Hello and welcome to this week’s round-up.
First up in a busy week is the news that Andrei Arshavin is likely to be in his final season at Arsenal. With so few games left to play, it is likely that we’ve seen our little Russian dynamo in an Arsenal shirt for the last time. Arshavin accomplished some great things at the club such as the 4 goals in Anfield and the Barca winner and will leave a lasting impression on many fans. Anyone in the comments making a joke about him leaving a lasting impression on his sofa will be banned for life.
In the same interview, Arsene Wenger mentioned Vermaelen’s remarkable response to being, in the kindest possible terms, ‘rotated’. In a rather unsubtle pick-me-up from the boss before rejoining the team, Vermaelen’s attitude received great praise. He is understood to now be ‘facing the right direction’.
It’s fairly uncommon for football players to say just the right thing but it happened this week. I tried to think of comparisons to make it sound better: ‘It’s like your wife endeavouring to emulate your favourite chef’, or, ‘It’s like your girlfriend taking the time to master the techniques of a famous porn-star’. However, nothing sounds better than when the Ox expressed his desire to learn from Tomas Rosicky. A short, montage-heavy, training video will go into production once terms are agreed with Tomas for the Miyagi role.
Arsene said the C word! Ahead of the Norwich game, Arsene Wenger said that it was important to continue to start games in a confident way. He spoke of how early leads force teams out of their defencive huddle and force them to leave some room for Wengerball…
83 Minutes in and we’re a goal down to a poor, albeit industrious, Norwich side. Unable to resist Olivier Giroud’s sheer sexual presence, Kei Kamara had to have him and he didn’t care where it happened. Luckily for us, the linesman had similar designs on the Frenchman and was incessant when he saw Kamara wrestle the object of everyone’s affections to the ground. Arteta scored the penalty and the whole of the Arsenal community exhaled in unison. Some great play from Alex Oxlade Chambicky set up Giroud to get in front of the former spud, Bassong, to tap home and take the lead. Fabianski then made a good save with his legs to deny Delia’s dipshits an undeserved point. The mayhem continued when Podolski dragged the ball out from under his feet and launched it into the bottom corner from just outside the area. 3-1 to the Arsenal and we’re in third place.
In the aftermath of the win, Arsene Wenger spoke about Lukas Podolski and his new training regime. Podolski has primarily been working on his centre-forward play, which is bound to increase the sulking German’s value when he is sold in the summer. Recent pictures show just how happy he must be to be leaving and the manager is giving him special tuition, which brings about one obvious explanation. Kroenke is obviously selling him like he did with Na$ri.
Then came the game against a robust Everton side who have a sneaky eye on our Champions’ League spot. In a battle where successful consecutive passes were at a premium, there were only a few chances for The Gunners to clinch victory. The best of which fell to Olivier Giroud from an excellent Aaron Ramsey cross. Giroud was first to get there but only in time to stretch out a leg and get any kind of attempt away. It went wide. Mikel Arteta made an excellent run to break the Everton defence and Cazorla duly found him, but good defending from Distin, combined with a slight sense of panic in the unknown, prevented the skipper from getting a shot or pass away. The Arsenal performance was spirited and tough and those are not traits many people would associate with Wenger’s men. They would, however, say those things about Stoke so maybe that’s not all bad.
If anyone deserved to win the game, it was Arsenal.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading.
Up the Arsenal!
Positively Arsenal 
Robust indeed
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Morning everybody!
Nice one B7 – it occurred to me that a B7-stylee sideways weekly round up based on our competitors antics could be quite amusing. No doubt there would be paragraphs that would require little amendment from week to week. Eg, Manure’s weekly penalty/dubious goal would require literally no alteration whatsoever (ref: last night, previous game, the one before that and so on and so on).
The other ‘banker’ paragraph would doubtless reference the latest howler from our beloved referees. For example, simple multiple failures to apply even the most basic of rules/abandonment of ANY attempt at consistency (eg, any game featuring Manure, blah de blah).
Am I alone in not feeling the joys of spring at the news of Cardiff’s promotion to the EPL? Stoke Mk II, anyone …?
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Football wise Malky’s boys are likely to be robust, I think that is the polite term. I see the bookies have installed them as favourites for the drop though admittedly because they are first promoted. Cardiff is however a proper city. If they could scuffle a couple of seasons and put their basketcase finances in order they could develop into a genuine big club
And again B7 good roundup
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For a comparison how about the wife giving her husband the good news:
“Your dick’s bigger than all of your friends.”
