So I started writing a blog the other night, canned it, and came back to it again with the intention of letting time dilute my disappointment. Why? Well the first effort was just too doom-laden, hairshirt-wearing, chest-thumping and – overall – it was a miserable read all round. I didn’t enjoy writing it so I added one and one together, made two, and realised that nobody of a sound mental disposition would much care to read it either. So here we are again, hopefully a bit more sanguine.
At this point, I’d take Bacary Sanguine.
Safe to say though that Wenger is not enjoying 2012 a whole lot, and let’s be frank here, he’s not the only one. Arsenal have barely swashbuckled at all this this season, with the second half at Chelsea about as good as it has got (and it was good – van Persie dovetailed nicely with Walcott, Santos announced himself on the scene and the result was five goals away from home). Swashbuckling used to be our trademark. What is our trademark now?
A bright few months followed – those we should not forget when we stare down the barrel of the last three games – but taken as a whole, the whiff of backwards is in the air. And it pains me to write that. Eight league losses and thirty-five goals conceded tell their own story. We’re making mistakes all over the place and confidence has evaporated – again.
My take on the booing, before I move on once and for all, is this: It was spontaneous and, like many of these things, it had more to it than meets the eye. The frustration with the way we are playing has been building up again for a while, so just when we did start turning the screw (and scored a lovely goal), removing Chamberlain took the wind right out of our sails, even if medically it was the right thing to do. I don’t think the booing was for Arshavin at all.
There’s also frustration at the weaknesses in the squad going unaddressed. There are probably a few other frustrations besides.
So I suppose it was the culmination of all that plus a bit more. Sometimes these things happen – like the chant at the end of last season, after drawing at Fulham, when the away fans urged Arsene to flash some of our hard-earned cash. I know it’s counterproductive to boo, but I find it hard to criticise, if I’m honest. Football is not just like a trip to the cinema, it’s an all-encompassing passion. Most of us live and breathe it, take it far too seriously and let it affect the rest of our lives. I know I do.
It does leave us in a pickle though and a fair wedge of the opprobrium – fairly, for I am no blind apologist – has begun to fall on the boss’s shoulders. I’d be lying if I haven’t at any point been worried about where we are going under him but I’m more worried about salvaging a season that, let’s be honest, has hardly fizzled out completely. We are not dead in the water. We are fifth, and still in both the FA and European Cups.
I also have huge sympathy for Wenger from the point of view of injuries (which, for the sake of argument, let’s not blame him for). If we had two full-backs, Arteta, Wilshere and Gervinho we would be a different team entirely – of that there is no doubt.
I also sympathise with his assertion that we don’t now need a full-back. If (ah yes, the mighty ‘if’) we really are only ten days from having Gibbs and Sagna back then there’s logic to that argument. Of course, had someone come in on Jan 1st to cover in the interim, there’d have been some logic in that too, but Gibbs+Santos and Sagna+Jenkinson is under almost all circumstances a well-stocked full-back larder. My frustrations with the defence are less about the personnel (there’s strength in depth and experience, when the wind is going in the right direction), and more about the lapses in concentration.
So where am I going with this? I dunno, quite, but what I do know is that I don’t want to grump out for the rest of the season, so after a few wild days on the moors of gloom, I am back and thinking happy thoughts.
And allow me to let you into a little secret: I enjoyed watching Mertesacker playing up front*.
*But I did grow up watching Niall Quinn.
Tags: calm
I’m afraid I retreated into my shell somewhat after Sunday’s loss, which I watched in the company of my six-year-old. He glared at me a few times plaintively towards the end. “It’s a good lesson for life”, I said (or I thought about saying, before patting him on the shoulder and muttering something pointlessly unreassuring.)
You will of course find all the critiques you can muster elsewhere, and have no doubt consumed them all (or bypassed them) already. I’m certainly too late to go over it all again.
