Arsenal 5-0 Porto
24 hours late, this. Just like the old days, when you went abroad, burned in the sun to cinder and had to wait a day for the papers to pitch up from blighty. Cast yourself back to 1985 and it won’t feel so late.
Anyway, we were the first English club through to the European Cup quarter-finals this season, it was the first comeback from a first-leg deficit since Hajduk Split in 1978 and… was it the first goal we’d scored in the first 15 minutes of the first half all season?
I have a thirst for more firsts if they’re anything like that.
5-0 is perhaps more of a thrashing than at times it felt, especially during the first quarter of an hour of the second half when Porto woke up and a single goal would have left things finely balanced, but as soon as Nasri’s unbelievably mazy dribble and tonking tight finish made it three, it was party time at the Grove.
But there were some eye-opening performances, and if there’s ever a good time in a season for three or four players to come into form, that time is now.
The issue of form is always an interesting one, because so much depends on state of mind, confidence and so on. So while only a month ago we were lamenting the form of Clichy, Almunia, Arshavin et al, now we can talk of a quartet of players who have suddenly found theirs.
Clichy and Arshavin, incidentally, are among those who suddenly look menacingly good. We all knew Arshavin was world-class, but playing as the lone frontman seriously curtailed his effectiveness. Freed to play where he is more comfortable, he suddenly looks terrifying. Henry Winter’s line summed it up very well: Arshavin was “a box of fireworks that kept exploding in Porto’s face.”
I’m pleased for Clichy too. Coming back from injury, he was a pale shadow of the Clichy of old. But hard graft and a run of games have turned that round, and last night his workrate was exemplary.
Diaby and Nasri are the other two whose form has been building impressively. The former, to be fair, has been steadily improving for a while, but has been struck down by his usual temporary ailments all too frequently. Nevertheless, he’s looking fantastic at the moment.
Then there’s Nasri, a player whose injury – though I barely need to preface any description of an Arsenal player by mentioning the ‘I’ word, it’s a given – set him back months. It’s all clicking now though, and last night he was superb, scoring a mesmeric goal and creating space all over the pitch.
And I’ve not even mentioned Bendtner.
So form breeds confidence, which creates momentum. As a result we’re fizzing along now.
Arsenal 3-1 Burnley
As I was heading to the game with my brother, crossing Highbury Fields, we saw a clown driving a car. He was in full clown regalia, including wig, make-up and huge red nose (though I assume he’d removed his oversized shoes by that stage, unless he had 2-foot wide clutch, brake and accelerator pedals as well).
At that stage, it seemed unlikely that we’d see anything more comedic before the day was out, but as it turned out we did – in the form of Nicklas Bendtner’s Incredible Goal-Missing Circus.
Now, had that kind of performance come mid-way through last season, you wouldn’t have been able to move for tuts and groans in the stands. But yesterday, the fans’ reaction to Bendtner’s afternoonus horribilus was one indication – the other I shall come to – that this season is very different from the last.
As gaping net after gaping net went unruffled, the groans (which were of amazement more than anything else) turned into chants. Bendtner merely got a rousing song. He immediately reciprocated with appreciation of his own, and was not long after subbed off to great applause.
It was just one of those days for him.
The other indication that things this year have changed in subtle ways was the immediate post-match actions of Emmanuel Eboue. He bounded over to our end of the ground on his own, leapt over the hoardings, took off his shirt and gave it to (I think) a young girl. It was a top gesture (no pun intended) and again, one that was responded to with huge applause.
Two players who had difficult seasons, now firmly back on track and enjoying what they do. How nice that is to see.
The game itself was great fun, but very Arsenal. We contrived to miss hatfuls of chances, let in a bad goal, conceded the initiative briefly when only 2-1 up and only made it secure right at the death.
