My Horse, My Ox, My Ass, My Anything

Time To Tame The Shrews

Greetings fellow Gooners!

Yes! Something to get excited about again! One of the few positives about this part of the season is that, given how badly things are going for us recently, the games are coming thick and fast we giving us the chance to turn things around a little. I know, it’s only the Carling Cup 3^rd round and we are playing a Shrewsbury Town side that, whilst they will be buoyed by our recent dismal run of results and their own recent run of 6 wins in 7 matches in all competitions, we really, REALLY should be beating.

Another good thing about this period is we get a chance to see some of the next generation playing as well as some of those already staking a claim for a place in the first team and Arsene Wenger has confirmed this will still be the case, despite the quandary we find ourselves in:

“I will be faithful to our policy but I will try to find a good mixture between youth and experience.”

“I had my team in my head before the Blackburn game and it will remain exactly the same.”

“We will have Frimpong, Coquelin, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ryo, and maybe one or two more. There is an also opportunity to see Park for the first time.”

“Chamakh will also feature. You will also see Jenkinson start in his position. We will try to find a mixture between youth and experience.”

“You will see the likes of Ryo and Oxlade-Chamberlain. You should be excited about Oxlade-Chamberlain because he is a great talent. My target is to develop him so he confirms the expectation I have for him.”

I have to say that I AM excited to see the Ox get a run out but equally excited to see Ryo as, from the games I saw him play in Holland last year, he also looks a really special player. Wenger made some interesting remarks regarding the differences between Oxlade-Chamberlain and Walcott saying:

“Walcott is a bit more a striker and Oxlade-Chamberlain is more a midfielder. I believe that Oxlade-Chamberlain could be a central midfielder one day and Walcott a central striker one day. That shows the difference between the two players.”

Although it does beg the question as to why on earth we are still seeing the generally dismal Chamakh come on from the bench to play centre forward and NOT seeing Theo get a run in that position. Everybody and his mother seem to think that Walcott is wasted on the wing and would be better off getting a run of games up front and, at 22 years old and 5 years at the club, isn’t it about time he got that chance?

In terms of some of the other new signings, Arteta will more than likely be rested although I expect to see Santos get another game in a bid to improve his match fitness and Yossi Benayoun begin the match in a bid to add an old head to the midfield. Whilst Wenger confirmed that Park Ju Young will probably get a debut, I think that Chamakh will start the game with Wenger hoping that a decent game on the back of scoring against Blackburn may be just what he needs to get himself a bit of much needed confidence back.

The other “Pole between the Poles”, Fabianski, will probably also get a game. Let’s hope he plays a blinder, if needed, to keep Szczesny on his toes. A central defensive partnership of Ignasi Miquel and Johan Djourou would give the former some game time and the latter, hopefully, also some desperately needed confidence. Given that the only other choice is Squillaci

Don’t misunderstand me, I simply don’t believe that Djourou is the answer to our defensive problems any more, even coming from the bench and only when absolutely necessary, but it appears that he is the current third choice and, even when TV5 returns, he will still be our fourth choice. With our injury record I believe it is safe to say he will probably get some games this season. Completing the defence we can expect to see the right back slot filled by Carl Jenkinson, yet another player in need of a confidence boost given the game he had against Manchester United.

The midfield will probably include a central partnership of Emmanuel Frimpong and Francis Coquelin, very much providing a screen for the defence, whilst creativity will probably be left to Benayoun, with Rosicky probably still out.

So, the line up should look something like this:

There is the possibility that Gibbs may start in the left-back role depending on how much match fitness Santos is or is not still lacking and, considering that he would be playing alongside two centre backs who we probably won’t spend too much time with this season, the benefits of playing him if he isn’t lacking match fitness are not immediately obvious. Aside from that, I think that Arsene has given us enough information for there to be few surprises.

