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Losing to Barcelona would make Arsenal league favourites + blog news

Analysis, Arsenal News, Site 14 Responses »

Mar 062011

Tuesday night is huge. Taking a lead to Barcelona is essential if you have any hope of knocking them out of the Champions League, but such a situation is far from a guarantee of success. In fact, I’d go as far as to say we are still heavy underdogs – very few people seem to give us a chance. The ‘that was a great win but you’ll come unstuck in Spain‘ line is commonplace.

They could be right. We might pull off a stunning result in the Nou Camp and progress, or we might go out. If the latter occurs, I have to be honest and say I won’t be as gutted as perhaps I should be. It seems strange, but it feel like a bonus game somehow – losing to Barcelona is no disgrace, and we’ve already proved in the first leg that we can mix it with the best. But more than that, if we aren’t going to win the Champions League, going out now is the best thing that could happen for our chances of lifting silverware this season. Right now, it feels like we’re crawling from one game to the next with walking wounded, a familiar situation that isn’t a sign of squad weakness as the pundits claim, but merely a byproduct of fighting on four fronts. The same analysts who criticise our reserve defenders make excuses for United’s when Vidic and Ferdinand are missing.

The prospect of winning the league is very realistic. United’s defeat leaves us three points behind them with a game in hand. They still have to come to the Emirates, and they still have to play Chelsea. I am certain they will progress past Marseille, so their fixture list is about to get very taxing – no squad in the league can boast a reserve team of stars to step in, even the financial powerhouses of Chelsea and City, so that would bring an inevitable weakening of their team from match to match. The same eleven cannot play every game, as we are finding, and in a way, it is those who step into the breach that are the most important members of the squad.

On Tuesday we are in the Nou Camp, at the weekend we travel to Old Trafford. Van Persie, Vermaelen and Walcott won’t play either, Cesc and Song are doubts for the former, but while that sounds disastrous, it is largely short term. We have only had one midweek off since Christmas, and even that was for the international break in early February. Following next weekend, we have a precious seven days before a trip to West Brom. After that comes another international break, and two weeks until a home game with Blackburn. The midweek that follows is reserved for the Champions League.

Imagine that Barcelona knock us out on Tuesday night. Our fixture list would then look like this:

12 March – Man United, a (FA Cup)

19 March – WBA, a (Premiership)

2 April – Blackburn, h (Premiership)

10 April – Blackpool, a (Premiership)

17 April – Liverpool, a (Premiership), or FA Cup semi final.

Now that is a spaced out fixture list, exactly the sort of thing you need when you have a squad packed with niggling injuries. Vermaelen and Van Persie aside, everyone should be fit by the end of the month, even allowing for setbacks, which means they will only miss one more league game. Not too disastrous for a Premiership title tilt.

Progression in the Champions League would, ironically, make our chances of lifting silverware slimmer, so while a glorious night in Barcelona would be a special occasion, it is in reality a win-win – a loss, and the bookies will slash our Premiership odds.

In other news, the blog will be taking a short break for a family holiday, but only for a few days, so don’t expect anything around the game on Tuesday night. I’ll be doing my best just to watch it, and put up with foreign commentary (which, in fairness, is likely to be an improvement). I also missed celebrating another blog birthday (four years old now, bless), and as usual I will be giving the site a belated birthday present on my return.

What present, I hear you ask (perhaps)? Well, from next weekend I’ll be doing my best to make this a daily blog rather than the infrequently updated site that it currently is, with a few new weekly features to look out for, and to add to that, the podcast will return on March 16. It ran only for three episodes last year, and if I’m totally honest it was a little placid, so I’m looking to liven it up a little. Stay tuned for that.

So all that is left to say is enjoy the week, enjoy Barcelona and I’ll see you on the other side.

The 2011 Arsenal mantra – win the right games

Analysis, Arsenal News 2 Responses »

Feb 262011

Ask any pundit about Arsenal’s form since the turn of the year and they will pause for effect before saying erratic, mixed, up and down, inconsistent or any similar description. The contrast between the win over Barcelona and the draw with Leyton Orient has been described in many places as ‘the sublime and the ridiculous’, which aside from being highly patronising of Orient, is grossly misleading.

