Up For Grabs Now

A delayed response to the stonking victory over Burnley on Sunday. Of course you’d be quite right if you said that we are a football club of sufficient stature that we oughtn’t be cheering victories over Burnley that emphatically, but the quality of our performance and our otherwise rather rickety season merits us in this instance. It also keeps us alive in the FA Cup, a competition we’ve got a good chance of winning this season, just as long as we can overcome Manchester United, Chelsea, and, er, Hull in the following rounds.

3-0, it was, and it could have been quite a few more had young Theo and Robin shot slightly different. The players involved in the goals were also wonderful statement from Arsene; all new, returning or maligned. The first was an Andrey and Carl incision of a quality that promises wonderful things for the future. A silky pass, a great first touch and then a chipped finish over the keeper. These two haven’t been around long enough to learn the Islington Shuffle, and I’ve rarely been gladder. The second has had a lot of coverage as a thing of pure beauty, and who am I to disagree. After a tentative bit of IS, Alex Song floated in a miraculously surprising ball to Eduardo who smacked it with his heel into the top corner, the sort of finish which were you in the playground you would have to spend a long time justifying as being deliberate. Eduardo isn’t in the playground, and so doesn’t have to justify his sheer technical brilliance.

The third was, as well as being slick and clinical, a goal which made you want to go and check which way round the loo was flushing. LeGal passed the ball forwards to Alex Song whose deft backheel put it in the path of the onrushing Eboue, whose finish was uncharacteristically, wonderfully clinical. Gallas-Song-Eboue-goal; what odds would you have got on that combination before the match, I wonder? Alex Song’s two assists reflected a great performance, and one which left me wondering whether it might not be Denilson who’s most nervous for his place when Cesc gets back. Song is much happier sitting back than the Brazilian, who like most of our midfielders ideally would like to be the Cesc figure. What a difference a good match can make.

So from the despair and despondency of the last few weeks we find ourselves in a position where, with a good performance against Roma tomorrow night, we can find ourselves in strong contention for two trophies and right back in the hunt for fourth place against a collapsing Villa. Great News.

In other Great News, our February Philosophy Football competition has finished- congratulations to our winners Peter Hoodless, Clementina Kyremateng, Clair Lewis Peter McNulty and Cara Taylor, who are now all the proud owners of the Arsenal t-shirts. We are also proud to announce the March competition. Same deal, only this time you can win a stonker of a Herbert Chapman t-shirt from our pals down at PF.

As before, we’ve got 5 to give away, to enter you’ve simply got to answer the following question: what formation did Herbert Chapman pioneer when he was at Arsenal? Full details are here.

Don’t forget to sign into the mailing list below. Until tomorrow, grabbers, where we’ll talk about Roma and all that jazz. Been a good few days for us gooners, hasn’t it?

Grabs’ kamikaze optimism, as contrasting with my own brand of frustrated pessimism, last night had its first major victory as we put the sword 3-1 to West Brom. Extraordinary, frankly, that we’re celebrating a wing against a team as miraculously bad as West Brom are this season, but that’s the situation we’re in at the moment.

More than that, we’re celebrating scoring not only one goal but three, including two for the Much Maligned Bendtner. Arshavin also looked good and contributed an assist; my Dad reckons he looks like one of those players ‘who enjoys a fag at halftime’. It would explain his being constantly out of puff (aren’t football matches 90 minutes in Russia?), and to be honest if he can make the difference in sixty who cares? Presumably it’s for getting through the Russian winter. I should point out that this is nothing but the idlest variety of speculation and probably has no backing in it.

How nice might it have been if one of those goals could have been last weekend, in which instance we would be on level terms with Villa, who are off to the, er, fortress that is the City of Manchester stadium.

Much as I approve of the pleasing image  of Robinho ‘rogering’ Aston Villa, the cheeky little money-grabbing chappy is injured, along with the renowned thug Craig Bellamy, and so will not feature. Nonetheless City have some firepower, and will be dangerous if they can temporarily forget to let in goals. Let’s hope Villa are massively demoralised by their ignominious draw with Stoke, and realise they never wanted to be in the CL anyway, and then we’re right back in there.