Above is a Wordle created using some of Wenger’s words here. I have no scientific proof to back my following point up, but it seems to me that these last two seasons, more than before, Wenger has at times used some very honest language post-defeat. Perhaps a combination of exasperation and pressure (or maybe there have just been more defeats to choose from). Who knows, but I’m not sure I’d find many people who’d disagree with the sentiment.
Anyway, I think I can cheer us all up with a picture of Martin Hayes.
Tags: forthright, hayes, wenger, whoopsadaisy
Wallowing in the glory of Henry’s movie-moment comeback was not meant to last all week, but for me it has. The YouTube video I breathlessly uploaded at about midnight on Monday has now had about 37,000 hits (and Analytics tell me 90.3% of those who watched it were male, with 9.7% female – how do they know this I wonder – though my brother did confidently predict that he had watched it “about 28,000 times” so maybe there’s some truth in that). It certainly captured the moment.
But now we’re back to the mundane grind of trying to reach fourth, win the European Cup and bag the FA Cup. On the whole coming fourth thing, I had this blinding-light Eureka moment a few days ago. I swear, it’s genius*. Here it is:
Fourth, we know, is an achievement. It’s got kudos attached, it earns oodles of dough, the players want it to stay and players want it to come. But it’s not a trophy. It doesn’t get listed in the programme masthead and it won’t go into the Rothmans Yearbook. So why not assign it a trophy? Let’s call it the UEFA Champions League Fourth Place Qualifying Cup (CLFQC if that’s too much of a mouthful, though I’m not sure I’m helping my argument here) and the winners can all go on an open bus tour, put it in the cabinet and whack it on the masthead. Job’s a goodun, eh? We’d have had loads of trophies in recent years had this idea been taken up and we could bury the whole ‘six years without…’ thing once and for all.
*It’s not genius, I know.
Of course, we face the fight of our lives to get there first. The main thing troubling me on that note is not the lack of full-backs, which fingers crossed will be imminently easing, but the drying-up of goals. Since beating Wigan 4-0 on 3rd December (the last time incidentally that we did have a recognised full-back – so maybe I should be more worried about it), we have scored just one goal in four of our six league games, none in one and two in the other (Yossi’s late winner at Villa).
Now, it’s very possible that the lack of goals is directly linked to the lack of full-backs, but in these instances we need other areas of the team to step up to the plate. This is where the midfield comes into the equation, and to my mind there haven’t been enough goals from that area. Sure, in those six games Gervinho and Benayoun did both score, but I think the point, if you take the season as a whole, still stands.
Our midfield has scored 21 goals all season – the same as Robin van Persie. That’s eleven players (Gervinho, Walcott, Arteta, Rosicky, Song, Arshavin, Ramsey, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Frimpong, Benayoun and Coquelin) who have started games in the midfield. It’s too much to ask some of those players to rattle goals in, but Arshavin, Gervinho and Walcott in particular have chipped in just seven league goals (ten in total).
Of course, how Wenger cajoles more goals out of his midfielders and wingers is the million dollar question, but if he’s happy to stick with van Persie (and Henry for six weeks) rather than twisting and buying a new striker, then he’s going to have to do just that.
Now, when’s Jack back?
Tags: arshavin, full-backs, gervinho, goals, henry, midfield, walcott
It’s that time of year again when I allow myself to go all misty-eyed about the FA Cup while the less sentimental (and perhaps younger) among us tut-tut and denounce the old jug as a busted flush.
The Champions League is bigger, bolder, more watched, more important and above all more lucrative than the FA Cup, this we all know. Well, actually one of those is open to debate: last year’s Champions League final between Man Utd and Barcelona was watched by 9 million in the UK, but the FA Cup final, between two teams with much smaller national followings than Utd, got 8.5 million. There’s life in the old dog yet.
