Simon Barnett | April 2nd 2011 |
If you logged on to this website in order to read something original about Arsenal, then I’m afraid you’re going to be sadly disappointed.
In fact, in my opinion, if you log on to any blog about Arsenal today, you will struggle to find anything that hasn’t been written before.
Even if the words themselves are in a slightly different order, it’s reached the point where us Arsenal bloggers have thought every thought and offered every opinion available on the current side and there’s virtually nothing left to say.
If I was to ignore what’s gone on over the last 5 or 6 years and talk about today’s performance at home to Blackburn then I would probably have to emphasise that we played too slowly from start to finish, seemed to lack a leader on the pitch and there was not enough desire to win a game which was vital in order to keep us in the title race.
But if I did say all that (and then spend several paragraphs expanding on the points made) then you would inevitably find yourself leafing back through past posts on my site, frantically trying to convince yourself that you’re not going mad and that you really have ‘read this one before’.
That’s right – today was a repeat. A repeat of almost every home game, bar about 5 or 6 notable exceptions, of the last few seasons.
When we moved to our lovely comfortable new stadium, little did we realise that we’d be so relieved that the seats were comfortable enough to sit in, without getting up for any reason, for a full 90 minutes. Arsene Wenger, for his part, assured us that the new stadium would have a significant positive impact on our style as we would have the extra space required to play our expansive game. It hasn’t.
We have now managed a paltry single goal in our last 3 home games at a crucial stage of the season against Stoke, Sunderland and Blackburn.
This team is not going to win the league this season. Or next season if we continue to play like we did today. Or indeed any season.
If a team wants to stop Manchester United or Chelsea from beating them, they have to try and tactically outsmart the opposition AND play out of their skins for 90 minutes. Even then, they may well find themselves completely outplayed and beaten anyway, wondering what happened.
Every man and his deaf and blind dog knows how to stop Arsenal. Yes it is quite hard to actually do, and that is why we’re near the top of the league. But if you are well organised and committed then you’re more than half way there.
Watching games like today is getting so predictable and boring that it is no wonder that us Arsenal fans have such a bad reputation for being so quiet. It’s hard to get excited when you can’t shake that feeling of deja-vu as we pass sideways for 87 minutes, bring on a couple of extra strikers, play them on the wing and pretty much fail to create a proper chance in the entire 90 minutes.
Teams that come to defend like Blackburn did today quite often tire eventually and make a mistake. However, preventing our attacks on days like today doesn’t take much effort at all and I think Nelsen, Samba and the rest must have so much energy left they probably feel they could play another game immediately and get rid of some fixture congestion so they can have a week off.
At this point I realise that, despite having nothing to say, I have said quite a lot. All of it fairly negative and all of it very depressing. Today was depressing but we’ve seen it all before. Nothing ever changes. We’re not bad, we’re just not good enough to win the league. Again.
Simon Barnett | March 9th 2011 |
Would we have qualified for the 1/4 finals of the Champions League last night had the referee not shown Robin Van Persie a red card for kicking the ball at the goal?
What a shame that no-one will ever know.
Whilst pretty much everyone agrees that we were beaten by a better team last night, the fact remains that at the time RVP was sent off we were leading the tie and were beginning to threaten Barcelona in midfield. If the crime deserved the punishment, you wouldn’t find many Arsenal fans indulging in any abuse of the referee this morning, but every blog and news article I’ve read is saying the same thing – the referee ruined the game.
There’s really no need to argue about whether the decision was right or wrong. Of course it was wrong. The way in which Van Persie protested lent a huge amount of credibility to his argument that he didn’t hear the whistle which would seem to be the most likely explanation. Even if he had heard the whistle and deliberately blazed his shot wide of the goal, this is hardly the sort of thing that is met with yellow cards in any other match so why this one?
The rule that exists in order to prevent players from petulantly kicking or throwing the ball away essentially comes under the heading of “unsporting behaviour”. Everyone knows what it looks like when players break this rule. There are two categories. One is where a player has been penalised for an offence which he believes he is not guilty of and either kicks a (usually fairly stationary) ball a long distance in anger or throws the ball into ground in disgust – the other is when a decision is given whilst a player whose team is in a winning position in the game is in possession, at which point he plays the ball deliberately away from the location of the incident in order to waste some time. There were 35 minutes to go – was Robin Van Persie really wasting time?