Ten games is suddenly a long time – if we’ve found some form from last night it couldn’t have happened at a better time.

So much more positive than last time I posted. Funny old game, isn’t it…come on Citeh!

In a spirit of blind, rampant optimism which has just this minute consumed me, I’d like to explain how in a little over 10 days time Arsenal FC will be back in fourth position and gunning for a unique FA Cup and Champions League Double, pissing all over the hideous Manc’s pre-planned quintuple celebrations. If there was a prize for the speedy counting of feathered farm animals prior to their birth, then United would be on for six.

In that vein of idiotic confidence, I can say that our season of glory will start tonight by jolly well stuffing West Brom. If Arsene has been guilty of complaining too much about teams who fail to deploy a 2-3-5 formation at the Emirates and in so doing avoid succumbing to our blistering counter-attacking artillery, then tonight ought to be his night. West Brom have the virtue of playing football in exactly the right spirit. They play to win and they attack from the off. I genuinely believe that’s the way the game should be played, however I also know that you can’t really argue with a position four points adrift at the foot of the table.

I’m also convinced that fixtures against mid-table teams at home are the last thing we need right now. It’s got to be either someone very good or very bad, away from home in order for our players to actually try.

Villa meanwhile face a tricky trip to Man City, where I am certain they will receive a cruel rogering from Robinho.

Then next week we’ll have Blackburn at home. Our delicious goal-fest will have whetted our appetite for more, and the malaise of the Islington Shuffle will dissolve in a flurry of over-head kicks, swashbuckling dribbles and diving headers. 3 more points.

Villa, meanwhile, will host Sp*rs, a club who as we all know, will do absolutely anything to ensure Arsenal FC’s qualification for Champions’ League football, even if it means poisoning their own playing staff with some hideous poo-dynamite and making a monumental tit out of themselves. This time they’ll swop nasty squits for rasping shots and will sneak a thrilling win over a spluttering O’Neill and his side.

In between, we’ll ease past Roma and dispose superciliously with Burnley.

Convinced? Let me know what you think.

Morning all. Isn’t it difficult to keep one’s eyes on the football world with so much envy-inducing Caribbean-based cricket going on. Why would you want to be stuck in England worrying about Eboue when you could be in a paddling pool in Barbados? That’s what I want to know.

Mind you, some of those Caribbean guys know a lot of stuff about football. I remember in 2005 I met a rasta guy in a bar in Antigua, and after I realised he wasn’t going to hurt me it noticed this guy was complaining about our lack of strikers. This was ages ago, remember… I pointed out that Bendtner was coming through, and he said that Bendtner looked promising but wouldn’t cut it eventually as he didn’t have the application. Well, quite.

What I’ve been trying to do for the last two paragraphs, and which isn’t going to work, is avoid discussing the current Arsenal side, and more specifically discussing Saturday’s limpid 0-0 draw with Fulham, which has put us all but a minor miracle away from fourth place in the Premiership. Yet again we remained largely unthreatened, and yet again we stayed resolutely unthreatening, resulting in a kind of horrible stalemate, awful to watch.

Wenger seemed like a worried man, and I think what bothers him almost as much as not winning is that we’ve seemingly run out of attacking ideas – we’re not fun to watch. Perversely it might be more fun for everyone if we were leaking goals and scoring them – drawing 2-2 or 3-3 all the time, rather than this 0-0. It’s because it’s an Arsenal we’re not used to under Wenger, and we’re worried. There have been bad patches before, but we’ve never had a problem scoring goals. It’s a new sort of dilemma, and nobody seems to have any easy solutions to it.

