Up For Grabs Now

If, as every blogger, hack and twitterer was insisting this morning, it was Cesc’s ‘cameo’ that saw off Villa yesterday(see also ‘SkySports-inspired vocabulary meltdown’), perhaps it’s worth asking who the lead actor was.

For me, it was Abou Diaby. The Big Guy. The Boss. The man we all expect will eventually play Will Smith in the story of his life. Winning headers here, coolly chesting the ball down there, and generally gambolling around the midfield without a care in the world, Diaby played brilliantly.

He tackled well, created yards of space for our forwards every time he surged forward and crowned his afternoon with a goal so chilled out that I half-expected him to slump to the floor in a deep and refreshing slumber just before he curled the ball gently round Friedel. He looked bewildered as he smiled gummily at the team-mates who surrounded him, like a man who had recently rolled out of bed.

Whatever, if he keeps that form up he’s going to be a major weapon. His style of play, positioning and passing choices are utterly baffling to opponents who seem to be too surprised at what he’s doing to offer much resistance.

He needs to stay fit, and he needs to stay focused. If he can do that, and if his progress isn’t interrupted too much by Song’s departure for Angola and the injuries to Denilson and Cesc, then we could see the emergence of a big league player this winter.

And with Song already a star man, should Diaby follow suit it’ll be yet another Wenger triumph – turning injury-prone catastrophe-merchants who most fans think are totally useless into top players. There’s no-one better than Wenger at this, and it’s just lovely to see the tabloid confusion which invariably accompanies these players’ change in fortunes.

Many apologies for the increasingly sporadic UpForGrabsNow output. I realise it’s been ages since my last much-derided piece on Eboue’s Hollywood potential. Neither Grabber nor I are really living very blog-friendly lifestyles just now, but we’ll try to post as often as we can until we’re back on an even keel.

And look out for the UpForGrabsNow Review of 2009 and a Review of the Decade, coming soon.

So. Another FREE VIDEO on Arsenal.com of the lads in training. We’ve seen this before. And we dealt with it. Not many blogs saw the importance of that footage, but we did, and we shared it with you.

That video was all about an uplifting guitar score which ultimately drove our gigantic Togonian from the club. It offered clues as to the real reason behind his heinous attack on Van Persie’s face. And it instilled, in all of us, a new optimism.

So what to make of this afternoon’s effort?

Well, there has certainly been a seismic shift. Gone and forgotten is the kind of formulaic guitar nonsense that did for Adebayor. But that hasn’t meant a return to Ade’s favoured Togonian hip-hop about shopping. Anything Togonian is clearly musica non grata when it comes to the Colney playlist.

Instead, the players have started training to a bizarre, grungy, grimy sort of electro. Still pretty teenage, and so a good reflection of the fact that most of our bench look like they were born under a Labour government, but funkier, slicker and less objectionable than the sort of puff Arsene made the players jog about to earlier in the season.

As for the training itself, cause for concern, I think. Of course, no-one will admit to a crumb of complacency as we anticipate the visit of Alkmaar tomorrow. But you have to say that a preparation which mostly involves a circle of players giggling in bibs as Emmanuel Eboue does keep-uppies with his backside does suggest a certain laxity may have crept in.

Kieran Gibbs looked baffled about all this, and must have been wondering what Fabio Capello would think if he saw the footage of Eboue and Song doing some kind of synchronised walking. Bad news for any World Cup dream to be associated with such behaviour.

And Boro Primorac looked absolutely furious throughout. And he appeared to be in charge of the whole sorry charade.

Certainly, Wenger wasn’t supervising anyone – he was off in a lonely corner of the pitch all by himself, engaged in a weird Sisyphean passing contest with the metal fence, something I’m sure we’ve all done, but which gets really annoying after a while when you realise that the fence absorbs most of the impact of the ball and it never really comes back to you as you want it to.

BREAKING NEWS: Beneath a picture of Abou Diaby rubbing his face with his shoulder, Arsene has compared his lanky but unpopular enforcer with a magnet.

This, he says, is why he is so attracted to the opposition goal (mostly made of air) and why he frequently appears to have no idea what’s going on, and why he’s never in the right place. All the other players have sat-nav. Diaby still uses a retro compass and a map Gilles Grimandi lent him a while back, but he’s magnetic, or the goal is, and so he’s permanently scrambled.

No idea what to do. Not the foggiest. Definitely not defend.

Arsene has explained that whereas most of us have even less idea of Diaby’s position on the pitch than the man himself, this is merely an interim period before he establishes himself as a fully fledged attacking midfielder. Or as a thoroughbred defensive midfielder. Or something.

Curiouser and curiouser.

A big game at Parkhead tonight, make no mistake.

Our boys will rightly be flush with confidence after Saturday’s boshing of Everton, a team whose ginger manager’s veins are green and white hooped. Arsenal could make it a very bad week for David Moyes.

