Up For Grabs Now

Well, what a week it’s been.

Eurozone Goal-God-cum-Scandinavian-Rhinocerous-impersonator Nicklas Bendtner smashes three past Porto to launch us into the Champions League quarter finals, then nips one past big bald (bad) Boaz in minute 93 to send us joint top.

Two days earlier, Arsene Wenger described Emmanuel Eboue as ‘the complete player’ to the derision of absolutely no-one.

These are days of strange and wonderful events.

The shoe with which the British media and large sections of the Arsenal blogosphere (to their eternal shame) have spent the last year or two kicking this Arsenal side and Arsene for building it, is now not so much on the other foot as in the process of being gleefully jammed inch by inch down the throats of those who chose to doubt and snipe when they should have hoped and cheered.

Former call-centre middle manager Phil Brown could barely get his whimpering and garbled objections out on Match of the Day, and ought to be branded a moaner in precisely the fashion in which Wenger is every time he gives his opinion on a leading question. All the attention was rightly on how big a goal that could be for Arsenal come the season’s end. Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of which Bendtner deprived Orange Brown so late on turned out to be the margin by which the Premier League was finally rid of Hull City?

Eight games left for Arsenal and the expectation, however much we try to keep it under control, is pretty big right now. When you get into this position it’s misery or glory, no mediocre middle-ground. That in itself is a symptom of success.

If we don’t win the league now, then the very same pundits and bloggers who said Arsenal couldn’t even make the top four with this team will be writing the season off as a failure, even though Arsenal have mounted the title challenge they said would never possibly materialise.

We can win this league. Maybe with the relative run-ins of the top three we should now win it. But if we don’t, let’s hope the fans can at least retain the optimism and togetherness forged over recent weeks instead of indulging the panic-button-bashing tabloids.

A team it’s difficult to feel much animosity for. Bonkers Thierry-cheering fans (apart from that bell-ringing waistcoat bloke), a charming shed which they insist is actually a stand, and – crucially – usually good for 6 points every year.

Today should be no different if we can maintain our encouraging early levels of swashbuckle and sex-appeal. I expect to see the strikers chipping in today, though if that happens you just know the press will start wondering where Arsenal’s midfield goals are going to come from.

The move to 4-3-3 looks to have reinvented one man in particular: Nicklas Bendtner.

Of course it’s very early on, but from what we’ve seen Arsene is going to keep him on the right of the front three. And rightly so.

There’s clearly a reason why it’s Arsh-RvP-NB52 rather than Arsh-NB52-RvP, which is how pretty much any fan would arrange them.

So far Bendtner has actually performed the role of spearhead – winning high balls and knocking them down for van Persie and others – but (rather revolutionary this) he has done so from the right, as part of his role as a wing-forward. I think this could prove very effective, in part because it’s such an unusual approach, and in part because with Arsene you know the team is never going to play in a way which needs a conventional (ie central) spearhead, through whom play is channelled (aerially) for much of the game – Davies, Drogba, Shearer.

Where was the spearhead in the TH14/DB10 combo? It was ludicrously effective despite the fact that Dennis was always dropping off deep and Thierry drifted wide to get the ball at his feet.

We use the high ball approach only occasionally, and it can be really effective as a change of tack.

Ade used to try and play from a wide position, but was absolutely dreadful at this and always ended up running up a blind alley, or crossing limply to nobody. We’ll miss him in some ways, I’m not denying, but if Bendtner can turn himself into a threat as unconventional as that he offered at Goodison, then we’ll have a real weapon on our hands.

Back to bread and butter issues: Gabon, the team that could prove vital to Arsenal’s season.

The thinnest part of our squad is clearly defensive midfield. Denilson and Song have grown impressively into first-picks, but behind them it all gets a bit ropey. Diaby and Ramsey could probably deputise for Denilson, but there isn’t anyone who could really cover for Song. And everyone knows he’ll be at the African Cup of Nations in January.

