Archive for April, 2008
April 30th, 2008
The game with Derby was one of the strangest Premier League matches you’re ever likely to see. The gulf in class between the sides was astonishing. Not only are Derby the worst team in the Premier division, but potentially one of the worst in the football league. Of course they have the odd decent player, but the defensive disarray and obliterated confidence has rendered them spectacularly useless.
The first half resembled a cup tie against plucky Fritheringham Town (don’t bother checking – they’re fictional). Despite the huge gap in ability, Derby were clearly keen to make a name for themselves with one big result before their looming return to the Championship. However, just when things were looking up for County, Darren Moore inexplicably passed the ball to Nicklas Bendtner, who played a one-two with Van Persie and fired into the corner.
Derby then managed to equalise after Lukasz Fabianski and William Gallas both failed to deal with a free-kick and Jay McEveley fired in at the second attempt.
However, the first half ended with Robin van Persie (who’d already missed two big chances) bringing down a Kolo Toure ball and smashing it into the top of the net with his weaker right-foot.
The second half started, however, with Robin van Persie going off with his latest injury – just a precaution, Arsene claims. So presumably that’ll be about six months on the sidelines.
The introduction of Van Persie’s replacement, Emmanuel Adebayor, signified the end of the contest. He became the first player to score hatrick’s home and away against the same club in Premier League history, in turn taking his goal tally for the season to 30.
It’s a remarkable achievement. In the past fifteen years, only Ian Wright and Thierry Henry have matched it. If somebody told you the day Henry left we’d have a thirty goal striker anyway, I think you’d have been pretty chuffed, if not a bit disbelieving.
Amidst the flurry of Adebayor goals was a Rob Earnshaw strike in consolation, and a fantastic effort from Theo Walcott. The Englishman had missed a great chance shortly before, but kept plugging away and curled in an Henry-esque effort. For all the goals, check yesterday’s post.
It was pretty entertaining stuff, but not a great advertisment for the Premier League. If this is the fate that awaits this season’s play-off winners, they may as well not bother.
Today is the unofficial deadline Arsene Wenger imposed on Mathieu Flamini’s contract negotiations. On Monday night Arsene was still expressing his hope that Flamini will stay. The silence from the midfield, meanwhile, is ominous. Arsene says:
“I’m waiting for him to come back to me and tell me whether he’s going.”
Here’s an idea: ask him.
Modric joining Spurs is evidence that clubs are already hunting down players for next season. If we’re going to need to replace Flamini, as seems very likely to be the case, we need to get going straight away.
In the meantime, rumours suggest our new left-winger might be 20-year old Bulgarian, Nikolay Dimitrov. Hardly the most inspiring news, but you never know.
Last night I watched United drag themselves over the line to reach the Champions League final, and I realised the critical difference between them and us. Some of their players are almost as exhausted as ours. But when they ‘hit the wall’, they pulled out that extra 10% of effort that you can only summon when it’s absolutely neccessary. I despise United, but watching them defend against superior Barcelona players, it was clear they were reaching very deep to pull those performances out.
A large majority of our squad have never had to do that. This season, our fantastic football meant we had it pretty easy for a good while. However, when the going got tough (and boy did it), none of our players had had to go to that place before, where you feel like you can’t run another yard but you do because you know the ends justify the means.
Still, we’ve learnt a lot this year. If we’re in the same position in 2009, it’ll hopefully be very different.
Tomorrow, I’ll have another suggestion for a possible Flamini replacement. ‘Till then, tata.
April 29th, 2008
Report to follow…
April 28th, 2008
Did anyone else find themselves forgetting that we were even part of the Premier League this weekend? With exciting battles at the top and bottom of the table, we have well and truly dropped out of the limelight.
I even found myself forgetting that we were playing Derby tonight. A team almost certain to finish third against a team already relegated. Even Sky Sports would have a hard time getting excited about this one.
There a couple of minor details to be ironed out. Victory tonight would absolutely guarantee third place, which would be an improvement over last season’s fourth. There are also a couple of landmarks up for grabs: Emmanuel Adebayor needs three goals to reach the esteemed thirty mark, whilst in The Battle of the Cripples, Robin van Persie must play in all three remaining matches to have made more appearances this season than his chief competitor, Tomas Rosicky.
Another player who, like Rosicky, will not play again this season is Bacary Sagna. At this point, we ought to congratulate Sagna on an extraordinary first season at the club. Arriving in the Summer as a relative unknown, he has since made the right-back spot his own, and is a leading contender for our Player of the Season. What’s more, he’s restored pride to the Number 3 shirt after the disgraceful conduct of it’s previous incumbent. I just hope, for Sagna’s sake, that he’s fit to go to the Euros.
