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.
“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.
It’s another one of those ‘big week for Arsenal’ weeks. For the first time since the defeat to Liverpool, we have two home games in a row, and a chance to generate some crucial momentum before traveling to White Hart Lane for a match that will have a great impact not just upon North London pride, but also on the battle for fourth place.
First up, it’s Bolton. After the trip to Blackburn, it’s another one of our supposed bogey teams. And, just as Blackburn were prior to our visit, they’re a side widely purported to be in a bigger crisis than even ourselves. I’m sure a few pundits will have a good old chuckle about this being a “relegation six-pointer”. The truth is that both teams are in need of the points, but for very different reasons.
Bolton’s ambitions won’t reach higher than mid-table. For Arsenal, beating the Trotters, Olympiakos in midweek, and then Spurs on Sunday would do much to put our disastrously rocky season back on an even keel, and see us push on back towards Champions League qualification.
Early team news is that we’ve lost Yossi Benayoun and Johan Djourou to slight strains picked up in Carling Cup action. Both should be out for around a week. Bacary Sagna has recovered from the knock picked up at Blackburn, whilst Aaron Ramsey has suffered no repercussions from his return and is fit to start. Arsene also expects Thomas Vermaelen and Abou Diaby to be fit for our next game after Spurs – Sunderland, on October 16th. There is no news yet on Jack Wilshere – no assessment can be made until he comes out of the plastic boot in a couple of weeks’ time.
The absence of Benayoun means there’s a chance Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could earn a place on the bench tomorrow. You can read an in-depth Q&A with him on Arsenal.com, in which he talks about his desire to push on and play in the more prestigious competitions:
“If you don’t aspire to achieve these things then you are not going to go anywhere. Whenever I get the call, I will be delighted with it. You have got to push to become part of the squad more regularly and that only comes with hard work and impressing when you get the chance.”
He certainly did that on Tuesday night, and would be well deserving of a place in the matchday squad if Arsene felt there was room. Time will tell. We have a big squad at the moment, so it’s far from guaranteed.
In an interview with BBC Football, Joey Barton has suggest that only his opening day antics at St. James’ Park scuppered a move to Arsenal. Struggling to form sentences longer than 140 characters, Barton said:
“If I hadn’t played against Arsenal, I may have signed for them.
There were a couple of conversations [with Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger] but that’s different to actually signing.
The Gervinho incident happened and there’s nothing I can do about it now. If it happened again, I’d like to think I’d deal with it differently.
Things happen for a reason and there’s a lesson to be learned from it. Right now we sit above Arsenal in the table – hopefully that’s the case in May.”
I have to say, I’m very dubious about his claims. There’s a reason he ended up signing with QPR, and it goes beyond his prohibitive £80,000 p/week wage demands.
“It’s not something the board heard about and if it was a serious proposition I certainly would have expected us to.”
Whether or not it was ever on the table, it didn’t happen, and that’s undoubtedly a good thing. There is a section of the fanbase who believe that Barton’s competitive spirit would be a healthy addition to the current Arsenal team. I agree that our squad could do with an injection of desire and that intangible ‘will-to-win’. But everything else about Barton – everything – turns my stomach.
He is a disturbed character. He has twice been convicted on charges of violence. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment for common assault and affray, and given a fourth-month suspended sentence for doing this to Ousmane Dabo. He almost blinded a youth team player with a lit cigar – at a Christmas party, of all places.
There is a difference between having the will to win, and being a psychopath. There is a difference between a competitor and a thug. In every instance, Joey Barton is on the wrong side of that divide.
Look at a man like Patrick Vieira. In his prime, Vieira would have destroyed Barton on the football pitch. Nobody was more fiercely competitive than PV4, and he could put his put in when it mattered and where it hurt. And yet, away from the pitch, he was a perfect gentleman. The same can be said for Sol Campbell, Martin Keown and more.
There’s plenty this current Arsenal team needs. Barton is not it, and never will be. In my opinion, he’s overrated both as a man and a footballer. A few trips to an art gallery and copying and pasting quotes from Google does not signify a transformed character. A few decent performances for QPR does not indicate an international quality footballer. And, frankly, however well he plays, his character will always hold him back. A club like Arsenal has no need to gamble on him.
One player it does look like we’ll be signing is Guim Laporta, son of former Barca president Joan. The 14-year old right-back has moved to England with his mother and has begun training in our youth set-up. We should offer his dad a job as a sporting director while we’re at it – though not the most popular man with Arsenal fans, his record at Barca is unquestionable.
In the end, it was an enjoyable night out – apart from the fact I managed to tumble down about three rows of seating when trying to make a quick escape by hopping over the man in front. If you saw a tall man in a blue hoodie go tumbling with kind of pirouettes and spins more commonly associated with a fouled Cristiano Ronaldo, then I confess that was me.
The spins and flicks from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain were far more impressive. After a quiet first 45, he came to life in the second half, thumping home a crucial goal from range as well as terrorising the opposition full-back with some searing sprints to the byline. The difference between Chamberlain and Walcott could not be more clear: the newer addition is much more prepared to drift inside and get involved with build-up play, spraying thirty and forty yard passes effortlessly across the pitch. He’s far less reliant on pace, and possesses far greater technique. Undoubtedly, a huge prospect.