Question-marks over the fitness of Fabregas, Denilson and Sagna shouldn’t be too much of a problem. If one or two of those three play, I think we’ll be fine. All three out could be tricky, especially in central midfield – I guess we’d be looking at a middle three of Song, Ramsey and Diaby, which could work, but doesn’t quite inspire you just yet.

That said, this is exactly the sort of night where Diaby, (spitefully missed out of our season preview by Grabber last week,) rams the ball into the net having found himself in acres of space due to his highly unorthodox sense of positionality. His roving could pose Celtic an unexpected threat.

My brother is a Rangers fan, which means that tonight he can take time out from goading me with prophesies of the imminent collapse of Arsenal FC, and instead relish the feeling of supporting our great team against his hated foe.

Many of our readers may know very little about Celtic, Arsenal having avoided them thus far in European competition. So here’s the inside story.

Celtic got rid of Gordon Strachan in the summer. Three titles in his four years wasn’t good enough for “the jungle”, who continue to pine for Martin O’Neill (three titles, five years, absolutely no eye contact during interviews). Strachan was slated for the quality of football he produced, though O’Neill’s teams were set-piece experts who relied exclusively on the wonderful Henrik Larsson to get them out of tight spots and crunch games. Not tonight.

Tony Mowbray (last year’s leader of the most principled relegation from the Premiership yet witnessed) is the new man in charge. He was previously at Hibs, where he cut quite the Wenger figure. His teams played the kind of adventurous attacking football which is so rare in the modern game in Scotland, and he brought through a series of superb young players, who are now – inevitably - key men on both sides of the Old Firm.

We all saw what happened at West Brom, and now he’s at Celtic, trying to play the same openly-Wenger-inspired brand of football, but with the players who bored everyone under Strachan.

Arsene picked out Aiden McGeady, a git of a man who is a reasonable footballer on his day, but whose profile is boosted by simply being one of the few players in the SPL with any technique to speak of. Scott Brown is Celtic’s best player, a hustling, snake-faced midfielder raised by Mowbray at Hibs. Apparently Spurs are interested, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him in the Premiership before long. Think a skinhead Scottish Flamini with less class and a far greater love of violence against his fellow man. That’s Brown. If Cesc plays, expect to see Brown targetting him, especially in the opening stages.

Scott MacDonald up front has turned himself into a useful striker, while his partner Giorgio Samaras (once scouted by Arsenal) isn’t much cop.

Their defence is poor, and will be weakened tonight by the probable absence of Scotland captain Stephen McManus and Glenn Loovens. It’s built to withstand heavy aerial bombardment. Not what they’ll be getting tonight. If we stick to our game, we should be able to play right round them.

We really should win tonight. It’s Arshavin’s European debut, and this team has shown it’s mettle on big nights before.

And when Diaby scores, remember – you heard it here first.

On the face of it, the game was a thriller – end to end stuff from the off, a terrifying penalty shoot-out and some dreadful near-misses.

And, somehow, we are in the Champions’ League Quarter Finals. Onwards and upwards.

Watching it, it was without doubt amongst the most boring Arsenal matches I can remember. It may have been end to end, but by the time it got to the relevant end, the attackers seemed to lose interest and feebly gift possession to the opposition. We carried absolutely no threat, even against a central defence which featured Riise for large periods. Robin was hopelessly isolated up front and whenever the ball reached him he snatched at it, aware that he needed something extraordinary without a supporting team-mate within 40 yards.

We had nothing. They had nothing. Between these nothings emerged a game so bad that poor Grabber almost lost his faith, not just in Arsenal, but in the point of football as a leisure pursuit. It was truely turgid fare – the first half was bad enough, by the time an hour had been played it was rare to see a pass reaching its target and both managers had slumped into their Club class seats in the dugout, sulking visibly and peering out occasionally between their lapels.

Something to get off my chest:

WHAT A STUPID FECKIN GOAL TO CONCEDE, I MEAN REALLY, YOU’VE WORKED YOUR BALLS OFF FOR A 1-0 LEAD AND THEN WITHIN 9 MEASLY SODDING MINUTES THE BALL’S IN OUR NET THANKS TO UNFORGIVABLE DEFENDING. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I BLAME GALLAS. AT LEAST TOURE TRIED TO GET TO IT. [that's enough shouting - Ed]

Observations: easy to say this with hindsight but a mistake to go with identical system/personnel to the first leg. Roma were clearly going to approach the game quite differently.

In a midfield which stunk pretty hard, Diaby had an especially smelly game. Roma were bereft of Perotta, De Rossi and (though he featured at the end) Aquilani. We ought to have been able to dominate from midfield as a result but, well, didn’t. I wonder if Song might have added something? Call that an outrageous piece of speculation about a player not much-beloved, but perhaps it would have been his night. It would certainly have freed up Denilson a bit from his defensive job, which was scrappy at best.

Gael and Bacary played OK, I thought, though Gael was mighty lucky not to concede that penalty when he hauled down Motta on half time.

