Sat 13th March 2010 17:30, KC Stadium
Archive for Cup Action
It’s The Samir Nasri Show As Bentner Rams Criticism Down Pundits Throats
Posted by: | CommentsThere are few nights that would rival the sense of satisfaction and enjoyment that Arsenal supporters around the world experienced last night. Yet it wasn’t for the fact that the Gunners secured a quarter final spot in the Champions League.
In a lot of ways, the display of total football last night, and the panache and arrogance it was delivered with clouds the significance of moving to the next stage of the competition.
It’s because of matches like last night’s that we all stand up and applaud the work of art that is Wengerball. It’s because of last night that we are reminded why we so love this game of football and why we swear by it.
It’s because of last night that we recognize how privileged we are to be able to witness before our very own eyes, the development of a group of players who together, are destined to become the best generation of Arsenal players that this club has ever seen.
Yet all around the Oscar winning performance that was the Samir Nasri show, the wretched voices of hackery and punditry defecated the air waves with pathetic attempts to belittle what was a master class in football.
They spewed their verbal diarrhoea and negativity in the commentary as they shamelessly looked for excuses to find fault with Arsenal’s game. They suffocated the pre and post match commentary with tired clichés and diatribe about Arsenal’s perceived weaknesses.
They jostled and positioned themselves – buttocks firmly planted on the fence hoping to pounce if Arsenal failed, and pretending to laud the Gunners when we went through.
The disappointment in their faces and voices were louder than a thousand words. Through gritted teeth, they tried to garner the courage to set aside their prejudice and contempt of Arsenal and do the right thing of clapping their hands and stamping their feet in recognition of what was without a doubt, one of the best football matches we have ever witnessed.
Yes I’m talking to you Mr. Graham Souness, Mr. Ruud Gullit, most definitely Mr. Tony Adams (legend you are, but you need to get your snout out of the pigs trough and get some fresh air away from the bile that is tabloid punditry; being an Arsenal legend doesn’t give you the licence to unleash your negative diatribe to get a pay cheque from these cretins).
Yes I’m talking to you Mr. Stan Collymore, Mr. Alan Brazil – and you know what – every miserable piece of anti-Arsenal &^&! Who works for Talk Shite radio. Yes I’m talking to you Mr. Alan Green and Mr. Mike Ingam and Mr. Graham Taylor as you try to lace your supposed love for Arsenal football with constant perceived negativity as if as insurance just in case Arsenal fall apart.
Last night was a night to stand up and bow to the privilege of being witnesses to a work of art. It wasn’t a night to pull out the ’Arsenal don’t have it in ‘em, especially without Cesc Fabregas’ nonsense of a script.
And all this without 3 of the best Arsenal players in William Gallas, Cesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie. Clearly someone didn’t give Samir Nasri the memo that dictated that Arsenal would struggle without our talismanic Captain Fabulous. If you believed everything you read in the papers, you’d think Arsenal were doomed to struggle following Fabregas’s injury over the weekend.
Take nothing away from a collective team performance that oozed class and professionalism. Take nothing away from the individual brilliance and magic from Samir Nasri that suggested Arsene Wenger might have just invested in Bobby Pires, Freddie Ljungberg and Alex Hleb all rolled in one.
The last time I saw a goal like that was when a certain Diego Armando Maradona waltz through the entire England team and scored what in my view is the best individual goal I have ever witnessed – well, maybe until Nasri’s goal last night. Are you watching Maradona? Or was it ’Are you watching Stan Collymore?’
What about our very own B52 bomber. It was only yesterday that I said I was quite content and happy to live with Bendtner’s transgressions for the simple reason that he shamelessly put himself about and got into scoring positions despite his nightmare at the weekend.
For that effort and courage alone, you have to admire the kid. Last night’s hat-trick couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. If it’s any compliment, the Sun newspaper rarely issues a full hearted apology to anybody, let alone a 21 year old kid from Denmark.
What a way to stick two fingers up to all the critics of the weekend past and ram their criticism down their throats. This is not the first time Bendtner has produced match winning performances for Arsenal, and you really have to be a hater to think Bendy won’t be up there with the best.
