Arsenal

6th December 2015: Wenger and Ramsey on Sunderland win

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. So another weekend of Premier League football comes to a close and looking back, it was almost the perfect set of results from an Arsenal perspective.

Manchester City and Liverpool lost, Manchester United and Tottenham drew, whilst we managed to beat Sunderland despite having to come to terms with a much-changed line-up because of a spate of injuries to key components of our first-choice selection.

I would revel a little more in Chelsea’s hilarious defeat at home to Bournemouth but a) the Blues are in a relegation battle, not the title race and b) I genuinely expect them to lose every match they play between now and when Jose Mourinho gets handed his p45. When they evade defeat, it comes as more of a shock these days …

Anyway, moving on from London’s worst, to the capital’s top-flight finest, and Arsene Wenger has been talking about his pre-match nerves before yesterday’s game at Emirates stadium and hailing his side’s victory as ‘pivotal’, telling Arsenal Player:

In my mind I was a little bit more nervous than usual because I felt it was a pivotal game. It was our first game without the injured players and we absolutely had to win. We played against a difficult team who were well organised and good on the break, so all the ingredients were there for a disappointing result. Because we hadn’t won for three games people would have said we were in a crisis, so it was important to get the win. We were a bit edgy, a bit nervous, in the first half but in the second half we played with more freedom, fluency and incisiveness which is how we won the game. It was a tough one and if you look at the results in the Premier League it was like that. It’s been a good day for us, because we have won the game and that makes helps us prepare for Olympiacos. Secondly it puts us in an interesting position again and that’s all positive. The squad that was out there for Sunderland – the good news is that we won and that we don’t have any injuries. It makes it obvious for the media to guess who will go to Olympiacos.

Meanwhile, Aaron Ramsey, who marked his return to central midfield with a goal and an assist, discussed the win over Sunderland, the title race, and surprise league-leaders Leicester City, when he spoke to reporters yesterday, saying:

It was very important to get the win after losing one game and drawing another and it was important to get back to winning ways and close the gap on the top and it was nice to do it at home in front of the fans. It (the title race) is really close at the moment. Teams are taking points off each other so it is going to be tight all the way through and it is important to keep ourselves in the race for this busy time and into the New Year and it was a good way to start ahead of December. It felt really good today. I feel a lot more comfortable and it (playing in the middle) suited my game a lot better, I could time my runs into the box and get on the end of things and I could have had two or three goals but at the end of the day I’m happy. It is quite a surprise Leicester are there but full credit to them, they have been exceptional but it is important for ourselves and what we have done today.

A lot was made of Ramsey’s re-stationing in the middle in the build-up to the game and although I felt the team stuttered and failed to find the kind of fluency we’ve become accustomed to seeing from Arsenal these last 12 months or so, that’s to be expected as the balance of the team readjusts.

A bit brief this evening but that’s all for tonight folks.

See you next week.

5th December 2015: Win over Sunderland sends Arsenal second

Posted on by TremendArse

Saturday night salutations. We secured our first Premier League win in four today, as goals by Joel Campbell, Olivier Giroud and Aaron Ramsey helped us to a 3-1 win over Sunderland at Emirates stadium to lift us up to second in the table.

I didn’t catch the opening half-an-hour of the action, thanks to a failed ignition coil in my car which resulted in me having to drive at Per Mertesacker-pace as I returned home from the shops, but from what I’ve read and heard, that wasn’t such a bad thing as the visitors enjoyed the better of the opening third of the match.

Just as I’d found a stream and settled down, Mesut Ozil picked up possession and sliced Sunderland’s defence wide open with a perfectly-weighted through ball on the left, to allow Campbell to guide home our opener without breaking stride after 33 minutes. Apparently, the Costa Rican had begun the game on the right but had swapped flanks with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain shortly before scoring, so it was a timely switch of position to say the least.

From the 15 minutes or so of the first-half I saw, Sunderland were far more adventurous than I had anticipated before the match and drew level on the stroke of half-time as Giroud found the net at the wrong end, clumsily slicing his attempted clearance into his own net following a Sunderland free-kick from our right. It was unfortunate for the Frenchman if I’m honest, with one of their players stepping over the delivery, leaving Giroud with little time to adjust his footing.

