Up For Grabs Now

The team may be a gaggle of lithe young whipper-snappers but Arsenal’s fans are fast turning into Dad’s Army. Every weekend there’s a small explosion of some kind (even if that explosion is “only” beating Wigan 1-0). You then have your Corporal Joneses who look a bit jittery and shout “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” to anyone who’ll listen. They’re reacting to the Private Frazers who shake their wizened heads at the first hint of frailty in the team and rasp in strangely Scottish accents “We’re doomed! We’re all doomed!”

I’ll try and sum up the arguments being made and made again as best I can:

Private Frazer: Wenger’s stubborn adherence to this inexpensive youth malarkey has led us into trophyless oblivion. These kids will never be good enough. He must buy lots and lots of expensive players as soon as he can (preferably in central defence and defensive midfield) but he won’t because he’s so stubborn. If he doesn’t we’re going to have a terrible season and he should go in May.

Corporal Jones: Please don’t worry about a thing, cos every little thing is gonna be alright. We’re fifth after a pretty smelly start to the season but we’re still only 8 points off the top (5 if we can beat Liverpool on Sunday) and our record against the big teams shows that we’ve got quality, if not consistency. We’re still in the Champions’ League and Eduardo’s back soon. And stop being so silly about Arsene, would you?

So are you a Jones or a Frazer? I’m a Jones, though quite an anxious one.

I think it’s worth noting that Corporal Jones was also responsible for another phrase often applied to Arsenal: “They don’t like it up ‘em!” Often used in the past to explain the apparently inexplicable defeat of truly great Arsenal sides playing some of the most lavish football ever seen to teams like Bolton, Corporal Jones was originally referring to “the fuzzy-wuzzies” with whom he fought in Sudan. In a confusing twist to my Dad’s Army division of Gooners, I suspect that a fair few Frazers out there secretly (or not so secretly) wish that this team had a few less “fuzzy-wuzzies” and a few more English redcoats in the mould of Parlour or Keown.

Enough of that. If anyone thinks of any further analogies between us Gooners and Dad’s Army do let me know.

It’s going to be a long wait for the Liverpool match on Sunday so expect to see the Frazer-Jones debate going round and round again and again until then. Yawn. It’s a match which I already feel way more confident about than I did for the Boro game on Saturday, simply because I think all the players will be working their balls off for the cause.

Since one of Private Frazer’s favourite things is relentless rumour-mongering and since that’s what always gets online Gooners licking their chops, here are a few doing the rounds at the moment:

Brazilian wunderkind Alexandre Pato has apparently caught the eye of Arsene Wenger who could make a move in January. This is pretty left field firstly as the boy’s a striker which is probably our strongest area right now and secondly because he’s clearly the dog’s danglies and Milan have been bragging about him ever since he arrived so selling him would be very strange indeed. The shred of hope here is that they’re meant to be signing Thiago Silva and so will need to offload one of their non-EU players if they want Thiago to play.

Even then, I reckon there’ll be other, richer, brasher teams who would want him more than we do. The only reason I can see for Arsene really wanting him is so that he can unleash a tongue-twisting extravaganza by signing Alex Pato, then signing Alex from Chelsea and finally entrenching Alex Song’s spot in central midfield. We will then have the world’s first Alex-Axis. Or, if you prefer, our grinding wheels of dominance will turn upon our well-oiled Alex-Axle. This is obviously tempting to a man like Arsene.

But how, you cry, will newly crowned X-Factor Champion Alexandra Burke fit into all this? I’m not sure yet, but she could surely provide useful cover at right-back. Signing her might also cement our place in next season’s Champions’ League, as UEFA president Michel Pratini is keen to give the competition back its edge and is reportedly considering inviting Champions from other walks of life to compete in 2009/10.

More likely would be Juve’s 24-year-old centre back Giorgio Chiellini,who could be involved in swapsies with our scowling number 10, William Gallas. The downside being that by all accounts we’d have to give them about £10million of our lunch money on top of sulky Billy and the upside being that we’d have a big, strong, good centre back in return for an actually not very big and constantly frowning jessie.

Have a Goonerific Monday.

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?

Ughghghh.

