What A Difference A Day 5 Signings Makes

Firstly, an apology. Sorry for not being around this week but, in mitigation, a cleverly placed 20 litre water bottle, a wet, slippery tiled floor and my ribcage got into a bit of a fracas and, well, to put it bluntly, two of my ribs lost…BADLY!

So, a week on the sofa put paid to my desperate desire to write something predicting a resounding thumping of Swansea today…

So, broken ribs and a week of bed rest turned out to be a stroke of luck because now I can now sit here and write about how I just KNEW we would scrape through by the skin of our luckiest hind teeth!

Ah, it appears I may have already given the game away somewhat!

Ok, seriously, what really went on today?!

Well, firstly but of secondary importance to finally leaving a premiership ground with 3 points again, Arteta and Mertesacker made their debuts, Arteta the shining light of our first half performance whilst Mertesacker looked, at times, like EXACTLY what we have needed, cried out for and cried over for the past two or three seasons. Mertesacker didn’t have the best game of his career but he looked pretty solid when it mattered and has only actually been in the UK for about 20 minutes!

Arteta faded in the second half but his first half performance should have been more than enough to close a few unnecessarily whiney mouths plapping on about how he won’t fit in. He fitted in just beautifully in my opinion and RVP looked like he was really enjoying the movement and service going on just behind him that provided a little extra time and space and delivered a few opportunities along the way. To be fair, had Robin hit the sort of goal scoring form that we have almost come to expect of late or Aaron Ramsey found his shooting boots before leaving the dressing room, we could have been 2 or 3 up by half time and probably wrapped up a treat of a win by the end of 90 minutes.

But could haves, would haves and should haves don’t win points, as we all know only too well!

What happened in reality is that Ramsey, after about 2 minutes of the game had passed by, contrived to get himself clean through on goal (on the end of a quite delightful slide-rule pass from the Mighty Mikel Arteta), suddenly looked like a deer caught in the headlights and thrashed it well wide of the target! Two minutes later and Mighty Mik was at it again, playing a neat one-two with RVP leaving the Swansea defence with the usual option of “having” to hack him down on the edge of the box. Mightily stepping up to take the free kick, Arteta obviously decided it would be a whole load more fun to trying to remove the head of Swansea’s Agustien from his shoulders! He came pretty close too with the midfielder looking dazed even after he finally remembered his name!

3 minutes later the “Pole between the poles” decided that Mighty Mik was getting far too much of the limelight and pulled off what can only be described as yet another incredible stop in the fledging career of this soon to be legend. Graham goes clean through and, with everybody in the ground already convinced that the ball was in the net and with almost zero reaction time, our polish cat smelled the impending danger, growled a little growl but did not even stop to preen before he threw himself down to the ground and literally clawed the ball off the line like he was chasing his favourite ball of wool! Seriously folks, how good exactly is this kid?! He just gets better and bigger every time he plays. Honestly, is it just me, or has he actually grown 4 inches since the end of last season alone?!  Not for the first time, Arsene can quite literally claim that “He Knew”!

On ten minutes Mighty Mik was at it again with another defence splitter! Van Persie found himself the lucky recipient but his goal bound effort was blocked by the challenge of the reasonably impressive Caulker. In fact, it was the very same reasonably impressive Caulker that managed to block Theo Walcott’s effort on the line after he had cunningly slipped it under Vorm’s body. In truth, the keeper got a touch on the ball which slowed it down just enough to give Caulker the time to get back. That said, he then threw himself full length to get to the ball, almost taking the goalpost down with him!

At around the half hour mark the strangely impressive Arshavin managed to skip past a few challenges, including a cracker from “I’m No Angel” Rangel that could have only been described as attempted assault, and slip a lovely pass into Van Persie leaving him the choice of only the keeper to beat or a simple pass to Walcott to get the job done. Robin chose to not lob the keeper and not pass to Theo whilst Theo chose to look at Robin like he better keep a good close eye on his secret Dutch biscuit stash for a while at least!

5 minutes later Mertesacker decided he too wanted to impress. Throwing himself, last-ditch Tony Adams-style, in front of Sinclair when it looked like we may have a serious problem from a set piece, he pulled off not only a great block but also showed exactly why he is quite so highly thought of, not only a great defender but a gutsy performer too.

The next five minutes or so were typically nail-biting stuff for us Gooners. Swansea weren’t really creating a great deal, but we didn’t have the ball very much and, well, you know how that tends to go! They knock it around for a while, pick up a couple of corners and a free kick and, wham, bam, thank you ma’am, we are 1-0 down through some sloppy defending from a set piece. Well, that may have been true on another day but not today as, on 40 minutes, the still strangely impressive Arshavin (somewhere along the way I am pretty sure that I caught him covering for Frimpong and actually putting in a fine sliding tackle, but I may have dozed off for a second there!) actually scored a really, proper, meaningful goal in an Arsenal shirt!

