The 'new' Arsenal

Looking at Sunday's team, I was struck by the lack of longevity:

Mannone – not played much

Jenkinson – 2nd season

Vermaelen- 3rd

Mertesacker – 2nd

Gibbs

Arteta- 2nd

Diaby – like Rosicky, so often injured, that he’s a 'new signing‘ each season

Cazorla – 1st

Gervinho – 2nd

Podolski – 1st

Giroud – 1st

I guess the short time at Arsenal is balance by the age and experience of the players who have come in.

Stoke away

Things started very well. An excellent pre-match chicken balti pie – good sage pastry with just enough moistness and an excellent meaty, spicy filling with a mixture of breast and leg to give a wonderful oral experience.

My feelings are about the match are ambiguous – the positive of a second clean sheet tempered by the typical domination of possession but little to show in terms of chances created.

I thought we had a good first 30 minutes with Cazorla particularly active and it seemed a real possibility that the goals would come – at either end, in fact, as Stoke had one or two dangerous breaks.

After that ‘normal service’ was resumed as Stoke settled for a point and we struggled to break them down. This continued into the 2^nd half with only a fluffed attempt by Diaby (ok the ball came to him unexpectedly but he reacted like it was a time bomb rather than the leather/plastic orb), a good turn and shot by Ramsey and a speculative effort by Giroud that would have been a goal of the season contender had it gone in but is now remembered for the fact that he didn’t pass to Ramsey. Personally, I would rather see players trying things.

Subs didn’t really change the situation – Theo still can’t take players on and still doesn’t make himself available for the pass and Ramsay still struggles physically.

Back up the M6 again at the weekend. Will be interesting to see how the team perform in a game in which the defence should be under more pressure as Liverpool will surely show more attacking intent than ‘red stripes’ x 2. This could open up the game and afford us more attacking space. We’ll see!


PS: just been reminded of Giroud's scissor-kick attempt from a corner in the 2nd half - now categorised as 'should have headed it'!

Shoulda, woulda, coulda - if my aunt had cojones, she'd be my uncle!

Finally, a word about the ref, Lee Mason. Apart from a mad two minutes when he seemed to forget himself and let all kinds of tackles go, he had a reasonably good game.

Villa in the cup - O ye, of little faith!

I predicted a 3-2 victory at half-time. A shame I didn't have the courage of my convictions and back it up with a wager.

Half-time was particularly funny for the string of abuse launched in my direction by the perpetual moaner who sits 5 or 6 rows behind me. He loudly announced that Wenger should resign. I started laughing but any attempt to engage in a rational conversation was met with a stream of expletives. I'm not sure whether he took me up on my suggestion that he should go home immediately and watch Spurs on Sky+. 

A strange first half. The Arsenal dominated with Rosicky, in particular, finding acres of space but with little end-product in the final third. Villa had two attacks and scored twice. Arsenal booed off by some so-called fans, including, no doubt, the 'moaner'.

A switch-about in the second half, with Arsenal showing more penetration resulting in two pens and a fortuitous ricochet off Theo. Cue celebrations and cheers all around. The fickle fans with little faith!

Szczesny points the way!

Tony Pulis: favourite to be next England manager

to replace Martin Johnson!

Arsenal v. Marseille

After Saturday’s epic, the Marseille match was flat. It was almost as if, having beaten Chelsea, the team thought they just needed to turn-up to get another victory. Some first half chances went begging and little of note was created in the second. Overall, the movement was poor and the same early season lack of tempo was prevalent. Song had his poorest game for a long period – he appeared slow and cumbersome and his passing radar was in urgent need of re-calibration. The substitutions brought Rosicky, Arshavin and RvP onto the field but there was no discernible impact as the game petered out 0-0.

Marseille: pre-match food

Round to Piebury Corner on Tuesday night to sample the ‘Ian Wright’ which is lamb with vegetables in a flavoursome gravy just the kind that Mrs H would love. Unfortunately, the preponderance of peas in the veg would not be appreciated by her. All in all another great gastronomic experience but, perhaps, not quite good enough to break into the top three. So 4 pies eaten, 2 fixtures remaining - the two Charlies: Nicholas and George. The former is the Scotch pie while the latter is a 'lucky dip' - I'm not sure if this is just a random selection from the other 5 or whether it is truly something different.

