PremierLeague

6th March 2016: More on the draw at Tottenham

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. So where was I? Oh yeah, Harry Kane being an annoyingly lethal striker, but just like the majority of attackers in today’s game, far from shy in ‘buying’ fouls.

Anyway, after losing Coquelin, I was hoping we’d regroup quickly and keep Tottenham at bay for at least 10 to 15 minutes or so because I thought they’d start to get frustrated, fatigue would begin to set in and perhaps we could grab another goal at some point.

In the end, we could only hold out for five minutes because Toby Alderweireld got an equaliser for Sp*rs on the hour mark, firing home a loose ball low and hard past David Ospina at the far post following a corner. Just two minutes later, the hosts completed the turn-around in the score-line with what can only be described as a stunning long-range strike by Arsenal and Freddie Ljungberg fan Kane.

The chance came about because of some slack defending by Per Mertesacker, who in hindsight should either have committed a tactical foul on Alli as the pair chased the ball near the corner-flag, or slid and put it into touch, but instead he allowed Alli to get ahead of him and back-heel the ball to Kane. The England striker cut inside and unleashed a curler into the far top corner, to leave David Ospina with no chance.

As Kane celebrated wildly, I’m sure I wasn’t the only Arsenal fan filled with dread and anticipating a heavy defeat. But what followed was a gutsy response by the Gunners and an equaliser 15 minutes later. Arsene Wenger threw caution to the wind by replacing Mohamed Elneny with Olivier Giroud and we fashioned our second goals moments afterwards. Mertesacker intercepted the ball, turned neatly and found Ramsey in midfield.

The Welshman picked out Hector Bellerin on the right and he produced his second assist of the game, perfectly measuring an angled pass into Alexis Sanchez’s run so the Chilean didn’t have to break stride and could shoot first time past Lloris. It wasn’t the sweetest of connections but he got enough on it to see it bobble past their keeper and restore unlikely parity to proceedings.

After that, both sides had chances with the best one falling to Ramsey very late on after his brilliant run into the box was serviced by an equally impressive through ball by Sanchez. But as Ramsey tried to get a shot away, their defender slid in and nicked the ball away.

Spoils shared then and an impressive achievement by us to secure a point under the circumstances. Yet regret at another two points dropped and perhaps a little frustration that the referee didn’t issue a second yellow for Eric Dier when he clearly deserved one for pulling Olivier Giroud’s shirt. That would have evened up the numbers and given us a great chance to win it, but it wasn’t to be and the incident gets filed in the same draw alongside ones with Diego Costa, who also somehow escaped dismissal against us this season when it was clearly warranted.

The negatives from the game are obvious in that we picked up another totally avoidable red card through our own lack of discipline, which in effect cost us two valuable points. On the plus side, we functioned far better as a team, with Mohamed Elneny impressive in midfield, Ramsey playing far better from the right than he has recently in the middle and grabbing a goal, Gabriel solid at the back, Ospina shining in goal, and Danny Welbeck working hard and being a constant threat up front.

Add in a confidence-boosting goal for Sanchez and things are definitely looking up as far as I’m concerned. We look much more like team with yesterday’s selection of starters so hopefully they can stay fit and firing until the likes of Santi Cazorla and Jack Wilshere are ready to return from injury.

Looking ahead, we play Hull in the Cup on Tuesday and then depending on the outcome of that game, next weekend we host either Watford in the quarter-finals or West Brom in the league. Whoever we face though, after yesterday’s showing at White Hart Lane, I’m feeling far more confident that we can actually string a few wins together now, having failed to get even one in our last five games.

See you next week.

5th March 2016: Arsenal find form in draw with Tottenham despite Coq-up

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. Despite only managing to draw against Tottenham, I felt our overall performance today was much improved following three defeats on the bounce.

The 2-2 full-time scoreline at White Hart Lane, combined with Leicester’s win at Watford and Manchester City’s comfortable victory over Aston Villa, means we’re now eight points off the Premier League summit and will fall a point below Manuel Pellegrini’s men into fourth if they win their game in hand. In terms of the title race then, the point we earned today could be vital, just as the two dropped could prove fatal – only time will tell.

But for the immediate future, we have to be encouraged by our display today, particularly seeing as we had to play the final 35 minutes or so with a man less following Francis Coquelin’s second-half dismissal for a second yellow. That we managed to grab an equaliser with ten men, after two quick-fire Sp*rs strikes within seven minutes of Coquelin’s red card had cancelled out Aaron Ramsey’s exquisitely-taken first half opener, was as pleasing as it was surprising.

After all, this was a much-vaunted Tottenham team, proudly sitting a place and three points above us in the table at the start of the match, boasting the best defensive record in the league and the healthiest goal difference. Their team contained the media-hyped hybrid of Zinedine Zidane, Garrincha and Eusebio that is Dele Alli, and were managed by the man with the Midas touch in Mauricio Pochettino.

