The Beautiful Groan

The arrogance of being English

Dec 052011

I’m going to take a small break from writing about Arsenal today to vent on a subject that has infuriated me since listening to the European Championship draw on Friday evening, and that is the supreme arrogance of English pundits with regard to the national team. We all know that England are forever overhyped before major tournaments, but it is the dismissive contempt for many of the other countries (those not called Spain, Germany or Italy) that winds me up the most.

England got a relatively kind draw (at least compared to other groups), with Ukraine, Sweden and France their three opponents. But by the same token, those three countries probably feel they got a kind draw with England – after all, Germany and Italy were also in pot 2, and would be expected to go further. Despite this, Radio 5 had Paul Ince and Darren Anderton (I know) talking about the draw, and both concluded that England would be favourites for all three games, and should progress with ease.

Really?

Let’s start with France, the opening game. They’re terrible, right? Laughable in the World Cup, an imploding disaster of egos? Well, no, at least not anymore. Since Domenech’s hopeless reign ended, they’ve enjoyed something of a renaissance, qualifying top of their group, and embarking on an unbroken 18 match unbeaten streak, stretching back fifteen months, and including a comfortable win over England, something they have managed on each of the last three meetings between the countries. Even with Rooney, England would not be favourites for that one.

Next up, Sweden. England’s recent friendly win over the Swedes was their first triumph over them in 43 years. In between, the two countries had met twelve times, with Sweden winning four, and the other eight clashes ending in draws. Hardly a record that backs up the ‘overwhelming favourites’ label. The Swedes may not be as strong as they have been in previous years, but it takes remarkable arrogance not to notice that the same could be said of England. A draw, as ever between these two nations, is the likely result.

And then, finally, England face Ukraine in Donetsk. Hosts are always terrible in international tournaments, right? And as we know from club football, Ukraine is such an easy place to go and get results, isn’t it? Oh.

The fact is – all four teams in the group will be pleased with the draw, and confident of progression. But to hear pundits dismissively talk down the other three countries is exactly why so many nations are willing us to fail. Time and time again we convince ourselves that we’re amongst the contenders, but a quick look at the statistics reveals a telling tale.

Of the 16 countries competing, nine (Germany, Russia, Holland, Italy, Spain, Czech Rep, Denmark, France and Greece) have lifted the trophy. One more (Portugal) has competed in the final. You can also add Ukraine (four finals, and one triumph, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union) and Croatia (two finals when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia) to that list, which leaves just four of the sixteen countries as nations yet to appear in the final.

Those four countries are England, Ireland, Sweden and Poland.

Given that, it is remarkable that there is any optimism around the national side, particularly when you consider that the ‘golden generation’ (which was hardly golden, at all) has passed, and the only striking threat is suspended for the entire group stage. It says everything about England’s lack of forward options that he will still be taken.

But I have nothing against optimism – having unrealistic hopes is part of being a football fan. But listening to Ince and Anderton dismiss our opponents as trivialities en route to the knockout stages was cringeworthy in the extreme.

England are often criticised for being a quarter final team. To be so again could be argued an overachievement.

One Song, one Premiership winner, one Premiership qualifier

Arsenal News, Matches 3 Responses »

Nov 242011

Arsenal 2 (Van Persie 49, 86) Borussia Dortmund 1 (Kagawa 90)
(Champions League)

You should never get ahead of yourself in football. Sing the praises of a team too early, and they can fade away and make you seem foolish (see the pundits handing Chelsea the title after five games of last season). Similarly, write any top team off at your peril. Three months ago, we were ‘in a relegation battle’, having lost heavily at Old Trafford. Without Cesc and Nasri we had lost all creativity and our defence was falling apart. Wenger himself was under pressure, and the Kroenke regime was being written off before it had barely begun.

At least, that’s what the kneejerking story-busters told us.