And yet, his Man of the Match award was possibly a little generous: across he ninety minutes, the performance of Francis Coquelin probably warranted recognition. Since arriving in 2008, the holding midfielder has always looked a neat tackler with tidy ball-skills. Yesterday, in a 4-4-2 formation alongside Emmanuel Frimpong, he demonstrated that some time playing at full-back and a spell on loan in Ligue 1 have seen him add power and energy to his game. Yesterday he charged from box-to-box, winning the ball back and using it simply and efficiently. It seems the Old Trafford mauling has not scarred him.
Honourable mentions also go to Kieran Gibbs and Yossi Benayoun, who grabbed their first Arsenal goals, and Ignasi Miquel, who looked far more assured than his experienced defensive partner, Johan Djourou. Lukasz Fabianski, too, won’t have worried compatriot Wojciech Szczesny with an unconvincing display.
Ryo Miyaichi got twenty minutes but didn’t have time to make a notable impression, whilst the game may well once be remembered for the Arsenal debut of the giant Chuks Aneke. Chuks is, in every sense, a huge star at U-18 and now Reserve level, with that exciting combination of technique and tallness that draws inevitable comparisons with Patrick Vieira. He’s more of an attacking player than the Frenchman, and an enormous prospect. He only got a few minutes in stoppage time last night, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we see him again before long.
Given our disastrous league form, some see the advent of a Carling Cup campaign as an ill-timed and unnecessary distraction. To me, it comes as a great relief, and a chance to see some fresh talent at a time when the first-team appears to be stagnating.
Tonight there will be a mix of relatively experienced talent, and new faces. Â Lukasz Fabianski ought to make his first appearance of the season in goal, with Johan Djourou and Carl Jenkinson making their first starts since the Old Trafford debacle. Â Alongside Djourou, the ball-playing centre-half Ignasi Miquel will continue his development, whilst Kieran Gibbs could well be recalled after sitting out the game at Ewood Park.
In midfield I expect Coquelin and Frimpong to form a no-nonsense pairing, with the intriguing flair of Ryo Miyaichi, Park Chu-Young and Alex Chamberlain, all making their full debuts, behind target man Marouane Chamakh.
It is the trio of debutants who fire the imagination most. Â After signing just before deadline day and instantly collecting a flurry of international goals, we’re yet to catch a glimpse of Park. Â Tonight he’ll most likely play just off Chamakh, and it’s this versatility that Arsene thinks will make him particularly useful as the season progresses:
“Park is good in every area.  He is good in the air, good technically, he is mobile and that’s why he is an adaptable striker who can play up front behind the striker.
That’s why we went for him. What I like with him is that he is very mobile and that’s the basis of our game.”
If I’m not mistaken, it’ll be the first time an Asian player takes to the field for Arsenal since the days of Junichi Inamoto. Â And there’ll be two of them. Â Left-winger Ryo Miyaichi will finally make his much-anticipated Arsenal debut. Â Ryo trialled with the club only last season, only to break his leg, delaying any move till January. Â Unable to get a work permit, he then moved on loan to Feyenoord, where he impressed enormously, before joining up with the first-team squad this summer. Â He’s made a huge impression in training and Arsene is convinced he will make the breakthrough to the full team before long. Â In the meantime, the Carling Cup is a perfect opportunity to adapt to the English game:
“We have to give him time and not put too much pressure on him but he is a fantastic player. Â We want to do things properly with him and not to rush him too much.
He has pace, attitude, efficiency in what he is doing and complete commitment.”
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain already has one appearance under his belt: an ill-fated cameo at Old Trafford. Â On his first start for the club, he’ll be keen to erase that memory and make a positive impression on the supporters.
It’s easy to forget that Chamberlain was our most expensive buy this summer, with a fee that could rise as high as £15m.  He’s clearly incredibly highly-rated, and as a quick wideman bought from Southampton, has drawn comparisons with Theo Walcott – comparisons which Arsene has been quick to dispell.
What’s clear from the little bits of Chamberlain I’ve seen playing for Southampton and for England U-21s is that he’s a far more accomplished technical player than Walcott. Â I’d liken him more to a Samir Nasri type: a stocky, powerful dribbler who can create and score goals by coming from deep.
I’m excited to see all three talents, and hope they can contribute to creating a positive atmosphere a ground which, with any luck, we can carry in to Saturday’s game with Bolton. Â If you wish to dwell on the gloom of our affairs in the league, then you can read Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis telling us lots of things we already know.
I won’t profess to know too much about our opponents, Shrewsbury, but they’re in decent form and currently occupy the third automatic promotion spot in League Two. Arsenal.com has a neatly prepared scouting report on them – it seems the main threat will be provided by left-winger Lionel Ainsworth.
I expect this inexperienced Arsenal team to get the win, and hopefully provide some mouthwatering glimpses of potential. Â Some of you will be cynical about a tomorrow that never comes, but let’s not allow the travails of the first-team to impact upon the promise of these youngsters. Â They need and deserve out support tonight, and beyond.
