So the first game under Captain Cesc and the first step on the road to recovery for this team. Let’s hope that road is about 12 metres long, paved with gold, and we’re allowed to drive a turbo-charged eleven-seater Ferrari. We need to get there fast so that when we next have a really difficult fixture we are at our best. What’s that? Chelsea away? On Sunday? Oh dear.
Back to last night, and Kiev. We shouldn’t allow the current problems to obscure the significance of ickle Jack Wilshere’s plucky European debut. He looked tidy and inventive as always, and supremely comfortable on the ball. Perhaps he’s been taking lessons from Alex Song.
For some reason I never noticed it in the Carling Cup games but playing for a bigger Arsenal side against a lumping Kiev team, Jack looked a bit like what happens on SuperMario when your guy gets shrunk. He was TINY! Seeing him marking one enormous bald bloke at a free-kick I half expected him to be crushed underfoot in a shower of lost gold coins, or else to leap ridiculously high and kill the bald bloke by stamping on his head shouting “Yippee! Wahey! Wazoo!”
It’s probably good in the long run that he didn’t do any of these things. Instead he gave a cameo performance which has had some fans calling for him to have a bigger role on a more regular basis. My view is that I’d like to see him get a few games this season and then really push for a place next year a la Walcott. Ramsey is still ahead of Jack for his sheer beefiness, and while last night wasn’t Aaron’s best performance, it’s much easier to look good for 15 minutes than for a whole match, as we saw with Carlos Vela who Wenger withdrew due to fatigue after an hour. The good thing is that Jack plays centrally and on the left, Aaron plays centrally and on the right and so they should both be providing healthy competition for more senior players.
Other observations: Gael pulled off some sick tricks to get himself out of trouble when he was in really tight spots. He’s been doing these more and more this season. I can’t think of another full-back in the world to match his sheer audacity (think the casual overhead lobbing of Ronaldo the other week). This can also land him in big boo-boo (think Totts) but it’s certainly exciting to watch.
I was concerned by Van Persie’s performance last night. He looked pretty lazy for most of the first half and I lost count of the number of times I was screaming at him to get in the box and he seemed to dash off in the other direction, making space for… wait… nobody, because he was the main striker. I know it’s very early to judge, but the Van Persie-Vela left footed combo didn’t really look too promising.
Typically for a club of such class, Gallas received a pretty reasonable reception. He had a night of near misses at both ends as he had a good finish disallowed, was then lucky that an error of Bramble-esque proportions went unpunished by their grubby looking striker, and then put a goal-saving block on a Van Persie which looked destined for the net. The early signs were promising that he will be able to stop girning and get back to being the pretty excellent defender he once was.
Cesc chose exactly the right words on Gallas, words that should unite the team and the supporters:
“I have a great respect for William. A lot of people from the outside have been very unfair with him because he is a great guy, a great professional and he always tries to do everything to help this club. You can never doubt his commitment to the club. It has been spot on since the first day and he has been a big, big player for us.”
This is quite hard to take as fans still angry at last week’s apparent betrayal, but coming from a player as adored as Cesc is, it’s kind of hard not to just accept this. Cesc knows Gallas and has trained with him for two and a half years. We don’t and we haven’t. He’s been in the dressing room and heard what has gone on. We haven’t. Cesc knows?
Finally, a word on injuries. Nine is a lot of first teamers (ok, eight if you don’t count Eboue) to have sitting on the sidelines, and seeing them all cosied up in dark grey parkas and silly hats I fear that unless our wounded players either get better and start wearing red shirts and white shorts again or else change their casual dress-sense pretty soon, people are going to start mistaking them for low quality rap collaboration The Blazin’ Squad and they’ll have to do gigs and such. But then Adebayor would probably quite enjoy that, wouldn’t he.
Arsene says that Sagna, Nasri and Ade are all “50:50″ to make the Chelsea game. He does love his percentages, doesn’t he? I wonder whether he keeps them all in his head and how often they change, e.g. when Eduardo first got injured his percentage must have been 0:100, when he had it plastered up it was probably around 2:98 and it’s been ticking up ever since. I wonder where he’s got to now, it will be VERY good to have him back.
(Final) finally, don’t miss this. Proof (which was obviously very needed) that Rooney is a cheating git. Purple Nose said he “didn’t mean to do it”. What exactly did he mean to do then? Execute some kind of unlikely diving header with the ball at his feet? Take flight up into the chilly Spanish sky? Most tastelessly of all, Ferguff-on goes on to attack Rob Pires for not apologising after his dives, which, lets face it, have probably happened once or twice. Proof (which was obviously very needed) that Purple Nose is a total git.
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