The positives won't last long though. Another cog in the flimsy machine that is our defence is now likely to be a long term absentee. Sagna didn't have a great game but will be missed for a while.
Instead, I look at several passages of play and feel with better players, a more commanding centre forward and brainer team mates, we might finish in the top 6. I am so fed up with Arsenal's restricted capacity to break the mould that they have created for themselves. It is a Corinthian rule that sets an example to other teams about how to run a club. Except no one gives a shit. It makes no difference to any other team and I am sure that they question the relevance of Arsenal Football Club. I mean, what is it we as a club need?
Is there a plan because there doesn't feel like one? It is not to wait for Wilshire, Diaby and now Sagna to regain some fitness. It is not to just wait for Van Persie to stop scoring or get injured. These are a given and there is still no plan b.
If there is anything to really take away from a defeat to Spurs, it is that it wasn't anywhere near as convincing as people were predicting before the game. It felt at times that Arsenal could put Spurs under a full court press, but then the absent minded Walcott and Ramsey kept making the wrong choices. Ramsey scored and I am grateful but he was rubbish today.
Anyway, I fear for the future until Wenger makes a root and branch change to the mentality of football. We need to create more chances and retain the ball under pressure. How will this happen?
It won't this season. Not often enough.
It is sad.
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Monday, 29 August 2011
Manchester United 8 Arsenal 2
I have tried not to write. I have.
I tried to collect my thoughts, get over the sick feeling, take the bump in the road and my little bag of vomit from the journey so far, and instead just keep looking ahead to the imagined destination. But then, so far down the line that I have often forgotten that this is meant to be about growth and experience - and one is meant to savour all the components within and around it. I realise that I have never more than fleetingly questioned the competency of the driver.
I want to get off. I want to travel by another method or wait for another vehicle. I can still take in the landscape, just at a different speed. You can all join me. No doubt this driver will still be paid. He will do just fine and can go where he wants with the length of the journey he has taken us all on. But we should not feel sorry for him. He has made up his own route and gone off-road before it was de rigueur. But he refused to countenance the new roads and vehicles coming past and tempting those on board with a faster and more luxurious mode of travel.
Now I am not stupid. I know I am not on my way to paradise. I have paid over the odds for an up market package holiday. Actually scratch that, I am stupid.
Let's talk Arsenal.
On Sky yesterday, they barely spoke about Manchester United as some fairly inept thinkers tried to dissect the remainder of the roadkill that lay before them. It was like watching critics and analysts of the recent riots come up with horrendous and wild theories of the causes. It was not needed. You can see what happened in the game and anyone with a bit of viewing (yes viewing), or spectator experience could tell what was happening.
Arsenal were decimated. They were not tired. They were tactically untrained. The players might as well have been playing table tennis outdoors during a hurricane.
I shall not dwell on the inept performances. Those players are not to blame as they were following instructions by a mad Colonel whose own family long since turned on him. The remaining faithful tried to pass and move. They tried.
Instead, we can look at everything around the players on the pitch. The away fans were staggering, but they were singing for their club, their history (of which Wenger is a massive part), of their heroes. They were singing for the badge and the shirt, not the men and not the manager. They sung to show we are still here, independent of this mess. We are Arsenal. We buy it, we verbalise and contextualise it, we take our disappointments and in the height of summer, like Groundhog Day, revert to excitement and optimism that this coming season could be our year. Except not this year and not this time.
We had the broken sleep of all broken sleep summers. We have lost Henry, Vieira, Overmars, Anelka, Hleb, Flamini and more. We know the insomnia of being a feeder club to bigger ones. This year was no different except that the inner workings of Arsenal Football Club had not been looked after. It was like having a major heart condition, and on the operating table the 'top, top' surgeon (on a whim), decided to do a penis extension and shape the patient's eyebrows.
So Liverpool, Man Utd, Newcastle, Udinese have all proven something to us. With a season that is 5 games old, and began with 2 injuries (Diaby and Wilshere), our squad has injured and indisciplined itself to its bare bones in 1/8 of a season.
Therefore it is down to the manager and the board. We must look at them. The investment made in the Arsenal 'experience' has been second to none. The money spent on Club level and Arsenalization has created a slick, Upper Class lounge feel to a holiday riddled with the runs. We cannot rid ourselves of the dead wood any more than we can the manager. Both are paid too much and have contributed little in the recent past.
We have players on our books who could not get in yesterday's side. Professional ones who commanded several column inches of turgid media lies. Yet they could not play owing to being THAT bad.
So what can the club do? They have no balls, no strength, no heart, no proactivity, no risk. They entrust they running of the empire to a man who deserves help, yet rejects it.
