October 24th, 2011
Arsenal 3 – 1 Stoke
Match Report | Highlights | Arsene’s reaction
Imagine, if you will, that Arsene Wenger had been dismissed following Arsenal’s defeat at Blackburn on September 17th. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility – certainly, a large proportion of the fanbase were calling for just that to happen. Now imagine that the new manager – some idealistic lovechild of Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, conceived in a bout of passionate hate-sex, had achieved exactly the same results Arsene has in the last seven games.
It’s six wins from seven games, with 15 goals scored and just six conceded. It’s a run that’s taken us to the top of our Champions League group, and within three points of both Liverpool and Tottenham in the Premier League.
Had these results been picked up by a new manager, divorced from the stigma that Arsene has collected in his 15 years at charge, he’d be being praised for the impressive and pragmatic turnaround. Arsene, too, deserves that credit. I want to stear clear of cliche and avoid claiming that we’ve turned round any corners or over any leaves, but there is an increasing confidence in this Arsenal squad – a confidence underlined by the fact that Arsene felt he would be able to start Robin van Persie on the bench yesterday.
As we know, the Dutchman eventually stepped on to the field to resume his customary role as match-winner. He is now just one off double-figures for the season, and has a staggering 25 goals in 26 league games in the calendar year of 2011 (thanks Orbinho). His evolution in to a central striker has been fascinating to watch. He arrived at Arsenal as a lanky teenager who had, like another great Arsenal striker, Thierry Henry, spent most of footballing career on the left-wing. Unlike Henry, Van Persie was not blessed with blistering pace, and so was ear-marked by many (including Arsene) as a potential successor to Dennis Bergkamp in the support-striker role. When we made the necessary switch to 4-3-3, however, Arsene needed a centre-forward who could receive the ball with his back to goal and bring the midfield in to play. He needed someone with an immaculate first-touch, and Van Persie was that man.
What he and others could never predicted was that the Dutchman would unearth in himself such a goalscoring instinct. Both finishes yesterday were instant near-post strikes – real poacher’s goals. If he somehow manages to avoid injury, he promises to have his highest scoring season to date.
For both goals yesterday he owed a huge debt of gratitude to Gervinho. The Ivorian winger had his best game in an Arsenal shirt, scoring the opener after a lovely clipped pass from Aaron Ramsey, and then setting up the second and third with darts to the right and left byline respectively before cutting the ball back in to Robin’s path. Whilst his first touch and finishing can be erratic, he does seem to possess that burst of pace over five yards than allows him to get past a man in the tightest of situations. And, unlike Theo Walcott, he seems to be able to take the ball with him when he does it too, and find a pass at the end of it. Hopefully his goal yesterday marks the start of a scoring run – we need the likes of Gervinho and Walcott to take the pressure off Van Persie.
Finally, I wanted to speak in praise once more of our centre-back pairing of Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny, who (for the most part) coped admirably with Stoke’s aerial bombardment. Stoke’s goal was the unfortunate product of a lapse on concentration – I think fans and players alike thought they’d hoofed their free-kick out of play, only to see it catch in the wind and turn out to be a perfectly clipped pass to the near post.
Koscielny has been getting a lot of praise of late, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that having the giant German alongside him is helping him enormously.  It means that Thomas Vermaelen will have a genuine battle to get back in to the side when he returns from injury, which is a luxury we couldn’t have dreamt of a few months ago. While we’re on the defence, I also though Andre Santos and Johan Djourou performed very ably in the full-back positions.
Right, Carling Cup tomorrow, and another chance to look at Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, among others.
October 16th, 2011
Arsenal play host to Sunderland today. It’s a meeting between two teams at the wrong end of the table, desperate to get their respective seasons back on track. According to rumours in the media, Sunderland boss Steve Bruce is on the verge of the sack. It is a measure of how poor our start has been that at kick-off we have just one more point and a significantly worse goal difference.