Thankfully for the striker and us, he made amends by heading home our second just past the hour mark from a left-wing cross by the typically-industrious Ramsey. After that, Sunderland looked dangerous and created a few openings as the game swung from end to end and both sides gave the ball away with regularity in midfield, but we settled the contest in stoppage time when substitute Calum Chambers fired in a cross-shot from the right and the ball eventually fell to Ramsey who scored via a deflection off their keeper from close-range.

Cue a little hop, skip and jump from Arsene Wenger on the touchline as the Gunners leapfrogged both Manchester City and Manchester United, who lost and drew respectively today, in going second in the table behind an annoyingly consistent Leicester City, who swept aside Swansea thanks to a hat-trick by Riyad Mahrez.

After the game, the boss discussed the game as well as the surprise league-leaders Leicester, telling the BBC:

We started a bit nervous and edgy in the first half. We were unlucky to come in at 1-1, so I was positive. I told the players they still had 45 minutes to win the game, and play with more pace and different angles. You see this Premier League is a battle. Sunderland played a dangerous game on the break. It could have been one of those days, but we kept our determination and the mental aspect was good. We have lost players in the heart of our game, so we had to find a balance again. It took us time to get going. [Premier League leaders] Leicester have been very impressive. The best you can do is to win games, and hope that they drop points, but that is not happening. We go to Olympiakos in midweek, which Leicester don’t do, so they have an advantage in that way too.

I have to say, as much as I’ve been impressed by the Foxes this season, I really can’t see them keeping up this form for the rest of the season. So in terms of the title race, I think it was far more important that City lost, United drew and Tottenham also dropped points today, because I think those teams will eventually prove the bigger threat to both our title and top-four hopes by the end of the season.

Time will tell obviously, but for now, we can stay upbeat, despite all our injury woes, as we look ahead to our crucial midweek date with Olympiacos in Greece.

Til tomorrow.

4th December 2015: Premier League Preview – Ramsey’s return to centre stage

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. We’ll get a first glimpse of a reconfigured Arsenal when we host Sunderland in the 3pm kick-off tomorrow, as we adjust to life without the injured Santi Cazorla and Alexis Sanchez for the foreseeable future.

Taking centre-stage in midfield alongside Mathieu Flamini, will no doubt be Aaron Ramsey, and for the Welshman, it’s a chance to start showing why he deserves to be first pick in the middle of the park, even when everyone is fit again. He’s a different player to Cazorla of course, but what Aaron perhaps lacks in ball control, passing and vision compared to the Spaniard, he can make up for through his greater stamina, goal-getting capabilities and overall dynamism.

The team will need to adjust, either by playing more directly overall, or ensuring Mesut Ozil drops a little deeper to dictate our play in Cazorla’s absence. I read somewhere that no two players in the Premier League have passed to one another more than Cazorla and Ozil, with the Spaniard assisting the German’s assists, as it were. Kind of like Alexander Hleb used to do for Cesc Fabregas several years ago.

Yet when Ozil first arrived at Arsenal near the start of the 2014-15 campaign, the player he seemed to ‘click’ with more than any other was actually Ramsey, and that period coincided with the Welshman enjoying the best form and goal-scoring run of his career to date.

At the time Mikel Arteta was chief distributor alongside Ramsey in the middle, with Ozil ahead of them, so it won’t be quite the same, but if they start to combine as they did in that spell, we might not miss Cazorla as much we think. Ball circulation remains my main concern, as Flamini’s more Gennaro Gattuso than Andrea Pirlo, which is why I’m expecting a slightly deeper Ozil to pick up our Santi-less slack.

In term’s of replacing Sanchez’s qualities, Alex Oxlade Chamberlain needs to start showing the kind of form he did in pre-season and the Community Shield, because to be completely honest, he’s been awful by his standards when given an opportunity to play so far this season.

The boss said a little while ago that the Ox was too critical of himself but he needs to banish the self-doubt and produce what he has shown he’s capable of, which is being a nightmare for opposition fullbacks and an energetic, effervescent, penetrative, goal threat. He also needs to put in the sort of work-rate Sanchez does and show more defensive awareness.

The other options on the left are Joel Campbell and Theo Walcott, although my guess would be that Theo will be eased back into competition with a place on the bench tomorrow. We should be at full strength at the back, which at least gives us a solid base on which to build a slightly new style/system, given the changes in personnel compared to the majority of the season so far.