And I haven’t even mentioned Arsenal’s ’Goal machine’ – Stand up and be counted Mr. Emmanuel Eboue. I would argue that Eboue is one of the most valuable players in the Premier league. Not in monetary terms per se – for player prices are just stupidly inflated.
Emmanuel Eboue is the most dependable versatile player there is in town. He can play left back, right back, left midfield, right midfield, central midfield and even as a relief striker if he needed to. Hell – if you gave Eboue the gloves, he’d stand between the sticks and do a job.
He’s not flashy and is not a ’champagne’ player – but he is dependable when doing the job asked of him and a manager can never ask for more than that from a player.
It’s a trip to Hull on Saturday evening, but for now, we must and we should get drunk in the enjoyment of the pure entertainment and total football that has reminded us all why we love and support the best football club in the world.
Gunners Look To Slay The Dragon Of Porto At The Emirates
Posted by: | CommentsOn a week that much has been made about Nicklas Bendtner’s inability to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, the usual suspects are trying their level best to create a crisis. The suggestion is of course that Arsenal’s profligacy over the weekend will surface again.
This coupled with the over-sensational focus of the absence of Captain Fabulous and his predecessor William Gallas through injury surely makes for a ’crisis’ headline.
My sense is that a lot of talk before tonight’s game fails to give respect to the remaining members of the squad – who on any given day, are formidable opponents for anyone who would dare cross the white line.
In truth, it was two moments of madness that cost Arsenal the first tie at the Estadio do Dragão 3 weeks ago. I would suggest that such a freak occurrence is a once in a blue moon freak show and it’s not likely to happen again.
Arsenal need to give one of them ”over my dead body” performances and put this game even beyond the reach of any referee or match official, let alone the Porto team.
Porto don’t travel well, especially to the British Isles where they’ve suffered 12 out of 14 defeats, with the remaining 2 being draws. A brace each from Van Persie and Adebayor ensured that their last visit to the Emirates was very uncomfortable.
Hopefully, our boys will remind them that this level of discomfort is a common occurrence for any footballing side that cares to venture into North London. The task is straight forward – keep a clean sheet and score, and Plan B if our defences are breached is to score more than Porto – at least 2 goals more.
Tactically, Porto will try the much bandied about blueprint for beating Arsenal. They will hope that we slip up in possession high up the pitch and they can then use their pace to counter attack.
Any chance of them getting a goal at the Emirates will increase the ’squeaky-bum-o-meter’, and they would hope to use this to destabilize the Gunners.
With Song and Campbell back in the team, the options Wenger has are kinder than they would have otherwise been. My first instinct was to hope that if Campbell wasn’t available, then Wenger should move Song back into central defence and play Denilson in the defensive midfield role.
My take is that Wenger might go with a starting line-up of:
Almunia
Sagna, Campbell, Vermaelen, Clichy
Song, Diaby, Nasri
Rosicky, Bendtner, Arshavin
At some point in the game, you would expect to see Eduardo, Walcott, Eboue or Denilson
Despite the loss in the first leg, the Arsenal team showed enough industry and creativity to suggest that they were the better team then and are likely to be the better team tonight.
Interestingly, the much maligned Denilson was statistically the best player in that first game at the Estadio do Dragão. If you take into account factors like pass completion, tackles and interceptions, fouls committed (or not) etc – the young Brazilian had a game of his life, this despite scaring the living daylights out of Sol Campbell in the first few minutes.
With Alex Song now back as the midfield general, and Abou Diaby also available for selection, it is hard to know who Wenger will go for, though Nasri’s man of the match performance on Saturday gives Wenger a very big headache.
I’m quietly confident that Arsenal will see the tie through but if ever there was a case of a need to show zero complacency, then this is one of them. As much as Porto don’t travel well, they’re not mugs and they won’t just turn up to make up the numbers.
Nicklas Bendtner for sure has some redemption to seek at the Emirates for his transgressions over the weekend – but in the same vein, the young Dane has squeezed Arsenal out of some very tight spots and has shown his value.
His goals against CSKA Moscow and Standard Liege in the last two years in the Champions league suggests that Bendtner is a key part of tonight’s equation.
However, Sol Campbell, Andrey Arshavin and Tomas Rosicky will have to stand up and be counted as the senior and most experienced members of this squad. They’re also the three likely to be on the field who are capable of grabbing the game by the scruff of the neck if need be.