Again. Yet another disappointing afternoon up north. As I sat in front of this one, bacon sandwich in hand and two litre tub of Tropicana in the other, I was gradually overcome with a miserable sinking sensation, and that was only as Andy Gray moved his interactive formation photographs around. As the dust settles on the one-all draw, I am asking myself questions. Lots of questions. Namely:

Are there four words better to flatten the spirits of an Arsenal supporter than Denilson- Song – Fabregas – Diaby?

If you’re playing a northern team with a dodgy defence, do you

a)      Play with some pacy wide midfielders, to complement the centre pairing and create goalscoring opportunities?, or

b)      Play with four central midfielders, including two who have been consistently hapless, and push your almost-established Brazilian holding midfielder into a wing position he is uncomfortable and useless in?

If you are struggling at 1-1 in the final twenty minutes of a match you really cannot afford to drop points in, do you

a)      Bring on an exciting young forward player, maybe even change formation, in an attempt to salvage some pride (if not points) from your season.

b)      Wait until 80 minutes have passed and then bring on Nicklas Bendtner, whose sole (and it came off his head, har) contribution is to deflect a goalbound cross/shot.

I don’t know. Very frustrating. What do you want to say to Arsene? What should he say to the team?

The grumpy rumblings coming from Arsene Wenger in his pre-match yesterday suggest to me that he has his bony professorial finger on the stuttering pulse of the bloated Arsenal Blogmonster and he doesn’t like the kind of guff he’s being subjected to. Yesterday it seemed like he’d had enough and decided to well and truly take the piss out of his haters using the official website.

“First off,” he tells his press secretary (we shall call her “Clive” for argument’s sake) ”Let’s have an article headlined “Why Bendtner Will Come Good“, replete with a cryptic explanation based on something to do with the amount of “pressure” the poor boy puts on himself. That’ll get them going for starters!” 

You thought he wasn’t trying at all? You thought he’d been taking motivational classes from Eboue? You couldn’t be more wrong! Nicklas’ current streak of banjo-wielding cow’s arse avoidance is because the poor boy’s trying way too hard. Stifling his own talent through sheer burgeoning effort. Scrapping for every ball, dashing blindly down every alley, constant hustle and bustle – that’s his game. Sure you might not notice it by, for example, watching him play, but that’s not the point here is it?

Not content with the outpouring of wrath this playful article inspires, Arsene scratches his gaunt professorial chin. He has an idea. “Clive!” he cries, leaping from his professorial chair. “Clive! I’ve got it.” He whispers his plan in Clive’s ear. She is visibly shaken.

“You can’t do that Arsene, they’ll go berserk! You know how sensitive they are about your transfer policy at the moment. The other day I read someone who honestly wanted you to buy back Igor Stepanovs just so that he could see photos of the shirt presentation on the Daily Mirror website. He said he’d take a decent shirt presentation ceremony over three points against Boro any day!”

“Oh yes I can do it,” replies Arsene gleefully. “And I will. Advertise a live question and answer session. Do it now. Call it something seedy, something slightly Babestation. How about “Exclusive Arsene Wenger Webchat“? Is that too obvious? A bit much? Oh, go for it then, we might as well go full-frontal on this one! And kick it off with something really tantalising. Something like “What have you always wanted to ask Arsene Wenger?“”

“Right. Now in about 3 hours I want you to put up another article saying “I won’t answer transfer questions“. And put something in about how good our youngsters are and how bright the future’s going to be – they absolutely hate hearing that. Those bastards will have been dead excited readying their lairy demands and idiotic recommendations – I want them to know I’ll be having none of it. They’re always just like [here Arsene affects high-pitched voice] ‘Ooh, Arsene, go and buy us Ronaldinho, yeah? Ooh Arsene, I can’t believe you sold Oleg Luzhniy he’d be perfect for our defence right now. Ooh Arsene, why don’t you sign Stewart Downing?” Well I can’t take any more of it!”

Enough of that, save to say that Arsene’s Friday wind-up went down an absolute treat. Next week you can look forward to headlines like “Wenger – Why Alex Song is an Arsenal Legend already” and “Wenger – why I wouldn’t sign Messi even if he came free with my Gardener’s World subscription”.