I’d say my overriding feeling about the team right now is anxiety tinged with excitement. I’m worried by our big-name absences but excited by what the likes of Ramsey and the Ox might produce. And Arsene Wenger highlighted the fact Arsenal remain close to the top of the table, despite being without a win in the league in three matches, and suggested our injury woes were ‘a challenge’ to the rest of the squad to show we can cope. He said:

We have gone through a little bit of a bad spell in recent games, but we are two points off the top. The great opportunity for us is that, despite that bad spell, we are very close. That’s why it’s important that we keep our confidence and our determination very high, and start winning again. It’s always a disappointment to lose players at an important moment of the season. But on the other hand, it’s a great challenge for the team and a great opportunity to show that we are ready for a fight and can deal with it.

The boss also discussed the Black Cats and the impact of their new manager Sam Allardyce, saying:

He has made them much more solid defensively, and much more difficult to beat. That is always very important when a team has a lack of confidence. With Sam Allardyce, you know that you will be confronted with a resilient team, who are quick on the break. They used that well against Crystal Palace for example, when I saw the game, and they have made results recently.

Getting the first goal is always important in games against teams like Sunderland, even more so when they’re managed by arch-pragmatists like Allardyce, because it forces them to come forward once in a while, as opposed to spending the whole game in their own half, time-wasting, spoiling, fouling and hoping for a lucky break from a set-piece to win them the game.

So a fast start and an early goal would be perfect and set us up nicely to hit them for six, which would send us top after Man City succumb to Stoke, United get hammered at home by West Ham, and Swansea burst high-flying Leicester’s bubble thanks to a Jonjo Shelvey-inspired supershow …

Back after the game.

COYG!

3rd December 2015: Arsenal send Dead Snake to scout Porto teen Ruben Neves

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Boa tarde. With the January transfer window on the horizon and Arsenal now just one injury away from having to play Ken Friar as our defensive midfielder, I suppose it’s inevitable transfer links to players from all over the place will begin to burgeon like Diego Costa’s waistline during the off-season.

Supposed interest from the Gunners in Porto’s 18 year old central midfielder Ruben Neves has been reported several times since the summer, but today, an article in Portuguese publication O Jogo claims our former winger Luis Boa Morte has been to watch the teenager on Arsenal’s behalf and that a move next month is on the cards.

For a bit of background, Neves is currently enjoying his second full season with Porto’s first-team, having scored and been named man-of-the-match on his full debut in his club’s opening league fixture of last term. Aged just 17 years and five months at the time, that strike made him his club’s youngest ever league goalscorer. This season, he’s broken another record, becoming the youngest-ever player to captain a side in the Champions League, when, aged 18 years and 221 days, he helped Porto to a 2-0 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv a couple of months ago.

Christian Tello, on loan at Porto from Barcelona, has likened Neves’ style of play to that of Sergio Busquets, whilst the youngster has also drawn comparisons from some quarters to his compatriot Joao Moutinho. If I’m honest, I haven’t seen him play, aside from a few short YouTube highlights, but judging by his standing in Portugal and the fact he’s reportedly being tracked by most of Europe’s leading clubs, he must be quite a talent.

Having dug around a little online, his standout qualities seem to be his maturity, despite the tender years, as well as his passing, tactical intelligence and aggression. At 18, he’s still got growing to do both in terms of his physique and his overall footballing ability but perhaps he’s the perfect age to share the defensive midfield role with Francis Coquelin.

No matter how good Neves already is, were he to make the switch to north London, he’d learn not only from one of the best managers in the world for young players in Arsene Wenger, but he’d also benefit from working alongside arguably the best out-and-out defensive midfielder on the planet right now in Coquelin. Okay not right now, because he’s done his knee ligaments, but you know what I mean. And yes, that’s how highly I rate Francis.

Neves has a contract with Porto that runs until June 2019, with a release clause of 40 million euros, so if we really, really want him, we can in theory have him, provided we cough up the requisite cash. That’s the good news.

The perhaps not-so-good is that his agent is Jorge Mendes, who Arsene recently revealed he’s never dealt with since narrowly losing out on signing another of his clients, a certain Cristiano Ronaldo, 12 years ago. That said, the boss didn’t rule out future deals with Mendes, suggesting he’s never shown real interest in any other Mendes-managed players since.

