That was a big win for the Gunners.

Welcome to the Sunday suppliment sore arses.

This morning I feel ashamed, I have to confess, I need to bare my soul to the world and say…..” I didn’t think we’d win at Leicester”. I thought they would be up for it and Mahrez, Vardy and Co would get the three points. I definately didn’t forsee us getting five and little Alexis getting a hat-trick.

But I suppose that’s what supporting Arsenal can be like sometimes, occassionally a small crack will materialise in ones faith, a smidgeon of doubt appears on the horizon and you find yourself dreading the next game. That was yours truly yesterday morning, I had no enthusiasm for the match…. but luckily, I watched it and as the game progressed my doubts, my fears, my dread, slowly dissolved as I watched a master class in football.

Theo… oh Theo, there have been so many doubts about you as CF but yesterday you showed that you have the hunger, the mental attitude and the skill to actually do it. Perhaps it just needed time for you to aclimatise to the position but against Leicester you proved, Yes, you can. Some great runs behind the defence, Positional awareness and a sublime Henryesque goal, and now you even sport the haircut and beard of King Henry. Well done lad.

Little dynamo Alexis…. MOTM, a hat-trick and a great third goal. The duracell has finally recharged and will now terrorise PL defences for the rest of the season. Long may it continue.

Overall, it was a good game by the whole team, shame we conceded a couple but still, it was a big win, no, in fact it was a massive win. Something I’m sure Wenger will want to build upon and improve. Our passing and counter-attacking play was quick, assured and positive. We were unplayable. Our two wing backs made a massive contribution to our attack and interchanged well with Ramsey and Alexis. Özil made some excellent passes, including the assist for the Alexis header and was unfortunate not get on the score sheet himself.

So, from my doubts and fears of yesterday morning I am now free of negative thoughts about the greatest team in England. We have moved into fourth place, just three points behind leaders Man United and with them to play at the Emirates next weekend perhaps a tougher test than Leicester but on yesterdays form, I don’t see us losing the momentum.

It looks as if the battle for the title is going to be a very close fought affair. The Chavs are gradually drifting out of contention, Leicester and West Ham will eventually fall by the wayside, as will the Spuds, despite their win yesterday. So that leaves Us, City and United to contest the top spot. City have now suffered back to back defeats and their defence is looking vulnerable. United are on form but as with City, their defence is questionable. So now that I’m in a much more positive mood I reckon in a few weeks time the Arsenal will be topping the PL. Inconsistency will be our only enemy.

Right, —-> Glass —–> Wine —–> Knife —–> Chorizo

Thanks for reading…. COYG’s.

Emotions of a fickle fan! A tale of two games…

I’ve been having an argument in my head on whether to do a post this morning. Three days ago I was angry with Mr Wenger for fielding a COC team for the Champions League, today I want to kill Mike Dean for ruining what should have been a cracking game of football at Stamford Bridge and Wenger is my hero. So I’ve decided not to vent my anger because others do it in a much more eloquent way… as does Redders on AA, so here is his rant from this morning, I hope you don’t mind RA… I’ve nicked your post.

Redders posted this:

Here is the musings of a deflated fan: not with his team but with the way football has been allowed to descend into farce!!

A match which most of us had looked forward to with both hope and uncertainty over the result, became instead all about neanderthal man Costa and the weak, incompetent referee Dean.

On a more prosaic level, the game was decided when we as a team fell to a sucker punch by allowing Gabriel to be provoked into a tame back-heeled foot flick towards his tormentor Costa, who swiftly screamed like a wimp to Dean what had happened, and allowing Dean, who clearly had not seen it, to walk away and become surrounded by other Chelsea demanding a red card which he then produced with his usual dramatic flourish.

Where was the Arsenal captain while this was going on – who the hell was the Arsenal captain in the absence of the injured Herman the German. Why it was the diminutive Cazzor who was conspicuous by his lack of leadership.

If anything, at anytime in a game required a firm no-nonsense word by the captain to Gabriel instructing him to cool it and not allow himself to be gulled into a red card that was it.

The despicable unbalanced Maureen gloated after the game that Costa was his MoTM, and as a physical, cheating embodiment on the pitch, of the twisted perverse mentality of the balding Machiavelli, then Costa was indeed that.

It seemed to many, and not just biased Gooners, that the incompetent Dean seemed to be frightened to admonish Costa, either for fear of the physical threat to himself on the pitch, or the verbal lambasting he would receive off the pitch by the puppet master, and allowed the nutcase free reign to do his malevolent worst on the pitch.