Boro today. Not a happy hunting ground of late. Especially galling is that we seem to keep conceding to Jeremie Aliadiere whose only notable quality is that he is supremely well endowed in the vowel department. Count them – 10 last time I checked.

Expect to see sudden recoveries from the likes of Captain Cesc, Sagna, RvP, Ade and Gael and for Djourou to retain his place in central defence. Also expect an afternoon packed with Out Of Position Diaby and Inappropriate Outbursts of Song. And Eboue. Yum, just what we Gooners love to see.

I’ll be making no predictions ahead of this one as there’s really no point. Suffice to say that as an impatient modern supporter I’m just about prepared to accept a repeat of our 7-0 duffing a couple of years ago. And if Eboue can pull off something like this, (intentionally or no) then all the better frankly.

Finally, we have again been linked with a move for the superbly named Sagna/Drogba hybrid Gervinho (an Ivorian forward at Le Mans who can also play on the wing). Real name? Gervais Yao Kouassi. Brazilian lineage? None. The guy has grasped the crucial fact that with a Brazilian sounding name and a lot of hair, you can make yourself instantly attractive to visiting scouts who have one eye on how this is all going to look when it comes down to a shirt presentation ceremony.

Sources close to Wenger report that should Gervinho sign in January, Arsene will insist that he change his name further to “Margervinho” to comply with his strict policy of only playing strikers whose names make reference to The Simpsons, though this will disappoint a section of fans who had been looking forward to having a player called Gervais, for obvious reasons.

Oh, and it’s Sp*rs-United later on, that most perplexing of fixtures for Gooners. Who do you want to lose more? Both of them, really. I’m hoping for a fractious draw, as many suspensions as possible and, if we’re really lucky, points deductions all round.

In a revolutionary new gesture of his internet savoir-faire, Arsene Wenger is to let the online community have their say in who he buys in the January transfer window. A secret shortlist of blogs has been drawn up, to be notified in the next fortnight, who will form an Action Committee to help decide where approximately £10m is spent in the new year.

Wenger is reported to have said:

‘As one of the greatest football managers of all time, I feel that I’ve suddenly become completely incapable in this job, and am instead going to forget my judgement and hand over spending power to a crackpot delegation of the credulous, the naïve and the constitutionally inept. It’s been drawn to my attention that they all love the club and are proper fans, who would never boo the team and who have seen, through their years of watching television from a sofa, exactly who the team needs. It has become clear to me that watching television from a sofa, together with sporadically contributing inane abuse to online forums, affords one a much better perspective on the European transfer market, and the Arsenal team, than I could ever glean from my famously encyclopaedic knowledge of world football and my team of highly paid and experienced professional scouts and coaching staff. It is also true that watching the occasional match on a 3×2 inch window streamed through an Arabian website gives you a far more nuanced outlook on the shortcomings of the Arsenal team than training with them every day. I look forward to the gems that my Action Committee will no doubt come up with. Particularly I hope that they each pick a different world-famous central defensive midfielder and then argue their case blindly until the cows come home.’

Enough of that. But if anyone knows which blogs might be asked, do let me know.

Mystic Silvestre has offered us his opinions on the team this season, which is good of him, since he hasn’t been doing much of anything else recently. Actually I take that back – he hasn’t been doing much of anything like playing football effectively for Arsenal and making a positive contribution to our attempt to win things. For all I know he might have been doing lots of other stuff – fishing, perhaps, or ruminating on how he gradually changed from being an ambitious professional to being a comedy summer transfer pawn. If you’re bored there’s quite a fun game you can play (or could have played last night, at least) whereby you scroll down the newsnow feeds and count all the different positions reported to have come from Silvestre. From ‘Silvestre: we can win the league’ to ‘Silvestre slams Arsenal’s disappointing season’.

Anyway. None of that. Sport.co.uk points out that Senderos could come back in January. Given our recent record of throwing lifelines to underperforming centre-backs, it might make sense to get back one of our own. Maybe he and Djourou will suddenly form an impenetrable defensive shield, and those problems will be solved forever, leaving us free to buy an amazing midfielder. But I’ll wait for the Action Committee to pass judgement on that.