This was a goal straight out of the Andre Arshavin School of Advanced Footballing Lunacy too. Vorm tries to roll the ball out and somehow manages to throw it at the back of Rangel’s foot and the ball falls to Arshavin. So, looking at an almost impossibly tight angle and with a list of other options all appearing to be far simpler and far more likely to be productive, what does he do? That right, he smashes the ball, first time, inside the near post of the keeper and produces that moment of magic that only the most gifted and arrogant of players are even capable of! Quite simply a goal of the highest importance as, if the end of the season brings us even a single shiny glint in the cobweb strewn trophy cabinet, it will be hard to look back and say that the season didn’t kick off for us in that very moment.  The relief on the faces of everybody in the ground, including the players themselves, told a story of its own.

This by no means killed the game off as Swansea continued to look dangerous on the break, but the change in attitude of the team was easy to see and even easier to enjoy. Suddenly everybody wanted the ball, everybody wanted to try a killer ball and everybody wanted to do things the Arsenal Way again.

The second half brought about no changes from either side. Incredibly this was a disappointment to those who actually found the need to complain that we had bought all this experience and were just leaving it on the bench. Like I have said before, you can please some of the people, some of the time!

Anyway, almost as quickly as the fairly poor Atwell could blow his whistle to get us underway, Kieran Gibbs did his best to welcome Santos to the club and his position! Clearly demonstrating that he borrowed the Gael Clichy Offside Handbook in the summer, he contrived to play Rangel onside whilst also marking him, no mean feat let me tell you, but thankfully Kos, not having one of his better games as seems to be the norm without TV5 at his side, was on hand to head away the danger.

Benayoun got his first taste of the Arsenal faithful and, if I am brutally honest, looked out of touch with the rest of the team. That said, and considering that there was only about half an hour left on the clock and Swansea were not playing pushovers for anybody, I have seen worse debuts from players with far bigger reputations and far bigger price tags! In fact, I don’t think that Veron or Forlan EVER played that well for United!!!

Coquelin got 15 minutes and, I am sorry to say, entirely failed to impress any more than in previous outings and, future surprises aside, I am still wondering what all the fuss others make about him is actually about. Frimpong is clearly the answer to the question “Who is the obvious backup to Alex Song for the defensive midfield position at The Mighty Arsenal Football Club” for $500. That said, I remember seeing Chamakh play really quite well in an Arsenal shirt once but once again he gave us 10 minutes of absolutely nothing interesting at all today. Well, nothing if you don’t count being open in the box with a free header and failing miserably to put the ball either side of a stunned and stationary Vorm in the Swansea goal. He simply won’t get many better chances than that and every time he fails to convert them he seems to take a step further away from ever succeeding in doing it again. I have to say, having seen what he is/was capable of, I do feel a little sympathy for him. He is clearly desperately low on confidence and every run out he gets just seems to make it worse. All that aside, he does appear to be doing his best to engineer another free transfer!

Swansea managed to pull off a few hearts in mouths moments of their own and credit must go to them for never giving up which, in reality, will be a necessity if they are to have any real chance of repeating their visit to the Emirates next season. The ever busy Sinclair cracking a great free kick against the bar on around 50 minutes which certainly got a few nerves racked and it was Sinclair again almost unlocking the defence in the 92^nd minute with a mazy run only to find Sagna ready to throw himself in the way in a “none shall pass” style. A minute later and with a matter of seconds to play, Graham managed to miss a candidate for “Sitter of the Season” in the 93^rd minute when, from about 2 feet out, he hammered the ball over the bar when a tap-in would have probably done the job.

In all fairness though, it would have been very harsh had either of those efforts gone in after Robin could well have gone home with the match ball, Theo should have probably bagged a couple and Ramsey will still be wondering how he didn’t manage to put us in front in the opening moments. All in all, we played a reasonable game at the back with a couple of shaky moments, a very good game in midfield with a lot of possession and some great work from Arshavin and Arteta and a fairly poor game in the final third. That is not to say that we are back to our old tricks again already as this was more profligacy than the inability to create any goal scoring chances regardless of possession. On another day it could well have ended 6-2, but it didn’t; it ended our dismal start to the premiership season, it blooded 3 of our 5 new players, it gave us a much nicer feeling than the one we have been carrying around with us for the past couple of weeks and will undoubtedly have lifted a few spirits in the dressing room and around the club along the way.

