Tuesday 29 September 2009

Winning badly is still winning….just!

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Indeed it is. So another crap performance away at Fulham, but a decent result for a change as RvP’s excellent strike with his chocolate leg from a fantastic through ball by Cesc, coupled with some sublime work by Vito Mannone to keep the home side out, sees us win 1-0.

Before the game about 200 of us cruised along the river Thames from Westminster, out east before turning around and heading for Putney. The sun was shining, songs were vocal and the beer was flowing resulting in a quality pre-game for all!

Right, so, the plus points. Mannone was awesome with some fine reaction saves from close range, while the defence did a decent job limiting Fulham’s chances. Song also had a relatively good game, helping to protect the back four and winning the majority of tackles in the middle of the park. The negatives? Well we looked quite lethargic at times, struggling to find any rhythm or indeed our own players at times. Diaby was probably the most guilty of losing possession cheaply, how he is starting ahead of the likes of Vela and Ramsey is beyond me. Rosicky will, i would imagine, replace him in the starting lineup once fully fit, but Diaby continues to blow hot and cold too regularly to be taken as a starter.

One of those blowing more cold than hot at the moment is Cesc. Aside from his killer ball to RvP for the goal on Saturday he was practically anonymous, as was Arshavin. It’s hard to say if there’s something legitimately wrong there and that they’re genuinely not happy (suggestions from others about Cesc’s body language showing that he’s regretting not moving during the summer are probably a tad OTT), or if they’re simply just out of form. They’re human and it happens, but no doubt we’ll get all the bollocks about Barcelona resurface soon!

The club published their financial results yesterday, showing healthy profits, much to many people’s annoyance following our lack of activity in the transfer market and areas in the squad that need addressing. Peter Hill-Wood delivering the news with all the tact and guile of Prince Phillip! Interestingly though he stated that funds were, and always have been, available for transfers, and for the first time stated that it was Wenger’s belief in his project that prevented us bringing in players in the last window, the boss added that one of his objectives, aside from making winning teams, was to ensure that the club made money.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, but shouldn’t the business side of the club not lie with the board rather than the manager? Otherwise you have a conflict of interest. You may want to buy someone like Yaya Toure as he would improve an area of the squad that needs addressing, so you shouldn’t be also trying to crunch the numbers working out when your next gas bill is due! If the manager needs cash to make a winning team then he should be fighting tooth and nail to get it if its available. I’m not asking for us to live beyond our means here and do a Leeds, but a little outlay from the highest ticket prices in the country towards squad improvement would be nice. I guess he still believes that Song, Diaby, Eboue can win us the league. Hmmm……..

Anyway, Olympiacos at home tonight in the CL.Team news is Bendtner is out after crashing his car on Sunday, nothing serious but enough to rule him out for one game. Denilson’s back injury is worse than initially feared, turns out to be a fracture similar to the one that ruled Gilberto out for most of the season a few years back, he’s expected to miss 8 weeks. Eduardo is back in the squad after missing Fulham for whatever reason it was, while Theo is in/out of the squad depending on what you’re reading!

Tonight won’t be easy, Brazilian legend Zico, who did great things getting Fenerbache onto the CL scene, is now at the helm of the Greek outfit, while familliar faces will feature, namely Matt Derbyshire formerly of Blackburn fame, while ex-Villain Olof Mellburg is marshalling their back four, which has only conceded twice in their opening ten games this season. Plus we’ll no doubt make things hard for ourselves as usual. But here’s hoping for a win and an improvement of recent form.

COME ON YOU REDS!

Friday 25 September 2009

WBA get a Dirty Sanchez in the Beer cup & Fulham away

Apologies for the lack of updates, been doing a bit much recently and consequently I’m half asleep most of the time now!

So, Tuesday night saw the Young Guns make the 4th round of the beer cup with a 2-0 victory over WBA. Those expecting an easy night like the 6-0 demolition of Sheffield United were somewhat over expectant given Albion’s form going into this match, as the first half proved with both sides going close.

