It’s a bank holiday Monday, the sun is shining, the coffee is good, there’s a game of football later which, while not especially important, is an Arsenal game and therefore a great thing (at least leading up to kick off), and all seems well with the world.
Then you read Arsene Wenger talking about goalkeepers and he says:
Let people think and let me do. But it isn’t an area that I necessarily want to strengthen.
Dark clouds now hang over this blogger’s fuzzy head. The boss has given Lukasz Fabianski his backing, saying:
He still has to show that he can be consistent. I know he has the talent and he has shown against Man City that he is mentally strong and that he can respond. Now the next target is for him to show that he can be consistent.
I might have missed something but Fabianski has been consistent. Consistently error prone. I’m glad for him, but mostly for us, that the Man City game didn’t see one of his trademark errors but let’s be honest about this, any one of us could have played in goal against Man City and it wouldn’t have affected the scoreline one jot. He must have been nervous, I get that, but so were the fans every time the ball came near him.
Perhaps we can put this down to the manager not publicly saying “Well, I definitely need a new keeper” when there are still games to be played this season but I’m worried now. For me it’s got to be the priority signing of the summer. I do feel a bit sorry for Fabianski, he seems like a nice chap and is clearly a talented goalkeeper … in training, but when it comes down to those 90 minutes on the pitch he’s always liable to make a mistake which will cost you a goal. I hope he plays the final two games of the season and I hope he plays well but even if he does it won’t change my opinion. To win trophies we need a better keeper than any of the ones we currently have.
Ultimately Fabianski is only being judged on one thing – his performances when he plays and I don’t think anyone can say they’re close to being good enough.
The manager also spoke about Emmanuel Eboue and said his transformation from boo-boy to cult hero was ‘one of the more satisfying points of the season’. Which really says a lot about this campaign for me. I’ve never been much of a fan but fair play to him this season. The way he has responded has been fantastic. I know there was a lot of debate at the time about the reaction to his substitution at the end of the Wigan game and I understand it must have hurt him. On the other hand though, would his attitude have changed without it? Would he, and the manager, have understood the fans frustration with him?
I always try to understand why. Fans in England will have a go at you if you don’t try. But they forgive those who try hard. But sometimes it can be for different reasons. I believe for Eboue it was because he got a second yellow card at Tottenham and they judged him.
Can’t agree with that. The second yellow at Sp*rs was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. There had been so much to dislike about his game. The diving, the cheating, the rolling around pretending to be injured, the back chat to refs and an attitude when picked which seemed very much like he was going through the motions. He was lazy. It wasn’t just his stupidity at Sp*rs, it was cumulative and there was also frustration because it was obvious he was a fine athlete with no small amount of skill who preferred to cheat than to play football.
The Wigan game was not exactly his finest hour but I understood the fans frustration. Besides writing a sternly worded letter to the club how else can they express themselves? Maybe you could call it a kind of footballing intervention. Eboue’s response showed balls I didn’t think he had and his subsequent redemption has been good to see. He’s cut out most of the histrionics, works harder, plays better and adds something to the squad when fit. Sometimes the best lessons are harshly learned.
The boss also says it’ll be a blow if Theo Walcott misses the World Cup. I don’t know about that, to be honest. His form this season has not been great by any means and based on that alone you’d have to question whether or not he merits a place in England’s squad. I know Theo is ambitious and missing out would hurt him, but maybe it’d be good for us. The start of next season would see a well rested player burning from missing out and with a point to prove. It might just be what spurs him on.
There’s been nothing new regarding those Arshavin quotes which have now been picked up by the Spanish press. From what I’m told by a chappy on Twitter The People claim to have a tape recording of a conversation with Arshavin. It wasn’t an official interview or anything like that so he was probably shooting his mouth off a bit. Surprising there hasn’t been any official response to the story, to be honest. It’s one thing for a newspaper to quote ‘a source close to’ or ‘a friend’ but they really attribute direct quotes to somebody unless they can back it up. I’m sure the boss will be asked about it later today.
The Mirror says we’re looking at Wolves striker Kevin Doyle. He’s a decent player, in the papers here yesterday Trapatoni was saying he could easily go play for a top Italian club, but I’m not sure he’s quite that good.
Right, well that’s about that. There’s the small matter of Blackburn later on and I hope we go out there and stick in a performance today. We still need some points to ensure third place and we should be going out to get them today. I really have no idea what he’s going to do in terms of the team. We might see Eduardo get a run out up front, which would be nice, but really there’s not a great deal of rotation available to him.
After the disappointment of the three defeats on the trot we levelled things off against Man City but the team shouldn’t view this as an end of season stroll. There are still 6 points to play for this season and they should want them, big time. I hope that’s the kind of effort we get later on and there’s a very unhappy Walrus when the final whistle blows.
Till tomorrow.
