moving forward

Today's game against Aston Villa was for want of a better word 'strange', but largely stereotypical of The Arsenal from the last 5 years.

Statistically we battered Villa on all accounts except the scoreline, a number of key players had very good games and some of our lesser players didn't have complete 'mares, however there is nothing about the game today that gave me confidence looking ahead to Spurs & Everton.

Giroud looks shot of confidence, Walcott was anonymous again, Diaby was at his static meandering worst and despite boasting one of the best technically gifted midfields in the league we really struggled to impose ourselves on a Championship quality team.

Despite the unconvincing performance, the 3 points were vital in our chase for the top 4, and we should be guarded against making snap-judgements, but the lack of 'purpose' I see in this Arsenal team is alarming, and isn't limited to one or two individuals. We've now got a team full of Denilsons.

The number of goals we've conceded as a result of us having a corner or a free-kick in the opposition's half is ridiculous for a professional team. In the first half today Weimann took the ball from a Villa clearance inside their own box and proceeded to run directly at our defence till the edge of our area, where he eventually lost the ball, but the precedent was set. When Guzan started a quick counter from a corner and Benteke headed the ball to Weimann inside his own half, the only players who started to bust a gut to get back were Vermaelen & Mertesaker. The resulting goal wasn't a shock, neither was the fact our defenders refused to challenge Weimann or the Szczesny should have done better with the eventual shot.

To me, that's unacceptable, but it happens pretty much every time we lose the ball. Repeatedly our players have a mini-strop after losing possession, and spend time complaining instead of staying switched on and trying to win the ball back. Surely this can't have gone unnoticed by Arsene Wenger? Thinking back to the Bayern game, their 3rd goal came from Cazorla losing the ball and then not working back. What use does staring at the floor or throwing your hands in the air have to getting the ball back, or help your teammates defend against the resulting pressure?

This apparent lack of will to do the 'dirty stuff' is why we find ourselves where we are, 5th and out of all the cup competitions. Few of the goals we concede are wonderful team goals or 'worldies' from the opposition, most originate from basic errors on our part or are a result of a downright lack of effort. For all the collective wanking over how good Bayern were, all 3 of their goals were entirely preventable. Yes it didn't help having to play without a real left-back, but I still don't understand how Vermaelen & Podolski managed to fuck themselves royally for the Kroos goal last Tuesday, nor why none of our midfield thought it would be a good idea to track back towards our goal after the Belgian-German axis had royally fucked itself.

Ultimately when we play against teams that can break quickly, namely 90% of the teams in the Premier League, we will continue to struggle until these traits of our performances are rectified or we change our system. Can this happen with the current squad? In my opinion, no. There isn't enough ownership of our issues within our squad, and very few players ever want to take responsibility of digging us out of the shit-heaps we oft find ourselves in. See the continual slow, drawn-out, purposeless, meandering passing we conduct nearly every game as evidence of this. So many of our players would rather make a simple 5 yard pass sideways or backwards than try to play a more attacking incisive pass forward. Using Wilshere as an example how often is his first movement forward, and burst of energy to take on a man or to pass to our attackers? Today 63% of his attempted passes were forward (58 from 92); now think about Diaby, today only 42% (26 from 61) of his passes were forward. 

Maybe this is down to a lack of confidence and the players are petrified of making mistakes & becoming the next boo-boy, but if the players can't handle the pressure or expectations associated with representing The Arsenal then we must to be brutal and cut them adrift in the summer. 

Otherwise we'll never move forward.

UTA

Season starts now?

Having grown to become more "meh" with the state of The Arsenal over the last year, writing a blog regularly became a chore. I was bored of typing out the same thing, over and over and over.

Not sure why, but despite our current league position things 'feel' different now, maybe it’s because the fanbase seems more divided than ever (on twitter at least) that it's shaking me from my 'meh' state.
With the game against Stoke today it's the first time in a while that I’ve sensed the whole of our fanbase actually wanting to win the game. No knobheads spouting nonsense about "wanting to lose to force Wenger out", no "Giroud is no Van Persie" bollocks, no "Theo's an idiot" blah blah blah.

