Up For Grabs Now

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).

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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

So we scraped the 3 points in the end. My 3-points-sandwich isn’t going to come with extra cheese and they’re definitely not going to toast it for me, but it’s good enough for now.

Early reaction: I thought Song had one of his better games and that overall the Djourou-Kolo partnership looked pretty solid (though they looked a bit shaky in the final 10 minutes). In fact the whole team was so shaky for the final 10 that at one point I thought one of them might grab the bull by the horns and actually score for Wigan.

The guy who looked most likely to do this was Eboue, who appears to have entirely forgotten the most basic ideas on which the sport of football is based. Fine, he was playing on the left of midfield. Not his natural position, by any means, but you get to wondering whether this guy has a natural position or whether he might just be very bad indeed at football.

The key incident came when Kolo ran towards him with the ball and ushered him forward. Instead Eboue ran backwards, tackled Toure and fed a good pass to a Wigan player who looked grateful for this surprise gift and alarmed at the lack of Kolo or any Arsenal midfielders blocking his path to goal. He gave the ball away a couple of other times and kept finding himself on the wrong side of opponents or making very weak challenges in important positions.

As I say, it is unfair to judge anyone when they are so far out of position, but this was idiocy, and our fans weren’t having any of it, giving him a healthy dose of vitriol as he headed for the tunnel. (In his place, that renowned midfield general, Mickael Silvestre, incidentally).

Eboue looked seriously pissed off (though admittedly he always looks pissed off when he’s not dancing in carparks) and people are bound to have a go at our fans for attacking him the way they did. I’d be very interested to hear what people think about this issue. You can vote in the Arse-Poll (top right) and let rip in the comments.

Internationals, eh? Bad to friggin’ worse they are. Wenger was fuming at the start of the week and if the papers are to be believed this morning (which, in fairness, they aren’t) then he will by now be crouched outside the English FA’s Soho Square headquarters with some cheesewire and an unquenchable wrath, ready to open up an enormous can of whoop-ass. Confronted by the enraged Alsatian, the quivering suits may have no choice but to hand over £200k.

This will be comfort about as cold as it is possible for comfort to be, especially in a week where we have already lost Sagna until December. It now looks as though much will rest on the slender and frankly silly shoulders of Emmanuel Eboue, the man who has patrolled Arsenal’s right side with so much, well, silliness for the last 3 years. My own preference would be to confine Eboue to right back at all times, regardless of his knowledge of what Arsene did last summer. I’d put Carlos Vela on the left and switch Nasri to the right (which he can play, just as much as he can play on the left – like most of Arsene’s wingers he is actually a central midfielder).

Many people have been groaning about how Theo’s injury shows how wafer-thin the current squad is. They definitely have a point. Of the current Arsenal squad, possible back-up includes Eboue, Rosicky, Eduardo, Nasri, Ramsey and Wilshere (and you could probably throw in some Out Of Position Diaby (OOPD) and Innappropriate Outbursts of Song (IOS) if you were feeling really positive about things, which we definitely aren’t). Both good options here are injured for a very long time and were already injured for a very long time before Theo got injured; Nasri has rather pressing left-side commitments and Eboue is such a disgrace to the good name of the midfielding profession that if he ever turned up at some sort of National Union of Midfielders conference I think he would attract more than a few hard stares. So yes, it is pretty thin.

The Ramzoid made his debut for Wales last night down the right of midfield and he could yet prove the best option. He would have grabbed a debut goal but for the incredible selfishness of Craig Bellamy, and by all accounts played well. Also playing well was Robin van Persie, who looked miraculously fresh for his game against Sweden, bagging a brace. Playing very badly, despite what the tabloids will tell you, was John Terry whose mega balls-up against Germany had a definite Cyganity (TM) about it.

Transfer gossip: Vast Belgian centre-half Daniel van Buyten says he admires Arsenal. Thanks very much Danny! He also says he likes Bayern Munchen but will see what happens in January. Well, that’s big of you. We are also linked with a bidding war with MIDDLESBOROUGH (shit, this could be tricky) for yet another Belgian, Steven Defour. Perhaps in a twist to his usual policy of only purchasing the very young, Arsene has tightened his focus to only purchasing the Belgian very young.