The two most noteworthy performances – aside from Bendtner’s, of course – came from Nasri and Walcott. Both players have had their own critics this season, but pulled performances out the hat that threw their form out the window. Nasri was my man of the match – direct, probing and dangerous. Walcott though was not far behind, with a second half of real quality culminating in an excellent goal. It says a lot that a player who was already being airbrushed out of some people’s final 23 for the World Cup suddenly catapulted himself back into the frame in just 45 minutes. On that form, he’d make it easily; the trick now is to keep it up.
Pre-match, the banners and the songs for Ramsey were class, as expected. As for the first 45 minutes, they started well but fizzled out. The thing that struck me most for the first 30 minutes – in fact, until Diaby came on – was that there were almost no tackles of note at all. It felt like a pre-season match. Not surprising I suppose given the last 10 days, just as Walcott’s reaction to a hard but fair tackle by a Burnley player was not surprising either.
The only stain on things was of course the injury to Fabregas. We’re far from a one-man team but someone like him – head and shoulders above most of his peers – will be missed in any side, so clearly we face an anxious wait to see whether he will make Tuesday.
Anyone got any magic plasters?
It’s four days now since Ramsey’s horror injury, and I’ve been impressed by the powerful, tenacious and heartfelt blogging (and podcasting) on what has been an incredibly emotive issue.
The reaction has been revealing though, hasn’t it? There’s been an incredible polarisation of articles, between those who bow to the ‘it was an accident’ and ‘he’s a good lad’ argument and those who realise that, if it’s brushed off so lightly as it has been this time and in the past, then it’s just going to happen again.
As for those who think the perpetrator has been overly stigmatised – I say go to Ramsey’s hospital bed and take a good look at his leg. Who is the victim here? Get real.
I’d be interested to know what, if anything, is going on behind the scenes – at Arsenal and at the Premier League. I’d be amazed if Arsenal had not registered their protests in some way.
While I don’t want to see the demise of a good tackle, I do think that the forcefulness of some tackles – such as this one, in the middle of the pitch, hardly the most crucial area – could be addressed. There is no way Shawcross needed to go in with such ferocity. Whether it was unintentional and lacking in malice is neither here nor there.
Then there’s the punishment. When players get three and four match bans for slight provocative gestures, or for an accumulation of yellow cards, yet a wild lunge that puts a fellow pro’s career in danger gets just a three match ban, then the authorities, in my opinion, are made to look like chumps. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
Will anything be done? I must say I doubt it will, at least not overtly. But at the same time I’d be quite surprised if the sight of another snapped leg – and all referees will have seen it, in all its gory detail – didn’t have some kind of effect. If it means referees move in to defuse and calm situations and players sooner then they would have done in the past, then I guess that would be a small step in the right direction. Maybe I am being too optimistic.
What can also not be denied is how superb, how loyal and how proactive Arsenal fans have been in rallying around. More than 56,000 have already signed Ramsey’s get well book, and there are some superb banners planned to support the young Welshman, such as this one from the Gooner. I believe Arseblog has something cooking on that front too. Fantastic stuff.
As for Saturday, well team news and international crocked-ness will no doubt follow. We’re definitely down Ramsey and Song. We’re probably up Diaby. I feel we are owed the healthy return of all our players. In fact, I demand it.
Whoever makes the starting XI, I do – arch pessimist though I sometimes am – feel that something has changed. Ramsey’s injury led directly to the raw emotion and togetherness of the players at the end of the win at Stoke. That desire and passion to make amends and make something happen will take some shifting. And it’s already being mirrored off the pitch by the fans.
I’ve not looked forward to a home game like this for some time.
I cannot wait.
Tags: injury, premier league, ramsey, rules
Stoke City 1-3 Arsenal
Fortunately for anyone who watches football, the sight of a player screaming in agony with his leg snapped and at the wrong angle is a rarity. I can remember it happening four of five times in all my years watching football. When it happened to Eduardo in 2008, it was too horrible to look at. So yesterday, for it to happen again to Aaron Ramsey was sickening in the extreme, and it has overshadowed everything. I was thinking about it all last night and I’m still thinking about it this morning.