Maybe it's because it is Stoke. The Orcs. The 7th Nation. Pubis' Cunt Army. Regardless of how much we dislike the stuff going on & off the pitch at The Arsenal, we all hate them for Ramsey and because their manager wears a fucking baseball cap.

I also think the logical move of buying a new left-back has perked a few people up. It was very last minute and may not have been done had Gibbs not been injured but who cares it's done, and, most importantly, he's decent (according to the footballing hipsters). I'm not going to lie, I’ve only watched Malaga a handful of times this season and I was never watching because of him, but by all accounts he's a big improvement on Santos and will provide genuine competition for Gibbs. If that's not the purpose of the January transfer window I don't know what is. It’s also nice to buy a player who comes with a readymade chant.

Fingers crossed the front 3 can keep up their recent form and our defence can try and find some. 3 points please lads.

UTA

@UTAblog

Broken Records

So a fairly traumatic week following The Arsenal has passed and quite frankly we're deep in the mire.

With the defeats in Milan and at Sunderland yesterday our season is over and as Arse2Mouse says we're going to hear a lot of tripe coming from the club regarding 4th place being and achievement, 15 years of consistency etc etc. What’s the point of qualifying for the Champions League if we aren’t going to try and win it?

Flying out to Milan I knew we wouldn’t win the competition, and as such I said to my mates that if we lost in Milan we'd lose at Sunderland. I said that because the way this team deals with pressure and defeats is akin to a child running to their room and crying after being told off by their dad. When the going gets tough Arsenal get beat. I don't like knowing that, but it's sat there in my brain 24/7. You could hear the excuses for yesterdays defeat before the game kicked off...scheduling....pitch....injuries

When we went 1-0 down I wasn't the least bit surprised, nor was I surprised that the 2 'culprits' of the goal were Djourou and Squillaci. Time and time again Djourou has brain farts where he does needless things that lead to goals (yesterday's freekick wide out on the right), whilst Squillaci just has no luck at all wearing the red & white (of Arsenal). That's not to say that I think either is a useless player, but I don't think the correct course of action is rewarding either with a fancy new contract (as has just happened with Djourou).

This Sunderland match really has shown the gulf between the current Arsenal squad and those previous, and as many have said this Arsenal team doesn't need a few tweaks here and there it needs to be reconstructed from scratch. 

We have a nucleus of players we should fight tooth and nail to keep - Wilshere, Ramsey, Chamberlain, Van Persie & Sagna.

Whilst all the others simply aren't good enough to get this team back to the top of the premier league, there are some very good players who can have very good runs of form, but if they were good enough we wouldn't be getting beat by Sunderland, Fulham, Blackburn, Swansea et al. with our season done and dusted February 19th.

I think there will be a large turnover of players this summer, but the biggest changes of all need to happen at the board level. We've been in the Emirates for 6 years now and let’s face it we've cruised through those years, making the Champions League every year, making profit and occasionally challenging for honours. To think that we had a player as good as Cesc Fabregas in our side and we didn't win the league; it beggars belief and verges on being criminal.

Why weren't the obvious flaws corrected? We've heard from Hill-Wood or Gazidis that Arsene has had oodles of money to spend and he's unearthed some rough diamonds along the way, but the strategy,started after Flamini left, of handing out big money contracts has backfired dramatically. How can we have the 4th biggest wage bill in the league yet have Sp*rs managed by Harry Redknapp who’s won 1 FA Cup above us in the league? Ultimately they've got better players than us who are earning less money, meaning their players have to fight for greater rewards.

Our players cruise, knowing that when they get to 2 years remain on their contract if they've done ok, they'll get an extension and a pay rise. It really shouldn't work like that. A case in point is Carlos Vela, a decent football player who showed much promise, but a player who's done nothing of real note for Arsenal. This year he's out on loan and has publicly stated that he doesn't want to come back to Arsenal. This is a young player who Wenger publically stated was the replacement for Adebayor back in 2009, yet no longer features in his plans. He was rewarded with a new contract in the summer 2010, and is paid handsomely no doubt, yet has given the square root of zilch back to the club. Adebayor has never been replaced, meaning we’ve currently got 1 striker and we had to resort to having Thierry Henry for 6 weeks to try and galvanise the squad and get us to the 5^th round of the FA Cup.

