Is anyone else starting to wonder if the young guns are actually out-performing the senior team?  Granted, the United result was brilliant but other than that we've been average to abysmal all season.  In case you need reminding we lost to Fulham, Hull and even fucking Stoke.  We are 10 times better than any of these teams on paper so why aren't we smashing goals past them?  The first team always seem like they're lacking a certain drive to win and are happy in the knowledge that they can individually have an average game and still be picked next week.  I've always defended A Weng his team pretty much picks itself.  Without injuries the only decision he ever has to make is whether to play Walcott or Eboue, which most Arsenal fans feel is an obvious choice anyway.  Can you really see him dropping Adebayor? No. RVP? No. Gallas? No chance, and all these players have been guilty of playing below par or complacently this season.  Even Fab's had an iffy start but I'm not suggesting for a second that Wenger drops him.  He always gives his all.

However, as a sub plot to all this gloom and doom we've had two rays of sunlight.  Both in the Carling Cup.  The first, a 6-0 thrashing of Sheffield United, was beyond belief.  Yes, we did get praised for it but it was also written off as an easy game.  Hold up.  Sheffield United are currently 4th in the championship and have been performing consistently well the whole season.  They could quite likely be the Stoke of the 2009/2010 season and the kids walked over them like they weren't there.  To back this up then came Tuesday night's Wigan game which has been reported on enough but no-one has looked beyond the fact it was the Carling Cup.  I genuinely believe that the first team would have come close to or actually messed up one of these ties given their current form.

Some people are calling for some of the kids to be given a chance in the league and I heard ex-Arsenal man Alan Smith say that he thought 2 or 3 of the kids may make it into the first team squad in the long run.  Not sure if he's been watching the same games as me?  I know it would never happen but I'd love to see Wenger drop the entire first team for a league match and see how the kids fair.  Even if they didn't win it might wake the 'big boys' up a bit and realise that they aren't untouchable.

TP.

Afterthought: Dropping the entire first team is ridiculous.  I just wish they could play with the same desire as the young guns!

vs Manchester United at The Grove

F*ckin’ Get In!!! Well well well…Saturday was a nice surprise. And before I start just let me say if it wasn’t for Bendtner up front we may have been celebrating the biggest win over United for years and years and years. He was bad, so SO bad…he was indecisive, he lacked composure, lacked vision, and towards the end he even gave up chasing the ball and putting pressure on the defence which had been his only positive all game…and that’s all im gonna say on Nicklas..quite simply awful....

Now, don’t get me wrong, we should be thankful to United for being so wasteful, we didn’t dominate or anything, but when we had the ball we were fantastic. When we didn’t have it we were much improved, and despite a few occasions it being glaringly obvious we lacked someone to sit infront of the defence on the whole we defended well as a unit. Obviously Nasri was the stand out player, and he just produced what he has been building up to already in his impressive early days as an Arsenal player. The goals from the midfield that we lacked last season maybe? Fabregas was creative and worked hard to not forget his defensive duties. Walcott batteld away and his most memorable moment - a superb slide tackle on Patrice Evra - was unfortunately followed up by giving the ball away and letting Anderson through to have a shot at Almunia’s goal. Speaking of Almunia, he did ok, but when Fabianski came on with time running out, when we needed to keep the confidence that we could hold on the youngster made at least 2 superb catches to kill the attack when you feel that Manuel may have chosen to punch and the pressure would have still been on. The defence worked well together for the first time and it was probably Silvestre’s best defensive performance since he moved from Utd. I thought that my conspiracy theory had been right after a few seconds when he played a criminally short back pass to Almunia who’s bleached brain cells didn’t have the capacity to remember the back pass rule and picked it up at Rooney’s feet. Fortunately we got away with it and Silvestre worked hard to make it up. Gallas was pretty solid and actually got caught on camera a couple of times doing leadershippy type things, could have been my imagination though….

This match was different to matches we have struggled in recently and really sums up why we tend to be ok against teams that we aren’t expected to beat and struggle against the underdogs. United like to play football. They come at you and that allowed us to play our own game. We struggle when teams set up to just snuff us out and that’s the problem that we need to work on solving if we are to make ourselves title contenders. That plan B that gives us the cutting edge. The other thing is the ability to kill games off, such as on Saturday when United were throwing everything forward and with a bit more composure we could have created several goals on the counter attack. We need to make sure we finish our chances and make sure we take the chance to make chances when it arrives….