Like us, Sunderland underwent major rebuilding in the summer, bringing in a host of new players and losing a couple of key stars in Jordan Henderson and Asamoah Gyan. Unlike us, they do not expect to be challenging for honours at the end of the season. A few wins on the bounce will take them up in to mid-table and back in line with their expectations. Arsenal have a far greater hill to climb.  We have an obligation not only to pull ourselves clear of the relegation zone, but towards the distant goal of the top four.
At the moment, this feels like a relegation six-pointer. It ought to feel like a home banker. Although Sunderland’s away form has been surprisingly decent (only one defeat for their first three games), Arsenal have to win today. Our next league fixtures are home ties against the Mackems and then Stoke. Six points would make a tremendous difference to our confidence, and almost double our total for the season.
There are, however, new problems to overcome. We have lost our most consistent and reliable defender, Bacary Sagna, for a period of several months. There are serious doubts over the ability of the obvious deputy, Carl Jenkinson, who has played most of his football in the non-league and still carries the scars of an Old Trafford mauling. Nevertheless, he’ll start today, and Arsene has unsurprisingly declared his confidence in the young man:
“He has top qualities. His fitness is outstanding, he’s quick, he has good crosses and he is good going forward. He needs to adjust a little bit his defensive game. But we are working with him and he is improving.”
Per Mertesacker, Laurent Kosicelny and Kieran Gibbs attempting to help him acclimatise, and they’ll be pleased not to have to deal with Nicklas Bendtner, who is prevented from playing for Sunderland by the conditions of his loan deal.
Alex Song, Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey will most likely patrol the midfield, with Gervinho and Theo Walcott flanking Robin van Persie.
On paper, Arsenal should win this. In reality, one can’t help but have doubts. This side has betrayed our faith so many times already this season. Arsene often speaks about the length of time it takes for the team to regain confidence. Arguably, it will take even longer for the fans to regain confidence in the team. Only once that happens, and the healing process is complete, will the Emirates become the fortress it ought to be.
Let’s hope that process starts today.
September 24th, 2011
In the build-up to today’s crucial match with Bolton Wanderers, Arsene Wenger has compared himself to ursus maritimus – that cuddly killer, the polar bear.
“Since I arrived in England there have been a lot of things said.
Personally I do not complain. I am supposed to take the bullets and absorb them. Like a bear, a polar bear.
In fairness, they don’t hurt me too much. You worry more about the young player who gets in the team at the moment and gets slaughtered. I remember when I was 19 that was much more difficult for me to take.”
Whilst I understand Arsene’s intention – to depict himself as a shield for his players, taking the weight of criticism upon his experienced shoulders – I would question some aspects of his chosen analogy. I’m not sure where Arsene’s got his info, but I’m not convinced polar bears are “supposed” to take bullets at all. When plucky Tommies went over the top in the Great War, they did not send a squadron of polar bears out first as cannon fodder. Shooting a polar bear is, I’m pretty sure, illegal. They’re endangered, after all.
It’s here that Arsene’s analogy begins to right itself and come bobbing up on the side of truth once more. The threat of global warming has led scientists to suggest polar bears could be eliminated within 100 years. Lose against Bolton today, and Arsene could find himself under an even more immediate threat of extinction.
The team will be very similar to the one that started at Blackburn. Tomas Rosicky has recovered and is back in the squad, but is unlikely to dislodge any of Song, Ramsey and Arteta. The only possible changes are on the flanks – Arsene Wenger will have to choose between Kieran Gibbs and Andre Santos, and is likely to reintroduce Theo Walcott, most likely at the expense of Andrey Arshavin.
Alex Chamberlain is in the squad, and Arsene insists, “ready to play”:
“With the ball, he’s ready. Off the ball he plays now like a young talented boy and he has to take responsibility in the senior team.
That will demand two or three months and after he will be there.”
If we’re in a winning position he might get off the bench today to make his home league debut.