They fielded a core of oh-so-honest English lads who will no doubt conquer the Continent at this summer’s Euros, and who help form a team that plays in an innovative high-intensity style that will never ever waver as the season progresses. They’re destined for the title and there’s never been a a team quite like them. They’re one of England’s own …

And yet, they couldn’t beat an Arsenal side in their worst run of form of the season, missing key players and playing with a man less for almost half the game. Tottenham will always be sh*t, no matter how this one-off title-chasing campaign ends for them.

Back to us though and after a difficult first 30 minutes or so when the hosts piled on the pressure without creating many clear-cut chances, we went one-nil up with a goal owing as much to the composure and vision of Hector Bellerin as it did the magnificent improvisation of Ramsey.

Danny Welbeck, who played up front and put in a non-stop shift in his just his second league start in almost a year, picked up possession on the left, cut inside, looked up and squared it carefully to Bellerin. Our Cockney Catalan played it first-time to Ramsey in the middle who pulled off a brilliant back-heeled shot at goal, somehow generating elevation in guiding it past Hugo Lloris.

With six minutes of the half to play after that goal, we turned the screw and launched a couple more attacks as Sp*rs froze a little and the realisation appeared to dawn on them that they’re actually nothing special at all, and that they’re only in the title race because of a freak set of circumstances. At that point, we had them – they knew it and we knew it.

What we also knew at half-time though, was that Coquelin had been cautioned and would therefore need to be extra careful in the second half to avoid another booking. Arsene Wenger said as much after the game in revealing he reminded his compatriot at the break that he was treading a tightrope. Unfortunately, within ten minutes of second half action, Coquelin recklessly slid in on Harry Kane on the by-line, inevitably earning a second yellow and a red.

No qualms, no complaints, it was a mindless rush of blood and we were now up against it. What I would point out though, is that Kane, for all his striking qualities, and admittedly, as his goal later in the game highlighted, he has them in abundance, purposely made contact with Coquelin in that way all shameless divers do, when he could easily have hurdled the challenge and continued his run.

The striker jumped, left both his airborne legs trailing to ensure connection with Coquelin’s and I thought I’d point it out because I haven’t seen anyone else do it. Of course, it would be a booking 99 times out of a hundred, but a truly honest player with nothing but trying to get forward and score a goal on his mind would have left Coquelin trailing and without contact, they’d have been no caution. Sadly, they’re aren’t too many of that ilk around in football, even English ones, and we were left facing an uphill task to keep our lead.

A bit abrupt but I’ve run out of time. I’ll pick this up tomorrow.

See you on Sunday.

4th March 2016: Premier League Preview – Can we find the right recipe to topple Tottenham?

Posted on by TremendArse

Friday greetings. We face Sp*rs in the early kick-off tomorrow of course and after three defeats on the bounce, I suppose the big questions are: who will Arsene Wenger choose to start the game? And can we put a stop to our recent rot by winning at White Hart Lane to make ‘power-shift’ proponents think again, whilst hauling ourselves right back into title-winning territory?

In terms of team selection, we know that David Ospina will come in for the injured Petr Cech, who Arsene confirmed today would be out for up to four weeks with the calf injury he sustained against Swansea on Wednesday, and Gabriel will retain his place in central defence alongside Per Mertesacker, as Laurent Koscielny is still sidelined.

You would assume Hector Bellerin and Nacho Monreal will remain at full back but given the latter’s made 33 starts in all competitions so far this season, which is exceeded only by Mesut Ozil’s 34, I do wonder if Kieran Gibbs’ fresher legs may be a way the boss feels he can add some energy to his side – particularly against Mauricio Pochettino’s hard-running outfit.

I do view Monreal as our undisputed first-choice at left-back, but this will be his fourth game in 12 days were he to start. The former Malaga man’s not the only one who’s endured that demanding recent work load though, so I’ll guess we’ll see. That said, even with all the effort and determination in the world, if we don’t come up with a game-plan that works better than ours have done in our last two games at least, we’ll be in trouble.

I think Arseblog hit the nail on the head in his post this morning, when he suggested that we don’t know what we’re doing as a team. We have no discernible style of play and in my opinion, that’s down to our central midfield area, as regular readers will already know and possibly be a tad bored by.

At risk of sounding like a broken record then, with Aaron Ramsey and Francis Coquelin as a midfield pair, we have nobody to dictate our play. In that duo, Coquelin is the specialist ball-winner, but what role exactly is Ramsey fulfilling?

Now I have no idea if Mohamed Elneny will be good enough to hit the ground running as adequate cover for Santi Cazorla’s sublime distribution from the middle of the park, but with Jack Wilshere also injured, he’s our only candidate. Unless you drop Mesut Ozil in there, which is not as bad an idea as it may sound at first in my opinion.

In fact, I’m torn between Ozil and Elneny as to who should partner Coquelin, but if we went with the former, the fact we would then have nobody obvious (don’t say Ramsey – he’s even less a number ten than he is a deep-lying play-maker) to fill in for Ozil further forward, makes me lean towards the Egyptian.