I’ve always loved it, and I may as well wheel out the reasons why again. Firstly, I grew up with it, and that counts for a lot. I can’t remember the ’79 final for some reason but I remember cup final day in ’80 (though not the match – you’ll forgive me for that). I remember Grimsby 3-4 Arsenal in 1986, I’ll never forget beating Man Utd 2-1 at Highbury in 1988, when McClair missed a last-minute penalty and Winterburn goaded him royally for it. The multi-man points-deducting brawl at Old Trafford in 1990 was merely a continutation of the bad blood between the two sides.
I was giving away free newspapers at Wembley in 1991 as a holiday job (fortunately outside the Arsenal end) and heard both the Spurs goals go in: I was on my way home in the back of a minibus when Alan Smith halved the deficit but it was too little too late. We got our revenge two years later though. Then there was 1993, the FA and League Cup double against Sheffield Wednesday.
Latterly, perhaps success bred a bit of complacency – or at least expectancy. Between 1998 and 2005 – eight seasons – we reached the FA Cup final an astonishing five times, winning it on four occasions. As Vieira rocketed in the winning penalty in 2005 in Cardiff, I’d never have thought, had you told me then, that I’d be sitting here seven years hence with no more FA Cup finals in the memory banks. They seemed like a bit of a birth right at the time but the intervening years have once again proved how cyclical these things are. If we were cup fatigued back then, we’re certainly not now.
Secondly, I love the fact that it’s a knockout (and not the kind where you clonk one another with giant ear buds beneath the Atomium in Brussels or dress up as giant penguins). It’s fair where the Champions League is not (at least in the group stages, which can be very sterile). You can be drawn against anyone, home or away, at any point. If you don’t perform on the day, you’re gone. I love that.
Thirdly, there is nothing quite like the cup, and particularly cup final day, as a fan. In many ways I preferred it during the Cardiff years [not least because we were in it – Ed]. Back then the semi-finals were in Birmingham or Manchester, and the finals in Cardiff, so we got the whole scarf-out-the-window road trip thrown in. Such occasions always heralded a new Arsenal mixtape from @feverpitch – the poor swine’s tape-to-tape machine has been dusty for too long now. Proper banter and nervous excitement. As someone who no longer travels away, I do miss that.
So yes, I love the old trophy and I’m as desperate as I have ever been to go somewhere in it this year. Not least because it really does represent our best chance of silverware. Coming 4th is an achievement of sorts (that fact alone I resent), but the FA Cup is what winning is all about.
So to Leeds on Monday night. A Cultured Left Foot has some memories of Leeds ties of old to chew on, but if the cup is not enough for you, then the return of a certain Mr T Henry, once formerly of this parish, now back for a sojourn, should get your juices flowing. What’s he got left in the tank? We shall see.
Yes, I’m excited already.
Fulham 2-1 Arsenal
So, a pretty dismal start to the New Year, but perhaps a focus sharpener as this month’s transfer window opens.
It was the ultimate clichéd game of two halves. Arsenal were pretty damn good in the first, creating loads of chances, passing neatly, very enjoyable to watch and well worth their advantage. That the lead was only slim at the break ultimately came back to haunt us and there are not an awful lot of people that Wenger can blame for that other than his own team. We were very wasteful.
That said, there was a penalty shout on Gervinho, and with the benefit of video replay it was a clear spot kick. I can’t help but think that had our Ivorian not gone down quite so elegantly it would have been given, but it did at least add fuel to Wenger’s post-match rage: “We had a penalty in the last game, a clear handball. We had a penalty at Man City, we had a penalty at Villa Park”.
The other thing Wenger was incandescent about was Djourou’s sending off, accusing Fulham of getting the Swiss red-carded. I’ve not studied either yellow since I saw them live (Basically, I am using the ‘I didn’t see it excuse’ – learned from the master) but I will say this: Neither yellow was so outrageous that it was mystifying. Reds have been given for less. However, it did make our job all the harder and so it proved.