Since the Blackburn defeat, we’ve won 11 out of 13, with the draw with Marseille and the derby defeat the only blips on that road. We’ve clambered our way back into contention for the Champions League spots (in fact, surely if Chelsea are still in the title race, we are too), and last night became the first Premiership side to reach the Champions League knockout stages, a feat that has now been achieved twelve years in succession. To top it off, Marseille’s defeat at home to Olympiakos means we top the group no matter what happens in our final game.

To put that into perspective, any of the other Premiership sides could realistically crash out after their final game. United are probably best placed, needing to avoid defeat in Basle, but having nearly lost to them at home, they won’t be taking things for granted. Chelsea lost again last night, and Valencia’s huge 7-0 thumping of Genk leaves them needing only a score draw or better at Stamford Bridge to knock Chelsea out. Man City, meanwhile, could beat Bayern Munich and still exit the competition. Are there enough TV channels available to show up to seven Premiership sides on Thursday nights?

That we avoided such drama was due to two factors – improved defensive stability, and the ability to strike at the right moments. Dortmund started brightly, pinning us back in the early stages, and perhaps earlier in the season they would have been allowed to fashion more clear cut chances. As it was, they had much of the ball without seriously testing Szczesny. At the other end, we weren’t faring much better – the closest we came was when Walcott ran clear from Ramsey’s through ball, but the keeper came out sharply to clear the danger.

By half time, however, we had assumed control of the ball, helped in part by Dortmund losing two players, including the dangerous Gotze. After the break, we pushed forward with more purpose, and when the opening goal came, the scorer was no surprise – once again, Van Persie was in the right place at the right time to power a header low into the corner. But the goal wasn’t really about him – it owed everything to the craft and surprisingly sublime skill from Alex Song, whose driven run towards the left corner flag ended with a jinking piece of skill to bamboozle a pair of defenders, before picking out the captain with a pinpoint cross.

Before the goal, Song had been excellent in his usual defensive shielding role, and immediately after providing the killer moment, he reverted to what he knows best. Dortmund had to step out, knowing defeat was disastrous to their hopes, and they came again, leaving more space at the back for Walcott and Gervinho to exploit. The former was threatening, but it was the latter who should have wrapped things up, showing a delightful piece of skill but dummying the keeper when through on goal, only to hesitate and allow the defender to get back and dispossess him. I maintain that he will turn into a very productive player for us, but right now his end product is very hit and miss. Or very hit, miss, miss and miss.

When we did finally seal the game, and qualification, it was an old school goal reminiscent of Bould and Adams. Like in those days, it was a corner, flicked on at the near post by a big centre half for the captain to tuck home at the far, but in the modern incarnation it was Vermaelen and Van Persie with the critical touches. With news filtering through that Marseille were behind, we knew we would be winning the group with a game to spare.

Some of the player relaxed, Song and Djourou combining to give Dortmund a sloppy consolation with virtually the last kick of the game. Vermaelen and Szczesny blew their lids, a great sight for anyone who still believes we don’t care about clean sheets. We do. It took a small gloss off what was an impressive defensive display, particularly from Song, who is unrecognisable from the player we happily saw leave for Charlton on loan in his laughing stock days. How times change.

So a tough Champions League group has been successfully navigated. The champions of Greece and Germany have been dispatched, along with the dangerous Marseille, and all without needing a result from the tricky trip to Olympiakos. Now, we can rest and rotate during the manic December period, safe in the knowledge that Barcelona cannot be waiting in the first knockout round.

While our kids get their run out in Greece, three other Premiership teams will attempt to avoid the ignominy of joining Stoke, Birmingham, Fulham and that shower down the road in Europe’s secondary competition. Pretty much every pundit expected that to be us.

I hope Wenger feels smug today. He deserves to.