As for Shrewsbury, we certainly cannot afford to be complacent. Currently on a decent run in League 2, they have 5 wins 2 draws and 2 losses in their 9 games so far. One thing that could go in our favour is that they have only scored 13 goals thus far and so, with a little luck, if the central midfield partnership does its job properly, our defence shouldn’t be over-occupied, something which, on recent form, would be a huge relief to all concerned. The last thing the players or the fans need is another game of cat and mouse such as Saturday with two teams trading scoring blows as, should heads start to drop, the Shrewsbury players may well get the scent of a giant-killing and then anything could happen!

Having already beaten Derby County, currently 4^th placed in the Championship, 3-2 away in the first round and Swansea 3-1 at home in the second round. Admittedly they played a Swansea side that only featured 3 of the 11 involved against us in our recent Premier League fixture, I don’t think that will make the slightest difference to the Shrews and we underestimate them and, possibly more importantly, overestimate ourselves at our peril.

In terms of a prediction, well, there are trainee minesweepers with safer tasks right now, but I am going to go all out and look forward to a slightly nervy to begin but turning out fine in the end 3-0.

Giving Them The Treatment

There may be a little light appearing at the end of the tunnel regarding the current injury list. Whilst Jack still has 4 weeks left before the protective boot can be removed and a proper test of that ankle can give us some real idea of how he is progressing, it seems that Thomas Vermaelen and Abou Diaby should be fit to return after the international break, putting them in line for selection for the home game against Sunderland on the 16^th October. It is a shame that TV5 will probably miss the away game against the Spuds, but I quite like the idea of him being fresh for the return of Bendtner! Tomas Rosicky will face a late fitness test on his knee and I couldn’t care less whether Squillaci never plays for us again so I won’t even bother discussing his “return”!

On The Defensive

Wenger also called for a little more patience regarding the new look defence saying:

“I believe there is a little question of time and timing.”

“Andre Santos and Per Mertesacker are new, but they were not especially guilty on the goals. But maybe as a unit we need more time to work.”

“A lack of concentration, a lack of communication, a lack of coordination and individual urgency [is behind the goals we have conceded]”

“I believe as well when you score an own goal, you have to look at yourself. It’s never, never, never, never, never completely out of reach, or very rarely. Out of 100 own goals there are maybe 5 or 6 where you have no chance at all, all the rest you have to look at yourself.”

Whilst I can only agree wholeheartedly with all of that, there are still questions surrounding the decision to leave the new signings until the last minute thus leaving us in the bind of bedding players in during the season and not beforehand. I understand that the guarantee of Champions League football had to have helped with the Santos signing, the fact that neither Mertesacker nor Arteta were playing for clubs in the Champions League anyway and Benayoun did not look like playing at all at Chelsea, it cannot be used as a be all and end all excuse for the obvious failings in our summer transfer dealings.

All Over The Park

Arsene had some interesting words regarding Park Ju Young’s role for the team:

“Park is good in every area. He is good in the air, good technically, he is mobile and that’s why he is an adaptable striker who can play up front behind the striker. That’s why we went for him. What I like with him is that he is very mobile and that’s the basis of our game.”

This may well confirm my theory that he was signed for a floating role in the style of God. This of course would lead to a reversion to the 4-4-2 which I, along with many others, am desperate to see.

That’s The Spirit

Arsene also commented on the travelling support although I cannot help but suspect that there is also “hint of hinting” in the direction of the boo-boys at The Grove:

“Again on Saturday in Blackburn there were thousands of Arsenal fans and they were fantastic.”

“We need to be united and I am very grateful for their attitude on Saturday. They were absolutely fantastic.”

“The team has a good spirit, a good mentality, a good attitude and that will come out longer term. We have had a bad start but I believe we can bounce back and be very strong this season.”

Whilst I agree with the sentiment and further agree that they are the current benchmark to try and emulate, I am not totally sure that we should actually be United!

And on that far too silly note, I bid you farewell my suffering friends!

Until after the game…

Come on you Shrew-Taming Goooonnnneeerrrrssss!

Testing Times and Doubtful T(h)omases!