The fact is, we continue to play with a centre-half at right-back and, yesterday, a right-footed central midfielder at left-back and until we can sort that mess out we will not look as secure or as dynamic as we need to look. That Coquelin had a really fine game slightly holes my argument below the waterline but the point stands.
In the second half we were a pale shadow of the side that dominated the first. Fulham improved and we tired. I know we’ve all played similar numbers of games over the Christmas period, but Arsenal in particular looked to have long run out of gas and you can’t say that Fulham’s equaliser hadn’t been coming.
Which brings me to another point: we’re relying too much on a small core of players. Walcott (through illness) and Ramsey got a break against Wolves, and Gervinho got one against QPR, but other than that Wenger has stuck with the same players for four games in 13 days. A lot of this, of course, is out of his hands: our back line picks itself and without Wilshere & Diaby our midfield options are fewer. Up front, van Persie has played all 360 minutes of the festive period. Chamakh has played five minutes and Park none. That van Persie needs a rest is surely no longer in doubt – it’s a good job we have seven days before our next game and he may be spared that one anyway. Well deserved. As @steve4good pointed out on Twitter, that Wenger could not trust anyone but van Persie to start against Wolves, QPR or Fulham speaks volumes. He’s the best striker in the land right now but he’s not superman.
So this break comes at a good time, and I fully expect us to be bombarded with transfer silliness henceforth. That we need to strengthen though is beyond argument for me.
Back to work then. Hurrah! Happy New Year all.
Tags: djourou, strikers, van Persie, wenger
Truth be told I’d prefer the 2002 vintage, but I’d be lying if I said I was completely cold about the possible return of Sir Thierry of Henry. It’s difficult not to be taken in by the romance of our all-time top scorer coming back for a few months, even if he is now one score and fourteen years old.
Such is the power of the mystical statues that next up, Tony Adams will be wheeled in as cover in central defence and Wenger will start dressing as Herbert Chapman in the dugout.
It’s all rather simple though, says le Boss: “I do it for footballing reasons because I need a striker for two months.”
I would wager, as many others have, that we need a striker for more than two months, given the recent contributions of all our strikers whose surnames don’t contain a van or a Persie.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Chamakh, with some matches under his belt, will come back sharper and more confident and sporting a dainty sharpshooter’s hat. It happened to Alex Song in 2008 – he was named in the team of the tournament. This at a time when his name was generally only muttered under one’s breath.
So honestly, I think the Africa Cup of Nations has come at a good time for our Chamakh, who could do with the matches and a bit of a change of scene.
Nevertheless, and I refer back to my point about needing a striker for more than two months, can this kind of thing be left to chance by Wenger? What if Chamakh comes back in the same kind of goalscoring funk that has seen him score two goals since November 2010? If van Persie
Anyway, we can worry about these things for a whole month. And let me tell you – I have every intention of doing just that. In fact, I may set up a Worry Group; let me know if you are interested in attending. It will involve sitting cross-legged in a circle, I suspect, though don’t worry, I won’t make you take your shoes off.
Between now and then though we’ve got QPR, a game for which you can pick your own cliché. We simply must win and dare I say it, cannot afford to lose.
A similar all-out assault as we saw in the second half of the Wolves game will be required – surely we’d not come up against another Hennessy? With a bit more pace on the flanks courtesy of the returning Walcott then we ought to prevail. But then I’m sure I said that before the Fulham and Wolves games.
As both @LittleDutchVA and @HayleyWright have pointed out on the Twitters, the last time we played Rangers on a New Year’s Ever, this happened. We all went a tiddly bit mental, even if we did lose 3-1. Odd that Jensen that day was wearing the number 17 shirt, and it’s seventeen years ago to this day. ISN’T THAT ODD??? No, not really.
All that remains – apart from a ‘Come on You Rip Roarers’ – is to wish you all a Happy New Year. My blogging has been a bit stop-start this year but thanks for reading anyway, thanks for the comments, thanks for chatting on the Twitters. It’s been a pleasure to put some faces to virtual names this year – let’s have more of that in 2012.