The only alternative I see is to contain and counter, like we attempted against Barcelona last week, and like we succeeded in doing at home against Bayern Munich earlier this season. I have no doubt at all that our lack of cohesion in this area of the pitch is adversely affecting out performance both in defence and in the final third. A lack of control, composure and coordination in our midfield spreads to both ends of the pitch and to my mind, if we remedy that issue, we’ll start looking and playing like a team again and the wins will follow.

So with all that in mind, I’d go with: ‘play Elneny, look to control possession and take the game to Tottenham’, over, ‘stick with Ramsey in the middle, and either produce another disjointed display, or sit back and hope to counter them’. And as such, my starting selection, fitness permitting, would be:

Ospina; Bellerin, Mertesacker, Gabriel, Monreal; Coquelin, Elneny; Campbell, Ozil, Sanchez; Welbeck.

I think with that XI, we would be fielding the strongest defence we have available, on paper our most complimentary and functional deep-lying midfield duo, the best goal-creator in the league in a free role, two industrious wide players boasting both a goal-threat and defensive diligence, all topped off with the best all-round striker at the club. A player who can stretch a defence with pace like Theo Walcott, and hold the ball up and link play like Olivier Giroud – our two other striking options.

But crucially, without Ramsey, Walcott and Giroud, we have ten outfield players, with the possible exception of big Per (although he is usually a very reliable passer), who are comfortable in possession and collectively, should much more easily find a common wavelength. It’s all in the chemistry and too often recently, our pH levels have been aimlessly sliding the scale.

It feels like every game we play at the moment is billed as a must-win, despite there being over a quarter of the league season yet to be played, but you can understand the sentiment.

By the end of tomorrow’s Premier League action, we could be any one of nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, or three points behind the leaders. So not only is tomorrow’s game a north London derby with a title-contesting difference, in a way, it’s potentially also a nine-pointer, in the countdown to the crown.

Back post-match.

COME on Arsenal. COME. THE. F*CK. ON.

3rd March 2016: Swans come (to our) home to roost

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. So last night Swansea City – a relegation-threatened Swansea City – arrived at Emirates stadium, home of supposed title contenders Arsenal, resting several first-choice regulars including three of their back four, yet still managed to come from a goal down to secure what was ultimately a comfortable 2-1 win.

On a night when Tottenham lost at West Ham and Manchester City were beaten emphatically by Liverpool, this was our chance to both close the gap to the two teams above us, and put some significant distance between us and fourth-placed City. But once again, we came up short, clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.

We’d all speculated about how we might line up after Sunday’s similarly shocking loss to a mish-mash Manchester United team comprised of squad peripherals, utility men and unknown embryos, and there was a surprise when the teams were announced – there was no sign of Laurent Koscielny.

Injury ruled the Frenchman out so Gabriel retained his place and Per Mertesacker partnered him having sat out the defeat at Old Trafford. Further forward, despite many hoping Mohamed Elneny might be given his first-ever Premier League start, Aaron Ramsey retained his place alongside Francis Coquelin in midfield, Joel Campbell came in for Danny Welbeck on the right and Theo Walcott, unsurprising, vacated the striker’s role for Olivier Giroud.

We actually started the game pretty brightly but considering this was a much-changed Swansea line-up, in hindsight our opening wasn’t as impressive as it seemed at the time. Nonetheless, Joel Campbell was by far our liveliest player and duly marked his return to the starting line-up by giving us the lead on the quarter-hour mark, skilfully and cleverly half-volleying home from a tight-ish angle following a brilliant pass by Alexis Sanchez.

It was just the start we needed after two defeats in a row. But instead of building on that promising start, we conceded an equaliser just after the half-hour mark when Mesut Ozil was fouled in Swansea’s half and our defence stood still. Unfortunately for us, the referee didn’t view the challenge on Ozil as a foul and by the time we realised that, one of their players sent a straight-forward ball through the middle of our defence for Wayne Routledge to saunter onto, take a touch, give Petr Cech the eyes, and roll it past him effortlessly.

That was that until half-time and you’d have thought they’d be a strong response from us after the interval, what with us wanting to the win the game and challenge for the title and all, but if you did think that, you obviously didn’t watch us at Old Trafford because we got another lackluster second-half showing, which after Sunday’s shambles, this time, I was wholly expecting.

Arsene Wenger then went full masochistic-mode in the second half, withdrawing our best performer on the night in Campbell and replacing him with Welbeck, who to put it kindly, looked off-the-pace when he came on. The boos that greeted the substitution made the fans’ feelings deafeningly clear and when Walcott later replaced a struggling (by his standards) Sanchez a minute after we’d conceded the winner, strangely, both the team and and the terraces appeared resigned to the result. Never mind there were still fifteen minutes to play plus added time, it seemed the whole stadium had decided 2-1 is how the game would end. And so it did.

There were no ‘come on Arsenal’ cries, no meaningful response from the players, just a limp last portion of the game that ended with Cech going up for a corner and injuring himself as he sprinted back –  the turd cherry, on the dog-food icing, on the rubbish-dump-salvaged sponge.