So, we could have had killed the game off by half time, we would have thrown a goal or two their way from set pieces alone and we should have had about 6 goals by the end of the match.

But this is the Arsenal, home of doing it the hard way. So what I should have said was…

We could have been forgiven for being a little nervous prior to kick off after recent events, we would have taken three points and a 1-0 to the Arsenal prior to kick off and we should have planned for nothing more than a home win, pretty or not.

3 points finally in the bag, a bit of a lift all round, no injuries and a run out for 3 of our 5 shiny new acquisitions…

I’ll take that all day long!

Before I leave I have t mention the home support today. A quite incredible performance by them may well have been the thing that kept us going in those dying moments, maybe even providing the convincing proof, were any needed, for the likes of Sagna to throw himself in front of the ball to ensure those three points went on record as being ours. Truly the twelfth man today and a joy to hear.

Until Dortmund, Well Done You Goooonnnneeerrrrssss!!!

Tough test awaits, Udinese no walk in the park

Just few hours from now could really define our season in a nutshell. It hasn’t been a great week for us has it now? It hasn’t been a great summer full stop. Loosing at the weekend has not helped one bit to be honest with you. We saw the last of Nasri then, today he is checking house prices somewhere up north but more on that later.

Tonight we take on Udinese in MASSIVE second leg of our Champions League qualifier to the group stages. We hold a lead which is a slender lead but still gives us that little bit of advantage. In ideal world I would like to go there with a three goal lead and a squad full of world class players, however we all know  that both of these options are somewhat a bit of a fairy tale. In fact our team sheet just got weaker, we finally got rid of Nasri who for me was the only player who could do anything against Liverpool on Saturday and young Jack is now facing a setback on his ankle problem. The only good news for tonight is that Djourou, Traore, Gervinho, Rosicky, Song and Frimpong are back in the squad following injuries and suspensions. Despite our team being paper thin both on paper and on the pitch to me that’s a great boost from Saturday. Frimpong gave us a glance of what a player he could be for us and as much as his inexperience let him down, we definitely have a player with Arsenal DNA in him.

We will need to keep it really tight especially in the middle as this area is mostly weakened we all know what Udinese are capable of, we all saw what they can do at The Grove a week ago. There were moments of scare in the first leg and I’m convinced they will give us even a sterner test at their home turf. They are a decent side who can break on the counter attack in an instant so positioning discipline is a must, Song  please don’t go charging forward like a headless chicken and expose rather inexperienced Frimpong.

We need to be on top of our game in all areas in order for us to progress to the group stages, best way is to score an away goal and I really trust us to do just that. The away goal will mean a great deal to us and hopefully will be enough to see us through this tough fixture. Not sure who Arsene will send out tonight but I would go with this selection to start with:

You could possibly argue this line up because it would also be interesting to play Arshavin instead of Walcott and let’s be honest he has tons more experience in European Cup games, on top of that Arshavin will never last 90 minutes so Theo could be used here as a super substitute. Theo comes on quick counter attack, scores a second goal and we are through. Sounds so simple and I know for a fact it won’t be that easy, either way let’s get behind the lads wherever you are.

So Nasri is officially gone, it’s a real shame I liked him as player and I thought he had loads of talent that would blossom under Wenger, however yet again the modern footballer goes for money rather than pride and history, there isn’t a great deal to add what Arsene said:

“We did not want to lose Fabregas, but we were forced into a situation we didn’t want. Nasri is a situation where the player didn’t want to extend his contract with the proposals he had somewhere else. What kind of commitment can you have when the player is not there long-term? That is the question you have to answer.”

Fair play I haven’t got any complaints about him leaving he was after more money after all, neither do I have complaints about Cesc leaving too (being homesick and all that). I do however question how the club has approached this summer transfer window knowing that we will require high quality replacements for the players we have sold. We are a week away before transfer window will shut firmly in our faces and at this very moment it doesn’t look like there is going to be enough time to sign anyone decent. I believe a great deal will depend on the result tonight, we all know quality players want to play in Champions League, so this game could certainly define our season.

I don’t even want to think what will happen if we fail to qualify (rather scary thought), not only we will loose on £25 million from the competition, we may also miss out on any potential new signings. I sincerely hope that once we get through to group stages Arsene and The Board will work overtime to sign suitable players to strengthen areas in our squad that have been depleted by those players who have now left the club. The only way to strengthen, is to buy top quality players and I’m hoping we will not be let down by the club with so little time left on the clock.

I will leave it on that note, I have been very annoyed with the way the transfer window has been dealt with, it has been simply unacceptable for a club like Arsenal. On the positive side let’s look forward to the game tonight and get behind what we have for now.