The tuning point of the game came shortly after half time, with the sending off of ex-Gunner Jerome Thomas for bitch-slapping Jack Wilshere. Roberto Di Matteo has criticised Jack for saying something to instigate the slap, but at the end of the day, if you raise your hands to a player then you’re going to get sent off.

Following the red we dominated play and went one up, Dirty Sanchez Watt, who made an impressive first team debut, was first to a parried Carlos Vela shot, before Vela himself turned poacher, taking advantage of a monumental defensive cock-up after a Mark Randall lob from distance came back off the bar to kill the tie. Great to have King Carlos back, lets hope he can transfer his awesome Carling Cup form from the last 2 seasons into the Premiership and Champions League.

Right, so, it’s Fulham away tomorrow. Not a happy hunting ground in recent seasons, and especially last season when a lightweight and toothless Arsenal went down 1-0. Arshavin is back in the side, RvP faces a fitness test while Wenger was coy on Theo being involved:

“He has only played 45 minutes since June so he lacks a little bit of competition. He was short for the West Brom game [on Tuesday] but he's available again. He needs match practice. I don't know [if he could figure this weekend] He is still a bit short because it's the week he's back to full, normal training. But the good news is that he's available again.”

So probably the bench for Theo, maybe. Almunia is definitely out, and with Szczczczczczczesny impressing midweek against WBA Wenger hinted that there may be competition for the nod this weekend, saying that it would “normally (be) Manone” getting the start. We shall see.

One thing for certain is I will be hammered as REDaction are running their boat trip to Fulham, starting at midday from Westminster, going out to the Thames Barrier before turning around and heading for Putney, plus the Italians and the mental Croatians that we met in Austria are over too, so don’t expect any sense from me until Wednesday at the earliest!

Anyhoo, have a good weekend and COME ON YOU REDS!

 

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Ah, so, blog…….

Right, this is my lunchtime so I’m typing quickly.

Wigan at the weekend was a piece of piss. We didn’t really get out of first gear against a poor side and worse support than our own. I actually think the reason we didn’t make the away section smaller is because it physically couldn’t get any smaller, and they still couldn’t fill that. At least we still get a whole end at their place.

The concerning thing about the weekend was that it was just another exercise of papering over the cracks, much like the Portsmouth game, although that did pose a few questions about Almunia that has arisen since then. While we cruised to a simples 4-0 win we were still pretty average, play like that against a vaguely competent side and we’ll get found out, like City away the week before for example.

Tonight the nippers are at home to West Brom in the beer cup. Apparently Vela is back from injury so could feature (yay!), while Senderos will feature in his “fresh start” to his Arsenal career. That's the fresh start he’s been granted since Djourou got injured. Expect to see Sanchez Watt, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Kieran Gibbs et al feature as well.The bad news is Silvestre is also in contention……

It won’t be a walkover, WBA are coming off of a 5-0 demolition of Boro at the weekend, going well in the Championship and playing some good football under new manager Roberto Di Matteo so it should be a good game tonight.

As much as I like to see the nippers do well in the beer cup, I shan’t be too annoyed if they fall short.

One more quick thing, managed to get a few pics of the Arsenalisation courtesy of a few people from the Online Gooner Forum (Basil and Josh, cheers guys), looks like the club have done a good job so far:

 

Starting to look like home!

COME ON YOU REDS!

Monday 21 September 2009

Return to winning ways and classy displays

That’s what I’d be talking about if I had the chance, but I’m a bit busy, so talk amongst yourself (note singular!) and I’ll put something up soon…….

Friday 18 September 2009

Shut up C**tybayc**t and Wigan at home

Seriously, he’s starting to take the piss now.

I know he’s an attention seeking c**t and the best thing would be to ignore him, but Greedybayc**t’s latest comments on his antics last weekend have really gotten up my nose.

"There is only so much abuse a man can take until he reaches breaking point," the c**t says in the Sun.

