Pre-season me up: Goalkeepers

The World Cup is over and now Pre-season is underway.

Spain won, Cesc won

Holland lost, RVP lost

That is basically the World Cup summed up from an Arsenal perspecitive.

For the next four blogs I am going to run through the positions and give my view on them and where we need strengthening.

To start of Goalkeepers

The boys are now back in training for the new season and have so far looked good in the two games that we have played (picture courtesy of Arsenal.com).

A quick note on the Goalkeepers during training they have been wearing all low down squad numbers which makes me think that they are being assigned new numbers to help them mentally compete. Normal numbers for Almunia No.1 and Fabianski No.21, but Mannone has been wearing No.13 and Szczesny No.26.  Read into that what you will.

We have not played with all four of our goalies at once.  But all but one of them have had a run out so far.  Almunia seems to have been pushed out of game time and it has been left to his colleagues try and stake a claim for inbetween the sticks v Liverpool on August 15th.

I does make me think who of the 4 I would prefer in goal and to be honest I am not sure.  So that makes me think we should definitely buy a 26 plus year old experienced goal keeper.  To be our 100% number one goalie in the Premiership while the other 3 (I expect Almunia to go either this summer or next) to fight for the position of Cup goalie 2010-11 and 2011-12 first choice.  This would give the younger goalie’s behind the new signing the chance to learn for an extra crucial year and gain that experience that they need, be that on loan or fighting behind golden oldie.

I do feel for the goalies we have though because Fabianski has made too many mistakes, Mannone has made a few quite horrible mistakes and Wojciech Szczesny is seen by us as too young at the moment and us fans do not really know what he is like.

For me I want to see Szczesny play in both games in the Emirates cup to see what he is like, if he can claim crosses, stop shots, kick the ball and catch the ball.  All would be better than our current goalies.  At 20 it would be a massive call for him to be our number 1 next season that is why I want a interim goalie in the mean time please.

I am happy to see if Fabianski and Mannone can get better but only in meaningless games I think.

So Wenger sign a 26+ year old  experienced goalie and let the others learn and Almunia leave.

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Stressed.com

During this post Im going to elaborate on my experiences of watching the last two games and stressing out.

After our impressive win at the Emirates against Porto we travelled up north for a evening kickoff with Phil ‘Orange man’ Brown’s Hull City.

I started off watching the game and was impressed that our form had continued from the Porto game.  Furthermore our lazy Russian Arshavin scored after ghosting through several Hull players and cooly finishing with the outside of his right foot to put us 1-0 up with only 12 mins gone.  I thought to myself that if we continued to dominate this game then it could be 4 or 5 nil.

But nooooooo, 14 mins later a ball over our defence to an ‘offside’ Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, a chasing back Sol Campbell jumped on to the back of him and was adjudged to have not denied a goal scoring opportunity (because the ball was behind him), was given a yellow card and a penalty was given.  Bullard stepped up and buried the ball into the net.

We pushed and pushed until the non stop pressure from our players wound their players up and Boateng was booked for being annoyed at Bendtner and deciding to poke him in the eye.  Somehow Bendtner was booked to for his part, maybe for shouting at him or something.

Boateng was later sent off for studding Sagna on the knee, which could/should have been a straight red itself.

We kept them in their half for the remainder of the game, threw on Eduardo and Walcott.  Their introduction nearly made an instant impact with Theo setting up Bendtner to have his shot deflected over by Hull defenders being committed.

Then in the 90th minute a Denilson shot from 30 yards was not handled well by the Hull keepers and he parried it to Bendtner who had to deal with a bouncing ball at waist height and showed composure and technique to knock it past Byhill.

Full time 2-1

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The next game against West Ham I watched in London with my friends after beating them all at ten pin bowling.  So to make my day, all I needed was a win against the Hammers to make my day.

This was a game of the first 5 minutes and the last 10 minutes. The first 5 minutes saw us playing some quite beautiful football and continue to dominate the half, with West Ham troubling us once or twice with a free kick  and Mido nearly latching on to a cross.

But then before the end of the half, our defence was caught napping and a ball over the top saw Franco and Vermaelen chase it down, TV5 was gently holding the Hammer’s man shoulder and Franco, being Franco an ex Villarreal player collapsed to the floor and the ref (on the half way line) gave a penalty and sent TV5 off.

