Up For Grabs Now

The morning after the draw yesterday and again I feel flat more than anything. Thank God for United and Liverpool both dropping points (against teams we’ve dropped points too as well), which at least conceals the extent of the problem for a while. I’ve said it before in other contexts, but a draw away at Boro, in other seasons, whilst not ideal would be far from a season-threatening result.

And I don’t think it is here, either. Yesterday we saw many of the problems we’ve already identified, but also quite a few examples of the chances we make. And actually, I felt that yesterday our real problem was not making enough chances, rather than incompetence at the back. For all that people will say he’s not of Arsenal standard, Alex song did fine in the middle, and Djourou and Gallas look better than Toure and Gallas/Silvestre have all season.

Like Cesc’s 2003 hairdo, the real absence yesterday was down the sides – we badly, badly needed someone attacking-minded prepared to run at their players – Sammy, or Theo, or Rosickentbrockmann. Instead all of our chances were channeled through Cesc, which meant Boro could snuff them out.

I think this is probably promising. Lacking options going forward because of injuries is the sort of mid-season problem which could affect any team. It was a shame we conceded the goal, but it was very well taken by Le Rongeur Francais, and sometimes these things happen, much in the way that sometimes on Football Manager the game decides that you have to lose, regardless of the strength of your team.

Bendtner came in for a lot of stick too, not least from myself, but in his defence he only had ten minutes to make a difference, and for the reasons examined above there wasn’t much service for him. He’s a funny one. Wenger must have seen in the big dane something which wasn’t present in Lupoli and Stokes, at a time when the three of them were banging in loan goals all over the shop. My dad reckons it’s perhaps it’s that he was tall at a time when we didn’t have anyone who could head the ball. Who knows. Anyway I think we should give him a little more benefit of the doubt. Thierry and Dennis didn’t start scoring for a while either.

No doubt there will be spending in January. I expect something north of £10m, perhaps on two players. But at the same time nobody’s going to go mad. Far from what the doomers and the gloomers say, we’re very nearly there as a team – it’s just not quite clicking.

That said, what was very depressing, watching Utd Spurs (I enjoy the pain) was the number of Spurs players you’d consider taking in the Arsenal team at the moment. Bentley? Sure. Lennon? Perhaps (definitely yesterday). A King/Woodgate figure wouldn’t go amiss either.

And honestly I’d take pretty much the whole Utd side bar Carrick and Evra. Oh and Ferdiand, the retarded-Egyptian-looking bastard. Oh and Berbatov because he’s a twat, and Ronaldo because he’s a mincing nancy- and Rooney because he’s the ugliest chav since time and oh wait.

You catch my drift. But the Sunday message, despite the result yesterday, is this: this season is not over. Not by a long shot. Call this the winter of our discontent, and wait for the glorious summer. P.S. Does anybody think that Gareth Southgate’s face looks like it’s very gradually melting under the glare of the managerial headlights?

Tags: Arsenal, Arsene Wenger, laurence olivier, middlesborough

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.