Remain the underdog, keep quiet, and have the last laugh

Analysis, Arsenal News 11 Responses »

Nov 232011

I see a lot of frustration brewing around how the media have been portraying Arsenal in recent weeks. After a couple of months of daily ‘crisis’ articles, many have been chasing other negative angles due to the team’s improved performances and results on the pitch. There was Van Persie’s contract (which still has nearly two years to run), Walcott’s contract (ditto), the ‘one man team’ nonsense, and finally the completely out of context claims that Wenger said he might leave at the end of the season.

On that note, does anyone else spot the irony that the press claim we’ll implode when Wenger leaves, just weeks after saying he was past it and should be replaced?

It is easy to get annoyed. After all, our last twelve games have produced an impressive 10-1-1 record, and even our much maligned defence is showing signs of tightening up, but despite that, there is still a negative overtone to almost every article we see. As an example, each Van Persie goal now guarantees an analysis along the lines of ‘totally reliant on him, they’ll plummet when he gets injured’. It is almost as if we should apologise for having a world class striker at the club. Do they think he is here by accident?

But take a step back for a moment, and realise that being the underdog, the team that no-one expects to succeed, is no bad thing. We’ve seen in recent years that the squad haven’t always handled expectations particularly well, so the longer the press refuse to talk us up, the longer we can carry on quietly working our way back up the table, slipping under the radar (in other words, we’ll be the anti-Spurs). We’re level on points with Chelsea and Liverpool, still in all four competitions, and could progress to the Champions League knockout stages tonight (while other English clubs are struggling to qualify). Some crisis.

The press have always taken a long time to come round to anything, good or bad. Only now are they beginning to realise that John Terry is slow, that Cech isn’t what he was, that Carragher and Gerrard’s best days are behind them. Likewise, they still haven’t noticed how solid Koscielny has become, or how effortlessly Arteta has fitted in. They even think Ramsey isn’t ready for first team action, despite assist after assist.

And it isn’t just Arsenal – they take ages to come round to any player. I remember it took Malouda about four months of brilliant performances in his second season at Chelsea before people realised he wasn’t as terrible as they thought. Outdated punditry views is nothing new – it is a cross between laziness that stops some of them from keeping their opinions up to date (here’s looking at you, Match of the Day), and a total refusal to back down on an opinion that has been proven wrong.

To bring it back to Arsenal, witness the analysis of Robin Van Persie. 31 goals in 29 league games in 2011 is a quite ridiculous record, the sort reserved for Messi and Ronaldo, who play for brilliant teams in a league containing an obscene disparity of quality between clubs. The Premiership is tighter, which makes the record even more impressive, and that is before you take into account that we haven’t had the best 2011 as a club.

But instead of focusing on the record breaking, they keep banging three drums. The first is the one man team garbage, which is ridiculously disrespectful to Ramsey and Walcott, who keep presenting chances on a plate to the Dutchman. Yes, he got both goals against Norwich at the weekend, but Vermaelen was the best player on the park by a distance. Any mention of that? Of course not.

The second is that Van Persie isn’t a natural striker. Really? The reason he gets so many goals is that his movement around the box is top notch, one of the key assets of being a ‘natural striker’. His finishing isn’t half bad either. To say he would be good in the Bergkamp role is probably true, but to say he should therefore play there is plainly stupid.

The final tired line is that he ‘is no leader’. Again – really? Aren’t we always told that the best leaders are those that lead by example? Those that the team look to for inspiration? Surely that makes him a more than adequate captain? I find English pundits have a massively outdated view on what being a captain actually is, as if shouting is all in entails. If you hadn’t noticed, the man they think should wear the armband – Vermaelen – isn’t a shouter either. He is quietly authoritative, and organises well, but he isn’t barking orders like Tony Adams once did. Yet he is clearly a good leader too – there are many different types.

A lot of the frustration comes from Match of the Day, where Hansen and Lawrenson are so painfully dinosaur-esque in their approach to punditry, harking back to the old days where flying tackles were okay (how many times have you heard them utter the phrase ‘nowadays, that is a yellow/red card’, as if ‘nowadays’ is so much worse?), managers shouted, captains shouted and everyone hoofed the ball past the ‘two banks of four’ to the big bloke up front. The irony is that a man most thought would make a terrible and annoying analyst – Gary Neville – is providing ten times the insight over on Sky, and is currently one of the best to listen to. Yes, I really did just say that.