It is easy for those wishing to knock the Arsenal manager but this behaviour, which had such a catastrophic effect on the result of the match, cannot be legislated for by one manager by himself, and also to ignore the obvious that if Costa had been sent off for the original face smacking head banging assault on Kozzer, then Maureen’s MoTM boy friend would have been in the bath and not on the pitch.

It would not be fanciful to believe that Wenger and not Maureen would have been celebrating victory if the referee had done what was demanded by the rules of the game, and not chickened out.

This whole debacle did not bring credit on anyone, certainly not the Chelsea or their hormonally challenged manager, and in fairness, Arsenal need to look at themselves too, for being poorly captained, and unprofessionally naïve in being so predictably provoked, and finally, the sheer weak, incompetent and disastrous refereeing was, as Arsene said, was totally unacceptable and needs to be urgently addressed.

There you go then… I couldn’t have said it better. I want to start a hate campaign against Mike Dean. Send him some hate mail, damage his car, post photos of him naked with 12 year old girls and being a friend of Rolf Harris, search his waste bin for signs of cannabis use and drug dependancy, hack his computer for child porn… you know the stuff, lets ruin the cunt.

It was like having sex but unable to reach an orgasm!

Yes, very frustrating! But we got the three points, kept a clean sheet, our two designated forwards got a goal each and we are joint second in the Premier League….. so why did I feel so frustrated during the match? We played some excellent football in the first half but were kept from scoring in the first 30 minutes by a combination of the woodwork, a keeper on form and poor finishing. On the eight minute mark Theo had a sitter but put it over with his head, we were all over Stoke in the first 10 minutes and we really should have been 3 or 4 goals to the good.

That’s what was frustrating, to see us play so well, create the chances but then fail miserably when it came to getting the ball in the net. The first half we produced 74% possession, with 13 shots and six of those on target.

Then the Big Coq won the ball back with an excellent tackle in our half, gave a short pass to Özil and then the little bug-eyed German did what we all know he is capable of doing, he flighted a sublime long pass forward, over the Stoke defence and into the path of Theo who was running in behind their defense and he slotted it nicely past Butland. Phew, at last…… an orgasm.

In the second half we continued to have goalscoring opportunities and the beautiful football was in full swing… but still the frustration loitered, an inability to score. Giroud came on for Walcott at the 75th minute and after another poor attempt on goal it took him just ten minutes to get his head to the ball from a Santi free kick…. phew, a second orgasm. Now the frustration was easing somewhat, we had control of the game and Stoke were nowhere near to getting a goal. Time to roll over, smoke a cigarette and relax.

Arséne Wenger was equally frustrated and after the game he said:

“My only regret is that there is too big a difference between the number of chances we made and the number of goals we scored but that will come.” 

That will come, we all hope! Overall, every single player had a good game, playing in harmony and passing well. However, back to the goalscoring opportunities, there were a few guilty of missing fairly easy chances, Ramsey and Özil both had chances which they should have buried but considering our poor start to the season, we are still joint second and just five points from City, which taking everything into consideration, ain’t bad.

My man of the match was Coq au Vin…. the boy just seems to be growing in stature. He even had a couple of pops at goal and his longer passing seems to be improving.

Next weekend we’re off to Stamford Bridge and this couldn’t be a better time to put our ghosts to rest against Maureen. The Chavs are just above the relegation zone (along with the Spuds HA HA) and are leaking goals like the Titanic leaked water…. so next week would be a good time for our attackers to get the goals that were promised yesterday but were denied due to the woodwork, Butland and poor finishing… and as Wenger said, “… that will come”. I want it to ‘come’ next weekend.

Before the Chavs however, we have a trip to Croatia for our first group game in the CL… a busy few weeks approaching, lets hope the injury gods smile upon us.

It’s Sunday morning and a very wet and grey Provence, but still time for a chilled glass of wine and some spicy chorizo. Until the next time scum bags.

With unlimited funds, Wenger would have won everything!