Piebury Corner League Table:

1.     Dennis Bergkamp – eaten 1

2.     Tony Adams – eaten 1

3.     Reg Lewis - eaten 1

4.   Ian Wright - eaten 1

Chelsea v. Arsenal

Fantastic game at the Bridge on Saturday. Chelsea ran riot in the first 10 minutes pulling the Gooner defence all over the place. The movement of their front six was exemplary which is a change that I understand has been initiated by Villas-Boas and helped by the recruitment of Mata (who, I’m told, but for the want of a couple of million would have been wearing red and white). When going forward, they continue to push their full-backs to the touchlines to give width with Mikel dropping back to become a third centre-back. The ploy with the full-backs is not new and been used over a number of seasons. Initially on Saturday, it was particularly effective down their left as Cole found acres of space due to a lack of basic defensive organisation between Theo and Djourou.

Theo appeared incredibly motivated for the game. I guess because he was 1-on-1 with Cole and also because other England team mates were playing. This was exemplified by his goal where he went down but got straight back up to win the ball and forge forward.

There was another near racial incident in the game when, in the warm-up, John Terry called the Chelsea reserve keeper a ‘blackman’.  But it was ok as he is and that’s also his name – Jamal Blackman which is kinda ironic in a way. There was the usual pre-match announcement to the crowd about there being no tolerance of racial abuse but Chelsea also saw fit to emblazon the cover of the match-day magazine with a picture of JT in suitably aggressive pose. A lower profile might have been more appropriate until the investigations are out of the way. The magazine also had a feature on another reprobate, Graham Rix. According to Wikipedia, he is now coaching at a Glen Hoddle soccer school in Spain. Hopefully, it’s boys only but perhaps the CRB checks are not so rigorous over there.

Bolton: Carling Cup

Good to see Vermaelen back in the side and he put in a typical tough-tackling assured defensive performance.

Interesting to see AW finally play Arshavin in a central role. I wouldn’t describe his performance as outstanding but he scored one and created one so that’s not a bad return. His goal, a shot through a crowd of players, was typically Arshavin and caught the goalkeeper by surprise. He has the ability to do the unexpected and not many players would have gone for goal at the moment he did. As I’ve said before, he’s much more dangerous in the box rather than stuck out wide.

The second goal was an ‘Henry-like’ curling shot by Park – an excellent finish. Or, at least, I think it was Park - the chap behind me was having difficultly identifying Arsenal's Asian players though I suspect that his level of knowledge was suspect as he told his American companion that the football season runs from September (then corrected to last week in August) to June. That's the problem with the Carling Cup - you get a lot of people attending who normally don't and their level of knowledge is not on a par with the regular fan (tongue-in-cheek comment, of course,  and could equally be taken either way!). In fact, I was the only regular in my part of the front row - no Laurel, John, Dominic, Ali x 2, little man and his little son, Judy, Nigel or Peter.

Bolton came more into the game at 2-1 as they pressed forward. There was one heart-stopping ‘Flapianski’ moment when he contrived to mishandle a shot unintentionally over the bar. Mannone is back from loan and on the bench – he must be close to being #2.

Bolton - pre-match food

Decided to try the stall close to the Arsenal tube that sells roast pork or beef in a baguette. Went with the pork with stuffing and apple sauce out of a large plastic catering size tub which was just as you'd expect large-scale catering apple sauce to be like. Pork was good and a generous helping. Baguette was soft and disappointing as it was slightly cotton woolly. A crusty baguette would, I think, be better.
I did notice that the stall selling steak baguettes in Drayton Park provides the afore-mentioned crusty baguettes so that is now on my mental to-try list.

Stoke at home - a win for football

In truth, a comfortable win in the end. 3 well-worked goals with Gervinho influential in all 3. After dominating the first, egregious defending allowed Stoke to equalise. Again, Gervinho had a part to play. Defending a Stoke free-kick, he was isolated on the left-hand side of the box with 2 Stoke players to mark. He called to his team mates which only resulted in him getting the ‘hand’ instead of a hand from Chamakh. Gervinho then failed to track the deep run from Shawcross who headed across goal unchallenged. A second header at the far post and the ball fell to Crouch who tucked away from 1 metre out. Poor defending but the free-kick that preceded it was highly debatable. Koscielny rose like ‘un saumon’ and hung in the air to win a fine defensive header against Crouch. Inexplicably, Lee Mason (remember him last season from Everton at home and Blackpool away) blew for a free-kick.

