Post Newcastle Thoughts:Good signs but more to do.

Morning Gooners,


So here we are, the 2011/12 season has finally started. We kicked off our season with an overall disappointing result at St James Park drawing 0-0 with the Toon Army.

Those that have read my stuff before know I'm not going to go over the match minute by minute, there's enough reports on the internet. What I will do is share what I have learnt from the match and invite you to do the same.

I thought we started the game quite well and created a couple of chances early on and considering RVP and Gervinho are still forming their partnership I'm quite excited about what the future holds when they finally click completely. However, as the match carried on it was obvious that we lacked that final cutting edge, that little spark that would normally be provided by Cesc or Nasri or Wilshere. Rosciky and Ramsey are capable but weren't able to produce the goods on enough occasions for one to matter.

RVP still didn't look sharp enough for me. His normally perfect first touch was often off and on a couple of occasions he was put through and he couldn't get the ball under control quickly enough to get a shot away. The sharpness will come with games but for me the team as a whole just don't look ready.

Our normal attacking fluidity was missing yesterday but the work Wenger and his team have done over the summer with the defence was evident for all to see. We looked pretty solid at the back. TV5 and Kos seem to have a great understanding between them and Song worked hard helping out at the back but more importantly stopping Newcastle getting that far in the first place. Particular mention should go to Keiran Gibbs. Left back is a position that many fans - including myself - have hoped would be reinforced over the summer as the general feeling was that Gibbs is not ready to be a regular starter. I will be the first to admit that Gibbs has impressed me over pre season and he continued to do so at Newcastle. I think he has earned the chance to show his worth, I just hope he manages to stay fit.

Of course the main talking point of the match is Gervinho's rash decision to do what 90% of the UK's population would love to have the chance to do and slap Joey Barton across the face. Gervinho worked his way into the box and was clipped and as a result went down. Barton seemed to take offence to this and proceeded to lift Gervinho from the ground by his throat, a bit of handbags followed among half a dozen players which ended in Gervinho raising his hands and clipping Barton round the ear. Joey Barton then decided the contact was enough to hit the floor like a sack of spuds and Gervinho was finally given his marching orders.

The irony of Barton reacting so angrily to Gervinho making the most of contact only to do exactly the same thing himself 2 minutes later will be lost on the player himself. Gervinho raised his hands to an opponent's face so deserved to go but Barton's reaction is laughable.

Earlier in the match Song gave a sly stamp onto Bartons's leg while he was on the floor and should also have been sent off leaving us with 9 men at the finish but we ended the game with 10 which is a shame in itself because 11 on 11 for the remainder of that match and the way Newcastle were tiring, we would've had enough to grab a late goal and the win.

Afterthe game Wenger gave credit to the team saying:

"I thought we had a solid performance and were in control.

They organised not to concede goals, defended well and it was very difficult for us because we played a team who was highly focused to defend.

We missed something, the regret is that we missed something in the final third and in the speed of our passing. But, overall, we had a good performance."

I have to say that's a fair assessment of the performance. Our game will improve and overall a point at St James Park is not a bad result especially when you consider the uncertainness among our squad at the moment with the Nasregas Saga still not ending and players still as unsure about who they will be playing along side this year as we are. Yesterday also showed that reinforcements are more important than ever as the youth and inexperience of top level football on our bench was worrying and will not be enough to challenge on all fronts.

Attention now needs to be turned to Tuesday night which is a much bigger game for our season than yesterday was. A win is a must as is another good performance from our defence. Champions league football is essential to Arsenal staying among the top teams in England so not qualifying is unthinkable.

I'm off to get ready for the return of Sky's Super Sunday and suggest you do the same. Football is back people, lets enjoy it.

Till next time,
Goonerfish

Don't forget, you can follow me on twitter for more ramblings throughout the day here: @goonerfishblog

Dowd's a tit but we must four-get the negatives.

Morning Gooners.


Right. I had the joy of playing some poker on Saturday night with some mates. Most of these mates are Gooners but also included some Man Utd fans. As we arrived we instantly came to a gentleman's agreement to not mention the day's football, but when we obviously failed we ended our depressing thoughts of the day's activities with all agreeing quite simply that last weekend just did not happen.

I wish I could keep with that agreement but every now and then I get a glimpse of the disappointment, frustration and anger that I felt when that fourth Newcastle goal flew into Szczesny's net.

I cannot and more importantly will not show the same restraint as our manager and players and refrain from mentioning the ludicrously inept refereeing by the self loving, self important gnome that is Phil Dowd. His performance was pathetic and before you start bitching that it's a pressure job, I don't know how hard it is etc etc, I'll point out firstly that I am a qualified and active football referee. Secondly Mr Dowd is apparently in the top percentile of his profession so I do not care how much pressure you are under at work, if you can't take it, don't do the job.

Our game fell apart once Diaby got sent off. I am not saying that the red card was not deserved, Diaby's actions were reckless and stupid, However, again my annoyance is two fold, firstly Barton's challenge was reckless and excessive and it was at least worthy of a yellow card but again it does not allow Diaby to do what he did but my second point is this, can someone please for the love of all that is holy explain to me how Kevin Nolan putting Szczesny in a headlock after Toon's first penalty is not as much of a red card as Diaby's? also how did the whole thing end in Szczesny getting booked? lets not forget Nolan's push in Diaby's chest before the Frenchman was sent off which again was worthy of at least a yellow.