We don’t know how bad it was, or how complicated it will be to heal, but you don’t need to see something like that in any great detail to know he will surely be out of action for a year. It’s doubly depressing to see as he just coming of age for Arsenal. He’s a magnificent little player.
The sad truth is he might find it hard to come back at all. If you look at the list of those who have suffered similar injuries in English football, a fair few had to retire not long after. We can but hope that Ramsey’s leg will heal and he will pick his career up where he left off. I feel desperately sorry for him.
Look at Diaby and Eduardo though, both of whom suffered similar injuries, and you will see two players still ping-ponging between the pitch and the treatment table. It’s a long road back.
I don’t doubt that Ryan Shawcross is a decent lad and meant no malice. The look on his face as he left the pitch tells you as much. But he broke a player’s leg. The tackle was a shocking one, a wild lunge, and three matches out seems absurdly lenient when you consider what Ramsey now faces. To cap it all off, he was called up for England. That was a bad call from a PR perspective if you ask me.
As Wenger and Fabregas both said post-match, for it to happen three times in five years to Arsenal players feels more than mere coincidence. There might be no malice involved, but for years we have been told the way to play Arsenal is to rough them up a bit, to knock them out their stride, and you know what, it’s worked too at times. But perhaps this is the result of that; occasionally, inevitably, there’ll be a badly timed tackle that does something like this.
Fabregas called for more protection but it’s hard to know what can be done against individual acts of stupidity, other than in retrospect. Yesterday, for example, was a rough-and-tumble physical scrap – one in which Arsenal showed magnificent commitment – marred by one dreadful tackle. That’s the way some teams play football; they play to their strengths just as Arsenal play to theirs. It’s hard to legislate against an individual player’s wild, late tackle other than to punish the player himself more harshly once it has happened. The punishment needs to fit the crime. At the moment, it doesn’t at all. Not remotely.
Onto the game. I thought it was a magnificent Arsenal fightback. OK, so our collective defensive amnesia saw us let in yet another goal in from a throw-in, but we matched Stoke’s commitment and showed a fantastic spirit overall.
I was particularly impressed with the way we recovered after Ramsey’s injury. For ten minutes the team was shell-shocked but we drove forward and you could tell what those two late goals meant to the players. The fist-pumping release of emotion after the Verm’s third goal made me proud. I was doing the same thing myself.
Maybe, just maybe, this team came of age yesterday. Fabregas captained the team majectically, scoring one, setting up two, and to see Vermaelen and Campbell roaring at the crowd tells you all you need to know. Anyone doubting the merit of having big Sol yet? He was fantastic. Clichy looked like a man possessed, a completely different player to the error-riddled Clichy of recent times. Alex Song was exceptional.
Three points off the top, with a collective spirit and a will to win forged by Ramsey’s leg break and a decent run-in.
We’re back in this, make no mistake.
Tags: commitment, diaby, eduardo, protection, punishment, ramsey, spirit, tackle
It says a lot about the utter detachment of footballers from reality that we wake up this morning to front and back pages in a frenzy as to whether one vastly overpaid footballer will shake another vastly overpaid footballer’s hand and whether another vastly overpaid and self-important footballer will talk to his estranged popstar wife or not.
Meanwhile, a Premier League club goes into adminstration for massively overreaching itself. I wonder how much of the mess it got itself into can be directly attributed to footballers’ wages? Rhetorical question.
So while Arsenal too are prisoners to market forces and have to pay their players huge wages, it’s refreshing to note that not only were Arsenal yesterday able to announce they had reduced their own debt – almost all of which is related directly or indirectly to building a new stadium – by a cool £130m, but that for now, our players are not dragging the club’s name down with their off-field antics.
[Blogger exhales and heartrate slows as rant finishes].
Over to the Potteries for the real stuff. I had managed to jemmy our last two visits there into the far recesses of my mind. Today’s reprisal has brought some of those memories flooding back, and judging by the general mood across the interwebnests, I am not alone.