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And I just read your post on Denilson last night Shotta – my Goodness that was spot on
If anyone hasn’t read it give yourself a treat
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Thanks for the props Mr Nicoll and my other peeps. Most of all I don’t want Passenal wandering away again. This is home.
Hey B7, I want some of what you’ve been drinking. That is some special coffee. Ha, Ha, Ha!
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prio to the arrival of mert, i always want arsenal to sign quick agresive and no-nonsence defenders. that was why verm and kos were my favourites in our defence. but per has given me a new perspective. if you can read the game very well then you will know what your opponent is up to. that is the strength of mert.
if verm can cut down the way he gives away dangerous fouls, expecially when contesting for aerial balls, he will become the world class player that many of us want him to be.
so if we want to bring in another defender in the summer, i will want us to bring one with the qualities of mert so as to be able to rotate mert as well.
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one of the talking last week was that walcott was in offside position when he recieved the ball from giroud before making the assist. walcott still had to elude two Players before passing the ball to poldi. and poldi himself still had to control the ball and turn around before shooting from the edge of the area. it was not a simple case of offside and tap in.
but yesterday the traitor score what is actually an offside goal. a tap in from an offside position and no one is crying over that.
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I think its important that people can voice their opinions without fear of being labeled negative.
If someone disagrees with me ,or anyone else ,they should be free to speak up.
If someone was bringing the general tone of the blog down or trolling then we would be concerned.
But lets not drive people away or live in fear of people not coming back if we disagree with them.
The mere fact that someone has been admitted to the site in the first place ,indicates that they are of a positive mind.But there are still degrees of positivity.
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Shotta was saying a few days ago about the complete bias in the Guardian. I knew they wrote articles to the extent of mocking us last year. I looked at their match report for manure’s match last night and there was not one mention of the word offside. Even the BBC acknowledged that judas was offside.
I know that talking about the negative/trash sellers, ignorants/shitheads can sound like moaning too, but we have to name and shame(if that is possible) them.
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No One Crying Layksite ? You didn’t see Fat Sam Allardyce on the box last night then – He really did have tears welling up in those bulldog eyes as he complained about the linesman making a blatantly wrong offside decision that may have cost him his livelihood and West Ham £70-£80 million.
Sam I think it is fair to say was just about water skiing on the tide of tears about to gush at the shocking unfairness of it all
Marvellous really – every Arsenal fan must enjoy it
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Verm and Kosc are footballers and could probably do a decent job wherever you put them on the field, they can control the ball well, pass, shoot
Per on the other hand is a 100% defender – he does one thing very very well
The combination of a footballer and a defender works
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Nice one number 7!, careful with that Arshavin stuff though….. Like Andrew I’m underwhelmed by the promotion of the welsh Stoke,it looks like Steve Bruce’s Hull are gonna join em, doesn’t exactly get the ticker racing does it?
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rambo’s cross was great, but the only way giroud could have scored was to go in with his studs. overall final balls werent there.
disappointed with fulham. bet they will now show up on sat.
everton plays everyone else, but they look knackered, and will be even more knackered, so not expecting favours there.
we are on our own now. 5 cup finals.
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pedantic george at 11:24 am
Works both ways George. Give and take. Swings and roundabouts. That is life. I hope Arshavin23 is willing to accept that.
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george why do people have difficulty in understanding what wenger means when he says 4th place is like a trophy?
he means the money …i think even a ten year old would get it..so why cant 30 and 40 and 50 year olds get it? whats wrong ?
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im giving battles in f365 with their journalists ..who the hell are they and who gave them licence to operate a site on sports? are there no checks from authorities? are they even journalists? the media have turned into savage trolls.
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Moyes / Gollum was really predictable this week, I expect them to lose to Gazprom in Chelsea too.
An additional report on ‘incompetent’ referees who wouldn’t last five minutes on stage at the Hackney Empire during the panto season could be fun. If they want to take the piss then they deserve to have the piss ripped out of them. Pardon me.
It is just a little disturbing how little protection England’s No.10 receives. Not good.
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hunter13 at 12:39pm
“…why do people have difficulty in understanding what wenger means when he says 4th place is like a trophy?”
Because people are slow to recognize profound revolutionary change. Football is now part of global, corporate entertainment industry. We lament the greed and the excesses that come with the unregulated capital flooding many leagues including the BPL but the sport has also been revolutionized in terms of technical performances, attention to science, stadia quality and most importantly the sporting spectacle. At the pinnacle is the Champions League, whether you like it or not. Failure to qualify and to participate means at minimum missing out on significant riches which can put a club at significant competitive disadvantage to its peers. IMO the growing gap between Lpool and Man Utd is partially accounted by the scousers repeated failure in recent years to qualify for the UCL. In the Darwinian world of corporate capital, it is self-evident that at the elite level you participate in the UCL or die.