That’s indeed true, but this is a two way thing. Us Arsenal fans took enough of the bloke abusing the club last season, holding the club at ransom last summer before playing like a total c**t for practically the entire season while we all paid through the noses to see him not give a toss. That after watching his two faced antics the summer before as he told us he was staying, then whoring himself to half of Europe an hour later. Then the c**t has the balls to claim that we showed a lack of respect for not shaking his hand before the game.

"My friends, like Eboue, were fine, they are decent people. But I could not understand some of the players being disrespectful towards me.”

Probably because you’re an epic, whale sized c**t and everyone can see this but you, and Eboue, but I’m sure he was just being polite.

'It wasn't my fault I left, it was Arsene who wanted to accept the offer for me. I wasn't making any comments in the press about wanting to leave or being unhappy. It was the club who wanted to sell me yet I am being abused by the fans who once cheered me.”

'I think, in terms of class on the pitch, we [City] have overtaken Arsenal and that was a reason for some of the hostility.'

Seriously??? What the f**k???? He didn’t want to leave and the club wanted to sell him???? City have overtaken us for class on the pitch?? With THAT c**t running around in a City shirt stamping on ex-teammates left right and centre before claiming it was THEM who were disrespectful????? He didn’t want to leave but was quite happy selling himself to Milan, Inter, Real, Barca et al at any given opportunity??? What f**king planet is he living on???

So yeah, to wake up to that lot on Sky Sports News this morning was rather entertaining to say the least.

Anyway, away from all things c**t for now and onto Wigan tomorrow. Injury news is that Mannone will continue in goal in absence of Almunia, AA is only 10% likely to play (which is 10% better than before I might add), Denilson’s back injury will keep him out a few more weeks while RvP should be our only returnee from midweek. It would be nice to see a convincing win and maybe, maybe a clean sheet, but the chances of us keeping a clean sheet are pretty slim, so I’ll take a couple of goals instead.

The Arsenalisation of the Grove continues, apparently the cannon in the seats in the Lower East has been modified to look less sh*t (apparently the size of our seats is causing trouble with adding detail but they’re working on it). The first exterior core has been done and will get its trial run tomorrow on the exterior opposite the North Bank Bridge (or that’s where the cherrypicker is at the moment looking at the Grove’s webcams), expecting it to be that retro-soviet legends design I posted a while back, while more work has been done on the lower concourse. I won’t be there to experience it tomorrow as I’m doing Fulham away instead so won’t get to see it all till the Scum visit in October.

Anyway, lets hope for a return to winning ways in the league.

COME ON YOU REDS!

Thursday 17 September 2009

Brazilian defending is killing us

Game of two halves. Jekyll and Hyde Arsenal. we’ve heard it all before and saw it again last night in Belgium.

I didn’t see any of the game until this morning when I caught the highlights on ATVO, only listened to the first twenty minutes on the radio while driving to the rink for training. My journey consisted of lots of swearing, some highly erratic and aggressive driving, and whatever c**t who was on 5live last night reminding us that we were two down every minute and a half as well as calculating Liege’s goal total if they carried on their scoring rate from the first 5 minutes. And to think my licence fee pays for these t***ers!!!

Again, like the City game at the weekend, we looked good in possession and going forward, but my god are we lacking at the back. Simple mistakes like Eduardo’s, poor marking (like for Bellamy’s goal at Eastlands), not helping protect the back four (any game with Diaby playing) is causing us to haemorrhage goals, nine in our last four games to be precise.

While we acquired the impressive Tommy Vermaelen over the summer the same problems remain. Clichy is error prone and often left exposed and we still have no competent and consistent defensive midfielder to win the ball and protect the back four.

On the plus side from last night, Bendtner played well and I suppose coming back from two down away from home in a hostile atmosphere shows the character of the team. Yes, we got lucky with Song’s offside handball before Vermaelen’s goal, but we’ve had some pretty crappy luck go against us in the last few weeks, so its swings and roundabouts there. Plus Eddy proved that “divegate” is well and truly behind him, poaching the winner with his knee with nine minutes remaining.

