Another day in Sunderland

(Picture via skysports.com)

What a mixture of results.

From the sublime to the annoyingly poor.  We win against Bolton 4-1 and Braga 6-0.  However, most recently we draw up in the North East 1-1.

Our performances against Bolton and Braga were astonishing.  Beautiful football, which did not allow the other teams to get near the ball.  We scored more goals than the both Braga and Bolton could score against us in 10 years of playing football.

If we carry on playing like we did against these two for the rest of the season then we will be up and around the title challenge. I know this is not going to happen, as we will come up against the big boys.  They will not allow us to score 3 goals against them, let alone 4 or 6!

Surely any fan in the world knows that when we are good we are really really really really good, but when we are bad we can look terribly average.  Seriously Fulham standard of average. Annoyingly we showed that against our most recent opposition.

Now can somebody tell me why we have not won up there for 3 or 4 years?  Is it something in the air, playing infront of 40,000 odd fans or is it the fact Sunderland just really really annoyed us.  From us scoring a freak goal off Cesc’s knee, we apparently never really got going.  I am not going to go on about the game too much because we apparently cannot win up there.

So I am going to forget all about it and focus on the Scum game tonight.  We play the other lot at WHL in the Carling Cup with a mixture of youth and experience.  However, unlike the most recent seasons we seem to be going for a more experience squad than expected.

No 3rd choice goalie, we are going for our No 2 a certain Lukasz Fabianski.  Also expect to see an experienced CB partnership of Squillaci and Djourou.  I expect Wilshere to get a rest and Lansbury step in for him.  Vela should start up front after his 3 goals in 40 mins of football and Gibbs should come in for the deteriorating Clichy.

I do hope we do not leave otherwise we will have to hide away from our Spurs fans, delete them off facebook because their status updates are too annoying and not buy or look at any papers tomorrow morning.

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Emirates Cup win

YES!! We won the Emirates Cup!  We must win the league now!

No we cannot defend and kill teams off.

These are two things that might be said after the Emirates Cup win.  I will be saying neither.  We must not get over critical of our performances as much as we must not be too overhyped with the performances of certain players.

While players like Frimpong and Wilshere have been pretty darn good in pre-season we should not be like the media and be wanting them in the England squad ASAP!  Yes they have been good but we need to see how they get along in the Premiership.  To do this we must bleed them into our team slowly and give them a good run in the Cup (like our 2nd choice goalkeeper).  So while I do not want to send them on loan, I do want to see them getting some game time with us.

That is all with regards too us getting too overhyped.  In other news (from my head) I thought that in addition to Frimpong and Wilshere were the performances of Chamakh, Koscielny, Nasri and Gibbs.

The new boys seemed to fit into our system very well.  Kosciellny seemed brilliant at timing challenges and being in the right place for to intercept the ball.  In the Milan game especially, he got infront of their players, beat them to the ball and in the tackle he was brilliant at winning the ball back and keeping it in possession.

Chamakh, was excellent at holding the ball up and playing it simple.  He did not want to run at players too often, letting other people do that by passing the ball simple and then running into another dangerous area.  Just what we need.  Like I have said before though.  He does seem awfully similar to our big Dane Nicklas.  Happy with the ball on the floor and capable of climbing high to win headers.  We shall see how Arsene plays them two and who he seemingly prefers.

Not much to say about Nasri, who continued his fine preseason form.  Running, passing and scoring with absolute class.

Same about Gibbs aswell really, he will give Clichy a good bit of competion down at left back.  He looks very good going forward, running off the ball and helping his wideman out in the attack. I am all for the competition it will make them both up their game and provide us with an excellent back up, if one gets injured.

In my opinion the Emirates cup as normal was great for our preparation for the new season.  It does not involve travelling to America to get some extra cash (Manchester Utd, Chelsea, Spurs, Manchester City).  It allows us for some altitude training in Austria, travelling back to London for the Emirates Cup then within half a day being in Austria and training again.  Genius from the professor Wenger.

Right I shall be back soon with my Defenders review

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World Cup and potential signings

Hello and welcome back to my blog.  I have been rather bad at posting recently and I do apologise!

So since I last blogged we drew 0-0 in a rather boring game, we lost 2-1 away at Blackburn and then we sealed 3rd with a 4-0 win over Fulham.

I am not going to go into the games that much because they were such a long time and I doubt I you will remember.  All I will say is that we sealed 3rd and deservingly so over much worse teams.  Hurrah.

Now.

The World  Cup is on and we are nearly near the end. England were shockingly poor.  The French were shockingly disorganised and Poor and the Germans have been amazing.

