So, another weekend of Premier League action has thrown up some interesting results, and bar Man City – who’ll be champions by the end of October at this rate – teams are dropping points all over the place.
Man Utd went down 2-1 to a Swansea side that look like this season’s Southampton, leaving Loius van Gaal looking a) most grumpy indeed and b) like a villain from Abe’s Oddysee. See below:
It makes our three points against Newcastle all the more important, especially going into an Interlull when the endless discussion of why we didn’t get them would be enough to make you pack up some meagre belongings into a bindle, head off down the road with your trusty dog, and start a new life repairing beach furniture somewhere warm. Maybe that’s just me though.
City’s response to their terrible start to the season has been to buy another player, this time Kevin de Bruyne, the most 14 year old looking player ever, from Wolfsburg for a fee reported to be around £55m. He was footballer of the year in Germany last year apparently, scoring 10 goals and getting 20 assists, so you can see why they’ve brought him in.
It goes back to last week when I spoke about the lack of top quality centre-forwards so clubs are trying to find goals via a different route – the Memphis/Firmino/Pedro/Sterling type player. Is that where we might do something if we do something? It seems like it might be easier to find someone there than an actual striker, because they are in short supply at the moment.
Let’s imagine that we’ve got £50m to spend on a player and we want a striker – who can we realistically spend £50m on? Or who’s actually worth £50m? I’m sure we could buy any number of forwards, it’s just whether they’d be any better than the ones we have already. If people are frustrated by Giroud and Welbeck, wouldn’t having another one of those simply exacerbate those frustrations and ultimately lead to even more clamour for us to sign someone of higher quality?
The short-term impact of signing ‘anyone’ would be just that, until said player finds himself clean through on goal against Chelsea only to kick his own heel, face-plant into the turf and spend the next three months out due to nasal reconstructive surgery – a period which would allow belief in his abilities as a player to reach fever-pitch until his actual return when he fluffs a chance to win a North London derby (“When he’s fully fit he’d score that!”, we’d cry).
The next day and a half, until 6pm tomorrow evening, are going to be all consumed with the desire for the club to spend some money to improve the squad. There’s literally no escaping it, unless you do the whole bindle/dog/beach furniture thing, so we’ll just have to wait and see what’s going to happen.
It will most definitely be a topic for discussion on today’s Arsecast Extra when James and I will make some predictions about what we think will happen. You can get that around lunchtime, we’ll be recording later this morning.
Meanwhile, Aaron Ramsey has made the outrageous suggestion that people look at the table after more football has been played before they draw conclusions about what this team is capable of. Speaking to the official site, he said:
My view is to look at the table after 10 games and then see where everyone is then. So many things can happen. You can’t take too much into how the table’s looking so far. Teams are going to have upsets and hopefully the opening-day upset will be our only one for a long time. It’s important to just concentrate on what we can do.
There’s a lot of common sense to that, of course. It does make sense to take a longer-term view of things, and if we do win a few games in a row then of course everyone will feel a bit better about things. We’re all aware that you can go from hero to villain, from top of the world to worst in show, in an instant these days. It would be good to look at things with a bit more distance from time to time, but it is what it is.
The problem is that when you look incapable of scoring goals, it’s hard to be confident that you can put that kind of run together, and thus the worries about the team’s performances are amplified. When your two main strikers have glorious chances to get the goals that will provide some of the confidence and belief they need, only to miss them very badly indeed, it doesn’t help either.
I’m sure even those most vocal about how poor we’ve been will admit that this is a team capable of much more. I think that’s where much of the frustration comes from … for me, anyway. It’s not simply down to how much money we’ve spent (or not spent), it’s that the players we have should be playing a lot better than this. And so, when they continue to clump the ball over the bar from close range, or lob it gently into the arms of the goalkeeper with no conviction whatsoever, the answer is someone else, someone new, someone different.
And look, I’m all for it. Any way we can improve this team, and this squad, I’m up for it. I hope they do find somebody out there that’s worth spending money on. If it’s a striker, a winger, a midfielder who can pick a pass, bring them to me and I will feed them grapes and rub their supple muscles into shape ahead of the next game against Stoke.
I think even if we do start playing well, and some of the forwards find their form and their eye for goal, we’re short of firepower for a season in which we’ll need to score more than we did last time around. After 4 games last season we’d scored 7 goals and garnered 6 points. This time around we actually have a point more having only scored once (2 OGs of course). I’m not sure what my point is here, other than to show that football is weird and confusing at times.
Get the chequebook out. Or the performance enhancing drugs. Something.
Anything.
Right, news throughout the day on our litany of new signings and Mathieu Flamini’s loan move to Real Madrid as part of the Benzema deal over on Arseblog News. Arsecast Extra coming later on.
Hang on in there folks. And invest in some dog food.