It is a classic example of how you can slant the same statistics two ways. Here’s the first, which I like to call the Alan Hansen analysis:

1) In less than two months since the turn of the year, we’ve required a last minute equaliser to avoid a home defeat to Leeds, lost to Ipswich and drawn at Orient. In all, we’ve played teams outside the Premiership six times, and kept a clean sheet only once. Add to that the collapse from 4-0 up to 4-4 at Newcastle and you have a problem.

And now here’s the second:

2) Our league record in 2011 is five wins, two draws and no defeats, and aside from the Newcastle game, those seven games saw only one goal conceded – Saha’s offside effort for Everton. In all, we are undefeated in the league since Old Trafford in mid-December. Running alongside that, we’ve reached the Carling Cup final, progressed in the FA Cup and now face a home replay with Orient for a place in the quarter-finals. Oh, and we take a lead to the Nou Camp after triumphing in one of the greatest matches I’ve ever seen.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m coming down on the side of the second analysis, and it continues to baffle me that Wenger is so heavily criticised for his rotation policy. Do people seriously wish we had played full strength sides against Leeds and Ipswich in the space of four days, before a trip to Upton Park? Wenger changed things up, we struggled in the cups (but progressed, and that we struggled was due to the reserves underperforming, not the selection), but hammered West Ham. Similarly, we sneaked past Huddersfield 48 hours before a tough game with Everton, which was duly won.

Wenger’s policy against the lower league sides has been simple – field the weakest side he could get away with, while still progressing. Despite what you may hear about it being disrespect for the competitions, it is anything but – it only turns into that if the competition becomes a sacrifice. I find it ironic that Wenger is seen as discrediting the Carling Cup in particular, when he has presided over a club that consistently progresses to the latter stages. It is why, although I chuckled at United’s struggles against Crawley, I have to admit Fergie got exactly what he wanted out of it – United progressed, he rested his stars, and learned plenty about the remainder of his squad. It is the same result that Wenger has had over and over.

Ask yourself this – out of this week’s pair of games, would you have preferred Leyton Orient to score a last minute equaliser, or Stoke?

Since the turn of the year, from a competition point of view, we have barely put a foot wrong. Progression in all the cups, unbeaten in the league, and only the Newcastle game to point fingers at, which was extraordinary but well responded to by a team supposedly lacking in mental strength.

The sign of a good team is apparently the ability to win when it counts. When it has counted, we’ve won the vast majority – as a result, while we play a cup final and visit the Nou Camp, we also have an eye on United’s tricky trips to Stamford Bridge and Anfield because our title tilt is very much on.

It is March in a few days, and we’re not only in four competitions, we’re in a good position in all of them. You don’t get that by being erratic or inconsistent.

Football’s fine lines – the alternative Arsenal-Barcelona story

Analysis, Arsenal News 29 Responses »

Feb 202011

“Arsenal’s Champions League dreams were in tatters last night after Barcelona ruthlessly tore them apart in a display worthy of the best team in generations. The warning signs were there early on, but when Van Persie’s shot was well saved by Valdes you sensed that such chances needed to be taken. The worry was proved accurate minutes later when Villa released Messi after good interplay. Szczesny came out and delayed committing until the last moment, but Messi dinked the ball over him at the last second, and despite Koscielny’s chase, the ball nestled into the corner.

Soon after it was two, with Messi returning the favour to Villa, playing him through before the Spaniard fired underneath Szczesny. The Pole kept Arsenal in it with good saves from Pedro, but two goals down at the break was the nightmare scenario for the home side. It was to get worse – Eboue gave the ball away and Messi was played through again. Arsenal’s nemesis again finished in style, just inside the near post. 3-0 and the tie was as good as over.

The home fans began to get restless, and focused some of their ire on their stars, Van Persie bearing the brunt when his ridiculous effort from the tightest of angles was easily fielded by Valdes, covering his near post well. Arsenal did get a consolation, the best goal of the night so far, Arshavin finishing a sweeping move, but the celebrations were muted.

The Russian quickly went from hero to villain, however, when his weak back header rebounded off his arm. The penalty award was harsh, but it finally killed the tie. 4-1 to the visitors and Arsenal’s Champions League dreams were over.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for one second that we were lucky on Wednesday night. Both teams missed chances, and that we came away with a positive result was due to our resilience and a pair of stunning goals in the second half, taking advantage of a Barcelona side unable to sustain their level for ninety minutes. What I am trying to point out is that football runs on the tightest of tightropes – sometimes the marginal incidents sway massively towards one team, and it has an enormous impact on how we view the abilities of the two teams. On Wednesday, there wasn’t such a sway, but there could have been, and the reaction would have been horrific.