As expected, the only threat from Stoke was the long throw-in from Delap. It is almost as if Stoke have adopted the American Football approach of special teams as all Delap does is take long throws – thankfully, they can’t follow the model completely and keep him on the sideline until required though I expect Pulis will suggest this to the FA. In any case, Stoke’s ‘line-out practice’ failed to materialise in a direct goal threat as the Gooners’ defence dealt with the aerial threat no doubt helped by  having an additional centre-half as Djourou was at right-back.

Delap was substituted in the second-half and with him went Stoke’s creativity. A cliché, I know, but worth repeating nevertheless.

A good win. RvP took the media plaudits by coming off the bench to score twice, But my MotM was Gervinho. Arsene should produce a DVD of his contribution and give it to Theo so he can find out what he should be doing!

The geography of N5

Weltschmerz

The dictionary definition is:
Sentimental pessimism; sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life; the feeling all Arsenal supporters currently have.

For the cunning linguists amongst you, it is a compound German noun: welt, "world" and schmerz, "pain." The term may have been coined by Jean Paul Richter but was popularised in German literature by Heinrich Heine.

Spurs away

Sky Sports web report sums up Arsenal's performance perfectly: "though their three-man midfield controlled long spells, familiar frailties told".

A big contrast in composure in front of goal - Gervinho failing to open the Gooners account after good work by RvP - Van der Vaart handling his chance much better, firing across the goal and into the far side to open the scoring. Taken with aplomb but you (I) have to question the absence of basic defensive organisation that allowed him the freedom of the right-side of the Arsenal back four. 
Ramsey equalised early in the second half when Song made a penetrating run behind the Spurs defence and pulled the ball back as Aaron made a good run across the face of the defenders. Theo - please note Song's run, RvP - please note Ramsey's movement.
Arteta had moments of great control and ability, Coquelin kept it simple, worked hard and shows a lot of promise, Ramsey, goal apart, was disappointing as was Theo. There were a number of players who were up for the physical challenge, there were others who were definitely shirking in this area - Ramsey, Theo, Gervinho.
A great strike from Walker made it 2-1. Arteta failed to track Sandro's run into the box and the ball broke free on the edge of the box.
AW's substitutions, Arshavin and Benayoun for Theo and Gervinho had little impact and the play became very narrow.
Arsenal had a couple of corners at the end for which Szczesny ventured up but to no avail. Overall, Szczesny made some good saves from chances that, unfortunately, were created mainly by defensive lapses.
Disappointing!

Spurs away: today's ref is?; Malaga; MOTD

Mike Dean according to the ashburtongrove blog.

I've posted on Mike Dean before - it's impossible to ascertain if he is prejudiced or just plain incompetent. We'll see what happens today.

Btw: watched MOTD last night for the first time in ages. Didn't watch in real-time as I recorded the start while watching the end of Malaga v. Getafe. Malaga winning 3-2 with 2 late goals, the winner being a spectacular overhead kick from the 'Beast' who had no such memorable moments when playing for us. Need to dig up some info on Malaga. They've clearly had an injection of pesetas. Looks like a new stadium plus a cast of ageing players such as Ruud van Horseface who scored their 1st goal. Santi Cazorla, who was once touted as a possible Gooner, is also there but I can only think for the money. Having said that, Malaga went top with the win but the big boys play today.

Watching a recorded MOTD meant I could skip Lineker's smarmy, self-indulgent comments and the 'analysis'. Martin Atkinson had a shocker in the Merseyside derby with an unbelievably inconsistent assessment of tackles made by the boys in blue. Again, I've posted about Atkinson before. I believe he and Howard 'ManU' Webb are the EPL's only two Fifa refs - can't understand why as Atkinson is really poor.

While on refs - what a comedian Halsey is - pointing to where the Wolves player landed as the spot for the free-kick rather than giving a penalty as offence was clearly in the area. I think I've posted previously about his revision to the offside law during a match at the Emirates v. Middlesbrough.
From Wikipedia: Mark Halsey (born 8 July 1961) is an English professional football referee who officiates primarily in the Premier League. He was formerly based in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, currently in Bolton, Lancashire, after a house move engineeered by a series of positive appearances at Old Trafford. (Guess which bits aren't true - clue: start with the 8th word)

Olympiacos: late thoughts on match

Arsenal's 10¼ men survived some good football from Olympiacos, compounded by Arsenal's usually defensive frailties, to achieve a 2-1 win - an essential result given that Marseille beat Dortmund. Good goals from Oxlade-Chamberlain and Santos set them on their way until horrendous defensive organisation allowed the visitors back into the game. AW has noted in the match-day magazine that defending starts from the front but apparently he has yet to convey the message to AA23. Perhaps the Russian translator is on holiday - perhaps we've never had one as it works both ways. Perhaps AW thinks AA likes playing wide left but the latter has been able to explain why it's a big 

