Like he’d never been away…

 

51 days after THAT horror injury that had, at one point, threatened to end his career, Eduardo returned to the Arsenal first team and marked that return with a brace in a 4-0 win over Cardiff City.

My current financial situation meant I had to choose between going to either Cardiff, Sunderland or Roma, so I had to suffer the gems of wisdom that dropped out of Craig Burley's mouth while watching this on Setanta.

Arsenal were dominant from start to finish, to be honest I was kinda surprised by Cardiff but apparently the weather has caused them to not have a game in 13 days, not sure how true that is but would explain a lot. Anyway, some nice play between Vela and Eduardo see the former put an inch-perfect cross onto the head of the latter, and with plenty of space dispatch it past a helpless Tom Heaton.

The second came from another cross, Bendtner with a good header downwards, before Eddy got his second from the spot after a clumsy bit of defending and promptly celebrated with the medical team that worked so hard over the past year to get him back playing. RVP wrapped the night up with a 4th off his chocolate leg from a good through ball by Bendtner, and booking a home tie in the 5th round vs Burnley.

Cheers to Arsenalist for the footage.

So anyway, the night was really about Eduardo, but not totally. Personally, while Eddy’s return brought back pace, movement and creative flair up front that has been so so lacking over the last few months (take note Adebayor and Diaby), his interaction with another player who for some reason has been criminally overlooked in favour of Wenger’s love child Eboue, Carlos Vela, was the key to last night’s victory.

In more recent games Ade has dropped deeper and deeper to collect the ball, thinking he’s Ronaldinho or something. It doesn’t work and kills attacks. However last night with Eduardo doing this and Vela, playing left wing, providing the overlap and feeding Eduardo enabled us to return to the quick, freeflowing brand of attacking football we’re famous for. I mean for Christ's sake, it was timed at 14 seconds from Gallas winning/fouling at the back to Eddy planting the ball in the back of the net. We’ve not done that since the Invincibles!

Saying that we’ll probably see the return of Eboue on Saturday to fuck things up like the epic cunthammer that he is, god I hope not!

Anyway, lets bask in the glory that is Eduardo…..

Oh, and I finally cracked the 12k on my powerball, shoop da woop!

Rock on!

Technorati Tags: Eduardo,Cardiff,Powerball

Gooooooaaaall!

 

Yeah, that’s me scoring at the weekend! Possibly the first time it’s been caught on camera. Kudos to Mr Stick for the pics, there’s more here, lots more infact!

I still can’t crack the 12k on my powerball, and I’ve found I can’t get close after my initial run, pretty pathetic really.

No Arsenal or hockey this weekend, so I’m off to the dogs tonight in Wim-ble-don with Lea, Scott and Carrie, fingers crossed I’m better than at the gee gees.

Ah, it’s Friday the 13th, fuck that then!

I put a Twitter update thing on here as I continue to get obsessed with social networking tools, so check that out for some schizzle, it’s top left of this page.

Oh, and the state of Florida sucks…..

Goalrush and the two Emmanuels

Morning all

Obviously I’m not referring to Sundays 0-0 in the North London Derby here, I’ll get onto that in a bit. Instead I’m talking about my 2 hockey matches that prevented me from watching the football, which thankfully we won (my god I’d have been annoyed if we’d lost and I’d missed the football for it!!!)

Our first game against University of Portsmouth was a potential bananaskin, while not the most skilled of sides they were organised and tenacious, something that usually makes us come acropper, so we were pretty happy with a 9-0 win! On a personal note my night of many beers with Leanne’s aunt, uncle and brother meant that the first half was a write off for me while I tried to muster some energy, in fact I benched myself for a few shifts (the power of assistant coach!) as I was just coasting most shifts. However once I got into the game I got a brace, controlling one with my feet before sliding it under the keeper and the other a one-timer from the top of the crease. However the first period confirmed what I already knew, I really need to limit myself to a few beers the night before a game as I don’t do myself or my team mates justice.