All my bitching can't be reserved for Dowd though. The second Newcastle penalty was given by the linesman and I am still trying to find the law of the game that means a penalty can be conceded with making absolutely no contact.

Arsenal have failed to win a single game under the supervision of Dowd this year and he was also the referee in the games we collapsed against Spurs and  Wigan. Also in the four games under his completely unbiased eye he has shown 10 yellow and 2 red cards to Arsenal players compared to 7 yellow and 0 reds to our opponents. Do not tell me this is pure coincidence. There have been reports circulating today that Interpol will be investigating the game for match fixing, in particular Phil Dowd and ....... wait for this............. Rosicky! I'm not going to fuel these rumours but the first report I read with a translation of the French press was on Gooner talk and you can read it here.

Even after everything we suffered on Saturday the worst bit of it for me was the injury to Djourou. The young Swiss defender has really grown this year and in my opinion has surely become first choice to partner Vermaelen when he returns. There has been no official news at the time I'm writing this but I'm sure we'll read a report today on Arsenal.com telling us he'll be out for around three weeks which of course will mean he'll miss the first Barca game. Get fit quick Johan, we need you.

OK, here comes the 'but'. We were 4-0 up and in complete control of the game. Diaby's red card hurt us as we didn't have a natural DM to see out the rest of the game and Djourou's injury was disastrous as (please correct me if I'm wrong) but we have failed to win a league game that our centre back partnership was Koscielny/Squillaci BUT the players we have and the quality they have should not be letting that lead slip. We were not strong enough, we did not concentrate enough and we let Newcastle back into the game. That second half performance cannot be excepted and certainly  not repeated if we have any desire to win anything in the coming years.

Despite everything I've just written I consider myself one of the most positive Arsenal fans in the world so I will try to spread that positivity to you guys in a vain attempt to make you feel better about the weekend. The message is this, you must ignore the fact that we were 4-0 in half an hour and although it felt like a defeat please remember we won a point which is one more than either Man Utd or Chelsea achieved. We have finished the weekend 6 points ahead of Chelsea, one point ahead of City with a game in hand and now only four points behind a Utd we are still to play at Ashburton Grove, play Chelsea - twice, Man City and away to Liverpool who seem to have found some form and hunger so if we beat them when they come to our place, Utd will still have to take maximum points from the other games above and I'm sorry but I just can't see that happening.

Utd's next four games are City (h), Wigan (a), Chelsea (a) and Liverpool (a). In that time we play a game less because of the Cup final but we play Wolves, Stoke and Sunderland all at home. By the time these games are completed I believe we will be within 3 points off them and if we go into the United game at the end of April knowing a win will put us top (or keep us top) then I have every faith that we will take that opportunity with both hands and after that we will have 3 games to hold on to that lead before we can be crowned champions.

OK, now hopefully you're all feeling a little better about things and can look forward to our next game but just in case I'll end today's blog by sharing some more of the silver lining, as pointed out by Ladyarse on twitter. We conceded four goals and not a single one of them was down to a goalkeeping error.

Till next time,
Goonerfish.

An angry rant and Newcastle preview

Morning Gooners,

I started to write a separate blog yesterday, to be fair, I wouldn't call it a blog so much as a rant. Two stories in two days from the lazy sods at the nations 'favourite' paper got me more pissed off at lazy journalism than I had been for a very long time.

The first story was written by Steve Howard and entitled "Now Bale's left Theo standing" first of all WTF!! They have compared a player who has two goals and a single assist after playing every minute of every game in the league this year with a player who has scored four goals and aided with one assist in only 5 games, only two of which being starts and one of them only lasting 6 minutes. But obviously because Bale has had two good games against Inter Milan then he is the brightest player in English football and no one, especially an Arsenal player can touch him!

Secondly the groundbreaking story that Wenger is a dirty lying cheat and has been sleeping around with a blond French rap star. Firstly, Wenger doing the dirty with a rap star...... Really? To be honest I don't want to give the tosh more advertisement however I'll just add my favourite line from the front page "They kissed on the cheek and held hands at the table in an airport hotel" They kissed on the Cheek? THEY'RE FRENCH FFS!!!! and just a little point, Arsene is one of the smartest people in football, would he really air his dirty laundry this easily and openly? Look, even if Le Boss has been having an affair then it's his business and if it's been going on for two years then it's not effecting our football is it?!? Anyway, It's not like he's sleepy with OAP prostitutes or maybe regular prostitutes while his wife was pregnant at home or getting it on with his wife's sister or even shagging a team mates wife is it, I mean seriously, who would be sick and twisted enough to go down that route? Bottom line is Arsene Wenger has earned enough trust and respect for us to just leave him to it.

