Up For Grabs Now

So the Eboo-ers have vanished into the night, nowhere to be seen or heard anywhere across the Arsenal blogosphere. Instead, there is a spectrum of opinion which ranges from regret to total embarrassment to real anger that an Arsenal player playing badly should be ridiculed by his own supporters during a game.

No-one will defend Eboue’s performance. It was indefensible. Arseblogger makes the crucial point when he observes that while the rubbishness of his performance was bad enough, what got people really worked up (and this is much less obvious to a TV audience) was that Eboue didn’t seem to care – shrugging and standing hands on hips after disastrously and needlessly throwing away possession yet again. This is bound to get anyone’s goat, and I suppose the best defence for the Ebooers is that if he didn’t care when he was on the pitch then he has no right to care when he is made to leave it.

So a regrettable incident, but one which could have been avoided by Eboue actually appearing to make an effort.

The other defence people are coming up with is that a lot of the booing was actually directed at Arsene Wenger so that’s ok. I’m sorry? It’s not ok to boo a player who doesn’t try, but it is ok to boo the club’s greatest post-war manager? I really struggle to understand how this is justification.

Or else, it was directed at the board, as some kind of bizarrely-timed protest at the lack of transfer activity. Perhaps this was a protest at Wenger’s stubbornness in not immediately signing an over-priced Italian winger we once saw do a trick on YouTube as soon as he saw Eboue was having a stinker? That’s how football works isn’t it?

There’s a great big scapegoating exercise which seems to run through quite a lot of fans’ minds when they don’t like a performance. Blame it on Eboue. Blame it on Song. In extreme cases blame it on Denilson. It’s a very easy way to deal with disappointment, to place all the blame on just one or two players, and the great thing is you don’t even need to watch the game properly, but it never really works as a way of explaining poor performance and other players who make big mistakes or underperform - like Toure, Clichy, Van Persie – their mistakes are always quickly forgotten to allow more time for yelling at whichever player you’ve decided to hate. Of course, football doesn’t work like this.

Song in particular continues to be singled out as the scapegoat. “He’s to blame for yesterday! If it wasn’t for Song we would have won… hold on… we did win? Right. Well I blame Song for the fact that the league chose not to magically turn our 3 points into 14. That was all his fault!”

BREAKING NEWS: Song actually played quite well yesterday. (NB this doesn’t mean I think he is better than Vieira or something).

One blogger yet to wake up and smell the 3 points is Le Grove. What a surprise! Ah, Le Grumble, that helpful support group for the bitter, the insane and the unloved in the Arsenal community. If they’re not complaining about the lack of a mid-season DVD celebrating Arsenal’s autumnal achievements, then they’re pining for the signing of Stewart Downing (as in today’s blubbing, semi-literate instalment). They must be the only group of fans who celebrate a victory by effectively calling for the club’s manager to be sacked. Literally, the only fans anywhere in the world who would see this as reasonable. Astonishing.

Next up it’s Porto away, and a great chance for the boss to try out that Eboue-Song strike partnership we’ve all been crying out for. Only joking! But it could happen, seriously… “I believe if you’re a good player then you can play in any position”…

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.

It’s a late blog because I have what can only reasonably be described as a TV hangover, after I decided the best thing I could do with my day yesterday was to watch twelve episodes of the West Wing in a row. Eventually I dreamt that I was assassinated, but it was ok because I could just reset myself. Most peculiar.

Wigan today. Can’t really lose. I mean I’ve said that before, and it’s not worked, but we really can’t lose this one. If the players can somehow Derren Brown themselves into trying even half as hard as they did against Chelsea then we’ll dominate. If, if, if…

In squad news it looks as though Djourou will start, which is good. I do like a bit of Djourou. Despite his own goal thing, he makes me feel unspeakably relaxed in a way that Silvestre never shall. I haven’t had the same feeling of security since we parted (perhaps only temporarily) with our World Class Centre Half Phil Senderos, for whom I retain a peculiarly large soft spot.