I have to say that, in the past three decades at least, I have not witnessed a time when, in the great scheme of things, games could be more meaningless and yet so damned important.

I know that there have been much more important games over that time such as the Champions League final against Farcalona, title run-ins, the odd FA Cup final, even those last few games of the Invincible season when you just knew we were going to throw away the chance to rewrite the history books away with a stunning reversal by Leicester City at Highbury! Conversely, there have been a few much less important games along the way too. The last three of four games of most seasons tend to provide that excruciating feeling of utter pointlessness regardless of how much we looked like we may actually be there fighting for the title until the death in the preceding weeks!

But I digress, as usual, from the main point that I am trying to make here! Sorry to bring this up, but as I am sure you are all keenly aware, the real successes that we have enjoyed in that period were quite some time ago now and a lot has changed since those heady days. Case in point, we were genuinely relieved when we beat Swansea 1-0 at home on Saturday and are all getting a little pre-match tension going before heading off to play Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League on Tuesday night.

In truth, I don’t remember a time when things were, for all the best will in the world, so uncertain in terms of direction, ability, desire or even the chance of us actually winning something. Put simply, we don’t really know how the new boys will fit in, we are unsure of what system Wenger has in mind for the team or even if it will change at all and we are even less sure that he could survive the next couple of months if we do something foolish like troll off to Germany tomorrow and get a good old shoeing! All in all things are a little up in the air and a good thump down to earth is the last thing we need. If there is any team in our Champions League group that can provide that thump, it may well be Borussia Dortmund.

Key players for them include: Sebastian Kehl, captain, a fantastic tackler and very good passer of the ball, Mats Hummel, not just a good central defender but also a real threat from set pieces along with central defensive partner Subotic (if he plays), Robert Lewandowski, a proper handful of a centre forward who, apart from being fairly lethal from short range, long range or with his head, also makes a habit of providing the kind of well-timed, defence-splitting runs which the likes of Mario Götze, clearly amongst the very best young attacking midfielders in Europe right now, simply love to provide defence-splitting passes for him to get on the end of.

There are warning signs here. Our defence will have to be on their toes or the creative attacking midfielders of Dortmund could well do some serious damage. Having watched a fair bit of Dortmund last season, it seems that our defence will have to begin from the front too. The Dortmund midfielders tend to drop deep to get the ball but, in a three behind the front man Farcalona-style setup, they move the ball very quickly from defence or defensive midfield to the penalty area. Make no mistake, this is not going to be an easy fixture, certainly not as easy as we would like it to be given the general state of things right now.

In reality we have never really fared that well against German sides and, whilst they may not have the stature or reputation of the likes of Bayern Munich, this Dortmund side do play fairly attractive, very attack-minded football, a lot like us to be fair. They too come into the game off the back of a dodgy result, losing at home for the first time in 18 games to Hertha Berlin and playing, well, terribly in the process. They are playing in the Champions League for the first time since the 2002-03 season but are doing so as champions of the Bundesliga and, to be fair, are a good side with a lot of young players, all of whom appear to be as technically gifted as our own, with an average age of just 24, one could be excused for thinking that this should be a team for the future and yet here they are, Champions of Germany. Of course, all of this serves to bring yet more unwanted pressure on our own young players to produce the goods on Tuesday night or facing getting “out-kidded”!

In terms of our team, we have the usual mass of bodies queuing up in the treatment room. Rambo Myarse, (sorry, Ramsey) hobbled out of training on Monday with an ankle injury, Jack Wilshere is already out until the end of September at least although word from the club seems to suggest we could be more likely to see him pull on the mighty red shirt sometime around the end of October. Add to this the two T(h)omases who are both still out, Rosicky as usual and Vermaelan, well, as usual too, and then tack on Diaby who, believe it or not, is still actually paid a salary to play football, and we are looking pretty thin on the ground. Jenkinson returns from suspension but did not make Wenger’s 18-man squad whilst all 5 of the new shiny things got seats on the plane although Santos is still lacking match fitness having not played a competitive match since the Copa America almost two months ago and will therefore be unlikely to get a place in the starting lineup.