However, at the end of the day, it should have been easier against Standard, right?

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Lots of stuff going down

Right, we all know what happened on Saturday, and the uber-sh*tstorm that it has created on many fronts.

First of all, I don’t actually have a problem with Greedybayor’s celebration. Yes, it was provocative, and yes, it was utterly retarded like the player himself. But we all had a chuckle when Henry did this to the Spuds didn’t we?

henryspursps5cp7

Actually, I prefer the photoshopped version of that:

Henry

I mean, ok, it’s not like Henry played for the Spuds and had an acrimonious departure after a season of getting paid a lot of coin for doing f**k all before trying to take one of their strikers’ head off, scoring and then taunting them, not like that utter c**t.

My main gripe is that the pillocks in the media seem to be more obsessed with the celebration that the true crimes, the stamps on Cesc and RvP (images pinched from Gunnerblog).

               Adebayor's high tackle on Cesc FabregasAdebayor stamp on Van Persie

While the Cesc incident could well be an accident, the RvP ‘face rake’ certainly was not. Greedybayor’s claim that he was trying to get the ball is utter tripe was the ball was well gone by the time he attempted surgery with his foot. It was a malicious attempt to harm, made all the more shocking by the fact that referee Mark Clattenburg as no more that 4 years away from the incident and looking right at it. You could argue that if he’d not bottled it and shown Greedy the Red that he will no doubt get retrospectively, then we would have gone on to win the game.

Take nothing away from City though, their counter attacking play was masterful and highlighted the need for a quality DCM. Quite why Wenger brought Song off I don’t know, but it’s a position that has required addressing since Flamini departed for Milan, no more “If I bring someone in it will kill X Y and Z’s development” it needs doing, bite the bullet.

In other news, Eduardo has been cleared of diving after the club’s appeal was upheld last night. Apparently we proved that there was contact. I’m still not convinced personally but glad that Eddy is available for Liege away tomorrow night, as game that we’ve not got to win just to get the CL off to a good start, but to give us some momentum that’s been lost on two jaunts up north.

The one thing I have noticed is that everyone has gone from having us as title runners to struggling to finish top 6 in the space of 2 games, something of a kneejerk reaction. The simple fact is, while we’ve lost away to both Manchester teams, we’ve got 3 difficult away fixtures done and dusted and have a game in hand. Assuming we win the game in hand, we’re in the same state as Liverpool but having played tougher fixtures. Plus we’re only 4 games into the season! This is a marathon not a sprint, a good run in what are, on paper, winnable matches before the Spuds visit at the end of next month should see us looking healthy both on the pitch and in the table.

Pre-Standard thoughts tomorrow.

Friday 11 September 2009

“The Project” away

So, the crappy football is done and only one injury to report so far ahead of our trip to Manchester “The Project” City.

“Arshavin has come back injured (Groin) from the Russian game last night. We are upset because he should not have played. He was not in a condition where he could afford to play 90 minutes. We took him off against Manchester United because he was injured already at half-time. He will be out for Saturday, Wednesday and certainly next Saturday.”

So AA is out for the next three games for sure, and while Wenger is correct to feel aggrieved, Russian manager Guus Hiddink did make it clear before the game that it was the players decision to play, so some of the blame has to lay with AA. Either way, Wenger isn’t happy!

Sky are saying the Cesc and Rosicky are likely to sit this one out, BBC are suggesting otherwise. Walcott is still a week away according to the manager while for “The Project” Tevez is ruled out while Robinho is doubtful.

Oh, and they’ve got some lanky pr**k up front who can’t work out the offside rule, who Wenger thinks isn’t obsessed by money.Yeah, and I prefer being sober!

Chances are the lanky tw*t will score against us this weekend, lets hope we can bag 3 in response!