And it works both ways – by all accounts Barcelona ripped us to shreds in the Nou Camp last season. But it was out of their control that Diaby missed a glorious chance to play the pass that could easily have led to us taking a two goal lead, and Messi had one of those freakish evenings where everything he tried came off. Exactly as in the above scenario, everything marginal went for them. We’d view that tie very differently had we had more luck, or not messed up the critical moments.

But imagine the above report was the one we’d all woken up to on Thursday morning. What do you think the reaction would have been? I’ll save you the bother – calls for Wenger’s head, claims that his youth project has failed, that we could never match Barcelona at their own game, that Cesc, Wilshere and many more would leave in the summer, that our season would disintegrate to the point where our trophy drought would continue and the club would unravel.

While that sounds ridiculous, it is sadly the way many react to a single setback. We could have been hammered on Wednesday had Barcelona taken their chances, alternatively we could have been in an even better position had Van Persie’s trusty left foot not missed two first half chances. As I said, football at this level can sway from one extreme to the other based on incredibly fine lines. It is the same reason one team can hammer another 6-0 in the league one week, only to get knocked out of the cup by the same opposition a week later. Did one side improve dramatically in a week? Or course not – sometimes things go for you, sometimes they don’t.

Cup football is often called a lottery, and this is why – on any given day, everything can go against you, and you can be knocked out. Remember the Leeds goal in the recent cup replay? It was an absolute screamer that neither our defence or Szczesny could do anything about. Now imagine that happening three times in a match – chances are, you’ll lose, and despite the fact there would be many recriminations, the reality it simply that it would be one of those things. Shit happens, to put it another way.

Over the course of a season, these things start to balance, which is why a team’s true ability can be gleaned from their league position. But cup football is a different animal, as is any individual match.

Food for thought next time we lose a game. We can point fingers as much as we like (because you’ll always be able to pick an underperforming player out of eleven, win or lose), we can claim that X should be sold or Y should be dropped, but what cannot be denied is that we are an excellent team. We’re not in all four competitions by accident, we’re not providing a genuine title tilt by fluke, and we didn’t beat a Barcelona team who played at the highest standard because everything went our way.

Undoubtedly there will be a match between now and the end of the season where everything goes against us – a stunning goal, a dodgy penalty, woodwork denying us, that sort of thing. That’s football. All I ask is that when it happens, we don’t start thinking we’re crap, dissecting Wenger’s transfer policy, or start calling it the demise of the football club. It’ll be a defeat. That’s all.

Perspective is hard to come by in football, from fans to the chairmen with itchy trigger fingers. That comes from passion, which can be fantastic in itself – witness the atmosphere on Wednesday if you doubt that. But misplaced, it can be hugely destructive – players getting abuse on Twitter, reading their own fans turning on them (make no mistakes, many players do read blogs), and that can turn a single defeat into a disaster.

This could be a stunning season if we stay united, recreate Wednesday’s electrifying atmosphere, and stick with the players along the bumpy road. Let’s do it.

After the sexism row, can we now do something about the xenophobia?

Analysis, Arsenal News, Broadcasters 37 Responses »

Jan 272011

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, or indeed watching Sky Sports News, where they valiantly pretended the story wasn’t going on around them, you may have heard about the spot of bother Richard Keys and Andy Gray got themselves into, going all 1950s alpha male by slagging off the ‘state of football today’ for daring to employ a female lineswoman (who, incidentally, was excellent), while ‘hilariously’ joking about how she would need to be taught the offside rule, being, you know, a woman, and therefore incapable of understanding some complexities. Seriously, these guys missed their calling in stand-up. Don’t give up the day job….oh.

That they no longer have jobs at Sky has less to do with the incident that started the furore (the type of which would normally result in a slapped wrist), and more to do with the fact that they were almost universally disliked within the organisation they worked in. Subsequent leaked videos proved that the ‘joke’ was anything but a one off, and the lack of support from a company that usually rallies around its most esteemed employees was extremely telling. Never was this plainer than yesterday, when Keys went on Talksport and proceeded to commit career suicide with the worst of attempted apologies. That Sky deemed it unnecessary to aid their presenter with prepared material was akin to giving himself the rope with which to hang himself. Keys resigned later that day.

