to how challenging Rice is to Arsene. My guess is that Pat became a kind of innocent bystander –an unwitting voodoo doll if you will – for people that had a gripe with Wenger but felt too scared to implicate him directly. Secondly, it’s quite a disrespectful target given the man’s 42 years of service to the football club. My hope is that that is held in the reverence it deserves when he hangs up his shorts.

On a decidedly sourer note, membership renewals for red and silver members have been released and I think the club have some explaining to do. For the privilege of merely holding a silver membership, the club are now charging £55. That represents a 73% increase in total in two years. We already know, though there has been little fanfare about it, that Club Level prices rose a further 2% this season. I’m sure the club’s justification for Club Level prices is that, when the asking price is so large, a little increase every year is preferable to a massive hike once every four seasons.

Red members are also now being charged £33 to hold membership. Considering it wasn’t long ago that being a silver or red member was free of charge, this is a quite astronomical rise and I’m not sure I’ve seen any justification for it. I understood the club’s stance of introducing the fee for being a member on the basis that it discouraged people from simply holding anaemic memberships that they rarely used. But a 73% rise in two years requires explanation.

If I were being cynical, I’d suggest the club looked at the furore created by raising season ticket prices last summer and plumped for a different strategy. They kept the headline cost of season tickets down, but hit other forms of membership with stealth charges that evade the same levels of scrutiny. I’m sure as fans we’d be receptive and open minded to any reasoning the club offered as to why the prices had to go up. But in lieu of an explanation, it’s difficult to arrive at an alternative conclusion.

Finally, I wanted to address some of the mini furore from the Stoke game. The booing of Ramsey was, of course, totally illogical (and they accuse Arsene of being a bit precious!) But it was nothing to get too bent out of shape about. The fact that it attracted a small amount of attention almost certainly confirms that Stoke fans will do it again because it got to some people. That was its sole intention really.

Incidentally, I thought Arsene – far from being angry or raging as the media depicted him – was very level headed and brilliantly dismissive in his post match comments. Particularly the “they have a relationship with me, but I don’t have one with them” riposte when quizzed on the very simple amusement derived by the Stoke fans at his expense.

Tony Pulis did not hear the booing of Ramsey, but was “more concerned” by the booing of Shawcross by those of us in the away end. Of course he was. Because he is a cunt. We all knew that. That’s why my man @superswe decided to wear the charming cap you can see above en route to Staffordshire. I also saw Lineker’s aping of Wenger’s exasperated pose on Match of the Day. It was cringe worthy, but again, nothing to be overly annoyed about.

That’s what the BBC are. They’re like the weedy kid that helps the bullies taunt one of his nerdy brethren in a desperate attempt to curry favour. It’s clear to me that few other managers in this country would be the target of such mockery. However, letters of complaint and demands for apology simply serve to fuel the fire. It’s total playground politics. Demonstrating large levels of annoyance simply ensures you’ll be a target again. So, you know, fuck ‘em. LD.

Follow me on Twitter @LittleDutchVA

So, last night’s results will certainly focus the minds ahead of Saturday’s game against Norwich.

Bolton’s game in hand down the bottom left them on the wrong end of a 4-1 pasting by Sp*rs while Newcastle pretty much ended Chelsea’s hopes of a top 4 finish with a 2-0 win and a couple of fantastic goals by Pappis Cissé. The second, in particular, was an astonishing finish (if a touch on the hit and hope side – not that you can argue with the result of it) and his success is a great example of why January deals don’t always mean you’re scrubbing around for unwanteds.

Anyway, it leaves the league table looking like this:

It really couldn’t be much tighter and leaves us with little or no margin for error. But then we knew that already and while it would have been nice if last night’s results had done us a favour, we can’t expect others to our work for us. It also means that the only way Chelsea can get into the Champions League next season is by winning the tournament.

I don’t think it’ll increase their focus in any way, if you’re in the final of the Champions League you’ll be 100% trying to win it simply because it’s the Champions League final, but there’s no safety net for them and it might give them that extra 1-2%. If that happens … excuse me, just going to be sick into my mouth a little bit here … then whoever finishes fourth will not play Champions League football next season.

