It’s hard to know where to start with yesterday’s game. The final whistle seems the best place. Arsene Wenger shook hands, briefly, with Sam Allardyce, stormed off down the tunnel a very unhappy man and then gave an interview, his voice unusually shaky, to ESPN.
He’d seen his Arsenal side outfought, again. He’d seen his Arsenal team create little in the way of goalscoring chances, again. He’d seen his Arsenal side concede two atrocious goals, again. He’d seen his Arsenal side throw away a lead, again. He’d seen his Arsenal side go down without much of a fight, again. And he must have seen the ghastly, gum chewing, grinning mug of Sam Allardyce which, regardless of what you think about the way Arsenal played, can’t be much fun to look at.
He complained bitterly about Blackburn’s tactics afterwards. Regular readers will know I have little time for Allardyce and the way his teams play football. His personal dislike of Arsene Wenger means his teams are more up for games against Arsenal than they are any other team. His team is physical and at times I think they go too far. Morten Gamst Pedersen should have had a red card yesterday for an appalling hack on Robin van Persie. Vince Grella clearly targetted van Persie with an elbow and that could also have been a red. Ryan Nelsen ensured he went through the back of van Persie for the first two aerial challenges and there was the usual cynical, disruptive fouling that we’ve come to expect.
And that is the key. We know what we’re going to get at Blackburn. It’s no good complaining after the fact that we didn’t get the protection from the referee. We rarely do and the more we complain the less likely it is to happen, especially when it’s a good old English manager against a moaning French one. We know Blackburn are going to push the boundaries of fair play and we allow ourselves to be pushed around. This is an Arsenal team that can be bullied and it’s sad to see.
I’m sure there’s an interesting parallel to be made with the number of red cards we received when Wenger’s team won trophies and the amount received since our last piece of silverware. If someone has the stats I’d love to see them.
Update: Arsenal picked up 35 reds in Premier League between 1996-2004 at a rate of 1 every 8.5 matches and 13 from 2004-10 – 1 every 17.5 – via Orbinho on Twitter (a fantastic resource for Arsenal stats).
I’m not advocating foul play on Arsenal’s part, I’m merely saying we need to stand up for ourselves. It’s clear some of the players aren’t capable of that so for me the solution is very simple: bring in some players who won’t allow their team to be bullied.
Arsenal’s obvious weak spot yesterday was Lukasz Fabianski. From the off it was clear that Blackburn were targetting him, crowding around him during set pieces and making life as difficult as possible for him. And to his credit he did all right initially. I thought he coped pretty well, making decent catches and punches as Blackburn hoofed it long as much as possible. It couldn’t last though. Having taken the lead through a Robin van Persie header, Arsenal allowed Blackburn back into it with another piece of comedy (Adam Sandler comedy, I mean = not funny) defending.
Blackburn had a corner on our right, it was played across, Fabianski came and was impeded by Jason Roberts. He still got a hand to the ball, it dropped to some fucker who whipped it back across goal. This should not have been problem but Samir Nasri, who was on the back post and was clearly looking at David Dunn, decided to go walkabout, let Dunn get goal side and the the giant headed man had a simple tap in. I really don’t apportion any blame to Fabianski for that one. The ref might have given a free (and he did give plenty to Fabianski) but if Nasri had just defended properly it wouldn’t have been a goal.
Our keeper made some good saves during the game. One from some bloke called Toilet and another from Pedersen who was then bundled over in the box by Sol Campbell. I thought it might easily have been a penalty to them. Up the other end Martin Atkinson evened things up when van Persie, having turned Salgado beautifully, was fouled by the Spaniard as he was about to shoot. A definite penalty, possibly a red card for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity, and nothing was given.
And then came another Fabianski howler. Another Blackburn corner from the right, they crowded the box as they had been doing, the ball was played in under the crossbar, Fabianski mistimed his jump, missed the ball entirely and it basically bounced off Samba’s head and into the goal. The Pole was left sitting in his goalmouth knowing he’d made yet another mistake and ultimately that mistake cost Arsenal the game.
I felt a bit sorry for him because he needed his teammates to help him out. When Blackburn put men in front of him where were our defenders to push them out of the way? Would Adams or Bould or Keown or Vieira have allowed that to happen? Not a fucking chance. Fabianski himself needed to be more aggressive. Jens Lehmann would have been stamping on toes, pushing, shoving, fouling and making life as uncomfortable for the Blackburn players as they were for him.
It wasn’t a pretty tactic from Blackburn but it was effective. If there’s a weak link in a team you go after it. That’s top level sport. There was no reason why Arsenal couldn’t have done the same when we had corners but there’s too much purism in this side. Arsenal should have protected their goalkeeper better, instead the players walked away from him as he sat there bereft, knowing he’d been forced into making another big error.