Gray, on that other hand, had already been sacked, and is considering legal action, which he will certainly win. Don’t get me wrong, I have no sympathy for either of them – their smug arrogance belied their own feelings of self-importance, and they had almost become parodies of themselves, their catchphrases (“Take a bow, son”, and “and it’s LIVE”) grating more with every passing week. But from a legal perspective, Gray’s is an open and shut case. He was warned about his future conduct after this week’s incident, and then sacked when it transpired he had done it before. However, you cannot fire someone for not heeding a warning when the second act occurred before the warning was received. It simply will not stand up in court.

It is precisely the same reason why referees cannot give a player two yellow cards in the same incident, no matter how many bookable offences they commit. Ever wonder why when player A hacks player B down, and then they square up to each other, the referee gives them equal punishment of a yellow card? Logic suggests that if B was booked for the squaring up, so should A, and given the booking he received for the original foul, he should be off, but it doesn’t work that way. A yellow card is a warning as to the player’s future behaviour, and a second yellow card comes when that warning is not heeded. The second card cannot be earned before the first has been officially given. In the legal sense, Gray hasn’t had the chance to heed the warning – he has been sent off for a foul he committed off the ball half an hour earlier, that the referee has just seen on the big screen.

The football world has gone into righteous indignation mode, with Henry Winter, the man who loves a bandwagon, leading the charge, tweeting over and over that he had written an article on the subject, as if we hadn’t noticed the first one and ignored it. The only surprise is that he resisted mentioning Henry’s handball somewhere in his piece, such is his inability to let things go. But while the faux surprise that sexism is rife in the Sky Sports studios has been nauseating, it has served a greater purpose – that sort of behaviour has no place in any workplace, and for it to be highlighted can only be a good thing.

Football does, however, have a habit of picking one evil, making a massive fuss over it for a week or so before going back to pretending there are no others to sort out. But while sexism is certainly an excellent problem to tackle, it is far from the only one. It isn’t even close to being the only prevalent form of discrimination that would be condemned in a ‘normal’ environment, yet is openly accepted in the alternative reality of football. I am referring in particular to xenophobia, which is both rife and legitimised.

During the first half of the Arsenal-Ipswich Carling Cup semi final on Tuesday night, Cesc Fabregas dived. It was a pretty poor attempt to win a penalty, and I expected him to be rounded on at half time. He was, but one line used by Alan Hansen struck a chord:

“These continentals have brought us great football, but they’ve also brought us diving.”

It was said brazenly, and raised no eyebrows in the studio. “These continentals” was used as a term presumably to represent all foreigners who have ‘corrupted the English game with their cheating ways’. Cesc was included in that ludicrously sweeping bracketing of nations, despite having barely broken into our first team by the time Wayne Rooney was diving to win United the penalty that ended our unbeaten run in 2004/5. Any corruption of the apparently previously squeaky clean game had occurred long before the Spaniard had come along.

That foreign players brought diving to the English game is a fallacy that the English media, players and pundits like to promote. It dates back to World Cup 90, the first time it became a real issue in our national papers, largely because the offences were being committed on the grandest stage. Klinnsmann was making a name for himself as a theatrical cheat during West Germany’s triumphant run, never more so than against Argentina, when his histrionics ensured Pedro Monzon became the first player to see red in a World Cup final.

Four years later, Klinnsman became one of the most high profile foreign players in the English game when he joined Spurs, becoming one of the early adopters of the Premier League’s rise to prominence. He was still best known for his playacting, a fact he showed himself aware of with his self-deprecating celebrations. Despite curtailing that activity before he even arrived in the country, he was perhaps the first to be labelled as ‘the cheating foreigner who will corrupt our honourable game’. That stigma has never left those coming to these shores, and neither has the country’s distrust of foreigners subsided.

Football, as a global sport, is now richer, more powerful and more greedy than ever before. Prizes for success are astronomical, and with that certain moralities have dissipated – the agent is now the corrupting voice in the ear, contracts are there to be broken at will, and diving to win a crucial penalty is seen as an acceptable risk. None of that is due to having more foreigners in the English game – it has far more to do with the greater rewards and consequences of success and failure.

