Up For Grabs Now

So a slim 1-0 lead to take to Rome but, I feel, a lead which ought to make us strong favourites to progress to the quarter finals.

It should have been more. The tie should be over.

Let’s get the missed chances out of the way first off, principally a howler from Eboue who decided to fanny around inconsequentially when one-on-one with Doni before sidefooting wide. Then there was Bendtner who somehow managed to clear the crossbar from about 8 yards and loads of time. There were other good chances, of course, but those 2 were the ones that you really have to nail in a tie of this magnitude.

I thought we’d be punished tonight, let’s just hope we don’t regret those misses too much in Rome.

Yet apart from their glaring misses, Bendtner and (especially) Eboue had played well. It was a strange decision from the Boss to start Nasri inside with Bendtner wide left and Van Persie alone up top, but it unsettled the Italians and while Bendtner’s individual performance left a bit to be desired, the tactical threat which he carried was considerable. Eboue had a strong game defensively and seemed to have got over the concentration deficit which has plagued him so often. His charges forward were pretty regular and, like most teams, Roma didn’t really know what to do.

Unfortunately, neither did Eboue once he got himself into a position to really cause some damage.

You sometimes get the feeling that people who talk about Arsenal’s ‘Total Football’ have got it all wrong. Total Football is about players who are comfortable in loads of positions and can basically execute whatever skill is required of them. Many of our players simply don’t have this. They are passers and providers who have worked so much on that aspect that they seem to have lost the ability to shoot, or simply drive past the final man when you’re charging forward and he’s backpeddling. Surely it’s not that hard, and if Wenger did a bit of shooting practise with the likes of Denilson, Eboue, Clichy, Sagna I think we’d see quite a few more goals.

Obviously they’re never going to be our main scorers, but in situations like Eboue found himself in this evening, it would be nice to be hoping he would score rather than waiting for him to miss.

Also, and I know a lot of fans will have had this thought, but since we have a player with such extraordinary close-control and ability to shoot on the turn as Van Persie, the Islington Shuffle is especially counter-productive as an effective way of scoring goals. We got the penalty after 2 quick, central passes ended up at Van Persie’s feet and the defender couldn’t deal with it. We always used to pass quickly, but right now we aren’t trying to walk the ball into the net (the common misconception) but are in fact executing a complex routine of goal-threat avoidance. I just wish they wouldn’t.

Still, a strong performance overall from the boys, who made Roma appear very ordinary indeed.

Their defence looked pretty suspect and Mexes should really have been sent off with a second yellow for the penalty. Roma will carry a definite attacking threat in 2 weeks time, but without an away goal or the suspended Daniele de Rossi, they will really need to come at us, which should provide lots of counter-attacking opportunities for the MAJESTIC Robin Van Persie to blast contemptuously into the net and then repeat his dandruff-brushing routine.

We always play well in Italy.

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In the spirit of originality which I was harping on about yesterday, I’d like to say how much I am looking forward to next year’s UEFA Cup Campaign.

Five points ahead of Everton at this stage, we look well on course to secure a coveted 5th place finish, a not inconsiderable achievement when you consider how comprehensively outspent we have been this season by the likes of  Manchester City and Tottenham, (the tabloid logic being that money spent translates into goals scored and points gained).

And not playing in the Champions’ League  will have its advantages. We always play in the Champions’ League and it will be nice to have a bit of a mid-week change of scene. We can to go to exciting new places, such as Latvia and Northern Ireland, rather than sticking to the usual Spain-France-Italy-Holland-Germany rigmarole, which is frankly becoming a bit dull.

It will also be ludicrously easy to win. The main problem with the Champions’ League is that it’s much too difficult to win due to the preponderance of top sides.

The UEFA Cup is like the Carling Cup but with even more disappointed looking chief-executives of major sponsors and half-hearted celebrations from the winners – except when Tottenham won it, when celebrations got comically cataclysmic, proving that

1. there is such a thing as overcelebration
2. that any pride temporarily restored to minor football clubs by the winning of minor competitions can be quickly lost by the spectacle of said minor football club’s fans celebrating as though they’d won the World Cup and Champions League double
3. that some people, (see “Keane, Robert”,) have absolutely no dignity. 

So yeah, the more you think about it, the more playing for 5th makes sense. Last year we could have faced Rangers in the final. Which I would certainly have enjoyed. We could also have enjoyed the expert analysis of Channel Five’s Stan Collymore [That's enough originality - Ed.]

Phew.

