Me: Not efficient in the zones where it matters

Jim 11/03/2013 3 Comments

And so it came to pass, as they said in the olden days (along with other common but now old-fashioned phrases like ‘Willlttttttooooooord!’ and ‘it’s up for grabs now’). We lost the derby and I went into hiding and swore a vow of blogging silence. That, at least, is this week’s feeble excuse. Honestly, how Arseblogger and other Arsenal bloggers do this every day at the moment – well ever, really, but especially at the moment – remains beyond my comprehension.

And then this random mid-season break of 11 days came along, which arrived courtesy of the FA Cup, a tournament you may or may not have heard that we are no longer participating in. (It still needles, yes). These 11 days form part of an entire month of no home games, all of which I feel I ought to blame on Sepp Blatter, so I will, irrespective of evidence.

I’m eager to get the home games flowing again. I still miss the starter and pudding of matchday, you see, if not always the main course.

Wenger admitted after the derby defeat that we were not efficient in the zones where it matters, which he then named as at the front and at the back. It made me laugh at the time. You know the kind of laugh.

So it’s a bit like me with this blog, then – I am efficient when it comes to intending to write something regularly, but rather lacking in the zones that matter, namely the writing of the blog and the publishing of it (and there’s an additional zone, which is writing something that makes any sense or has a structure, and is worth reading, and I’m not enormously efficient there either). Not efficient in the zones that matter. So good I ought to make it my new tagline.

Anyway, it got me thinking a bit. Which area are we most likely to have a bit of luck fixing? Defence or attack? My initial view was that our defensive errors are so stubborn that Wenger should concentrate on eking out some more goals from the people who have stopped scoring them – Giroud, Walcott in particular, but let’s be honest, we’re not scoring enough so from everyone. But then I read Tim Stillman’s excellent piece arguing that we should go all out to tighten up at the back, then build from there, and I can see the logic in that too. And then I thought, why can’t we do both? Got ahead of myself a bit, I know.

I bet all three options have been considered over the last ten days, albeit probably in a more lucid manner.

And what of Munich away? I read tonight that Wilshere is a doubt, and I just wouldn’t risk him if that’s the case. Winning 3-0 or 3-1 is pie in the sky. Play for a bit of pride, yes – but not if it sidelines Jack for more realistic matters.

But at least it’s looming, it’s nearer – and we can all get back to normal. Or whatever passes for normal just now.

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Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Jim 02/03/2013 4 Comments

Oops. Two weeks have zipped past with nary a word. There are mitigating factors, though. Straight after the Blackburn game I took a wrong turn in Chipping Barnet and ended up 6,000 miles away, and as luck wouldn’t have it, it was the middle of the day when we played Bayern and I was in a meeting. I now have an increased admiration for any global lunatics who follow the Arsenal before breakfast, after the pubs have closed or in the middle of the night. They are, to a man or woman, quite crackers.

The Bayern game went as I feared it might, leaving us with no eggs and no baskets, unless you call fourth place a basket, or indeed an egg. Either way it leaves our genuine trophy chances pretty much fried. They were never going to be an over-easy opponent, I suppose, and my guess is that Podolski’s poached – or was it scrambled – effort will not be enough.

A few days later I made a half-hearted attempt to watch the Villa game at breakfast, found a stream, lost a stream, refreshed Twitter with abandon, got cross with buffering. Honestly, following football is a complicated business these days. In the mid eighties (warning: old man’s wistfuI reminiscences incoming) I remember very well coming down to breakfast and opening up the paper to find the score of a match from the night before. If you were really lucky and the game had finished before the copy deadline you might get a small match report. Occasionally there was nothing at all. How would I then find the score? I have asked myself this question many times. I imagine I wrote a letter to Don Howe. Or went to the library. Or phoned someone. The eighties were rubbish for football.

So despite being punched from rope to rope in the cups, we find ourselves on a five-match unbeaten run in the league. There are unbeaten runs and there are unbeaten runs, and I would place this more as an unbeaten saunter. Nevertheless, it’s the kernel of some league form.