Come on ARSENAL!

Why I think Arsenal will win the league!

In Gooner terms, to describe the last month as very very bad, would be a desperate understatement. Defeat to Birmingham, Barca and United saw us crash out of three major trophies, not to mention a disappointing draw at home to Sunderland in the league. On top of all this we have taken injury blows to Djourou, Szezny, Walcott, Song and of course our captain, Cesc. Calls in to 5 live have been requesting Arsene to leave as if we have finished in the bottom half of the table, from the outset it seems that the Gooner’s season has been turned upside down. And I think it’s fair to say we’ve hit what one would call ‘a mid-season crisis.’ But in this article I would like to explain why this little crisis shouldn’t, actually, can’t continue to overshadow our season.

Right where to start, ah yes I almost forgot. 15 years ago, Arsenal were the Aston Villa of the Premier league, in ’94 we finished 12th, in ’95 we finished 5th, as Alan Hansen would say ‘It was a mixed bag.’ Our stadium was a 40,000 seater and our fan base barely stretched over the English border. 15 years later, Arsenal are in a very very different place. We finish in the top 4 every year, our stadium capacity has increased by 20,000 and we are the most popular European club in Africa. In finances, Our yearly turnover is near that of Real Madrid and we are emerging from a huge shadow of debt faster than anyone predicted. Now I don’t think there is one person who can tell me that the grass is much greener than it was 15 years ago. To me, this has all been implemented by the success of one man, Arsene Wenger. It was he who came to us in ’96 and picked up our unsettled team from the despotic hands of Bruce Rioche. It was he who brought us the Premier league 3 times and FA Cup 4 times. Mr Wenger transformed Arsenal from top to bottom, inside out, he is behind the youth system, the team philosophy and of course the success. Arsenal is his project, creation almost, and it would be entirely foolish to sweep it out of his control.

The main subject of our criticism over the last month has been our centre midfield, or lack of. Abou Diaby and Denilson have had a fair crack of the whip, but neither of them have made any effect in games against Barca and United. With injuries to Song and Fabregas, we supposedly have a problem in the area. The answer lies with one man/boy: Aaron Ramsey. Ramsey showed us what he’s got in the latter end of last season and after recovering from injury is the perfect man for the job. Ramsey posses strength, pace, vision and determination, by the time he was savagely put out of action by Stoke last season, he was already a well established team member. If that isn’t enough to suggest that he is the obvious alternative to Diaby, Ramsey is known to improve when partnered up with Jack Wilshere who will be starting as many games as possible from now until May. In fact, the pair have already been hailed as the Gooner’s midfield future. Wilshere’s ability to retain possession and use the width of the pitch, mixed with Ramsey’s magic first touch and ability to create something out of nothing make them an irresistible duo. However, while Wilshere shows sure signs of becoming one of the best in the world, there is a small chance that Ramsey will pick up ‘Eduardo Syndrome’ and fail to return to the form which he was on before his terrible injury. This is unlikely as Ramsey has had two loan spells at Cardiff and Nottingham Forest where he has shown the same ability as previously. Ramsey and Wilshere seem like the perfect duo to rush to aid our endangered season, and if deployed, I believe they could be pivotal in the conclusion of our season

Now in terms of tactics, If we are to prevail over every opponent from now until the end of the season I believe Arsene should enforce a strict set of rules regarding selection. One starting XI should be set in concrete, by Saturday Arsene should have found the midfield combination which he wants to stick with until the return of Song and Fabregas. As fixture congestion will not be an issue there will be no need to rest anyone and the team should remain fairly similar from now until May. The team should be heavily disciplined, the victory is not stable until a 4 goal margin. Away games will be key, this weekend we play West Brom in an enormous fixture, I believe we should play away games with a far more defensive and conservative mentality than in the past, score line is utterly irrelevant, what matters is if we concede. Conceding will drain our moral and we must do everything we can to prevent it.

In terms of depth and selection we have only a slight problem, at least two players contest each outfield position, every player in our squad is top quality. I believe we can beat United, Liverpool, Tottenham and Aston Villa with the players available to us, as far off as that may seem in the current moment. Aside from tactics, I believe our main barrier is Mentality. Mentally we have cracked over the past month, the fixture congestion and pressure of big matches became too great a burden causing us to give below par performances. The rest given from only being in one competition should do us a world of good. Not only can the boss revise his strategies for upcoming matches, but the players can have time realise the clear and vital mission which they must complete to define the season. The most important thing is that our players are in positive mindset, from there, given the ability of our players, and without sounding too corny, anything is possible.

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