Arsenal v QPR – BBC preview, Guardian preview
Arsenal 1-1 Wolves
Twenty-seven attempts on goal, eleven attempts on target, thirteen corners, one goal. Frustrating, to say the least. The goals have dried up again at home (three in three league games – conceding two in the process), giving Wenger a fresh headache to mull over as we head into the New Year.
But as the stats suggest, you can’t really fault us for effort. The thing that struck me most yesterday was that, unlike the Arsenal of old, we didn’t wait until the 75th minute to crank the all-out attack handle. We were at Wolves’ throats from about the 60th minute. The lurid Hennessey happened to swat away everything we threw at him. I lost count of the amount of times I found myself with my head in my hands, practically kneeling, as another goalbound effort pinged off to safety. That’s football I suppose.
One other thing that was very noticeable was our lack of pace and width. Our game relies on our full-backs motoring forward, and pacy outlets on the wing, but didn’t have anything like that yesterday in the starting eleven. Having Vermaelen at left-back is like driving a Ferrari on a farm track. But what can you do? All four of our full-backs have long-term injuries (stress fracture, broken leg, ankle ligament damage and bizarre unhealing groin). Walcott was out ill.
Oxlade-Chamberlain could have supplied some of that but he remained glued to the bench as Arshavin and Chamakh entered fruitlessly into the fray. Neither man was able to make much of a difference, which will not surprise seasoned watchers of the spectacularly out-of-form duo. What does the Ox have to do, one wonders? Well, this one does, anyway.
As for the Wolves goal, we have ourselves to blame. A ruthless team when 1-0 up early in the game should go for the jugular, but yesterday our level seemed to drop. Complacency? Hard to say, but possibly.
Nevertheless, Walcott or no Walcott, full-backs or none, dodgy period after our goal or not, we should have won the game yesterday. It just never quite happened. Wolves were dogged.
It’s easy to suggest we have no plan B, and watching us toil on the edge of the box is pretty frustrating, but without the right balance in our team, it’s bound to have a detrimental effect. And besides, we did genuinely pepper their goal.
Nevertheless, the squad would patently benefit from a few new faces in January. Someone who can score goals when van Persie doesn’t would be a good starting point. Park’s “adaptation period” is apparently over but can we expect miracles from a player who has not been trusted to play a single minute of Premier League football in four months?
We’ve come a long way since our early-season punch-drunkenness, the spirit is good, but a new face or two would lift everyone. Can you imagine Chelsea, Liverpool or Spurs are not thinking along the same lines?
A lot of money was splurged last January – none at Arsenal. It’s not the best time to buy, but it can make a difference. Wenger tried it in 2009 when we need a spike by signing Arshavin – to initial success. I’m not saying buying new faces is the be-all and the end-all but why leave our improvement to chance?
PS – One excellent new addition to the Wenger lexicon. “We were a bit too much in the ‘wanting zone’”.
It’s the new handbrake.
Tags: full-backs, pace, park, transfer window, wanting zone, width
The Villa win – having not played that well, and right at the death, and thanks to a header (rare), and from a corner (plentiful but rarely fruitful) – was a deeply satisfying result. It’s a game we may well previously have lost, but coming after the loss at Man City, it showed tremendous bouncebackability.
It also cemented, for me, the usefulness of Yossi Benayoun. His signing has been a bit of a slow-burner for me. But the fact that the littlest man in the box could come off the bench, steal in and nab the winner was a big moment. On top of that you could see what it meant to him. He celebrated with real gusto. Hands aloft, followed by him lickety-splitting it out of the box with his mane flowing behind him. Brilliant stuff.
Of our Supermarket Sweep August quintet, the plaudits have obviously gone primarily to those who have played the most – Arteta (quietly brilliant), Mertesacker (who I like a lot) and Santos (slimmed down, spiced up, stretchered off). But I’m confident that we’re going to see a lot more of Benayoun over the rest of the season. With that one strike, he has proved that at the very least he’s got the capacity to be a gamechanger off the bench.
