We wanted a reaction after the Bolton game. We wanted a performance. We wanted to see desire, spirit, hunger. We didn’t get it, we got beaten 2-1 and it’d be a struggle to even suggest we deserved anything more from the game.
With important games on the horizon the manager made some changes but they do say there’s no game more important than your next one and there’s no question the team we picked underestimated Fulham. Like anyone who saw the game you’ll have seen Alex Song so far out of his depth that you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy. I know he’s not good enough, you know he’s not good enough – and it’s been fairly apparent since his first appearance – but for some reason Arsene Wenger thinks he’s good enough.
You can say what you want about Arsene seeing more of the players than us but that doesn’t mean fans don’t know anything about the game. Alex Song is not good enough to play for Arsenal, certainly not the Arsenal we all expect to see, but if he’s picked what can he do? The blame for his selection and subsequent bad performance rests entirely on the shoulders of the manager. When our own fans, whose support was excellent all night long, are singing for Fabregas after about 15 minutes then you know something is wrong.
As usual we let the opposition score first and once again it was from a corner. McBride got a good head to the ball but Jens Lehmann should have done better and it crept in at the far post. Then they went two up when Song was nutmegged by Boa Morte who crossed for Radzinski to tap it home after he’d gotten ahead of Flamini.
Our goal, once again, was a set piece as Robin van Persie lashed home a great free kick from 30 yards but that was pretty much the sum total of our first half threat. In the second we hardly created anything more despite Cesc coming on for the hapless Song and our task was made more difficult when Philippe Senderos was given a second yellow card by Howard Webb whose favourite colour must be yellow. His red and a yellow for Kolo means they will both miss the Chelsea game next month. Fulham hit the bar from a free kick, Hoyte made a great tackle when Boa Morte was clean through and the former Arsenal man had one disallowed for offside.
For our part Henry had a goal disallowed for what looked like a very marginal offside, Theo Walcott hit the post and Gilberto had an effort blocked by a defender when van Persie played him brilliantly in. However, that sounds like we were some kind of threat in the second half and we really weren’t. It was a massively disappointing performance and with Sp*rs coming up on Saturday I’m worried because we appear to be slipping backwards at an alarming rate of knots.
Afterwards Arsene Wenger said:
We’re playing many games at the moment but the team showed great spirit and reactions, we fought until the end but it just doesn’t seem to be going for us at the moment.
I can’t fault the team but it’s difficult when you’re 2-0 down early on.
Wouldn’t it be possible to fault the team for being 2-0 down in the first place? That was the 9th time this season we’ve let the opposition score first in the league. Only once have we come back to win and that was against Charlton (thanks to the man from East Lower for the stats). By any standards that is a major flaw in the team and at the level we expect this Arsenal team to be at it’s shocking.
Arsene went on to say:
The offside decision against Thierry Henry was decisive. The coincidence of the decisions against us at the moment is very peculiar. We can put this decision along with the penalty decision we had turned down at West Ham. This fixture was a farce. What is important is that teams like Chelsea, who have already qualified in the Champions League, will not be playing at the weekend.
Sounds a little like clutching at straws for me. Sure, two poor decisions but that’s football. Poor decisions aren’t what’s costing us at the moment and there is no great conspiracy against Arsenal.
What is painfully obvious now though is that this team needs some serious work. I spoke last season about how competition for places was vital for players to maintain their form but we’ve still got the same problem. Who is there to challenge Gilberto for his place? Why is there nobody pushing Henry and van Persie as strikers? They know that Adebayor is not good enough to keep them out of the team on a long term basis. Beyond him we have nobody.
And as I said before I’m right behind the manager’s use of young players but I think we have to accept that some of them just aren’t as good as we’d like to think they are. Or maybe they aren’t progressing as well and as fast as they might because they don’t have enough experience around them to bring them on.
We won’t buy anybody in January. At the moment we have enough players. If you look at the number of players we have on loan — Bendtner, Lupoli — we are not going out on the market at all.
Now, Bendtner and Lupoli look like fine players but they’re not the answer to our problems. Neither are Kerrea Gilbert, Seb Larsson (who must be so fed up he’s out on loan at Birmingham while crap like Alex Song gets the chances he was never given despite looking a far better player) or any of the others. We need to go into the transfer market in January in a big way in my opinion. We need a top class midfield player to make Gilberto work hard for his chances when they come because he’ll be on the bench with this new player alongside Cesc, we need a striker to bring competition for places up front and spark performances from the captain in particular and we have to realise that we can’t go away from home and play all three of Cesc, Rosicky and Hleb. I’m not sure we can even play that trio at home.
This team needs more physical presence, it needs scrappers and battlers, someone who will get stuck in, make the opposition afraid and more than anything else it needs leadership. It’s so obviously lacking direction on the field, someone who will gee up his teammates, someone who isn’t afraid to give someone a good bollocking when required, someone who refuses to lose and drags his colleagues with every muscle screaming to the final whistle. At the moment this Arsenal team is a pale shadow of the brilliant teams Arsene Wenger has put together over the years, the balance between youth and experience is still all wrong despite the younger players growing up and unless he does something drastic to put it right I fear for us.
Arsene’s teams have always played nice, technical football, but we always had players who could put their foot in. Vieira, Petit, Grimandi, Parlour, Lauren, the ‘old’ back four, even Edu was a Brazilian with bite. Now we have a collection of wonderfully technical players who look, for the most part, like they couldn’t tackle their way out of a wet paper bag.
Yesterday the manager said this was a ‘moment of truth’ for this side and challenged his team to put in a performance that would silence the doubters. Sadly they couldn’t rise to the challenge. Not through lack of effort or because they don’t care but because fundamentally this team is flawed from front to back. The manager buys the players, the manager picks the team and the manager is the one who has to carry the can when things go wrong. If he insists on playing someone like Alex Song and resting Julio Baptista for a game we just had to win then I think it’s not unfair to question him and his methods.
The things we’re missing, the physical presence, the leadership, the organisation are patently not present in the group of players we have at the moment. There’s only one way to rectify those problems and that’s to get into the transfer market this January, bring in experience and quality because that’s what we need. The return of two 18 year old strikers is not going to turn things around.
A word for the Arsenal fans who went to the game, we could hear you singing all night long and you lot are a credit to the club. I hope, despite the disappointing result, the players acknowledged that this time.
So, another defeat to put behind us, we’ve got Sp*rs on Saturday and this time we really need to bounce back. Defeat to them is just unthinkable.
Finally, so as not to end on a down note, don’t forget Perry Groves will be signing copies of his book at Border’s bookshop in Islington this evening from 6pm. Tell him Arseblog sent you.