This uncertainty is creeping into his own speech: after the match he said, of Walcott, Rosicky, Fabregas et al:

Let’s not make heroes of those who don’t play’

Don’t adjust your screens, this is the same manager who reminded us at Christmas time that Rosicky, Walcott, Fabregas and Eduardo would be like new signings for us when they came back. His emphasis has shifted: no longer is it ‘all the elements are nearly in place’, it’s now ‘this lot need a talking to’. And who’s going to give it? A policy whereby all the players are totally professional in their approach every game, and give it their all whilst being technically virtuoso is all well and good, except for the part where it doesn’t work and we draw nil all at home to Fulham.

Sad and frustrating, basically, but for me there’s more to it. This is just my opinion, and it’s going to get some people very wound up, but a big part of the problem is that it’s boring. It’s no fun to watch, no fun to read about, it just makes me angry. And why shouldn’t it? I feel frustrated settling down to watch these games, paying money for seats, spending hours reading and writing about this club when it’s painful. Does this make me not a real fan (an unreal fan?)? I don’t know. I don’t think it does. I’m never going to support another team, but if football is a religion, and Arsenal is my creed, I’m perhaps suffering from remembering that faith is a one-way street – you give and give to a team, and at the moment we don’t get a whole lot back.

The team exists for the fans, not the other way round. People announce with pride that they’re Arsenal through and through, as if Arsenal had somehow sacrificed something for them that they had to repay with loyalty. All I have tying me officially to the club is the money I hand over for television subscriptions, for shirts, for tickets. Emotionally I clearly have far more invested: my whole life as a fan, my personal history, friendships made through the game. Living the ups and downs is one thing, but it’s just so much more aggravating when it seems that they’re not even trying. It’s a cliché to get cross with the overpaid superstars, but I’ve never felt it before. Bloody annoying, isn’t it?

Anyway.

With Villa drawing it gives us a real chance to narrow the gap. Let’s hope we can. It’s also very funny that Tottenham lost the Tottenham Trophy on penalties, but less funny that it was to United, who this season are playing a kind of gameshow game where there’s a big pile of silver, and they have to see how high they can climb up it. A Spurs-United Carling Cup final is a bit like watching two really ugly people get off in a club: you don’t care about the ‘result’, there’re no real winners, least of all the spectators, but if they must do it, ’twere well it were done quickly (lot of Shakespeare today). 

A brief word about Arseblog, which just turned 7, and many happy returns to it. What the guy has done as a blogger is pretty extraordinary, not just within sports but across the whole internet. Writing every single day, rain or snow, matchday or ‘Interlull’, is no mean feat, let alone keeping it interesting, informative and amusing – even today, a pretty glum day:

Maybe I’m a petty man, a small, petty man, for getting my kicks from the misfortune of others, but David Bentley is rat-faced chav whose catastrophes will always be thigh-slappers to me.

There are others out there doing good stuff, but few would dispute that this is the granddaddy. It inspired us as well as countless others – as Arsenal fans we should thank our stars that he’s on our team…

That’s quite enough moaning and poo-nosing for one morning. But if you’re bored, why don’t you enter our competition? Or sign up for our email list?

What a miserable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. It could have been our lithe younglings taking on United’s bloated squad of greased up journeymen. As it is, it’s bloody Spurs and I don’t know what to do with myself. Not watch, probably.

In what has been a weekend of utter footballing abjection, there was a glimmer of hope from a man called Glenn Whelan, who clawed back an equaliser for Stoke at the death at Villa Park. In my supercilious Top Four Supporter way, I was unaware that anyone called Glenn Whelan played top-class football, however if we end up pipping Villa to fourth I recommend that Arsenal provide him with a handsome pension for the rest of his days.

Failing to score again and being booed off is depressing enough, but I think Villa are going to be feeling even worse having pissed away a 2 goal lead at home to Stoke. Both teams drew highly winnable home games, but sometimes context is important in evaluating the real significance of results. Hopefully today’s result will be a big blow to Villa’s belief and they’ll get jittery.

So we’ve 11 games left and a 6 point gap to claw back on Villa. In the cold light of day, that is eminently do-able.

We just need to stop being crap. If you have any suggestions about how we should go about not being crap, do put it in the comments section.