*thwack* *biff* *boof* *groink*

Getting up in the mornings is lame, especially when you have decided to have a lie-in but the Arseblog basset hound has decided he wants to go out for a poo and won’t stop whining even when you shout ‘SHUT UP ARSEBLOG BASSET HOUND. I AM TRYING TO HAVE A LIE IN’, which does nothing but make Mrs Blogs sit up in bed going ‘What the fuck is going on?’. What’s even more lame is when your blogging software decides to not publish the post you’ve just written and somehow delete it instead.

I’m surprised there isn’t more going on in terms of news, to be honest. Even the tabloids have given up making transfer stories (that hasn’t stopped Gunnerblog though) but Obafemi Martins is in The Sun talking about how he is flattered to be linked with Arsenal but prefers to stay and fight for a place at Newcastle. He’s been linked with us all summer long but it was always unlikely, what with Wenger’s policy of not signing players over the age of the 35. That’s why my move to the club didn’t happen this summer too.

Emmanuel Adebayor has illustrated this team’s unwillingness to be pushed around, saying:

A lot of players have learned that we have to fight hard to win games. We know people say ‘they are kids and don’t want to play as soon as we kick them’. But we stand up for it and we are ready for it, if they kick us we are going to want to beat that person.

I can see it in the next game. Someone will foul Cesc then Ade and Robin will grab them and force their hands behind their back. Senderos and the Flamster will produce saps from down their socks and administer a hefty beating around the face before Rosicky nips in and boots him in the balls with the outside of his foot. As he’s lying on the ground Kolo will come racing over, give him a couple of swift kicks to the head and then asks their players, in the style of Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon, if they fancy a bit more. Meanwhile, Alex Hleb will have taken advantage of the distraction by dribbling up field, stopping the ball on the goal line and looking for a striker to pass it to.

Speaking of Hleb the boss has been singing his praises and explaining that so many of his passes don’t find a man because he’s trying to play through the eye of a needle. Perhaps his sloppy passing is just something we’ll have to put up but if he can continue having an impact on games like he has at the start of this season it’ll be easier to forgive.

The boss will have a pre-match press conference today, as per UEFA rules, so we’ll get the low down on the injury situation. Hopefully Sagna and Senderos will be back, allowing our collection of central midfielders to battle it out for a place in the middle of the park.

Ashley Cole is all over the papers today saying Chelsea can be invincible. Invincible cunts. Invincible shite eating, piss drinking, donkey fisting thundercunts. Nobody will ever come close to being as despicable as this Chelsea team. If football goes on for another million years and through the process of evolution a team is made up from hideous mutants who feast on kittens and small babies before making it compulsary to listen to Phil Collins music 23 out of every 24 hours they still couldn’t be as cunty as Chelsea.

Right, I’ve got to get my nose to the grindstone. See ya’ll tomorrow.

Van Persie angry on a quiet Monday

Good day to you wastrels and other folk. A bank holiday in the UK has robbed us of any real news. Well, I’m blaming the bank holiday in the same way I might blame clouds for hiding a flock of giant, man eating condors who swoop down and lift people from their back gardens.

Most of the talk seems to be about Kaspar Schmeichel. It’s not comforting at all that top cunts like Peter should breed. You see off the elder, confident that the years of ire and spite are behind you, then along comes a younger version. It’s not right, is it? Can you imagine young Robbie Savages or mini Cantonas? Horrible.

Speaking of fucking cunts Robin van Persie has been talking about Blackburn Rovers and their physical approach to the game. He’s absolutely not letting it lie and is unhappy with the media for their coverage of and reaction to the game, saying:

I’m watching Match of the Day, which I think is a fantastic programme . . . and I don’t think it’s honest to laugh at the boss and say, ‘Oh yeah, Arsenal are always the same, they always complain’. That’s not honest.”

Two or three people said it on TV and suddenly everyone’s thinking, ‘That’s the way to beat Arsenal’. It’s not. Personally I will never give in to it. Fabregas, he’s small, but he goes into battle. It’s the same for [Mathieu] Flamini. Same for Gilberto [Silva]. If you look at us, I think this idea is based on nothing more than air.

He goes onto say:

I want to say one thing. However you play, you have to always respect each other. Blackburn didn’t do that. I’m angry about it, still, because I think football’s a man’s sport. You have to be tough, yes, but you have to play fairly.

Right on, there’s nothing like a sense of injustice to spur on a player and I fully expect a hat-trick from him next time we play Blackburn. I also expect him to get a straight red card for gouging out someone’s eyes with his football boots but there you go. You can read more of Robin and his expectations for the season ahead in a decent Sunday Times article here.

And that’s it. There’s really not much else going on. There’s no team news yet ahead of Wednesday’s CL qualifier against the Spartans but we should get some idea which of our walking wounded will be fit and ready for battle.

In the meantime I’ll just bid you a happy Monday.

It's not about performance, it's about results

The good start to the season continued yesterday with a 1-0 win over a Manchester City side that looks unrecognisable from the ones we’ve been used to down the years. They were organised, quick, hard working and pretty good, if a bit toothless up front.

It took us about half an hour to get going but when you consider Gilberto was a last minute replacement for Senderos who was injured in the warm up and the Flamster was at right back when Sagna went off after 19 minutes that’s understandable. We had a couple of moments in the first half, one when van Persie just failed to get on the end of a ball across the face of goal and another when van Persie himself rolled one across goal only for Adebayor to stop his run for some unknown reason.