Ordinarily, I would agree that a draw at the Britannia – where we most definitely haven’t ruled the waves in recent years – would be a good thing. But really, we cannot afford to drop any points at all I don’t think.
I like what Pulis has done at Stoke, and personally I cannot see any problems with the way they play. They’re hardly going to take us on at our own game are they? But they are pretty much the antithesis of us – as The Times puts it, “the ultimate culture clash” – and that’s why we can struggle against them.
For me, it’s all eyes on the defence. To be caught out two away matches running by Delap’s long throws is naïve in the extreme. If it happens again today I might blow a gasket. It would be unforgivable. Like a man walking into the same lamppost three days running.
Fortunately, our last two league games have been clean sheets – read it and rejoice, even if they were sandwiched between Flapianski’s House of Calamities – and we definitely need defensive solidity today.
Looking forward to it already.
Finally, happy birthday to Arseblog – eight years old. A top lad, top blogger, and the inspiration for about eight thousand subsequent Arsenal blogs, mine included.
What is eight in blog years?
Tags: defence, footballers, long throw, stoke, wages
It must be a bit frustrating for le Boss to have to spend so much time talking down two of his players.
But I guess that’s the peril of a World Cup year.
With van Persie, talk of an early return emanated initially from the Dutch national camp. It was of course on national duty where van Persie suffered his injury in the first place. But they have since suggested he might be back in early April – counter to what Wenger has always said, which is that he might be back in May for the last few games of the season.
Now of course, who can blame the Dutch for wanting to talk up van Persie’s return? Lord knows we could do with him ourselves. It’s been widely reported that before his injury Arsenal scored 55 goals in 19 games, whereas since he was crocked it’s been in 33 in 22 games.
Clearly, it’s in their interest for him to come back as soon as possible so he will have had more than just a few games to regain form and fitness before the Dutch kick things off in South Africa.
For Arsenal – who lest we forget pay his not insubstantial wages and pick up the pieces when injuries occur out of their jurisdiction – the pressure for him to return is tempered by the desire for him to be in top shape next season. I don’t suppose the Dutch are thinking much beyond this summer. So Wenger finds himself trying to douse the flames.
Then there’s Gibbs – an extraordinary story in many ways. We’re talking here about a converted winger who has made just 25 starts for Arsenal being touted as a potential option for England at the World Cup finals. But with Cole injured and Bridge ‘retired’, suddenly there’s a mild panic at left-back for England and it’s perhaps not surprising – were it not for the cast on his foot and his lack of experience – that Wenger is once again fielding questions about Kieran Gibbs.
The answer is pretty unequivocal. Wenger said:
“There is a little chance [that Gibbs will be fit before the end of the season] if all goes well now. I don’t know yet [if he will play enough] because I cannot give you any date of his return to football. It’s very premature at the moment, he is still in a little cast and we are at the beginning of March.”
While Gibbs’ career is undoubtedly on the up, to expect him back, healthy and match fit by the World Cup – assuming he’d even get a look in – is stretching things a bit.
[Who’d have thought it – another post about injured Arsenal players?]
Tags: gibbs, van Persie, wenger, world cup
Match updates via text – how 2006 is that? It fell on the willing shoulders of @feverpitch to keep me in the loop during Saturday’s game, as I had been called up for duty elsewhere. He did a sterling job, signing it all off by waxing lyrical about Andy Linighan. It takes a man of a certain age to a) remember Andy Linighan and b) wax lyrical about him.
Would Linighan get into today’s team? Ha – now there’s a conundrum. No, in short. Though I’d have him as a sub, if only so he could come on, zombie-like and barely able to see through a bloodied bandage, to nod a 93rd minute cup final winner.
As an Arsenal fan, it feels like a slightly odd time though. A cursory glance at the league table tells you that we are doing very well; within sneezing distance of second in fact, and not impossibly far away from the league leaders with just 11 games remaining.