The other issue is the likelihood of fierce competition for Neves’s services from other clubs, including Spain’s big two, who you’d imagine would have a far greater pull for a Portuguese player than us. In a way then, this coming January might actually represent our best chance of buying him given how interest will surely only heighten from elsewhere if he continues to progress as a player at his current rate.

There’s also the fact that Porto’s president is on record as saying:

We would like to keep him (Neves) at FC Porto, as a kind of Joao Pinto. That is, he was a symbol and legend of the progress of the club for several generations. I never want him to leave Porto.

With Neves responding:

To hear the president say that he wants to make me a symbol of the club? It’s fantastic. This made me feel very proud. I am under contract until June 2019 and, at the moment, I am only thinking about the club achieving its goals.

‘At the moment’. It’s still all speculation of course, but at the very least, I think we can add Neves’ name to the list of possible defensive midfield purchases alongside the likes of his compatriot William Carvalho, Barcelona’s Sergi Samper, Bayer Leverkusen’s Lars Bender and Sevilla’s Grzegorz Krychowiak, having had to scrub off Geoffrey Kondogbia and Morgan Schneiderlin after they changed clubs last summer.

Elsewhere, the boss ‘updated’ us on team news via the official site, revealing Laurent Koscielny and Theo Walcott “could both make the squad” for Saturday’s game against Sunderland, Kieran Gibbs will be available but how long Alexis Sanchez, Mikel Arteta and Santi Cazorla are out for is still unknown.

I guess we might get more information at the boss’ pre-game press conference tomorrow, as well as his thoughts on lots of other stuff, maybe even Ruben Neves.

Back on Friday.

2nd December 2015: Cazorla woe, Monreal on London and Gabriel talks Wembley

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. Although not yet confirmed by the club, widespread reports today claim Santi Cazorla’s knee injury will keep him out of action for ‘at least the next three months’.

There’s not much more to add really, given the news is far from unexpected and I’ve gone over what our Santi-less options are over the last couple of days.

All I will say is that Aaron Ramsey now needs to really step up in the Spaniard’s absence and prove he’s worthy of playing there long-term, by helping us win enough games to sustain our title challenge for the rest of the season. One man’s misery can be another’s opportunity, or something.

Moving on from our injury woes and onto something a little more positive now, and Nacho Monreal has been speaking with the Arsenal Weekly podcast about how he’s settled into life in London following his move from Malaga almost two years ago. He said:

Everything feels right. I can say that I feel at home on and off the pitch. If you don’t feel good off the pitch and in life in general, obviously you can’t give 100 per cent. However, at the moment, I love England, I love London and I love my team-mates so everything is positive. When I arrived here I knew that the first thing I had to do was learn English because, if you want to speak to your team-mates, the staff and anyone here, you need to learn the language. It was difficult for me because I’m very bad with different languages but I am trying. Mikel, Santi and Hector were very helpful for me because I didn’t speak English when I arrived, I didn’t understand anything, so every time I had a problem or didn’t understand something they explained it to me. Even in the evenings, sometimes you have nothing to do and you can spend your time with them. They helped me a lot.

Meanwhile, Gabriel, who like Monreal the year before, joined the club in the January transfer window last season, has been discussing his stand-out memory of his first year in North London. He told Arsenal Player:

It is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life, winning my first trophy with Arsenal, and the most important of my career. I spent a whole week just thinking about this game, and the fact that it was at Wembley, a stadium that everyone around the world knows. The thought of setting foot on such a legendary pitch, in this magnificent stadium, was amazing. I was lucky enough to play in the semi-final and the final was very emotional for me too. It was great to win a trophy so soon after arriving at the club, and also very important for my family. It was great to see the whole squad so happy at achieving our goal.

Although managers often bemoan the lack of options available in the winter window, Monreal and Gabriel are proof that quality can be purchased if you look hard enough and do your homework before hand. Considering how stretched our squad has become in recent weeks due to injuries, we clearly have an urgent need to strengthen in midfield in next month’s market.

With Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini in the final year of their contracts, there’s no worry over becoming over-stocked in that area once the likes of Cazorla, Coquelin and Wilshere regain full fitness. We need at least one new central midfielder, lets make sure we pay what’s required and get him in as early as possible after the New Year.

