So there we have it, Arsenal are in the final of the FA cup. Again.
OK. not the most scintillating performance , but not half as bad as people like to say.
Quite how a team with 71% possession , twice as many efforts on goal, while committing half the number of fouls and hitting the wood work three times, can be seen as lucky. beats me.
When Arsene picks the team he has to consider everything. Players returning from injury have to be reintroduced. Otherwise an injury means they wont play until another injury lets them in. Players battling for a place must be given a chance to shine and keep match fit. Players need rest. Its not as simple as picking the best eleven.
Its fairly clear that the team plays better when Giroud plays, but it really is not as simple as just putting his name on the team sheet every game.
Would Arsene have wanted Debuchy to play 124 minutes in his first game back ? No ! But he is our best right-back, and he is fit and has to be brought back.
Credit has to go to Reading too. Every one of them to a man played like their life depended on it. They were set up to stop us flowing. and it worked. But its not like they offered much going forward. Because Arsenal didn’t win easily and with panache does not mean we played badly. That’s just not the case.
Musut Ozil was once again magnificent. Of course he was less impressive than Sanchez. But only because the pundits see what most fans also see. In the same way they saw Reading’s effort over effectiveness as a reason to think they deserved better.
Personally I’m not sure I like Ramsey on the right. But I don’t know enough to say its not the right thing. He seems to be playing the Ray Parlour role. That worked just fine, so perhaps Aaron will grow into it, like he as to every other possission he has been asked to play in.
Anyway, the final it is then ! Roll on Wembley.
Positively Arsenal 
The Newcastle fans were intriguing eddy – the boycott of Ashley among the season ticket holders and the fan who hated Fat Mike but could not bring himself to stop going to St James Park.
Touch of Hamlet about the debate
Not sure where I’d be if Ashley was in charge at the Ems, allegedly a money sucking leech, and that is only what his friends say. Hide of a rhino though.
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it was not ashley who forced out Pardew, the toon fans forced him out, just as they did with big fat sam, and lets not forget they had turned on sir bobby robson so much that he was dumped, ashley might be a cunt, he might not be, but where is the rule that an owner has to put his own money into a club, he has invested a ton of money buying the damn thing, but fans now expect every owner to do what the roman and the sheiks have done, and the reality is that the world just does not work like that. we have a fair few fans who think along the same lines, its a very childlike logic they have.
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Suit yourself eddy
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On a more general point though I doubt it was ” the Newcastle fans” who “forced out” Pardew.
As far as I recall he packed it in.
Whether a manager really fancies managing a club where each time you get a decent player he is flogged, then each Summer window you start in with a new crop from the French/Sp/Por etc lower leagues you would have to ask Pards – must be top notch not bothering to compete in the FA Cup each season as it is not a “priority”, as was the Europa Cup.
No I think Mr Ashley would probably strain my support.
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Still it might be all those deluded Geordies
Going back a bit like Spuds and their similar fraud the managers are expendable for the owners, the regime lives on.
The cockroach is an almost perfectly equipped creature to survive and thrive
And then one ponder the Newcastle results, annual accounts that is.
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anicol the newcastle fans had a sustained campaign to get rid of Pardew,
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Positively Arsenal @Blackburngeorge · 4h 4 hours ago
There are people calling themselves Gooners, trying to post in the blog,that want us to lose the final so Arsene gets stick. I shit you not
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Michael Gooner @MickTheGooner · 1h 1 hour ago
Brendan Rodgers has spent £212.5m as Liverpool manager in 3 years.
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so Wenger explained why Debuchy played instead of Bellerin –
“Bellerin has played recently with some ankle problems and Debuchy was back so I thought it was a good moment to do it.
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http://www.arsenal.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=552789#yoursay
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Andrew,
His shenanigans north of the wall must be causing you to giggle a bit too.
They do for me.
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Last year I remember reading that it was the choice of Wigan not to have the Wembley pitch watered. I think Hull chose likewise, and both games saw The Arsenal make heavy weather of things. I imagine it was possibly the same on Saturday.
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Convenient while it might be to “blame” Newcastle fans for Pardew’s departure eddy the fans had not taken to him from the outset of his four years at the club
From the man himself no inkling that it was the fans, or even Ashley, that pushed him on to take the Palace offer. As he says it was a job he performed under the “difficult” financial constraints imposed by Ashley i.e. he flogs the best players if he gets a chance.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2901998/Alan-Pardew-quit-Newcastle-job-difficult-financial-constraints-owner-Mike-Ashley.html
To be fair the shambles that Toon have become since January probably mean that Sissoko and Cisse are stuck on Tyneside for the next few months.
And who will be the next lucky post holder when Carver is disposed of, or more accurately if you watched any yesterday’s game put out of his misery ?
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North of the wall DC – as in the West End and Govan Town ?
A bit like Leeds I don’t really understand how a big football club, loyal fanbase, in Rangers case 49,000 bluesnoses through the gates season after season, TV cash, solid commercial revenue and sponsors, can fuck itself up season after season after season after season.
ln any business you have the odd total disaster that pushes you to the brink of ruin but Rangers are still trying to recover from incompetence and wrongdoing from 10+ years ago, and Leeds from Ridsdale and his insanity at the start of the century.
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New post is up.
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Andrew and Eddy: As a farawy observer, comparing Newcastle and Rangers is a bit like oranges vs apples. But one similarity is that they are both big clubs in terms of the quantity and quality of their fanbase. But in both case the owners are frittering the goodwill the supporters bring to the balance sheet, unlike say Arsenal. How and why they managed to do this should make an interesting study.
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