Olympiacos: Pie update

As forecast, I made a pre-match visit to Piebury Corner and ordered the Reg Lewis which is the vegetarian option. The very kind lady at Piebury Corner insisted I sample the other pies I had yet to try. So my plate consisted of the Reg Lewis and samples of the lamby Ian Wright and Charlie Nicholas which, of course, is the Scotch pie. And no ordinary Scotch pie it seems as it is the 2011 Champion Scotch pie!

The Reg Lewis was good but imho doesn't dislodge my current table toppers (update below).

Will, of course, try full versions of the the other two as the season progresses. I am particularly looking forward to the Scotch pie as the pastry is different from the others. According to a Google search, it's hot water pastry which is made using lard. Apparently, the filling can vary: "a typical Scotch pie recipe will have meat, salt, pepper, nutmeg, Worcestershire sauce, onion and pastry. Many local Scottish bakers will keep their Scotch pie recipes secret, especially the spice ingredients and quantities."

Piebury Corner League Table:

1. Dennis Bergkamp – eaten 1
2. Tony Adams – eaten 1
3. Reg Lewis - eaten 1

AW's comments on the Bolton game

From his post-match email:

"In the first half, we had to show patience and intelligence"
"We improved a lot after half-time. Before that we were a bit impatient at times, we didn't move the ball quickly enough"

As I've posted before, I believe a lot of Arsenal problems result from slow movement of the ball. AW recognises this but why don't we start that way, why does it takes 45 minutes and presumably a half-time team talk before we start playing properly?

Btw - I saw no evidence of impatience. In fact, exactly the opposite as we dawdled on the ball in the 1st half.

What's up, doc?

From a collection of camera phone photos sent to me by my daughter.

Bolton come to park the bus (again!)

Bolton came to ‘park the bus’. Not sure if Owen Coyle reads CBP but his formation had two solid central defenders and two solid central midfielders – see my previous post about AW’s success with this base formation. What Bolton lacked was the much needed complementary flair in other areas. Chris Eagles, who looked tricky when playing for Burnley, was disappointing in the extreme. Ngog kept on getting his head to the player rather than the ball and after the second or third clash was replaced by Davies whose only real impact was a stray arm that caught Kieran Gibbs. Kevin’s main contribution was to back into the defender when challenging for high balls.  He’s now too slow to get close enough to engage in dubious challenges on the ground.

Having said the above, it was Bolton who nearly took the lead early on. The ball was played back into the box, Gibbs dithered and didn’t attack the ball. A Bolton player got there first and Szczesny pulled off a good save to defend the goal.

The overall tempo from Arsenal was, all too typically, slow in the first half. Sir John, who sits next to me, said Sagna was our best player with some good runs down the right – he was correct though Theo, swapping to the left flank, did have one good run inside which resulted in a powerful shot just over the bar.  In the first half, he looked more dangerous on the left. Cutting in, like he did, he can use his pace to create space for the shot without actually having to go past his man. On the right, he needs to get down the outside and he doesn’t have the skill to dribble past the opponent. Contrast this with the second half, when as the game opened up, the Arsenal midfield were able to slot balls between the full-back and central defender for Theo to run onto.

Arsenal started the 2^nd half well and the early goal meant, as mentioned above, that the game opened up, the more so after Wheater’s dismissal for hauling back Theo. Arsenal played at a higher tempo and exploited Theo’s pace by providing through balls for him to run onto. He looks a different player when his talent is exploited though there is still, perhaps, a lack of confidence as shown when he had time but failed to convert a 1-on-1 with Jaaskelainen.

‘I’m Juskerlineman for the county’ made some good saves as Arsenal increasingly attacked. Two further goals were the reward for a better 2^nd half performance – great cut-back from Theo to RvP and a superb curling effort from Song who showed great composure.  A comfortable win in the end against a somewhat disappointing Bolton side who offered very little. I thought Coyle was supposed to be a footballing man – in the past, someone even he suggested to me that he was a FAM (Future Arsenal Manager).

Finally, I’m in a cause and effect conundrum. Was the better 2^nd performance due to Arsenal imposing themselves on the game with a higher tempo or did they get fortunate with the early goal and Wheater’s dismissal? Time will tell.