Diamanti, a dead ball specialist stepped up and sent his kick to Almunias left, which he streched out and palmed the ball away.  “YESSSSS” I shouted.  The half time whistle was blown and Wenger was waiting at the edge of the tunnel to moan and should abusives at the officials.

Song moved back into the defence to partner Sol Campbell and Denilson played the holding role in midfield.

So at half time we was 1-0 up and we were down a man.  Not looking too good….if you were any other fan except an Arsenal fan.  For some reason we seem to be able to play as well, if not better than we would with 11 men.  I guess it does not change our system too much with leaving one man up front and the midfielders get the chance to join Bendtner at every chance they can.

Diamanti continued to try and make up for his penatly miss with a few shots from distance.  We also tried our luck from distance with Denilson and Fabregas testing the Hammers defence.

Wenger brought on Diaby for Bendtner to protect our lead, and us not to rely on Arshavin to chase back and defend.  He was allowed to stay up front and conserve his energy.

Carlton Cole who started on the West Ham bench (thank god) came on and barged his way through the defence to drive a low left footed shot on to the outside of Almunia’s post and our keeper celebrated like we had won the game.  Great to see passion like that from our players.

I then was stressing out about them nicking a goal in the last 10 minutes. But a poor pass by one of the West Ham defender was intercepted by Cesc which landed at the feet at Eboue who ran at their defence and layed a ball through to Cesc.  With his first touch he chipped it towards ex-gunner Upson who handled the ball to stop our captain running on to it. Penalty.

Our spainard grabbed the ball placed it on the spot and showed nerves of steel to launch the ball into the net.

2-0 Game over.  THANK GOD THAT IS OVER.

Great character in the past two games, which really has shown me we have what it takes to win this title. I kept saying to myself, if we win this we really have got what it takes to win the title.  I am not saying these remaining games are easy, Birmingham away, Man City at home and the scum away.  Tough games who have got to fight for everything to stay up, get in Europe or just get their own back on the reverse fixture against us (think Everton).

So hopefully we can keep winning games and show the title winning mentality to win the title and bring it back to North London.

(picture courtesy of Daily Mail, Accessible: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1259614/Cesc-Fabregas-bans-Barcelona-talk-focus-title-charge.html)

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Play the Percentages!

Well…. 

I have just watched Arsenal lose to Manchester Utd 3-1. It was so depressing being 3 goals down with about half an hour to go and wondering whats the point. Manchester Utd were superb on the counter attack , I was scared for us when we were taking a corner.  It reminded me of the days when I saw an opposition corner and I would think, “We could score from this”.

I dont know whether to blame our defence for not getting back in position or just taking it on the chin and believing that Man U were just that good on the counter.

One person who I blame for their second goal was Denilson, I have never seen him running full pelt and having his head down with the aim of stopping an attacker, we saw it last week agains Stoke when Sidibe out paced him when he was just jogging.  This week it was seen when he was chasing back (well done him for doing that) but still he just focused on the ball and did not look around him until it was too late and Rooney was running off his back.

So I do not want to talk about the game too much to be honest I think we best forget about it learn from us not being able to defend on the counter and move on.

It’s not to say we do not need a striker because we created a fair few chances and come close to scoring if players like Arshavin would be less selfish and look up.  Dont get me wrong I love to see him running at defenders and knowing that he could skin any defender put in front of him, which he did on a number of occassions today.  Evans and Brown are not that good defenders and we should have made that show, Jermaine Beckford can do it for christ sake.  We needed to exploit them, but we hardly ever did and when we did players should play the percentages and know that there is a better chance of scoring by passing to a team mate.

Denilson needs a rest like he did this time last season, give Ramsey a few more games in there, he is more mobile, can still get stuck in and can make runs into areas that can hurt opponents.  Arshavin needs to play out wide and give Bendtner a couple of games up top.  Nasri and Rosicky played well today they are both skillful players who can keep the ball and will give the all if they lose the ball and try to win it back.  Denilson just did not do this, he was hardly ever running full pelt after he lost the ball, he would rely on other players.

Now that is probably the first time that I have ever tried to give some tatical help to Wenger (I know he isnt listening).  I just see why he has not had a word with Denilson about this, he just never runs.  Maybe he has told him this “Don’t worry, save your energy”.