Second game was a demolition job from beginning to end as we game the Bristol Falcons a 15-0 thrashing, helped by the fact their keeper had never skated before in his life, let alone played in goal! Their team was mostly ice players so were pretty good, but we worked hard defensively to shut them down and Sam recorded her second shut out of the day while I bagged a hat-trick, the first a slapshot from right wing, the second a snapper from the left and the third a onetimer from high slot, so smiles all round and a 5 goal weekend for me!

So, onto the football, and looking at the result, given the fact that we were down to ten men for just under an hour I guess its a good battling point, however in the long term and with eyes on the top four we really needed a win. However, after a bright start where we had a goal disallowed (it was one of those where if you score it its a harsh decision but if you’re the one on the receiving end you’d feel aggrieved if the goal was given) our chances were significantly limited by 2 events:

1: Emmanuel Adebayor pulls up with a hamstring injury and it stretchered off. Now, he’s not having the greatest of seasons but Ade has a wonderful knack of scoring against the scum. He was replaced by Bendtner (Eduardo, on the bench for the first time in a year wasn’t seen as ready by Wenger I guess)

2: Emmanuel Eboue stupidly gets himself sent off after picking up his second yellow of the match. His first was for dissent after being told by the referee THREE TIMES to walk away, and the second was for kicking out at Luca Modric after being fouled. For all the good he did in the opening stanza, and he did actually play well, all be it a bit headless at times, it was typically undone by the side of Eboue that Arsenal fans know and loathe. Even his faked apology to Modric was pathetically overacted. Arsene, your lovechild has to go!! As a footballer he is crap and offers little more than as cover to Sagna, who is practically indestructible, and the way he conducts himself is a disgrace and frankly embarrassing!

Eboue went and realistically so did our hopes of 3 points. The team defended well however Spuds never really came at us, Gallas and Sagna both performing well in defence and Almunia making vital saves when required. Both sides had chances to nick it at the death, Song shot wide from close in as did Bendtner while Modric was denied by Almunia and the game finished 0-0, a result that doesn’t really help either side.

Next up is Cardiff on the 16th in the cup replay, team news is obviously the 2 Emmanuels are missing through injury and suspension, while Arshavin is ineligible as he wasn’t registered for the original game at Ninian Park. Diaby may return, Eduardo should feature providing he doesn’t get injured on international duty tomorrow night while Rosicky, who is now kicking a ball again, and Walcott are probably around 6 and 3 weeks away respectively.

I should probably do some work.

Oh, one more thing. How the hell did the Leafs beat the Habs 5-2? Luke Schenn, that's how!

Its Friday! I need sleep and the NLD....

The end of an odd work week here, everyone's talking about snow and have been working from home lots. I've had another 4 day week, which is always a good thing and apparently Bisley is open again which means my games this weekend will be on.

For some reason I've been going to bed at about midnight all week this week, so I'm shattered and can't wait for a lie in tomorrow morning before a trip to Leanne's aunt and uncle's, which will no doubt involve some good food, good beer and copious amounts of tequila and wine. That's how you prepare the night before a match kids!

Speaking of her uncle, we're playing his lot Sunday (see, a seemless link between paragraphs!) at the shitehole. Sadly as I'll be on the rink I wont be able to watch, so will not know the score until I'm done vs Portsmouth. Its kind of a good thing really, as if we win I get to look forward to watching the game on MOTD, and if we lose (please, I know its been 10 years since they last did us in the league and they've got to win eventually, but lets keep it going for a while longer) I can just shut it out and take out my frustrations on one of the Bristol guys in my later game and avoid any forms of the media!
They're having a really crap season (and we thought we were having a bad one!) but I just fear that they'll up it for this, especially with the Pikey making his 2nd home debut for them. The wind will be in their sails and he'll have a point to prove. But then again we're 8 or 9 games unbeaten now, RVP is on his career best form so far while Adebayor, despite playing bollocks so far this season, has something like 8 goals in his last 9 games vs the Scum. I'm thinking that a draw is probably the most likely outcome.