So overall a good performance topped off by a fantastic second goal for Nasri which showed all the teams positives - we were patient in the build up, we switched it around, the movement off the ball was good, the passing was precist, we made the space and for once the finish was emphatic! Superb goal. Just a mention to Rafael Da Silva who looked good for United, and continued the Premiership’s trend of scoring wonder goals against us. My prediction of goal of the season featuring all the goals being against Arsenal is still on. 

And so to Wigan…Stick with the kids Arsene…D3   

vs Fenerbahce at the Grove

Well it was bonfire night, but there were no fireworks at Ashburton last night. The performance was an improvement but in the second half we lacked imagination and seemed void of ideas on how to break down the defensive Turks. In the first half we created clear chances on numerous occasions. These are the kind of chances that we need to start taking 9 times out of 10, not once.

Aswell as the forced changes, Wenger found his balls for once and made some changes for the better. He dropped the suddenly awful again Almunia and went with our young Pole Fabianksi between the sticks. He looked more assured on crosses, attacking the ball with confident punches, and got down well on a few occasions to make smart stops. One occasion when Fenerbahce tried to counter attack he made the wrong decision to stay when he should have been playing the sweeper role, but had the shot well covered in the end so will live to play another game. Im sure Wenger will restore Almunia to no1 for the Utd match but it was a good assured performance and a clean sheet for Lukasz. Into the defence and Wenger finally brought in Djourou to the middle alongside Silvestre with Toure occupying the right back berth. Johan made the difference as far as im concerned and was the reason for the improvement in the defensive performance. When crosses came over he attacked the ball, dominating the area and not allowing the Bahce players time on the ball. Toure played well at right back and although he's no Sagna, he's looked weak at centre half recently and looked more comfortable galloping down the wing. A few good crosses came over from here and he always was there offering support. Up to the midfield and Wenger included Aaron Ramsey from the start. The youngster had a good game until he was replaced towards the end. He didnt have the creative influence he may have liked but he slotted in well and certainly wasnt a weakness. Nasri was impressive as always but sometimes struggled to get his passes through the two banks of four infont of him. Van Persie ran his socks off, all night, trying to make up for last weekends stupidity it appeared, and just lacked the goal after failing to take a couple of chances and being superbly denied by defender and then goalkeeper on a couple of other occasions. Bendtner was shocking. Really bad last night. Just wasnt at the races even more so than usual. Im so annoyed that Vela didnt come on sooner as when he did we had already ran out of energy and ideas and whatever he tried just didnt seem to come off.

With Bendtners failure to perform last night i really fear for us on Saturday. We're not that great at defending and now cant attack either. With Eduardo, RVP, Walcott and Adebayor all out, i fear Wenger is going to do something mental like leave Vela on the bench and play Bendtner up top solo with Diaby supporting or something along those lines. I fear for us in that situation. I really do.....

Til then...D3

vs Stoke at the Brittania Stadium

We lost. against stoke. 2 goals conceded from Rory Delaps long throws. The defence proved again how fragile they are. Wengers starting line-up was shocking. We also lost our ability to outscore the opponents. It wasnt good enough. We have Fenerbache and Man Utd this week. We are most likely to be without Theo, Bacary (both devastating losses) & Adebayor (normally that wouldnt be bad) but Van Persie will be suspended after his moment of stupidness which leaves us with Bendtner (oh dear) and will produce a chance for Vela but its kind of throwing him in at the deep end. We MIGHT scrape through against the Turks but Man U's attack against our defence...we better be really careful or we are gonna get absolutely hammered! I have nothing more to say on the match itself. I want to move on and forget about it as quickly as possible.

Facing up to the fact that this season we just aren't gonna be title contenders...D3

vs Tottenham at the Grove.