Back tomorrow.

1st December 2015: Cazorla ligament damage, Sanchez uncertainty and bullish Bellerin

Posted on by TremendArse

So we begin a brand new month but sadly, it’s the same old sh*t when it comes to Arsenal and injuries. Reports today say Santi Cazorla has, as feared, damaged ligaments in his knee but the club are still assessing him and how long he’ll be unavailable remains uncertain.

What is for sure however, is that both Cazorla and Alexis Sanchez will miss our crucial Champions League game at Olympiacos next week. And speaking of the Chilean, he’s either got an ‘outside’ chance of making our game against Manchester City on December 21st, or he hasn’t, and will miss our next six matches, depending on who you believe.

So I guess it’s time to have a look at the boss’ options in midfield and further forward, in their absence. For the immediate future, with Mikel Arteta also missing through injury, Aaron Ramsey will have to partner Mathieu Flamini because the only other options we currently have available for the two central midfield berths are Calum Chambers and at a stretch, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

The two wide attacking starting spots can be shared between Theo Walcott, Joel Campbell, the Ox and Kieran Gibbs and the sole striker role by Olivier Giroud, Walcott and Campbell. So we still have options and different things we can try despite our substantial injury list. With all those players fit, my preference would be to play Walcott from the left, the Ox from the right, with Giroud centrally, although Arsene Wenger would probably opt to swap the Ox and Walcott.

With our defence at full strength and Mesut Ozil thankfully still available, remarkably, we’ve got a pretty strong selection to call upon. Certainly one I’d be confident can beat the vast majority of sides in the league, but it’s games like the one against City in three weeks that would be the worry.

Jack Wilshere was also reported to be making good progress a couple of weeks ago, with a return date of Boxing Day when we travel to Southampton, penciled in as his comeback game. Then there’s Danny Welbeck, who’s due to return near the New Year and even if Sanchez misses the next month, he’s unlikely to be out much longer as hamstring recoveries don’t usually suffer setbacks.

Arsene’s main challenge I think, will be to get the team to adjust from having Cazorla and Francis Coquelin in the engine room to players with different skill-sets. For instance, for all of Ramsey’s qualities, his distribution isn’t nearly on a level with Cazorla’s so perhaps, as he already does quite often in fairness, Ozil will need to drop a little deeper, a little more often, to dictate our play from the middle of the park.

One man who’s very confident we can cope regardless of which players are out injured however, is Hector Bellerin. Speaking to Arsenal Player, the right-back said:

I have said it before, there is great depth in the team. There are a lot of young players in the team waiting to come through, and we have a lot of quality training with us every day. They are ready to step up so obviously every single player on the bench can do the same job as every single player in the starting XI. We don’t need to worry about [the injuries to Alexis and Koscielny]. The only thing we need to do is go out onto the pitch with the right mentality, it does not matter who we play.

Whilst I admire Hector’s confidence in his squad-mates, and completely agree about the team needing to have the right focus and mentality, we’ll undoubtedly be weaker with the likes of Cazorla, Sanchez and Coquelin missing through injury.

Whether we’ll be strong enough in their absence to win enough games to maintain our challenge for the two big trophies remains to be seen. We’ll find out soon enough.

See you tomorrow.

30th November 2015: Wenger defiant and bullish as injuries pile up

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome to a brand new week on TremendArse. The early prognoses on the injuries suffered by Alexis Sanchez, Santi Cazorla and Laurent Koscielny in yesterday’s draw with Norwich, are reportedly mixed.

The latter’s hip complaint is not thought to be as bad as it appeared at Carrow Road, with the defender struggling to walk straight as he left the pitch, after The Guardian today reported the club hope Koscielny will return to training before the end of the week and should be in contention for Saturday’s game against Sunderland.

For more worryingly however, the same article says the club fear a torn hamstring for Sanchez, which would side-line him for a month, and worst of all, ligament damage to Cazorla’s knee, in which case the Spaniard would follow Francis Coquelin in being unavailable for a number of months yet.