Lastly, I feel it is my duty to draw your attention to a much under-discussed interview Le Gal did while away with France. See what you think and try not to fall off your chair at the end:

“Defenders are judged whether the team wins or not. There have been matches when I have played better than when I faced Manchester United, but if we’ve lost, it isn’t recognised.

“But now, the fact that it is Manchester United, there is pressure, a lot of things around this game, having won 2-1, we immediately talked about the match of Gallas. I’m not complaining.”

“We immediately talked about the match of Gallas.” What? Did we? I didn’t, did you? Certainly not. Who did, then? The Press? No, not really, they focussed more on Nasri. Hold on William, it was you wasn’t it. You’re the only person who talked about the match of Gallas. Let’s just hope he didn’t talk about it with the team afterwards. I can exclusively reveal that this story was first broken by UpForGrabsNow in our post-match report. It’s in the sixth paragraph of that report and we said:

“A small quibble with Gallas though, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but at the very end, whilst the TV cameras were swaying around Ronaldo’s lithely disappointed torso, Gallas went to the Redaction end of the Emirates and beat his chest to the crowd’s adulation, as if he had won the whole match on his own. Clearly it’s ridiculous to complain about a celebration, particularly after such an important win, but you couldn’t help but feel that whilst he revels in the attention, it was exemplary of the fair-weather captaincy which has disappointed so many fans this season. We need him to feel that imperious all the time, not just when he’s won.”

Wise words indeed, UpForGrabsNow, wise words indeed.

So the barnstorming little Gunnerlettes destroy a Premiership team with a grin and a swagger. 3-0. “Too easy!” they cry, “Give us someone more difficult to humiliate with our Average Age Statistic and frightening ability to retain the ball! Please Mr Wenger, let us tear into Aston Villa this weekend. We won’t let you down!”

Wenger the Wise thinks about this. He strokes his wise chin (the chin the tabloids once hailed as the natural successor to King Solomon’s chin, which was well known for its wisdom). He sighs, looks up and says “I thought the team showed great spirit today, great mental strength and were again unlucky… Sorry, what? Oh it’s you Jack. For a moment I mistook you for that knave Geoff Shreeves. Sorry about that. You say you and the other young scamps want to play against Villa tomorrow? Hmmm. That is tempting.”

Wenger the Wise strokes his wise chin a bit more. “No,” he says at last, “I’m going to stick with the other team for this one. But I might play Carlos.” Please do, Wise Wenger, please at least give us Carlos.

And stick with them he will, except those members of the Other Team doomed not to play by the doom-mongers at Arsenal.com: Van Persie (suspended) and Eboue (injured). I reckon Arsenal.com should have a fanzone match preview where the real reasons for player absences can be properly recorded: Van Persie (rather brutal assault on Stoke goalkeeper), Eboue (not good enough, really, and a bit of a twerp).

Wenger himself said Eboue “is not fit“, which could be taken in two ways. Either he’s “not fit” in the sense that his physical condition is not really up to a game of footie, or perhaps Wenger has finally started applying a “right and proper persons” criteria in his selection of teamsheets, in which case Eboue may well have been overlooked because he is such a twerp.

Hamstring, 2 months. Cruciate Ligament Damage, 7 months. Dead Leg, 2 days. Twerp, rest of life.

Arsene: “We hope to have Eboue back very soon, but unfortunately for the medical team there is very little they can do when you have as big a twerp as Eboue to deal with. We hope to send him to a specialist in Los Angeles next week who will hopefully sort him out.” Fingers crossed, eh?

Villa,  of course, had an impressive start to the season and spent a ton of money in the summer. As soon as Tiny Totts went tits up and Arsenal stuttered a bit, Villa were suddenly everyone’s pick for fourth. At which point they immediately started dropping points. That said, they have a good team from front to back, including a few players I wouldn’t have minded seeing in red and white. Obviously there’s Barry, but Young is another one who looks a bit like an Arsenal player in disguise and was a great signing at £9m even though it seemed massive at the time. Think of the utter piffle that Totts are always spending £9m on.

So it could be tricky against them. Hopefully because they are quite good they will attack us a bit, forcing our players to try a bit and then we’ll win. If I was O’Neill I would get my team to pretend to be really bad and refuse to leave their own half. In this instance Arsenal, as always would idly piddle away 9 great chances before conceding to the bloke Gallas should have been marking at a corner.

Please no! Let’s hope for something more like this.