Got to mention the Leafs at the moment, urgh! If you call up Pogge from the Marlies wouldn't it be nice to actually give the guy a bit of protection? In football it happened with Richard Wright, went from Ispwich to play for Arsenal and England and it just broke the guy. So, please, just if you're going to call him up just make sure he's not totally hung out to dry by his team mates again before it ruins him!
Not looking forward to the Habs game on Saturday, unless we just beat them up rather than beat them again, that may be enjoyable. I just can't subscribe to the Tank Nation way of thinking, just seems wrong to will my team to suck immeasurably.
Sadly being stuck the wrong side of the pond I never get to watch games live so only manage to feed on online highlight packages, but we all knew that this year would be a rebuild season, but was it meant to be this bad??

Have a good weekend, come on you Reds, Leafs and Arrows!

Hockey is cancelled and I've eaten a load of carbs.....

The weather has managed to kill training tonight, and I've already had my usual carbtastic Wednesday lunch.

However I have a backup plan! Aha! A trip to the local pool and going for longer than our usual session and work on my front crawl should give me a good work out. Trouble was I was really looking forward to Hockey, Ginge and I had a good session planned out, starting out with basics and progressing onto breakouts, passing and movement and set plays through transitional moves ahead of our 2 games this weekend vs University of Portsmouth and the Bristol Barracudas.

Acutally, if the ice remains they could be cancelled and I could watch us play the scum! That'd be a bonus!

So yeah, the pool calls tonight!

The longest transfer in the history of football is finally over!

So, 24 hours after the transfer window shuts, Russian Captain Andrei Arshavin is finally confirmed as an Arsenal player!

As usual the fee is undisclosed but rumoured to be near the £15 million mark and the contract a 3 1/2 year one taking him up until he's 30, which is believable knowing Wenger's policy on the over 30's, a bit like Logan's Run!

Arshavin had previously claimed on his personal website to be wearing the number 23 which is indeed true, seems an odd number for an attacking player, but then again this wasn't a normal transfer!

It's on, it's off, It's on, it's off, It's on, it's off, and a shit load of snow!

Morning,

Back at work today after about 8' of snow kept us indoors yesterday, apart from a swift excursion outside to get bacon and mock those trying to destroy their cars getting to work! Apologies for the formatting on this post being a bit sketchy, not sure whats going on with this.

Since my last blog I've been on a legends tour with Eddie Kelly, gotten pissed, very pissed, then got pissed again. In between all that was Arsenal vs West Ham, which I should probably mention.

Now I've mentioned that lets never speak of it again, other than to shake our heads and utter "fucking shite". I did however get to stay in my uncle's flat at Highbury, which is pretty fecking swish as you can see from the pics above (I'll have to work on the formatting of that!!)

So, Arshavin, The Owl. Well, he flew in by private jet on Sunday night and since then we've had:

8am - Deal is on

10am - Deal is off: We can't afford him

2pm - Deal is on again, we checked behind the sofa

3:30pm - We've agreed a fee and personal terms

4pm - He's passed a medical

Then silence, not a sausage, until at 5:50pm a Zenit spokesman comes out and says the deal is off again, then countered by Wenger at 6:45pm saying its all agreed in principle and we'll confirm it later tonight.

Later tonight has now passed, in fact I'm pretty certain it's mid morning, otherwise I really shouldn't be in the office, and the most potracted transfew in the history of transfers still isn't resolved. Apparently the only thing preventing it being completed is that Premier League staff who register players were snowed in and only one member of staff was available and had a few other last minute players to register. Obviously as the deal was done at the death Arshavin would have been at the bottom of the pile.

Personally I think it's a good move on our part. After previous games without Walcott, Cesc and Rosicky (although thats a years worth of games for him!) we've been seriosuly lacking in creativity, which came to a head on Saturday (fucking shite) and our inability to break down the most defensive and non-attacking side I've ever seen. Anything that will take some pressure off Nasri, who isn't consistent enough to provide that spark, and prevent us from relying on Eboue (as if Wenger would actually start Vela!) has got to be a winner in my book.

So, fingers crossed its a done deal and we'll hear at some point today some official news!

Rock on!