To most fans and observers, we’re in the mother of all injury crises, even by our lamentable standards, yet Arsene Wenger stood firm on his decision to play Sanchez yesterday, despite revealing in the build-up to the game that the Chilean was a doubt for the match due to a ‘hamstring alarm’. He said:

The players are there to play football and not to be rested when the press decides they need to be rested. He says it is a kick on his hamstring. I fear the reality is worse than that. Nobody is scientifically developed enough, not even the press, to predict exactly when a guy would be injured. I must say that with all humility we are not position to predict that, despite all our test he looked alright. We checked him and when you have no force and no middle stretch in your hamstring then there is no problem and he had that. I believe that it is normal that a player gives everything in a game and I’m surprised you are surprised. You have plenty of players across Europe who play every single game and at the moment we are short as Walcott is not there, Welbeck is not there, Oxlade-Chamberlain is just coming back. I can take a gamble on one and in case I can take a gamble on another one.

And the boss also expanded on Cazorla’s injury, saying:

In the first half he got a kick on the knee and it got worse. I don’t know if he has jaded his knee ligament or he it was just a kick on the nerve but the worrying thing was it got worse during the game.

Yet despite all the injuries, and to players who are simply irreplaceable by other squad members by most people’s estimation, Arsene remains confident he, and what’s left of our decimated squad, can cope with the challenges ahead. He said:

We have Ramsey (who can play in central midfield). I can understand you worry for us, but trust us, we will be there. We have to go through that spell. We had a bad spell of a few games now with Tottenham, West Brom and today we only have taken two points but we are still not far and going through a bad spell and not being far. It is not enough but at least we had an opportunity to come back.

You have to admire the boss in a way for remaining defiant, albeit a little cocksure, despite his players dropping like Ashely Young over thin air in a penalty box, but privately he must be as concerned as the rest of us.

How we’ll cover for absent first-choice players and what that will mean for the way we play is obviously going to be an important topic of conversation over the coming days, but personally, I’m holding fire on playing Arsenal manager until the full extent of the damage to our injured players is confirmed.

Despite the undoubted brilliance of Sanchez and the goals he generates, in terms of both the time he might be out for and his importance to our style of play, the player I’m currently most concerned about is Cazorla. Hopefully any scans he has show no ligament damage and our ambidextrous little game-runner is back before we know it. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Til Tuesday.

29th November 2015: Triple injury blow as we’re held at Norwich

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I suppose the first thing to say after today’s 1-1 draw at Norwich is: thank f*ck that was our last fixture of November.

Traditionally a difficult month for the club, the inexplicable trend continued this year, as we picked up just two points from three Premier League fixtures.

And having lost Francis Coquelin to long-term injury last weekend, three more key players picked up knocks today after Laurent Koscielny injured his hip, Alexis Sanchez, who went into the game with ‘a little hamstring alarm’ according to Arsene Wenger, er, pulled his hamstring, and Santi Cazorla sustained a knee injury, finishing the match playing ‘on one leg’ according to the boss.

Next year, I suggest we boycott November football, forfeit all our games and take the squad on a gentle, warm-weather training trip to somewhere like Dubai, just to keep them fresh and fit. It’s not like we pick up many points at this time of year …

On the bright side, we didn’t lose today and Mesut Ozil scored again with a delicious chip from a rapidly-executed through ball by Sanchez, following a poor clearance by Norwich’s keeper after 30 minutes.

Before then, Koscielny had already damaged his hip in what was an innocuous-looking block before we’d played ten minutes. Gabriel replaced him and when Norwich put together a rare first-half attack and the ball found it’s way to Lewis Grabban inside our area, the Brazilian defender was poorly positioned and thus unable to prevent Grabban from coolly sliding the ball past Petr Cech for 1-1 after 43 minutes.

We then wobbled a little and the home side nearly matched West Brom’s feat from a week ago by responding to our opener with a quick-fire, first-half double, but one of their players could only guide a right-wing cross over the bar at the far post. Phew.

The second half began with us regaining the kind of control on proceedings we’d enjoyed for most of the first period, only for Sanchez to pull up clutching his hamstring after an hour, forcing the boss to replace him with Joel Campbell. After that, Norwich grew more confident, forcing Cech into one particularly impressive save low down to the left.