The full-time whistle blew, one (probably a number) of irate Arsenal fans near the dug-out seemingly aired their views and a clearly devastated, but defiant until the death Arsene, sarcastically gave them the thumbs up as he left. It was so sad to watch.

A man who ought to be feted for his work at the club is reduced to receiving vitriolic ridicule on a regular basis from an increasing section of his own club’s fan-base. I’m not saying Wenger’s faultless – far, far from it. The Campbell sub was weird, his faith in Ramsey as a central midfielder is, for me, as baffling as it is infuriating, but I still think he’s the right man for the job. Just my opinion mind – don’t have a baby about it.

We’re obviously in dire straights results and performances-wise, but in terms of the title, it’s not over until Frank Lampard sings. And I can’t hear the c*nt just yet.

Until tomorrow.

2nd March 2016: Thoughts on selection for Swansea

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. A very, very brief post for you today because kick-off is fast approaching as we prepare to welcome Swansea City to Emirates stadium in a few hours’ time, when we’ll be looking to reduce the gap to the top of the table to just three points after Leicester could only draw with West Brom last night.

When you consider we play Sp*rs in the early kick-off on Saturday, with Leicester travelling to Watford in the 5.30pm game, we could actually be joint top of the table as early as Saturday afternoon. Despite all the doom and gloom after a disappointing week then, Arsenal still have it in their hands – providing the Foxes lose just one of their remaining ten games.

Tonight’s starting selection should be interesting, because not many players covered themselves in glory in our defeat to Manchester United last Sunday and there are a few who weren’t involved from the start at Old Trafford who will no doubt be strongly urging the boss to give them a go.

I think Per Mertesacker for Gabriel is an obvious change in central defence providing Laurent Koscielny is fit and I do wonder if we could see one or both full-backs rotated for Kieran Gibbs or Calum Chambers with the trip to White Hart Lane in mind.

Further forward, I would love to see Aaron Ramsey replaced at the base of our midfield by Mohamed Elneny or even, Alex Iwobi, if we want to go gung-ho and play just Francis Coquelin as a defensively-minded midfielder in the trio in the middle of the park.

Although Alexis Sanchez has struggled for form, I think Arsene will expect him to play his way back to sharpness rather than take him out and hope a rest will help him rediscover his mojo, and I think that would be the right call. The Chilean had a lengthy period out of action due to injury recently and I think the more minutes he can get right now the better he’ll perform.

On the right, I think we’ll see Ramsey if Elneny or Iwobi come into the middle, otherwise my guess would be Joel Campbell, with Theo Walcott dropped to the bench. Again, I think that would be the right call because Walcott was woefully lacking in impact against United and Campbell should count himself unlucky to lose his starting place in the first place having performed consistently well after breaking into the starting line-up.

My preference for tonight would be the following: Cech; Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal; Elneny, Coquelin; Ramsey, Ozil, Sanchez, Giroud, but I think Arsene will persist with Ramsey in the middle and bring in Campbell on the right. We’ll see.

Finally for today, after some reports that Santi Cazorla could miss the rest of the season (!) through injury, the player himself today mercifully took to social media to reassure fans he was still very much on course for a comeback at the start of April.

Of course the boss had spoken about Santi having an Achilles problem at his press conference yesterday, which is where those reports were obviously rooted, but it appears what the boss said had been exaggerated in the press. Who’d have thunk it?

Right. That’s me done. I told you it would be short.

Please win tonight Arsenal. Please?

COYG!

1st March 2016: Wenger urges solidarity as we prepare for Swansea

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome to a brand new month on TremendArse. Here’s hoping March will be more successful for Arsenal than February was, and January, December and November for that matter, because if we want to ‘defy all odds’ and win the Premier League, as Arsene Wenger said today, it has to be.

Speaking at his pre-Swansea press conference, the boss stood firm is his belief his side are still very much in the title race despite a run of just seven wins from their last 16 Premier League games since the end of October, which has left the Gunners five points adrift of league leaders Leicester City, and sickeningly, three behind a grossly over-rated Tottenham. He said:

What we want to do is defy all the odds that are against us at the moment. The best way to do it is to fight together for that. We have come out of a bad week so we want to have a good week now. It’s as simple as that and that’s why you love competition. A bad week is not permanent, it’s what you make of it and how you respond. That’s the beauty of sport. Things change quickly one way or the other. That’s beautiful as well. We are professional and we want to focus on how we respond to the defeat. It can happen. We lost 3-2 at Manchester United, we are not happy with the result but if you analyse the game we had two lapses of focus that we paid for. That made the game difficult for us after. We gave a lot against Barcelona and the disappointing outcome certainly had an impact on our belief against Manchester United, but we want to focus on the positives and recover from it. We want to give our best from now until the end of the season.

That defeat against a severely-weakened Manchester United team on Sunday has inevitably led to an outpouring of anger, criticism and ridicule alike, but Arsene seemed unmoved today, suggesting his longevity as Arsenal manager means he’s seen and heard it all before. Funnily enough, that’s what a lot of fans and pundits would throw straight back at him.

