A disgusting win and I'm happy

With about 80 minutes of last night’s game I was thinking about writing today’s blog and I was struggling, really struggling, to keep it positive. Once again we’d give the opposition a head start after van der Vaart fired them into a 4th minute lead. Although Hleb hit the bar about 10 minutes later we were, how can I say this politely, out of sorts for the first half. Nothing we tried came off and we looked one-paced, pedestrian and short of ideas against a team that, like all the others, was going to play with 10 or 11 men behind the ball at all times.

At half-time the boss made the change I hoped he would by reverting to a 4-4-2 with Henry and van Persie up front and it paid off. Cesc turned beautifully on the ball, slipped it through to van Persie and he scored with his right foot to make it 1-1. At that point you thought we’d really turn the screw but the game descended again into a pretty poor spectacle. We got the ball wide but time and again both Clichy and Eboue hoofed it out of play. Incredibly frustrating.

Adebayor came on for van Persie then Theo Walcott came on for Hleb and it was the 17 year old who made the difference. As I was mulling over writing a horrible blog he slipped a ball through to Eboue who knocked it past his man and fired in a low shot which went underneath the keeper. Hurrah! Then, when Theo was put free down the right again, he landed a beautiful cross right on the head of Julio Baptista to make it 3-1 and make sure of the victory.

Now, there are plenty of negatives that we could dwell on. As well as having a frustratingly quiet night, and that’s being a bit kind I think, Thierry Henry was booked – very harshly, I thought – and misses the game away in Porto (when you consider the bullshit yellow he got in Moscow it’s a bit of a pain in the arse – but then listening to that twat Lou Macari on Setanta last night you’d swear Henry had karate kicked the bloke in the head). The lack of quality in wide areas when we had good possession was not much fun to watch and yet again we allow the opposition to score first when we know that’s exactly the last thing we need.

However, let’s take this night and turn it into something positive. Despite giving them a goal and despite every Arsenal fan on the planet thinking ‘Oh here we go again!’ we turned it around and we won 3-1. We didn’t draw 1-1. We didn’t have to rely on a free kick to get us back into the game. We got goals from three different players. Even though we weren’t playing well and it would have been easy, in a way, to ‘settle’ for the 1-1 because that’s what we’ve been used to we came back and won the game.

At the very least I expect this to instill some kind of belief in the players that they can achieve results like this at home. In fact, in order to break that hoodoo, perhaps this is exactly the sort of game and performance that we needed. A battling, scrappy, disgusting win.

What I would say though is that we played 4-4-2 in the second half and looked better. While I understand the manager using the 4-5-1 when we got to United away or Real Madrid or play somebody half decent for me we’re showing teams like Hamburg, Newcastle, Everton et al far too much respect when we use that formation against them at home. More 4-4-2 please because we get more out of Henry and more out of van Persie. Honestly, asking a player like Thierry to play as the lone striker in a 4-5-1 is like buying a Ferrari then using it to tow a caravan. I know he’s the captain and I’m sure he’d never admit it but it’s becoming more obvious that he really dislikes playing on his own up front.

A word for the back four as well. I was very happy to see Philippe Senderos back and with everyone fit I’d like to see him in the middle with Gallas at left back. Now, I know people might wonder about putting a quality player like Gallas at left back but although Senderos may not yet be as good a centre-half as Gallas, Gallas is by far a better left back than Gael Clichy who really struggled last night. Anyway, that’s something to discuss in the future.

Afterwards Arsene Wenger praised the spirit of the team and their unwillingness to be beaten. He said:

I’m very happy because the team refused to lose the game tonight, being one-nil down we did fight and kept the pressure. We didn’t feel sorry for ourselves when we hit the bar, the post, and just in the end we got a result against a good side.

He also ensured the players realise that they’re capable of coming back and winning games at the new stadium when the opposition score first, saying:

It will convince my players not to make an obsession of conceding the first goal and thinking “oh, here we go again”, you know? Once you know you can come back and win the game it makes a big difference.

Had we not gone onto win the game last night you can only imagine the way they’d feel. With all the talk afterwards of how often it happened we’d have certainly struggled even more the next time we went a goal down at home. With it out of the way now hopefully we can just concentrate on not letting them score at all, let alone first.

And on Theo Walcott, he said:

We will give Theo more games now – because there are so many of them coming up. When he came on he provided power and pace – especially when he switched from the left to the right. And it helped us master Hamburg physically.

With Porto winning in Moscow it now means there are three teams that can finish on 11 points. My understanding is that a draw or a win is enough to see us through no matter what happens in the other game. No doubt all the permutations will emerge over the course of the day.

Next up on the agenda is Bolton away, a traditionally difficult fixture but one I think we’ll win. I mean, if we can win at home after letting the opposition score first then anything can happen.

Just a final reminder about this week’s Arsecast. If you have any questions or comments for the show email them arsecast@[remove]arseblog.com and I’ll do my best to answer or comment during the show. That’s it. Enjoy the win. Let’s not get too hung up on the performance because that’s not the important thing today.