I’m not going to blame him though. I’ve made my opinion of him quite clear. I don’t think he’s anywhere near good enough or strong enough to be a top level keeper. I blame Arsene Wenger for picking him. The manager sent Fabianski into the lions den to try and prove a point that didn’t need to be proved. Fabianski was the nerd with a pocket full of lunch money sent into the schoolyard full of bullies. It was obvious that Blackburn were going to go after him and based on his previous performances it was a good bet that he wasn’t going to be cope with it. Arsene complained about a foul on the keeper for the second goal. I’ve watched it again. There is no foul. Samba stands his ground, Fabianski gets it wrong.
He’s been given chance after chance after chance and come up short every time. He wasn’t helped by his teammates yesterday but at the end of the day he’s got to be stronger himself. I hope he goes somewhere with less rough and tumble where his obvious talents as a shot-stopper work to his benefit but Arsene has to call time on his Arsenal career now and accept that he’s got this one badly wrong.
It would be unfair to level all the blame at the keeper though. There’s the other side of the coin in that Arsenal created next to nothing in that game. Paul Robinson has shipped more goals against us than any other keeper in history and he had the quietest game of his life. Too many Arsenal players weren’t up to the challenge yesterday. Carlos Vela started his first Premier League game of the season yesterday and it was easy to see why. He shanked a glorious chance wide in the early moments. Theo’s persistence set him up, an open goal albeit with a challenge from the defender and somehow, from just inside the right hand post and about 4 yards out, he managed to put it wide of the left hand post. That was his final contribution to the game, he was abject and I see little future for him at this club. The only Carlos Vela News I want to hear at this point is that he’s been sold.
At left back Armand Traore was awful. He looked completely disinterested, like he’d rather have been somewhere else (and I’m sure many of the Arsenal fans who travelled to Blackburn felt the same), he annoyed me. Late on, when we needed to score, he rarely ventured beyond the halfway line and when he got it he played the lazy pass inside to his centre-half. He didn’t want the ball. At one point Nasri was back in the left back position trying, at least, to do something because he knew Traore didn’t care enough to try himself.
These are games in which guys like Vela and Traore have an opportunity to show they’re worthy of a place in this Arsenal squad. When you’re making your first start of the season don’t you want to give it everything you’ve got? Don’t you want to prove that you’re ready for first team football? How little pride do you have that you think ambling about a pitch and shirking responsibility is acceptable? Andrei Arshavin came on, had one shot, then disappeared. Diaby had another one of those games. Eduardo got 14 minutes at the end and barely touched the ball, his season, and perhaps his Arsenal career drawing to a sad and feeble end.
I know we have injuries. We were shorn of Song, Bendtner and Rosicky prior to this game on top of all the others we have missing. So lack of quality is not an issue for me. I realise we’re down to the bare bones and that our football is going to suffer because of that. What I cannot bear though is the lack of fight. When Blackburn went ahead yesterday there was no sense that these Arsenal players really tried to get back into the game. They didn’t care enough, they didn’t work hard enough and again they let themselves and the club down. We might have been there or thereabouts for the title this season, and I take that as a big positive, but the last few weeks have taught us a lot about some of these players.
They don’t have enough pride in the Arsenal shirt. They’re not willing to stand up for themselves or each other. They allow themselves to be bullied and not enough of them fight back. Say what you want about Blackburn’s tactics, they’re anti-football or whatever (and I’ll agree with you, by the way), but this isn’t netball. Physical contact, at varying levels of legality, is something we have to learn to deal with and not enough of these players can do it. We’re too small, we’re too weak and we’re too easily pushed around.
This is the team that Arsene has built. He needs to rebuild it for next season. Add physicality, add players who hate to lose, like Vermaelen, like Cesc, like van Persie. Get rid of the ones who think it’s ok to stroll around a Blackburn pitch when we still need points this season to make sure of third place. It’s not just about a player’s talent, it’s about his attitude and application. You don’t learn much about that when things are going well, you sure as fuck do when the chips are down. We’ve learned a lot in recent weeks.
Arsene complaining that Blackburn were ‘unfair’ isn’t what I want to hear. It adds fuel to the fire of those who say he whinges and is a poor loser. Not that I care too much about what they say but I want to hear the manager talk about how we can learn to deal better with games like these, not stamp his feet and bitch about injustice.
I thought this summer required a little bit of tinkering, perhaps some keyhole surgery of the squad. After the last month it’s more than that, open heart surgery required I think, provided he can find what’s left of it.
Depressed.
