Ox Tale Without A Happy Ending
Mar 11th, 2014 by 'holic
So for a second year running we achieved a better result in Munich than at home, but again it was not enough to get past a side widely regarded as the best in the game right now. Given that we were missing Wojciech Szczesny, Kieran Gibbs, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, and Theo Walcott, among others, I think it is fair to say we gave a better-than-expected account of ourselves.
It was important not to concede early on, and to get to the break on level terms was not the worst thing to happen. Any side visiting Munich will have to put up an effective barrier and to be fair the hosts were on top for most of the half. They failed to capitalise on that largely because of Arsenal’s application and discipline. There was a spine to the Gunners built on Lukasz Fabianski, Per Mertesacker, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, that teased us into believing the miracle was possible. The Ox provided the most positive outlet for us and a couple of mazy runs hinted at a way for us to perhaps pinch an unlikely result on the night.
Interestingly Santi Cazorla was played centrally and charged with negating Schweinsteiger, pushing Mesut Ozil into a right-sided role unfamiliar to him. It was something of a surprise that Schweinsteiger avoided a yellow card in the first half for two blatant fouls and kicking the ball away after conceding one of those free-kicks, an offence that saw Lukas Podolski rightly carded. Schweinsteiger was guilty of another couple of bad challenges after the break so it was more than a little frustrating to see him open the scoring less than ten minutes into the second-half.
Ozil didn’t make that second-half, victim of a hamstring problem that seemed evident long before the whistle. For one established journalist to type at the end “even injury cannot excuse such a lacklustre display” was pretty poor, frankly. We will see the benefit of him as a playmaker, one of the best around, and not limping in an unfamiliar role providing cover for his full-back against Ribery. Unfortunately that may be weeks away, according to the boss tonight.
The Bayern goal proved to be sufficient to see them through, but rather than buckle Arsenal made a spirited response. Lukas Podolski got the better of Lahm, not the only Bayern player with balance problems on the night, and smashed the equaliser in at the near post. We were still alive, and the introduction of Serge Gnabry gave us another attacking option. Chances were created and gave us false hope until the closing stages.
There remained one moment of satisfaction. Not for the first time the brittle Robben folded under a gust of wind in the box and won his team a penalty. It is that behaviour which causes Bayern not to get the recognition they probably deserve. They are a fabulous side, but also well versed in the dark arts. Muller’s penalty was saved by the excellent Fabianski, surely on his way this summer, but a much-improved and genuine contender for the number one shirt.
And now this fossil has to wait another fourteen months at least to complete the set. There is still, however, a double to fight for, a fourth one in my lifetime. It would be the most satisfying. The neighbours are next up on Sunday. A huge game for both clubs. More on that in the coming days.
Congratulations
The two winners of the Junior Gunners Chelsea v Arsenal screening competition are Daniel Chapman and Shezan Vayani. I hope you both enjoy the day and are able to celebrate a significant triumph in the race for the Premier League title.
Cheers ‘holics.
317 Responses to “Ox Tale Without A Happy Ending”
Have to make do with the double then. So be it.
I failed to see the match tonight do am assimilating information from reports from those who did. Whilst U admired the loyalty of drinkers in here who saw us achieving a 3-0 victory against the best side in the world with a weakened team , it was never going to be possible to overturn this unless something amazing happened. So just as we get Ramsey and Kjallstrom fit we lose Willshere and Ozil and may be without Gibbs , Sanogo and Monreal for Sunday.
What mattered tonight was putting up a strong performance. Had this been the first leg we would have been delighted and we have possibly seen just how good the Ox can be in a central role . We will get little credit for what is an excellent effort over the two legs given the circumstances. It is probably better if Citeh and Chelski continue in the competition as it will strain their resources but as neither gets as many injuries as us that is only of marginal benefit. But let’s hold our heads up. Very few sides come away from the Allianz with their pride intact
Nicely put, ‘Holic. As I said in the previous drinks, at least we went out with dignity in tact, though out it s.
Cheers ‘holic.
We’ll be back next year
A review very fairly and quite masterfully written, especially liked this:
“It is that behaviour which causes Bayern not to get the recognition they probably deserve.”
That unnamed journalist you refer to ‘Holic has not, I would hazard, ever tried to play once a hamstring strains. No injury gets worse faster than that one if the individual plays on. If there is anything to the talk of four to six weeks out, then it is already a serious strain.
Props to the defence tonight for the way they nullified one of the most free-scoring attacks in Europe. The tactics, performances and discipline seemed all spot on.
Evening H
Saw it much as i did.
Why the game was refereed by an inexperienced near novice in these environments, absolutely baffles me.
All these big games have to be officiated by the best guys in the business.
But the boys did us proud and can come back sound of body and mind,and get ready for Sunday.
Unfortunately for us,the long arduous season that is the Premier League,looks to have done for Mesut, and our injury list gets that little bit longer.
No surprise that our season lost momentum when we lost Ramsey and Walcott within a few days of each other.
The good news i gather,is that young Ramsey is training this week,and is expected to play some part against the mob down the road.
With our midfielders dropping like flies,his return will be most welcome.
On to Sunday.
Cheers
The Sweeper
A very restrained account, Holic.
Bayern are indeed a great side.
Arsene Wenger was criticised – no, really – for ‘pre-criticising’ the referee before the game. Disappointingly but not surprisingly, he was proved right.
Schweinsteiger should have been booked for his first half foul on The Ox, and again for the second half clog through the back of Giroud.
Robben, a talented player but thoroughly objectionable little git, ‘had’ to be booked for his first dive in the box if the penalty were not to be awarded.
The attempt by Martinez to get Podolski booked for caressing his cheek was also quite pathetic.
A shame that such a strong side feels the need to discredit itsself so badly. I suppose over the two games one feels obliged to say they deserved to win. They certainly had their share of help though, with two Robbenalties and having our goalkeeper sent off in the first leg, added to the impunity with which they were allowed to foul The Ox in rotation tonight.
Sour grapes ? Maybe. But they are definitely an acid Gwürztraminer rather than a Domtaler Auslese.
They will attract no interest from me in the rounds to come.