To say that foreigners are the purveyors of diving and the only perpetrators is at best, laughably myopic and at worst, obscenely xenophobic and offensive. Steven Gerrard, a man adored by the very same Hansen who apparently abhors diving, will tell all and sundry how he tells his new foreign teammates that simulation is not accepted in the English game, only to do his best starfish impression the very next week. And he is not alone. Rooney is a persistent offender, while the likes of Ashley Young throw themselves to the turf at every occasion. Going back further in time, I don’t remember too many people complaining at how easily Michael Owen went to ground winning a penalty against Argentina in the World Cup.

Foreigners did not bring diving to the English game – it was an inevitability that came about by itself. To suggest that if we hadn’t imported Europe’s best talent then we would have avoided the problem is a laughable piece of self-denial. The game has exploded into a multi-billion pound industry, and with that comes cynicism and the desire to win at all costs.

Hansen, along with many other pundits and papers (particularly the openly racist yet strangely untouchable Daily Mail) will continue to blame foreign players for every woe in football. But not only are they misguided in the extreme, they are promoting an opinion that is every bit as outdated and objectionable as those that saw Keys and Gray ousted.

Overreaction becoming the norm but don’t write us off

Analysis, Arsenal News 27 Responses »

Nov 092010

Every football fan hates to see his or her team lose. And every football fan is entitled to criticise the manager or the players for whatever they feel led them to that defeat – doing so does not make you any less of a supporter, despite what some will have you believe. We all have frustrations, decisions we cannot fathom, players that we do not rate as highly as others, and for those reasons the life of a fan can be one on the edge.

What is new is the innate cynicism that seems to plague fans these days, at least of certain clubs, of which Arsenal are undoubtedly one. We may mock Spurs fans for their blind optimism (yes, we will finish above you this year) but it seems a huge swathe of Gooners go in completely the opposite direction, taking any opportunity to write off the entire club based on the actions of one day.

In case you hadn’t noticed, we lost at home to Newcastle on Sunday, the second promoted side to come to the Emirates and win this season. Liverpool then beat Chelsea to offer us an olive branch, or compound our frustration, depending on your point of view. But the fact remains that we are five points off the lead with 27 games to go.

But according to many, we are out of the title race. That’s right, we have no chance to overhaul a five point deficit when there are 81 points left at stake. It makes no sense. Doubting our capacity to win the league is a completely different thing, and a lot more understandable – if we keep repeating the WBA and Newcastle performances then we will get no closer to ending our trophy drought, but you cannot write us off at this stage. You couldn’t even if the gap was wider – we closed a far bigger one last season with a greatly depleted team.

It seems to be a modern myth that only perfect teams win the league. We look at champions from the past few years and all we see is flaws in our own team. Perhaps that is a by-product of the Invincibles, perhaps our expectations of a title winning team are too steep and sit forever in that great team’s shadow. But Chelsea are aging and have a comparatively small squad, a fact that may undermine them in the latter half of the season. United have been poor so far, yet somehow remain unbeaten and in contention. And the rest are not likely to be contenders. The league is wide open.

So what do we really have to fear? There are certainly enough vulnerabilities in our rivals to believe we have the chance to capture silverware this season, the only obstacle appears to be our own inconsistencies. And while many will point to the fact that we’re already off the pace as evidence that we will fail, I would happily take a five point deficit at Christmas because it would mean we had navigated the trickiest half of the campaign and remained in contention. Remember that Chelsea, Man City, Man Utd, Liverpool, Everton and Villa all have to come to the Emirates in the second half of the season in what is a freakish coincidence. That is essentially the league’s top eight excluding Spurs. And they got their once-a-decade victory over us out of the way last time out.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying we will win it. What I’m saying is ease up a little – practically every time Chelsea have been tested this season, they’ve been found wanting, while United keep relying on late winners to take three points they scarcely deserve. As for us, we are hugely inconsistent, so all three teams should look at each other and realise that a good run of form could see them seize the initiative. There is no reason for it not to be us, particularly given the players returning from injury.

If we are still in the hunt at Christmas, we have a real opportunity. We could go on to throw that away with more listless performances, or we could repeat the heroics of the 1997/98 team, who were roundly written off following a 3-1 home defeat to Blackburn in December, before embarking on a long unbeaten run that clinched the title.

Either way, it would be an opportunity. What more can we ask for at this stage?