Im still so angry this morning that this probably isnt going to be my most in depth match report ever. Im literally spitting feathers reading through the articles this morning and remembering how we controlled the match for a good 75-80 minutes and still didnt managed to win. It makes me angry that David 'I havnt done a single thing since ive been at Tottenham until its time to play my old club' Bentley thought it was ok to suddenly remind us why once upon a time he was touted as the next Dennis Bergkamp. I'm not sure what it is but come the end of may the goal of the season competition may feature all the goals in matches against us. Players just seem to keep on pulling them out the hat and its starting to make me angry. We got in the lead through a header from a corner and a header from a free kick. Not our usual style and im slightly annoyed that Silvestre and Gallas scored the goals, considering they are absolutely pants and really annoying me at the mo. When it got to 3-1 i had this horrible, nasty feeling that the match would end in a draw. Despite our total domination the way we kept spurning chances angered me somewhat and i just knew it wasnt gonna go to plan. To be honest i thought that meant 3-3, especially when it went to 3-2 but when RVP made it 4-2 i felt slightly more comfortbale. It was the chances missed at 4-2 and the seemingly complacent passing and lack of major effort to kill the game off that just made me know...when it got to 4-3 that wasnt the end of it. I could barely watch the injury time as I just knew what was coming. 4-4 at the final whistle, the defence was a shambles again, Almunia blew his chances of Player of the Month with a shocking performance, Adebayor was wasteful and lazy, I was angry and dissappointed. Spurs were celebrating as if they had won the Super Cup or something, I was angrier, 2 points lost, a chance to keep up with the leaders lost. We need a big result at Stoke. Drop Adebayor. Get Vela in. Get Toure and Djourou in for Silvestre and Gallas. Maybe even put Fabianksi in for Almunia. Don't take it Arsene. You made some bad substitutions last night. It may not have affected the outcome but I know that at 4-2 Theo had a far greater chance of hitting them on the counter attack when they pushed forwards than Eboue did. Make the changes. Get them up for Saturday. Let Stoke feel the backlash. We need to get a good run going and stop letting these stupid results happen in matches that we should win!

An angry and dissappointed D3

So tonight at 8pm the Yiddos come to the Grove, Hopefully to be well and truely cemented to the bottom of the League. If Stoke can manage some points, then hopefully we can be responsible for subjecting them to atleast another month in the relagation zone! 

It's a tough game, and we need to have our wits about us. Harry will be anxious to get off to a good start, and with Liverpool and Man City in the near future, he knows that points will not be easy to come across. I don't think I will be watching the game tonight, it always manages to frustrate me, and last time we watched this fixture TP didn't speak for around 24hours. Not happy memories.

Ultimately the best way to approach the worst defence in the league, is to throw everything at them, and I really hope we have an attacking line up. Carlos Vela should play but won't, and I'm going to keep asking him to play until somebody gets the message. Our defence is weak, and even against Strikers who have less goals between them than they do bollocks. we can't afford sloppy moments!

Denilson is back in the team, as is Sagna. To give him his credit, Eboue has done "ok" at right back, but he is no Sagna! As a great friend of mine once said "Give me 11 Sagna's anyday!" I think all Eboue has done is illustrated further the fact that he is not able to play effectively in the midfield, and hopefully Wengers eyes will have cleared up from the conjunctivitus he has clearly suffered over the past few months, and chuck him back where he belongs.... In the Reserves.

Almunia is in fine form, and will hopefully continue this further today. A clean sheet, gives the rest of the team a lot less to worry about! Clichy, Sagna, Gallas and probably Silvestre will start. Is Toure injured?? Because if not, we shoould definately get rid of the ex-Chelsea, ex-Man U defence and stick Djourou and Toure in there. Fabby is still working his way up the gears, but lets face it, even a shit Fabregas is better that an on form Bendtner or Eboue. Hopefully Diaby will get the nod over Song, as Song is frustrating in the middle, and Samir and Theo should hit the wings. Im all for RVP and Vela to start upfront but the more i wish, the more Bendtner gets chance after chance after chance, and Ade will most certainly play after his "wonderful" performance the other day. What a twat that bloke is! Hurry back Eduardo.

All in all, the team is never going to be as I want it, so long as that French frog-eating wanker is in charge. If we don't beat Tottenham tonight, then I think we can all agree....he's come too far, and needs to be cut loose!

vs West Ham at Upton Park

TP has already blogged this week and the moment has passed really so I’m not going to go into great detail today about Sunday’s match just a brief recap.