I’m not complaining about our selection, or our performance, but I thought our best chance of winning the tie was to really have a go at them from the off, and try to unnerve them in a way that they would not be used to in their domestic league. That would, for me, have meant the Flamster holding with The Ox in the centre, and Rosicky and Podolski out wide, with Ozil and Giroud further forward.
Maybe we would have just lost more heavily, but maybe the last 10 minutes suggested not.
Onwards and upwards it is then.
Quadruple is still on Larry.
Premiership,FA Cup,FA Youth Cup and the UEFA Youth League.
Cheers
well said, as always ‘holic. we leave munich with our heads up, eyes on the further prizes. damn shame about özil if he’s indeed out for that long, just as aaron comes back. hopefully we’ll get a dm, center back*, and forward this summer and the team won’t have to wear itself out over the course of the season covering the gaps…
*if we don’t sign sagna, a right back and a dm that can cover defense – song, anyone? – will be most important of these.
Excellent post ‘holic.
Agree entirely with your asssesment.
Munich were the better team of course but Arsenals battling, spirited performance gave us an indication of what might have been had not the fates conspired against us in the first leg. It is an irrefutable fact that Robben is a downright cheat, and the ref was conned on a number of occasions.
Im hoping this season isnt turning into one of “those” seasons in which we threaten to achieve so much before falling at the final hurdle, but a quick glance towards the treatment room has me a little nervous.
Podolski, Ox and Fab stood out for me, but the team defended superbly to a man. Dignity is indeed intact. Well played lads.
Its begining to look like KK will get a game or two! Not sure if thats a good or bad thing, but time will tell.
A resounding win at The Home Of Despair at the weekend should cheer us all up a little.
“not the only Bayern player to have “balance” problems”.
Indeed Holic – indeed.
It is an irrefutable fact, IF, that if you put a hand on a player and he goes down the ref will award a free kick against you. Yet time and again we see player doing just that … and then complain about diving! Duh. Don’t touch him (especially when he’s in the penalty area AND facing away from goal, Kos) and if he dives he gets a card for diving.
It’s not rocket surgery.
Öskar
Evening all. I have not watched the whole game. I have watched the highlights and listened to the radio commentary. We can point to many things but sadly, over the two legs we were very much second best. The sending off in the first leg was crucial but again, was the correct decision. Yes Robben is a horrible cheating twat but I think it was the right call. He was embarrassing again tonight with his theatrics and was not the only one. Why is this not looked at retrospectively??? Great strike from Poldi but I do think he was lucky to get away with a push. The fact is that with only 3 shots on target it’s always going to be a struggle. I also thought that we were poor with their goal. To not track such a quality player on a run like that was not great.
Lots of positives. AOC continues to grow. He was strong and with some great runs. His final ball and decision making at times needs working on but he is a fine young player. Kos and Per were fantastic. Old Flappy also had a very good game but please can we cut this number 1 stuff. He is nowhere near the quality of Shezza. He has always been a good shot stopper but he scarred the life out of me when it comes to crosses and big centre forwards.
The one sour note was the injury to Özil. Especially after his performance against Everton on Saturday. Let’s hope it’s not too bad. Still, super Kimmy Kalstrom will be available in April so all is well.
So, onwards to the spuds and to their cup final. Win at the shit hole and not only will it be funny but it will also end their season.
Scruz. Alex Song????? Are you being serious?????? I must say that if you are then it’s a big no thanks from me.
Poldi lucky? From some angles it didn’t look like a push at all, just minor contact in running. Serves Lahm right for going down when he could just as easily have stayed on his feet. More strength to refs prepared to ignore such theatrics. I thought the ref had a good game by and large, including the penalty for which Kos was an idiot again.
Öskar
Oskar. I agree totally re the way Lahm went down but you only need to watch the way Poldi looks at the ref before shooting to know that we got the rub of the green. Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted he did not give it and it was a fantastic strike. But if that was Ribery going passed Bacs we would all be going nuts.
Steve T: if Ribery had tried a Poldi on Lahm on Bac, it wouldn’t have been Bac that went down!
Raffle clearly has no idea how many clubs would be lining up offers for AW in the unlikely event he chose to leave North London. He could walk into practically any club he fancied. Thankfully he chooses to stay exactly where he is.
And note that word ‘choose’ cos it’s his choice where he plies his trade, unlike most managers who only remain employed courtesy of their results week by week.
If it was mere trophies AW craved he would have moved on to Real Madrid years ago, or to PSG tomorrow.
Öskar
No more of the bait for me. Thank you very much.
A discussion question for the adults:
How is it that we seem to have more midfielders than anyone else, but our overall team strength in the midfield seems not to be that much better than mid-table prem teams, let alone Bayern or Atletico?
Is it down to injuries? Youth? I wonder when we will be treated to a dominant, confident midfield for those “European nights.”
Still, I actually feel better about this result than last year. I think any objective assessment of the tie would agree that the referee’s thumb quite blatantly affected the scales. Last year, Bayern was comprehensively better than us. Not this year.
BMBD
Our overall midfield strength is way better than mid-table premiership teams, Lonestar, and when not depleted by injuries is on a par with practically anyone.
Perhaps at the pinnacle we miss out because AW has had to build with cheaper bricks on average, augmented with youth talent either bought young or academy developed (ours or Barca’s!). Until the Özil purchase we have generally had to buy at a level below that of clubs who can easily outbid us in both transfer fees and salaries. Or have been able to in the past before FFP became an issue. Hopefully that might level out a bit in future.
Thankfully we have a manager with a canny eye for a player and usually finds excellent value for money. Problem is when other clubs learn of AW’s interest in a player, at which point the asking price invariably goes up (refer Higuain, Suarez of recent memory) because his opinion is so widely valued. If AW wants a player others start looking at that player more closely, and the Russian mafia and oily clubs don’t hesitate to offer more and then loan the player out to play against us (Lukaku, eg).