Anyway, adding that he wants fans to get behind the team between now and the season’s end, he also stressed that the contest for the crown is still a very close one, saying:

I’m never surprised by the criticism that comes – that’s part of the media today. Part of the opinion is always a bit excessive and emotional, but we have to deal with that and I don’t complain about it. Yes, that’s what we want to do [and use criticism as motivation]. We want to transform the negatives into positives around us and create even more solidarity. Let’s not go overboard, we do not play to be relegated. We are playing to fight for the title. That’s why we have to put criticism in the right place. After 20 years I’m used to it. We have built this club, and it has been built before me, with values. What we try to do is respect these values and when we are disappointed we need to show these values and clarity to fight together. What you want from your fans is to fight together until the last game of the season. What we have learnt from the league is that it is very tight, that everybody can drop points, and the teams – and the fans – who can show togetherness and solidarity until the end, might come out of it in a positive way. That’s what we want, to fight together until the last game of the season and not give up when you have a bad game or a bad result. That’s what fans and players and teams and clubs are about.

As always, Arsene fronted up and said all the right things; the title’s far from lost, the team and fans need to remain united, criticism can be emotional and excessive. The problem is we’ve been here so often these last 12 years or so, fans are sick and tired of words and just want the wins that secure silverware.

I’m not one of those fans. Yet. We may be on a level financial footing to our rivals now, or at least more level, but it’s only been a season or two that that’s been the case. In that time we’ve won back-to-back FA Cups and signed some of world’s best players in Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez and Petr Cech. I see improvement and reasons to be confident of future success even if it feels like we’ve been enduring Groundhog campaigns for years now.

‘Project Youth’ failed to deliver trophies in the time we were financially handicapped and perhaps some bad habits set it. The winning mentality of our 2004 squad was lessened in direct correlation with our average age, but that’s now reversing and has been for a few years.

For me it’s not 12 years without a title, it’s about three. All of which is to say whilst even the most staunch supporters of Arsene over the years are beginning to contemplate a change in manager, I’m not there just yet. I think the boss has earned a year or two more to build the team he wants rather than one he has to fashion on a relative shoe-string and that he knows will sooner or later be broken up by enforced player sales.

I know I’m in an ever-diminishing minority among our fanbase but for now at least, I’m backing our manager to ‘defy the odds’ and make us champions again before his time runs out, whether that’s this term or in the next couple.

As for Leicester’s rise and Spurs’ challenge being evidence of why we’ll ‘never win the league again under Arsene, I think that view is bordering on ridiculous. Those clubs are enjoying freak seasons as far as I’m concerned and I have little doubt they won’t finish in the top four next season, even if one of them go on to win it this year.

Whatever your view though, surely we need to see how the rest of the season plays out before we solidify our stance.

Back on Wednesday.

29th February 2016: Walcott needs to man up or move on

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. I spoke about Aaron Ramsey yesterday because his unsuitability to playing as a central midfielder in our style is the primary reason Arsenal have been functioning poorly as a team for the last few months in my opinion, but today I want to discuss a few of our other players.

I’ll start with Theo Walcott, because he has rightly been derided for going AWOL in our loss to Manchester United yesterday and similar to Ramsey, is a player who divides opinion. Capable of match-winning contributions occasionally, what we get more often than not from Theo is a player with poor control, minimal involvement in the team’s build-up play and an infuriating lack of will to impose himself on the action.

I’ve long thought it to be a mental issue with the player; he has the necessary ability to play for us at the highest level but if one player’s on-pitch personality reflects that of every Arsenal team, funnily enough, since Theo arrived back in January 2006, it’s him. Timid, overly nice with an ‘after you’ demeanour towards team-mates and opponents alike, and the opposite of tenacious, whatever the right word for that is – that’s Theo.

As fans, whether we’re watching from the stands or tuning in on TV, I think I speak for the majority when I say we can take being outplayed. We can take us having a bad day. But what’s unacceptable is players shying away from trying, for whatever reason.

I wouldn’t say it’s laziness at all on Theo’s part though, I think as Amy Lawrence suggests here, and in fairness, similar to what I’ve said in the past, it’s fear. In colloquial terms, if I’m being blunt, he’s a wuss, who lacks faith in his own ability.

He has the mentality of a child who thinks he’s playing against big, bad grown-ups and if I’m honest, it’s a little embarrassing, aside from being detrimental to Arsenal’s quest for success. Amy hits the nail on the head when she says it’s a fear of failure.

Walcott comes across as an articulate young man off the pitch and always says the right things but he’s on autopilot – spewing straight-batted, press office-fed, image-conscience words with little or no real meaning. It’s the way of the world but unlike most professional footballers, Theo plays like he speaks.

I’ve been Theo’s biggest fan since he arrived at the club and have defended him, insisting his qualities are under-estimated – and I still maintain they are. He’s still outstandingly quick, has brilliant movement off the shoulders of defenders, (usually) great finishing technique (despite the odd comical miscue), and a knack for scoring at vital times.

