We must beat Stoke in a week to forget 31 October, 2008
Posted by lasagnechef in Arsenal News.trackback
I’ll start off by apologizing for not keeping the site up to date recently, I’ve had such a long week including a long and expensive day trip up to London for Wednesday night’s game. We all know what happened though, there’s not much point in me going over it all again in depth.
I will say this though. We threw it away, it was ours to win and there is no one to blame except Arsenal for throwing it away. There was no leadership on that pitch, we needed someone to take the game by the scruff of the neck once we went 4-2 up and say, ‘Look, we’re going to take the ball down, play our own game, not fuck about, concentrate, play the game at our own pace and win this one out.’ However we didn’t have anyone on the pitch to do that. You look towards players like Cesc Fabregas to take tht role, but he was fucking knackered, with Denilson alongside him he had to play defensive midfield, attacking midfield & no.10. Emmanuel Adebayor thinks he’s a player of authority but he was fucking useless the other night, he couldn’t keep the ball to save his life. And the one person who’s job it technically is to take this role is no good at it; William Gallas is no Arsenal captain. He should’ve played out those final few minutes as if they were the most important of his career, but I saw no leadership from him, which would inevitably ruin his career…
He’s been dropped/injured/whatever you want to call it for tomorrow’s game verses Stoke, also Eboue could miss out. Now Gallas’ injury could be legitimate, but i doubt it. This is a perfect chance to drop Gallas and teach him a lesson.
Arseblog reports today that there were some harsh words said after the Spurs game and The Mirror reckon Gallas has ruled himself out after this.
There could be some squad rotation for tomorrow’s game. I can see Adebayor, Denilson, Gallas and Silvestre all missing out. There will be players hungry to come in and some of those from Wednesday night need to realize that there are others who will happily take their place.
This game at Stoke has come at a perfect time. They will be difficult to beat and it will take some spirit, which is exactly what we need to show right now.
There are so many possible options for the team tomorrow. There is the team that I, a pissed off fan would make or there’s the managers team. Here’s what I think Wenger will do:
Almunia (c)
Sagna – Toure – Silvestre – Clichy
Diaby – Fabregas – Denilson – Nasri
Bendtner – van Persie
Here’s what I would do if it were up to me:
Almunia
Sagna – Toure – Djourou – Clichy
Walcott – Fabregas (c) – Diaby – Nasri
Bendtner – van Persie
I’m tempted to start Vela in my team, and I’m also worried how tired Walcott is after Wednesday, but with Eboue possibly out then I don’t know who else we have. Almunia made mistakes on Wednesday but he also made some alright saves and we haven’t got anyone else ready for 1st team football.
From being quite happy with the squad last week I’m not feeling so great now. I’m just not happy with the spirt we have. I thought we were doing alright until Tottenham showed us up. Maybe we were tired, I don’t know. But something has to be done and this team has got to pull together.
The title race is probably mentally over for us, so we have to find something to fight for. I bet moral isn’t great at the moment to a win tomorrow is vital.
It’s weird, if we’d have held out those last few minutes against Spurs this match report would be a very up-beat one. But we didn’t, at that is the problem.
I don’t think the players will be down in the dumps. I think they will be really up for this one and keen to prove a point. Stoke should be worried, we will be angry.
I’m really interested to see how we play tomorrow. The players will know the fans are upset with them and they will know we will be looking for a reaction. It’s a traditional Saturday 3.00pm kick off so it’s not on TV in the UK. I was meant to be going but I can’t afford the trip so I’m going to have to pick it up on the internet.
Hopefully a match report to follow on Sunday. Thanks for reading.
COME ON ARSENAL!
I totally agree with youe team m8, exactly the same as what I would have done!
Arsene really is letting us down hese days! He betta buy in Janurary. I reakon Senna as he’s old and therefore cheap and already has played with cesc or there’s Barry or Miguel Veleso??
And as CB wel who???? We should have had Kompany really if it was’nt for tight ass Wenger.
Great article anyway, keep it up!!