That is enough of my Denilson rant, because it was not all his fault, there are 10 other players on the field that did not get themselves into that position that Denilson was in to stop that Nani through ball.  Maybe we dont leave enough players back from a corner or maybe Rooney is just that dangerous on the counter, and they certainly found him from defending our corners.  We hardly ever score from corners, maybe we should try something different, free kicks we occasionally do but corners hardly ever.

So overall conclusion to that game, we created chances and should be finishing them but defensively we were suspect against a good Man Utd team and we should be exploiting their average players more often and get them on the back foot scared.

Man Utd rant over.

I have missed our 4-2 come back against Bolton, being knocked out the FA Cup and rare 0-0 draw away against a good Villa team.  Against Bolton we showed that style can beat power by scoring  nice goals.  The FA Cup saw us be knocked out away at the Britainia, playing a team half full of reserves, so not much of a suprise for me.  Finally, Villa draw which saw us draw a blank against a team which can play effective football and cause problems.

Right I will be back soon no doubt.  Cheers for reading

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Premiership for the taking

CC	Man City	3 – 0	Arsenal	L
PL	Arsenal	2 – 0	Stoke	W
CL	Olympiacos	1 – 0	Arsenal	L
PL	Liverpool	1 – 2	Arsenal	W
PL	Burnley	1 – 1	Arsenal	D
PL	Arsenal	3 – 0	Hull	W
PL	Arsenal	3 – 0	Aston Villa	W
PL	Portsmouth	1 – 4	Arsenal	W
FAC	West Ham	1 – 2	Arsenal	W
PL	Arsenal	2 – 2	Everton	D
PL	Bolton	0 – 2	Arsenal	W

In all competitions: P 11 W 7 D 2 L 2

I must announce why I have been away for so long.  It is due to the fact that my broken wrist you may remember me talking about still has not healed.  I should be going in for surgery within the next 3 weeks for it all to heal nicely and allow me to be at my productive best!  However, most importantly getting back on a football field and running around.

Now for Arsenal news, since I have been away our form seems to have got a lot better!  Maybe I should stay away for longer.

Even though we are out of the Carling Cup we are very much  back in the hunt for the Premiership.  It has been a long time since I have been able to say that without deep down knowing it is not possible. Saying that our next run of games do see us play Bolton again, Villa away, Man Utd at home,  Chelsea away and Liverpool at home.

I recon we have to come away from these games with around about 12 points out of a possible 15.  It is a tough ask for our injury prone squad.  But we have been dealing with it lately.  Injuries to RVP, Denilson, Clichy, Ramsey, Nasri, Rosicky, Gibbs and Song and Eboue away on ACN duty have seen our form get better.

Last time I posted we had just lost to Chelsea convincingly and I was for sure that they were going to go on for the rest of the season unbeaten.  They were immense against us, Drogba and their defence especially. However, with draws against Everton, West Ham and Birmingham and a loss against Man City they are far from being the unbeatable side I anticipated (we will ignore the 7-2 scoreline against Sunderland at the weekend).

With this Premier League season becoming one of the best ones of late with the title race for the taking, our players should take a lot of confidence in the fact that all of the big four are struggling at the moment and of that we are the team in form.

If our good form continues tomorrow night against Bolton and we win by at least two goals we shall be top of the league for the first time since August. Cummon you reds.

As I have missed a few games I must pick out some stand out performances:

Cesc has been instrumental in the games he has come back in, especially against Villa and Bolton. Other mentions go to Ramsey for his constant development and maturity against such teams as Portsmouth and West Ham and finally, to Abou Diaby who is starting to become a consistently good player FINALLY!!

Last word goes to our new/old signing.  That is right, our new number 31; Sol Campbell. Now I have not heard much about him but I do think he helped us win the League a few times.

Hopefully he can bring a bit of this to the Emirates.

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Drogba more holy shit than Dog shit

Drogba destroyed us on Sunday.

Chelsea were far too good for us.  We had so much possession yet we couldnt let them pay by scoring a goal.  As the great Alan Davies says, its like the Weakest link, when no player chooses to bank (shoot) instead of trying one more and passing it along the edge of the box.  Chelsea dealt with our crosses all day long and they were just immense in defence.

They probably will go on to win the title and so they should with a team like that.  John Terry is the most annoying one, because by the look of him he should be an awful defender.  He is slow he is technically shite, yet he knows how to defend and how to make a tackle (even if it is a late one on a player who is shooting and he can get away with it).  The team he plays in knows how to defend. I dont know how they do it so well, but they do.