Arsenal’s Firepower Not Enough To Slay The Dragon of Porto
Posted by: | CommentsAs I threw my hands up in exasperation last night, the question about when a hill of beans becomes a mountain lingered in my head. That was me just pissed off at our breath-taking propensity to engineer individual moments of madness that pretty much unravels the collective team effort.
After being scraped off the ceiling, I had a beer and watched a classic stand up comedy routine from 1981 by Richard Pryor. Of late, movies seem to do the trick for me, especially to inject a dose of reason and perspective with the elapsing time.
So what really pissed me off? Probably the fact that I don’t like losing, but I guess one team inevitably loses in a game of this type. I think it was more the individual mistakes that led to the goal, but just for the record – I came off the ceiling and can happily look at this in the cold light of day.
Firstly, it was a great match for most part. Any neutral would have loved watching last night’s game as it ebbed and flowed. Believe it or not, there was not one offside decision and I can’t ever recall a match going all the way without an offside decision being given.
I didn’t want to leave the room lest I missed a counter attack. Apart from the errors that led to the goals against us, Arsenal played relatively well for a visiting team to the Estadio do Dragão.
It seems the lessons from recent defeats about keeping our shape and dealing with counter attacks have been learnt. I don’t recall a time when I thought we were in imminent danger of conceding a goal from a counter attack.
In respect of a free flowing attacking game, both teams have to be given credit for making it a great game of football to watch. Not that there weren’t sloppy and lethargic spells during the game, but the two teams applied themselves well.
From Arsenal’s point of view, it was great to see Bendtner getting into the attacking flow of things. We eventually scored from a corner resulting from Bendy’s deflected shot, and in all honesty, Bendy had started to celebrate for the ball was enroute into the net when it was deflected.
The look on Bendtner’s face with his hands behind his head pretty much said ”how the hell didn’t that ball go into the net”.
Porto had clearly been studying our games against Man United and Chelsea. They targeted Clichy’s left flank in what the industry now considers Arsenal’s defensive Achilles heel. I recently wrote about the mental fortitude and discipline Arsenal needs to make the system we play a success. There was a classic lapse of this for Porto’s first goal.
Silvestre Varela should have never been given the freedom of the park to bomb down our left flank, and the sequence of individual lapses that amount to a hill of beans that I talk about played right in front of our eyes. Nasri didn’t track quick enough, Clichy didn’t deal with Varela well enough (and he really should have), and Fabianski became the second Arsenal goal keeper to score a goal in less than 3 weeks – albeit at the wrong end of the pitch.
Watch The Goals And Highlights
Fabianski’s judgement could have been spot on as he moved to anticipate Varela’s cross, and I guess you can argue all day whether it was a really bad shot from the Porto player that went the wrong side of Wookash. Varela probably couldn’t care less, and why should he.
For the second goal, I can live with the first mistake made when Wookash picked up the back pass. However, his judgement to give a demanding referee the ball will probably haunt him for a long time to come. This was one of them cases where Wookash should have taken one for the team and refused to give the ball to the referee until Arsenal had regrouped.
It most definitely would have cost him a yellow card, but it would have been one card that the Arsenal players and supporters celebrated.
Campbell should have punched the referee out of the way for blocking his run towards Falcao and taken a yellow or red card for ‘dealing’ with foreign objects obstructing access to the ball. If the referee had any conscience, he’d have had Porto retake the free kick because his positioning blocked Campbell.
Denilson, who in recent times has become the doom and gloom brigade’s ’scapegoat du jour’ had a shaky start but he settled down and I feel he had a good enough game. Like with AC Milan and Man United the previous evening, both Arsenal and Porto went through a spell of giving the ball away like they were being paid to do it.
Porto also employed the unsavoury tactic of rotational fouling targeting Cesc Fabregas. This cowardly and irritating strategy not only broke Arsenal’s flow, but it’s that cumulative tackling that ends up causing niggly injuries that will affect our players as the season goes on.
Martin Hansson (of the France-Irish World cup qualifier fame) should have handed over more yellow cards to Porto players for this rotational fowling was a deliberate well thought out strategy that had intent written all over it.