Years ago I confidently told a mate that Theo ‘will explode soon, just you watch’. I knew at the time he needed to mature in his outlook to the physical challenges of the game but not for a second did I think that would still be the case when he was 26.

If you compare Theo to Michael Owen, Owen was more fearless at 17, in what was a tougher, meaner Premier League in those days, than Walcott is now. Perhaps it’s all down to varying upbringings and club environments.

I mean, whereas Owen had the likes of the no-nonsense Paul Ince as a captain in a squad of battle-hardened, old-school British pros, Walcott’s not been toughened up in training, as Thierry Henry for instance, often fondly remembers he was by the likes of Tony Adams and Martin Keown when he joined Arsenal.

And perhaps more than the player then, that’s on the manager. Some players, like Jack Wilshere and Danny Welbeck, are naturally aggressive and have ‘fire in their bellies’, others need one started for them. In our 5-3 win at Stamford Bridge in 2011, for example, Theo scored a great goal moments after being fouled by Ashley Cole for about the 17th time in ten minutes.

It was obvious that for a few seconds after being upended, Theo got angry. What followed was him showing the kind of determination we need from him all the time. On that occasion, he was felled, sprung to his feet as if to say ‘fuck this, I’ll show you you fouling, money-grabbing, turncoat, and proceeded to score a great solo goal.

Maybe what we need is to make Theo more angry more often. Tell him he’s crap at football, someone’s keyed his new car, nicked his shin-pads – whatever makes him lose his sh*t. Perhaps we should sign Joey Barton and Lee Cattermole for the sole purpose of fouling him in training. Not to injure him mind, just to annoy him into anger. The bottom line to my mind though, is Walcott needs to man up, or in his and our best interests, move onto to a club where he’ll be forced to.

At the start I said I wanted to talk about a few players but Theo’s taken up all my time in the end so Gabriel and Alexis Sanchez will have to wait. But I will say this, I maintain Ramsey being unsuitable to cover for Santi Cazorla is by far the side’s biggest problem at the moment, not Theo’s lack of contribution, or defensive lapses in concentration or Alexis being out of form.

Theo may have gone missing at Old Trafford, but if you’re singling him out as the reason for our loss, you’re missing the point. The point’s Ramsey.

Until tomorrow.

28th February: Misfiring Arsenal outgunned by Man United’s reserves

Posted on by TremendArse

Arsenal today completed a week to forget by losing 3-2 against a Manchester United side largely made up of reserves and academy players in what was for me, the most disappointing result of the season so far.

Our title hopes suffered a massive setback, when instead they were widely expected to be raised, and both our players and manager will now rightly come under increased scrutiny as we enter the final straight of a season of which so much was expected, but is increasingly looking like concluding with all-too-familiar failings.

Yes we’ve lost to Sheffield Wednesday this term, been routed by Bayern Munich and Southampton, had the double done over us by a half-arsed Chelsea, lost at home to West Ham, thrown leads away late on in games, but today’s defeat is by far the hardest to swallow for me, for a few reasons.

First and foremost, a quick glance at the United team-sheet prior to kickoff will have had even the most in-the-know anoraks Googling their match-day squad. They were missing their first-choice right-back, left-back, centre-half, striker and captain, and most expensive-ever buy, not to mention a host of other household names.

They were fielding an inexperienced 22-year-old right-back, an 18 year-old striker making his Premier League debut and just his second-ever start in professional football, a veteran midfielder – the Per-paced Michael Carrick – out of position at centre-half, and two wingers who probably wouldn’t start with everyone available.

We on the other hand, were missing just Santi Cazorla from being able to put out what would be a first-choice eleven. And yet we still went two nil down in the first half, produced a pitiful collective performance for a team with title-winning pretensions, and eventually lost 3-2 with oles ringing around Old Trafford as the hosts comfortably saw out what for them was a rare home win this season.

Opinion drives football debate and here’s mine – we’re not functioning as a team and we have a couple of options. We either approach every game between now and the end of the season as we did against Barcelona, that’s to say sit back, cede possession, defend in numbers and play as directly as we can on the counter, whether we’re playing Swansea at home, Hull away in the Cup, or Barcelona at the Nou Camp, or, we find somebody who can distribute the ball from the middle of the park to give our team it’s tempo back. We lack cohesion – that buzzword from early season – and in my mind it’s because one vital cog is missing in front of our defence, adversely affecting our whole style of play.

The only player who has shown signs that he has the speed of thought, weight of pass and all-round ability to cover the absence of Santi Cazorla and, to a lesser extent, Jack Wilshere, is Mohamed Elneny. But what we can’t do, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, is persist with Aaron Ramsey in there. Play him on the right. Or drop him to the bench. It’s not that important a role in our set-up, relatively speaking.