We started off fairly well and kept the ball, patiently building up and gradually moving up the field. West Ham used there flexible 4-3-3 (4-5-1 if they take a good long look at them selves and stop pretending) to leave Cole stranded up front and park their other 9 outfield players around the edge of their box - taking it in turns to rush forward to close down and otherwise just holding firm and attempting to intercept passes when we tried to make our move. Very surprising tactics from a Gianfranco Zola team especially after all the talk about giving it a real go, but I guess our reputation goes before us and teams just feel threatened. To be honest for a long time it seemed as if it would turn into one of those days and the goal would just never arrive. The arrival of Adebayor was the turning point as described by TP in yesterdays blog (and indeed Diaby again showed promise) and yet to get those 2 on the field we replaced Nasri and Walcott who, bar Van Persie were the players who looked like they might make something happen. Strange one, but I guess it paid off so no-one needs to question it this time round. In the first half Rob Green was most definitely outside his box and despite Arsenal hating Andy Grays comments about the ‘assistant referee’ not being as fit as professional footballers and cant be expected to keep up as we attacked so quickly there isn’t any way what so ever that he needed to be parallel with the incident on this occasion. Bad decision, and Rob Green went on to have (as also noticed by Mr Wenger) his traditionally, exceptional performance against us. Had he have been dismissed at that moment in time I may well have been writing about a rather larger away win. I really worry about Silvestre at centre back, he just doesn’t seem to be all there, apart from that the defence looked ok. Midfield was lively as usual if maybe lacking a bit of inspiration on occasion, and RVP was doing his best to make the break through. Bendtner, oh dear, all the fairly decent-ish work that had been done over the last few weeks was undone via a performance where he couldn’t pass, his touch was awful…like really bad…even worse than usual, and I don’t even remember him shooting on target or getting in a position to give himself that opportunity. Yeah it was a good ball for Adebayor’s second but in reality I don’t think there is a player registered to Arsenal Football Club at any level that wouldn’t have been able to see that pass was on and hit the 75sq.m. area that it needed to land in to create the same opportunity…maybe Eboue but never mind. So anyway…we got the 2 goals, Cole showed his frustration at being stranded for the whole game by stupidly lunging in and although the tackle may not have been a red card offence the fact that he knew he couldn’t get the ball and it was out of pure frustration I think the ref was right to send him off. If players let emotions get to them like that and put the safety of fellow professionals at risk then they deserve to get sent off. Good decision….and so that is just about it…a clean sheet, 3 points, onwards to the visit of a reinvigorated Spurs…this one wont be easy…


A slightly wary D3….

Well well, aren't we lucky we've got a giant clumsy Togan destroyer up front!  If he's going to do that off the bench more often then I definitely move that we whack Carlos Vela up front with RVP (who had a decent game yesterday) and unleash the £80,000 a week man on around 70 minutes if we're in need of options.  DR would argue that he changed the game through no fault of his own but that's what he does.  Defenders hate him, linesmen love him for keeping them in business but whatever way you see this guy, he does deliver and often when it's needed desperately.  He forced the own goal then latched on to Bendtner's surprisingly good through ball and finished with a plomb.

That brings me to Bendtner.....Nicklas Bendtner.  I'm not going to bother, it winds me up too much thinking about it.  Why is Vela not getting a chance ahead of him?  Beyond belief if you ask me.

As for the general performance, I think it was good not great but great performances only come about if your oppostion lets you play great football.  West Ham certainately did not.  The 4-3-3 they were supposedly playing turned into more of a 4-5-1 at times and they looked to play on the counter attack.  Other than when Bellamy got through in the first half, they never really troubled us with this set up and we had the patience and ability to punish them late on.  I think it was a good resiliince test ahead of what proves to be an interesting derby against the division's lowest team.  I don't think they'll be pushovers like we we're hoping.  With HR at the helm (who seems to have realised they need to play a DM, unlike Ramos) they'll have a bit more fire.  But nothing like the INFERNO we're going to hit them with.  Come on you Gunners!!!

Have a pleasant day!  TP.

Adebayor.... good ole Ade, what is he on about?? He scores his first one-on-one in 4 years and now thinks were going to win the Champions League? We won't...... not if we play like that!

