Koeman Aims For Keep-Ball Against Arsenal. Good Luck With That!
Oct 19th, 2009 by 'holic
“Arsenal, therefore, have defects.
“We must take the initiative, dominate possession and take the chances that come our way.”
So says the coach of AZ Alkmaar, Ronald Koeman. I had to read a bit of it twice. “We must…dominate possession”. Jebus, this is going to be a Champions League tie to remember!
I want to go back through the stats to find out the last time anybody dominated possession against Arsenal. Even when the Gunners have an off-day keeping hold of the ball is second nature to them. When the creative juices fail to flow we are still to be found shuffling the ball in aimless patterns and caught on the counter when eventually we run into a blind alley or misplace one simple pass.
Football finance dictates that Dutch football is stripped of its brightest talents. Whilst the national side remains a force the club sides are finding it difficult keeping pace with the big spenders in England, Spain, and Italy. That is a shame to anybody who witnessed at first hand the Ajax side of the early seventies.
Koeman’s words demonstrate that his charges will attempt to play the game the right way. The Arsenal way, some might say. The Arsenal way of the Wenger years owes a great deal to the Ajax of the seventies. Ownership of the football is essential, players in all positions being comfortable in control is also mandatory.
Results to date suggest Koeman is being a tad optimistic. Having lost the opener at Olympiacos the Dutchmen could only draw at home with Liege and are rooted to the bottom of the group. Domestically they have won five and lost five and sit in sixth place, eleven points off the pace.
Arsenal have travelled without Theo Walcott, which will surprise nobody who saw the game on Saturday, and Tomas Rosicky. The last time he had a minor knee problem we didn’t see him for eighteen months. “Just a few days” this time, according to Arsene. Fingers are firmly crossed here.
The ‘holic pound must be placed on an away win. Nervously though I am opting for 2-1. Ladbrokes 8/1 is very tempting, and cannot be ignored. That, of course, depends on Ronnie’s boys letting us have the football a couple of times.
I think they just might.
19 Responses to “Koeman Aims For Keep-Ball Against Arsenal. Good Luck With That!”
really lookn forward to the game 2morrow,id have to disagree with yoer score prediction im fancying a 3 goal margin victory with arshavin getting a a hat-trick,id like 2 see wilsherinho start a bloody match id say he would cut AZ to pieces,it would be a nice warm up for him ahead of the liverpool game next week
Plays as at our own game at your peril….ROoohahaha
I can see them trying to play football which is good if they knock it around and players take advanced positions I can see us scoring way more than 3. We close down players at pace, and somehow i think we are better suited to defending against the quick passing movement if Koeman is to be believed. Think about it, in training any 11-a-side practice both sides will be playing arsenal football, its probably the reason why we struggle against the long ball, they dont pracitce it in training.
But i suspect we might see abit of football and Arsenal will take over possession and they will drop deep, something they not likely to be accustomed to in their league, so heres hoping we can pick the gaps and RvP, Arsh et al can slot some goals.
We dominated possession against Milan, Real, well just about everyone so i dont think we need to worry about not seeing much of the ball.
I think it will be a game where we will dominate possession, but look vulnerable on the counter attack. They have some decent offensive players with both height and pace so Vermaelen and Gallas will need to be alert. However, in our current form we should comfortably win this game.
Anyone here go to the Birmingham game? Arshavin looked lazy and like he couldn’t be bothered for the majority of the game, but then popped up with two significant moments of class (forcing a good save at the keepers near post, and of course scoring the final goal). I can’t help but feel that he is just the player we have needed since Henry left. A player that can win games even on a bad day. Let’s hope he can continue his rich vein of form and do the same tomorrow.
COME ON YOU GOONERS!!
[…] Goonerholic: Eat, Sleep, Breathe, Drink, Arsenal goonerholic.com/?p=1897 – view page – cached Goonerholic: Comment and review from a lifelong fan — From the page […]
But he’s right. It’s European football, so you can’t just park the bus and kick Arsenal off the park.