Form and confidence – something that has ebbed and flowed throughout this peculiarly fitful season.

It’s hard to disagree with those who argue that tomorrow’s NLD (the Twitters is a wonderful tool but I do resent the way it has forced acronyms into our everyday speech. NB52, ITK, NLD, AVB, JW10 – it doesn’t make me lol at all. In fact the only acronym I like is WWWWW. And anyway that’s not even an acronym. It’s just five Ws in a row. OK, shut up now, man).

I wouldn’t say that losing it rules us out of the holy grail, but our friends from N17 already have form and momentum, and if they win tomorrow they might reasonably be envisaging the hula girls and pina coladas and find themselves humming the Uefa ‘Pyjamas’ theme tune. At this stage of the season, a run of form is priceless. If we lose, we are back to a form square one.

We need to start the game well, play with a real intensity throughout, and take it from there. Another of our lacklustre opening 45s will be hard to bear.

It feels like I finish most of my pre-game posts these days with the words ‘I have no idea what to expect’. Well I think it will be helter-skelter and blood-and-thunder. I’d say that’s a given. But beyond that – who knows.

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Half-Arsednal

Jim 17/02/2013 7 Comments

Arsenal 0-1 Blackburn

So I voiced my inner fears in yesterday’s preview with these words:

“The effects of a disjointed performance and a cup exit on the players, the fans, on pretty much everyone, do not bear thinking about.”

Well we’re now having to bear thinking about it, because a disjointed performance is exactly what we got, utterly blunt and operating at about 60% of the required urgency until it was too late. Let’s file this away with the rest of the season-definers: Bradford, Norwich, Swansea, Schalke – there are more besides, all hewn from the same rock. This tweet from Orbinho sums the situation up, really:

And that’s just it: It’s the same mistakes happening again and again and again. For every cautious step forward we take (Stoke, Sunderland), we then proceed to fizzle out. You got the feeling after about ten minutes yesterday that the players thought it would be easy to win it.

We had a dozen corners in the first half, only one of which was dangerous. As Tim at Arse2Mouse pointed out, Blackburn soon twigged that conceding a corner was the safest option because we wouldn’t do much with them, and so it proved. The other chance we had fell to Gervinho, who predictably scuffed it wide. He often gets into decent, advanced positions on the wing but he can’t cross and he can’t shoot. As Adam Ant once said: ‘What do you do?’

Rosicky had a cracking effort that came back off the bar moments before he was subbed off, but then came Blackburn’s only shot on goal, from which they scored. A bit jammy, but Szczesny should have done better. After that there were a couple of point-blank saves thanks to a belated cranking up of the tempo but it was too late, and we spent far too much time in our favourite desperation zone, just in front of the D, passing left and right across the goal like a caged animal pacing round its enclosure. Only, this animal had no bite.

Fair play to Blackburn and all that, because riding your luck a bit is what makes cup football the unpredictable beast that it is. But the last five or ten minutes aside, it’s not like they were throwing bodies across the line.

When Arsenal have a day like this – ponderous, lacking ideas, lacking forward motion – they are terrible to watch. When the crowd is flat, it is flat because there is nothing to feed off from the pitch. Yes, it goes both ways, but this in the Mirror rings true:

The energy and the drive has to be generated by the players and what this occasion proved was that too many players are lacking those qualities.

If there were a smattering of boos at half-time, they had turned into a cascade at full-time. The feeling of gloom was capped off by a rousing rendition of ‘We want our Arsenal back’ outside the tube station.

I’m not sure that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The camel’s got several bales of the stuff in its saddle-bag already.

Making so many changes backfired. Leaving it until the 70th minute to inject something into the side was too late.

We are back to square one. The knives are out – rightly, though I don’t approve of the malice or the spite – for Wenger. Something has to change. But will it?

Somewhere in Bavaria, there will be chuckling.

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Wenger’s double cup juggle

Jim 16/02/2013 1 Comment

I might as well just wheel out my ‘I love the FA Cup’ article again, mightn’t I? I do love the FA Cup. Did I ever mention that?