Then we could call them, collectively, the Swiss Guard. Or the Swiss Wall.

Little else to mull over at the moment. Boro tomorrow will be tricky, I think. Very tricky.

More then.

Today we’ve got: Sweaty Eboue in Portuguese Romp Sensation, The Future of Cesc and a daring exposé of the extraordinary rationale behind Arsene Wenger’s transfer market tomfoolery.

First off, last night. It was a bit pants, wasn’t it?  A very under-strength team sent to Porto apparently with the frank instruction not to bother. Nobody playing last night did themselves any great favours, though Ramsey and Vela looked fairly encouraging and would surely have looked even better had they been part of a high-strength Arsenal team rather than the diet version.

There seems to have been a lot of internet credulity towards the sudden injuries afflicting our most senior players which meant none of them could even travel to the game. Concerned, 37, from Nuneaton wrote in to say “I’m so surprised that Fabregas, Sagna, Clichy, Van Persie, Adebayor and Toure are all injured – they looked fine on Saturday. I really hope they’ll be back for Saturday!”

Don’t you worry Concerned, they’ll be back for Boro sure as Gael’s a Gooner. Arsene was just playing silly buggers with Uefa.

Eboue’s return passed off largely without gaffe or aplomb. Not that I really know what aplomb actually constitutes – it just sounds sort of bouncy and flag-waving and since I didn’t see either of these things from Eboue yesterday I think it’s fair to say that he returned without aplomb. Though he did hurl his sweaty number 27 shirt into the crowd, so, erm, congratulations to the long suffering no-doubt delighted Gooner on the other end of that.

No originality points for pointing out that Bendtner had another poor game, losing the ball at important moments with chronic regularity. Would be interested to know just how thin Goonerish patience is wearing with him. I’m not really sure why, but I still think he’ll be worth it in the long run.

All of which means we’ll be playing one of AS Roma, Panathinaikos, FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Juventus. You’d obviously pick Panathinaikos as the one you’d want while Barca, fun as that would be, is probably not what we need at this stage. Some BBC chappie wrote that if we drew them we’d have no chance. Must be because the BBC doesn’t have the rights to the Premiership – didn’t he see us beat United and Chelsea, teams at least on a par with Barca right now?

Nothing to fear I reckon and as many people have been pointing out, we only play well against the big teams because that’s the only time when any of our players can be collectively arsed.

Talking of Barca, much quoted around the British press this morning is Captain Cesc who has unfortunately done another interview with Radio Marca:

Everybody knows that one day I will return to Spanish football. It’s an experience I want to live. I want to play in Spain as a professional before I retire. The idea has always been the same. That’s why I signed such a long contract.

If these remarks are not being hideously mistranslated and decontextualised, then this sounds like a time-frame – another 6 years at Arsenal then off to Barca. I reckon Cesc may well have a similar view of contracts to Arsene, that is, you sign them for a reason and you stick to them (remember Arsene joined us late because he wouldn’t shave even a couple of months off his Grampus 8 tenure?

Seeing as Cesc obviously does want to go to Spain at some point in his career isn’t it in Arsenal’s interests to know in advance when that is going to be so that the inevitable speculation can be brushed aside (at least within the club) and plans can be made to fill the huge gap he will eventually leave? A relatively neat solution to an awkward problem, the problem of a loyal player who really loves the club, but who naturally wants to play for Barca, the team that is in his blood, at some stage. 

I’ve always had a niggling suspicion that something like this might have been agreed upon, and it was a suspicion which grew wings when we signed Ramsey in the summer. He looks to me like a future midfield engine to be groomed under Fabregas as his long-term replacement.

Very interested to know your views on this.

Finally, yesterday Grabber pointed out that with Homer and Carl already involved, all we needed was a Lenny to complete the world’s first Simpson’s-based strikeforce. Terrifying indeed. Well, guess what? If the newspaper reports were right in November then that’s exactly who will be arriving in January – Palmeiras’ pint-sized scoring sensation Lenny!

So there it is, UpForGrabsNow has scooped the world’s media. This stuff about signing talented youngsters is just a cover for Arsene’s crazed attempt to assemble a team of Simpson’s characters. The next time you see a player linked with the club, you’ll know if Arsene’s really interested by his name.