But the primary distributor from the middle of the park is crucial. He needs vision and to be able to pass but Ramsey, for all his strengths, such as stamina, and a knack for popping up with goals, is not that man, even if his stats suggest the Welshman’s better than Pirlo, Alonso and Cesc combined. You could have Neymar, Messi, Suarez or Superman himself up front, if you replace Busquets or Rakitic or Iniesta with Ramsey, it’d disrupt even Barcelona’s rhythm big-style. He’s laborious, clumsy and erratic bless him, and those traits have no place at the heart of our team, or at the heart of any team trying to build from the back.

The lack of control and reliability in midfield effects the shape of the side, players roam from their positions with greater frequency in search of the ball to make things happen spontaneously, fluency is lost altogether, and even our defending is afflicted by the chaos ahead of it.

You may read this and think, ‘boll*cks’, and that’s fine. You might point to games lost with Cazorla playing in the middle and that’s a fair point, but since the Cazorla-Coquelin partnership emerged just over a year ago, we’ve been winning consistently when it’s been used, controlling games and showing title-winning form far more often than not. In my mind, that partnership has been the bed-rock on which we built our brilliant form over the calendar year of 2015 and though there were the odd hiccups, we nearly always looked like a well-functioning side.

These last few months, when we’ve been deprived of that midfield platform, we’ve flattered to deceive when winning, or just gone to pieces like we did this afternoon, against what on paper, was the weakest United team in decades.

I realise I haven’t touched on other talking points from today’s game; like Gabriel’s defending, Walcott’s whereabouts, Sanchez’s struggles, Arsene’s choices, the impact of sunlight, the fearlessness of youth, Louis van Gaal’s, admittedly brilliant, touchline amateur dramatics on a day the Oscars are handed out, but I wanted instead to talk about what I feel is the main issue behind our poor form at the moment.

Ramsey’s had a rough ride from me this week so I’ll reiterate that I do like him as a player and don’t mean to sound overly critical. He can be an effective footballer, but he’s poorly positioned at the moment and like a lot of our squad, horribly out of form. I’d like to see him back playing from the right, where his energy is an asset rather than a liability, he can drift without the unsuitable task of running the game for us, and can time runs into the box and get on the end of things.

Back tomorrow.

27th February 2016: Premier League Preview – Can we end United hoodoo?

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. In all the time I’ve been following football, I can’t think of a more vulnerable Manchester United team than the one we’re likely to face tomorrow afternoon, as we try to reduce the gap to league leaders Leicester back to two points after the Foxes scored a last-minute winner against Norwich earlier today.

Having conceded at the death against us a fortnight ago to lose the game, I suppose some will view Leicester’s late victory today as karmic consequence, but I’m going to put it down to the fact Claudio Ranieri’s side are a genuinely quality outfit who have their first-ever Premier League title in sight.

When you then study the respective run-ins of the two sides, ignoring the two other title hopefuls in Manchester City and Sp*rs, it becomes pretty obvious Arsenal can’t fall any further behind, making victory Old Trafford all the more important.

It’s something Arsene Wenger is obviously very aware of and assessing our upcoming run of fixtures, which start against United tomorrow and include hosting Swansea next midweek before the north London derby at White Hart Lane a week today, the boss called it a ‘key period’ when he spoke at his pre-match press conference yesterday. He said:

It is the key period. We work the whole season for this period and that’s where you’re really tested but it’s where you have an opportunity to show your quality as well. On that front, that is the most interesting period of the season. You can show quality, nerves and desire as well. We need to focus on the Premier League where we have a big part to play. Everybody drops points and it is unpredictable. We have rebuilt a good run in the Premier League and we need to continue that. How many points that will be needed [to win the title]? We don’t know. Let’s not set any limit on the number of points we can get. We have put ourselves in a strong position again. We want to take advantage of that and continue our good run in the Premier League.

In terms of team news, Jack Wilshere, Santi Cazorla and Tomas Rosicky remain long-term absentees and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has joined them on the side-lines but Gabriel, who played in the reverse fixture in October, is expected to be fit and available after his own recent lay-off.

When you throw in Danny Welbeck’s availability, Olivier Giroud’s lack of goals recently and a newly vacated starting berth on the right of the attack, playing Arsenal Manager and guessing our likely selection for tomorrow becomes a lot more difficult.

I’m tempted to say we’ll see a change at centre-half because if not, this will be a third game in eight days for Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny. On the other hand, which one do you rest and is Gabriel match-fit even if he’s no longer injured?

As for up front, is Theo Walcott worth a go in place of Olivier Giroud? Or were his two assists in the two recent games against Leicester and Bournemouth proof that the Frenchman’s contributing enough even if he’s not scoring himself?

Is Danny Welbeck now able to start and finish a vital game having played bit-parts in just three games in ten months? Then, whoever leads the line, what do we do on the right? Joel Campbell? Theo? Danny? Aaron Ramsey, with one of Mohamed Elneny or Mathieu Flamini playing in the middle alongside Francis Coquelin? Who knows? Only Arsene …

Personally, I would be inclined to play Elneny in midfield, move Ramsey to the right and pick either Welbeck or Walcott up top if this wasn’t quite such a vital fixture, but seeing as it is, I’d make as few changes as possible to Tuesday’s team, despite us losing. So if pushed, I’d say keep the same starting line-up, with the one enforced change being Welbeck starting in place of the Ox on the right.