And now we’re approaching the business end of it – win today’s fifth round and it’s the quarter-finals. That has the word finals in it. Maybe at this point I should throw in a gem of a stat, one that you’ve not heard before. How about: We’ve not been in a cup final since 2005, which incidentally was the last time we won a trophy! Come back again, you’re welcome.

Not that I have an especially fond memory of the quarter-finals. We lost at that stage rather tamely to Man Utd two seasons ago, 2-0. I just re-read my match report and it’s a model for despondency, so I won’t link to it. And one of my first (unhappy) memories of the quarter-finals was losing to Watford in 1987. My guess is that we hadn’t been that far for a few years because I was massively giddy about it, but Luther blooming bloody Blissett scored a controversial late winner and that was that.

I also remember a few years later, in 1991, we were taking on Cambridge Utd at the same stage and a whole bunch of us – about ten, because you could do that then – rolled up at about 2.15pm but it was a lock-out and we couldn’t get in. So instead we went ten-pint bowling at Finsbury Park. It was chaos by about the fifth pint.

Anyway, I’m waffling. This is a big game for us for all the reasons I don’t need to remind you of, but of course it comes just three days before a more prestigious game against Bayern. Like it or not, that’s the hierarchy and I’m sure Wenger’s team will reflect that. I wouldn’t risk players who are not 100% fit like Jack Wilshere – especially given his overall importance – but I’m not sure I’d rest too many, really. I think we have to go for both but I do accept it’s a balancing act. But the effects of a disjointed performance and a cup exit on the players, the fans, on pretty much everyone, do not bear thinking about. It would undo all the good work of the last few weeks.

Blackburn have a new manager, only their third of the season, and he seems to brought some stability to a club that desperately needs it. They’ve not lost since 19th January so we take them lightly at our peril.

The looming presence of the Champions League does worry me though. On the one hand I love it and those nights are always memorable. You’re on a global stage. But on the other, its shadow looms over the games either side of it.

Focus gents, focus – and come on you rip-roarers.

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One nil to the Arsenal²

Jim 10/02/2013 4 Comments

Sunderland 0-1 Arsenal

Backs-to-the-wall, fighting spirit, riding our luck, throwing our bodies at everything, defiance &c. (And I’ll skate over ‘missing a hatful in the first half’).

Yes, there’s something deeply satisfying about a one-nil away win in these kinds of circumstances, where at the end of the game the shirt colour can be described as ‘off-brown’ and Szczesny’s back has huge bruises on from being patted so hard and so often by his teammates.

The big Pole – who has been a bit skittish of late – pulled off a couple of blinding point-blankers. Such are the fine lines between success and failure that had he not done so we’d this morning have been wailing and caterwauling (Cattermoling?) about more dropped points.

A couple of observations:

The Corporal deserved to be sent off, with two badly-timed lunges, and while it could have been costly I find it hard to be too critical. I’m not sure he’s started in the league since that confidence-sapper at home to Swansea (when to be fair he did make a majestic howler). And yesterday he was drafted in at the last minute, which means he probably wasn’t mentally ready. It just goes to show what a run of games, or a single mistake, can do to your season. Earlier in the autumn he filled in admirably for Sagna, with no complaints. Now he looks rusty. He needs to cut out the wild stuff but he’ll be fine.

The former contract rebel needs to sharpen his arrows a bit, sure, as does Giroud, but overall Theo really is growing into his shoes (abysmal – Ed) and is having a tremendous season. Top scorer with 18 goals, his confidence is right up and he’s a really important cog in the machine just now. Again, autumn seems a long way off – when Wenger wasn’t playing him and a lot of the fans were in two minds about his worth. I don’t doubt there are still plenty who think he engineered a salary above his value, but at 23 he is now maturing lickety-split and can you imagine how sour we’d have felt had he walked away in the summer for free, on this kind of form, to either Chelsea or City or United? Sour as the blazes, that’s what I’d have felt.