Their two front men give them the release by simply passing it to them and they will win it and out power people in their way and lay it off or have a shot.

Their first two goals came from two Ashley Cole crosses, they were class crosses in dangerous areas which begged to be put in the back of the net.  Drogba accepted Ashleys invitation and made it look so simple by sidefooting the first goal in.  The second was about 2 mins later and the same ball, Gallas missed it and it hit our number 5 for his 1 millionth goal of the season (wrong net though).

Half time and we strangley took off Song who was our only 6ft plus player out on field and replaced him with Walcott, to no doubt keep Ashley a bit more quiet.  Walcott came on ran with the ball too fast and thus couldnt control it all game.  He didn’t impress me at all, give him some games and he might change my mind.  His pace will undoubtedly scare defenders but he has got to remember to take the ball with him!

Whilst speaking about players that annoyed me, I must mention Eduardo.  Whats happened to him?!  He was this calm player who wouldn’t panic at any moment and simply knock the ball into the back of the net.  Now he is a nervous wreck who couldnt get one shot off on Sunday.  He either found himself with the ball on his right foot and not wanting to shoot, or he would have the ball under his feet.  Carlos Vela at the moment seems like a more mobile and calmer player than him, sort it out Eds.

I dont know how the free kick was given for their third goal, but they are not to blame.  Almunia is.  What was he doing? To conceed a goal two foot away from where he is standing is quite bad.  Ive lost all confidence in him and the sooner we get a new keeper the better, Rob Green?  Now I dont want to take anything away from the free kick because it was soooo good, how does he get that much power on his side foot and for it to curl slightly, its something quite special from the annoyingly good Drogba. Grrr him!

The thing is we weren’t that bad, we just aren’t as clinical as the Russian Revolution in Fulham.  They were too too good.  It’s now how we react, we tend to lose to them in a season so maybe we can beat them at home react well and overcome our next dozen opponents and go on a bit of an unbeaten stretch.

Citeh tonight, in the League Cup. Nice to see some youngsters playing there football.  Hopefully we will beat them.  Saying that we will probs draw with them as thats all they seem to be able to do at the mo.   Pens?

I however will only be able to watch the first half of the game as I am going to watch my 5 aside team play tonight.  Back to the place where I broke my wrist.  Hopefully I wont have bad nightmares when I go back there.  Wish me luck!

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Will.I.am helps Arsenal be Boom Boom Pow

The first two league games have been and gone. We have 6points and we are looking really good!

One UEFA Champions League qualifying game over and we are looking really good!

I hate repeating myself, but it’s true.

First game of the season away at Everton. Which I was really worried about due to the fact that Everton had a really good year last year and I really rate Jo, who is on loan from Man City.

We were the last game on the first Saturday of the season, Live on ESPN the newest Setanta.  We started the game well passing the ball around like we normally do, but in a different way.  We were playing a 4-3-3 formation which we saw at the end of the last season.  I remember the days when Wenger said ‘We play 4-4-2, we do not change our formation for anyteam, teams change their formation for us’.  A few weeks later he played 4-5-1 against Manchester Utd in Cardiff when Paddy Vieria won us the FA Cup with a spot kick.  Wenger must have thought from that day that he was wrong and that he can adapt his team to be more effective against different formations against various teams.

So we played with Almunia in goal; Sagna, Gallas, new boy Vermaelen and Clichy in defence.  Our three boys in midfield were Song holding with Fabregas and Denilson pulling the strings infront of him. Van persie was upfront on his own with Arshavin and Bendtner flanking him.

On 26minutes after some neat footwork from our new number 52 Niclas Bendtner, who passed it to Cesc who passed it sideways to Denilson who curled the rolling ball into the top left.  Everton tried to reply immediately but were often stopped by the debutant Belgium center back.  He was impressive all day.

Then from a RVP free kick which was perfectly floated into the back post where Vermaelen ran unmarked and headed powerfully into Howards net.

Four minutes later, we earnt another free kick from the left which Cesc took and curled a cross in worth for anyone to get a touch onto to put it into the net.  Will.I.am Gallas got on the end of  it and started his goal tally for the season (which was soon to be added to).

So we went into the break 3-0 up and it was hard to see Everton coming back from 3-0 down.  Two minutes from the restart we scored after breaking from an Everton corner, where we raced to the Evertons goal. Denilson layed the ball to Van Persie who was racing down the left who nutmeged an Everton player to square the ball to a (speedier looking) skipper who shot past Howard and into the Everton goal for 4-0.

