Morning all, a quick New Year’s Eve post for you.
We’re preparing for a game against Cardiff tomorrow and I think it’s one in which we’ll see a number of changes as the boss tries to keep things fresh. Up front, dare I say we might enjoy the spectacle of a Podolski Bendtner duo as Giroud is given some time to rest his cut foot and partially broken heart?
I don’t think resting him after scoring a goal would have any impact on him whatsoever, he must realise that it’s part of a longer-term thing and his presence remains crucial to the team. Bendtner is the most obvious centre-forward replacement, while Podolski from the left is a threat in terms of his delivery but also goals. Most of his Arsenal strikes have come when he’s started there, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see those two, plus Theo, in the front positions tomorrow night.
The manager meets the press this morning so we should get updates on the lurgy which kept Vermaelen and Monreal out of the Newcastle game. The fitness of the latter could well be important seeing as Flamini was forced into deputising at left back at St James Park. We still assume that’s because of injury and not because Gibbs just didn’t feel like playing, so having the Spaniard (and indeed the Belgian) back will cushion the blow there – fingers crossed it’s not too bad.
Speaking of which, I have to admit I’m somewhat concerned at the radio silence over Aaron Ramsey. It was December 26th when he tweaked his thigh, he’d have had a scan the next day, and so far there’s been no definitive news about how long he’ll be out for. Sometimes no news is good news, but when it comes to football injuries no news often means they’re trying to play down bad news.
There are suggestions he could be out until February, which sounds like ages, but in reality it’s just over 4 weeks. It’s a bit like someone pulling a hamstring in late April and seeing the headline ‘X to miss rest of season!’. Ideally he’ll be out for just long enough to get him fully rested, but not so long that we start to miss him badly. The Goldilocks period, I guess, when it’s juuuuuuuuust right.
Anyway, I’m sure the manager will update us in his press conference – news and stuff to be found over on Arseblog News throughout the day.
Elsewhere, there’s a suggestion that Emiliano Viviano’s loan could be cut short as there’s interest in him from Bologna. The Italian has gone from playing every week for Fiorentina last season to not even making the bench for us. I get that he was signed as a back-up + to provide some competition amongst the keepers, but it can’t be much fun for him.
The difficultly, of course, is that if we let him go we’re just an injury away from having one senior goalkeeper at the club, so it’s hard to see it happening unless we’re in the market for a similar signing in January.
Ahhh, January. The transfer window opens once more. The peddlers of nonsense and bollocks will be out in force. Remember: believe half of what you hear, almost none of what you read, 97% of what you listen to on podcasts will be completely wrong, and that there’s an industry within the industry that lives for this period when they can publish outright fiction and dress it up to look vaguely respectable.
I suppose I should write something about what I expect us to do, but maybe I’ll leave it a day or two, or even have it for discussion on this week’s Arsecast (the 3% of podcast you should believe. Probably. Sometimes).
Finally, a brief thought on 2013 as a whole, even if it is odd to look at a year as some measure in a football sense. It’s a game of seasons, August to May, but it’s impossible not to look back on this year as one that has redefined us, and the manager.
I wonder, in a way, if we hit a kind of rock bottom. The two embarrassing cup exits last season, a home tonking from Bayern and a trip to White Hart Lane in which we made it easy for a team with about as much spine as an earthworm meant things were not good in any sense – on the field, off the field, in the stands, and anywhere there was opinion.
As we stand now, enjoyably at the top of the league, it’s easy to look back on it with a kind of league-leading, dampened hindsight. ‘Maybe it wasn’t that bad?’, but let’s not ignore that it was an extremely difficult period and fluctuated that way right up until the end of August.
In March, the team’s form saw a significant change in the manager’s approach to our games. Wenger’s classic ‘We play to win’ became Arsene’s ‘First: we do not lose’. Get a goal, defend the goal. Boring, boring Arsenal kinda stuff. That was enough to pip that lot to fourth and the team deserve huge credit for pulling it off. The joy at finishing top four was almost immediately replaced by a desire to see the club use that platform to improve over the summer.
The signing of Ozil was a wonderful thing, for all the reasons we’ve been through time and again, but the summer until then was frustrating. Deals were not coming off, the big striker we clearly wanted didn’t arrive, the Suarez thing was a bit of a debacle all told, and it looked as if, after the opening day defeat to Villa, as if things could go wrong much more easily than they’d go right.
But if there’s one thing that, for me anyway, epitomises Arsenal in 2013 (from March onwards anyway), it’s a resilience and resoluteness that was a quality long gone. We dug in to make 4th; we lost to Villa on day one, but then won 10 on the bounce; we might have lost to the Dutch Skunk’s goal at Old Trafford but our response was to win the next 4 while they took just 2 points from the same amount of games; a hard period which saw a thrashing by Man City and defeat in Napoli was countered with two superb, well-fought, away wins.
It’s the year in which we’ve rebuilt our character. The weak and insipid are mostly all gone, what’s left is a united, cohesive and intelligent group who are all pulling in the same direction. It’s always darkest before the dawn, as the saying goes, and I think that sums up 2013, to an extent. If you’d told me in March – or even after the Villa game – that we’d be top of the league and deservedly so, I’d have thought you quite bonkers. But here we are and it’s fantastic.
It doesn’t mean that critical analysis of our situation was wrong or misguided. There has to be a place for that once it’s measured and reasonable, but maybe 2013 was also the year when people learned not to tolerate the worst of what the Internet has to offer. I know from my point of view that ignoring, rather than engaging with, people who see abuse and bad-manners as a starting point for a ‘discussion’ helps enormously. Give it a try.
There’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the difficult lessons we learned are what drives us in the second half of the season. Can we hang on? Who knows? I never thought we’d be where we are now, so even if there are other, stronger squads, you can’t write us off. It’ll be tough, but nothing good ever came easy.
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Finally for today, I’d just like to thank you for all your visits, listens, emails, comments, follows and likes throughout 2013, and to wish you and yours a very happy, peaceful and successful 2014.
Till tomorrow.
