Morning all, welcome to a brand new week after what turned out to be a quite excellent weekend for us, all things told.
Having done what we needed to do at Villa Park on Saturday, Sunday brought a bounty of riches. And by riches I mean hilarious things to point and laugh at. Firstly, Man Utd were 2-0 up, then 3-1 up against Leicester but ended up down to 10 men and losing 5-3. They’re a bit like us in that they’re a very top heavy squad but at least the defenders we have are decent.
They lost most of their back four in the summer and have struggled to find any defensive balance this season. And I hope they keep struggling. Fair play to Leicester, they got a bit of luck with the penalty to make it 3-2 but all in all it was a laugh a minute romp of self-destruction from United. It’s also amusing to think their captain is a man who twice blackmailed the club into giving him extortionate wages and who has all the leadership skills of a special needs lemming. When the going gets tough, Rooney gets his agent to get him a pay rise.
Then, West Brom beat Sp*rs 1-0 at White Hart Lane. I haven’t yet seen any of this but conceptually, factually and any other -lly it’s something that can just be enjoyed from the scoreline alone. As they’re our next Premier League opponents there’s part of me that thinks they’ll be working extra hard this week to make up for it, but in the very short term it’s point and laugh time.
Finally, Man City and Chelsea both dropped a couple of points after a pretty tedious game in the Middle Eastlands. Down to 10 men and a goal down with just 10 minutes to go, the fact that Frank Lampard denied Chelsea the three points is pretty much as funny as it gets. His ‘I’m not celebrating’ face was funny. As was the fact the Chelsea fans applauded him onto the field and he then served them all a delicious bowl of steaming hot turd pie.
There were also some quite amusing comments from Manuel Pellegrini about Chelsea’s approach as he likened them to Stoke, but what I enjoyed most about them is that the Man City manager has, in the last few weeks, exposed himself as a really quite dislikeable bloke. He seemed to be a respectful, decent gentleman but he’s up there with the best of them now. I’m happy for him to pick fights with Mourinho, van Gaal and all the rest now. A little more league spice is never a bad thing.
So, from our point of view we rest our legs for next weekend while the manager has to look ahead to tomorrow night’s Capital One Cup game with Southampton (sitting second in the league, having conceded fewer goals than every other team at this point). Obviously he’s going to have to rest and rotate, but we’ll touch on that in greater detail tomorrow.
After his opening goal for the club, Arsene Wenger had some interesting things to say about Danny Welbeck. As we live in the age of fatuous comparison, it was asked of the manager if he could develop the former United man like he did with Thierry Henry, and to be fair, there are some vague similarities to be made as both arrived at the club having spent time out wide.
But Henry, let’s remember, was singularly unconvinced he could be a central striker whereas Welbeck has been itching to get the chance. His goal and assist against Villa were obviously eye-catching but so too was the way he used the ball. Only one of this passes didn’t find a yellow shirt and a 97% pass completion rate is very high for a centre-forward.
While suggesting that Welbeck could certainly use Henry as inspiration, Wenger said:
He has a good mentality, good physical potential, good technical potential, he contributes to our team play because he doesn’t lose the ball up front and those are important qualities
And on his finishing:
I think as well he has played at Manchester United in the position wide for the last two or three years, never through the middle. Then you lose a little bit of that instinct to score … which is a little animalistic. You need to always be in the middle and wait for your chance to kill the opponent. On the flank you have less of that responsibility.
Yet from everything we’ve heard from and about Welbeck, he’s been craving the responsibility that playing centrally brings. It’s still very early days, of course, but his performance on Saturday was very promising – especially after he’d botched a couple of good chances in midweek against Dortmund. He didn’t let it affect him or his confidence and that’s a good sign. Fingers crossed it was the first of many displays like that.
Finally for today, in the wake of Arsenal’s financial results being announced last week, the incomparable Swiss Ramble takes a look under the hood and breaks it all down. I’m a man of words, so numbers, especially ones this size, make my head spin, but you won’t find a better, more understandable analysis of our finances anywhere else. Go read.
And that’s just about that. James and I will be recording the Arsecast Extra for you a little later on this morning. Feel free to send your questions to us on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog using the hashtag #arsecastextra as we look back on the weekend’s events and probably laugh a bit at the other teams trials and tribulations. It’d be rude not to.
Until later.