Watching that final is going to be difficult enough without knowing our hopes for top table European football rest on the outcome. However, the good thing is that it’s in our hands, and it’s something we have control over. When it comes right down to it, you have to say that if we can’t beat Norwich and West Brom in these final two games, then we don’t really deserve it – especially when you take into accounts defeats this season to low-mid tables teams QPR, Wigan, Blackburn, Swansea, Fulham and perennial strugglers Sp*rs.

No doubt that’s something the manager will be drilling into the players on the training ground this week. While we know well there’s a financial contingency for not playing Champions League football next season, I doubt there’s much in the way of a back-up plan from a footballing point of view. With key players’ futures still up in the air, and the need to strengthen the squad ahead of next season, it doesn’t really bear thinking about. Still, we’ve rarely, if ever, done things the easy way so let’s hope that the breathing we can feel on our necks serves only to make us put in one final sprint to the finish line.

In other news, Lukas Podolski told a press conference yesterday that Arsenal was ‘the right move’ for him at this point in his career. He has yet to travel to London, or indeed speak to Arsene Wenger face to face (they’ve been in telephone contact), which is unusual, but he says he thought long and hard about what he’d do at this point in his career:

I’ve long thought about how we go from here and the question was only a top club like Arsenal. I’m ready to take this step and I am convinced that it is the right thing. I’ll find my place at Arsenal.

And for those who suggested an unsuccessful move to Bayern meant he wouldn’t make it at a bigger club than Cologne, he said:

In Munich, I maybe was a tad too young. Now, I’m more experienced and have become even better and I’m confident about this move and certain that I will make it there.

You can read a full transcript of the relevant parts of the press conference here. It’s interesting to hear that he spoke to Mertesacker but it seemed as if he were trying to play that down. I have no doubt the BFG filled gave him the low-down on life in England and what he could expect at Arsenal. Signing for a club without seeing the training ground, the facilities etc is a bit odd, but if you have an international colleague telling you everything is top class and as good as it gets then I imagine it makes the decision a little easier.

And he’ll add to the growing German contingent at the club, a nation sadly overlooked since Moritz Volz left (is he still doing his brilliant website?). Update: Oh yeah, and some fella called Jens. Anyway, Mertesacker and youngster Thomas Eisfeld mean that there’ll be familar faces/voices for the new arrival and while professional footballers need to adapt and get on with things, it doesn’t hurt to have that around.

There’s some guff from Theo Walcott on the official site about not being one-dimensional, which is fine, but I can live with one-dimensional if that one dimension is outstanding. And when Theo’s in the right dimension there are no complaints, but when he slips off into another dimension, it’s one where he’s got a club-foot and blinkers on and he thinks dribbling out for a throw gets us bonus points.

What’s more interesting is the stuff from the BBC’s David Ornstein who took to Twitter yesterday to reveal that there are no talks planned with Theo before the European Championships despite the fact that he’s in the very same contract situation as Robin van Persie. Whether this lack of urgency means both parties are happy enough and convinced a deal can be done afterwards, or if it suggests something else, I have no idea.

He is, by all accounts, happy at Arsenal, but at the same time his ‘people’ withdrew from preliminary talks with the club when things weren’t looking so good, saying they’d wait until summer to sort it out. A clear sign that they wanted to see where Arsenal finished before committing to any new deal. On the one hand that seems fair enough, on the other perhaps Theo needs to find more than ‘consistency in patches’ before playing hardball. Anyway, we’ll see how it all pans out.

And that, my good old friends, is that. Back tomorrow with an Arsecast. Till then.

It is remarkably quiet considering we’re heading into the final two games of this league season. Maybe it’s not that remarkable though, maybe there’s just a sense that this campaign is one most people would pretty much like to see the back of … once we secure third place.

We’ll watch tonight’s games with some interest. Chelsea, who pounded QPR at the weekend, host Newcastle who were pounded by Wigan, while Sp*rs travel to Bolton. I guess the good thing is that all teams involved have something to play for. Bolton are fighting to avoid the drop and will be looking to take advantage of a Sp*rs side who now know they’re stuck with Harry Redknapp, while a tasty, ultra-violent draw at Stamford Bridge would suit us fine.