They can all laugh at Wenger’s 4th is like a trophy but there will be hell to pay if we miss out.
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but surely shotta they are above the age of ten to know what he means when he says it. right? so it must be something else.
when arsenal sits securely at 4th its all about lack of ambition and how getting to that 4th spot is nothing to write home about. however when the same 4th place is at risk the same people who said it was nothing to write home about come out attacking the manager and club in new ways.
there is no consistency…
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i have coem to the conclusion that the concept of democracy is wildly misinterpreted..democracy means that you are free to choose/vote who regulates your society ..it is about having a choice of a representative. it is not about coming out and saying/expressing/ opiniating about whatever comes out your arse with no sense of accountability. thats is not democracy that is lunacy and anarchy…anyone saying and doing whatever he she wants under the false pretext of freedom of expression
when lineker wrote his crap about wenger leaving mportant players back at london for the bayern game in munich i got on his back and demanded he took responsibility for what he wrote. His reply was all about ” if you dont like it dont read it”. No such thying as an apology for the lies he wrote, No such thing as an accountability. As if saying “i can write whatever the fuck i want, stir shit up and excuse myself to noone” which is how tyrrants and dictators operate….
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so who can those who exercise their profession and roles within society in a thoroughly non-democratic manner…claim that what they do or say is their democratic right of freedom to express themselves…????
they are shit. they know nothing.
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“when arsenal sits securely at 4th its all about lack of ambition and how getting to that 4th spot is nothing to write home about. however when the same 4th place is at risk the same people who said it was nothing to write home about come out attacking the manager and club in new ways”
Could of come fifth in ’10, could of come fifth after the Spuds ate some native cuisine from Middlessex. If the Arsenal come fifth this season you get the impression that the bile merchants will feel vindicated. Class? I don’t think so.
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they move the goalsposts fins they surely do…and what gets me is that you rpove them wrong ..objectively you win..a third eye wathcing but give you victory for your arguement but because they hold position of influence( forimg public opinion) they then hide behind thier “freedom” to express whatever the hell they want no matter how insulting or wrong…
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i was happy that manure dropped 2 points yesterday. all the talk of arsenal players forming a guard of honour for manure at emirates has failed. all we have to do now is beat them and deny them of the joy of winning the league on our ground. hopefully they do that at the bridge because we need them to beat the chavs.
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I’m not sure I care about the opinion formers Hunter. If someone wants to believe that most of the refs we see at Home do not behave as they have been statistically proven to do (a famous older study, not by an Arsenal fan!) because of incompetence then so be it.
People moaned into the vacuum when video was first used in cricket. When neutral umpires were first used (our dare you impinge upon the good character of our umpires: outrageous!). Some of the arguments used were as regressive as those we hear in football. Progress: it can be slow. With FUFA busy milking the holy cow it’ll be even slower.
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another good review of the week B7, the pressure is now on for the fulham game but I think we are playing well and we should be able to cope however I think it will be close and after losing 3-0 to the chavs they will be up for it.
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pedantic george
April 18, 2013 at 11:24 am
I just want to be clear that I did not mean to come across as precious. I recognise with a cooler head today that maybe I over reacted because A23 pushed my buttons by trotting out a familiar refrain. My reference to a break was that I recognised what was going on with me. It’s always good to take a step back every now and then to regain balance. I have no intention of walking away permanently because I had a difference of opinion with someone.
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arsene says their is no return ticket for alex song.
i really pity the guy. it is easy to talk of winning trophy but does it always bring you happiness? wenger please save this guy from his pain.
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While I enjoyed Song while he was here and he developed into a good player I can’t see a way back
If his main job was as a defensive midfielder and shield to our back four it does not seem he has been missed at all – unless I am reading the figures wrong we are better defensively since he has gone
And if he was retrieved what message does that send to younger players – Coquelin most obviously – who have stayed and worked hard to earn their chance ?
Sorry Alex I think the bus has left
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Anicloo5,I have been snooping
It would have cost £315 k pw to hold RVP to the last year of his £75k wages plus £24 million divided by 52
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lol when somebody says “I thought you were made of sterner stuff”, I think he hit me where I needed to be hit :|.
I never dissed Giroud. I never said he wouldn’t serve us well next season.