Arsenal fans up and down the country are ranting and raving about Tuesdays game at Fener. I was not impressed, At the end of the day, Fener played worse than Derby did all last season. They couldn't pass the ball to each other, and when they got through on goal they either spooned it wide or shot it right down Almunia's throat. Almunia had a great game by the way. But I'm straying.... the fact is that we did not play well. We did alright going forward, but only alright. After we'd scored a couple of goals it all seemed a bit lack-lustre. The passing was sloppy and movement was poor. We seem to lack any kind of drive to put a game to bed lately, and enjoy the thrill of them scoring goals against us.

The defence is a whole other story, now they were visibly SHITE! If we were playing the likes of Man U or Barca, or Real Madrid, mark my words Almunia would have felt like a fisherman on Tuesday, constantly fetching the ball from his net! I honestly think even my Sunday league team could have had a result agaisnt Arsenal on Tuesday.

Anyway, now I've said my bit, let's have a look forward to Sundays game. West Ham... not a bad team, and they have had a decent start by their standards and find themselves a mere 4 points behind us after 8 games. They will most probably be looking to lob the ball in the box, as 6'3" Carlton Cole looms to take advantage of our midget squad! The perfect opportunity for our lanky Swiss defender to make an appearance! It seems that after Tuesdays "Brilliant" Cough! result, the whole Arsenal camp are on top of the world. This Sunday could turn out to be another Hull if were not careful. Wenger needs to get him team choice right! Eboue's, Bendtner's, Adebayor's and Songs's are hilarious to start with, but were months into the season now, and without a decent 90 minute performance between them, including them in the starting 11 is utterly undefendable!

Fingers Crossed....DR!

vs Fenerbahce.

Wow! what a night in Turkey. A potentially tricky match against a team who hadnt lost at home in Europe for 15 matches was despite the scoreline...actually a very tricky match...For all the fantastic flowing moves that produced the goals there were many times that the Fenerbahce players hassled and closed us down quickly and stopped us from getting into that rythm. By that stage though the damage had been done. The first 20 minutes the Home defence made our makeshift back 4 look like World Beaters and my god (Bergkamp if your wondering) that is far from the truth. By the time they had worked out that a big gap between centre backs a long way up the pitch, teamed with Fabregas' ability to play precision passes would rip them apart they were already 2-0 down and fortunate to not be 3 behind as the keeper saved well from Nasri's effort. Adebayor struck the first after negotiating the obsticle of Theo who thought that as the defence werent going to bother he should at least stand there so as it wasnt too easy for Ade to score. In fairness though it was a good composed finish from the lankster. Next up, a mere minute later Fabregas again slid a ball through and Theo this time raced through to round the keeper and despite the tight angle and the fact the ball was running away from him slightly he managed to wrap his foot round it and squeeze it inside the post. The home crowd had been silenced. They needed to sort it out quick. In fairness to them, they did look dangerous on the attack all night, i dont know if its cos they were actually dangerous or just because our defence was SO bad but Song blatently cut across his man to earn himself a booking and give away a free kick which was swung across and played back into the area by Guiza who found Silvestre in great space to tuck it away beyond Almunia. It actually did cross my mind right there and then that Silvestre is in fact under orders from SAF to completely ruin our season but he did seem to try harder after that so im still undecided. After 21 minutes, the impressive throughout, Diaby, showed great feet and turn of pace to get away from his man and fire hard and low left footed across the goal into the far corner to once again hush the crowd. Almunia was in good form all night and kept out Guiza on multiple occasions after he far too easily escaped our defence. The break came and went and not too long after the restart a Fabregas free kick found its way up in the air and dropped out the sky to be hammered home by Song with a fantastic volley. As Fenerbahce pressed hard and tried to break through without being caught offside we continued to counter attack. They did eventually get it right and Guiza sneaked through to lob over Almunia. What could have been a tense last 10 minutes or so was controlled well by our brilliant use of the ball and ability to keep possession. This was outlined brilliantly when from about the 90th minute until the 4th minute of injury time we passed it and rarely let Fenerbahce get a touch on it as we pressed well looking for that final moment. It came after a couple of rejected attempts at breaking through when the ball found its way to the impressive Ramsey on the edge of the area who fired low into the opposite corner to mark a special moment and a great night in Europe again for the Arsenal...


Vast improvements are needed when it comes to defending but our ability to outscore the opponent is getting us through at the moment!

.....D3