I thought we actually played well for the most of the match, apart from Olivier Giroud, who if I’m honest, may as well have not been there for all he contributed. Maybe it was just a bad day at the office for the Frenchman but as a striker, he needs to take up far better positions in the box to attack crosses and be a little quicker in his reading of where team-mates might put the ball. I thought he was sluggish, to say the least, today and we need better from our front-man than what he offered this afternoon.

In the context of the title race, the draw keeps us in fourth spot, a point behind Manchester United and two adrift of joint-leaders Leicester and Manchester City. After the game, Arsene reflected on his side’s performance, saying:

It was a difficult game. We played against a Norwich side that was at the top level physically and focused. They were well organised and they played every time with 10 players in their own half, and we were not incisive enough. Maybe the turning point of the game was maybe we dropped a little bit after scoring straight away and allowed them back into the game. In the second half I felt we had to dig deep to get though as we were a bit jaded and we lost players. Cazorla played on one leg and of course we played Kosicelny at the start of the game so it was, I would say, a fair point for Norwich and it was on the injury front a bad afternoon for us.

So pretty magnanimous stuff from the boss there and although the result today is far from disastrous in terms of our title ambitions, another trio of injuries to some of our most important players may well turn out to be.

In successive weekends now, aside from dropping five points from the six available, we’ve lost our best defensive midfielder, our best attacker, our best defender and, in Cazorla, possibly also the man who makes us tick from the middle of the park.

At this point I’m not sure what we can say or do other than pray they aren’t sidelined for too long. Because the thought of going into next weekend’s game against a rejuvenated Sunderland at Emirates stadium, before travelling to Greece for our make-or-break Champions League game against Olympiacos, without Koscielny, Coquelin, Cazorla and Sanchez, is pretty scary.

See you next week and try not to get injured in the meantime. Evidently, it’s catching, if you’ve got anything to do with Arsenal at the moment.

28th November 2015: Premier League Preview – Can we get back to winning ways at Norwich?

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. Much to the consternation of environmentalists everywhere, we’ll make the 14 minute flight to Norwich tomorrow, as we try to secure our first win in three Premier League games.

We’ll also be looking to make it four wins in a row against the Canaries, since, if memory serves, a Per Mertesacker slip let in Grant Holt to grab the hosts a 1-0 win back in October 2012.

And after Manchester United and Leicester City both dropped two points earlier today having played out a 1-1 draw, we can climb back above both of them in the standings with a win tomorrow.

In terms of how we’ll line-up, I’d expect Aaron Ramsey will come in on the right-hand side of midfield for Joel Campbell, which would admittedly be particularly harsh on the Costa Rican, given his fine performance against Dinamo Zagreb in midweek, but for me Ramsey remains the better option in that position.

Elsewhere I think we’ll be unchanged and should have Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on the bench to give us one more attacking option should we need it as the game progresses.

There had been talk in some quarters of Ramsey playing alongside Santi Cazorla in the middle with both Francis Coquelin and Mikel Arteta currently out injured, but Arsene Wenger feels asking the Welshman to play deeper in a more disciplined, defensive role would take too much away from the player’s natural game, saying:

Ramsey is more an offensive player. I will use him sometimes there [centrally] when the game demands, but is he naturally with Cazorla a balanced pair? Defensively, certainly, it’s a very adventurous one! I used Ramsey on the right because he gives us a balance, because we have Ozil who is an offensive player, we have Sanchez, we have Giroud or Walcott and Cazorla so to balance a bit defensively, I use Ramsey on the right. That’s where I will certainly continue to use him. He is not afraid to tackle but he likes to go in the box and he has a good timing of runs and he wants the ball and he wants to go forward. If you take that out of him, and you say ‘look, you have to sit now, and sit there and wait,’ you kill his strengths. He [Ramsey] can do [the deeper role]. It is not that he cannot do it, but he can do it [more effectively] with Coquelin. Cazorla can [play alongside] Coquelin. Cazorla and Ramsey is a bit [attack-minded] and you know in my mind I have seen that the turn of our results last season was when I went for a bit of stability and put Coquelin in there. Now I am a bit cautious on that front and I do not want to unbalance the team. Arteta is not a Coquelin-type but he is a tactical player who loves to sit now because he is less [focused on] going forward. In my mind I always had Arteta and Flamini and Coquelin. But Arteta was injured so I played always Coquelin. Now with Arteta and Coquelin both injured we are of course a bit short. That’s why I play Chambers for 10 or 12 minutes to see how he positions and we are happy because he can do it.