I must say that i cant realy disagree with this,arsenal clearly lack leadership in midfield, when you at the midfield delinson,song,diaby,nasri, and wilcat have been rested accept fab who is clearly over played,what is very clear wenger does not trust the squad without fab,and knows the teams lacks leadership, i dont believe the blame can throne central defence that fact is both gallas and syslectser played very well, i feel that team there foot of the peddle at times and its more lack concentration than anything else, dor delinson is clearly not dm by nature and effacts fab in a negative way,also song is very good in that position because of lack experience is guily in lapses in concentration,what is clear by the wenger effort buy some in summer and will hopefully is looking for dm and also will need risicky back who is clearly arsenals most experiened player. when it comes to stoke arsenal is going to have difficult game but arsenal will need to win and cannot afford to draw or lose they must win.i feel that for this match diaby will play pivital role. arsenal need a leader this cannot all rest on fab who is clearly overt played and has played every game since fulham.
I agree with your 2nd line up (the one where if it’d be up to you). There needs to be some changes and some of them have to know their position isn’t safe just because of name.
Btw, where do you watch your matches on the Internet?
Joel I usually watch my matches on the internet. All you gotta do is quite simply download Sopcast from http://www.sopcast.com/ .
After downloading this you then goto http://www.myp2p.eu/competition.php?competitionid=&part=sports&discipline=football
Click on the game you want e.g. Arsenal V Stoke then click on the “PLAY” icon. Then finally sopcast should load up, you let it buffer then the game will come up.
As simple as that
Hope it works!
Oh or there’s http://livefooty.doctor-serv.com/
IF my p2p seems to be playin up. (very unusual)
sam i dont arsenals have enough defenders and i dont think kompany is any better than dijouro or song plus if you look at man city there defence is pretty leaky,i feel for arsenal its just a matter of finding the right partnership and gallas sylestor played very will on wendsday,i would play diaby and song and rest fab.if wenger realy trusts his midfield he should rest him and rotate the squad, but i dought will happen
The more i read about gallas the more i hate the bloke, if he doesnt fancy it tomorrow then he really is a disgrace and it definateley sends out te wrong message to the rest of the team. No doubt the thought of Delaps long throws have frightened him off.
Lets face it we have probably blown the league now and the weird thing is that everything that people said about this team at the beginning of the season is happening, only a couple of months earlier. We are way to lightweight in midfield and the defence just aint up to it, our strikers are not world class and that is the classi ingrdiants for failure, We are sleepwalking into mediocrity and i doubt if we will finish in the top 4. We have gone downhill steadily over the past 5 years yet no-one seems to want to face up to it. “in Arsene we trust” is pure rubbish!
I agree its about attitude. yes its partly about ability but mostly about whats in their heads and to be honest every time we have faced a difficult situation this season we have not risen to the challenge – in fact we have flopped in the face of any kind of adversity every single time. Champions dont flop in these situations. I dont know what it is. Is it down to bad captaincy? maybe. Is it down to not having an aggresive ball winner in the park winding up his team mates? Maybe.
we have gone backwards from last season and yet we replaced Hleb with a better player and the defence is much the same. the only place in the team where you can clearly see a loss of personnel is central midfield. we miss Flamini and or Gilberto so much its untrue. we simply dont have a player that can protect the back 4 and we will continue to suffer until wenger fixes the situation. its going to be a long hard season.
and do you know why the attitude is wrong? its because the players dont really beleive. they lost belief before the season even started. they saw their best mates, the corner stones of the team leave for pastures new and they lost belief. compare us with liverpool. liverpool have got beleif from somewhere. OK they singed Keane but pool are not doing great because of him as a player but the squad may have gained confidence from that signing. my liverpool supporting mate says there is no real tangible difference between a liverpool side lacking beleif last season and this seasons mega confident team. its all in the players heads. they feel now they can come back and win in ANY situation. 2-0 down? no problem we can still win. Arsenal are just looking each other and blaming each other and wondering when wenger is going to fix it – we look to be in a bad way and something big needs to happen fast, but I’m not holding my breath. wenger doesn’t do big changes mid-season.
dennilson always gets the blame when fabregas has a bad match which he seems to have had for the past six months.dennilson has been a better player than fabregas this season but knowone dare critisise the golden boy in case he decides to leave.i believe fabregas in his mind has already decided to move to spain next season and it is showing in his play.i wouldnt worry to much as in ramsey i think we have a guy who from next season onward will be the best midfielder of his generation surpassing fabregas who doesnt seem to have strengthened up and seems to have lost 2 yards of pace this season. ramsey is fabregas but with pace , better tackler and can thump a ball and score from anywhere.BUILD THE TEAM AROUND RAMSEY AND WILCOT
hassy fab is not at his best beacuse he played far to often plus the fact because delinson is not realy a dm player fab is having play alot deeper that he should and playing with freedom as when has with flamaini, to me song should played alot more and also i think it would be good idea to play diaby and rest fab.
i must i am disappointed i thought the players would stronger this season that has not happend they seem to get complaisent are these players are bit arragunt and they seem to switch off at vital times.