Öskar
lonestar – I do not necessarily agree with your comment that our midfielders are not much better than a mid table premier league team as was displayed v Everton recently where we showed we have one of the best midfield combinations in the world when we click in the right conditions.
however, part of the answer to your question I believe is about quality and pressure.
the difference between high quality pressure and next to no pressure is the reason we look so good one match and not so good the next match.
when you look at Bayern tonight, they applied intense consistent pressure very high up the pitch, even up to the edge of our 18 yd. box.
in the first half we did very little wrong, but Bayern’s pressing was very strong and very high and disrupted our game plan.
the teams we look strong against usually are not teams who press high, but sit back and allow us to come at them with little need for any defensive duties by the midfield group.
the other part of the answer to your question is about our lack of a strong disciplined DM. we do have a raft of midfielders as you rightly point out, but we lack cover for them via a DM such as the viera type or the toure type. remember we have diaby for that role, but unfortunately he is a full time injury.
the dominant display you are looking for usually comes from buying quality players with big pay-packets or biding your time with academy players and hoping one makes it or not being forced to sell our top midfield players such as fabregas and co.
This Bayern team is very impressive from front to back and will most likely only be troubled by real Madrid in the CL. they also have a massive wage and spending budget, so this brings us back to the age old argument. are we are buying club or a selling club or somewhere in the middle.
you only have to look at their subs today, Kroos and Muller is not to shabby eh…
Great summary ‘holic, and some excellent drinks above. (Also several not so excellent. DFTT, fellas.)
It’s frustrating to go out with so many what-ifs. What if Ozil scores his penalty (or if you prefer, what if Arteta had been playing)? What if we played the entire first leg with 11 men? What if Walcott or Ramsey had been available?
It’s futile though of course. Even if all those what-ifs had worked out in our favor there’s a good chance we still would have gone out. We are very, very good but Bayern are, at the moment, the best in the world. That’s not to say that, if a few things had fallen out a little differently, we couldn’t have beaten them.
We go out with our heads held high, though, and that was the base-line requirement from tonight’s game. We can take out our disappointment on Robben (insufferable divey little shit) or blame fate, as many are doing tonight, but I think the decisive moment was probably when we fell short of the requisite point in Naples. I love playing Europe’s very best, of course, but I’d rather play them a little further into the competition.
The derby looms even bigger now. We are an injury-battered team but we will be up for this one, and we can take some confidence from a resolute performance in Munich. They’re in a little bit of a tangle right now. I think if we get the mix right we can torch them.
A triple over Sp*rs this year would be just the tonic for my CL disappointment.
aussie @29. Agreed about Bayern’s pressing. It’s suffocating. Though I thought on the whole we dealt with it pretty well tonight. Their goal was down to a defensive error on Santi’s part, not to track Schweinsteiger’s run. Granted, any team will make an error or two against a team so relentless, and Bayern have the quality to make you pay. But overall Arsenal’s performance today was notable for it’s defensive organization and quality, not otherwise.
Also I was pleased with Vermaelen’s performance. Not an easy game to be thrown into, short on regular time and out of your preferred position. He acquitted himself quite well on the whole. And except for his swing and miss vs Everton he looked very solid in that one, too. Encouraging to see. I wish to God we could keep both him and the Bac. And Fabianski.
Performances like this tend to bring in mixed emotions, we played well yet if we played well enough why dint we qualify?
Ox just showed yet again that if he remains fit he can be a world beater. The defense including Thomas were excellent yesterday yet one moment of laxity by cazorla resulted in the goal. What great teams do is concentrate, when you see Lahm or a schwensteiger, you realize for all their talent what makes them great is their efficiency. We need such characters in the team, we have a very good team but to be great we need consistency than just technical know how.
Someone said Wenger has failed 16 seasons to win the champions league, well all i can say he has come close but barring the invincibles no other team really looked like winning the ucl and the team that went to the finals in 06 was punching above their weight and how.
All is not lost, win this weekend against the scums, the ucl is gone and in a way now we can focus only on the league ala pool plus 2 massive FA cup games.There is still a twist in the tale and even though jose and his men maybe thinking its our league, Arsenal may still emerge from the shadows and walk away with the league, lets say we will nick it on the last day hahah
All this team needs is a bit more confidence and the FA Cup should make that happen.
Don’t get me wrong. The Bayern stats that were being salivated about up to kick off last night were those of champions (49 games unbeaten in their league. Sounds like de ja vu). Anyway, in the first leg I think it has now been accepted by everyone, that we were the better side, but for the penalty miss and that red card. Plus a draw last night and a win in the corresponding fixture last season in Munich just goes to show what a Wenger team which have not won any silverware in 8 years can do. Imagine what one with a trophy can do.
So my next round goes to the fact that
we can now focus on narrowing the league gap and of course a semi final in wembley.
😉
Fine summary H. Couldn’t agree more, Trev and Steve T.
Tie was lost 3 weeks ago.
Brave effort but always felt we would fall short.
Robben is an utter, utter cunt (c) Tabs.
Guardiola is a hypocritical sheisster – I don’t want him anywhere near the Arsenal – his Farca cheats dived left right and centre and his Bayern are every bit as bad. He clearly has that cheating as part of his game plan. This year I hope Bayern get stuffed in the next round.
Laxative – If anything I said was fictional, I will leave town myself.
Maestro – please! 😉
Well summed up, H.
bath says what I was just going to say about Guardiola. There is one common denominator between the unofficial kings of diving that were Barcelona and the heirs to the throne that is Bayern Munich, so go figure. Apart from Robben I can’t remember them acting nowhere near like this last season.
We lost to the better team but I am still a bit gutted that we’re out. I am proud of the effort the boys put in, and it is clear we have the basis of something that can become a fantastic team. Much as I like Giroud, his lack of pace seriously hurts us in matches like last night. He often makes the right runs but he is just too slow. We can’t rely on just Theo, we have to have more pace up front sometimes. When playing parked buses Giroud can be really effective and open up space for others et cetera but he struggles when we build our game from deeper positions.
We’ll now have to patch up the players and see what we can put out there on Sunday. Ramsey is supposed to be back in contention but we can’t expect too much of him for the first few games as he’s been out for the best part of three months. He won’t start on Sunday unless we have absolutely no other choice, that’s for sure.