I have called for Wenger's head because it cannot get any worse. Us fans would like to win the league but we can't. We would like to win anything but it is unlikely. But we sure as hell don't want to lose by 8. That is a given. A fucking axiom that the most indignant and impetuous and malicious scumbag would have to work very hard to break.
Who cares who would come next? We are a wealthy and elite club. We will employ someone with skills. Virtually all coaches in the world have tactics except ours. Our pitches will remain excellent. Diets and player fitness won't worsen. The marketing of the club (disgusting), will never cease. What will really go wrong here? Transition, Tony Adams once said, is an excuse. Only if you are a massive club like Man Utd or Barcelona.
What will happen is that Wenger will buy two players. No stars and workhorses who believe in his methods. No big name players will now come because Arsenal are crumbling and everyone knows Wenger has a short time left. We will show 33% fighting spirit and demonstrate in a few games that, in the words of Wesley Snipes, "the sun shines on even a dog's ass some days".
But next year, there will be no new contract. And the management of the management will prove that like our manager, with no plan B, we can sink lower and lower.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our next manager, (and he has been waiting so patiently for his chance). With no further ado, I give you Pat Rice.
I tried to collect my thoughts, get over the sick feeling, take the bump in the road and my little bag of vomit from the journey so far, and instead just keep looking ahead to the imagined destination. But then, so far down the line that I have often forgotten that this is meant to be about growth and experience - and one is meant to savour all the components within and around it. I realise that I have never more than fleetingly questioned the competency of the driver.
I want to get off. I want to travel by another method or wait for another vehicle. I can still take in the landscape, just at a different speed. You can all join me. No doubt this driver will still be paid. He will do just fine and can go where he wants with the length of the journey he has taken us all on. But we should not feel sorry for him. He has made up his own route and gone off-road before it was de rigueur. But he refused to countenance the new roads and vehicles coming past and tempting those on board with a faster and more luxurious mode of travel.
Now I am not stupid. I know I am not on my way to paradise. I have paid over the odds for an up market package holiday. Actually scratch that, I am stupid.
Let's talk Arsenal.
On Sky yesterday, they barely spoke about Manchester United as some fairly inept thinkers tried to dissect the remainder of the roadkill that lay before them. It was like watching critics and analysts of the recent riots come up with horrendous and wild theories of the causes. It was not needed. You can see what happened in the game and anyone with a bit of viewing (yes viewing), or spectator experience could tell what was happening.
Arsenal were decimated. They were not tired. They were tactically untrained. The players might as well have been playing table tennis outdoors during a hurricane.
I shall not dwell on the inept performances. Those players are not to blame as they were following instructions by a mad Colonel whose own family long since turned on him. The remaining faithful tried to pass and move. They tried.
Instead, we can look at everything around the players on the pitch. The away fans were staggering, but they were singing for their club, their history (of which Wenger is a massive part), of their heroes. They were singing for the badge and the shirt, not the men and not the manager. They sung to show we are still here, independent of this mess. We are Arsenal. We buy it, we verbalise and contextualise it, we take our disappointments and in the height of summer, like Groundhog Day, revert to excitement and optimism that this coming season could be our year. Except not this year and not this time.
We had the broken sleep of all broken sleep summers. We have lost Henry, Vieira, Overmars, Anelka, Hleb, Flamini and more. We know the insomnia of being a feeder club to bigger ones. This year was no different except that the inner workings of Arsenal Football Club had not been looked after. It was like having a major heart condition, and on the operating table the 'top, top' surgeon (on a whim), decided to do a penis extension and shape the patient's eyebrows.
So Liverpool, Man Utd, Newcastle, Udinese have all proven something to us. With a season that is 5 games old, and began with 2 injuries (Diaby and Wilshere), our squad has injured and indisciplined itself to its bare bones in 1/8 of a season.
Therefore it is down to the manager and the board. We must look at them. The investment made in the Arsenal 'experience' has been second to none. The money spent on Club level and Arsenalization has created a slick, Upper Class lounge feel to a holiday riddled with the runs. We cannot rid ourselves of the dead wood any more than we can the manager. Both are paid too much and have contributed little in the recent past.
We have players on our books who could not get in yesterday's side. Professional ones who commanded several column inches of turgid media lies. Yet they could not play owing to being THAT bad.
So what can the club do? They have no balls, no strength, no heart, no proactivity, no risk. They entrust they running of the empire to a man who deserves help, yet rejects it.
I have called for Wenger's head because it cannot get any worse. Us fans would like to win the league but we can't. We would like to win anything but it is unlikely. But we sure as hell don't want to lose by 8. That is a given. A fucking axiom that the most indignant and impetuous and malicious scumbag would have to work very hard to break.