Beyond that, I’d be fascinated to hear your views on the match and on its possible significance for our season. Wenger did his usual thing and built it up (remember his puff about “getting on the train and staying on it” for the triple header with Liverpool last season?) saying that the match would be “definitive”. Definitive of what? Ineffectuality? Or gritty, grinding victories?

We’ve started a new Arse-Poll (top right) to see who our knowledgeable readers believe to be the worst exponent of the Islington Shuffle. For those who might not know, the Islington Shuffle (IS) is the complex tactical ideology employed in recent seasons by Arsenal whereby possession of the ball is maintained in close proximity to the opposition penalty area for long periods of the game through a series of intricate lateral passing movements which amount to nothing. There can be no shooting, crossing or box-busting, surging running for the True Shuffler. Personally I thought tonight Diaby made a very strong case for the accolade of our foremost shuffler with some particularly fruitless shuffling.

Ooh, and don’t forget to enter our brand-new Phillosophy Football competition to win a Herbert Chapman t-shirt! Simply send the answer to the following question to admin@philosophyfootball.com, together with your name, address and t-shirt size: What was the formation that Herbert Chapman pioneered while he was at Arsenal? There’s five to be given away, and we’ll be announcing the winners at the end of the month.

Arsene has confirmed that Cesc has injured his medial knee ligaments and will miss between one and three weeks. He said the injury was “difficult to assess”, admitted it was a blow, but that the team would “have to cope with it”.

They certainly will. He’ll be missing at Villa Park for sure. A three week lay-off would also rule him out of home fixtures against Portsmouth and Bolton in the league, games which should be very winnable with or without Cesc. And he would surely have been rested againt Plymouth on January 3rd in any case.

It’s a big big blow, but the positive angle would be that he’s only going to miss one really big game and at least Cesc will finally get a rest and we could see him back to his imperious best in the New Year as a result.

On today’s evidence, it will be Diaby who steps into the breach. He needs to take this chance to nail down his status as an important player in the squad.

We’ve never needed him more and he’ll never get a better opportunity to prove himself in his preferred position. Over to you, Abou.

Latest Update: Guillem Balague, the well-respected Spanish journalist has claimed that Cesc’s injury may be much worse than originally thought. He describes “private fears” within the dressing room that in fact Cesc has torn a cruciate knee ligament, a severe injury which would see him sidelined until well into next year. He’ll have a scan tomorrow, a prognosis which could well decide our season.

I hate to say it on this occasion, but Balague is a top journalist with excellent connections and astute instincts. Let’s just hope he’s been talking to the wrong people.

Still only eerie silence coming out of the Emirates this morning with no official confirmation of Gallas’ ignominious dismissal. Arsene is expected to deal with the issue publicly after the match today when it will no longer be very easy to pretend that nothing is going on. If the Arse-Poll (top right) is to be believed, we can expect Adams to start polishing his cannon as soon as he’s finished playing Hull.

Gallas didn’t even have the decency to do his dirty at the beginning of the week, which would have given the team some time to get their heads together for today’s game against City. As it is, they will all be suffering a bit of a mind-fuck as they prepare for the match. We can only hope that Gallas’ absence serves to unite the team – perhaps a bit of siege mentality is exactly what we’ve been missing so far this season.

Our injury list would stand a pretty good chance against most teams: Kolo Toure, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Emmanuel Eboue, Bacary Sagna, Tomas Rosicky and Eduardo. Though the defence might be a bit iffy that lot would certainly be a pretty decent 5-a-side outfit, as long as Eboue agreed to be the kind of rolling sub who rolled straight off as soon as he rolled on.

So we’re likely to start with Stallone and Djourou at the heart of the defence (we may also have to endure Inappropriate Outbursts of Song). Our right-back position has been well and truly scuppered by the scuppering of all possible candidates – Eboue, Sagna, Toure, and even Gallas all ruled out. Our squad depth in that position is better than most others, actually, and yet we still find ourselves completely bereft of an experienced right-back. Young Guns reckon we’ll see Gavin Hoyte, and if we do, the team will really need to get behind him and help him settle.

A big game for Diaby today. With Fabregas in the side, you often get the sense that he isn’t really allowed to run the show as much as he’d like and often finds himself notoriously Out of Position, gangling around rather aimlessly, or occasionally brilliantly (witness United, Fenerbahce away). Today we should see him firmly in position at the heart of the midfield and it will be fascinating to see how he gets on against a very competent City engine room.

One story which deserves a bit of attention is this from the Guardian, who report that today’s opponents are eyeing up Kolo Toure with a view to a January move. At one time this would have been unthinkable and Wenger’s obvious affection for Toure and Toure’s immense loyalty to Arsenal and Arsene make any such move very unlikely, I think.

Some of our more reactionary fans would do well to note that Hughes is reported to be considering this because two of his current centre-halves (Micah Richards and Richard Dunne) have not been good enough, making costly errors in key games. We have regularly been linked with both players and I have heard more than a few fans moaning about Arsene not bringing in Dunne in particular when he was available. Well, the grass isn’t always greener and Arsenal’s defenders aren’t the only ones who make mistakes.

Forza Gooners.