And we really have to find the cause of all these injuries. We can buy all the players in the world but if they are injured they’ll do us no good anyway.
Oh, and did I mention Robben is pathetic? No, don’t think I did. How remiss of me. Fine, I can somewhat understand why you would take a dive when you absolutely have to win a game but when you are already through and into stoppage time??? Ridiculous.
I did like reading this – sums up the bizarre press attitudes to Ozil:
https://twitter.com/BeardedGenius/status/443640822777790464
Sorry, Goonertown@27 – we were not the better side. But we made a good fist of it against them with a depleted squad – they are certainly the best team in Europe on current form – maybe RM will give them problems.
But I agree a trophy will be beneficial psychologically, and two trophies doubly beneficial.
Just to go back to J Hanson yesterday evening, one of the things he said was that we had “overperformed” this season. That’s gobblydegook. “Over/underperformance” has to be in relation to something. For example, you could say we underperformed against Stoke in relation to how we know the team are capable of playing. But I can’t get my head around the concept of “overperformance” unless it’s raising the level to something not seen before and we had been the best team in the league in the last 3/4 months of 2012/13. But overperformance over a season – that’s total headbanger stuff, except when put in relation to the speaker’s previous assessment of the team.
So what JH is actually saying is, “I underrated the quality of this Arsenal side at the beginning of the season and they have proved me wrong.” Not very difficult judging by the “quality” of the rest of his comments. John Hanson should know that the quality of the Arsenal squad he was a member of went up 5-fold when we got rid of him. Why do the BBC employ these people? If he had a track record worth talking about, I could understand it. Same as Savage. Baffling.
Rant over.
My 34 – Hanson = Hartson of course.
Get confused by all these know-nothing “experts”.
Nice link Charlie@33. Neatly sums it all up in one sentence. Just think that they get paid to write this drivel – don’t they read it first?
“Gi’ us a job – I could do that.”
Will everyone just stop getting shot! 😉
Well balanced reports ‘holic. Like most here, I thought the whole team put in a real gutsy performance and the score was as good as we could really expect. I’m with Bath re Guardialo. Both his champion teams play the possession game but unfortunately laced with a high dose of cynicism and I have no desire to see them progress any further. Robben is the prime example – he goes down more times than a whore’s drawers on a Saturday evening. The referee got a lot right yesterday but also a few wrong – Robben should gave been booked for his blatant dive in the first half and the game would have been better for it.
Onwards to neighbours down the road. If we play at the level of the past 2 games, St Totts day will loom ever closer.
Lars @32 are you suggesting you would like to see a fast world class striker bought in at end of season and you are also questioning our Injury record to our top players ?
Aussie, I have questioned our injury record for years and that I want a striker with some pace is nothing new either so not really sure what your point is.
Cant believe all the negative press against Wenger, Ozil and Arsenal in general.
All true fans know that the CL is a step too far at the moment. This team needs to win something domestically first. Never fear. The rest of the icing on the cake will follow.
But we need to one or two world class players in key areas. That is for the future.
Lets start winning our league games and see how it all ends.
Bath,
I see Barclay is at it again dishing out criticism of Ozil.
Paddy seems to think that Ozil should have built upon the display at Everton instead of putting in such a “pallid” performance last night.
I must be blinkered, but for me, it was hardly Ozil’s fault that we were overrun in the first half last night or that he subsequently got injured?
Was Paddy really expecting Ozil to go to the Allianz and defeat the German Champions with “fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse”..?
Unlike Bayern, this team is not the finished article yet and needs another few players, but we’ve made progress in getting the spine right. It would seem that some contributors seem to think we should have built Rome in the same year we managed to rid ourselves of the commercial shackles, despite the fact that we spent a great deal of time and effort over the summer in trying to buy some of the best players in the world.
I was confined to listening to the “wisdom” of Lawro on TV3 last night who smugly said that Ozil goes missing when the game “gets physical”. And there I was murmuring to myself that ‘maybe that’s because he’s not all that physical Mark’? Maybe he’s just highly technical? Maybe he, like most other players that come to the premiership, need a year to adjust to it all. Koscielny was a very slight player when he arrived, and while he’ll never pass for a russian weightlifter (because his tits are too small), he certainly is a much stronger man physically to when he first arrived.
And like DK above, I find myself wondering how it comes to pass that some imbeciles actually get paid money to provide such shallow opinions. What do the TV stations really think of their audience?
Wenger is damned no matter what he does. He’s cursed when he buys top players and damned when he doesn’t, even after offering stupendous sums of money for world class talents. Its begs belief that some people actually think they know better. While fans discuss who they would like to eventually succeed him, am I the only one who thinks that no amount money in the wide wide world could properly compensate the man who gets it?
http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/patrick-barclay-once-a-breath-of-fresh-air-now-arsenals-mesut-ozil-is-having-a-stinker-9186058.html
Thank you Maestro! 😉
Joe, spot on there. I am disappointed that Paddy Barclay has joined the anti-Mesut movement. I’ll check out the link, thanks.
As for the moronic fringe who affiliate themselves to Arsenal. They don’t even have the wit to realise that one day this period will be looked back upon as a golden age of achievement (despite the lack of silverware). Once he’s gone, some might recognise it but most won’t. They say dogs have a 10 minute memory span – they are worse.
I should add that I am deeply, deeply disappointed that Flamini failed in the job he was sent out to undertake. He should have fucking maimed Robben. That diving queen needs to learn what a real foul feels like.
Lar @32, Well said, especially on Robben, I just don’t get it. His team was winning the tie by a two-goal margin and he has the ball in the opponents box with a few minutes remaining so what does he do? He takes a dive. He f*cking dives! Who thinks/acts like that? Well, in my opinion, only an utter, utter, c*nt does that. Only the Biblical rich man who had flocks of sheep but still forcefully took his poor neighbour’s only remaining lamb and served it to his guests tops that.
Robben being a diver is one thing, but Robben’s worst crime is being the main person responsible for Chelsea winning the CL. He should be condemned for that heinous act for the rest of his life.