He absolutely deserves to have been voted into the PFA Team of the Season, alongside Gael Clichy (who is in Arsene’s good books), Emmanuel Adebayor, and Cesc Fabregas. Those four have all been consistently outstanding, and are arguably the only players in our squad we can absolutely guarantee will be in our starting line-up next season.
Special congratulations should be reserved for Cesc, who has (finally) been crowned as the PFA Young Player of the Year. Whilst I expected Ronaldo to win it as much as anyone else, I’m delighted to see Cesc honoured. He’s almost three years younger than the Portugese winger, and with 16 assists and 13 goals this season, he’s been almost as big an influence.
It tells you plenty about our season that no team has more players in the Team of the Year. Tellingly, United players feature in the side at centre-back and on the wing – these are the areas in which we most require improvement. Amusing to note that not a single Chelsea player was nominated for either individual award, or the team, and yet they could still win the title. I’d like to see the look on Ronaldo’s bloated face then.
Where was I? Oh, yeah: Derby. Lukasz Fabianski could make his Premier League debut, whilst I also suspect we might see starts for the likes of Senderos, Hoyte, and Denilson. I hope that any changes to the team don’t give Derby the encouragement they need to try and leave the division with one big scalp. We really should hammer them, and I hope we do.
For those of you who can’t bear to have your heart troubled by false hope once more, stop reading now.
For those who are gluttons for punishment…
Assuming we win our last three games, then were Chelsea and United to fail to win next week, we would still be in with a chance of the title on the final day of the season.
God. Reading that just makes you realise how incredibly close we were. It’s sickening. But it doesn’t half make you yearn for next season.
First, let’s end this one in style. Come on Arsenal.
April 27th, 2008
…by the start of next season, all of those players could be elsewhere.
It’s pretty remarkable. In August, we had six central midfielders for two positions. Fabregas, Diaby and Denilson made up the attacking contingent, with the aforementioned trio all fighting for the holding role.
At the very beginning of the season, Gilberto was recovering from the Copa America, whilst Diarra (poor soul) was still at Chelsea. This gave Mathieu Flamini the opportunity to stake his claim, and he did just that – his excellent form took him from third to first choice, where he remained for the rest of the season.
Meanwhile, Diarra and Gilberto grew unsettled. Whilst the Brazilian stayed (possibly because doing so allowed him to gain British citizenship), the Frenchman moved to Portsmouth in the January transfer window, citing limited first-team opportunities.
Flamini continued to excel, but as the season wore on, his contract remained unsigned. With Milan joining Juventus and Bayern in the list of illustrious clubs chasing Flamini, it’s not looking good. Within the space of twelve months, we may soon have gone from having three outstanding holding midfielders to… well, none.
You have to question whether or not Arsene was right to continually pick Flamini over Gilberto and Diarra when his future was far from certain. In the past, players like Edu and Wiltord were marginalised in the final years of their contract to prevent situations just like this one. Granted Flamini was the in-form player and deserved to be picked on merit, but perhaps involving Diarra or Gilberto more might’ve left them more inclined to stay – Arsene’s thinking was unusually short-termist on this one.
On the other side of the coin, I suppose that kind of short-term thinking is what many fans are demanding from Arsene. Whilst playing Flamini might not’ve been in the long-term interests in the club (certainly financially), Arsene did it anyway in the hope of providing trophies.
Anyhow, Le Boss is still hopeful he will stay, but admits Flamini would be making a “sacrifice” to remain at Arsenal. As much as we all want him to stay, I can’t expect him to “sacrifice” twenty or thirty or forty thousand pounds a week to remain in London. He’s not a supporter – this is his job.
Furthermore, I support Arsene’s policy of not breaking the wage structure to keep Flamini. Match the ridiculous sums he’s being offered on the continent, and our expenses will spiral out of control, and we’ll end up like Newcastle, paying Oba Martins £90,000+ a week.
Our other likely departee, Aleksandr Hleb, is none-too-convincing when asked about his future in The Sunday Times.
Look on the bright side: we’ll have to buy someone…
April 26th, 2008
This isn’t today’s proper blog post, but more of a heads up.
Dinamo Zagreb midfielder Luka Modric, whom we believe was very close to a move to Arsenal last Summer, will join Tottenham for a massive €26m this Summer. The only English source running the story as yet are The Sun, though I hear this Croatian source says the Vice-President has confirmed the deal and that Modric could be unveiled at White Hart Lane today.
This deal is proof, as if it were ever needed, that we will face stiff competition in the transfer market from the pocket of clubs chasing European places. Spurs will spend big again, as will Manchester City and Newcastle.
£20m is an awful lot of money, but Spurs will have known that Modric’s value would only rise if he had an impressive European Championships. If Arsenal are targetting any players set to feature in that tournament, they’d be wise to make their move sooner rather than later…
Update: It’s official.
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