If our players want motivating, which on yesterday’s performance, they clearly do, Arsene could do worse than forcing them to spend their Thursdays watching the cringingly pointless sporting charade which is the UEFA Cup, a competition which seems to generate an unseemly variety of poor-quality introductory title sequences and which has attracted television presenters of the calibre of John Barnes. Normally the issue with ambitious ex-pros is whether they can make the jump from TV to the dugout, with TV perenially perceived as the easier job by far. Barnes regularly makes a nonsense of this, turning in televisual performances so ugly that they make Celtic’s 3-0 defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle under Barnes look like a great result. Arsenal FC must never be associated with such broadcasting ineptitude.

Villa are ailing. It’s time to start showing our class, and fast. It is also very important that while showing our class we remember to do certain things, such as the scoring of goals and the winning of games and the accruing of points.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to go about ’showing our class’ please stick them in the comments. The best will be sagwaroffed to Arsene Wenger using the very latest technology.

Kick-off is imminent, and the big team news is that Andrey Arshavin is set to start, his hair issues having been resolved: about that, you’ve got to wonder whether it was a big sticking point in the transfer dispute…

AA: I must have my hairdresser.

Arsenal: We have many good hairdressers in England.

AA: I must have my hairdresser.

Arsenal: But your hair is quite easy to cut, you are not Mr T or J.Lo.

AA: I must have my hairdresser.

Arsenal: How does this affect your football?

AA: I must have my hairdresser.

No wonder the whole thing took so long.

Anyway. Arsenal team:

Almunia,

Sagna Gallas Toure Clichy

Nasri Denilson Song Arshavin

Bendtner Van Persie

Subs: Fabianski, Vela, Ramsey, Djourou, Eboue, Gibbs, Merida

I have to say I like the looks of this lot, particularly with Song and Denilson being given the middle. It’ll let Denilson push forward, a position he’s much happier in than holding, and Song the chance to really prove himself. Gallas and Toure will be less of a struggle, but given the colander-like nature of Sunderland’s defence I hope that we’ll have at least a goal or two to play with by the end.

Though it looks unhelpful, Chelsea beating Villa is probably good news for us in the long run – I really think the wheels are starting to fall off the Villa wagon, whilst ours are fully greased and good to go.

Watch it here

More updates after the game, but for now, come on the Arsenal! 

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If UpForGrabsNow aspired to originality, then today would be all about Ryan Giggs.

It would be original in the sense that it would be an Arsenal blog about a man who plays for our detested foe. But it would be original mainly because nobody, absolutely nobody, is making the point that Ryan Giggs is having a good season. I find it unbelievable.

Oh no, hang on. There’s this. And, erm, this. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible to click on a website, turn on a telly or open a newspaper without finding some eyebrow-preening ex-professional noisily pointing out that Ryan Giggs is a good player as if this incredibly talented bloke had somehow been overlooked for the last 20 years and as if the journalist’s groundbreaking discovery comes tragically too late for poor anonymous Giggsy to ever really make a go of this professional football shenanigan.

I mean, it’s not like he’s won much during the last 20 years at Man Utd,is it?

What annoys me is that sports journalists get paid to do this. Surely they’re meant to watch sport and come up with original insights about it, right? They’re meant to have a knowledge about the game which transcends the humble understanding of the common man, you or I, we swarthy flat-capped North Bank sorts. Aren’t they?

I want to read an article about the hidden genius of Helder Postiga during his time at Tottenham, about how the young man justified his exorbitant transfer fee with a string of lung-busting performances and should never have been sold. It might be bollocks, but at least it’s contentious and thought-provoking.

Put it another way: who’s going to seriously oppose the claim that Giggs is good? Admittedly, there were large sections of Utd’s idiotic, infantile crowd who were screaming for Giggs and Scholes to retire last season while Arsenal were on top, but then presumably those supporters can’t read and are only in football for the nice shiny brands.

So, in the spirit of innovation and controversy, here are my thoughts on the Sunderland game today:

We should win. Sunderland aren’t very good.

Hopefully Arshavin will play. He is Russian.

Hopefully Eboue will not play. He is not as good at football as Arshavin. Or me.

Hopefully Vela will play a bit too. He is a bit like Eduardo, who unfortunately can’t play because his leg is sore.

Hopefully we will win. This is my opinion because I support Arsenal.

If you have any similarly shocking ideas about anything Arsenal or otherwise, stick ‘em in the comments. Don’t forget to enter our superb Philosophy Football Competition. Good luck!