We will also welcome back the effervescent Gervinho as well as what could well turn out to be a pivotal role in the shape of Alexandre Song. If Dortmund do indeed have a weakness, I believe that it is in their full backs, Piszczek and Löwe. If Gervinho can get at them like he did against the full backs of Udinese, we may well come out of this with a share of the points or even three all of them. Of equal importance will be Song’s ability to stay in position and break up their attacks before we are praying that Kos hasn’t forgotten there is a game going on or Mertesacker finds himself trying to play catch-up with a Dortmund player he probably won’t catch up with!

I think the team is likely to line up in a much more conventional than usual 4-4-2 due to the injuries to Aaron and Jack and thus expect it will look something like this:

We have to hope that Mertesacker’s knowledge of Dortmund will be put to full use and as such we can also hope that he learned as much from his Bremen side getting beaten by them 2-0 away from home last season as he did when Bremen won 2-0 at home.

In truth, this is not the type of game that we as fans or we as a club really need right now. There are clear dangers here and everybody will have to perform well for us to get a result. If we lose concentration we will be punished and if we show the sort of profligacy in front of goal as we did against Swansea, we will be lucky to get out with a point.

All of that said, without precisely this type of game to go and win, how would we rebuild that fragile, shattered confidence?!

On top of that, we have a secret weapon, something cunning and devious, something that they do not have and something that they will not be expecting…

EXPERIENCE!

Come On You Champions League Challenging Gooners!!!

Lost

Ok, so the title isn’t too imaginative, but let’s be totally honest, we did lose, we looked lost on the pitch and we appear more and more lost as a club.

I am sure that you all saw the “game”, but a quick recap should get us all on the same page. I think that we can literally do this by the numbers:

8-2 – That was the final score today at The Theatre of Dreams.

Ok, I know how much fun it is to call it “The Theatre of Debts”, but I am actually going to pay a far superior, far more willing, far more cunning, far more organised and far more talented Manchester United side the minimum respect of actually using their correct and full names. Maybe it will be just for today, but they have earned my respect with their performance. Anyway, whilst we enjoy nothing more than having a good laugh at them roaming around winning trophies and titles, the following two sets of numbers may actually tell a rather important tale:

18.3, 16.5, 16 – This is how much United have spent on players this transfer window, depending on which sources you believe.

1.1, 4, 7, 34, 25 – This is how much Arsenal has reportedly recouped in the transfer window.

This means that United have spent 50.8m on players whilst we have sold 68.1m. If they are a “spending club” that surely, beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt, must render us a “selling club”.

28, 22, 42, 64, 67, 70, 82, 90 – Those were the times of the goals for Manchester United. The exact moments where we contrived to allow them the courtesy of recording the heaviest league defeat of our fine club since the “bad old days” of 1896 and the very same moments when they gladly, ruthlessly, joyfully accepted our kindness.

45, 74 – Those were the times when we showed that, once we could actually get the ball to either the wasted on the wings Walcott or RVP, we could actually appear slightly dangerous.

27 – That was when our frankly nervous looking captain scuffed the ball from the penalty spot – gifting the fairly ordinary looking De Gea a penalty save to add to his scrapbook of footballing memories – choosing to take a run up that started closer to the touchline than the goal and never looking like he wanted the ball in the first place.

77 – That was when Carl Jenkinson got the obligatory “red card for the new boy” that all Arsenal players strive so hard to get in their first game or three. Surely this means that he is simply a Gooner legend in the making? After his performance today, an appeal has been lodged and the jury is back out. Udinese and Manchester United proved to be two totally different prospects after all.

More numbers? Ok, let’s try these for size…

253 & 260 – Notice anything odd about these numbers? No? Well you should because those are the total ages of the two teams that started the match. Yes, that’s rights folks, even without the injured “experienced veterans” Song, Gervinho, Vermaelan and Sagna, (23, 24, 25 and 28) our frighteningly young team got thrashed 8-2, and damned well thrashed they were, by a YOUNGER TEAM.