Charlie @46 – true – that makes me even more pissed off with Flamini
No fairy tale ending last night but let’s take the Brothers Grimm to the cleaners on Sunday.
Again disappointed but not disheartened, loved the Ox he gives us eternal hope and well played the BFG, Kos and TRPIG, also thought Podolski put in a shift in the second half. As for that diving Dutchman, my thoughts are unprintable!
COYRs
Bath @44 – oh yes.
Wouldn’t it be great to see that whining little shit get one really good kicking. If only KE-OWN was still playing ………
One could argue that this Arsenal seems to be a Tale of Two Teams, or a Dr. Jekyl (timid and tame) and Mr. Hyde (brilliant and flash). After Mr. Hyde demolished Napoli at the Ems, Dr. Jekyl showed up in Napoli and gave away the golden opportunity to top the group and avoid drawing a ‘top’ team in the last 16. The irritating thing about Chelsea is they seem to be more consistent, defensively strong, and they grind out results. We have these games of brilliance followed by horrible losses, but I guess thats the way we play. Still lets not get too discouraged by last night, it was not a thrashing…
“Disappointed but not disheartened” sums it up well, Delia.
Cheers Maestro, another solid report based on facts which appears to be a skill completely forgotten by the English media, even those that allegedly support the club. The lambasting of Ozil is, frankly, incredible.
Trev & Bath – How about Big Tone bearing down on ‘Theotherdutchc*nt’ after he’s got his shot away for a free reducer. He’d think twice wouldn’t he? But the ref should have carded the w*nker early for his masterclass in cheating. A shame he won’t be retrospectively brought to task either.
Hey ho, forwards Arsenal, we have a double to fight for.
Peter @50
Addressing the lack of a big strong holding MF-er who will ‘mix it in the trenches’ when required would go a long way to addressing that split personality.
Trev @49 or the original true STOREY.
‘Talk of the devil…….’
The good news – Robben is 30 – won’t have to suffer him much longer.
My hope is that BM draw RM in the next round and go out to a penalty from a Bale dive. Poetic justice.
Nice call dk @55. Now there’s the hand of Nemesis.
Well said Lars @ #31.
As much as I applaud the HFB for his application, hold-up play and set-piece defending we really need a combo of Theo & the HFB in a single player. The Henry’s of the world only come around once in a generation but a speedy and skillful CF who can run at a defence, shoot from anywhere and do the tika-taka think that’s a hallmark of The Arsenal is what (I think) we really lack.
I also believe that not buying anyone to at least try and fill that role in the winter was a mistake but I would be delighted to be proved wrong come the end of the season.
Lars and Cent, hear hear gentlemen.
Robben is the diver’s diver, I never thought it possible but he’s worse than Suarez (for the reason you mention Lars).
Also did anyone notice what he did when he won the penalty? He fell over (obviously!) and his very first action was to look hopefully at the ref. The guy sickens me.
Heh! @ bath.
He would’ve simply picked Robben off the floor and then loafed him to make sure the penalty was worth it. Oh to see Robben trying those antics in the First Division of the 70s. He’d have worse knees than Trev by now (sorry Trev).
PR @58 – wait till you hear his self-exculpatory interview; deserves a flogging really.
A friend and I were putting together a ‘Players I Love To Hate’ XI (aka, Wankers XI) the other day, and this is what we came up with:
Owner: Delia Smith
Stadium: Britannia
Fans: Stoke
Manager: Pulis
First XI:
GK Robinson
LB Evra
CB Terry
CB Shawcross
RB Danny Alves
DMF Keane
CMF Busquets
AMF Robben
AMF Nasri
ST Adebarndoor
ST Rooney
Subs:
Steven Taylor
Ronaldo
Bale
Drogba
Simeone
Delap
Martinez
Porco,
Simeone as in Diego Simeone? If so, why? 🙂
Grav, that was my mate’s choice, I’d very happily swap him for Bale and put someone else on the bench.
Fine report ‘H, agree with every word, and great stuff in the subsequent drinks.
It was always going to be a long shot to see us progress. Not only would we have needed a stellar performance but also a heavy dose of luck – something that we have always been short of – to go our way for us to reach the last 8. It wasn’t to be. A game where the possibility of progression only really disappeared in the last 10 minutes was probably the best that we could have hoped for. I have no complaints with the efforts expended to try and pull off the unlikely.
Many positives emerged. Mertesacker was magnificent throughout. He is surely the Captain in waiting for next Season. TV5 emerged from a difficult first 45 to have a very good second half and if, as seems likely, he moves on in the summer, he will have done no harm to his valuation at all. Ox was fantastic, and was often, especially in the first half, our only outlet, with his willingness to take his player on. What a player he can become. Podolski and Cazorla both put shifts in, and Arteta battled gamely. Fabianski was faultless other than some dodgy distribution on a couple of occasions, and any continuing gripes about him are surely informed by his early Arsenal career rather than any rational analysis of his performances over the last 4 seasons. His penalty save was well merited. Neither he nor the team deserved to lose on the night. If there is a better reserve goalkeeper playing in England, I have yet to see him.
On the downside, I would question whether the right wing was the best place to utilise Ozil’s talents, especially when faced with such an attack-minded left back, and I don’t really understand the thinking behind that decision. His injury is a massive blow. He will be a big big miss in the games ahead.
We struggled with Bayern’s high pressing game and there were times when the ball needed to be moved quicker and forwards. Both Bac and Arteta were guilty at times of playing the percentage game at a cost of forward momentum. Penned in as we were, it might have been worth going long and playing down the channels, if only to alleviate the pressure from time to time and to turn Bayern around. With a reluctance to do that, it was pretty difficult for Giroud, whose effort could not be faulted, to make any kind of impact on the game.
Poldi’s goal (a clear push) gave brief hope and for five minutes or so Bayern did look rattled. Another goal at that point would have made it really interesting. In the event we were, by that stage, already spent, and we never really looked like we would enjoy enough possession in Bayern’s half to put their goal under serious threat.