Then to add to the home teams woes, 22 minutes later Cesc controled a throw from Almunia and jogged up the pitch unchallenged to the edge of Everton’s area to power a shot into the bottom left of the oppositions goal.

God its getting boring talking about all these goals.

Not to let the last 20 minutes of the game get boring, substitute Eduardo then got on the end of a Arshavin shot which hit the post, to show his poacher instinct and pass the ball into the back of the net. 6-0.

Everton scored a goal, im not gonna talk about it because that would be pointless, just like the goal.

We were by far the most impressive looking team of the weekends Premiership action. Yet the BBC and Match of the Day, hardly said one word about us, it was all about Evertons haplessness.  No fair.

The following Tuesday saw us take on Celtic in a tough encounter.  Im not going to talk much about the game, just that we continued our form from the Everton game and came away from a tough match at Celtic Park with a 2-0 win.  Gallas scored (AGAIN!) and a own goal by Steven Caldwell, seperated the two teams and it provided us with two away goals to take to the Emirates for the second leg which is on Wednesday.

Now to Saturdays game, which was our first home game of the season.  The visitors were the increasingly depressing looking Pompey.  This game brought up some rotation from Wenger, with Eboue, Gibbs, Diaby and Eduardo coming in for Clichy, Sagna, Song and Bendtner.

We again looked very impressive against the South coasters.  We scored on 18 mins and the scorer was our inconsistent lanky frenchman called Abou.  The number two powered a shot into the top right of the net after neat work from Eduardo who was today playing out wide on the left.  Then before the crowed could stop singing, Diaby cleared a Portsmouth free-kick which made its way to Fabregas who played a lovely ball over the top to Eboue who was racing down the right with a man on him squared the ball to Diaby, who had raced forward after his initial clearance, and sent James the wrong way to make it 2-0 within 22mins.

We then conceded a goal on 37 mins when a cross, from the person who I confused with Armand Traore last season when he was on loan their, and a former Spurs man Kaboul jumped higher than Almunia could and the length of his arms to head a ball into the net.  My grandad always said that goal keepers just dont jump anymore, and he is right.  Almunia jumped a maximum of  a foot where as Kaboul must have jumped about 3 or 4 foot which was taller than Almunia could ever have made himself. So learn to jump boy!

After another scare from a Utaka break and with Gallas being the last man the Nigeria fell, which looks like he fell over his own feet, we added to our goal tally through a Arshavin free-kick which was headed on by RVP, then slid across the box by Vermaelen which found Gallas’s foot which in turn hit his face and went in the back of the net.  Very perculiar.

In the attractive 69th minute, RVP slid a through ball to our young welsh substitute, Aaron Ramsey, who calmly slotted the ball past James.

Game over, another 90 mins and another Arsenal 3 points.

Overall, a great week for the Gunners with impressive displays from Gallas, Vermaelen, Diaby, Van persie and of course Alex Song.  Song has looked very impressive this week, with great tackling and some lovely touches.  Especially with his chest, which he seems to have masters the chest over the on-coming opposition player.  Bendtner, has also shown maturity this season with his lack of goals not effecting his on the field play to help his team mates.

Great week.  Bring on the next 32 or what ever it is.

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Long time no see… fancy an end of season review?

Yep thats right I am back.

First of all I would like to explain my lack of posting recently.  It is purely down to the fact that I have been finishing my final year of university and I have had about 20,000 words to write. Not Fun.  I’m all done now, unemployed and able to write about Arsenal, woop.  Saying that the season is over and not alot is happening at this time.

We finished the season 4th with 72 points, 18 points of the winners Manchester United.  We scored 68 and conceded 37.  Man U scored the same amount of goals but conceded 13 less than us.  Now it’s easy to tell where the difference between us and them is.

So during this blog I am going to review the squads season by looking at several positions and summing up my opinion of what went wrong, right and where I think we could add.

The Goalkeepers

Being slightly worried at the begining of the season with us only having a Spanish goalkeeper who had been far from looking like a top four keeper. In back up the 4th choice Polish keeper.