Xabi Alonso? Don’t remember seeing him in Springfield Elementary too often, do you? Little known Bolivian hardman Barney Gumblinho? Expect to see his popular “Gumblinho 48″ shirt all over the Emirates come January.

The squad for the game tonight, perhaps predictably, has excluded lots of our big names, names such as Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie. It has also excluded some of our smaller names, but names nonetheless of important players, for instance Cesc Fabregas and Gael Clichy. The boss has, however, named eleven starters and seven substitutes, so I suppose we can all rest easy on that one.

Set to start are Homer and probably Carl. If only we had a Lenny, we’d be developing an entirely Simpsons-based attack force. If anybody can think of any more Simpsons related Arsenal puns I’d be grateful to hear them. My erstwhile friend Josh has suggested ‘Apubayor’ and ‘Robin van Barney’. How about Rosickentbrockman? (On reflection Robin van Barney sounds like an awesome Dutch footballing/darts playing hybrid victory machine. What a sight that would be. Maybe he’d kick the darts.)

With qualification assured it’s a nice opportunity for people to prove themselves against a side who are no mugs, proven by their ability to win cups (er).

Many will say it’s also an opportunity for Eh?booedhim to win back some confidence and some supporters after he lost on Saturday. Without meaning to cross the line my esteemed colleague drew under the issue yesterday, I want to have the last word so will anyway: the real reason everybody booed on Saturday was not that Eboue was rubbish, but that with every meaningless giveaway of the ball and tackle of his team-mates Eboue was reminding the world that he, and he alone (except for Song) Knows What Arsene Did Last Summer. The boos were, quite contrary to what everyone has been saying, a gesture of solidarity with Arsene – the sound of thousands of people articulating their discomfort at this flagrant Ivorian flaunting of Arsene’s vacation pursuits.

I, for one, say let Arsene’s secret lie. The rest of you feel free to carry on supporting Emmanuel through thick and thin (mostly thick). Judases the lot of you. All I’m saying is the next time the only people who know about your secret from last summer are a couple of West African utility midfielders, don’t come running to me.

Three points tonight please. Ideally a wonder goal. And a squirrel. Been a while since we had a squirrel. I’d post a link but you had to be there, really. But those who were please do join with me mentally in song: ‘Squirrel is a gooner, squirrel is a gooner, tra la la la, tra la la la’. Followed by ‘Lehmann, show us your nuts, Lehmann Lehmann show us your nuts’.

Come on the boys.

Eboo-gate has, I think, rumbled on long enough. Enough mud has been slung across these forums and it has again shown the many fractures and rifts which exist across the Arsenal fan-base, and how quickly these come apart. On these, I share many of the excellent thoughts of Goonerholic. Enforcing labels for groups of fans who may be particularly pro-Arsene or otherwise smacks of a perverse tribalism which can only harm the club as a whole.

And you know who’s really to blame for all this? T*ttenham. No, they didn’t infiltrate the stadium to cause tension, nor (believe it or not) are they paying Eboue on an each-time-he-plays-a-delightful-through-ball-for-the-opposition-midfield basis. No, they caused this whole sorry affair by being really really shit for such a long time. If they had even a scrap of quality you’d soon see the Gooners closing ranks, but as they have been crap for such a long time now, we lack a common foe and those Gooners with aggression to vent are increasingly turning on their own.

Unlike Grabber (see yesterday’s post), I still feel the booing was destructive and pointless. I’m not really interested in arguments about whether your season ticket does or does not entitle you to a few throaty grumbles over the season. The main point for me is that the booing doesn’t help the team, of which Eboue is a part, and so it’s probably a bad plan. It pisses the team off, and when you’re having a difficult season it’s made a whole lot more difficult if there is significant beef between the crowd and the team.

Right. Enough on that, I’m drawing a line under it (so to speak).

————————————————————————————————

Champions’ League Wednesday ahoy! Despite being one of the most universally poorly punctuated leagues in the world – the League belongs to the many Champions from around Europe, so surely UEFA should enforce the apostrophe with greater rigour – we have generously agreed to contest the competition regardless. Calling it the “Champions League” is confusing for all of us and sounds suspiciously like these “Champions” are a corporate sponsor a la “Barclays Premiership”. Maybe they should call it the “League of Champions” or something to clear up the whole sorry saga.