So, excuse Number 1 in the Arsene handbook of excuses goes right out of the window never to return, one assumes.

I for one am glad. Honestly, I am sick and tired of hearing about experience or lack of it, it confuses the issue and, when push came to shove, we got shoved.

So what actually went wrong? Well, the following is my opinion and mine alone. I do not ask for your confirmation and equally I do not ask for your condemnation. This is a game of opinions after all!

Traore is not ever going to be a great left back, defend, track back, mark or get organised appear to be a little out of reach for him. The trouble starts when you realise that he cannot actually beat his man, either with the ball or just for pace alone, and he cannot cross it either. Whilst not being able to cross a ball has been a basic requirement of Arsenal full backs for some years now, it isn’t enough to convince me that he should be anywhere near our squad, let alone the ONLY back up to the injury prone Gibbs who, let’s be fair, isn’t exactly showering himself in glory when he DOES get out of the treatment room.

Coquelin played today and, quite honestly, showed why he does not appear to be in the short term plans of Arsene. I am aware that there are others who claim that he is better than Frimpong, almost as good as Song, ready for a taste of first team action, but today was not that day and certainly proved as such. In his defence (about the only effective defence Arsenal had all day) he should not have even been needed to play after the warning signs of about 4 seasons ago showed us the desperate need for a couple of top class centre backs. Had we had one of those at least, we could have thought about playing Djourou in the DM position saving Coquelin from walking into his debut shirt and out onto the killing field.

Arshavin is going backwards. His pace left him and he looked simply dreadful for it. Now he appears a little leaner, a little fitter and a little faster again and, guess what, we have the old Arshavin back again. No, not the Arshavin clone that turned up against Liverpool, the Arshavin that runs into blind alleys, refuses to pass the ball, can’t shoot and can’t track back. Quite frankly he was lucky to even be on the pitch after his assault on Young came quite so soon after his high and late effort on Phil Jones had already earned him a well deserved yellow.

Ramsey is looking like a player not yet ready to take on this level of responsibility. When Vieira left we wondered how we would cope, but a little Spaniard showed that boys can be men and stepped up to the plate. Ramsey clearly is not of the same mentality as Cesc and I genuinely believe that we are risking his confidence in the longer term by continuing to play him in such an important role.

Rosicky, oh dear, Rosicky. I love Tomas Rosicky, let’s make that clear. A fabulous player on his day but that day may well have gone down sluices of the treatment room. I feared that playing the full 45 minutes against Udinese and then asking him to play at Old Trafford so soon afterwards may be a step too far. I did question whether or not this may be the case in my previous article, although I am bitterly disappointed to have been proven correct.

Now, there are those that will point to the injuries and suspensions list – Gibbs, Sagna, Vermaelan, Song, Gervinho, Frimpong, Diaby, even Bendtner if you like, but in reality the majority of them would not get in the Manchester United side. Seriously, Vermaelan and Sagna would almost certainly get some games as squad players, but I do not see their Manchester United counterparts getting dislodged by either of them…And they are the BEST of what we had missing.

I am not calling for the heads of any of our players as such; I am simply saying that looking at whether or not we have sufficient cover for them is NOT going to solve the problems. We need players that are going to COMPETE with them. For example, Traore cannot push Gibbs to perform better under threat of losing his place. This is true all over the team.

Similarly, I am not going to call for the head of Wenger, the buying out of Stan or even the return of David Dein. These are not the solutions that we need- What we need is better quality, more experienced winners to push the youngsters along and help get us some dearly needed stability and points in the meantime.

What I and many other Arsenal fans like me ARE calling for is some common sense and less BS. The quality players ARE out there, the need IS there, the squad is NOT so young and inexperienced that we should expect less of them and the experience being gained by those young players right now is NOT invaluable.