Till tomorrow.

Hamburg preview – Gallas out, Senderos in

It’s Hamburg tonight at the Grove and it’s a must win. There are all sorts of permutations but the best outcome tonight, and I’ll stand to be corrected on this, is that we win and CSKA Moscow beat Porto. If Porto win and we win we could face the prospect of going out in Portugal unless we take points from the home side. Still, let’s concentrate on tonight.

We’ll be without William Gallas who will be out for several weeks after pulling up with a thigh injury in training. It’s a blow because he’s been consistently good since he joined but centre-half is probably the area where we have the most cover. It’s not like losing Cesc or Thierry. I’d imagine Philippe Senderos will step in and he’ll be determined and motivated to take his chance having seen his first team place taken by the new arrival.

There was good news about Robin van Persie, who is fit to play, and Gilberto who has returned from Brazil and is likely to start. Given our recent frustrations at home you feel it’s going to take a couple of games where we score a couple or three goals to make a difference and give the side the confidence they need. At Highbury you always felt a goal could come at any time when we were chasing a game. At the Grove you feel like there are days we couldn’t score if we played till 4 in the morning. At this point I’m not too concerned about performance but I’d love to see some names on the scoresheet.

It would be nice to see some midfielders get amongst the goals because when the forwards are struggling to score you want your other players to pick it up a bit. Look at Liverpool the other week. Flamini, Gallas, Toure. Three goalscorers nobody really would have expected and without them we’d have struggled. When you consider the quality of Hleb, Cesc and Rosicky (when fit) you’ve got to be looking at at least 20-25 goals from those three players combined over the course of the season.

Arsene Wenger has again spoken about the potential of the team and how he feels they’re a ‘fraction’ away from being where he wants them to be. And I think that’s what frustrates so many fans. We can all see the potential, we’ve seen performances like the one at Reading, like United away, but there’s just something hindering the consistency of our performances. No doubt that’s down to the youth of the side. There really is a lot to be said for experience and having been through many different situations time and again but there’s no question this Arsenal side is learning, sometimes the hard way.

On a personal level the manager wants to win every game and it hurts when we don’t. He says:

I always say it still hurts the same no matter how long you have been in the game. For me my desire is stronger than it was. Every time we don’t win a game it hurts me so much. Every game we do not win is a real disaster.

And I don’t suppose you can be a top flight manager if you can chalk off defeats as just one of those days. Hopefully tonight won’t be a real disaster.

In other news Gael Clichy says he wants to continue playing well for Arsenal and to win a call up to the French national squad. I’m sure Arsene Wenger will be delighted another of his players will be under the control of Domenatrix. Sky Sports are linking us with some Nigerian striker called Chinedu Ogbuke. I am enormously underwhelmed.

Not much else to report. Do remember you can leave your own personal message or comment about the team, the site, someone’s mother or anything else for this Friday’s Arsecast by going here and recording via your own computer. It can be like that programme where cunts ring up Sky Sports and they get some cunt to answer their questions. You can be the ringing up cunts and I’ll be some cunt. It’ll be marvellous.

So there you go. Fingers crossed ahead of tonight. An early goal for us and not giving them one as welcome to our new stadium present would be the order of the day. Till tomorrow.

Post-Toon, pre-Hamburg, Roeder taunts

A busy and important week ahead with tomorrow’s vital Champions League game first on the agenda. Might I just take this opportunity to say I fucking hate ITV4, which is the only channel showing it, simply because I don’t have it. Naturally all the other channels are showing Celtic v United. There’s nothing like choice, eh? You can choose which channel to watch the same game on. Wankers.

Update: The game is on Setanta Sports here in Ireland. I really should have known that.

It looks like that we’ll be without Robin van Persie after the injury he picked up against Newcastle. Arsene Wenger says it ‘doesn’t look good’. The boss also says he was right to rest Thierry Henry on Saturday.

Henry can’t play 90 minutes Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday and then again on Tuesday. It’s impossible.

Which is fair enough. He does admit to making other ‘wrong decisions’ but not that. I wonder does he mean he showed Newcastle too much respect with the 4-5-1 formation. Would van Persie and Adebayor had more impact as a pair of strikers in a 4-4-2? It will be interesting to see what sort of team he picks tomorrow.

Apparently Glenn Roeder was told to ‘Sit down tumour boy’ after Newcastle scored on Saturday. Quite frankly that sort of abuse is just unacceptable. If you’re going to abuse Roeder you simply must refer to his likeness to Roland Rat, the Roland Rat looking cunt. What sort of abuse is ‘tumour boy’ anyway? He doesn’t even have a tumour anymore if you don’t count Titus Bramble.

In other news William Gallas says he’s loving life at the Arsenal while Jens Lehmann still feels Arsenal can win the title.