Good morning Gooner grumblers. It’s another fucking International break, don’t you just hate them, but it gives bloggers a break from predicting team selection and results or doing a match post-mortem. Recently I saw a discussion somewhere about if Maureen had managed the Arsenal team over the past ten years he would have won nothing and probably wouldn’t have kept them in the top four as Arsene has done, ditto Pelligrini. And alternatively, if Wenger had the money available at Chelsea or City he would have swept the board of trophies. With enough money from a sugar daddy like Abramovitch or the oilers, would it be possible to put a team together like this:

That team is all personal preference and dreamland I know, I’ll apologise now for not including any Arsenal players, I was tempted to put Cech in goal though. I’m sure people will have different ideas, but you get the gist. If Wenger had the money and could put this team together, what would he achieve? If he had the money to get a third of those players he would win most or all trophies available. But then could you say any manager with that team could win everything? For example, if Pulis, Moyes or Fat Sam had that team, would they win trophies?

My point being is that Wenger, with the restrictions on budget over the last 10 seasons has managed to keep a fairly lightweight team punching above their weight and keeping them in the top four all that time and eventually winning two FA Cups back to back after being given a bit of cash to buy Ozil and Sanchez. No mean achievement. What could he have achieved if given a budget like City or Chelsea? and now United (although Van Gaal still needs to prove that he can do something with it on the pitch).

More and more premier league teams are now spending more cash on top flight players. West Brom splashed £12m on Rondon, so the Arsenal need to up the ante, £12m doesn’t get you much of a striker these days, Giroud and Welbeck were our last at that price. With City , Chelsea, Liverpool and United all spending heavily in the striker department the Arsenal now need to think in terms of £40 or £50 million for an up front man. Wenger always says he doesn’t spend money just because he has it and waits for the right player if available. All very commendable and probably the correct way of doing business but when you see the inability of our current team to score goals then it is a frustrating philosophy. He goes against the trend of short-termism but is that now hurting our prospects?

Alternatively, looking at the beginning of the current season we have seen all the big hitters (apart from City) start miserable campaigns, Chelsea are leaking goals all over the place, Liverpool had three clean sheets but with only two goals scored and then got thrashed by West Ham. United have done nothing despite the acquisition of Depay but they have just bought a 19 year old ‘wonderkid’ for £40m plus.

There have been an increasing number of quality players going from big European sides to lesser English clubs. The TV payoffs for the PL means that lower clubs are able to pull off transfers for players that seem capable of playing at a higher level. For example:-

Ayew to Swansea (Marsielle) that was a freeby?
Afellay to Stoke (Barcelona)
Shaqiri to Stoke (Inter Milan)
Rondon to West Brom (Zenit)
Wijnaldum to Newcastle (PSV)
Son to Tottenham (Bayer Leverkusen)
Ogbonna to West Ham (Juventus)
Deulofeu to Everton (Barcelona)
Lens to Sunderland (Dynamo Kiev)
Cabaye to Crystal Palace (PSG)
Inler to Leicester (Napoli)
Payet to West Ham (Marseille)

Wenger says that if a player he wants is not available then he will not rush off and spend money on a player just for the sake of it, he waits until a player suited to our style is available. However, if a player who was suitable for our style of play wasn’t available in the last window, the likelihood is that there won’t be one available in the next window. Van Gaal has shown what a manager will do at all costs to keep fans happy and spend over the top for an untried 19 year old.

The top four or five teams in the PL can now spend whatever they want and get the best players, whether these players then perform on the pitch is another matter entirely. Only time will tell if Liverpool with Benteke, Man United with Depay and Martial, City with Stirling and Kevin De Bryrne and Chelsea with Pedro will improve.

However, the mid table teams are also buying quality and maybe, just maybe, their managers are thinking more logically about who they buy and if that player will improve the team. This will have consequencies for the top teams, Crystal Palace and West Ham have already proved that to be the case.

So, ultimately, was Wenger right in not getting a new striker in the transfer window? We have to have some faith in our manager, he knew before the deadline that Welbeck needed an operation on his knee, he said he searched for new players but none of the appropriate quality were available, he said that he would only buy a player who would enhance the current squad and he said he will continue to search. We have to have faith that he knows what he is doing, because Maureen, Van Gaal and Pellegrini have spent fortunes on possibles, because they had the money to do it, Wenger had the money as well apparently, but he is much more cautious in todays market place, when quality melons are not available in the shop, he doesn’t want to spend over the odds for one that will not be worth eating in two days time. He knows how to keep a mid table team in the top four, that has to count for something. The quality signings will come, he just needs more time to find them…. he will.

Right, breakfast time, smoked ham, spicy chorizo, hard, old goats cheese and a glass of chilled muscadet. Happy Sunday my Gooner dildos…. can’t wait for next weeks game against the Orks.