Morning all, happy Friday to you.
I’ve gotta start with congratulations to Steve Bould and his U18 side who provided us with fantastic cheer last night in the FA Youth Cup. With the game against Sp*rs at 1-1 (Kyle Bartley for us) and seemingly headed for extra-time the young Guns lashed two goals in two minutes to make it 3-1 and advance to the semi-finals.
Jay Emmanuel Emmanuel Emmanuel Thomas broke Sp*rs hearts with a fantastic left foot shot and then sub Rhys Murphy (Murphy for Ireland!) latched on to Coquelin’s ball and finished with aplomb. In fact, double aplomb. I’ll admit, I was a little bit in my cups last night watching it, but it warmed my heart and no mistake. Well done to all the lads and to Steve Bould who still has no hair but do we care? No we certainly do not.
Now, onto matters more senior and the boss has had his pre-game press conference for the Burnley game. As usual lots of stuff to report on so I’ll get through it as quickly as possible.
Firstly, team news. Eduardo and Theo Walcott could both be involved on Sunday which is a good boost, especially with the Champions League game in midweek too. There’s still no definitive news about Kolo but he’s unlikely to play on Sunday to give him the maximum chance of making Roma. Adebayor remains out.
The boss has called Theo’s potential return ‘great’ and he’ll certainly add some pace to things. Hopefully his shoulder problems are behind him now but some first team action will tell us that for sure.
On rumours that he was going to join Manchester City, Arsene said:
I have never allowed anyone to question my commitment to this club, in the good and in the bad times, that has not changed in my mind. You have told me I am on their wanted list, I do not know if that is true or no. On my side, I am contracted until 2011 and until 2011 I do not envisage to go anywhere else.
Of course Man City have been linked with all kinds of people this week. Lionel Messi, Jesus, ALF (whose snout provides him with that edge in the air), former Olympic sprinter Kriss Akabusi and Lord Lucan who they’re going to clone from a piece of amber. Twats.
And responding to comments from Cesc Fabregas saying that he felt his future at Arsenal was dependent on Arsene Wenger, the manager said:
I hope his future will last longer than mine because I think he can still be here in ten years. He should be one of the bases of this club. I think the club should be built around personalities like Cesc and that’s why I hope he will still be here. He was born in 1987 and he is 22 years old in 2009 and at 32 he will still play.
I suppose it’s fairly natural for players to find it hard to imagine life at a club without the manager who brought them there. And in Cesc’s case Wenger is the only manager he’s ever had. But in the heel of the hunt managers leave and players stay more often than not.
After a series of Premier League games which have seen red cards for atrocious, dangerous tackles, the boss reckons some kind of special committee needs to be set up to ensure those guilty of such challenges are punished more severely. He says:
An accident can happen when two people go for the ball but it is very rare. What I see is that guys go into the tackle to hurt the player. There is not sufficient punishment.
They could create a special committee to analyse if three games is enough because, in some tackles, 10 is not enough.
And he’s absolutely right, as are his further comments which question the attitude of the players who have just tried to break someone’s leg. Look at the Kevin Nolan challenge on Anichebe the other week. Deliberate, meant to hurt the opponent, yet he feigned surprise when the ref gave him a red card. And the worst thing about it all is the culture of excuse making that exists.
“Oh, Kevin Nolan isn’t that kind of player”, they say. “We’ve never seen him do that before”, they say. Well, a murderer only needs to murder one person to be a murderer. Anichebe was very lucky he didn’t have his leg snapped like Eduardo but all the same he’s now out for the rest of the season due to injury. He hasn’t played since that challenge. Yet Nolan will be back after a trifling three game ban.
It’s a bug-bear of mine, as regular readers will know. We had the ridiculous situation last season when Jeremie Aliadiere was banned for four games for touching the face of Mascherano, and that’s literally all it was, yet Martin Taylor whose oafish, brutal tackle put Eduardo out of the game for a year got a three match ban and nothing more.
It’s ridiculous. There has to be a sliding scale, there has to be an acceptance that when serious harm has been caused to a player that the incident should, at the very least, be examined by a panel to see if further punishment is warranted. Of course it’s hard to gauge intent but overall it must be possible to do something about a system which is quite clearly wrong and punishes the victim more than the perpetrator.
Right, enough of all that. Time for the Arsecast. On this week’s show I talk to Tim Payton from Arsenal Supporter’s Trust about finances, property, ticket prices and Ivan Gazidis. The Man in the Bar is … erm … in full effect, we might say, plus the usual waffle.
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. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here 21mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
Phew. Plenty for a Friday morning. Have a good one, more tomorrow.