Hello all, sorry for yet another hiatus in the blogtrain. Grabs and myself are, unfortunately, both hilariously busy. And, quite genuinely, we don’t particularly want to interrupt all of your interesting lives to deliver any old slice of codswallop when it’s not necessary. Aside from the mighty Arseblog, we feel that there are too many Arsenal blogs delivering daily rubbish rather than concentrating their might into less frequent but more prescient postings.

Goonette – I’m sorry you are disappointed, I hope you keep coming back, and forgive us for prioritising quality over quantity.

Anyway some bits and bobs to discuss. Ivan Gazidis has given a little interview, in which he reiterates that Arsene has money to spend. I’m not sure anyone’s ever doubted this. Perhaps it’s true that we can’t compete spending-wise with United and Man City, but I don’t think that’s been the obstacle; rather Arsene has not seen fit to spend it. And as we saw with Arshavin, a bit of shrewd manoeuvering can get you instant results: remember how close Spurs were to spending waaaay more to get him fresh out of the Euros.

We also haven’t yet spoken about the Usmanov situation, which is a tad worrying. It seems unlikely you get a blocking vote in a company unless you want to, er, block votes, or at least carry the threat of doing so. At the same time, however, you’ve got to agree that there’s no point owning 24% of a company when 25% gives you a much more important role, and despite the drop in equity prices Boss Nass Usmanov is still not a poor man, although he doesn’t seem to have spent much on his gym membership, the Gungan-looking bastard. All we can really do is wait and see, and hope that Fiszman keeps his word RE selling. I’ve got a lot of confidence in the board. Perhaps one thing the supporters could do is each bake a cupcake and send it to Red & White holdings, and hope that after eating 60,000 cupcakes he finally explodes like Mr Creosote.

Fun article here in the Mail about dream teams. These lists are always bollocks, more or less, but it’s good for a nostalgia trip. Carrick? Really?

Sunderland’s next up: what team would you pick? I really hope to see Carl and Andrey get a start, but I’m not sure it’ll happen this weekend. This is a huge run of games for us, let’s hope the boys keep their scoring boots on, and that Villa lose to Chelsea. Is it just me or are Chelsea becoming much more pitiable of late, somehow? All that money and they’re still crap, and they still bin world-class managers. You’ve got to think Mourinho goes to sleep every night with a huge grin on his face…

Don’t forget our fabulous Philosophy Football competition, and to sign up for the mailing list below. Until later, Grabbers.

4-0 against Cardiff in the Cup might not seem like the most important result, but in the context of our season, with Eduardo’s triumphant two-goal return, and the news that Cesc will be back sooner than we thought, this just might be the best result of our season so far. I know people will look to the United and Chelsea games, but I really feel that this could be a turning point – especially since it’s come in a competition we still have a real chance of winning. Fingers crossed, all.

It was the Arsenal we know and love – passing, movement and, above all, goals. Finally. Some wonderful goals. Goals we can savour and watch on youtube.

And young Carl Vela looks pretty useful too, doesn’t he? 

What do you reckon? Enjoy the evening… 

I wish I could say that Grabber and I have been unable to blog this week because we have both been so exceptionally busy and important.

But no, our silence has in fact been the sound of a deep slumber, into which we both fell while trying desperately to excite ourselves about Arsenal.com’s brand new Andrei Arshavin mobile phone cyborg man (which makes him look more like a member of Narnia than the solution to our creative woes).

Finally, FINALLY, after a week so boring you could have given it an unsightly paunch and a smattering of facile populist witticisms and comfortably passed it off as Jeremy Clarkson, finally Arsenal have a game. It’s against Cardiff, it’s the first step in our 3 game map to the FA Cup semi-finals (all home draws) and, most memorably, it could see the return to full competitive action of Eduardo da Silva.

In fact, you couldn’t really have asked for a better night for a comeback. At home, against lower league opposition and with the team in need of a lift. I really hope he starts, though I would urge a cautious level of expectation until he has had a proper run in the team again. Even the best players don’t get their mojo back just like that and Eduardo will be no different.

One man who will be puffing his pink cheeks and stamping his pink feet in frustration if Eduardo starts ahead of him is Nicklas Bendtner, whose PR campaign took another turn for the worst as he revealed he is entitled to play “every minute of every game, no matter what”. How Mr Bendtner has arrived at this conclusion is anyone’s guess, really. Feel free to post suggestions in the comments if you have any ideas. It’s especially confusing because even the most amateurish body language analysis of Bendtner during a game reveals that he is just as frustrated as the fans are with his current performances, particularly his apparent inability to contribute anything other than the loss of possession. At least the fact that he seems to realise that he isn’t playing well would suggest that there is a “well” to Bendtner, just that we aren’t seeing it right now.