Of course whatever happens tonight our future is very much in our own hands. It’s as simple as it gets – win the last two games and third place is ours. It would be nice to have that task made easier by favourable results tonight but the reality is that it’s down to us and how we perform against Norwich and West Brom.

After the signing of Lukas Podolski there was much mutteration and scuttlebutt floating about the Twitter box yesterday with all kinds of whispers about Jan Vertonghen and Yann M’Vila. As you might expect, much of it – if not all – is absolute bollocks. Perhaps we are after Vertonghen but I very much doubt that a signing is close. And you hardly need to Johnny Indaknow to suggest we have an interest in M’Vila. Pretty much every French football related journalist has reported that over the last few months.

I guess people are just hopeful that the Podolski signing is a sign(ing) of things to come. We can be very cautiously optimistic that it suggests a change in our modus operandi but hardly convinced just yet. Look at what Arsene said after Stoke when asked if Chamakh was going to be let leave at the end of the season:

At the end of the season I think you will have big surprises because there will not be a lot of movement in football.

I think he’s referring to football in general, rather than us, but it does have an impact. Depending on who you talk to, Arsenal fans list of players they’d like to leave this summer is either long or pretty damn long indeed. You can look at the squad and see ways in which players who don’t contribute ought to be sold and replacements, who can offer more, could be brought in.

Yet we go back to the old point that it’s not like getting a new car, you can’t just trade one in for scrap and get a new one. We have to find other teams to buy these players and while complaints about our wage structure do have some merit, this is not the only reason it’s difficult to move players on. The reality of football today is that the finances of many clubs are in the shitter. As clubs like Chelsea, PSG, Man City, Malaga and others who have sugar-daddy owners continue to inflate transfer fees and salary expectations, the more conservative others become.

That doesn’t alter what we need to do, of course, but it does make it more challenging. And perhaps we’ve erred in offering long-term deals on healthy contracts to players who didn’t quite merit them, yet not so long ago we were losing players on free transfers and that was as much a cause for complaint. Maybe we went too far the other way but let’s not ignore the fact that when Edu and Flamini ran down their deals there was as much gnashing of teeth about that as there is about those on inflated salaries that make them unattractive other teams.

What we have to do, I suspect, is count on the fact that for the most part footballers want to play football as much as they want to earn a lot of money. The Winston Bogardes of this world are few and far between and if we can clear the way for players going out – by lowering our expected transfer fees and allowing the purchasing club to bump a signing on fee, for example – then it should be possible to do the business we need to do.

But we shouldn’t be under any illusions that it’s a complicated process, both buying and selling, and that if and when we bring more players in it’s got to be tallied with players going out due to the restrictive 25 man squad rules.

Anyway, in order to keep a relatively clear head about things, remember that most Twitter rumours aren’t worth the virtual toilet paper they’re spouted on, and that finishing third has to be the focus for now, not the summer madness which this, of all summers, is going to be pretty intense, I reckon.

In other news, well, there is none, apart from the fact that Ryo Miyaichi looks set for Japan’s Olympic football team. The Japanese FA have sent documents to Arsenal asking for him to be released this summer and unlike the Wilshere situation, I don’t think it’d be a bad thing at all for him to be involved. It may not be a ‘big’ tournament, or a tournament many people care one jot about, but it certainly wouldn’t be a bad experience for a footballer still as raw as Ryo (a sentence I’m glad I’m writing and not trying to say out loud).

And that’s about that, finally for today, a shameless, towards the end of season plug for So Paddy Got Up. You can read reviews and reaction here, and purchase it here. While if you’re a digital reader you can get it from Kindle, iTunes and Kobo. There are also copies behind the bar at The Tollington so if you’re heading into the final home game of the season you can pick one up there. I might see you there for a pint too.

Ok, that’s yer lot, till tomorrow.

Yesterday Arsene Wenger made it quite clear we were a team that was far too reliant on the goals of Robin van Persie.

Yesterday Arsene Wenger said there was nothing we could do about it until the end of the season and he urged the captain to drag us over the line into third place.