Undaunted by the governing body’s basic grammatical failings, Arsene’s boys have marched to the top of the prestigious Group G and have 2 points on Porto going into the clash tomorrow. Easy-peasy you cry, we duffed them at the Emirates and we’ll jolly well duff them on their own patch. Hurrah! But what’s this? Arsene says he isn’t going to try because he doesn’t give a hoot if we’re first or second:

It makes a difference to win the group because it makes you feel you have done your job better than to finish second. Does it really make a difference in the outcome of the last 16 tie? I do not know. Maybe there is an advantage to play the second game at home, but if you look at all the groups, there is not a big difference between some teams finishing first or second.

Now, is this really true? Firstly, yes there definitely certainly undoubtedly is an advantage in playing the second leg at home. We’ve seen it time and again. Secondly, if we finish top we are likely to be playing someone like Panathanaikos, Sporting, possibly Atletico, Villareal, one of Bayern or Lyon and Real Madrid. If we unleash the Song/Eboue strikeforce and lose to Porto then we’d be more likely to come up against teams of the calibre of Roma, Inter, Barcelona, Juventus and (again) one of Bayern or Lyon.

So on balance, topping the group would surely be an excellent idea. No points for originality, I’ll admit, but it needs to be said.

Other news: Ade says we need more goals and less pretty fannying about. Of course, more goals sounds like an excellent plan to me, though I am partial to a bit of Goonerish fannying about now and again. I also think this really hasn’t been our problem this year. Very rarely have we played a team off the park but not managed to make our chances count, certainly not as much as we used to, say, last season. Against City, for example, the problem wasn’t that our dashing cut and weave brand of Wengerball was cruelly thwarted by our own penalty-box vanity, it was more that we were utterly utterly mince and got shat on by the better team.

Transfer whisper: I note that the repulsive reptile that is the Daily Mail has linked the similarly tough tackling and reptilian Esteban Cambiasso with a 17 million euro move to Man City. My ingenious plan is that he should reject their vulgar overtures and instead sign for us! Cambiasso is an excellent player and the thought of him sitting selflessly in our midfield egging Captain Cesc on to more box-busting forward runs makes me salivate openly. Like the cheeky bloke who ran that headline yesterday about how Arsenal were going to sign Michael Owen I have no grounds whatever for supposing that Arsene is in any way interested. But at least we’ve got hope.

Grabs

The Emmanuel Eboue debate rages on today, unsurprisingly, and after Grabby’s take on it yesterday It’s my turn now. It might seem like a bit of a U-turn.

Keen-eyed and or regular readers (both of you) might have noticed that in the past month we have had the prescience on this blog to refer to our dear utility right-back/midfielder as ‘Eh?Boo-him’. This is because we (or at least half of us) have always felt him to be a) bad at football b) lazy and c) a moron, three qualities which, if not disqualifying him from all professional employment, ought at least to render him ineligible for one of the best teams in the world, and one of the most sought-after careers in humanity.

People go to watch football, and support a club, because as much as it is another little world to escape into, one with victories and defeats – it is entertainment, a show, and like all the best shows it has heroes and villains. Though I want the team to win, for the money my season ticket costs I want to be able to say whatever I want about the team when I’m in the stadium(within the realm of decency). If I’m in the wrong, no doubt those around me will tell me to shut up. Nobody did on Saturday. I booed Adebayor at the start of the season for behaving like an asshole over the summer – I don’t anymore, and I booed Eboue yesterday for a terrible performance. We were winning a match which was providing us with three crucial points, and Eboue seemed to be trying to sabotage it.

Whilst it might be a bit disheartening for the player, I refuse to take responsibility for the morale of a grown man paid twice the UK average annual salary, every week, to play sport for 90 minutes. I think it’s irresponsibly demoralising to, say, boo returning squaddies because you don’t like the war. Having a boo at Eboue, who delivered one of the worst performances I’ve seen in an Arsenal shirt (and I watched Glenn Helder), is not on the same scale. All of the best jobs come with pressure – if you wilt as Eboue seemed to, despite 55,000 people wanting him to do well and for the team to win, then perhaps you should find another one.