But instead of getting angry about it, chuckle at their ignorance and move on. So what they that don’t give us a hope? So what that they think Koscielny is terrible, that Mertesacker’s 80 caps mean nothing, that they think we’ll have an exodus in the summer? Or that they think Spurs will finish above us? After all, we’ve heard so many of those lines before, and by May they are usually dismissed for another year, buried away as secretly as Harry Redknapp’s financial dealings.

Let them chuckle, let them taunt. As long as we have the last laugh, I couldn’t care less who is shouting loudest now.

Chelsea 3 Arsenal 5 – three days on, still feels as good

Arsenal News, Matches 6 Responses »

Nov 012011

Pinch, punch, first of the month and all that.

And pinching is something we’ve been doing a lot of since Saturday. Did we really go to Stamford Bridge and become the first side in the Premiership era (the twentieth year of it, no less) to score five times? Did we really come from behind twice at a ground that has caused us so much grief over the past five years? Did we really concede another late wonder goal but bounce back to win anyway? Have we really put in a run of eight wins in nine, after the doom and gloom around the club only a short while ago?

Best of all, did karma really hit John Terry so hard that his view of our winner was face down in the dirt?

While it is important to remember that it represented only three points, it was a truly extraordinary game, and the sort that gives players a remarkable amount of confidence. If they can score five at Stamford Bridge (and miss a bunch of other chances), then surely they can be dangerous anywhere? Whether it becomes a turning point remains to be seen, but it is the sort of epic affair we’ll be seeing for years to come. How many times have you turned Sky Sports Classics on, and watched Spurs 4 Arsenal 5? Add this one to the list.

Of course it wasn’t perfect – our defence was breached three times, and that could have doubled in the first five minutes, were Chelsea not so wasteful. But it would be churlish to focus on that after such an unexpected day, and it is telling when you read people speaking about the game in a purely negative light. Paul Parker, an awful writer at the best of times, and one who can never disguise his resentment of Arsenal, continued his internet trollish ways by focusing entirely on Arsenal’s defence, exactly one week after he said that United’s wasn’t that bad. The day they conceded six.

There is a reason I’m not linking to the article – it isn’t a serious piece of journalism, it is a classic case of trying to get hits by being outlandish, similar to when he wrote that Wenger should apologise for Shawcross because the Stoke player was ‘so upset’ after breaking Ramsey’s leg. There are times when intentions are painfully transparent. But it is true that positive assessment of Arsenal has been hard to come by – Match of the Day struggled as well, with Alan Hansen choosing to berate Chelsea and call it freakish, rather than dare give us any credit. Strangely, it was left to Gary Neville to provide the best analysis – impressive that a man who spent years in an intense rivalry with Arsenal is so willing to put it all aside in the name of sensible punditry. Many could learn from him.

The fact is that the positives enormously outweighed the negatives. As far as bad things to say, I can’t get much further than this:

In the first five minutes, we were all over the place.
Santos had a ‘mare in the first half.
Terry’s goal on the stroke of half time was poor.

Now compare that to the list of positives:

We created more chances than I can remember in years at Stamford Bridge.
Ramsey was superb in midfield, never better than his pass for our first.
Walcott had perhaps his best game in an Arsenal shirt. His goal was brilliant, but his pair of passes for the early misses by Gervinho and Van Persie were sensational. Cole could not handle him.
Van Persie scored a brilliant hattrick, the first by an away player at Chelsea since Kanu. That was a good day, too.
Koscielny was superb. One day the press might actually notice how good he has been.
Song controlled the midfield, and again showed his eye for a pass for Santos’ goal.
Speaking of the Brazilian, his second half was the complete opposite of his first – he was excellent.
We reacted to adversity well – twice behind, hit late on by a wonder strike, yet came back every time.
John Terry. Ha.