Yesterday, he did something about it, for next season at least, by finalising the signing of Lukas Podolski from Cologne. Like most every other signing it comes with what should be a well-used acronym OALTCFAUF (On A Long Term Contract For An Undisclosed Fee) with the manager obviously pleased at his work:

We are delighted to secure the deal for Lukas and see him as an important part of our future. He is a top-class player, a very good finisher and a proven performer at club and international level. He is a very strong player and will provide us with good attacking options.

We are happy to have made this signing early

While the player, still focused on his efforts with his German side this season, said:

I’m so happy to be joining Arsenal Football Club and to play in the Premier League. Arsenal is one of the top clubs in Europe with a huge history. There are many top quality players at Arsenal and the style of football which the team plays is fantastic.

I’m proud to become an Arsenal player and am looking forward to playing my first match at Emirates Stadium and doing my best for all the Arsenal fans.

Which is exactly what you’d expect any new player to say but it’s always nice to hear. So what have we got? I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert of all a sudden, if you want insight into his character and career then this piece by Raphael Honigstein is a good start, but clearly we’ve bought a name and a player most people will be well aware of.

95 caps and 43 goals for Germany means he’s not somebody who has flown under the radar, he’s well known, hugely experienced, can obviously score goals and at 26 is pretty much the ‘right’ age to make a move like this. A move earlier in his career to Bayern Munich didn’t work out but he wouldn’t be alone in not succeeding at a club to which he made a high profile move.

In fact, two of our very best players ever came to us off the back of disastrous times elsewhere. Bergkamp’s time at Inter was fraught for many reasons, while Thierry Henry was deployed as a wing-back at Juventus before joining us and becoming our record goalscorer. Now, I’m not saying he’s going to match their feats, just saying that one failed transfer move doesn’t mean he’s unable to play out of his comfort zone, as some suggest.

As for what he brings to the team, pace, power, strength and a left foot that packs a real punch. If I were Gervinho this morning I would be watching on in relative horror because he’ll probably play on the left hand side of the attacking trio, providing us with somebody who can go outside rather than a right footed player who nearly always cuts back inside. I’m not Gervinho though so having an extra/better option there is good.

But he’s also capable of playing the central striking role, providing the manager with a chance to rest Robin if need be. And here’s the fear part – people will think that Podolski is a replacement for van Persie but I’m 100% sure he’s not been bought as that, even if it might – and let’s be realistic – turn out that way. Ideally he’s here to augment the Dutchman and the bottom line for me is that he’s a better option than Chamakh, a better option than Park, and a better option than Gervinho. In which case he makes us better as a team.

We needed to improve our striking options and we’ve done that. He’ll have the BFG to help him settle in and while his arrival will likely be delayed due to the Euros, we’ve pretty much broken the Arsenal mould by making the signing as early as this. I can’t really remember us doing such a high profile piece of transfer business before the end of the season before, and if that signals a change in the way we operate then it can only be a good thing.

The club have acted decisively after last summer’s madness and it makes a pleasant change. The proof of the pudding, however, will be how the rest of the business we need to do is carried out. With a number of the players we’re linked strongly with at the European Championships – and national sides most likely preventing their players from engaging in negotiations/transfer business during that time – getting as much done before they go to Poland/Ukraine will be important. That goes for our renewals too.

Making one timely signing while we dilly-dally over the rest would be a poor return to old form, and we’ve also got to take into account that we’re going to need to sell some players before we can bring in new ones. So let’s hope that Dick Law and Ivan haven’t booked a camping trip in June.

Overall, this is good news in my book. Everyone loves a new player, it energises the fans and the team, and hopefully we’ll see Podolski’s peak over the next few seasons. Welcome to The Arsenal, Lukas.

As you’d expect this has pretty much dominated the news this morning so there’s not a great deal else going on. If you missed it yesterday though, Arseblog has now launched in Chinese, so both the daily blog and Arseblog News will be available in Chinese, hopefully finding and converting new Gooners across the globe. Fingers crossed anyway.

Right, that’s yer lot, it’s another miserable day here in Dublin, the first of May and it’s teeming down. Welcome to summer.

More tomorrow.