Song: Indomitable

And here’s the thing. He might not. Song’s Cameroon team (bullishly nicknamed The Indomitable Lions), sit bottom of their tough-looking qualifying group, which includes Andepaymore’s Togo, Chamakh’s Morocco and, er, Daniel Cousin’s Gabon. Third-place or better qualifies you for the CAN.

Lion: Midfielder

 

 Cameroon have a double-header with Gabon up next, who have taken maximum points from their 2 games. If Cameroon lose those two, they’ll be big favourites to finish last, and miss out on African Nations Cup qualifications.

Of course, they could still qualify. Let’s just hope they don’t. And let’s also hope Arsene signs a burly defensive midfielder all the same.

COME ON YOU REDS TODAY

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.

Very many apologies for the silence from our end this weekend.

Fictional excuses: Grabber was getting a few of his choicest bonsai trees ready for an agricultural show this week, and I was engaged in a gruelling shampoo testing programme.

After some humming and hah-ing and a chronically timid piece of defending from Gael, we finally managed to crush Hull City beneath our imperious Arsenal heel. A goal of happily Piresian economy from Nasri and then a box-busting one-two between Van Persie and Bendtner gave the scoreboard the warm and fuzzy glow of dominance, an aura which was probably merited over the piece, however tardily it might have been achieved.

At this point, I’d like to reiterate that Alan Shearer is an imbecile of Daniel-Levian proportions. He ‘talked’ last night on MOTD (where we were scandalously on after Man City) about the home fixture between Hull and Arsenal, and said that Hull had been “dominant” on that occasion. He can only be describing the sort of dominance where you park not so much a mere bus as a bona fide East Coast mainline express train (with a quiet coach and a serviceable cafeteria) in front of your goal and then score a wondergoal and a header from your only two tentative sniffs at goal. Idiot.

I hope Shearer finally plucks up the balls to finally take the Newcastle job just so we can watch him oversee a disastrous implosion which gets them relegated having been hailed by hysterical Geordies everywhere as the messiah. We’ll see how far his lazily-informed, smugly expressed, know-all hindsight gets him then, won’t we?

Though I must applaud Johan Djourou for his innovative, and potentially homicidal, last minute upwards-headering technique, yesterday really belonged to the man possessed of 3 assists, the goal of the month for December and the balance of Natalia Markarova Rudolf Nureyev (who, my researcher informs me, is a ballet dancer with ’sick’ balance).

Yes, the man on form right now is Robin Van Persie. When he isn’t injuring himself or butting the unfortunate goalkeepers of lesser teams firmly on the bonce in seemingly unprovoked attacks, then he’s crashing rasping free-kicks against the bar and ripping opposition defences firmly asunder. More crashing and ripping and less injuring and butting, thanks Robin. He’s an absolute joy to watch right now, and long may it continue.

Something else which will hopefully continue is our ability to score late goals. Arsene, never one with a head for figures, helpfully pointed out post-match that:

I think we have scored 16 goals in the last 15 minutes of the last 33 games, and we did that again today.

I’d be very interested to see a proper analysis of how many of those goals were in some way related to the substitution of Emmanuel Eboue in favour of a player with a working knowledge of the sport. I’d wager a fair few.

As ever, we love to hear your thoughts, shouts, groans, cheers, yelps, farts, screams and laughs. Stick ‘em in the comments section where the sun don’t shine and we’ll have a right old chinwag.

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.

Not so much to talk about today. We’re no longer in the Carling Cup, which is a bit, well, meh, isn’t it? I try very hard to get worked up about this sort of thing, but you can’t always do well in the Carling Cup, and it would be far worse if players like Cesc Fabregas were becoming demoralised and tired from losing away at Burnley than Nick Bendtner, say, who as far as I’m concerned can be as tired and as demoralised as he wants just at the moment, the couldn’t-hit-a-barn-door bastard.

