Stuffing The Golden Goose

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Never really looked at the Camel Worriers logo before – bit odd isn’t it?

A golden goose with the Blue Peter ship brining another load of middle east gold to that jewel of Northern England? Who knows, but I guess the three stars show the number of league titles won, which just shows how much money they’re going to have to spend to catch up with Arsenal. We’d have trouble fitting 13 stars onto our badge… you can buy success, but you can’t buy history…

I know City fans are sick of people bringing up the money thing, but what do they expect? A middle of the table outfit, not long in the lower divisions, now pretending they’re one of the elite teams in Europe and it’s down to more than just money is one of the more ludicrous things fans in the Sky age have been asked to swallow. Ahead of tomorrows match there’s been a number of interesting articles on the differences between the two clubs, and how the obscene amount of money that’s been spunked on City has altered the Premier League.

I do feel for Wenger sometimes, even though he’s an obstinate bugger, he must feel fate has it in for him – the building of the Emirates was supposed to have elevated us into a financial power in Europe, instead it’s just about allowed us to keep our place, while watching all around us playing Championship Manager and looting our team. Whatever you think about his spending (or the lack of it!) I dread to think where we would be had we stayed at Highbury. Scrabbling with Sperz to try to steal the Olympic stadium from West Ham? Firmly rooted in mid-table that’s for sure.

Still, the law of unintended consequences rarely fails and as Arseblogger points out this morning, City’s wild spending sprees have done us a favour in removing a poisonous presence from our dressing room (step forward Samir Nasri). I won’t pretend I’m pleased by clubs cherry picking our younger players, but as I’ve pointed out previously, even losing Fabregas wasn’t a disaster and may yet prove to be the point that we actually took a step forward. Nasri (like Bendtner and to a lesser extent, Denilson) strikes me as a player that will never be as good as he could have been. Flash, lazy and prone to disappear when the going gets tough, he’s going to need a complete personality transplant to avoid a massive scarring of his arse from the time he’s going to spend on the bench. It’s looking more & more that his transfer was more about stopping us from having him, rather than for what he might bring to City. I’m happy with the cash thanks.

So, tomorrow’s match and apart from the unabated carnage in our full-back department, we have a pretty strong team to put out. It’s a team that will know they can beat City, and having Djourou & Vermaelen at full back may actually increase our solidity. Put it this way – we may win, we may not, but I’m a lot more optimistic of a positive result than the last time we went to Manchester. A draw would be a good result, but a win could go a long way to increasing our belief, while chipping away at theirs. A true 6 pointer…..

If Only

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If only the season had begun on the 24th September and not the 20th August…..

If only Wenger had signed the players he did in July and not 3 seconds before the deadline….

If only Nasri & Fabregas had been more honest earlier in the summer….

If only so many players weren’t injured for so long…..

If only Bendtner was as good as he thinks he is…..

But then, as a wise man once said, if my Auntie had balls then she’d be my uncle. ‘If’ is a big word.

But the season is what it is and right now it’s more positive than I can remember for a long time. An extremely impressive game against the Camel Worriers, where the result was largely irrelevant, followed by a dominant performance against an albeit weak Wigan side. But then you can only beat what’s in front of you, and for the last couple of years we haven’t managed that.

So tomorrow a hopefully enjoyable run out in the warm for our youngsters and then a chance to continue our good form throughout December. Only the trip to Eastlands should pose any major threat, and I’m not as worried about that match as I would have been a few months back. City are a good team but at the moment so are we and we should go into the game with that mindset.

In fact, looking ahead we have as comfortable an end to a season as I can remember, meeting the major teams at a rate of only one a month, except for April, where even then the games against the the two billionaire’s playthings are at our place. If this team can keep treating triumph & disaster as one and the same, and not go into meltdown at the first opportunity, then I’m optimistic about a good placing overall. We won’t win the title, but there’s no harm in trying.

While not going for the whole ‘one-man team’ nonsense, there is no denying however that we’re one injury away from losing our free scoring Kapitain (what are the odds on some knuckle-dragging defender acting under orders fulfilling this?) and Arsene has been making some worrying noises about not needing another striker. While he always plays his cards close to his chest, his recent January record does scare me somewhat. Chamakh seems shot, Park is obviously a long way from being ready and then who else plays up front? The Ox? Not yet I don’t think.