I have really liked how the Germans have been playing this tournament.  Losing to them doesn’t feel so bad, but then again we were still poor through the 3 other games.  Oh well, I care about Arsenal and the players I think we should buy!

Watching the tournament I have seen many a player I have been impressed with.  From the obvious Ozil (Ger) to the less players such as:

• Juarez (Mex), with his great techical skills
• Van Bommel (Ned), who I was impressed with his ability break up play, play it simple and be the typical villain, which I have not seen since Jens Lehmann.  
• B. Bradley (USA), who proved me wrong that he was not only in his team because his dad was the coach but because he had a good engine, could pass the ball and was comfortable going forward with it.
• Neuer (Ger) the goalie has shown a great shot stopping and catching crosses ability and we do need that at Arsenal.  He would be a perfect choice goalie for me.  If not a bit too expensive
• and mostly Mueller (Ger), to be honest my view of him before the WC, having seen him in the Champions League for Bayern was that he was a young striker that did not really offer the team anything, especially goals.  He has certainly proved me wrong.  For Germany he has been playing right wing in a kinda 4-2-3-1 formation and been amazing.  Where I thought he had a lack of pace he seems to disguise it with brilliant movement and for his lack of goals he has provided his team with 4 goals and 3 assists.  For a 20 year old that is pretty impressive.  It makes me want him at Arsenal. Although I am not sure where he would fit in to our team.  I can always wish though can’t I…

Speaking of signings and people I want us to buy.  We have signed Chamakh of Morocco and he will wear number 29.  From what I have seen on youtube and in the Champions League for Bordeaux he looks like a pretty good acquisition. Good enough on the floor to be able to come out wide and link up play and pretty darn good in the air.  This does make me wonder where he is going to fit in to our system.  I know that people will have to fight for their places but still Wenger doesnt like putting people in front of young players and Chamakh is certainly in the way of many players such as Vela, Eduardo and more interestly Bendtner.

I see Bendtner as a very similar player to the Moroccan.  Both tall, skillful and good in the air.  From what I have seen Bendtner looks better at being a fox in the box and putting chances away (as we saw with him playing for Denmark against Cameroon).  With van Persie in the team, with us playing a 4-5-1 and with Arsene liking RVP in that central role, we are going to have a lot of players battling behind RVP for first choice on the bench.

It is going to be an interesting time when the WC ends.  Being linked with Joe Cole week in week out, us being linked with many an average WC goalie.

I shall no doubt be in touch again soonish when the WC is near an end or we sign someone.

Tarra

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Guess who’s back? VieAdeTour

I am not going to go on and on about where I have been or what I have been doing, lets just say that since I have been given the all clear to play football rather than watch it I have been taking FULL advantage of it.

So I come back at a time when we have drew to Birmingham, drew to Barca at home, beat Wolves, lost to Messi away from home, lost to some team who are our neighbours (can’t remember their name) and lost to Wigan.  All really really fustrating games to watch.

Since the begining of the season and beating teams like Everton 6-1, we have recently found ourselves struggling to put games away.  I do not think it it because our injury list has been being longer than Dawn French’s shopping list or individual mistakes.  But I believe it is because we have just not been desisive in the final third of the pitch.

Arsene always talks about us being good on the ball but making the wrong choices or not being good enough in the final third, and him being Arsene Wenger, I believe him.  Our movement off the ball, when a player has the ball in the final third is pretty poor.  Generally, this is to do with players within the width of the goal.

We have been technically brilliant with the ball at our feet, but players like Rosicky and Nasri are not having many options when they look up.  Bendtner generally moves to the back post position when the ball goes out wide, to get a run on a floated cross.  We need other players to make the right movement around him.  Theo done it against Wigan and he scored from it.  Now we need other players to step up and make penetrating runs in behind the opposition defence.  Hopefully, our prayers are answered tomorrow when Robin Van Persie will make his first start at home against Man Ci.

Since he has been back and on the field we have looked like a completely different outfit.  He has shown real class in the final third.  I am sure examples can be seen if you Youtube ‘Gomez saves Arsenal.’

Tomorrows game against the richest team in the world, comes at a time when we have not won in a while and our fans could really do with one.  Especially, being against people we used to pay the wages for.

You may notice from my three pictures that there is an odd one out.

Yes that is right.  I no longer remember Adebayor as an ex Gooner, he is now a full qualified TWAT Man City player.  I am sure many of you know why.  His absolute appauling behaviour when he left the club and more recently when he ran the whole length of the pitch and celebrated in front of our fans at Eastlands.

Do not get me wrong his finishing this season has been magnificent.  But Arsenal even if you come fourth this season please do one thing and beat City so we can celebrate on the pitch in front of their travelling fans.