Who cares who would come next? We are a wealthy and elite club. We will employ someone with skills. Virtually all coaches in the world have tactics except ours. Our pitches will remain excellent. Diets and player fitness won't worsen. The marketing of the club (disgusting), will never cease. What will really go wrong here? Transition, Tony Adams once said, is an excuse. Only if you are a massive club like Man Utd or Barcelona.
What will happen is that Wenger will buy two players. No stars and workhorses who believe in his methods. No big name players will now come because Arsenal are crumbling and everyone knows Wenger has a short time left. We will show 33% fighting spirit and demonstrate in a few games that, in the words of Wesley Snipes, "the sun shines on even a dog's ass some days".
But next year, there will be no new contract. And the management of the management will prove that like our manager, with no plan B, we can sink lower and lower.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our next manager, (and he has been waiting so patiently for his chance). With no further ado, I give you Pat Rice.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Thoughts on Barcelona, Media and so on
Somewhere in between euphoria that transcends all sense of logic and outcome, and a cynicism which suggests that actually Barcelona won the game in the long run, comes truth.
Arsenal were very good, Barca too and better in most areas of the pitch. But Barcelona could not take all of their chances. Their disallowed goal is part of the game as all England and Arsenal fans know well.
It is somewhat confusing that the soothsayers and doomsdayers and whoever else are trying to create a context for the result that underpins a false intellect and a logic fitting for the individual that wants to be understood. By this I mean that the media people and bloggers who attempt to contextualise a game of football, with a great sense of meaning and understanding, do so with the primary objective being that their perspective is the right one and possibly only one. Why bother?
So having scoured the media today for the reaction, it is unsurprising to see that Barcelona were better, squandered chances, complacent and (in some parts of the Spanish Press), a spent force. Nice try with a spent force. That is extreme in the extreme.
Then all the conclusions drawn from the Arsenal victory attempt to undermine the validity of the football match. Even Fabregas alludes to half time in the tie, but the three weeks of oranges that we get to eat between now and the second half suggest that some serious evaluation and consideration will be given to the successes and failures of both sides. Normal fare for a half time chat, but in taking stock, new things happen. This is the point of my writing.
Barcelona play sublime football in terms of their drills. But the drills demand colossal focus and it was quite easy to see that they can switch off because of the demanding nature of this. The drills are based on systems that they deploy to dictate, with or without the ball, the available space to use for themselves or the opposition. So what we see from them is a change in formation from 4-4-2, to 4-5-1, to 4-3-3, to even 5-4-1 depending on where the ball is, who has possession, if it is a dead ball – e.g systems for corners, free kicks, goal kicks, and so on. All the time however, there are 2-3 players who are also required to surround and harangue the player/s in possession and not only try to create a turnover, but also position themselves on the eventuality of that happening or not – in an immensely short timeframe.
And yet we beat them. So what did they do wrong and we do right?
Well they were not clinical, they say Messi should have scored 2 but the pressure told. But RVP also should have scored 2 more in the first half and both were nailed on chances that he would have normally taken. We could say the occasion got to both of them for different reasons.
Next, it would be important to highlight that they found it easy to slice our defence up. But firstly, look at who is playing for them and then consider that it is more amazing that they didn’t do a better job. Is that because they are bad or that we stood up to the task, as much as we could? Equally, we showed their weakened defence what they can expect in the second half. Without Puyol, they lost their thunder, without Pique they lose their finesse. These things will worry them as much as we can be worried in the Nou Camp.
Lastly, everyone will expect them to beat us. I expect them to beat us. But I can see Arsenal winning too. The reason for this is the system and players that Arsene has educated ‘live’ for this situation. They have learned everything for this particular test and with a strong first team available, have options and a Plan B. This is something that has always been levelled against us, yet the stronger our bench gets, the more varied our systems can become. This is not without fault and games like West Brom and Spurs show a real downside. However, like Man U, we are conditioned to come good at this time of the season and our second half stats are much better than our first – both in terms of season and individual matches.
I don’t think I need to single out players. The passes for our second goal demonstrated that the lack of fear and the freedom of expression are not always naïve. It was a coming of age, but this doesn’t mean that we will not experience problems and slumps within ‘adulthood’.
So really who cares if Barcelona were better? It doesn’t even matter and the score is almost irrelevant as it is so finely balanced. But that is the point that people don’t seem to recognise. Villa, Alves, Maxwell and Abidal cost more than our whole team. This Barcelona side many believe are the best in the history of the sport. And we went toe to toe with them. We beat them, and we are not afraid to do it again. We can beat their opposition too and we can give them and their rivals a run for their money. We are not the best in the world, and probably not the best in our league, but we showed maturity, stomach, consistency and guile on top of our usual passing game.