Unlike others, I didn’t really have a problem with the ref. As mentioned above, I thought we got away with a push for our goal and was not especially vexed by their penalty. Kos’ s challenge, borne of the need to win the ball back quickly ( he would have ushered Robben away at a different stage of the game), made contact and Robben does not require a second invitation. None of that is to excuse Robben. The incident where he went down with no contact at all was a disgrace – he is clearly one of the most loathsome characters playing the game today – and whilst AW’s decision to call him out on it afterwards was probably not wise, I’m glad he did it.
So then, a tie of ifs and buts, but the bottom line, in my view, is that they are better than us. We are not at their level yet. We go out however without having suffered a confidence-crushing defeat and I hope that the players can take some belief from that into the tough group of games that await. Turn up at Tottenham with a similar intensity and all will be well.
Nothing better than getting one over the neighbours. Already looking forward to it.
Grav Lens @62: Presumably for getting Beckham sent off at the 1998 World Cup by simulating injury (he later admitted it).
Wise words tabs
I for one am very glad AW said what he said and believe that Pep’s suave demeanour slipped a bit afterwards in his interview because Arsene had called him out.
Pep’s acceptance of such blatant cheating by important players in both the teams he has managed shows a major flaw in the persona of the world’s most revered coach.
On reflection, he would have been just right for Chavski.
Pep at The Bus Stop? Be careful what you wish for bath 😉
steve t@16, no, I wasn’t trying to do your head in :). just asking for another level of cover… shoulda put in a smiley face there, maybe even winking about song. I don’t want him back!
Cheers Bath.
As said above, I agree with you that he said it. If nothing else, it means Robben’s card has been very publicly marked (again!).
Where I depart however is I’m not sure that Guardioka’s mask slipped all that much. It gave him an opportunity to paint AW as a bad loser (he is! ), and to just simply state that Bayern were the better side.
I’ll say at the outset that I like Guardiola – probably not a popular view in the Bar today. Enjoy watching his teams play, and I think the allegation of endemic cheating is overcooked. There will always be individuals who are cunts – Alves at Barcelona, Robben at Bayern to name but two – but I’m not sure their behaviour is as a result of orders from on high, rather, I reckon its just a maniferstation of their innate and individual cuntishness 😉
I have to agree with TS on this one. I would hate to see Guardiola at Chelsea.
I sometimes think that we North Europeans are rather naïve when it comes to what we call cheating, or lack of sportsmanship. It has often been said the South Americans, for example, think it’s perfectly acceptable to cheat/simulate in all sorts of ways and if you don’t, you’re a fool. A cultural difference? I don’t know if it’s true – I only know it’s dangerous territory to venture into. We often hear of such practices having been brought to our shores by Johnny Foreigner. There are also the examples in other fields in such countries as Italy and Greece where corruption is considered endemic and acceptable. I read the other day of a survey in Turkey where 62% of people thought that it was normal for politicians to feather their own nest when they got to power and that they even considered a former socialist prime minister who didn’t do so as “retarded”, which is similar to the attitudes of some footballers.
But the mentality behind it is rife in most countries – e.g. claiming more on insurance than you have actually lost (which increases premiums, so you’re in fact stealing from your neighbours, not the insurance company) and tax evasion/avoidance (increases tax rates generally, so those who do pay – or can’t avoid paying – pay more).
I’m not going to claim that “it were different when I were a lad”, but I can’t help feeling that the “something for nothing” ethos is spreading its tentacles wider and becoming more generally acceptable. Maybe it only seems that way because news travels faster these days. Whatever – it destroys our relationships with each other and my love for the game of football. We Arsenal fans can’t claim that our players are not like that – Bobby Pires used to go down rather easily at times and in the current crop, Jack’s not too stable on his young pins.
The shame is that no-one seems to want to address these issues head on, in football or in the wider aspect, so I can only applaud AW for drawing attention to Robben’s instability if he takes steps to put his own house in order. It’s part of the manager’s job to create the ethos at the club, which means that Guardiola’s ethos, on the evidence of Barca and the trend at Bayern, obviously stinks.
Greetings from Munchen. Recovery day after all that darn beer. Nice summary and contributory drinks.
bath, tabs
The great thing about Maureen at The Bus Stop is that he makes it so easy to despise him and he presents such a perfect shop front for all the massive c*ntery within that rotten club.
For me, Pep is firstly a better manager and secondly I’d find it hard to feel about him the way I do The Splashal One.
WOW! The Neighbour went to Munich.
Brilliant support last night. Could hear The Arsenal singing on Arse Player.
*doffs cap*
tabs – I’d like to believe what you say about Guardiola at Barca is true, but that’s not my recollection. Going down easily was, still is, a general trait at the club – it’s a way of retaining/regaining possession, which is Guardiola’s mantra. I don’t see him as a “nice chap” at all. There were those allegations that came out about him claiming to have visited Tito Vilanova in hospital in NY when he was there for cancer treatment which Tito said was nonsense – never saw him once allegedly. And, to return to my theme @70, he’s just backed up Uli Hoeness who admitted to tax evasion of €18.5 million. It’s the same “if you can get away with it, do it” mentality which is so corrosive.
dk at 70: well said.
I had a longer, and somewhat less well-worded post prepared, but saw yours first and thought: nah, dk nailed it.
And for me, I agree with those above: an interstellar dick-stomping of the neighbors at the weekend will all but erase another dubious CL exit.
Cheers all.
tabs @ 69: I am with your minority view on Pep. As a DM in that Barca set-up of Stoichkov-Romario-Laudrup he used to play the game in the right spirit and I think the diving of many of the Barca players (those continue today) were results of personal habits that are tolerated more in La Liga. I would hate to see him in any PL club other than ours (only after Arsene has decided to retire, after lifting a few more double and a couple of CLs in the process).
A most pleasing thing about yesterday’s performance was the tactical discipline and maturity to really follow a game plan against such a high pressing team of great passing qualities. Didn’t get frustrated, or drawn into bad decisions, or just give up the ghost and suddenly throw everyone forward (a common ailment of some previous years’ Arsenal side), but played to a shape and strategy all throughout the match. And not to be forgotten that with a bit more quality in the final third, and even a bit more maturity (imagine Theo in place of Serge with his two late game chances) we could have actually scored a couple more.