I’d like to see run-outs for Young Jack and Carl tonight, though I’m finding it hard to get inside Wenger’s head on this one. He picked a very strong team for the game in Cardiff and its hard to know how big a factor home advantage will be in his rationale. Very interested to hear your thoughts as the game approaches.

A lot of fans are getting huffy and puffy about Red&White’s upping of their stake in the club to just over 25%, and in a sense I can understand why, particularly those with concerns about Usmanov’s character. Yet I’m disinclined to pass any judgement on them as I simply do not know enough about them, specifically what their intentions are with Arsenal. Everyone was initially highly suspicious of Kroenke, yet now he is firmly one of “us”. Let’s just hold fire and see what happens. You don’t want to end up like the Utd fans who screamed “Utd not for sale!” so loudly before crawling rather shamefacedly back to Old Trafford when they saw the Championship and European Cup on their way.

Believe me, this gap is no good for anyone. Least of all those with an interest in blogging about Arsenal, with insatiable needs for interesting material. People have rightly been upset about the perfomance on Sunday, but to my mind too much of the blame has been laid at the malcoordinated feet of Emmanuel Eboue. It is not his fault that he knows What Arsene Did Last Summer, and if you or I were in his position I’ve no doubt we would be similarly behaved, testing the limits of what the boss will up with. I just can’t wait until we have a fully fit midfield and we can play whoever we want…we could even play five across the middle…

Walcott Arshavin Fabregas Rosicky Nasri

Looks pretty good to me… You’ve got to think that lot would make some chances…

Of course that depends on a world without Arsene getting up to mischief in the off-season whilst Eboue’s watching, which as we all know doesn’t exist. So I fully expect to see the little moron sat snugly in our team until the return of the proverbial bovines.

What do you reckon?

Anyway in other news, er, there isn’t much news. We’re all waiting for the Cardiff match, which is literally days away. To keep busy, let’s all laugh at Chelsea and their instant-results approach to football, a game which takes entire seasons for success or failure to become apparent. It’s a matter of time before Abramovich is outtahere, mark my words…

Also continue to laugh at Tottenham Hotspur.

And finally continue to enter our stonker of a Philosophy Football competition.

And add your name to the mailing list below. Phew.

T*ttenham have nothing.

Actually, nothing. Against one of the weakest Arsenal sides they will have come up against for many years, a side down to 10 men and lacking in confidence, they showed absolutely no ambition and deserved to be punished for it. They haven’t beaten us in the league since 1999 and you could see how terrified they were all through the game. Modric’s pathetic miss at the end told you everything you need to know about that football club.

Losers.

Then there was their fans, chanting “Same old Arsenal, always cheating” as Gael Clichy lay bleeding on the ground, having quite clearly sustained a nasty wound to his head. A few weeks ago, the police found out a pretty significant section of their away support for the yobs and racists that they are. Their chanting at Gael today wasn’t racist, it was just the nasty, bitter, jealous yells of a group of extremely unpleasant people, people who represent a club which is ugly at its core.

On the face of it, we should be pleased with a point, yet it always felt as though the game was there for the taking. And it should have been ours to lose, had Mike Dean not made the first of many cowardly decisions when he ludicrously disallowed a perfectly good goal by Eboue.

Eboue’s frustration was obvious, but his response was childish and inexcusable, displaying an attitude to be expected from a Sp*rs fan, not an Arsenal player. His booking for dissent was idiotic and I’m convinced that it was his petty behaviour after the Modric incident rather than the little kick out itself which made the referee to send him off. Why else did he take such a long time between booking Modric and sending Eboue off?

We’re not great fans of Eboue here on UpForGrabsNow, but I really do admire the loyalty of those fans who have stuck up for him this season. I can’t help feeling that he mocked that loyalty this afternoon.

The backlash is likely to be severe, and Eboue will have to play out of his skin when he returns from suspension if he’s to command any sort of respect with most Arsenal fans again. Wenger is a loyal person who clearly sees something in Eboue as a footballer, but you wonder how much longer his patience can last.

There will be those who wanted to see Arshavin today, but I think the boss was right to keep him on the bench. He still hasn’t trained with the rest of the squad and it will be far better to ease him in over the next few games. Eduardo will be itching to make his first team return, and while everyone (including us) laughed at Wenger’s saying his return would be like a new signing, I think it’s actually going to feel even better.