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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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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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P2 W 2 F 8 A 2

So recently we have won the last two games 4-1, against AZ and Wolves.

Fabregas scored 3 goals and Nasri, Diaby and Arshavin scored one each and finally, two Wolves own goals completed our impressive goal scoring form.

They were brilliant performances against ordinary teams. We have played outstanding football and the team seem to be playing for eachother.  Passing the ball, when they have the opportunity to turn and shoot, to a player in a better position to score.  Arshavin was the key man against AZ, with 3 assists.  He often looks very lazy in games, but what he does do with the ball is know exactly when to pass it and exactly who to pass it to.  He can beat a man and he can score goals.  Which is alot better than our last Eastern European wide man *cough* Hleb *cough*

Im not going to talk to much about the games because we played brillaint football and thats what you want to see.  I was impressed with Nasri’s finish against AZ, he showed real composer in his comeback start. Its nice to see we can score goals from all around the team.

However, one person who has been key to putting goals on a plate for other players, is RVP who was recently seen doing this….

Reports are saying 3-4 weeks and others are saying months.  Whatever it is it’s going to be a long time.  We have lost our lanky Dane to injury and god knows where Carlos Vela is.  So we are left with Eduardo anddd ermmmmmm ermmmm…it will give the chance for Sanchez Watt and other young strikers from our reserves.  I guess it could give the chance for Arshavin to play up front and show why he wants to play centrally.  Maybe not that far up the field but you never know with the little Russian he could prove to be a class striker for us.

So yes, if you want reasons for not playing pointless friendlies, look at RVP’s injury against the Italians.

However, saying that yesterday I watched our young Welshman by the name of Aaron Ramsey absolutley destroy the Scots.  He was on a different level to all the players on the field. Saying that all the players on the field were Championship players including Darren Fletcher, he couldnt carry his scottish team by providing an assist, a pre-assist (think Hleb) and a wonderful solo goal.

Thats all really, this post has particularly hard for me to write because I have recently broken my wrist playing football. I just fell over, and didnt realise until I was driving home that my wrist was swelling up at an alarming rate.  So no football for 6 weeks and maybe surgery after I have my cast taken off.  So my post will be short and to the point.

I HATE NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY FOOTBALL. DAMN YOU POWERLEAGUE, DAMN YOU.

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Mannone Saves us a win

So Vito Mannone has just gone gained himself a man of the match performance which has produced a 1-0 win for us gooners.

After last weeks win against Wigan, where he was not troubled, Fulham started very well and they were equal to us for much of the game.  Mannone had to produce some fine fine saves to stop their front line scoring.

So last weeks win against Wigan was pretty much as much as a one sided game as you can get.  Thomas Vermaelen scored from a header and then played a nice one two with Eboue to curl a fabulous shot past Kirkland.  Eboue then (unintentionally) deflected an Eduardo Shot into the Wigan net.  Finally, Fabregas made a fine run along the Wigan backline for Bendtner to fire a cross into the near post where the captain was on hand to knock it in.

So an easy home win to an average team, was then followed by a tough away game against a team who have scumpered us in the past.

As I have said Fulham were equal to us from the start.  We played Mannone- Sagna, Gallas, Vermaelen, Clichy- Song, Fabregas, Diaby- Bendtner, Van Persie, Arshavin.

Mannone was the difference between the two teams.  He made some outstanding saves.  One one-handed save was brilliant from the 21 year old Italian, who from point blank range saved a Andy Johnson header and then a follow up Clint Dempsey shot with his head.  The commentators at the time were saying it was lucky, but for him to get up that quickly and get his body in the firing line, he made his own luck.

He was confident in coming for crosses and was not afraid to put his body in the line when it came to claiming crosses, or even using his feet.  Also to note is William Gallas who continued his fine start to the season with one last ditch block on a Zamora shot which could have been heading goal bound. 

Our goal game in the 52nd minute after a Fulham attack was stopped and we counter attacked with a few lucky toe pokes, from Song and Bendtner, which ended up at Fabregas’ feet who saw RVP strolling beyond the Fulham defence and played a beautiful, looping, curling through ball which was expertly controlled by the dutchman with his left and then instantlly stroked the ball home with his right.

He wasnt exceptional today, he played some nice football in and around the edge of the box.  I remember one time when he took on a few player on the edge of the area then played a ball to Cesc who (with eyes in the back of his head) saw Arshavin rushing through, only to collect the ball and scoop his shot over.

We could have made it 2 or 3 in the last ten with efforts from Eboue who pulled his shot wide and for our young Dane who headed over and had a shot heading for the far corner saved by their keeper.

Good result after a not so good display *thumbs up*

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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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