The role of the referee in any sport is not simply to enforce the rules as set out in that sport’s official rule book – it is to manage the game in an appropriate way. In football it is quite common to see challenges go unpunished which, during fractious periods of play, would receive a yellow card. The referee is supposed to use his judgement and discretion and use the rules to control the way in which the game is played. Most of the time, this happens in the manner intended. But every so often we see a referee who gets it all wrong and this last week or two has seen several such incidents.
In my last post, I referred to Mark Clattenburg’s ridiculous award of a penalty for a challenge in the penalty by Blackburn’s Grant Hanley – the challenge, seen in isolation, was a foul. But to give penalties for such things is clearly incorrect, unless they are happening repeatedly. Assuming the referee didn’t believe Van Persie’s defence that he couldn’t hear the whistle, his decision to book him seems to me to be totally out of line with how the game was going and as such, was unnecessary. Had it been 5 minutes from time, it may well have been justified. This is what is meant by managing the game.
As a result, the whole of the football world (and most of the non-football world, judging by the numbers of people in the pub last night!) is forced to resort to pointless speculation as to whether we would have qualified had our only striker not been sent off. Seeing as we had, until that point (and beyond) not had a single shot on target, it would seem sensible to come to the conclusion that we would have lost anyway. But the point is that without the referee’s intervention, who knows what would have happened? We’ve all seen games that completely change their nature at some point.
For what it’s worth, I think that we were lulled into playing too slowly for our own good last night by a very cagey start from the home side. They passed at a snails pace and we were happy to let them for the most part, as we were already ahead in the tie. When we eventually got the ball, not only was our passing too slow and inaccurate, they snapped into the tackle and made space tight for us, meaning that we rarely kept possession for more than 2 or 3 passes.
Nicklas Bendtner should have done better when he had the chance late on but if you look at all the chances that were missed by much more respected players at the other end, it is hard to put all the blame on him. Jack Wilshere and Johann Djourou aside, I think the team let Barcelona dictate the game from start to finish and that was never going to reap rewards for us.
On a final note, I must give credit to Manuel Almunia for an outstanding display. When Szczesny saved Alves’ free kick, injuring his finger and Manuel was shown ready to come on, the outpouring of grief and disappointment in the pub I was in was louder and more disappointed than it would have been had Wenger decided to put himself between the sticks – but he did very well, made the right decisions and kept us in it.
It’s going to take a lot to get the team up for the challenges ahead this season now, especially if we fail to get anything at Old Trafford on Saturday. Being knocked out of 3 out of 4 competitions in 2 weeks is not something I am confident that we have the mental strength for but I guess we’ll find out in West Bromwich on 19th March.
Simon Barnett | March 8th 2011 |
What a frustrating weekend. What a brilliant weekend. What a disappointing weekend. What were those refs doing at the weekend?!
The self-proclaimed Best League In The World certainly provided some half-decent entertainment this weekend but it was not all positive – certain referees didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory.
First of all, Mark Clattenburg. Hard to defend this bumbling idiot, isn’t it? I’m not going to bother trying.
I don’t think anyone can blame him for responding in the affirmative to his employer’s question of “did you get that decision right, Mark?” after the Rooney elbow last week. Which of us can honestly say that we wouldn’t do the same if our boss asked whether the obviously crass mistake we made was something they should consider a sackable offence?
“Simon, do you think you made the right decision when you punched that important customer in the face?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough.”
Great psychology there from the FA.
Now, what’s the best thing to do when you make a mistake? Get right back into the game and, errrr, make another one. His decision to give a penalty to Fulham for a fairly standard, pre-corner wrestling match wouldn’t have been so bad had he not failed to give them a penalty in the very attack that led to the set piece in the first place. You’d be hard pressed to find a more blatant admission of a previous mistake than that one. At least give it a few minutes before you try and redress the balance, Mark!
Then there was Anthony Taylor. “Anthony who?”, I hear you say. That’s what we said before the game. By the end of the game, we all knew who he was. He insisted that we look at him and talk about him.
I don’t think you can really blame him for the goal that was given offside. It wasn’t his decision and even then, it was pretty close. The penalty one was wrong however, and just serves to demonstrate the unwritten rule that says you have to go down if you want a penalty. However, the reason many in the ground were screaming at the referee was not because of a difficult offside call and a missed penalty shout. For the entire second half, Taylor seemed desperate to get on TV, making poor decision after poor decision – ironic really because these antics didn’t make it into the Match Of The Day edit so his mission failed. Sort of.