Whoever plays though, we’ll have to buck a trend that has seen us go win-less in our last eight Premier League games at Old Trafford, losing six of them. But as I suggested at the start of this post, we should be more confident of victory than at any time in recent history. Time to turn that confidence into concrete points and stay firmly on the Foxes’ tails.

Back post-match.

COYG!

26th February 2016: Wenger on Manchester United

Posted on by TremendArse

Happy Friday. Following two consecutive disappointing results in cup competitions, we return to Premier League action on Sunday against Manchester United in a fixture Arsene Wenger today labelled ‘special’.

Not ‘special’ in the sense that the game will be a Portuguese, loudmouthed, bus-parking, hypocritical bellend, but special because it’s a meeting of two teams with a rich mutual history, and who shared a fierce rivalry as they dominated English football for the first decade or so of Arsene’s tenure at Arsenal.

Speaking at his pre-match press conference this morning, the boss said:

Yes [it still has an aura] because Manchester United are a big club, Old Trafford is a special place and I believe for every club it remains a special fixture. Against Arsenal, the United fans and players will be up for it. In one week all has changed. I didn’t believe that they would lose against Shrewsbury and Midtjylland. Old Trafford is always a difficult place to go and even if they had lost against Midtjylland, I would have said that it is a difficult game.

All of the above accepted, this has to be the first time, certainly in my living memory at least, of us going to Old Trafford and being widely expected to take all three points. I mean, we may have failed to win our last two games without scoring a goal and we may have a dysfunctional central midfield, but Manchester United are a relative shambles at the moment, regardless of their big win in Europe on Thursday.

If I was to go through the United squad and try to pick their best players, David de Gea, Chris Smalling, Luke Shaw, Wayne Rooney and Anthony Martial would certainly be on the list, but all five are either already ruled out, or serious doubts, to face us on Sunday. Which means a squad that’s been struggling all season and currently has various other players on the sidelines, is stretched to the point of having to blood a bunch of untested academy hopefuls.

Yet the boss maintains his side will need to produce a ‘special’ performance against Louis van Gaal’s men, and cited the 3-0 spanking we gave them at Emirates stadium in October as a kind of blueprint for Sunday. He said:

If you look all the titles of Manchester United, to beat them at Old Trafford it needs to always be special. They have never won many more games than us away from home in their whole history. There are a lot of ingredients [for success] in there. We had a good performance against them in October. I think we took them a little bit by surprise and we played at a high pace from the start and closed down well early on. We need to play at that pace again because our game is based on pace and speed, and if we don’t have that I don’t see how we can win there. We have to raise our level at the right moment. You want to raise your level and after, individually, the players will benefit from that. When we attack well, Alexis will be very dangerous so we have to focus on attacking well together. After that it’s important to remember that we worked very hard to be in this position. At half time against Leicester, we were eight points behind Leicester. Today we are two points behind. We have to take advantage of that.

Meanwhile, Per Mertesacker has also been remembering our emphatic win over United earlier this season, highlighting our game-plan that day and suggesting what will be needed to secure another win over them this weekend. The defender told Arsenal Player:

I think we came out really strong, trusted in ourselves, nicked balls from them in their final third and then broke them down. It was remarkable how we played and how we reacted. We were really active from the start, pressed them high and tried to get the ball as quickly as possible. It completely worked out. It will be a different game this time but I want to see the same effort from our side. That was our plan, to get the ball early, so the distance between where we got the ball and the goal was short. We are dangerous when we win the ball early. I think that’s something we need to emphasise. I would say we are more comfortable going there, or away from home in general, and performing well and to our best [than before]. We need a good performance in Manchester, there’s no doubt about it.

Obviously United’s generally poor form and performances this season are offset a little by our own recent struggles and in particular, the absence of Santi Cazorla, who was outstanding when the two sides last met.

Regular readers will know just how highly I rate our little Spaniard and how much I think he’s missed in the middle of the park right now, but his performance in that 3-0 win encapsulated his brilliance for me.

In the build up to our first goal, eventually flicked home at the near post with aplomb by Alexis, Cazorla picked up possession from one of our centre-halves and toyed with Bastian Schweinsteiger, rolling his foot over the ball and teasing his opponent before drawing him in and releasing it to a team-mate to set us on the attack. And for our second, Cazorla’s control, elusiveness and vision in releasing the ball to Alexis under pressure from Rooney was as brilliant as it was effortlessly efficient.

But aside from those two bits of play, Cazorla ran the game for us alongside Francis Coquelin and played a pivotal role in us dominating the ball and producing fluent football, particularly in that devastating opening 20 minutes in which we scored all three of our goals. We won’t have that level of control on proceedings on Sunday in his absence in my opinion, because the under-rated, over-worked and misunderstood Aaron Ramsey will play in his place, but perhaps we can find another way to be just as effective. I hope so.

Back tomorrow with a preview.