In terms of our season, it’s going to be a long hard fight for a top four place. Villa have been lucky, but they’ve bagged the points and sit seven clear of us. Chelsea are on a poor run and are within five, but are likely to prove resilient as the season wears on. If we can hit form, we can still catch both clubs. We just need to hit form now.

It also looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of Nicklas Bendtner over the next few weeks as Ade’s hamstring popped in the first half and he’ll miss the rest of February.

As always, delighted to hear your thoughts. Just stick ‘em in the comments and we’ll have a right old chinwag.

I just had a conversation with a wise man. He was walking out of a door when he looked at me strangely, and said

- Who are we playing today, again?

- Tiny Totts, I growled.

- Who?

- T*ttenham. There, I said it.

- T*ttenham? Well I don’t know why you look so worried. They’ve only beaten Arsenal once in the last 25 league games between the 2 clubs, and that was back in 1999. Plus they’re in relegation trouble and used up every last ounce of their luck against you in the Emirates fixture which scandalously finished 4-4. I mean, this is a club with a sense of humour. Self-deprecating, like - they like nothing more than a joke at their own expense. It’s actually rather touching. That’s surely why they re-signed Pascal Chimbonda. The kind of mood Daniel Levy’s in right now he’ll probably be lacing their bacon butties with laxatives as we speak, just so he can take the piss out of himself when Van Persie bangs in number five. You mark my words.

Then that wise man shook my hand, ruffled my hair and went down the pub, singing:

Oh to, oh to be….

I really hope that wise man’s right today, and I think he probably is. You can never tell with T*ttenham… except when they’re in a position to actually do some damage to Arsenal Football Club. In those situations they’re always terribly obliging. They lie down, and take a humiliating beating. Remember when they had the chance to leave us without Champions’ League football for our first year at the Emirates? It was such a great opportunity for them to inflict some serious pain on us Gooners, by totally ruining our Goodbye to Highbury.

What did they do? They shat themselves, (tragically this is one of the few times on the internet when this is actually true and not at all some sick exaggeration). They complained loudly and lost to West Ham. Truly, a club with class.

Of course, today’s match up has been billed as Arshavin VS Keane, almost as if people were still willing to believe the tabloid journalists who say football is not just about big name forwards, it’s really about whichever big-name forward your club happened to buy most recently.

An Opta study commissioned for the Daily Star on Sunday found that the number of times a player’s name was crudely punned upon in a back page headline was a far more important factor in a team’s success than ‘performance related’ factors such as the player’s ability to score goals, not concede goals or play well. The survey found that football is a sport played entirely in the minds of infantile fantasists who believe the hype.

Arshavin might well make the bench, though I doubt it from the tone of Wenger’s remarks in the week. The guy hasn’t played since November, and he started sulking way before that, so chucking him into a PremierLeague game (admittedly against poor opposition) would seem a bit sudden. But who knows? If he comes on and scores a zinger I’m not going to be musing about his lack of match sharpness, I’m going to have my throat jammed squarely against the ear-canal of the nearest Spurs supporter, and I’m going to be making noises that sound a bit like:

“How do you like the smell of the foot of the league you relegation battling nobodies?

“Eat our goal!”

“Perhaps it’s time you re-signed Paul Robinson?”

… and other such pleasantries.

If it was up to me, I’d start with our Spanish waiter goalkeeper, Gael, Sagna, Djourou, Gallas, Nasri, Denilson, Song, Vela, Ade and Robin Van Persie, whose name I italicise to indicate that he is absolutely phenomenally good at playing football. Players in bold have a high chance of appearing on the actual team-sheet as “Eboue, E”. It’s annoying that Diaby is banned/injured as he would have been a useful bloke to have around.

I’ve heard suggestions that we should stick Bendtner on the right, Van Persie on the left and play a sort of Liverpoolish 4-5-1. I can’t say I fancy that idea that much, to be honest, and if you were going to insist on it, then I’d far rather stick Robin on the right (where his goodness at football makes him a potent attacking force) and Carlos Vela on the left.

T*ttenham are likely to start with King and Bentley out injured, and manager Harry Redknapp also has concerns over Luka Modric, Aaron Lennon, Tom Huddlestone, Darren Bent and Jermaine Jenas. Redknapp mumbled:

I have concerns over Modric, Lennon, Huddlestone, Bent and Jenas. Modric is too small and can’t really be arsed, Lennon is really bad at playing football, Huddlestone is morbidly obese, Bent has caught the same thing Lennon has (badness, a lifetime) and Jenas looks and plays like a 7 year old girl.

COME ON YOU REDS

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