And that my friends, is exactly what I have been working my way towards throughout this missive. These youngsters have been getting their souls and their hearts broken year in, year out, tournament in, tournament out, and, aside from an average Italian side that it appears we may well have helped to look better than they really were, right now week in, week out. Does ANYBODY think that is good for the development of a young player? Seriously, can it be helping any of their careers to be on the end of an 8-2 trouncing, the worst defeat in more than a century of league football? They are in the Arsenal history books now, and for all the wrong reasons.

Yes, we have Jack to come back, but why is he out? Apparently and unsurprisingly, he was overplayed last season. So, even when he comes back, are we going to ask him play 50-60 games this season? It would not make a lot of sense to do so, so where is the backup? I don’t mean playing Song AND Frimpong either, I mean REAL backup. I am talking about a first class central midfielder with the ability to pass the ball and tackle hard. All the top class leagues in Europe alone and we seriously, with over 100m to spend, cannot find ONE?!

That Juan Mata chap looked ok yesterday it has to be said. Weren’t we linked with him?! Oh yes, that’s right, we were waiting until we lost our best player and captain and a little French muppet BEFORE buying in a replacement.

Wesley Sneijder would have been a perfect fit in my opinion but the wages cap seems to have put paid to that. That would be the very same wages cap that seems entirely responsible for the loss of Clichy, Na$ri and to a certain degree, Fabregas. I have it from a reliable source that Wenger wanted to offer him 120k a week and the board turned down his request.

And that, in essence, is what I believe is wrong with our fine club right now. We are reactive and not proactive. We are looking for the replacements after we lose the player, not before. We have a wages cap that literally stops us from being able to compete. I know, I know, it is a business and we don’t have a sugar daddy, but we do have a painfully large amount of money in the bank and have taken a large chunk off of the wages bill. Surely there is room for a little movement from the board, or are we in the middle of an asset stripping session by Stan? Could it actually be that all the years of laughing at Manchester United and the Glaziers was just us ordering up our very own serving of just desserts? The Glaziers do not appear to be affecting Sir Alex Ferguson and his ability to buy great and fairly expensive players and they certainly do not appear to be sliding down the league table faster than Arshavin can waste good possession either!

There are already those fans out there claiming that this result will just give the “doomers” more ammunition. Guys, we got stuffed 8-2 today by a younger team and clearly much better team…

DAMN RIGHT IT GIVES THEM THE AMMUNITION.

Frankly, it holds the gun for them too.

Time to let them have their moment. Don’t worry, they will all have their broad grins and their singing voices when we win the Premier League and Champions League double this season…

…or maybe, just maybe, they have a point.

Anyway, to finish up, this was what Arsene said after the game:

“No (I will not quit). Of course it hurts. It’s humiliating. But you could see we had not recovered physically from Wednesday. They had class and they punished us. I know that in England when you lose a game signings are always the solution. We had eight players out today. You feel always humiliated when you concede eight goals. It was a terrible day for us. Man United had class but every single shot in the first half went in.”

To which I would offer these responses:

4 of the players that started on Wednesday were not available today so that is 4 fully fresh players you had in the side. Is it our fault that the replacements that we have aren’t good enough (yet?) to play n the Premier League?

Not recovered from Wednesday is a result of not buying the players that we so obviously needed last year and thus inviting the inevitable end of season collapse that required us to play on Wednesday in the first place.

Of the 8 players we had out today, how many would actually be first team choices? Sagna, Vermaelan, Song, Gervinho and Wilshere. Two of those are out suspended and we have had three red cards in three league games so maybe it would be a good idea to try and instill a little discipline in the side?!

Manchester United did see a lot of their shots on target today, but surely that is the inevitable result of giving away a free kick on the edge of the penalty area just about every single time they attacked! Again, some discipline is clearly required. Maybe having somebody experienced enough in defence to know that you simply cannot go flying into every single tackle, especially in and around the box might help!

As for feeling humiliated, I do not even want to get started on that one. And I won’t. Because this has gone on for far too long already!

So, until the next time when we will have filled at least three key positions on the pitch and everything will look rosy again.

Ooh to be a Gooner!

 

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