Next up is Wolves, on Boxing Day+1. I’m well aware that moving the match is a pain of the highest magnitude for those coming from far away. But from a selfish perspective, I’m ok with it. Not because I have an aversion to leaving the house on Boxing Day. Mostly, it’s because I have memories of Boxing Day producing some right turgid old numbers. The crowd can be flat, the play can be flat. Our last two Boxing Day encounters were a 2-2 at Villa in 2008 (far from turgid, but we did turn a 2-0 lead into a 2-2 draw), and a 0-0 at Portsmouth in 2007.
Contrast that with our last two games played on 27th December – a 3-1 win against Chelsea in 2010 and a 3-0 win against Villa in 2009.
So you see what I’ve done here: Using shaky statistics, a paucity of reason or logic and hauling long-forgotten games out of my memory, I have written off Boxing Day games as ones to avoid.
Anyway, enough of that. Wherever you are, I hope you’ve got a few days off. Enjoy them, relax, it’s been a pleasure.
Ah, finally – a letter to Santa. I cajoled my 6-yr-old into doing the donkey work. I hope I haven’t confused him.
Manchester City 1-0 Arsenal
Losses and goals conceded are always more palatable when your team acquits itself well. Giving up, or turning up expecting to win, or crumbling inexplicably has been something of a hallmark in recent seasons so one of the most pleasing things about this Arsenal side since October has been the blossoming of its spirit and its excellent attitude. We got all that in spades yesterday at City, even if we came away with a measly zero points. We did bloody well in most areas, particularly at the back until we ran out of central defenders to spread across the rear line. With a bit more luck, we’d have scored, or earned a penalty, but that’s football and it’s not as if Szczesny was leaning against his post picking dirt out his nails while we laid siege to their goal. They could have scored more too. As many people have pointed out, it was a belter of a game for a neutral. Just a shame I wasn’t one.
Strength in depth was not the only difference, but it’s a factor. Whereas City can afford to pay a prolific striker £250,000 a week to play golf in Argentina (is there any other walk of life where it’s that hard to sack someone?) and a further £100,000 a week to subsidise another of their strikers to play for a rival team, we currently rely heavily on the magical Robin van Persie. It’s not that we don’t have other attacking options, more that those attacking options are wading miserably through sticky declines. The late-2010 vintage Chamakh and the 2009-vintage Arshavin have corked. It’s more Arshavin de table and Babychamakh these days. Such a shame.
Not that a firing-on-all-cylinders Arshavin would have guaranteed a goal yesterday. Just that the Arshavin who helped himself to those four portions at Anfield would have scared the life out of City – out of anyone – had he come on as a sub with 15 minutes to play. Whatever happened?
I must admit, I agree with those who wonder when The Ox is going to be handed more chances. He’s looked good when called upon so far, is fast, strong, mobile and eager to shoot. I admire Wenger’s desire to protect him a bit, given his age and relative inexperience, but he’d be a dangerous bench option at a time when there’s not a lot of danger on our bench.
At least we can stop pretending we’re in the hunt for the title. A Champions League place remains the goal, but there are five other sides who will strongly fancy their chances of getting one of those four spots, making it harder than it’s ever been for us to retain.
The fact is, our next three games are more important to that end, and they come thick and fast. Of our three Christmas matches, two are at home and one against a Villa team with their own troubles. If we can get to New Year unscathed, it will cap a fascinating first half of the season, one that couldn’t have started worse but which has picked up considerably. Five league losses is the same as the top three teams combined, but the main story for me is how we’ve injected experience into the side and hauled our form up by its bootstraps. The two are, of course, connected.
But we’ve got to get to New Year unscathed yet…
Tags: defence, depth, spirit, strength, van Persie