In keeping with my spirit of optimism, I’m backing us to win easily today. Consequently my attentions turn to other issues, such as:

People I would like to score today:

1)    Cesc. Wouldn’t it be nice?

2)    RvP. Because he can continue his rich vein of form.

3)    Carlos Vela. Because it will permit the ‘Vela-ela-ela’ song to develop apace.

4)    Almunia. Sure.

Anyway, we shall see. Come on the boys.

P.S. I have decided to extend the Sagna competition until the entries heat up. I’ve been very disappointed so far with the imaginative qualities of the responses.

1. Fabregas. You’ve gotta love him. He’s one of the very few footballers who seems to understand what it’s like being a fan and how terrified we are when someone starts claiming that your best player wants to leave. I thought the Out of Contextness of the comments yesterday was so obvious and the jump from Cesc saying “Milan are a great club” to headlines like ”CESC WANTS OUT!” was so big that it was very obviously bollocks. Soon there will be a whole industry (hold on, there is, it’s called the Spanish media) dedicated to asking Cesc innocuous questions and then twisting his polite replies into dire threats of his imminent departure. It really isn’t going to go away as it’s a perennially big story which the papers can run over and over again without doing any actual work, which is exactly the kind of story journalists love.

Yet still, great man that he is, Captain Cesc takes the time to issue a short statement on Arsenal.com effectively saying “don’t worry, it’s all bollocks I’m staying here”. Thierry Henry used to say he wouldn’t respond to every story about his future because if he did he’d have to be doing it all the time and the stories would just come back next week. Well, Cesc does it all the time and it doesn’t exactly seem to be a full-time job, Thierry, and yes he is balancing brief statement-making with the captaincy. Cesc seems to realise that though the stories won’t go away, what matters when Arsenal fans see these stories is that they have some kind of confirmation that they are the same old guff.

Captain Cesc, we salute you. You are a warrior and a gentleman.

2. Eduardo is coming back! Arsene has said he’s been playing training matches, will be back as quickly as possible and should be getting games soon! I think we all know that we shouldn’t expect too much of the boy especially when he first gets back, but I can’t really stop myself thinking about how great it will be to see him back in the shirt and how incredible it would be if he got back to his pre-injury level of performance. It could also be vital for our season, though the icy realist in me (he’s called Olie and he’s been having a great time all season) keeps insisting that we’re unlikely to see him back at anything like his best until next season. Still, haste ye back, Dudu.

3. We’re going to annihilate Wigan. I can feel it. I know as I write this that I might end up eating a My Words roast on Sunday with a My Words sauce and My Words dumpling but I’ll go for this anyway: I think we may have turned some kind of corner. I know we’ve had more than a few false dawns and I don’t expect everything to suddenly be hunky-dory again, but I don’t think we’re going to see as much utter piffle as we’ve been subjected to in recent weeks.

My confidence for the Wigan game is based on two things. Firstly, Wigan are really bad and Titus Bramble plays for them. Secondly, the kids got duffed in the Carling Cup and two of our most abject first team displays have followed triumphant Gunnerlings victories. Not so this time. I expect a three-points-sandwich for Saturday’s supper.

4. Veet-hair-removal-cream-nemesis Ryan Giggs, a player for whom I have infinitely more respect than the detestable Roy Keane (see previous post, the guy resigned by text message – what a clown), has hailed Aaron Ramsey as the future of Welsh football. If this sounds a bit like saying that consonants are the future of the Welsh language it’s because it is, a bit. There’s not much competition from the vowels, admittedly, but I reckon Giggs has seen enough promising young players to have a pretty shrewd idea when you’re looking at a future great and this is what he seems to be saying with Ramsey.

5. Finally, today’s your last chance to enter our Sagnatastic Chant Composition Competition. Write us a top new Arsenal chant and pop it in the comments section and if yours emerges on top from the bloody struggle with all the other entries then we will richly reward you with a crown of laurels* and a photo of Bacary Sagna, signed by His Majesty The Right Back himself. You might as well give it a go.