If anything, the team that has something to worry about is Chelsea. Three of the goals involved Cech being beaten at his near post, and Van Persie’s second saw him charge so far out to close the angle that he ended up outside his area. Nowhere have I seen this mentioned, despite thinking he was having an absolute nightmare at the time. Three years ago, I don’t think anyone would have questioned the assertion that he was amongst the best keepers in world football. Is that really still the case?

As for our reliance on one striker, at least we have a free scoring one. And for all the criticism of Chamakh, at least our misfiring forward didn’t cost us £50m.

I don’t want to focus on Chelsea, because they will put the day aside as a freak, and will probably bounce back just fine. The important thing is that we take this momentum forward, and prove our many many doubters wrong.

I might go and watch the highlights again. Why not, eh?

Marseille preview – form is not as bad as you might think

Arsenal News 1 Response »

Oct 192011

Well, this is strange. This poor blog has been so neglected in recent weeks that even sitting down to write feels a little alien. What have I missed? Well, in the time that I have been away, we lost to Spurs, had a two week international break in which I barely looked at Arsenal news (why would you, when everyone is so damn negative?) and then beat Sunderland at the weekend thanks to an inspired Robin Van Persie.

Ah, Robin Van Persie. The same man so many wanted us to get rid of a couple of seasons ago, because he was so injury prone and ‘could not be relied on’. Like Gael Clichy before him, who also suffered a sequence of entirely unrelated serious injuries early in his career, it always felt like it could eventually happen for the Dutchman. After all, most of the injuries were freak occurrences, and one-offs – it was never like Diaby, for example, whose hamstrings and groins have been tweaked and strained a ridiculous number of times. How painful would it have been to see him finally stay fit and perform like this for someone else?

I suspect the voices that called for Van Persie to be sold are the same ones who now criticise the fact we’ve given Vermaelen a new long-term contract, despite his own fitness travails. But the Belgian remains our best defender when fit, and is in the final two years of his contract. We would be mad not to sign him up – he is exactly what we miss when he is absent, and has the best years of his career ahead of him.

But enough of that – there is a rather crucial match tonight, the first of a double header against Champions League group-leading Marseille who, like us, have had an indifferent start to their league campaign, while looking far more impressive in Europe. Either side would happily take four points from this particular pair of matches, and as such I’d gladly take a point tonight.

We come into the game on better form that you might suspect. For all the doom and gloom, we have won four out of our last five matches, and our performances in Europe have been decent. Udinese were a tough nut to crack in the qualifiers, and coming away from Dortmund with anything was a cracking result. Yes, we looked wobbly at home to Olympiakos, but we were still the only English side to win that week, and our position is favourable when compared to that trio.

Tonight could be tough. Marseille appear to be more relaxed away from domestic competition, and as such their league issues are largely irrelevant. We may also rotate a little, with Arshavin likely to start after his impressive cameo at the weekend, while at some point Van Persie needs a rest, and that may come tonight. Chamakh should be comfortable playing in France again, but he is certainly a whole heap less threatening than our recent goalscoring centurion.

What is encouraging is that the defence is just beginning to show signs of promise. Szczesny is miles ahead of the ‘fun’ we had with Almunia and co last season, while Mertesacker had a terrific game at the weekend. Koscielny remains inconsistent, but I still rate him VERY highly, and with the imminent return of Vermaelen, we have a much stronger looking defensive spine. Santos has settled in well at left back, so you suspect the potential weakness is Jenkinson on the other flank, who puts in a devilish cross but needs to work hard on his defensive positioning. That isn’t a criticism – he’s a kid, we cannot expect any more.

Prediction for tonight? 1-1, with both sides pretty happy. Marseille would remain top, we would leapfrog them with a win at the Emirates. Fancy Arshavin to score.

Enjoy the game.