The club needs to assume a much more 'cut-throat' attitude to its employees, and demand excellence, not just talent. I can demonstrate all the talent in the world in my work, yet if I'm a lazy prick and show no development I'll never get promoted or get a pay rise.

Sadly I think don't think Arsene can do this for us, it needs to come from the board and the owners, and they should be demanding trophies, not healthy bank balances. 4th place isn't an achievement it's failure; we've had 7 years of failures. We also need to face facts, we're simply not that good anymore; I don’t expect success, but as a fan of The Arsenal I expect the players to fight for the badge. This group of players doesn’t.

I still think Arsene is one of the best a mangers around, and we’ve had some terrible luck with injuries, yet he needs his hand forced here. I think he deserves one more summer to put right the wrongs and get the club going in the right direction again. Sadly I don't think the current owner-board structure is good enough to right all the wrongs, and give him the backing he desperately needs.

This season has been a right off since Cesc was sold last summer and the players brought in on deadline day were simply Arsene filling the gaps. They weren't the players he wanted, but then we never seem to get the players he wants. For his sake and ours, I sincerely hope he’s able to get the players he wants and needs to bring this club back to life, or I’m afraid his legendary status with the club will continue to spiral downwards and out of control.

RC

The time is nigh

So lots has happened over the last 3 weeks, and it must be said it's mostly been shit; 3  defeats and 7 points lost from point scoring positions, which would see us in 4th place.

Much has been said about the 3 games and the fallout of the Chamberlain-Arshavin substitution rages on (no idea why, it's 1 substitution?). But the biggest effect seems to have been the unity of The Arsenal. By that I mean the manager, the players & the fans. To say there has been a fallout between all 3 wouldn't be far from the truth.

The fans showed their obvious disquiet towards the manager with some frankly idiotic and mindless chants, whilst although the booing wasn't directed at him, Arshavin must feel like an absolute mug right now, as the booing continued when he replaced The Ox. I have no issue actually with booing the substitution of Chamberlain, but what shouldn't have happened is the booing once Arshavin had stepped onto the pitch. How moronic do you have to be? The bloke's at his lowest point since joining the club, yet we contrive to make him feel even shitter. All the nonsense afterwards from fans, especially on Twitter, of blaming the Russian for the goal need to take their Vermaelen-tinted goggles off. TV was at largely at fault for the first and should have stopped Wellbeck once he had evaded Arshavin, That's not to say I'm him blaming him solely for the goals, as Song was culpable for the second too, but we fans do love a scapegoat don't we.... Senderos, Eboue, Denilson and now Arshavin.

One 'pleasing' aspect of the fallout has been that the players appear to have had some frank 'conversations' in the changing room post match, which can only be a good thing. Former players have spoken about how such talks from previous campaigns ('91 can't remember the game and '98 post Blackburn) can have a positive influence on the remainder of the season, helping to get everyone reading from the same page, and focused on the job in hand.

The other positive is that we're only 5 points behind Chelsea. Yes we realistically need to get a few of our players back from injuries, but with  Sagna and Wilshere back, I genuinely can't see us playing as poorly as we have been of late. Lets not forget before Sagna and Santos got injured we had won 10 out of 11. That's not bad is it? With Sagna due back in 2 weeks (or so) and Wilshere, Gibbs  et al. not long after we've got every chance of hauling ourselves up the table. We've also got to remember we've got to play the Spuds and Chelsea at home yet, both of which we can win.

So what about Arsene then? I think it's fair to say that he's not covered himself in glory since the summer. Before the Fulham game he said that it wasn't worth losing games because we don't sign a left back. We haven't signed a left back and we've lost 3 on the trot. Add this to his comments about selling Cesc and Na$ri  in the summer and the picture doesn't look too rosy for him, long term.