I have to say I completely agree with that assessment by the boss. The only way I could see Cazorla and Ramsey working effectively is if Ramsey changed his game and mimicked Coquelin’s role as closely as possible, but as the boss says, that would be a waste of Ramsey’s natural strengths as a midfielder; the lung-bursting runs and goal-getting ability etc.

Elsewhere I think the team picks itself and the only position we might see a change, injuries aside, is in central defence where Arsene has occasionally rested Mertesacker for Gabriel so far this season.

Back post-match on Sunday.

COYG!

27th November 2015: Wenger on Ozil, Sanchez and bargains

Posted on by TremendArse

Happy Friday folks. Although we don’t play until Sunday when we travel to Carrow Road to face Norwich, Arsene Wenger held his press conference yesterday and provided an update on team news. Apart from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who the boss said ‘maybe’ and ‘should’ be available, we’ll have the same squad from our midweek win over Dinamo Zagreb.

Considering how well Joel Campbell played against the Croatians, the boss will have a bit of a dilemma when selecting his side because you’d expect Aaron Ramsey will now be ready for a start having been eased back into action from the bench last Tuesday. Anyway, I’ll take a closer look at how we could line-up in tomorrow’s preview.

But for now, onto some words from the manager about his two most expensive signings for the club. First up it’s his record buy Mesut Ozil and Arsene discussed how his German schemer has developed his game since joining Arsenal, saying:

What is interesting about Mesut’s game is that he is not only a provider now, he likes to get on the end of the things. What he has added to his game is the runs into the box. He played before like he was not too much obsessed [by goals] and more by providing, and I think he has a much better balance in his game now, giving, assisting and scoring. At the start, in the first season, there was a lot of scepticism around him. I think the quality of his performances have turned opinions. He now has the support of everybody who loves Arsenal. You look at the players who give our assists and you will see who does it. I think the best assist player at the moment is Ozil, but we have many providers. We have Alexis, Ramsey, Cazorla – they are all people who can create chances. You could see Campbell the other night has given a great assist to Alexis. I think all our players have technical ability to do that.

Ozil’s assisting capabilities are beyond question of course, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s at all unfair to suggest the number of goals he scores himself could certainly be improved upon. On the other hand, Ozil’s altruism is what makes him such an effective player, so what might be better, is if his team-mates converted a greater proportion of the opportunities he creates.

Next up for praise from the boss was Sanchez and after calling the Chilean’s fellow south Americans Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani ‘animals’ in the past, Arsene says his own Latin American attacker, along with Leicester City’s free-scoring striker Jamie Vardy, is like a king of the Premier League jungle:

They are like the lion, he has to catch the animal in the first 200 metres. If he doesn’t get there, after he’s dead. They are these kind of killers. When they go, it is to kill and after they have to stop. His resistance is remarkable. What is also remarkable is that he goes to South America, he comes back Thursday night and on Saturday he can play without a problem even if he’s jet-lagged. He would have been a perfect tennis player.

I’m sure Sanchez would have excelled at any sport he’s have chosen to pursue as a career but needless to say, I’m pretty glad he went with football.

Finally, ahead of what was ‘Black Friday’ today (which if you didn’t know, is when retailers mark up goods by 500 percent, then offer them at ‘huge discounts’ so they can boost sales and clear old stock, while the general public engage in physical scraps to get their hands on said goods), Arsene was also ribbed about his own reputation for being cautious with cash as he was asked if he liked a bargain. Here’s what he said:

What is for us a bargain is to buy players of top quality, because only top quality strengthens our squad. I can tell you I bought Patrick Vieira for £2.5m and it was a top bargain because he was a top-quality player – it would be difficult to repeat these kind of buys now. That looks for me a very important one now, because he gave me credibility for my career here at Arsenal. Maybe if you look purely financially [there are others like] Anelka for £500k or Petit for £4.2m – today these numbers look so ridiculously low, but it’s impossible to do better. What is most important is the quality of the player and, on that front, even for example we paid high money for Ozil and Alexis – the highest we’ve ever paid – but I don’t regret it for a second. I still think it’s absolutely fantastic because we have the money and because the players are top quality.

A bit abrupt but that’s it for tonight.

Til Saturday.