* the crown of laurels aspect of the prize is purely metaphorical, an e-crown of laurels to be worn with pride.

Update: An additional reason why it’s great to be a Gooner today – Ronaldo almost signed for us but didn’t. Hmm. Don’t know how much support that’s going to get as a reason to feel great, but you will admit that the guy is a complete tool whose victory in the Ballon d’Or was a shame for football. Plus we had Reyes instead, didn’t we. Hmm. I can see this is going to be difficult, so let’s move on.

Can anyone make a whole team of players we nearly signed who then went on to greatness? This might be a bit painful, but off the top of my head there was Cech and Ronaldo (both of whom we were very close to), Terry might have been on the cards before Abramovich arrived, Robinho was fairly close before he went to Madrid and Torres was looked at very seriously when he was 17. Wenger almost signed Makelele before he went to Spain. God, this is depressing – anyone remember any others?

We’re playing Wigan tonight. This is great. Rather oddly, I’ve come to love these Carling Cup matches. We’re on a hiding to nothing, it seems to me. Hang on, no. We’re on a hiding to everything. Is that right? No. We’ve got nothing to lose. Yes, that’s better. If we win (and I suspect we shall, but I wouldn’t say it very loudly) then we can talk loudly about how great our youngsters are, how exciting our future is, etc etc. If we lose, (and I suspect we shan’t, but I wouldn’t say it very loudly) then we can just talk about how it’s a Mickey Mouse competition. Actually, not even Mickey Mouse, as Mickey Mouse is quite a big and important cartoon. Maybe more like a Pluto character; big and shit, and fit for minor North London club sides and which our Colts XI can use as a warm up before the big youth game.

Etc.

It’s also the case that whilst previously the team has obviously been our youngsters, this season our first team is so young that the Carling Cup lot, being even younger, are comically young.

Still, there are some things to look out for. Zaki, doyen of fantasy football teams everywhere, will be playing and tends to score, but then again so will Carlos Vela. I’ve heard some people say that they’d like to see Vela play more, but I have mixed feelings about it. Whilst part of me would be delighted that he would play well, score goals and win matches for us, the other part of me would be sorry to see his potential revealed. At the moment he’s a little bundle of potential that sits on our bench, all warm and subjunctive. You hear murmurs around the Emirates as we get to the seventieth minute:

Murmurer 1: Oooh, I’d love to see Vela get a run at ‘em…

Murmurer 2: Oooh, Wenger never will. Playing it cautious, you see…

Murmurer 1: Ah, yes, I see. Very sensible. Good thing he’s bringing on Song though. That’ll lock things down.

Murmurer 2: Oooh, yes, I should think so.

Arsenal concede.

Murmurers (together): Bollocks.

Who knows what would happen if he came on…

I don’t usually do this but I feel I must bring this terrible article to the attention of the loyal readers. 

The headline on the newsnow feed for this story is, quite literally, ‘Wenger to decide on January transfer activity’. What’s that, you say? ‘But he’s the manager’, you cry? Possibly you expect it’s more complicated than this. It isn’t. That is literally all it says. The article might as well read ‘Arsene Wenger does job’. I mean honestly who else is going to decide on transfer activity? Me? Celebrity Television Doctor Professor Robert Winston? From which tree did these people fall?

In other news, and to prove the veracity of our reporting to those of you who questioned earlier pieces, Arsene has cleared up the Barack Obama transfer issue, reiterating his faith in his youngsters and explaining why he doesn’t need to bring people in, least of all American Presidents-Elect the wrong side of forty-five, whatever the success some MLS players have had in England before. It’s not even a problem that he’s better-suited to (and perhaps better at) basketball, as Adebayor will no doubt testify.

As ever, if you have any threats or abuse, please send them in to us at upforgrabsnow@googlemail.com

Until then, let’s hope for a good one tonight. Come on the boys (literally) (actually not literally, that’s kind of gross, but you catch my drift),

Luego.