Part of the reason I was pissed off after that second goal was this. The referee made a technically correct decision to give the indirect free kick to Porto, but having done that – it was totally unfair for him not to allow Arsenal the right to defend it.
Considering the drama this referee is capable of, I concluded that there’s absolutely no point in expecting any less from him. My exasperation then moved to Campbell and Fabianski for giving the referee the opportunity to gift Porto an open net – and also for not taking a yellow card for kicking the ball out of the stadium to stop the free kick being taken until Arsenal were ready.
All in all, the minimum we can now demand from this team is the right to sing ’One nil to the Arsenal’ on March 9th. Any win will do, but if Porto score twice at the Emirates, we have to win with a 2 goal margin because of the away goal rule.
I don’t think Arsenal is out of the tie and I believe we have a great home advantage. This habit of the Gunners doing things the hard way is what’s making my doctor contemplate referring me to a shrink.
Is It 3rd Time Lucky for Arsenal’s ‘Wookash’ Fabianski?
Posted by: | CommentsApril 18th 2009 and January 24th 2010 are two days ‘Wookash’ Fabianski dreads to recall, even though the former date is the Pole’s birthday.
It has something to do with the fact that on those two days, Arsenal were shown the exit sign and asked to unceremoniously leave the FA Cup. They were days that the young goal keeper had ’howlers’ that any professional sportsman would want to forget very quickly.
A mad rush of blood to the head from Wookash gifted an empty net to Drogba last April, and at the Britannia a few weeks ago – he wisened up to the folly of waiting for a Rory Delap throw to come to him.
Let’s face it – keeping goal is a thankless job. More often than not, the keeper spends long periods doing nothing constructive and requires constant discipline and focus to keep up with the game around them.
The problem for goalies is that mistakes they make or momentary lapses of judgement almost certainly end up with them picking the ball from the back of the net. Also, in this media savvy age where cameras cover every nook and cranny on the pitch, the actions or inactions of the goal keeper are easily amplified.
If Bob Wilson was keeping goal for Arsenal today and he had the howler that led to the goal at his near post in the 1971 cup final, Wilson would have had to go into exile, for the Sky cameras would have made is life a misery.
Goal keeping seems to be a subject that divides many observers when it comes to the Arsenal. I don’t recall it being that much of an issue in the past times of Lehmann, Seaman (who was the goalie that I most identified with), Jennings or Wilson.
There’s a cliché often used to say that a good goal keeper can save you at least 12 points a season, and Almunia doesn’t seem to jump out of the page for some when it comes to Arsenal goal keepers. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 points saving interventions that Almunia made in 2010 – when Denilson collapsed and Everton had a one on one with him; saving Agbonlahor’s shot across goal at the match against Villa on 27th of Jan; and his fingertip save of Ryan Babel’s shot last week against Liverpool.
All of those saves prevented Arsenal from losing or drawing a match and gained us points in that respect. Even so, it’s more than likely that Almunia’s transgressions will be the more amplified for it’s those mistakes that end up with us conceding goals.
Fabianski has had his high profile moments to impress and he has shown signs of a great goal keeper, and signs of poor judgement on occasion. This is not uncommon for a 24 year old goal keeper, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that some things will only come with experience. Good judgement is one of those aspects that will only develop with time and mileage on the pitch.
For the record, I think Fabianski is a very good keeper and will become one of the best keepers in the world. You can see this when he has a good game – the way he commands the box and the way he marauds around like he owns that piece of real estate within the box; the way he comes for crosses and the way he sweeps behind his defensive high line; and his general presence in the box.
What has eluded him so far is the consistency in good decision making. His individual skill and agility is not in question. The only way we’re going to find out if Wookash is really the answer to Arsenal’s goal keeping dilemma is to let him get on with it.
Some may argue that he’s not yet there and needs some more experience, but short of farming him out on loan at the risk of not having a 2nd choice keeper – Wenger seems to be convinced that the Pole is a good enough understudy to Almunia.
The manager has certainly gone out of his way to pump up Wookash by waxing lyrical about his ability to hold the fort. Definitely good people management and confidence building skills on the part of the manager.
My sense is that if the team defends properly as a unit and each person takes their responsibility seriously, it will make the life of a goal keeper a hell of a lot easier. There will be times during the game that the keeper is called upon to do something extra-ordinary and it’s on those occasions that Wookash can stand up to be counted.
