april 27th
09.08 – Quite rightly, Arsene Wenger is a legend and well loved by Arsenal fans. His achievements have been fantastic, his witty, edrudite style a complete contrast to the gum-chewing foul-mouthed British manager and he’s changed the way Arsenal play football, making us nice to look at instead of dour, boring and merely functional.
He does make some odd decisions at times though, and yesterday, no matter how much anyone wants to try and defend it, his substitutions were all wrong. When Freddie was injured, Dennis should have come on. Cardinal rule number 1 -don’t disturb the back 4 when you don’t have to. Especially don’t disturb it with a player who has hardly kicked a ball in 3 months.
I like Oleg, he’s super, thanks for asking – but Dennis should have come on and Wiltord should have gone right side. Then when Lauren got injured, he left Dennis on the bench again and put on Gio van Bronckhorst – another player who has hardly played any football recently. Once Pires moved to the right, they killed us down that side of the pitch, partly because Oleg was unable to pick up the pace of the game at all, and partly because Bob decided not to tackle anyone. Maybe his ankle injury hasn’t healed properly, but I lost count of the number of time he jumped out of the way rather than challenging for the ball.
I’m loath to go any further with all this, because it’s not all over yet. Funny things happen in football, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that United could drop points between now and the end of the season. Once it’s all done and dusted I’ll write something about the future of the team and how I think we need to freshen things up a bit.
Of course, even if United do drop points, we have to win all our games, and the bad news in the injury front is that Freddie and Lauren appear to be out for the season, while Pascal Cygan has a small chance of making a comeback before the Cup Final. That means problems at the back, with an unfit Martin Keown the only central defender worth talking about on our books. Selling a Mr M.Upson was another strange AW decision, but regular readers will know my feelings on that one. We could see Oleg or Igors at centre half, and Toure at right back. Maybe Oleg will score the winner in the cup final. Maybe I’ll win the fucking lottery.
All we can do now is hope Spurs don’t take it too far up the arse today and lose by a hatful. Then we can sacrifice things to the Gods to enable Charlton or Everton to nick a point or 3 from Man Utd.
Still, there is the comfort of knowing Sir Alex is as thick as a German sausage – as illustrated brilliantly on the forum by Tom.
Online ‘Rock, paper, scissors‘ – amusing enough to keep you away from the Sunday papers. Or not. Have a good one, although I suspect too many people have sore heads for that…