This would be the perfect occasion to show the world that we are not completely spineless but somehow i have got a very bad feeling about this game………Stoke are no mugs whatever position they are in and as long as Darren Bent can score against you you can never feel safe.This could easily be a 1 all draw.
A terrible result but not the end of the world. Too many matches left to start getting worried.
Arsenal will more than likely win on Saturday…
We were also more than likely to win against Hull, Sunderland, Spurs and Fulham but look what happened there.
I agree with the second team for the most part. I would like to see Fabianski play instead of Almunia, not just because of the Spurs mistakes but I’ve never been a fan of his. IMO Fabianski is better at most things anyway and i defo far better at dealing with crosses and the likes.
If it was against a different team i would also have liked Song to start because his concentration is never there when coming off the bench but Diaby’s height will be vital for the Stoke set-pieces so……
Once again, like after Hull, there will be no consequence for poor attitude and poor performance.
The team will not really be too bothered about stoke, they’re not an “important” team, so the same players who don’ bother to pitch for the likes of Hull will now they are a dead cert to keep their place, and the same rubbish will continue.
Until AW actually believes in the youngsters in his squad enough to actually play them (Djourou, Vela), and drop those that don’t perform or are incapable of keeping concentration for 90 mins +, we will see this over and over.
We might even beat stoke, and then everyone will claim “the lesson has been learned”, but for how long? 1 game? 2 games? 3 games? 5 games?
All I do know is that the “lessons” we have had this season haven’t lasted very long.
I really enjoy Gael Clichy and his general play, but that’s not the first horrendous lapse in concentration.
There have to be consequences, there is way too much sympathy and not enough boot up the posterior going on.
RvP has played like a plank for all of the season except for the last game.
Where is Vela?
Why was Djourou shafted the second Kolo could breathe without help?
——-Fabiansky——–
Sagna—Toure—Djourou–Silvestre
Walcott—Densilson—Song—-Diaby
——Bendtner—Vela—–
I’d rather lose points to stoke and make a hard lesson clear to the players, than allow this poor attitude to continue to fester, because we will lose more points down the line.
Mike, i had agrees with all you said until your team selection. Why Silvestre left back, Why Denilson and Song but no cesc and why Diaby left midfield.
I would have Diaby and Cesc in the middle with Nasri on the left. ????
Stu, because I don’t try and cover up for favourites.
Cesc has been poor for large parts of this season, and I don’t buy the excuse that his partner is to blame.
His partner has been better than him, so he should be rested.
I love Clichy, but he has shown a distinct lack of judgement on more than just one or two occasions.
Dropping him is as much a point to the rest of the squad as it is to him.
I’m sure he’s gutted about his mistake, but he dawdled on the ball, like many of our players do all over the park (Kolo is a huge culprit of this, and he’s a defender FFS).
There have to be consequences for poor performance, otherwise the same stuff just keeps on happening, everyone’s contrite, things are all ok…………….until they do it again.
Nasri is still settling, and I don’t really buy Diaby as a CM just yet, and very definitely not a defensive one, that’s mindless.
Thats why gallas bottled it…………….Delaps long throws, We really are a shit outfit at the moment, no plan A,B or C. Its about time we fucked wenger off, he should have bought quality defenders in the summer. Im sick to death of him playing around with the team i have followed all my life. Clock end 77 you have got it band on. Wenger has picked a team today to stifle stokes long throws into the box instead of a team to beat stoke and its all gone tits up after 10 mins. Even if we win today we wont win any silverware coz theres no passion and hasnt been for years.
Fucking hell.
Dude. With Arsenal playing this poorly, I’m finding myself rooting for Tottenham. They’ve been amazing since the new manager came on.
Thank god! a decent result at las…oh bugger…WENGER OUT!
old post, but i just read back. for a arsenal blog you really dont know much about the team do you??? you think almunia would be captain?? although TOURE is the captain when gallas aint playin. rubbish site