Maybe tonight is a chance to prove that it’s 3rd time lucky for him and he can help propel Arsenal to a good position before the return leg against Porto in 3 weeks time.
Arsenal’s European Adventure Resumes At The Dragon’s Den
Posted by: | CommentsArsenal reacquaint themselves with European action tomorrow when they visit the Estádio do Dragão for the 3rd time in 4 seasons. The Dragon’s den in Porto hasn’t been a good hunting ground for the Gunners, having only previously managed a scrappy goalless draw in the 2006-2007 campaign, and a 2 nil defeat last season.
Jesualdo Ferreira’s Porto’s side are in fine form with a 12 game unbeaten run and having scored 12 goals with only 3 in reply in their last 5 games. If Arsenal’s last 5 games are anything to go by, you then realise that whoever suggested that the Gunners are favourites needs to go a bit easy on the cool aid.
Arsenal will have been buoyed by the win against Liverpool having come back from a mauling by both their closest rivals. Both the players and supporters will have taken a lot of encouragement from the collective team effort and the defensive display shown against Liverpool.
In tomorrow’s game, that defensive discipline will be the key. Consistency has been elusive for this team at critical times and this has been a source of frustration for many supporters. However, the spirit and sheer determination shown by the team in the game against Liverpool was very encouraging.
Arsenal has left itself vulnerable in the last couple of losses because of over-committing when chasing the game. You always feel that at 0-0, the Gunners are comfortable and can play a patient game. Our Achilles heel has been the loss of our shape when defending counter attacks against us as a result of the over-commitment in chasing the game.
Against Liverpool, the team showed that they had the maturity to remain compact and hold the game, while being patient for their chance on goal. The same approach will have to be taken against Porto who are in better scoring form than Arsenal are in.
From Wenger’s point of view, the minimum requirement is not to lose the game against Porto, though he will be more happy with Arsenal keeping a clean sheet.
From a tactical point of view, Porto will have watched Arsenal’s recent defeats to Chelsea and Man United and believe that they have the definitive blue print to beat Arsenal. They will look to crowd the midfield and push forward at every available opportunity using the strength of their star man, the Hulk.
I’m not exactly sure why, but I believe Hulk has been suspended from the rest of the domestic season – but he should be eligible to play in the champions league, and probably gagging for the chance to scratch the itch that Arsenal will represent.
From Arsenal’s point of view, Alex Song and Andrey Arshavin’s absence will be a huge miss, though it’s encouraging that they’ll probably be back for the return leg at the Emirates.
My sense is that Arsenal will go with a starting line-up of:
Almunia
Sagna, Gallas, Vermaelen, Clichy
Denilson, Diaby, Fabregas
Eboue, Bendtner, Nasri
At some point in the game, Rosicky, Walcott and Eduardo may feature.
I feel that Wenger will go for Eboue because of his penetrative attributes and ability to run at defences to open spaces. Eboue’s presence also provides solidity and strength in the middle of the park.
For Walcott, whatever time he gets will be valuable especially since he is away from home and there’s less pressure from the crowd and from the media. Hopefully, if he gets pitch time, he can enjoy himself and play with a smile.
Denilson will also get a chance to improve his recent form after his return from injury. He’s become scapegoat du jour in recent weeks and he can’t do any worse than get on the pitch and do what he’s good at.
Arsenal have a good chance of getting past Porto to the next round, but it’s not going to be a straight forward task by any measure. The fact that Porto have won the European title twice and the fact that they’ve been in the competition for 12 years running suggests that you should write them off at your own peril.
Zero complacency from Arsenal is paramount.
Does Arsenal Have Supporters, Or Are They Customers?
Posted by: | CommentsI always have a healthy exchange with my Liverpool supporting friend Dean about all matters football and about our respective clubs. The fact that Arsenal play Liverpool tomorrow prompted a customary chat about the state of the football union.
He posed the question as to whether I’d been following the hysteria about Arsenal, quipping “Dude, you guys want to do a Benitez on Wenger”.
He of course was talking about the treatment Rapha Benitez got from everybody under the sun when Liverpool’s season was capitulating.