I say long term as there is no chance of him leaving mid-season. There's no point even having the debate as it simply will not happen. Not that I want him to leave, but I do wish he would take his head out of the sand.
His stubbornness in always getting 'value for money' when buying players has allowed this squad to become very average.

There are 8 or 9 players on our books, at the club or out on loan, who shouldn't be and must be sold in the summer (at the latest). There's no need to name names as they're all pretty obvious, and hopefully Ivan Gazidis does "trim the fat" from the wage bill. We can't keep relying on injury prone players to be fit and pay them £60K+ contracts for nothing in return, it just doesn't make sense.

Hopefully, once the board lock-out ends before the season is out, we'll see a new board formed which can drive the club on to further success and insist on intelligent investment in the team. By intelligent I mean not scrimping on 1 or 2 million if it bags us a top quality player (i.e. Xabi Alonso in 2006) and demonstrates to our best players that we do want to build a title challenging squad.

All this is by the by though, right now our current squad, the manager and the fans need to pull together put aside our differences and drive the team on to the minimum of 4th place. We've still got the champions league and the FA Cup as opportunities, though not realistic, of silverware to aim for.

This is when we all need to stand up, be counted, and put the the Chavs and Spuds firmly in their place.

Va Va Voom 1 Dirty Leeds 0

So we all knew the script didn't we? It just had to be. King Thierry. 1-0 to The Arsenal against Dirty Leeds.

What can you say about the man, other than he's still got 'IT'. 5 Years since his last goal for us, it took him 10 mins to clock up number 227.

'IT' is also something the large proportion of our squad lack. It is also very worrying that our 1st team midfield trio really struggled to put Leeds to the sword. They obviously weren't helped by the pathetically impotent Chamakh, and the hugely wasteful Arshavin, but still for large parts of the game we were really poor.

Ramsey, Koscielny and Arteta were again our best players, whilst Chamberlain, Miquel and Yennaris had solid games without really excelling. But we really do lack the cutting edge in the middle; it was like watching the Arsenal of 3 years ago tonight, no drive, no conviction, no 'want'. It was just pass, pass, pass......

Thankfully the result was the important thing, as it always is, and overall a controlled performance with a very makeshift defence can be seen as job done. However, if it wasn't obvious we were lacking in creativity before, it's blindingly obvious now.

Too often Ramsey slows the play down at the point of the midfield trio, when he should be looking to release sooner; whilst I've no idea what we do with Chamakh. He started quite well with some decent hold up play, but then he just stopped. He knew he'd be subbed if he played shit enough and his blushes would be sparred by Thierry. As ever. Always the saviour.

I'm not meaning or trying to put a dampener on the night, as it was one of the moments that will live with me for a long long time, but if we're having to rely on a 34 year old returnee to provide support to RVP it really doesn't say much for the 'talent' that Wenger has brought through in the last couple of years. Park clearly doesn't have an arsenal career ahead of him, so it's imperative that we do bring in another forward over January.

Hopefully TH can spread his wisdom, calmness and composure to the young lads in the squad and the next 6 weeks will help the majority of this squad improve.

His finish tonight was the TH we all knew, know, loved and love again. Classic Henry.

Theo watch and learn.......

So what next....?

The defeat by Man City was a tough one. We deserved something from the game, no questions, and on another day Phil Dowd might not have been the complete tool he always is and given the penalty for the blatant handball by Micah Richards. That said the defeat did raise the same questions about the 'depth' (I use the term loosely) of our squad, particularly the attacking options.

I think it's clear for all to see, that Arshavin is a spent force, not through lack of effort, but his confidence is so shot, I think there is no of him re-discovering (if he ever really had it) his form. Chamakh is frankly useless to us as a team now. He comes on, ambles about a bit, does nothing and then runs off the pitch as fast as he can. At least Arshavin still tries to make the odd pass and will waste the odd opportunity, Chamakh doesn't even do that now, he is our Emile Heskey.

If these are our 2 best attacking substitutions and are to remain so for the remainder of the season then I think we'll struggle, simple because Van Persie can't play every game and without his goals and attacking prowess we look powder-puff at times.