I’m optimistic we’ll begin to turn out form around this afternoon, but the day’s undoubtedly been clouded by some bad news: Jack Wilshere will undergo surgery on his ankle and is likely to be out until Christmas at the earliest. It’s huge blow. With Cesc and Nasri gone, Jack is comfortably our most accomplished and inspirational midfield player. This team ought to be being built around him – instead, he’ll be absent for half the season. The only positive spin I can put on it is that I’d rather have him fit for the second half of the season than the first, when we reach the crunch period and the accumulation of points is all the more vital.
Whether or not we get Champions League football, there are already ominous signs for next summer. The quintet of Andrey Arshavin, Thomas Vermaelen, Robin van Persie, Theo Walcott and Alex Song all have less than two years to run on their existing deals. If new contracts aren’t tied up this season, we could find ourselves over a barrel as we did with Samir Nasri. Arsene doesn’t exactly sound confident of reaching agreements with all players concerned:
“We will try to convince them. Our desire is there to do it and we are ready to sit down with them.
After that we see where we go but the gap on that front has become bigger for us so, today, I cannot say that if we go to the maximum [deal] we are sure to sign a player – even if we do that we are not sure.”
To compound your distress, Arseblog reports that Darren Dein (the machiavellian marketeer behind the exits of Henry, Clichy, Cesc & Nasri) is now representing the interests of both Song and Van Persie.
All that fun can wait for another day. For now, we need to focus on beating Bolton – who we’ve just been drawn against in the League Cup, as fate would have it. Come On You Gunners.
September 17th, 2011
Yakubu wheels away after exploiting more dreaful defending
Match Report | Highlights | Arsene’s reaction
Arsenal’s fresh start is already tinged by the familiar odour of decay. After scraping past Swansea and nicking a point from Dortmund, our shortcomings were once more horribly exposed in a 4-3 defeat to struggling Blackburn.
It was, without doubt, one of the strangest games I’ve seen. But Arsenal conspire to make the strange familiar, and the impossible plausible. Only we could twice blow a lead at Ewood Park, conceding four goals to a side that, until today, had managed just the one. It means that Blackburn, whose manager was the subject of protests calling for his sacking prior to the game, have now moved above us in the league table.
The result is made all the more baffling by our dominant first-half display. Gervinho and Mikel Arteta both netted impressive first goals for the club, sweeping home after moves which both involved incisive passing from Alex Song. Song, Arteta and Ramsey were dominating the game, and ahead of them the movement of the Ivorian winger was causing havoc in the Blackburn back line.
The Arsenal strikes sandwiched Blackburn’s first equaliser, which gave warning of what was to follow. Arsenal, the replays hsowed, had a neat defensive line – unfortunately it was on a diagonal rather than a horizontal, and both Koscielny and debutant Santos were playing Yakubu onside as he raced through to toe-poke brilliantly beyond Szczesny.
That said, we still looked comfortable, and should arguably have gone in at half-time at 3-1 – Gervinho choosing to shoot rather than square to an unmarked RVP after a brilliant burst from an in-form Arshavin. The news boys were slotting seamlessly in to our swashbuckling style, and I expected us to come out after the break in search of the crucial next goal – the one that would define the pattern of the game.
That goal, as now know, went to Blackburn. Andrey Arshavin was harshly penalised for a backtracking slide on the left-flank. When Ruben Rochina clipped the resulting free-kick in to the box, Scott Dann’s flicked header was turned in to his own net by Alex Song. Arsenal’s new zonal marking system, which had looked ropey in the first half, relies on preventing a Blackburn player from reaching the ball. It does not, however, legislate for our own men accidentally putting the ball in the net.
Blackburn couldn’t believe their luck, and began to play like a team believing it might be their day. Within nine minutes, they were ahead. Another set-piece, a corner this time, found N’Zonzi unmarked at the back-post. He fired across goal and Yakubu – offside – tapped in.
There was worse to come. From an Arsenal corner, substitute Martin Olsson broke at breakneck speed, hurdling challenges from Santos and Johan Djourou, who had a nightmare as a replacement for the injured Bacary Sagna, to see his cross turned in to his own net by Koscielny. Our third own goal of the season – more than we have chalked up in the past two years combined.