To his surprise, I told him that I switched on the TV at 4.00 pm on Sunday and turned the volume down, before switching to something else after the game was over. Since then, I really haven’t gone out of my way to read, listen or watch anything said about Arsenal.
Actually, I tell a lie – I re-watched the game on Arsenal TV and also watched Wenger’s press conference. I’m not into that kamikaze type nonsense right now of absorbing overly negative vibes to self inflict pain.
Both of us agreed that we expect nothing but drama from the media – for they have bills to pay. We were comparing notes on our actual fans and how the fans reacted in adverse situations.
It was then that I made the comment that perhaps Arsenal has customers rather than supporters. And in a media savvy world – let’s face it, the customer is king.
We were joking about it, but seriously speaking – are we getting to the age where fans are treated by the club like commodities where the expectation is that they will buy match day tickets, stadium hospitality and merchandize.
There’s also the small fact that the billions of pounds pumped into football come from the sale of broadcasting rights around the world for leagues like the English Premiership and the UEFA Champions league. The rights owners recoup their money by selling subscriptions.
Wenger has caused somewhat of a micro-storm in the footballing establishment in this past week by suggesting that he’d rather be 3rd in the Premier league than win the Carling Cup or the FA cup. The establishment’s translation of this is ”Frenchman doesn’t care and doesn’t give a damn about the historic FA cup or domestic cups – the arrogant fool. That’s why he hasn’t won diddly squat”.
But let’s face it – the FA cup and the Carling cup don’t actually pay the bills, do they? In the grand scheme of things, any romance they provide was firmly drop kicked into the long grass with the advent of mega bucks TV money.
We can sit and debate until the cows come back home and still conclude that the domestic FA and Carling cups are actually a distraction when it comes to clubs who need to draw in the mega bucks to keep afloat.
The ”Arsenal hasn’t won anything in 5 years” is a tiresome refrain that is already echoing the streets of Holloway and the alleys of Ashburton Grove. Mind you, such refrains are the pre-amble to the Post hoc ergo propta hoc (Latin for After it therefore because of it) pronouncements that Fabregas is now on his way to Barcelona.
The truth doesn’t always follow the idea that a second event always comes because of the first. Fabregas or any other player for that matter wouldn’t leave in the summer because Arsenal hasn’t won anything for 5 years. Far from that – if a time ever came for him to leave, it’ll be because the club agree to sell him or any other player.
What is more of an issue here is that the chain of stories and events following what’s now dubbed as ”yet another season without a trophy” is the classic shit stirring scenario.
For me, it’s part of the problem that makes me think Arsenal has customers. It’s these customers who have taken the view that they want a return for their money here and now and enough is enough. They are convinced that unless Arsenal win a trophy, the club is an equivalent of a failed banana republic that is headed to the dogs.
I guess in the last 5 years, Wenger could have fielded full strength teams in the domestic competitions, but I doubt that for the ’Arsenal hasn’t won a trophy in 5 years’brigade, a Carling cup or two will count.
I admitted to Dean that if there’s something I admire about the Liverpool fans, it’s the fact that they know when and where to remonstrate, and when and where to fully get behind their team and support the players like mad.
I sometimes feel we have customers who are more interested in getting a good return for their buck than they are in supporting the club through difficult patches.
Dean always reminds me of the Arsenal fan who committed suicide straight after the second leg of the 2009 champions league semi-final against Man United when Arsenal lost 1-3 at the Emirates.
He jokes that if Liverpool had such supporters they’d all have committed suicide by now if they had to wait 20 years to win the league.
Wenger’s Gamble Stokes Arsenal Out Of The FA Cup
Posted by: | CommentsThe morning after any defeat is a strange one. For many Arsenal supporters, it’s probably the headlines and the recycled TV footage of the said defeat that can make them lose the will to live.
For others, it’s a balance between lying in a dark room with a cold towel over the face or confronting friends and colleagues at work to explain why yet again, Arsenal fell short. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have to face such an inquisition, but nevertheless, any loss is disappointing for the simple reason that I don’t like losing.
When my Liverpool supporting friend walked into the room and asked me “Have you seen your team playing Stoke?”, my first question was “Has Wenger done a Man United?”.