He has never looked the part. Despite his technical gifts, no Arsenal fan has ever looked at an Arsenal teamsheet and been reassured by the presence of Eboue. One of the reasons he has been more popular in midfield than he ever was in defence is the perception that somehow he can do less damage there – no reason for an Arsenal man to earn his position.

You can become popular with the Arsenal crowd either through your character and how you work in games, or by being fantastically good at football. Of the current crowd in the first category I’d put Almunia, the second Van Persie, the third Clichy and Fabregas. Eboue will never be appeal on either of these grounds.

I doubt he’s played his last game for the club, and he’ll probably get a big cheer next time he comes on by way of apology, but what is essentially a reaction to media coverage should not be used to paper over the obvious truth; that Eboue’s quality and temperament are both below the standard we should expect of an Arsenal player.  

Finally I present you with a quick game. Do a youtube search for any of the Arsenal first team. For only one player are two of the first results ‘red card’ and ‘dive’. Guess who?

So the Eboo-ers have vanished into the night, nowhere to be seen or heard anywhere across the Arsenal blogosphere. Instead, there is a spectrum of opinion which ranges from regret to total embarrassment to real anger that an Arsenal player playing badly should be ridiculed by his own supporters during a game.

No-one will defend Eboue’s performance. It was indefensible. Arseblogger makes the crucial point when he observes that while the rubbishness of his performance was bad enough, what got people really worked up (and this is much less obvious to a TV audience) was that Eboue didn’t seem to care – shrugging and standing hands on hips after disastrously and needlessly throwing away possession yet again. This is bound to get anyone’s goat, and I suppose the best defence for the Ebooers is that if he didn’t care when he was on the pitch then he has no right to care when he is made to leave it.

So a regrettable incident, but one which could have been avoided by Eboue actually appearing to make an effort.

The other defence people are coming up with is that a lot of the booing was actually directed at Arsene Wenger so that’s ok. I’m sorry? It’s not ok to boo a player who doesn’t try, but it is ok to boo the club’s greatest post-war manager? I really struggle to understand how this is justification.

Or else, it was directed at the board, as some kind of bizarrely-timed protest at the lack of transfer activity. Perhaps this was a protest at Wenger’s stubbornness in not immediately signing an over-priced Italian winger we once saw do a trick on YouTube as soon as he saw Eboue was having a stinker? That’s how football works isn’t it?

There’s a great big scapegoating exercise which seems to run through quite a lot of fans’ minds when they don’t like a performance. Blame it on Eboue. Blame it on Song. In extreme cases blame it on Denilson. It’s a very easy way to deal with disappointment, to place all the blame on just one or two players, and the great thing is you don’t even need to watch the game properly, but it never really works as a way of explaining poor performance and other players who make big mistakes or underperform - like Toure, Clichy, Van Persie – their mistakes are always quickly forgotten to allow more time for yelling at whichever player you’ve decided to hate. Of course, football doesn’t work like this.

Song in particular continues to be singled out as the scapegoat. “He’s to blame for yesterday! If it wasn’t for Song we would have won… hold on… we did win? Right. Well I blame Song for the fact that the league chose not to magically turn our 3 points into 14. That was all his fault!”

BREAKING NEWS: Song actually played quite well yesterday. (NB this doesn’t mean I think he is better than Vieira or something).

One blogger yet to wake up and smell the 3 points is Le Grove. What a surprise! Ah, Le Grumble, that helpful support group for the bitter, the insane and the unloved in the Arsenal community. If they’re not complaining about the lack of a mid-season DVD celebrating Arsenal’s autumnal achievements, then they’re pining for the signing of Stewart Downing (as in today’s blubbing, semi-literate instalment). They must be the only group of fans who celebrate a victory by effectively calling for the club’s manager to be sacked. Literally, the only fans anywhere in the world who would see this as reasonable. Astonishing.

Next up it’s Porto away, and a great chance for the boss to try out that Eboue-Song strike partnership we’ve all been crying out for. Only joking! But it could happen, seriously… “I believe if you’re a good player then you can play in any position”…