In a game as surreal as this, and with the way we had played in the first half, rescuing the tie didn’t seem impossible. Theo Walcott and Marouane Chamakh were thrown on, and with five minutes to go the latter provided some hope with a thumping header – his first league goal in almost ten months. We had chances to equalise, too: Mertesacker and Chamakh again spurning presentable opportunities created by crosses from Santos, who unsurprisingly looked better going forward than back.
All that history will record, of course, is the result; the cause of which will surprise no-one: some apocalyptically bad defending. Today we learnt what most of us already knew: that adding new personnel won’t change the fundamental problems of organisation and coaching that dog our defensive displays.
Arsene seems to admit that we were in dire straits at the back:
“It just looked like we had a lack of focus for what we knew they were good at – corners and free-kicks.
You cannot say you are not worried when you see the performance we put in today. It’s just not defensively solid enough.
At the moment we do not have the capability to focus defensively for 90 minutes to win games. It is important you do not give cheap goals away like we did.”
Staggering admissions from the manager, and one only hopes he has some idea of how to combat the malaise. Signing Santos and Mertesacker is all very well – although both struggled today – but the one addition many fans were crying out for was someone on the coaching staff to provide a bit of guidance and discipline. It hasn’t happened, and the likes of Martin Keown will continue to dissect our errors on the sofa of the BBC when they could be doing so on the training ground.
By the end of the weekend we could be eleven points behind the league leaders, after just five games. We’ve now conceded 14 Premier League goals already – in 1998/99 we conceded 17 in 38 games. Last season in took us until mid-November to ship that many.
There’s a lot of rage out there on the internet. Fuming fans are looking for someone to blame, and inevitably their ire is turned on the manager. Myself? I’m more calm. I’ve taken a lot of stick over on Twitter for being “out of touch” and “in denial”, but I think it comes down to having already adjusted my expectations.
From the moment we lost Cesc Fabregas, we ceased to be title contenders. Losing Samir Nasri merely compounded that fact. A clutch of knee-jerk signings on deadline day boosted the squad, but not enough to change our status in an evolving league. City, Chelsea and United have got the top three sewn up. We’re part of the scrabble below, hoping to maintain fourth place and our Champions League status.
That’s as high as my sights ago. We can not and will not win the league, or indeed Champions League. We might have a stab at a domestic cup, but even the hunt for an overdue trophy has to be below fourth spot in our list of priorities. As Arsene suggested on Friday, we are at the start of a new cycle. Whether or not he’ll be here to see the completion and fruition of it, we can’t know. What we do know is that retaining the financial fillip and elite status provided by Champions League football is essential to help this club get back to the top. Without it, we genuinely run the risk of slipping in to a period of obscurity.
If you’re insistent that Arsenal must achieve more this season then I suggest you switch off now, because the next eight months will be rather pointless viewing. The realistic aim, that fourth spot, remains very much on the table. I believe that come the end of the season, we will be in contention. In fact, call me crazy, but I still think we’ll get it.
There were, amidst the chaos, positive signs. In the first half, and right at the end of the second, we played the best football we have mustered this season – possibly since around February last season. Arteta and Gervinho looked fine additions, and I began to see just how Arsene might manage to pull us out of the fire.
There was misfortune, too, in the goals we conceded. Any side that wins a game courtesy of two own-goals will hold their hands up and say they were a tad lucky – and therefore, by default, we were a little unlucky. Yakubu, too, was offside, and Arsenal had a decent shout for a penalty denied in the dying moments. We had 24 attempts to Blackburn’s 10, and 13 corners to their two.
I can’t sit here and tell you that Arsenal defended anything other than dreadfully. Nor can I tell you that we’ll turn this round and become title challengers. What I can tell you is that I saw signs today that we are perfectly capable of finishing fourth in this league. It will take a lot of work, and a few changes, but it can happen. And if you care about the future of this club you had better hope it does.