Only thing that’ll work is try to dominate possession.
how many managers have said that they will play football and attack us all of them,and what happens the complete reverse negative tactics defend defend and defend again.expect more of the same..oh at least they wont have to kick walcott off the park brum scum saw to that.
I’m confident with your assessment ‘Holic, we won’t have too much to fear from AZ.
But I’m more worried for Theo, at his age it’s very important to play regularly and at this rate his recurring injuries will end up hindering his development. As you say, fingers crossed…
lololololololol koeman really from the ‘great player ergo shite manager’ school of thought.
This is a guy on the verge of being sacked talking about dominating possession against Arsenal! What the…? Even Guardiola would think twice about saying that, and he has Iniesta and Xavi in the middle of the park!
I truly love it when inferior teams decide that they can play us at their own game. We should send the Carling Cup team out tomorrow. Embarrass him just for what he did to Valencia.
(As long as Ronald himself hasn’t been giving free kick lessons. Then we are buggered.)
I’d like to see arsenals fitness training, they seem to have players injured more than any other team in the league….off the point i know, but just something i wanted to say…..i’m going for 4-1
Samuel
I hope to God Arsene and the team do not share your logical approach to this match as it will only see us on the end of an embarrassing shock defeat. AZ have some good quality players in Dembele and El Hamduo…err…whatever his name is. We can not simply roll them over like we did West Brom. A professional and organised performance is what we need tomorrow.
Le Shava: I wasn’t being entirely serious! The money is too important to be experimenting or taking it too lightly. That said, the Championship is most probably on a similar par to the Dutch league if you were to count up revenues and international players. And I do believe we should rotate – I’d like to see Merida, Wilshere, Senderos and Gibbs start.
i can see our lineup being mostly predictable with regards to senior players playing. the only positions i think might have younger players could be in goal i don’t know if wenger plans on putting almunia back in goal yet- i suspect not. gibbs will play lb. i expect sagna to play rb with cesc, song and diaby in midfield. arshavin and eboue out wide and rvp up top. that said this season wenger’s twice played eboue at lb in the cl and it would be nice in my opnion to see him play there again with wilshere given a start wide right. or they could put arshavin on the right and vela on the left. wenger talks up our young guns (and they deserve that credit) a lot, and i think he has to put his money where his mouth is and give them some games. vela in particular needs games. i don’t think we should be playing kids all over the place as we need a strong spine, but a couple of kids would be good in my opnion. at least if we win we can expect to see a lot more kids in the remaining 3 games!
A very optimistic blog to start the day, ‘holic, sir. Very nice indeed:-)
Optimistic, oh yes., that’s me Reds. Welcome to my humble abode.
Ryan, I take your point, but given the form that Rosicky, Arshavin, and van Persie have been in, would you really rather have seen Vela or Wilshere playing instead of them lately? You are right when you say victory tonight would give us the opportunity of using them in the remaining three games. I’m pretty sure that they and Ramsey will get a chance if that is what happens.
OLE GUNNER:
“But he’s right. It’s European football, so you can’t just park the bus and kick Arsenal off the park.”
Zico brought his Olympiakos team to the Grove a couple of weeks ago and parked the bus for over 90 mins.
Zico also made the same comments Koeman did before the game — that he’d put out his team to attack and score.
He did quite the opposite.
Granted, this will be a home game for AZ which means they should be more focused on attacking than defending. But don’t take Koeman’s words too seriously, holic. He’s not stupid.
Also, European football most certainly allows for parking the bus and kicking teams off the park. That’s what Marseille tried to do at the Bernabeu in the last CL round. Diawara injured Cronaldo badly so now he’s out injured for several weeks.
Well that was the most boring game I have watched in a long while.
Can’t add much to that Samuel.
Or well, I can, as I guess can you, but neither of us can’t really be bothered, I’m guessing.
I’ll probably write a witty comment to ‘holics nice blog about this later!
You go ‘holic! Make us proud.
My hamster puts more effort into running in his wheel than I saw from the Arse last night