COME ON YOU REDS!

 

Monday 7 September 2009

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz & sh*t happens

Internationals are crap

This is crapper, and typically comes just after the poxy transfer window happens. At least we know why Senderos wasn’t sold then, yay! Fingers crossed Song will cover if when injuries happen and that we buy another CB or two in the January window so spare us from the SAS partnership from hell.

Of course, that would be something wouldn’t it!

No other injury news so far, although we do have more lovely exciting international games on Wednesday for all our players to get crippled. Yippee!!

Wake me when the proper stuff starts.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Boycott Play.com and Amazon (who will actually sell anything apparently!)

Morning all,

I’ve been away in the Cotswolds all weekend, totally cut off from the world aside from the occasional text, so I’m not going to touch Saturday night with a bargepole.

Ok, one thing. “That” chant by the United scum towards Wenger.

After going unchecked by the FA, MUFC officials or the media for the best part of a decade, it’s finally gone too far:

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That's right, it’s now available from Play.com as a download.

There have been some calls to revive certain chants relating to Munch in retaliation. However, before we stoop to United’s level, how about bringing this filth to the public eye? Simply copy this email below (courtesy of Fuse from the Online Gooner forum)

To whom it may concern

I am writing in relation to this product: http://www.play.com/Music/MP3-Download-Album/4-/7944338/Manchester-United-Chants/Product.html. In particular to track no.4.

I am a fan of Arsenal Football Club and I have heard this vile, disgusting chant has been sung at the manager of our club. I believe that paedophilia is one of the worst things that any human being can do and to accuse someone of it just because of a dislike of another football team is disgraceful.

Therefore, I was in disbelief when I found out that this "chant" was on sale on your highly respected website. I request that it is taken down now and a complaint is brought to the manufacturer of this CD. I and many other Arsenal supporters will not use your site again until this is dealt with.

I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Then sent to these select addresses below:

To: play@hillandknowlton.com; customercare@play.com
Cc: marketing@arsenal.co.uk; membership@manutd.co.uk;footballforall@thefa.com; info@premierleague.com; lma@lmasecure.com;richard.bevan@lmasecure.com

Use this form to contact Amazon.

An email sent to Amazon in reference to the same got this, frankly stunning response:

Dear Customer


Thank you for writing to Amazon.co.uk with your concerns about one of the titles we list in our catalogue.

This is an issue we take very seriously and we wanted to share with you our goals with respect to our catalogue.

Our goal is to support freedom of expression and to provide customers with the broadest selection possible so they can find, discover and buy any title they might be seeking. That selection may include titles, which some people, may find distasteful or otherwise objectionable.

Amazon.co.uk believes it is censorship not to offer for sale certain titles with repugnant or distasteful content, and we would be rightly criticised if we did so. As a result, we will continue to make controversial works available in the UK and everywhere else, except where they are prohibited by law.

Furthermore, because we strongly believe that the appropriate response to distasteful or repugnant speech is not censorship, but more speech, we will continue to allow readers, authors, and publishers to express their views freely about the books and other products we offer on our website. It is important to note that we do not endorse any opinions expressed by individual authors, musical artists, or filmmakers.

We value all feedback from our customers, and I thank you again for taking the time to send us your comments about this issue.

We hope you will allow us to continue to serve you.
Please let us know if this e-mail answered your question:
If yes, click here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/rsvp-y?c=euttxrbg3389003203

If not, click here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/rsvp-n?c=euttxrbg3389003203&q=ukff

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.
To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our website.

Warmest regards
Ram K.
Amazon.co.uk
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company

I’m not sure whats more stunning. The fact that Amazon are happy selling this, citing ‘freedom of speech’ or the fact that they ended it with “warmest regards”! Utter tossers!

That’s my custom gone, c**ts. If this hasn’t been dealt with by the powers that be by the time of United home, then come here for some ‘select’ songs for the match.

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**UPDATE**

Play have since removed the downloads, Amazon however…….