So what the alternative? Again I think most fans would say it's blindingly obvious Wenger needs to buy in January. A striker is a must, as Chamakh will be gone for up to 6 weeks, and Park hasn't as much made the bench for the last few games (if Chamakh is getting onto the bench ahead of him, how average can Park be in training?), so despite Arsene saying Park, Arshavin, Chamberlain etc can play there, we really shouldn't risk it.

I think we're covered in midfield to be honest. The return of Jack will give us options to rotate the trio of Arteta, Ramsey and Jack. It'll also force both Arteta and Ramsey to play out of their skins week-in week-out as Jack ought to be starting every week when he's back. I would go as far to say that our best midfield would be Song-Arteta-Wilshere, as I personally think Ramsey is more suited to the Arteta role by controlling the tempo with his passing and Jack has the greater potential to play the 'killer' pass.

The next position that I think needs investment is out wide. I think Gervinho has done well since coming in, and despite the glaring misses, has added a much needed impetus to our forward play, that was sadly lacking with Arshavin out on the wing. I would love to see the Ox play, I'd have loved him to come on for Theo at City and just run at Zabaletta; that said I don't think Chamberlain is ready to play every week during the African Nations and I really don't want to see us return to the having the Russian out wide again.

I do however think Chamberlain should be our first choice substitute winger right now (followed closely by Yossi), ahead of the Arshavin. If we're losing and need some drive and spark to get back into the game, the Ox has shown he's more likely to produce, whilst Benayoun has played well every time he's come on. He's delivered whenever he's had the chance to play a full game (carling cup & Olympiacos) and I think he deserves more opportunities over the Russian.

Who we actually buy, I've no idea, but I think there are a few players who have just been dumped out of the champions league who could be available (from Dortmund & Lille), but I doubt we'll get them; Whilst the players I would like Cavani and Ayew are still in the competition so probably wouldn't move.

Whilst it's not all doom and gloom right now, I'm worried that due to the size of the squad it could all collapse in March. Again.

Arsene don't let it happen. Please.

Up The Arsenal

Ricky

The Chocolate Leg Does It Again

So we got the result and the 3 points from the potentially tricky fixture of Norwich away.

Overall it was a satisfying performance. We should have scored 3 times before they scored their first and we could/should have been 4 or 5 up by half time. Our profligacy in front of goal was worrying, but Norwich were playing so open at times we would always end up taking some of our chances. That said, Norwich did get lucky with having a player in position to clear off the line 3 times, especially with Walcott's first half effort.

The most pleasing aspect of the performance was that we are creating more chances; the front 3 are really gelling now, and baring injuries, we should be scoring more freely  moving forward through the season than we had up to the Chelsea game. As this team was struggling at the beginning of the season to create chances, let alone score, it's pleasing enough to see Gervinho and Theo get into positions. The goals will start to flow from these 2 and I'm now reasonably confident of our chances going into the games over the Xmas period that we're enough in our team to get the results even when Van Persie is rested.

I thought Walcott was our MoM yesterday, but I think Ramsey was outstanding as well. The guy is so tidy in midfield and has bags of energy, the thought of him and Wilshere playing centre midfield for Arsenal is well verging on orgasmic. Verging, not actually. It'll be interesting to see what Wenger does with player rotation when Jack is back and where he'll play him, but that's a while away yet, so it doesn't need worrying about now.

Obviously our mandatory defensive mistake cost our clean sheet, I've no explanation for what Mertesaker was doing, but overall I thought we looked quite solid yesterday, and Norwich only looked a threat when we played a too-high a defensive line and bar the goal I can't remember another time that we were genuinely worried by them.

As ever the criticism of our defence was over the top and media love to shit on The Arsenal, but they can't argue with the current run of form, 5 straight wins and now 3 points off third place. Quite frankly the media can go fuck themselves and go rim John Terry's racist ringpiece as we're all bored of the "Arsenal in Crisis" headlines, and today is the "Battle of the Racists". I do hope SKY are calling it that.

right to an awesome post-Arsenal win Sunday, and Dortmund midweek.

UTA