Even though with our number 37 in the goals conceded column in the table Almunia suprised me this season with a number of impressive displays which out numbered the mistakes he made.  He had an obsession to come running out of his goal when the defence could quite easily deal with it.  It must be an Arsenal thing…

Because our young pole with a lack of matches behind him decided get involved in a certain FA Cup Semi final.  He showed us that like many goalkeepers of his age, he was a great shot stopper and showed some great reflex saves but lacked maturity when it came to making decisions.  Coming off his line to help out the defence and coming for crosses were two of the major downfalls of Fabianski’s season. 

Overall Almunia being quite consistent and Fabianski not being there yet, I feel we should bring in a goalkeeper inbetween the age range of 24 and 31 that has some good experience behind him to challenge the two because behind them we only have a very young Italian keeper.

Centre-backs

This season saw a very poor effort from our defence at doing what they are paid to do and that is defend.  Our center backs specifically saw a constantly changing patnership due to injuries and bad form.  Like many football pundits would say ‘Wenger doesn’t know his best pairing’ .  Gallas started off the season as captain and this seemed too much for him with the responsibility of  marshalling a relatively young back line and trying to show that he is the voice and the face and spokesman for the club.  Gallas and Toure were the favoured partnership at the start of the season however it did not work out too well for the club with there being too many poor performances.  Gallas could not handle the pressure of such responsibilities and his form dropped aswell as the armband from his bicep .

The defence was shifted around many times between Toure, Gallas, Djourou and Alex Song competing  losing their place in the starting line up.  On a note that kills me to say.  I think recently Kolo this season has been a shadow of his former self and he has yet to show the form he showed before he had a spell out with an illness, this could be down to the fact that he has not had the Campbell’esque partner, which saw his best form.  I hope he recaptures that form, otherwise the rumours that Man City are after him are looking increasingly attractive.

None of which showing a Vidic and Ferdinand partnership which fans were comparing them too.  Since the end of the season Arsenal have signed a left footed centre-half..No no stop cheering it is not Pascal Cygan…it is a young Belgian, former captain of Ajax, just 6ft defender.  Being a captain of the best club in Holland shows that the 23 year old has leadership qualities that we are seriously lacking at the back. We will see come next season if he is exactly what we need. 

Full backs

Not much to say here other than they do what all good Arsenal full backs do, they go forward better than they defend.  Sagna and Clichy our first choice full backs are both getting better and better, Clichy was probrably our best player in the first half of the season.  He showed a few more mistakes than last season but he is more and more looking like he is going to turn into a much much much better version than Ashley Cole, I love it.  Sagna was more of the same, he is great at getting forward and linking up attacks, in my opinion he is the best right back in the league.  Kieran Gibbbs came in to the squad when Clichy got injured towards the end of the season and played really well minus one mistake against Man Utd in the Champions League semi when under no fault of his own, slipped over.  He will provide good competition for Gael next season.  Additionally, in the Youth Cup a young left back Thomas Cruise showed me that Arsenal have a great skill at producing fine young left backs that are so so so comfortable on the ball.

Centre Midfielders

Gone are the days of having Vieira and Petit in centre mid, or even Vieira and Gilberto Silva.  We now have a young spaniard who is first pick, with loads of young(er) players around him.  People that have played there have been Denilson, Song, Ramsey, Diaby, Nasri, Eboue even Arshavin and Van Persie played there.  This to me shows, along with injuries of course, shows that Wenger was never quite sure on who his best partner for Cesc is. 

Now all of the above mentioned stick out to be magnificant centre midfielders, if centre mids at all.  From the begining of the season I saw Fabregas being teamed with Alex Song, who I was not orginally the greatest fan of, now as you who read my blog can tell, he has impressed me an incredible amount this season.  He has developed from a young player who we did not know if he was a CM or a CB to a pretty darn reliable defensive centre mid.  He always looks so lazy when playing yet he constantly wins the ball back, is strong in the challenge and is pretty tidy in the air, with him beating Emile Heskey in the air throughout our games against Wigan.   As I have said before his only down fall is his passing , as he can struggle to make a 10 yard pass sometimes, but saying that so did Gilberto.  For a player of 21 he sure does have time to learn his trade as a centre mid. 

Looking briefly at the other players that played CM, Denilson was another player who impressed me at the begining of the season by having a hand in a few goals be it assists (Nasri opening game of the season) or scoring (Aston Villa away).  However, with him being used regularly at the start, towards the end of the season his form seemed to decline with him looking tired. Also one thing that I think makes him a lesser mans Cesc is his lack of a killer pass, he still has to add this to his game to make him a better player. 