Ram Zamzi* is having a good run of form but for the love of god will someone let him have a goal (and I make this entreaty to the opposition as well as to our players). He had a great opportunity yesterday but was just a bit too close to the keeper. I don’t subscribe to ramseyisnotgoodenough.rss which is why I somewhat desperately want him to get his first league goal of the season.

*Aaron Ramsey to a three-year-old

Super Jack is always going to get rough-housed, I’m afraid. He’s a little terrier and puts himself forward for all encounters. The opposition will go for your best player – it’s a fact. I’d like the refs to bear this in mind, but that won’t stop him getting involved. He’s an incredible little player – already our player of the season. It’s a shoe-in.

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I don’t think it will be a case of Bacary Sayonara. I know we are hearing worrying murmurs about his future but it feels to me like the opening salvo in contract negotiations. You know, leak a bit about how you might leave, and let Arsenal take up the slack. Certainly, we’d be insane to let the Bac go. Jenkinson has the ability to take over eventually, but he’s just turned 21 and only has 16 Arsenal starts under his belt. He’s a rookie, albeit one with Arsenal wallpaper, an Arsenal duvet and a Gunners lampshade. Another year or so learning the ropes will do him no harm.

A week off now – I reckon some of those legs need it.

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Nacho to see you, to see you Nacho

Jim 01/02/2013 9 Comments

When Kieran Gibbs pulled up on Wednesday night, clearly crocked, little could we know that that one split second, that sprained thigh, would cost the club £8m. Because I think it’s fair to say that had Gibbs been roaming the Emirates pastures happy as punch at the end of the Liverpool game, Wenger would not have signed anyone this transfer window.

Well, circumstances often dictate all manner of things, and so it is that this morning we have Nacho Monreal. If Santos’ purchase (for a not inconsiderable fee) in 2011 was part of a mad trolley dash, this one feels more measured, and something we were looking to do anyway. I look forward to seeing him play.

I’d have preferred another striker too, and some more experience in defensive midfield, but it never materialised. It’s not really surprising, given all that we know about how Wenger does business. We were clearly in for Villa but it wasn’t to be.

So up front, we now rely on Giroud, Podolski and Walcott to play through the middle. It sounds decent, except that Walcott’s best role is further to the right, and Podolski scores and assists well on the left. Nevertheless, those are the forward options – and with 43 goals to their names, they’re very good options.

There’s Gervinho too. I’m not sure that central experiment was an unqualified success.

In defensive midfield, it’s Arteta, Coquelin or Ramsey. Jack can play there too. A little inexperienced in the absence of Arteta, but that’s it.

A new left-back makes sense, not least because our game relies on decent wing-backs. Remember January 2012, when Gibbs, Santos, Jenkinson and Sagna were all injured, in some freakish left-right voodoo? It was a total disaster. We were completely stifled. I know Vermaelen can play there, but it’s not his strongest position, and it was the death of Djourou.

We lost every single league game that January.

Given that we have only taken five points from fifteen this January, and that was with our defence at full strength, you can see why Wenger did this deal. Relying on Santos or Vermaelen at left-back would be too much to ask. It would probably have affected left wing, too, at a time when we need all our forward power to counteract some ridiculously inept defending.

So off we go! How the hell we stop the confidence and organisational rot in the defence is the million dollar question. Into this jittery back line drops Monreal.

Out of the frying pan…

Good luck Nacho.

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“What was it like watching Arsenal, grandpa?”

Jim 31/01/2013 5 Comments

Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool

Oh, ho, whoa! Another evening of football that encapsulated everything you need to know about Wenger’s latest, and possibly last, Arsenal side. Put that on a DVD and show the grandchildren.

“This is how we were, kiddo”.

“Wow, grandpa, look at that wave of attacking, that little dynamo at number ten. That blunderbuss up front, he’s actually pretty dangerous, isn’t he? He’s like a steam train! And how many goals did Walcott score? That one was an exocet. Playing like that you must have rolled over all-comers.”