Let’s hope we don’t finish the season and look back to January thinking ‘if only’….

He'll do......

False Dawn Or New Tomorrow?

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The media would like you to think it’s the former. A lot of Arsenal ‘supporters’ also seem to take pleasure in thinking that it will all come crashing down tomorrow – you can find them inhabiting Twitter and that portal of doom, The Online Gooner which only seems to be happy when it’s miserable. Seriously, I used to enjoy reading that website but just recently it should come with an advert for the Samaritans, as anyone going along in a positive frame of mind will be ready to end it all after reading a couple of articles and more than 3 consecutive comments.

OG Contributor leaving the Emirates

But I digress. I feel more positive about this Arsenal team than any from the last 5 years. I actually enjoyed the match against Dortmund this week, though I will admit that the first half was a little difficult. But even that first half viewed in retrospect gives you hope for the future. Dortmund, a skilled team, champions of Germany and recent vanquishers of Bayern Munich were bossing the game. A lot of possession, virtually all of the attacking intent and they were hounding & harrying Arsenal all over the pitch. But they didn’t really come close to scoring despite a few shots on goal.

Glass half full types (GHFT’s? Don’t start me on the acronym business again) will say that was due to BVB losing two of their better players to injury, and sure I wasn’t unhappy to see Goetze go off, but such is football. But we defended solidly from front to back, with RVP, Walcott and Gervinho tracking back, the midfield trio continued to work hard, always with an eye on going forward, and the back 5 were excellent. You can see just how much we missed Vermaelen over the last few season, Kos did well at right back but it was Andre Santos I was most impressed with.

Santos is another player who a large section of the fans have already written off, along with Mertesacker, but he is growing with every game – and I don’t mean outwards.

Breakfast of Champions

The man is quite obviously an excellent footballer, confident on the ball with the good technique  you would expect from a Brazilian and he is very calm in his distribution. The defensive side of his game still gives a few heart attacks, but it is improving and is something that can be worked on. With him on one wing and Sagna on the other, we may yet have a duo to rival Dixon & Winterburn though that’s a few years off at the moment.

So with a first half clean sheet in the bag, we came out and gradually increased the pressure on Dortmund; Arteta and Song continued to break up and play and counter-attack and it was Songinho that made the breakthrough. Trotting out toward the near touchline, he began to slow as if to stop and turn back toward our end (and perhaps last season he would have done). Instead, a burst of acceleration and close control saw him glide past half the Dortmund defence before standing up a cross for RVP to finish. Outstanding play.

Again, we retained our solidity, continued to press, picking up a second from a corner of all things. A consolation was given to BVB by some over-elaboration by Song & Djuorou but we can brush over that. Vermalen & Szczesney’s rage over that was enough to tell me it will have been dealt with in training.

So, the only English team to qualify for the next round after 5 matches of the Champions League, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that we could be the only English team left in after the final round of matches. To which I can only say ‘ha ha’. Arsenal are really beginning to play as a team now and it seems that some of the fear is going out of our play. Instead there is just a determination not to over react to conceding or scoring the first goal, and to stick to the gameplan and keep pressing. Every player knows their job and we look a real team, with quality & experience on the bench. We’re a long way from winning anything yet, but I’m optimistic about the remainder of this season. I would like to see more progress with signings in January, and the next round of injuries will be a real test (and you know they’re coming).

But for now, bring it on…..

Give Per A Chance + Canaries Cooked

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Arsenal’s run to the title continues (remember, you heard it here first, unless we don’t win, in which case you can forget you heard it here first) with another solid professional win over Norwich. A lot of people will say it was ‘only 2-1′ against ‘only’ Norwich, while I’ll point out that’s the same goal difference as the good old fashioned 1-0 and that ‘only Norwich’ could and perhaps should have beaten United.

'Scheisse!'

Of course it wouldn’t be Arsenal without a gift to the opposition, which came from pretty much their first effort on goal, Metersacker going to ground and Morison with a good finish. I’ve seen some ultra-critical reports say Szczesney was too slow off his line, but with a defender covering the ball and low sun in his eyes I didn’t see much wrong from the stripper-bothering* Pole. Most of the ire was dumped on the big German – deservedly so in direction, less so in the level of vitriol. There’s been a lot of criticism aimed at Per since he joined us – too slow, easily brushed off, too ginger etc. One person on Twitter has taken to calling him Mertesacker-shit which is about as funny as it is desperately contrived.