And that my friends, is good fecking news (provided it continues) ;)
Bring on Brum, Brauglana, Big Balls. Bring it.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Dropped points
It should be suggested, even if it is not believed, that this season's Premier League champions will be the worst team for some years.
This is not because they play bad football at all times. Nor is it to do with the quality of the EPL going down. Instead I would suggest that average teams are better and the mercenary player who cannot love a club longer than 2 years, still has a role to play in the furthering of their own career by helping a club that they never would have aspired to join in the first place. Pennant, Tevez, Gyan and Wellbeck, Konchesky, Harewood are all examples as they have played a part in the consolidation of average/good teams who can turn over anyone on their day. All these players (with the exception of Tevez), remain untested in the EPL. The jury is out but their clubs have gained results not to be sniffed at.
If we look at the amount of points dropped so far, it is amazing. Man U - 16 of 60 (without loss!!!), Man City - 19 of 63, Arsenal - 21 of 60, Spurs 24, Chelsea 25. These teams can only really blame this on lower opposition as they have only really taken a few points from each other.
Why is this a problem for Arsenal? I look at it as a strange set of circumstances. Firstly, the Arsenal run-in is more in our favour than any of the other clubs. This is mainly because of the 20 games, 9 have been at home. Secondly, the squads and fitness pay and it looks for once that we may have a full squad to choose from which could only really be rivaled in experience by United and possibly Spurs, in depth by City and the quality of player at Arsenal is consistent, though I do not say good in all cases.
However, under current conditions, good enough to win the league I feel. This worries me as we are the only club from the above list who would not strengthen properly if we were to succeed. This would create an immediate dip in fortunes for the following season as Fabregas would be bound to leave on a high and Wenger has already bemoaned the lack of leaders. Arsenal are not a back to back winning club and the stakes are too high at the other clubs to let a economically stable club demonstrate that big finance is not the way forward.
So I feel that under Wenger, the only thing he could do to please me beyond winning the league, would be to buy big, not to 'kill' the likes of Wilshire, Nasri, Van Persie et al, but challenge them. He has conceded that the return from injury is down to more rotation and preventative work being eased somewhat, so we need to balance the amount of youth with experience in order to ensure that the rotation does not leave us short like Chelsea showed against us last month.
I am in a position of fearing winning the league because of the consequences. This cannot be right. But then we know our manager and know that he has a very 'alternative' way of doing football business. A little flexibility would go a long way.
It is a fear. (Sorry about any spelling errors as this was rushed)
This is not because they play bad football at all times. Nor is it to do with the quality of the EPL going down. Instead I would suggest that average teams are better and the mercenary player who cannot love a club longer than 2 years, still has a role to play in the furthering of their own career by helping a club that they never would have aspired to join in the first place. Pennant, Tevez, Gyan and Wellbeck, Konchesky, Harewood are all examples as they have played a part in the consolidation of average/good teams who can turn over anyone on their day. All these players (with the exception of Tevez), remain untested in the EPL. The jury is out but their clubs have gained results not to be sniffed at.
If we look at the amount of points dropped so far, it is amazing. Man U - 16 of 60 (without loss!!!), Man City - 19 of 63, Arsenal - 21 of 60, Spurs 24, Chelsea 25. These teams can only really blame this on lower opposition as they have only really taken a few points from each other.
Why is this a problem for Arsenal? I look at it as a strange set of circumstances. Firstly, the Arsenal run-in is more in our favour than any of the other clubs. This is mainly because of the 20 games, 9 have been at home. Secondly, the squads and fitness pay and it looks for once that we may have a full squad to choose from which could only really be rivaled in experience by United and possibly Spurs, in depth by City and the quality of player at Arsenal is consistent, though I do not say good in all cases.
However, under current conditions, good enough to win the league I feel. This worries me as we are the only club from the above list who would not strengthen properly if we were to succeed. This would create an immediate dip in fortunes for the following season as Fabregas would be bound to leave on a high and Wenger has already bemoaned the lack of leaders. Arsenal are not a back to back winning club and the stakes are too high at the other clubs to let a economically stable club demonstrate that big finance is not the way forward.
So I feel that under Wenger, the only thing he could do to please me beyond winning the league, would be to buy big, not to 'kill' the likes of Wilshire, Nasri, Van Persie et al, but challenge them. He has conceded that the return from injury is down to more rotation and preventative work being eased somewhat, so we need to balance the amount of youth with experience in order to ensure that the rotation does not leave us short like Chelsea showed against us last month.
I am in a position of fearing winning the league because of the consequences. This cannot be right. But then we know our manager and know that he has a very 'alternative' way of doing football business. A little flexibility would go a long way.
It is a fear. (Sorry about any spelling errors as this was rushed)
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