A good example was Giroud finding himself with a good opportunity slightly deeper in the penalty box, he doesn’t have the quality to really accelerate and shake off the defenders and then finish, so he puts on a good enough pass that TR7 wasn’t expecting (rightly assuming Giroud will make an attempt)…a little lack of quality and a bit of misunderstanding but that is the margin when playing against a great side like Bayern.
Same with a few times we pressed intelligently in the middle and own the ball only for Arteta to not being able to display his typical control and passing as he was physically — for pace and strength — overwhelmed by Bayern ganging up on him. Arteta has done a fantastic job for us in the last couple of years, has been a true tactical leader on the pitch and genuinely controlled the tempo of matches that we haven’t been able to do for years, but if we are to win against the likes of Bayern and RM and Barca we need someone who has those abilities but also the strength and pace to quickly move forward with the ball on his feet. I don’t know who that player is, at one point of time I had thought Song might evolve to be like one, but we do need someone to be able to play that role.
Good work tabs.
I agree with an awful lot of that, even the unpopular view.
For those who think that Bayern were sans theatricals last time around, think again. This is not just a thing that Pep has injected into them. Arjan Robben has always been a dispicable, flailing, swan diving, floor rolling, agony faking, cock smoking slap head. Not for nothing that Arsene singled him out, not something he does lightly.
As for Bayern, I hold no particular grudge against them and hope they do well in the competion. That we went to their place and managed a draw, when all and sundry were expecting us to take a shafting, speaks volumes of this (depleted) team. If bayern go onto win, taking another few high profile scalps along the way then it will vindicate us even futher. I’m not happy that we’re out, but, as I said yesterday, proud that we go out with our dignity intact and our heads held high.
dk @ 70: This is dangerous territory indeed, especially given that the financial stability of the many “North European” countries that allow a certain degree of moral high ground was achieved through pervasive corruption and violence of colonialism, and given that the so-called first world companies and financial organizations are often the worst culprits in mass corruption in third world countries, down to the extreme of propping up violent regimes.
“Something for nothing” is how much of the British empire was built, to be honest. 🙂
Dr. F. @78. Agree totally. Long since lost the illusions drummed into me at school about the Great British Empire.
And as for financial institutions, that documentary doing the rounds about Goldman Sachs is one of the scariest I’ve ever seen. 🙂
dk @ 70: Also the “lack of sportsmanship” on football grounds is not a new phenomenon at all. Today the diving is the most visible manifestation, and however despicable that might be yesteryear’s violent hacking down of creative players was actually a much worse offense as it ruined careers and deprived people of enjoying the game.
I started watching football in the eighties, 82 world cup to be precise when I was six years old. I still remember the Gentile tackles…subsequently I used to watch Serie A (best league at that time), at least what I could get in Indian TV back then and in videotapes, and even Aarigo Saachi’s great Milan side had their rough handlers when dealing with someone like Maradona. IMHO, those cynical tackles truly were much much worse compared to a dive, simple because of the harm it could cause a fellow human being.
dk @79: Thanks. I agree with you that diving does really look too bad and disgusting, especially to the supporters of the team at the receiving end. But I think the way to clean it up is easier. A very stringent ‘time out’ measure: the referee suspects you of diving or a video watching fifth official tells the referee of the dive and the player gets a 15 minute time-out. Second offense in that match and a red card.
I think football should seriously consider time-out as a punishment for on-field misbehavior. That would very rapidly take care of cheats and serial stompers like the Stoke gang because there is quite nothing like playing with a few less men to get into your head the principle of fairness.
Also agree with Lars’ appraisal of the HFB.
====
You guys did us proud last night AJ, have a great time.
Yeah, Timmaaaah Sherwood is crap.
Dr F@80. I agree but I can go back further and not as far as Italy: Nobby Stiles, Norman Hunter, Peter Storey to name but three – none of them took any prisoners. Some of Storey’s tackles were GBH. You could see that players were scared of him – and that was just on his own team. And yes, certainly worse than diving. But it got stamped out.
Maybe the timeout idea would work – but it would be hard to get FIFA to take such a decision. Robben is of course far from the only one but naming him, as AW has, would be one step in getting a debate going. The problem is that he just gets seen as “whingeing Wenger”, the bad loser and it’s no good while Jack’s falling over all the time and he’s ignoring it.
The problem is that winning at all costs has become more important than playing to win. There is too much money involved for the international and national associations, the clubs, the managers and the players for anyone to take the necessary steps to get a general debate going across the game about conduct on the pitch and impressing on the referees the necessity of using the punishments already at their disposal. Last night’s non-booking of Robben was sheer cowardice. I know it can be difficult at times for refs but with someone like Robben, if you book him for simulation, you’re going to get it right more often than not.
I fully believe that SAF had words with Ashley Young when he was going through his Flying Frog phase and put a stop to it, but that’s just dealing with one player, not a whole attitude prevalent throughout the game.
The more I think about it, the more depressed I get. We’re doomed I tell you – doomed!
dk@70 – Good stuff. I will stay away from the wider aspects – as you say, it is dangerous territory 😉 – but just concentrating on the football side of things, I pretty much agree with most of what you have said.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that, going back as far as I can go (the seventies), diving was something that was more widespread elsewhere than here, largely because I think the game was referreed in a different way with far less tolerance for the ‘physical’ than here. There was therefore more to gain abroad by going to ground rather than here where play was simply waved on. There were of course exceptions that proved the rule and people of my generation will remember Franny Lee going to ground (and causing a small earthquake) at the slightest of contacts. There were others too. Keegan and Dalglish didn’t need much provocation to collapse as if they’d just been shot.
As however the game has become far more cosmopolitan, and therefore more homogeneous, with many nationalities plying their trade in all the major leagues, national distinctions have been, if not completely erased, then certainly lessened to within an inch of their existence. I wouldn’t really make any distinction between British and foreign these days. I think it’s fairly well ingrained throughout the game. Examples of the good old honest Brit diving are too copious to mention but high profile ones that stay in the memory – Rooney to end the Invincibles run, Owen against Argentina in the World Cup and Gerrard before a baying Kop end to keep Liverpool in the Champions League one year.