I find this hysterical urge to demolish our players by our own fans odd to say the least. It seems to get worse with every passing season – Almunia, Eboue, Denilson, and more recently Squillaci, Djourou and now Mertesacker. Now while I agree that some of these people are not players of the quality I want to see playing for Arsenal, it’s worth remembering that the likes of Walcott, Koscileny and Song have also come in for similar levels of abuse. Anyone want to see them drummed out of the side at the moment?


The point is, no player should be abused while they play for the club, it can only be counter productive. Mertesacker’s cock up on Saturday struck me as a guy who’s only ever played in one league, getting surprised by the robustness of the challenge (it wasn’t a foul) and more especially the fact that a free kick wasn’t given for him. Think about it, you’ve been playing football in one country your whole life, getting fouls given in your favour for going down under that sort of challenge and now you’re not – it can only be an ingrained action. He will adapt and these elements will go out of his game. Germany don’t give international caps away free with packets of bratwurst and Mertesacker has 80 of them (international caps, not bratwurst-though who knows what his sausage munching activities are like?).


The rest of the match was very similar to the rest of our recent run; Walcott had his opposing right back on toast, Gervinho was getting into some good attacking positions, though had an off day in finishing and the midfield werre again solid. Koscielny slotted in seamlessly at right back, Vermalen was here, there and everywhere and Santos was again good going forward, while occasionaly drifiting out of position at the back. Another player who I feel will only get better, if given the time….


There’s not much more that can be said about Robin at the moment – 10 goals in 5 games? Insane. To be honest he could have had 5 on Saturday and it’s almost a surprise when he missed a few. Of course the press won’t allow us to enjoy the moment without bringing up the issue of his contract with every report, despite it having another year to run. This, along with the issue of Wenger’s ‘retirement’ is getting rather boring so I’m going to ignore it – they’ll stay, or they won’t and Arsenal will carry on.


Dortmund on Wednesday should be a stonking match – bring it on……


*Apparently.

The Enigma Of Tomas Rosicky

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I first chose Borussia Dortmund as ‘my’ foreign team while playing Championship Manager 2 back around 1997, mainly because they weren’t Bayern, they had a large stadium and a cool black & yellow kit. Soon after in real life they hilariously defeated Manchester United in a Champions League semi, before going on to win the cup itself, cementing them in my affections for all time. I seem to remember the semi final result nearly made Clive Tyldesley cry, but that may just be wishful thinking.

Anyway, I continued to ‘manage’ BVB through various incarnations of ChampMan (usually to build my reputation before being begged to take over at Arsenal) which is where Tomas Rosicky came to my attention, scoring 15 goals a season and racking up 20+assists (who said that game was realistic?).

So onward to 2006 and the World Cup and unusually for Arsenal, we announced a signing beforehand, that of the god-like assist king Rosicky, to take the place of Le Bob who was retiring to the sunshine. What happened there did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm:

Playing largely on the left side of midfield, the season went well enough with 6 goals and 4 assists though no trees were ever in danger of being pulled up and we all still missed Pires. His second season was again ok with more goals (7) but fewer assists, but by the end the strange hamstring injury which would see him miss the whole of the 08-09 season was beginning to take it’s toll.

After some 18 months out when many of us doubted he’d ever be back, Tomas returned to a very different Arsenal side containing Nasri and more dominated by Fabregas which meant that he became less of a regular starter and even less of an impact sub. With the new contract that was signed in 2010 expiring at the end of this season, what next for the man nicknamed ‘Little Mozart’ for the ability he was famed for in orchestrating a teams play?

Possibly a new role. Though only making 6 starts so far this season, he’s earned some positive reviews, not least for the more defensive aspects of his game. I don’t mean in terms of Alex Song, more the role played by Mikel Arteta that I described in this post – breaking up play in the middle of the pitch or receiving the ball from defence, before then moving it on to our attacking players. Tidy, economical and a style of play crucial to counter-attack which Arsenal finally seem to be going back to (thankfully).

Time will tell as to whether he can earn a new contract, and thrive in a deeper role – I think his time at the front is coming to an end- but I for one would be glad to see Tomas enjoy some success towards the end of his Arsenal career, as well as paying back the faith Wenger has shown in him. Even if he never will get 35 assists in a season like he did for me in ChampMan 03/04. ;-)