The second half was better and more enjoyable but it was City who could have scored first when Petrov drilled a shot just wide of the far post. Mpenza was put through then but Almunia was out of his goal quickly and made a very good save. City’s defence coped well with Adebayor and van Persie and the two strikers had games to forget but it was Micah Richards who chopped down Hleb and gave Arsenal a penalty on 65 minutes. I’ve always liked Robin van Persie’s penalty technique, he hits them high and into the corers where it’s impossible for a keeper to get near them. This was the complete opposite, he hit it hard and low and in the perfect place for Schmeichel Junior to save it. Having previously been a bit shaky looking that boosted his confidence and he made saves from van Persie and Cesc.

Adebayor was withdrawn for Eduardo and the Crozilian looked sharp and lively as Arsenal pressed for a goal. In the 80th minute Hleb played a lovely little ball through to Cesc inside the box and he spanked it home from a tight angle inside the keeper’s near post. Cue delirium, badge kissing and good times. We could have had a second when Hleb’s left footed shot scraped by the post. There was a late scare when Schmeichel came up for a corner and got a header on target but Almunia made a routine, if rather showy, save.

So, a victory, three points and a rather better start to this season than last. Now, I don’t think we played particularly well today. The two strikers didn’t do a lot and Adebayor in particular looked rusty, half fit and, for the first time in his Arsenal career, a bit lazy. Maybe he just doesn’t have the legs at the moment but what I really liked about him last year was the effort and workrate and that’s not something he can afford to do away with. As it was his first game of the season we’ll chalk it all down to fitness though and expect better next time.

My main point was the fact that we played badly and won. Some people might say the result simply papers over the cracks but there were times last season when we played lovely football and got nothing from games. Performances can be improved as the season goes on, results cannot. This was our first 1-0 at the new stadium and it was the kind of result that can make a huge difference at the end of the season. I’d much rather play badly and win games than be nice, pretty and ineffective. The desire to keep pushing for a goal was there and the amount of goals we score inside the last 10-15 minutes of games must be huge. Obviously I’d prefer if we scored a lot of goals earlier in games but beggars can’t be choosers.

Arsene’s comments afterwards made mention of that and he is really trying, publicly, to emphasise his belief in these players. He also spoke about transfers, saying:

I am not in the market for any new players.

I think you all know my stance on it. I think a genuine wide player would really make a difference to this team. I think most Arsenal fans would like to see a couple of players come in to give the squad some depth. The back four had two midfielders today, the wide areas are a problem and we don’t produce enough from there. There’s also the feeling the striking area could use a bit more quality but if Arsene has decided that there are to be no new arrivals then that’s the end of that. There’s no point us bleating and gnashing our teeth. I think he’s taking a gamble and if we do go on a bad run you know that this is a stick that people will beat him with. I’m sure he knows that too. Let’s just accept it and move on. If anything does happen between now and Friday night it’ll just be a nice surprise.

Early start this morning so I don’t have time to wait around and see what kind of gossip and scuttlebut fills the Sunday papers but I’m sure you all know how to find that yourself. Just bear in mind that from four games this season we’ve had three wins and a draw.

Next up a CL game on Wednesday against Sparta Prague. More tomorrow.

Saturday, yes, it's Saturday

*boilk*

The results from last night are in. Staropramen 9 – 0 Arseblogger.

The return match this morning sees coffee and Ibuprofen taking on the hangover and at the moment a battle is raging for victory. It could go either way.

Today we’ve got Manchester City at home and with a Sventertaining manager they’re riding high at the top of the league. A funny place for them but they won’t be complaining. I did think it was funny the amount of people who were writing them off and tipping them for relegation. I know Sven was no great shakes as England manager but I read in the latest Arsenal magazine that Paul Merson suggested they’d go down. In fact, in the magazine, Merse says City will go down, Don Howe compares Alex Hleb to Lionel Messi (seriously) and Paul Kaye (Dennis Pennis) is rather enamoured with the stripey away kit.

Maybe it’s just me but I have this image in my head, something like Trainspotting, where Don Howe, Merse and Paul Kaye are sitting on a dirty matress, listening to banging tunes, injecting each other between the toes and then coming up with their crazy ideas. It’s the only rational explanation.

Anyway, back to Citeh. They’ve brought in good players and today’s game is going to be a proper test. I had a listen to Sven on the BBC yesterday (Real Player req’d) and he was talking about Arsenal and Arsene Wenger for the most part (although he did mention Henry Thierre…) and also a bit about Theo Walcott who was a rather strange choice for the England World Cup squad last summer.

There doesn’t appear to have been any change in the team news from yesterday so it’s Gilberto and Adebayor in, the rest are all still out. I wonder if Adebayor will start or if he’ll go with Eduardo again. The Crozillian scored in midweek and had more endorsement from former Gunner Davor Suker who claimed that Arsenal had made a better decision to sign him than Liverpool had to sign Torres, so he’s highly rated (thanks Tony). It might just be the kind of game that’d suit him as well with City more inclined to play football. Ade and Bendtner on the bench at least provides us with good options to change the game in need be.

Cesc talks to the Guardian and his comments about Thierry Henry make very interesting reading.

Arsene says his new contract doesn’t have anything to do with David Dein. That’s good. Pillows don’t have anything to do with David Dein. Nor do bananas. Or cutlasses.

This is an interesting read – Arsenal had a get together for their new charity, which supports autism, and Arsene talks about the social responsibility the club has and how involvement in such things makes the players better people. It certainly does, much the same as Chelsea players going to Las Vegas and playing the slots (yes, I said slots), makes them such lovable characters.

Now, I think I need to eat something. Till tomorrow and here’s to three points today.