But still, any talk of a genuine title challenge seems incredibly fanciful to me, and I’m hardly the only one to think that. It’s not borne of deep natural pessimism, though I do have some of that floating about, more a realistic assessment based on what we have seen so far. Are we disgruntled as fans? No, I’d say not. But we’re far from being gruntled. (With apologies to P.G. Wodehouse).
For much of this campaign, the next defensive blip or injury has seemed nearer than the next run of form, and yet here we are, far from out of things.
What we are crying out for more than anything is for the injury clouds to miraculously burn off and for some of our key players to hit a rich vein of form. I chuckle sourly as I write that of course, because it’s easier said than done. It does sound plainly obvious too, but how can any team be properly judged when half its big players are either out long-term, or are blighted by boomerang injuries? It’s held us back all season, along with kamikaze losses of concentration.
One of the players who has had a poor old season but who could yet make an enormous difference over the next three months is of course Theo Walcott. He’s had something wrong with just about every part of his body this season, so perhaps we have expected too much too soon. By the sound of it, his game did pick up on Saturday – can he rip into form just at the right time? What a weapon he might be if he could.
Wenger for one has bemoaned the “terrible pressure” on Walcott, presumably most of it because he is English and we’re in a World Cup year. It’s been said before, but he needs to forget England completely and get on with improving his game for his employers. Look after his club form and the international side of things will take care of itself. There’s no doubt that a confident, fit and hungry Walcott could be like… am I allowed to say… oh go on then… a new signing.
Anyway, there’s a whole week off now to train for long throws and set pieces. And for the Arsenal medical team to dish out strepsils, deep heat and magic sponges to whoever finds himself on the injury list this week.
Porto Amateur Dramatic Society 2-1 Arsenal
I read somewhere earlier this week that Lukasz Fabianski was becoming frustrated by his lack of opportunities at Arsenal.
What can you say to that? On that performance, it’s some feat for him to have got any time on the pitch as Arsenal’s goalkeeper at all. When push came to shove – or should it be when slip came to slapstick – he once again fell short of what is expected from an Arsenal keeper. And sadly it’s merely the latest in a long line of howlers from him.
I don’t particularly want to make this a witch-hunt for a young keeper but when both conceded goals were at least in part down to him then you have to take him to task. The first goal was a simple slip-through-the-hands error. Awful and, for him, very embarrassing. There were mitigating circumstances in the second, but ignoring the ref’s rapid intervention and the way he seemed to get in the way of Campbell, it was still Fabianski who picked up the back pass and it was Fabianski who gave the ball back to the ref before the Arsenal defence had even sniffed the danger. Really naïve stuff.
There will now be those who wonder whether Fabianski has already sealed his own fate as an Arsenal prospect. Barring more Almunia injury woe, it already seems unlikely that he will play again this season. He does have a few things going for him though; namely Wenger’s patronage and his own youth.
Still, when we start seeing Almunia as some kind of goalkeeping demi-god by comparison, you know things are a bit screwy. Quite how we have assembled such a collection of substandard keepers is another matter entirely.
Enough of the negatives though, for with a better keeper, tonight could and should have ended differently. Although we were sloppy at times (in particular after their second goal), I thought we also showed some real attacking threat. Rosicky was very good on the right (and had a 100% nailed-on penalty waved away by the ref), Diaby was tricky until he faded, and Bendtner fought hard up front, having a few chances of his own.
All this with a pretty extensive injury list. For the return leg we’ll need some of the absentees back – that Song is now oodles better than Denilson is beyond dispute – but above all we’ll somehow, and I sigh a bit when I write this for the ninety billionth time, need to wipe out the incessant errors that have blighted this season.
Fabregas did not mince his words after the game when he said, “When you concede these goals you cannot go anywhere… schoolboy goal”.
So yes, it’s exasperating to have to report on another defeat, and another worrisome goalkeeping performance, but against the Porto side I saw tonight, I’m not trembling in my boots. They looked dangerous at times, but defensively they were like us – basically, porous – and at home, with an away goal, you’d have to say we stand a good chance of making it to the quarter-finals.