“But eek! Why did Sagna fall over? Was that Belgian man chasing his tail? Is this how you always used to ‘clear’ your lines? Why is the goalie out his goal? Why has he done a shimmy in the box? That tall man – why has he passed straight to the opposition? Why did they let that man run through them? Who’s the fella at left-back spinning round in circles?”

“This is how it was, son, this is how it was. Happy days.”

Loads to admire, loads to make you perspire. Grit and power and chances aplenty up front, but “keystone cops” at the back. Moments of breathtaking attacking prowess living cheek by jowl with kamikaze, comical defending. This is our calling card.

Yes, this is Arsenal. Somewhere, hidden away in there, there must be the kernel of a side with more balance than this one has.

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Ten glorious minutes

Jim 25/01/2013 2 Comments

In a season dotted with more than its fair share of lacklustre moments and peppered by curiously slow build-up play, the quick-fire four-goal salvo at the beginning of the second half on Wednesday was like music to my ears. So much so that I think I might just bundle the memory up and replay it in my head at whatever point now suits me. I could press play during a quiet patch in a future game to cheer me up, or at work to liven up a dull stretch of breadwinning.

But obviously, if I don’t write those moments down to preserve them, I’m going to forget them in all their detail. I can barely remember the scores of games within a few months and it would sadden me if, in future times, these explosive six-hundred seconds had disappeared off into the ether. So here goes. I should add that this is how I end up remembering all goals.

Giroud, 47

OK, there’s a corner at our end, over to my right. It looks like it might be Theo taking it. I’m craning my neck. “Too bloody low, Theo”, wails my brother in frustration, and then the ball flashes into the net and we’re all cheering. “Top work, Theo” he adds. Who scored it, I ask myself? Might have been Giroud. Nifty move at the near post? It was a bit of a blur.

Cazorla, 53

I’m still a bit agitated, so imagine my surprise when whoosh! Cazorla back-heels it in. My recollection of how he came to be in a position to back-heel the goal is blurred. Anyway, I cheer and as I write this I’m going to look at the goal (I’ve not seen them since).

[looks at goal]

How exactly do I not have that carved into my memory? I wasn’t looking at my phone, given than Vodafone is a matchday deathzone. So it was Podolski to Giroud, who arcs a belter back to Der Hammer, then Cazorla does some magic. Now that I’ve had my memory jogged, I do remember that glorious dinked pass from Giroud. Nice.

Walcott, 54

This I do remember. Podolski thunders down the left wing (I don’t have him down as a thunderer, but by god he was thundering), crosses it on a plate with tassels on for Theo, who obliges. I remember every bit of this. We are high-fouring now.

Giroud, 57

Replace Theo with Giroud and you’ve got the fourth goal, at least that’s how I remember it, or don’t remember it. I mean come on, give me a break, I was a bit befuddled by this point. Four goals in ten minutes – I’m not used to it.

I’ve just seen it again and it wasn’t like that, not exactly. The Podolski bit was, but it was near post not far. Ah well.

That’s that then – I’m glad I have it lasered into the bonce with such clarity. Ten lovely minutes. When you’re at the ground they go by in a blur and you remember them in a blur. At least, I do.

Thank heavens for Arsenal Player. And real match reports. And people who can actually remember live football.

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Half an Arsenal gives Wenger a whole headache

Jim 21/01/2013 2 Comments

It’s a case of Like, Yikes! as another spooky tour through the emotions concludes in a dilapidated mansion of despondency. Pick your own baddy dressed up as a pretend ghoul and you can write the ending yourself.

This blog has gone semi-fallow, a little like the team I love, but can you blame me? I’m fairly sure I mentioned, earlier this season, that I was determined not to be miserable, so to find the quote I searched for the word ‘miserable’ on the blog and found plenty of examples going back further than I would care to say (and then I gave up looking, as naturally it made me more miserable). It either tells you something about the infinite capacity this side has to keep on making the same errors, or it indicates my mental state. Or both, I suppose. One perhaps brought on by the other. (And I am not suggesting that Arsenal are making errors because I am miserable – though if it were true, at least we’d have something to work on).