Now Samir Nasri not one that you would think of as a Flamini esque CM, but Wenger towards the tail end of the season started to use him as a CM to allow Cesc move further up the field. Now this intially seemed weird as Cesc is so much less mobile up the field than Samir is, which made supporting the striker difficult for Cesc.  Samir at CM however, seemed to work well as he could get about and play the quatre back passes that everyone wants David Beckham playing for England.  So if Wenger is to play Samir at CM i do not think it should be at the expense of Cesc, he should perhaps play the two together with Song supporting. 

This is not saying that Wenger should not go out and buy a more experienced (Gilberto like) player for our young players to learn off, compete with and develop under.  To be honest tho I would preferably want a Premiership experienced player to play there but a currently players playing in England are too god damn expensive. So I really do not know who Arsene will buy. I can only hope they will be amazing and unknown.

Wide Men

 Theo Walcott, Samir Nasri, Emmanuel Eboue, Andrei Arshavin, Carlos Vela, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Abou Diaby…

All played out wide for us last season. In the first half of the season both Nasri and Walcott impressed me immensly with Nasri fitting in straight away to the English Premiership.  The opening game against West Brom saw him score straight away and from that moment onwards he has looked like a fabulous signing from Wenger.  Most notably he scored a brace against Man Utd to win the game for us 2-1.  He not only scored goals but he set them up too.

Theo on the other hand started of like a house on fire, he looked unstoppable, defenders were scared of him because he ran at them. Some one with that pace is going to make any defender pee their pants.  At the start of the season I remember him saying on arsenal.com that he was told to be more aggressive against opposition and with the aim to do that he bulked up his upper body strength and learnt how to hold players off as well as run at them.  His impressive displays for Arsenal saw him gain (deserved) England call-ups and he scored a hat trick in his first start.  Throughout the season I still found myself being fustrated with his lack of footballing know-how (compared to mine that is ;o) ).  Sometimes he just did not know when to pass or when to attact the full back and stay out wide, also in front of goal some of his shot choice was poor.  He tried a lob at one point from about 6 yards out when he could easily have just rolled it past the keeper.

One player who did not have a lack of scoring know how in less than 6 months at the club was one man from Russia.  Not much to say about the little Russian really except to marvel in his goals.  From his fine indivdual goal against Blackburn  where he scored from a crazy angle after running from the corner flag to the goal…class. To his 4 goals against Liverpool in one of the greatest games I have ever witnessed.  He is exactly what we needed a bit of experience for our young squad to learn off of.  I cannot wait to see him for a whole season in an Arsenal shirt.

Strikers

Adebayor has gone!

Thank fook for that!

So now we have an exciting (injury excuting) strike force of RVP, Eduardo, Bendtner, Vela, Arshavin and Walcott can even play there.  I would really like to see Bendtner play up front more this season he finished the season with a good goals to game ratio.  I would like to think that if he plays more he will score more, with Ade-bye-bollocks now left you would think that he will play more and being the only target man now… he should reap the rewards.

RVP became our fans player of the season and deserved it fully, when he was in the team he scored important goals (the brace at Chelsea).  He really is becoming a quality player, we all know Dutch players have a tendancy to be a bit miserable and aggresive sometimes (we saw with Dennis).  Hopfully, he will let his left foot and chocolate leg do the talking by scoring more and more important goals for us. 

Eduardo after briefly coming back to the squad last season with a few goals in the Carling Cup he soon became a fans favourite.  It would be awesome to see him continue to show the goal scoring nack that he showed glimpses of when he first joined the team.  Bring on next season for him too! 

Vela, more of the same really he is progressing by playing and scoring some classy goals in the tournament, he seems to be a faster, younger version of Eduardo.  He certainly knows where the back of the net is and can find it with great precision.

Now our old no.25 has left to go to the riches of Man City.  Do we need a replacement? I do not think so, alot of talk is about Chamack of Bordeaux.  I just really do not think that we need another young striker to go in front our youngsters that are waiting to come through.  However, if we could get a certain Real Madrid striker called Klaas-Jan Huntelaar.  But with a steep £18 million pound bid from Stuggart to compete with I do not think we could pay that much for some one that would be likely to spend time on the bench or starting and hampering our young strikers with alot of potential.

That concludes my Season review, it certainly has taken me alot of time to write these 2,300 words! Hope you havent got too bored.  Mucho love.

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