Right, rant over, on to the preview:

November traditionally sucks for Arsenal fans. Shakhtar ensured that the month started on a bad note now Newcastle come to town to try and make it worse. Newcastle will face a different and stronger side to the team that beat them at St James Park in the Carling Cup which should be great for us but we will also face a different, stronger Newcastle team. The big differences for the Magpies and the only ones we should be concerned about are Nolan, Carrol and Barton. Kevin Nolan is bang in form at the moment after his hat trick in the Sunderland game, Carroll is in my opinion hugely over-rated but he is big and strong enough to cause our defense all sorts of problems, he is also good in the air and our full backs are not the best at stopping those crosses coming in so our entire defence will have to be on their game. Those crosses will be pinged in by a certain Joey Barton. Now I'm not going to pretend to like the man but he does seem to have actually been quite good this season, the big problem we will face with Joey 'Jailbird' Barton is the legs of our very, very, very fragile players. The referee will have to be right up with play and as strict as he can be otherwise I can see someone getting hurt.

In our midfield, Jack Wilshere serves the last game of his 3 match ban for his red card against Birmingham so won't be involved, Song, Denilson, Arshavin and Fabregas are all back in contention after their *adopts sarcastic tone* "injuries" that kept them out of the mid week defeat to Shakhtar *drop sarcastic tone* The real question comes around where will Samir Nasri and Theo Walcott slot into Wenger's plans. Wenger has spoken of Walcott taking up that central role but I don't see it happening for a while and Wenger seems reluctant to play Fabregas and Nasri together in the middle of the park. I can't see Walcott being left out as he's the player back from injury, in form and scoring goals so that leaves a couple of options, play Nasri in the middle with Fab (please, please, please), drop Arshavin and play Nasri or Walcott on the left but seeing as our Russian wizard got a rest was injured mid week I don't see that happening either, the other option is dropping Nasri to give him a breather, all I can say is that it makes a gorgeous change to have these sorts of selection problems rather than our normal 'everyone's injured' problems. I have a feeling that Wenger will play Song and Deni in midfield to keep a close eye on Nolan which means either Walcott or Nasri will miss out.

Goonerfish's line-up:

Fabianski


Sagna - Koscielny - Squillaci - Clichy


Song


Fabregas - Denilson


Walcott - Arshavin


Chamakh




Score Arsenal 3 - 1 Newcastle

I think we have enough in our locker to see this one through but I think that Carroll will be enough of a pest to either score or create a goal for the visitors, especially if they team him up against Koscielny. Walcott should hit this game running whether it be from the start or the bench and Fabregas is due a league goal.

We need to make November a good month for us this year as I have previously said, it is a month that on paper at least, we should be looking to gain maximum points and hopefully Liverpool can do us a favour and take points off Chelsea.

Here's to some change of fortune for November for us Gooners so when we get to our tough fixtures in December we can get past Christmas confidently top of the league.

Till next time,
Goonerfish.

Bring on the Toon: Newcastle preview

Another day, another cup.

Tonight's game has come a little early fro my liking. I'm still bathing in the great feeling from Sunday's victory at Eastlands. Hey ho suppose we all need to move on at some point.

Arsene takes our boys up north tonight for the Carling Cup clash with Newcastle. The Toon Army beat of Chelsea in the last round and it wasn't exactly a particularly weak Chelsea either so this should not be considered an easy game.

As you read around the news stories and blogs you can tell that Arsene is taking the Carling Cup a touch more seriously this year but it won't stop youngsters being involved. The fact is the gap between our youngsters and first team is shrinking all the time the players that were the young ones are now reserves or even better, considered regulars in the first team squad.

The third goalkeeper of the season should make his debut tonight. Szczesny has been banging on the door for a while (a little too publicly for my liking, but that's a different story) and has had a lot of hype built around him, tonight will be his first chance to live up to that hype and prove he's good enough to fight for our number 1 shirt.

As for the rest of the team, we'll see a few players coming back from injury looking to regain fitness and a few players who are on the fringe of the first team looking to stake their claim for a regular spot in the starting XI.

One of the biggest questions is who will take on the 'Fabregas' role. Fab and Nasri should be enjoying a rest tonight with at least one of them on the bench, hopefully not needed. Wilshere will be serving the second of his three game ban so I think Rosicky will be given the chance to play in what seems to be everyone's favourite position. Denilson should continue in midfield and fully expect Lansbury to get the chance to carry on where he left off against Spurs.

Walcott and Bendtner should both get starts on their bid to get match fit and it'll be a battle between Vela and JET to get that final spot and considering Wenger lustful comments about JET he may well grab that spot or on the other hand it may be Wenger making him feel good in preparation for telling him he's not starting. Koscielny should also return from injury tonight

Goonerfish's Line-up

Szczesny


Eboue - Koscielny - Djourou - Gibbs


Denilson


Rosciky (c) - Lansbury


Walcott - Vela

Bendnter




Score: Newcastle 1  - 4 Arsenal

I know I said this game won't be easy but I am going on the assumption that Newcastle will rest a few of their stars such as Carroll and Nolan as they did against Chelsea and our team contains enough players fighting for a place in the starting line up to really give it their all.

This may only be the Carling Cup but we need to keep up our winning momentum and lets be honest, is there a gooner in the world who wouldn't want us to win this competition?

Till next time,
Goonerfish.