Of course, the sad truth is that, despite the wrong decisions, we didn’t deserve to win the game anyway. Sunderland would have been understandably disappointed not to take anything out of the game if we’d won it – they played just like Birmingham did at Wembley, closing us down but also carrying a threat at the other end – and without Fabregas we didn’t have any idea how to beat them.
Strange really, you’d have thought that the cunning and wily ability of Denilson and Diaby would have been enough to undo a tight defence. When Denilson’s not slipping over just as he receives the ball, he’s passing it back towards his own goal, even in positions of real threat and Abou Diaby is the only man who could ever be booked for time-wasting whilst taking a penalty – the man has to think for such a long time when he gets the ball that only a new FA rule which says that all other players have to stand still for 10 seconds whenever he touches it can save him.
For the first 70 minutes the team was clueless and lethargic. Once the two spare parts in the middle went off, we began to come to life but 20 minutes of effort was not quite enough and we have now managed only 2 goals in our last 3 games (Leyton Orient aside).
Of course, the talk on the way out of the ground was that whenever United mess up, as they did at Chelsea in the week, we always fail to capitalise – so it was hard to believe that United did even worse on Sunday and lost to Liverpool. Bizarre.
So after all that, we’re still in it, Mark Clattenburg is still a Premier League referee and Abou Diaby is still an Arsenal midfielder. Not only that, but he’s going to play tonight in Barcelona as Song is injured. Forgive me but I can’t find the words to describe how this makes me feel.
No, hang on, I’ve got one … nervous. Goodbye.
Simon Barnett | February 28th 2011 |
We lost. In the last minute. We weren’t good enough. We didn’t want to win as much as they did. Simple as that.
Yesterday was pretty rubbish from the very start. When I left my house, there was a moment when I wondered whether to take my sunglasses as it was such a lovely sunny day. When I arrived at Baker Street, it was pissing it down. We tried to find a pub that was open – there were none. We got back on the tube.
When we arrived at Wembley, it was still pissing it down. My shoes made a point of reminding me that they are on their last legs by allowing the water to seep in, soaking my socks. This was not shaping up to be a great day.
For those that have not had the pleasure of the New Wembley, imagine a massive, shit, football stadium and you won’t be far wide of the mark. This place cost us tax payers more than twice the final price of Arsenal’s new stadium, despite being built on land that already had a football stadium on it and therefore didn’t require any businesses relocating and the like. What a waste of money. Luckily, the very people who were fleeced for the thing in the first place are expected to dig deep into their recession-filled pockets for even more readies if they want so much as a pint in this place. A beer is £4.30 and a programme of guff-filled articles freely available on the internet will set you back £7. I didn’t check the food prices but I think it’s fair to assume that there weren’t all that many bargains.
The designers of the stadium have managed to create a concourse which isn’t large enough to hold the expected crowd and with the food outlets positioned at regular intervals around the edge, fans must constantly barge through hundreds of fellow supporters, glumly queuing for over-priced pies.
Then it’s into the stadium proper to find that the seats are made of crappy plastic – the type that gets very, very cold in February. This might seem like a trivial complaint but the seats at The Emirates Stadium are all padded and very comfortable. Half the price of Wembley, remember.
But hey, it’s a Cup Final so none of this stuff matters really, does it? The atmosphere must be amazing right? Wrong.
The only sound that can be heard in the ground until 3 minutes before kick off is the nightclub-loud thump of pop music being pumped out of the PA system. Every now and again the song dies away and, in the seconds before the next one is cued up, the crowd immediately springs into life. For 15 or 20 seconds it feels like a proper cup final. Then we all get drowned out by the PA again. If it’s not music, it’s the stadium announcer trying to get us going by telling us what an amazing thing we’re about to witness. As if anyone needed reminding why they were there.
Time to announce the teams, which everyone already knows in fact, because they were on all of the screens on the concourse beforehand and these days, everyone has an iPhone or similar anyway. We’ve all paid a lot of money though, so we must have “something different” for this bit, right?
Some men roll out enormous sheets of red and white at our end – blue and white at the other – and then people with huge, black Carling balloons take up the positions that the players might start in and the stadium announcer reads out the teams one by one, each balloon-holder unravelling a scroll with that player’s name on it as he does so. It’s like a scene from CBeebies on a Tuesday morning. What a waste of time and money.