You see, in March 2008, I was with Dean (my friend) listening on the car radio while driving when Arsenal visited Old Trafford in the 5th round of the FA cup. At that time, the Gunners were top of the league, 5 points clear and with a game in hand.
For some reason, the Arsenal team didn’t get off the bus that day and were dispatched back to London with a 4 nil defeat. Dean’s reaction to that game was that Wenger threw the game to focus on the Premier league and the Champions league.
With a threadbare squad leading up to this weekend, it was therefore anyone’s guess as to who will make an appearance. Most of the headlines of course went to Sol Campbell, who I must say, didn’t have a bad game for someone who’s been in the wilderness for a while.
And so the team was overhauled. Dean joked in exclamation when he pointed out that “Jesus! Arsenal have started the game with 4 English players. This is a miracle. ” I reminded him that it could have been 5 if Little Jack Willy didn’t pull a sicky forcing Cesc to make an appearance.
We had a bet as to how many times the commentators will mention the fact that Arsenal started the game with 4 English players, 2 shy of Stoke’s 6 Englishmen. I said they wouldn’t notice and I won the bet.
Stoke seemed to want this game more than Arsenal did and within 70 seconds, Delap duly obliged with one of his trademark throws. Fabianski was none the wiser as the ball ghosted past him into the net.
The match then took that “they’re going to park the bus” feeling. A scrappy match followed for most part with constant references of Stoke’s giants vs. Arsenal’s pint sized diddy men. Clearly the revised script titled “How to be a lazy observer” was in full use.
The match ticked on at 1-1 with Denilson’s equalizer being referred to constantly as a deflected shot. I actually got pissed off the more this was said. Frank Lampard for example, has perfected the craft of scoring deflected goals yet no one bothers to mention that they’re deflected.
I expected that at some point, Wenger would relieve Theo Walcott off his misery. Theo couldn’t even fart on the pitch without being surrounded by a gang of red and white Stoke shirts. For all intents and purposes, it was like Arsenal were playing with 10 men.
When Wenger decided to unleash all 3 substitutes at the same time, I said to Dean – “this is going to be dodgy”.
The only time I remember Wenger ever employing a triple substitution was in early September 2006. I was actually sat at a bar in a mall in down town Kampala with Dean and some friends.
Middlesbrough were 1 mil up and Wenger brought on Thierry Henry, Alex Hleb and Julio Baptista at the same time. We still ended up drawing 1-1 despite the reinforcements.
Maybe it was déjà vu, but triple substitutions give me the jitters. At one point, Sly nearly ruled himself out of the game and I was convinced Arsenal were going to complete the game with 10 men.
Stoke however applied themselves well, and scored twice from attacks launched after Arsenal sloppily conceded the ball. I guess that’s what you get with a team determined to cause an upset and a heckling Britannia stadium behind them.
The team selection was always going to be a slippery banana skin for Wenger. Damned if he played his strongest team, damned if he didn’t. I was actually pleased that Gallas and Vermaelen had their feet up with a cup of cocoa watching the game from home. The two needed a rest and this game was as good a chance as any to give them a rest.
Doom and gloom merchants as well as media hawks and I-Zombies (the new name for plonkers and pundits aka plundits) will be quick to point out that Arsenal have killed their chances of silverware this season.
Frankly speaking – that’s total nonsense. Arsenal had to make a choice and prioritize and in the grand scheme of things, the FA cup was the sacrifice.
Of course Arsenal want to win, but prioritizing the Champions League and the Premier league has to be the case. The blunt truth is that the FA cup doesn’t bring in big bucks.
It’s still very disappointing to lose a game and I’m sure that the team that played were bitterly disappointed.
Time will tell whether the loss adversely affects the morale of the team ala the drama following the 5th round defeat in 2008.
Stoke were worthy winners on the day and they gave the game a really good cup atmosphere. I must say, their crowd are brilliant and get well behind their team.
It was also very nice to see J Emmanuel Thomas have his full debut for the first team. I like the lad and he has a lot to offer this team. I seriously hope he gets more game time.
And as for the nonsense about Stoke being our new bogey team, there’s a simple answer to that according to Wenger. Arsenal doesn’t struggle against Stoke at the Britannia, Arsenal struggles against any team if they don’t play well, period.
A positive response is needed at Villa Park on Wednesday night when the first team returns for duty.