Jay Simpson might go to Norwich. I know people will talk about this young player and his facial hair, but for me the real interest in him at this point is that he’s the second part of the name of America’s favourite yellow father (and not the Chinese sort), as you discover in the episode where you discover that the ‘J’ in Homer ‘J’ Simpson stands simply for ‘Jay’.

I think perhaps his nickname should be ‘Homer’.

Gael Clichy says we can’t afford to drop points, which is a bit like me saying I don’t need any more muffins, in that it will probably happen anyway, and Gael will feel sad for saying it. I think Gael Clichy should stop speaking to the press for a little while, anyway.

Anyway, that’s about all for today. I leave you to continue the chant competition to win our signed photo of Bacary Sagna (signed by him, not by us). For my two pennies’ worth, there must be something doable with the Vampire Weekend song ‘Walcott’…?

Nicklas Bendtner, eh? one week he’s lashing the ball confidently into the Dynamo Kyiv net and exposing his chilly Viking torso to the winter night, the next he’s tapping the ball pitifully into the expansive midriff of Burnley’s gargantuan goalkeeper Brian Jensen. The next one after that he’s doing the pitiful tapping thing again. And the one after that. What happened to confident lashing, Nicklas?

Wenger’s post-match assessment of all this miss-ery was unusually unsympathetic to Nicklas and his striking chums:

We had plenty of chances but when you do not score, you really have to ask yourself why. You can praise their keeper but also question our strikers. We had six one-on-ones with their keeper and did not score with any of them. In front of goal, you have to be much more clinical than we were. We just did not have the right focus in front of goal. We lost a game we should never have lost.

Which sounds about as close as you’ll get with Arsene to him placing the blame at the whiffy adolescent feet of Nicklas Bendtner, or at least putting a big mental question mark over those “berry”-coloured boots.

I think that question mark has been sitting in the minds of most Goons for most of the time that Bendtner’s been in the first team squad. He’s a player that has frustrated us Goons for a long time now – scoring important goals with apparent ease one day, then looking absolutely useless (and in extreme cases such as the Liverpool tie last season, worse than useless) for the next three or four games.

Bendtnerphiles take a long view. He’s still only 20 years old and has scored 14 goals in 28 starts. That’s good going for any striker, especially at his age. Sure, they say, he shouldn’t be in the first team every week and he’s still very raw but he’s going to be an important player in the future.

Bendtnerphobes (in my experience outnumbering the philes about 25 to 1 – it’s always easier to criticise) point out that his goals record needs to include his 34 substitute appearances, in which he is often at his most infuriating. They object that he looks silly and apparently lacks basic footballing ability at crucial moments.

From these two camps, only the more extreme Bendtnerphobes will claim that he the lad hasn’t got talent. Similarly, there is broad agreement that he does look a bit silly.

Finally there’s Bendtner himself, and it is his own view which counts. You see, Nicklas has been Denmark’s main striker for about 2 years now, and in his eyes that makes him a fairly major European footballer. Everyone else might point out that that’s a bit like being Norwich City’s main striker, but not so Nicklas, whose agent-father has muttered about interest from the likes of Milan and Juventus whenever it looked like Nicklas might be spending the season in a tracksuit.

So on the one hand he’s a thrusting Gunnerling with bags of potential and on the other he thinks he’s a bit good. He should probably watch last night’s tape and see how that stands up.

Anyway, I’d be interested to know your thoughts on Naughty Nicklas.

The good thing about crashing out of the Carling Cup is that it means we’ll almost definitely win this weekend, in contrast to past weekends where our kids had flattened their Premiership opposition only for our main men to feel so bad about it that they allowed themselves to be flattened in turn (Hull etc). None of that on Saturday, thanks.

And don’t forget UpForGrabsNow’s SUPER SAGNA COMPETITION. Pen the top new Gooner chant and you could get your hairy mits on a photograph of His Majesty The Right Back signed by none other than His Majesty The Right Back himself. SAGNATASTIC! Just post them on the comments section and we’ll announce the winner at the end of the week.