According to yesterday’s Mail on Sunday Perry Groves’ book ‘We all live in a Perry Groves world‘ is outselling Ashley Cole’s and not just that, he’s outselling Wio Ferdinand and Fat Fwank. Hurrah for the interweb. For those of you who still haven’t got a copy Pez will be making personal appearances as he continues his march towards world domination. On Thursday Nov 30th he’ll be in Border’s book shop in Islington so go there to get your copy and get it signed and after the Sp*rs game at home he’ll be doing a Q&A and some signings in The Rocket on Holloway Road which RedAction’s treehouse where they go to make up new songs or something.

And that’s it, more or less. Team news will emerge during the day and there’ll be a full preview of the Hamburg game tomorrow. Till then…

Same old Arsenal…

Another frustrating day at the Grove yesterday as a 1-1 draw was as much as we could muster against what has been, to now, one of the worst teams in the league this season.

Arsene Wenger and some of the players have been talking about how it took some time to feel comfortable at the new ground. Sadly it seems we want to make the opposition feel as at home as possible too by gifting them goals. And always the first goal. And it’s a pain in the arse.

So it was yesterday when Kieron Dyer, of all the cripples, put Newcastle ahead. We had a set-piece up field, they broke and we were left two on two. Clichy and Eboue versus Dyer and Martins (I think). Eboue, being the kind soul he is, said ‘Here you go Dyersy, have all the time in the world to take a touch and curl the ball wherever you want. I won’t make a tackle at all. In fact, I won’t even go near you. I’ll just stand and watch’.

It was shocking by Eboue. I can’t even call it defending because he didn’t do anything. As good as he is going forward the boy still has a lot to learn about defending and moments like yesterday when his brain seemed to switch off do not fill me with confidence. It was like he was waiting for somebody, probably Kolo, to tell him what to do. 1-0 Newcastle and here we go again.

At the end of he first half Robin van Persie picked up a knock which meant Thierry Henry, who should have started the game in my opinion, came on for the second half. And we played better and made chances. Alexander Hleb was excellent and did very well when he moved over to the left. Henry had shots saved, he hit a post, Cesc had a shot deflected just wide and Shay Given showed, yet again, why he would be the perfect replacement for Jens Lehmann with his usual outstanding performance whenever we play Newcastle.

In the end, like Everton, it was a classy free kick that brought us level. Henry was fouled outside their box and curled home a brilliant shot which went in off the crossbar. And to be fair we could have won it after that but it wasn’t to be. Afterwards Arsene Wenger was critical of the defending but insisted the team would learn from the pain of days like today.

It’s just that it’s becoming a bit of a habit now and while we talk about almosts and nearlys the league, realistically, has slipped out of our reach for another season. I know there’s a long way to go and that our results against the big sides have been good so far but if we can’t beat the teams we’re ‘supposed’ to be beat then it’s never going to happen. To have taken 4 points out of 12 from home games against Everton, Newcastle, Villa and Boro is not championship form. We have to start scoring because we won’t score brilliant free kicks every week.

I’m also getting a bit of a pain in the arse with the 4-5-1 formation. I would dearly love us to revert to 4-4-2. Some people might say we don’t have a partner for Henry but in my opinion van Persie is a 15-20 goal a season striker if he gets a run of games. I’ve said it before but I think Henry is wasted in a 4-5-1 and it’s not like we don’t have other strikers at the club although I think this is an area we could certainly improve. Julio Baptista was played in midfield and looked like a man who hasn’t played very much football for the last few months while Adebayor looked, yesterday, like a man who has never played very much football.

As the man from East Lower pointed out it would have been lovely to have had the goal threat of Robert Pires yesterday. For all the great goals he scored people forget the scrappy ones, the tap-ins and rebounds he put away. He was certainly the closest thing to the mythical, legendary fox in the box we’ve ever had. As technical and skillful as the midfield are they lack the goal threat he carried and when you ask a great striker to play on his own up front it’s no wonder we’re struggling to find the net at times which is another reason why I’d like to see us move back to 4-4-2.

With the next league game a traditionally difficult game at Bolton away we’ve got to get back on track and funnily enough I’m confident we can do it. When we need a result we’re more than capable of getting it and there are some scores to be settled this season at the Reebok after the most insipid, horrible performance there last year. It’s finding consistency that’s the main problem with this side as the quality, and again I agree with East Lower here, is more or less there. A bit of tweaking and fiddling under the bonnet and we should be fine. It doesn’t make days like yesterday any less frustrating though.

Finally, a word for the crowd yesterday. It sounded like a great atmosphere, nice and loud and there didn’t seem to be the same exodus there has been in previous games. Whether that’s down to it being a 3pm Saturday kick-off with nobody rushing to get home or people realising that their support can make a difference I don’t know but it was good to see.

We’ve got a massive Champions League game on Tuesday, it really is a must win so let’s hope the players can pick it up, not present the opposition with a cheap goal and we can move onwards and upwards from there.

My head really hurts because of too much beer, red wine, rum and sambuca so I’m going to take some tablets. Mmmm, cyanide extra strength. Till tomorrow.