He works terribly hard for the team and that for me is quite enough. Other small details will work out as long he continues to do that. It is his first season after all and these small details correct themselves after regular game time. (small details include his passing, his anticipation for the low crosses, his movement inside box which I think needs to be more dynamic – I think he is too static). I play football and I generally like to believe I know what I am talking about :P.
I am not one who points at people saying “you said this, this and this and so on”. I can go on about people wanting to bring another midfielder and another defender and make it sound like they don’t believe in our existing midfield and defence respectively. (I believe we should not change our midfield or defence except for maybe bringing back Song. I don’t mind discussing why bringing back Song is indeed a good idea imo). I don’t do all that because I think its wrong.
The only reason I decided not to post again because I felt somehow I was responsible in shifting the general mood to anything but positive.
I am terribly sorry if you think I wrote badly about Denilson. I only wrote what I perceived the truth to be as I followed his career keenly from the day he arrived. I have always had a thing for brazilians. I was disappointed hugely at a lot things he did playing for Arsenal but I always supported him when he was playing for Arsenal as I thought he was learning and thats always fine by me. (btw I was praying for Arsene to sub Denilson in when Song got that early red card against Barca :P). Let me say this in the end. He was hoping to go to some club in Spain or Italy after his stint at Arsenal. He forced himself out hoping to go there and not drop down a couple of notches by going back to brazil. He did in fact try to make a scene when he left but being the insignificant mole that he was he was never taken seriously. But lets not get into all that again. I am happy if someone has a different notion regarding his antics.
Well I said what I said.
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anicoll5
April 18, 2013 at 8:42 pm
Who is saying bring back Song and fit him into the team straight away. Bring him back only if he agrees to fight for his place. I am sure Coq or anyone else will always welcome that. Even if they don’t they should.
Song is a highly versatile player. He makes that Striker for CB substitution possible as he can well hold his own as a CB. In Fact he can well hold his own in any of the thirds.
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If being positive means we cant have debate then I think it needs to be redefined.
No harm done then?
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A snip at twice the price George – how could those fooooools not have the slightest idea how to run a football club
Now back to the play what I wrote
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Arshavin23 .Even the greatest of Song enthusiasts could not convinge me that he could play in the final third .And his assists were mainly the lob-wedge to Judas.
He is not a bad player though .
If his attitude problems were nothing more than speculation .Yes,he would be a very good squad player .
But that is what he is now.Would he be any happier if he came back to Arsenal to warm our bench?
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As strongly as I feel about Arsenal or Football in general, a discussion about these things can never do me or anyone any harm. Simples.
Life goes on mate.
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I was responding to the suggestion on layksite – who did you think I was responding too ?
Other than your enthusiasm I don’t see any reason why we would take Song back – we have performed better with out him
And your idea is to take him back on some sort of squad basis ! Why ? We are not short of midfielders or at least midfielders as good and Song
I think he would be better trying his luck on a new pitch – clean break
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He would never be happy warming our bench. Thats true.
I believe Song can fight and be a starter again at Arsenal. Although Arteta is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, Song will provide very good cover and make rotation possible. As I said he will add another dimension.
MIDFIELDERS
2 Abou Diaby
7 Tomas Rosicky
8 Mikel Arteta
10 Jack Wilshere
16 Aaron Ramsey
19 Santi Cazorla
22 Francis Coquelin
23 Andrey Arshavin
Take 23 out and bring back 17 :).
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Pity to see a player – any player – condemned on the basis of the content of the Daily Mail
Baaaaa
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Song to Arsenal is pure speculation as of now.
He will most probably play for Barca one more year. Arsene himself said so. If he wants to leave after that, I just think it is not something not worth discussing about.
Arteta would have been 33 by then right?
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Song is not speculation
Song is a former player
And will remain in that category.
His big chance came
Or so he thought
How common is that ?
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Seems like we have reached yet another impasse then.
good golly.
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By the way 23 don’t hold back on all your knowledge about Denilsons plans for a move to a club in Spain and/or Italy and how he failed in his cunning plot
The insignificant mole
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Excuse me if I do hold it, for now.
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Impasse ?
As in Song has about as much chance of rejoining Arsenal as Stephen Hawking has ?
Real 50/50 innit
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?!
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“I think he’s a quality player and sometimes the players have to persist when it doesn’t go well and not change their mind too soon. My personal advice for him would be to give it another go and after two seasons he can still make a decision.”
Why is Arsene talking about him then?
How does one make inferences dear Anicol?
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If it helps Anicol.
I am sorry for everything. Everything right back to being born. Really.
haha, the righteousness.
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Andrew
Yes, welcome to the 3rd Welsh Team in the premiership, Swans and FC Bale.
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