Looking beyond that is something of a lottery, but one thing is sure: if we continue to make rudimentary errors (tonight it was Fabianski but he’s hardly the first to have lost concentration this season) then we won’t be setting Madrid alight in May.
Massive Attack on Thursday, Tiny Attack on Wednesday…
A very good morning to you on this Arsenal-free Saturday, brought to you courtesy of Le Boss’s callow team selection at Stoke in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
I was quite surprised at the time how many fans simply shrugged their shoulders and wrote the FA Cup off as a nothing competition. ‘Bigger fish to fry’ etc.
I’ve almost certainly got a few more miles on the clock than some Arsenal fans, and peer too frequently and too nostalgically into the depths of my mind to the days when FA Cup final coverage started at about 9am, but there’s more to it than that.
It was a competition we had a very good chance of doing well in this year, it would have shut the ‘nothing for five years’ doubters up for another season, but above all it’s a competition I love. Don’t try and tell me the interminable group stages of the Champions League are anything to write home about. They can be turgid beyond belief.
Anyway, here we are and as luck would have it, the proper part of the European Cup is just round the corner. It’s now that the competition morphs from a money-guaranteeing mini league to a proper knockout cup, and boy does it make a difference.
For Arsenal, it’s Porto on Wednesday and lady luck appears not to be shining on one player in particular: Andrei Arshavin. Last season, little Andrei had to watch on from the bench as we got knocked out in the semi-final, cup-tied and no doubt deeply frustrated. I suspect he joined Arsenal at least in part to have a good pop at the Champions League.
Now, having battled manfully up front on his own throughout Arsenal’s strikerless months, ignoring the knocks and bruises, he has finally succumbed to a hamstring ping on the eve of the one competition he had no say in last season. Cruel indeed.
His official website (for we live in times when players have their own websites) says he’s out; Arsenal’s site has not quite gone that far but we have no reason to disbelieve the former so on that basis he’s out.
As for last Wednesday, well it seems so far away now that it’s hardly worth bringing up. But two things I will say: First, before the win the gloomier amongst us (guilty, m’lud) began looking down rather than up, but three points means we can now look up again, albeit squintingly. And second, Diaby’s goal reminded me not only how much I love headed goals from sweet crosses, but also how infrequently we seem to score like that anymore. Room for thought there, Arsene.
OK, that’s it then. Have a good weekend.
Tags: arshavin, european cup, fa cup
Chelsea 2-0 Arsenal
Improved performance? Yes, but with the same defensive clangers and the same lack of striking options as ever. All too familiar, all too avoidable.
The bottom line for me is this side is not currently good enough to challenge for the title. Against Chelsea and Man Utd, we are consistently coming up short.
Whilst against most sides we can still score enough goals to give us a good chance of winning despite our porous defence, against the best sides we let in more than we are able to score.
All the possession in the world means nothing if you do not do enough with it and defend poorly. After just eight minutes we went AWOL and let in a soft goal. It was truly shambolic stuff and yet, who’s really surprised? We’ve been defending like that all season. All of the top three have scored 60 goals, yet Arsenal have conceded a third more – 30 rather than 20. Therein lies one of the reasons why we are nine points behind.
Arshavin should then have equalised with one of the two decent chances we had, before we were undone again, this time on the counter. 2-0 down, and no Kanu to save us.
Up front, our one fit striker Bendtner was not fit enough to start, so Arshavin once again led the line. He had one decent chance as mentioned, but really, he shouldn’t be there. He’s only there for lack of options.
Which does beg the question – again – why did Wenger not buy a striker this January? Was there really not a single striker available who could have given us something for four months?
Still, there were positives. It was a much more spirited performance, much more committed. You can’t fault them for that. And on an individual level, It was good to see Diaby back. I think he’s growing as a player and adds a lot to the team when fit.
Right, I need to leave it at that. No more time to dwell.
Onto Wednesday…
