Funnily enough I was dreaming this morning that I was away on holidays and Tom was supposed to be writing the blog. It was one of those very real dreams so that even when I got up to go to the bathroom I lay back down thinking ‘I wonder what Tom is going write about’.
Sadly, I am not on holidays, nor do I have the pleasure of reading what Tom wrote whenever he got around to actually writing it.
We have an interesting week ahead. A Carling Cup game against West Brom tomorrow night will provide an opportunity for the likes of Senderos, Wilshere, Ramsey and others to get some playing time. There’ll be more team news and a preview on tomorrow’s blog.
In the meantime Robin van Persie has been singing the praises of Thomas Vermaelen. They had a little spat during the Amsterdam Tournament a couple of summers back (it was this which brought him to the manager’s attention apparently) but all is rosy in the garden now. Robin says:
Now I’m happy he is on my side. In training everyone mixes up so I play against him. He is tough and it’s good because I am training against proper defenders.
And of his goals, he said:
The first one showed he is very, very strong from corners and free-kicks and that is very important for us. Even if we play badly we can always score from set-pieces.
I would have been proud of his second goal.
The set-piece thing is by far the most important to me. At times we struggle to break teams down, to have that added threat is a real bonus.
The manager has been talking about teams who foul a lot. It was clear against Wigan that part of their game plan was to disrupt the flow of our football. A succession of fairly innocuous fouls prevented us really getting into our rhythm and Arsene Wenger said:
It’s a general thing. It’s the little fouls in the middle of the park. It breaks up the game from when you are attacking three against three, four against four and then you get a free kick and it’s ten against ten again.
All the work you have done is nothing. You start from scratch again. They have broken up the play. I think I will try to talk to the FA about it. It’s the same for Manchester United, Liverpool and for everybody.
If it’s the same for everybody then we may just have to live with it. I can see where he’s coming from. The football purist in all of us wants to see flowing moves and all the rest but stopping the other team from playing is part of the game. If you’re playing a so-called lesser team you’re going to have to accept that they’ll probably be more physical, that they’ll try and stop your more skillful players with little fouls which break up play.
I think it’s just a fact of life. The only way you can stop it is to dish out more yellow cards and as it is I think players get booked too easily. On the flip-side I’ve thought for a little while now that we haven’t had the kind of player who will commit that kind of foul to help us out when needed. If there’s a break on sometimes you want to see your central defender or deep lying midfielder take the man out on the halfway line. That is a good yellow card, if it’s given. Song does it, Flamini used to do it, but in the current squad we don’t have enough players who will make that kind of foul – and sometimes fouling is as much a part of the game as anything else.
If a foul on the halfway line prevents a three on two break then isn’t that just good play from a defensive point of view? Frustrating for the attacking team, of course, we’ve been in that situation plenty of times. We just shouldn’t be afraid to do the same.
The boss on Tomas Rosicky:
I am very positive. Touch wood his problem is sorted. He had not played a game for 18 months. Now he has played with the Czech Republic and us. I did not leave him out today because I was cautious. He was ready to play and for me he looks completely over his injury.
Touch wood. Light a candle. Lucky rabbit’s foot. Charmed pygmy pelt. Blessed monkey scrotum. All the things we use for good fortune. I really hope he is over his problems and the manager hasn’t just jinxed the ever-loving shit out of him.
With the Carling Cup on the agenda it seems Blackpool are going to ask for permission to marry play Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. His loan there has already been extended so it’ll be interesting to see the outcome of that. I suspect we’ll refuse, hoping to use him in later rounds if we get through.
Not much else happening from an Arsenal point of view. What about that Manchester derby though? While I would have much preferred a draw how hilarious was it to see Mary Hughes so grumpy at the injury time winner? All those times he played there benefitting from the referee’s dodgy watches and he never had a complaint to make. Now, when the boot is on the other foot and the other foot is a great big cloppity foot like Christy Brown, he’s annoyed by it.
Most amusing. Then Craig Bellamy, the Gladstone Small of football, whacks a fan who came on the pitch. More FA madness. What’s going to happen next? What was that film with the American football thing and maybe Al Pacino was in it and one of the players is running down the pitch and he takes out a gun and shoots the opponents out of the way to score a touchdown? That’s where we’re heading with Man City. I’m glad we’re not playing them again until April.
Right so. Best leave it there. More tomorrow.