Birmingham wanted to win. A lot. They pressed hard in the midfield right from the start and we couldn’t cope. They took the lead but we managed to equalise, Van Persie injuring himself in the process of scoring a cracking goal, and we went in level pegging.
At half time, we were told what the score is. As it turns out, it was 1-1. I have a feeling a few people near me already knew.
The second half continued on in much the same vein, Birmingham closing us down and us struggling to find space. We knew they’d tire eventually and they did. The last 25 minutes was all Arsenal but, with the injured RVP watching from the bench we had no cutting edge. Inevitably, we folded in the last minute and what a shame it had to be Szczesny’s mistake. Home time.
A long and sullen trudge back to the station followed, through huge lakes of water – £900m is evidently not quite enough to buy you a flat surface around the stadium. Is there anything worse than squeezing onto a tube train which is over-crowded with people who all feel as miserable as you do?
Yes there is – a day out at Wembley.
Simon Barnett | February 24th 2011 |
You could be forgiven for thinking that Tony Pulis was really annoyed about his team having to go to North London last night. He certainly wasn’t really that interested in playing football, that’s for sure.
Over the course of the evening’s, errrm, entertainment, the things that got the Stoke City manager most animated were mainly throw-ins, goal kicks and bookings. In other words, things that happen whilst the ball is not actually in play. You get the feeling that if he could, he would stick a pin in all of the available footballs and stomp off home in a rage, throwing his crap hat at the dog on the way through the door. Tony Pulis just hates football.
Whilst everyone knows what they’re like though, it’s hard to believe that they’re quite that bad until you see them in the flesh. Having paid up to £70 or so for their ticket – more if they paid a tout or an agency – it’s hard to imagine too many of the fans that were there really enjoying watching a 34 year old man drying a football with a towel whilst he waits for two of his team mates to jog the length of the pitch and join in. The Stoke fans, however, loved every minute of it.
In all my years of watching football, I have never heard fans cheering every single time they get a goal kick. Pulis must have convinced them that goal kicks were goals, the way they celebrated whenever an Arsenal attack broke down. By half-time, their fans were fairly sure they were winning 6-1 away at Arsenal and were more than happy.
Part of the reason they are so excited when they are awarded a goal kick is because, as far they are concerned, this is a great platform from which to create a goal-scoring opportunity. One can imagine Pulis and his men deciding how they’re going to play in the next game. “If we can somehow miss out the midfield, we’ve got a chance. But how do we get the two enormous centre backs into the opposition penalty area without risking being caught out from the goal kick?” Literally hours of meetings must have followed when this question was put to the Stoke coaching staff – hours rather than minutes because the subject matter was so spirit-crushingly boring that many of the attendees must have nodded off during the discussions.
In the end, the answer was simple. The keeper is right footed. So he kicks it as far as he can towards the opposition goal. But not too straight. He aims for the left corner of the penalty area with the ball arcing away towards the touchline. 7.653 times out of 10, the opposition defence will head the ball away but the ball will naturally fly towards the touchline on that side and they have a throw-in. At which point, the ridiculous “Delap-towel-jog-wait-throw” procedure begins. Painful to watch.
Before the game, I tweeted that there was only one man in the stadium more nervous than he was at the same time the previous week and that was Sebastien Squillaci. He was clearly going to struggle under the onslaught of The Giant Men Of Stoke. Of course, he duly stepped up and headed Nicklas Bendtner’s early cross into the net from a corner and, in actual fact, had a pretty decent game. Well done me.
No-one else really stood out for good reasons or for bad tonight. Cesc went off injured early on which is a real worry and, less worryingly, given his performance last night, Theo also managed to injure himself. One moment of note was the tigerish performance by Mister Wilshere who seems to be improving with every game – an achievement in itself, given the fact that he started off pretty damn well. His tracking back to cover for Clichy (and Arshavin, whose job it was meant to be!) was superb and an excellent tackle in our corner near the end pretty much sums up his spirit and attitude.
If this game had been played just before Christmas as it was meant to be, I’m not sure we’d have won it. Since then, the team has really grown in stature and it is players like Wilshere and Szczesny that typify this. Whether we can cope without Cesc and maybe Van Persie in the forthcoming games I don’t know but we’re certainly a very different bunch to the side that has crumbled around this stage in previous seasons.
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