The manager will not walk away. Nor will he be sacked. Like it or not, he is here for this season. You may believe that this mess is of his creation, and I’d probably agree. However, I still believe he can get us out of it.
September 10th, 2011
A short time ago in a stadium far, far away, Arsenal were on the receiving end of a defeat so humiliating that it prompted one of the greatest periods of introspection in the club’s recent history. Since then, a great deal has passed. Five new players have joined the club, and another five have left. The club have taken the opportunity provided by the international break to regroup, recoil, and reinforce.
We’re undoubtedly in a stronger position that we were ten days ago. The addition of established players like Mertesacker, Arteta and Benayoun has provided the squad with a depth it was sorely lacking. Arsene Wenger has even suggested the squad may be better than it was twelve months ago:
“The squad is stronger. If you look at the squad now and imagine Wilshere and Diaby coming back, plus the players like Vermaelen who will come back soon and I think we have a more mature squad.”
Only time will tell if he’s right. The loss of Fabregas and Nasri has been a tremendous blow, but if the likes of Mertesacker, Santos and Arteta can make the team more robust, we may see the emergence of an Arsenal side with a different personality. One with less flair, but more fight. Mertesacker and Vermaelen should have the ability to bind in to a formidable defensive unit. Arteta, meanwhile, has “amazed” Arsene with his strength in the tackle – a toughness forged on the battlegrounds of the SPL and the Old Firm Derby.
The new boys in training
We may be lighter on big names. We may be lighter on creativity. But we won’t be lighter in the challenge. It’s important to remember that whilst we’ve lost two lynch-pins of the side, they didn’t lead us to any great success, especially in terms of silverware. Arsene’s additions this summer have been unusual for him, but isn’t that just what people wanted? Fans cry out for a departure from the philosophy of signing unheard of youngsters, and then when he does just that, they ask why we didn’t sign players like Hazard and M’Vila – both less than 21 and without any experience of the English game. I believe Arsenal tried for both – the latter in particular – but right now the likes of Arteta could prove more useful.
It’s our fourth league fixture, our sixth game of the season, and yet Arsenal fans and players alike seem united in the belief that the season starts now. Winger Theo Walcott says:
“We need to start our season against Swansea. We need to forget about the games against Liverpool and Manchester United.
We need to react in a positive way. We need players to stand up and be counted because, if we’re honest, it wasn’t good enough against Manchester United.”
He’s right. We need to be positive. In order to do that, we’ll have to be realistic. We’re currently in 17th place, already 8 points behind the Manchester clubs. With that start and the disruption we’ve suffered, winning the league seems improbable at best. At the moment, our priority has to be overhauling Liverpool and retaining that valuable Champions League spot. If we can do that this season, as well as have a decent stab at the cups, we’ll all be mightily relieved.
That battle starts today against Swansea. I suspect a couple of our new signings will be on show: Per Mertesacker is likely to start alongside Laurent Koscielny with Bacary Sagna and the fit-again Kieran Gibbs at full-back. Andre Santos is not yet fully fit, and will begin on the bench, and Wojciech Szczesny – our player of the month for August – will continue in goal. In midfield, Emmanuel Frimpong and Aaron Ramsey will be joined by Arteta, whilst captain Van Persie is likely to be flanked by Walcott and Arshavin. There is the possibility that Yossi Benayoun could be thrown in ahead of the out-of-sorts Russian, but J. Y. Park is unlikely to be involved: as of last night he was still in Paris awaiting clearance on his visa.
I’d love to see Arsenal come back in style and make a real statement, putting four or five behind a newly promoted side. I don’t anticipate that, however. Swansea are a decent side and won’t roll over. We may need to be patient today: the fans as much as the players.
After Swansea, we face Blackburn and Bolton in the league, and have the chance to build some momentum before the North London Derby. If we can embark upon a winning run, then the Old Trafford debacle will soon seem light years and galaxies away.
It’s time to look ahead. Or as the marketing folk at Nike would have us say: Forward.
 Come On You Gunners.
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