Our latest footballing tic seems to involve only playing for half a match, which is almost more frustrating than not playing at all. Because just when you’re about to explode with rage and call for everyone’s severed heads on a dish, the team magically performs a miraculous volte face and starts pressing, passing, making runs, defending more vigorously, and generally doing what deep down you know it can do. And against Chelsea, we had them on the rack at the end. On the rack! Had we possessed someone we could bring off the bench who was more effective than Andrei Arshavin – that’s to say, someone with feet and legs – we may have snatched a draw. And yet in the first half we were barely a football team.

City at home, Swansea at home, Chelsea away – three decent halves, three poor ones, why do we do it to ourselves? And that’s only this week.

Ultimately, it might well be that Wenger no longer has the capacity to coax this side to be the one that he – and of course we – would dearly want it to be. It’s quite possible that a couple of new players wouldn’t make much difference, at this stage.

But I am parroting what everyone else has pointed out by saying that it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a couple of judicious signings could make enough of a difference to patch the side up until May, to plug a few gaps, to give everyone a boost. Look how they played in the last two second halves and you will be reminded that amid the maddening periods of lifelessness, there is the kernel of something damned good.

Wenger’s getting it in the neck from all angles for his foggy utterings on strengthening – definitely going to buy someone one day, complete side in situ the next – and the evident lack of decisive swooping in the first 21 days of the window does not exactly augur well.

But until the window closes on the first of February, I want to believe that something really is cooking on that front. That a few new faces are being sought to bolster the troops. A striker, at least. Maybe a defensive midfielder. A recognition, beyond mere words, that something vaguely pre-emptive is being done to help the troops out.

There’s no point passing judgment until that time comes. That said, I do plan to be quite agitated between now and then.

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Up tight (everything’s not alright)

Jim 14/01/2013 6 Comments

Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City

What can I write that won’t make us all teeter over the edge again and bash our already bruised heads against brick wall, or wail uncontrollably? Well I suppose it’s fair to say that a sending-off after nine minutes makes any game impossible to judge properly. Going down to ten men that early in a match tests the mettle of the meatiest, most blow-your-own-trumpet of sides, and we are neither especially meaty nor enormously capable of the correct utilisation of our brass instruments. By the end of the match we came out of things looking rather dishevelled – though having managed at least to do our shirt buttons up – and having done what we often do these days, which is asking as many questions as we manage to answer.

And I will add that we perked up quite a bit in the second half and showed some character and a bit of vim, with Jack Wilshere excelling, even if we couldn’t get a consolation goal (Giroud should have at least nodded an effort on target, and the otherwise invisible Walcott hit the post).

But by and large what I took away from it all is that we remain as far off the pace as ever, as inconsistent as always and still some distance from hitting upon the elixir of continued success. The team that Wenger rather baffling called ‘quite complete’ is nothing of the sort. (I hope that may have been lost in translation).

Timid, lacking in both authority and concentration are three ways of putting it – Wenger’s way of putting it in fact – and just how can that be? Why are we so timid? Where is our authority? Why are we not concentrating, for the love of god, against the current champions of England? For what reason does our confidence ebb and flow as rapidly as the Thames? There’s only so much pointing fingers you can do at the players before the finger inevitably swings back towards Wenger.

In the first half we were poor before Koscielny got sent off, and we were poor after he was sent off too. We should have rolled up the old sleeves and scrapped like hell to weather the ten v eleven storm, but instead we pressed the timid button by mistake. Had we played like we played in the second half from the moment Koscielny got his marching orders, who knows. But it’s all if, if, iffety iff.

Look, I have no idea what to make of things anymore. The team can be up, it can be down, it can be flying around. But it can totter out the blocks too.

So despite all that there really is only one thing for it, and that’s to come again and put myself through the mill once more.

Wednesday night, you say?

Don’t mind if I do.

Fortify yourself in advance, you say?

Might be a sensible idea.

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