Nor, as you rightly point out, are Arsenal exempt. And why would they be, given how endemic the practice is. Bobby Pires is my favourite Arsenal player of all time but no-one could legitimately defend him against accusations of going to ground at the slightest touch. Eboue was a terrible diver, one of his specials (lest it be forgotten) played a major part in us being 15 mins away from landing the big one. Vieira was another who loved a dive but was saved from any lasting damage to his reputation largely because his execution was always so ludicrously and often comically poor.
That is why I mostly disagree with your @74 because I think in such a culture it would be wrong to single out Guardiola or anybody else. Is he really any worse than everybody else? He may be I guess, but I’m not convinced.
Agree with you completely about the all pervasive and pernicious “getting away with it” culture though. My guess is that the culture has grown exponentially as more and more money has entered not just Football but Sport in general. Winning is all and the rewards for winning far outweigh any short term condemnation for bending/breaking the rules.I just don’t think Guardiola is the best example especially when you have someone like Mourinho around who not only openly flouts the rules but is quite happy to wear his transgressions as badges of honour.Having said it would be wrong to single anyone out, I have of course singled Maureen out! 🙂 For me he exemplifies all that is wrong with Football in a way that Guardiola will never do, and in that respect I agree again with TS.
Just my penny’s worth.
Faustus@76 – Agree with you on Guardiola. I would certainly hope that he is in the frame when AW finally decides to hang up his puffa coat. Also agree on Arteta. Fine servant though he has been, I hope that this Season is his last as an (almost) automatic starter.
H2H @77 – Cheers and agree with all that. Heh at the Robben description. 😀
Ah I see you got there first on the money/winning relationship dk.
Should have refreshed … 🙂
tabs@87. I think I’ve said my bit on this for the time being – as I said above, it just gets depressing.
But thanks for reminding me of Eboué – that cheered me up no end. Total clown and the funniest diver of all time – but there was something about him that I warmed to. Maybe it was the guts he showed in coming back from that dreadful day against Wigan.
tabs@85 after holic deleted the intruder.
Yeh kinda agree with you dk. I was often furious with him ( that penalty in the 9th minute of injury time against Liverpool ffs! 🙂 ), but he was the kind of character who you couldn’t stay too angry with for too long.
I was glad when he was moved on though.
Great drinks above people – bravo.
PS – is it wrong that I’m STILL mad at Eboue? 🙂
Agree, tremendous drinks above. Dr Z, better than being mad about Eboue;-)
Eboue was a total disgrace but Arsene did try to sort that out.
I have seen no acknowledgement from Pep that his teams are full of diving cunts.
I do recall Maureen mendaciously claiming that ex-players of his, including Dogbreath had started diving after leaving his patronage. Very rich coming from the man who coached Porto to dive their way to two European trophies.
On the scale of cuntitude Pep is nowhere near Maureen but he is clearly not as saintly as he has been painted in some quarters.
So.. Ozil out for six weeks at least, great chance for others to step in, this will test the depth of the squad! Looking forward to keeping our momentum going!
Any truth in this article, regarding training methods?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenals-injury-problems-down-incompetent-3233644
Experts? Anyone?
No idea BB – interesting if true.
Interesting article about the training. I’m not an expert but just from my personal experiences (tweaked hamstrings are my specialty!) I have to imagine the lack of rotation plays a part too. Ramsey is the one the comes to mind. I think it was clear to many of us that he was getting fatigued and not playing up to his earlier season standards just before his injury. And to compound things, I think getting injured when your body is tired results in a much longer recovery time.
Bayern Munich legend Franz Beckenbauer says the club’s tactics are becoming unwatchable.
The former captain and manager, known as Der Kaiser, was unimpressed with their performance after the Bundesliga club knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League.
“In the end, it’ll be like Barcelona, unwatchable,” he said, referring to Bayern manager Pep Guardiola’s previous team and their tiki-taka passing game. “They will pass the ball back even on the goal-line.”
Just no pleasing some people. 😉
BB,
I don’t know what the training methods are exactly. I understand that there is almost all ball work and that passing drills form a large part of it.
I have wondered here more than once how the squad manage to fit pre-season training into the Far East tours which have become a regular occurrence, and what effect playing and then sitting in aeroplanes must have on them.
Maybe that is when they undergo the short bursts if marines style training – if that is the case.
I have been promising Holic to do a piece on our injury problems for some time but my own problems have got in the way. It is now done, but it is sitting in the iPad where I have no email – very bright, I know.
Once it’s been transcribed I will send it to him to do with as he wishes. 😉
Interesting article BB. Whatever are the reasons for our injuries over the years it is clear that there is a obvious pattern every year. Absolutely no coincidence or bad luck.
Hi holics,
Agree with almost everything you said tabs
We are not at their level yet, but if we build further, we’ll get there.
It’s utterly important that we win the cup though. I kind of feel our future hinges on it somewhat
Cheers
That article does indeed provide food for thought. Surely all our injuries can’t be put down to just bad luck!?
In other news, I see that Barcelona’s appeal to have Demichelis’ suspension overturned has failed.
Maybe Citeh will have a chance then tonight. 😉
Thanks for all the feedback guys.
It is indeed curious as I am convinced that if we have had most of our key players injury free by the end of every season, we would have won some trophies by now. This predicament seems to occur year after year!
Hence i am always harping on the depth of our squad, if (by whatever cause) our key players are always injured towards the end of every season then we better have good replacements if we ever want to compete seriously.
Just my humble opinion of course.
BB squad depth wont be worth much if we are crocking our players.
Look at how many midfielders we have. Many of us were wondering how we were going to give them all game time when they were all fit……
sad deluded fools that we were…. 😉
H2H, failed Demichelis appeal encouraged me on putting some money on City win tonight. Stupid or not, time will tell, but I interpreted that as a sign.
tabs@85. Anothe trip down Memory Lane for Lee Wun Pen, Man City’s Chinese centre forward, as he was known back then. Later to be just as crooked with his racehorses (allegedly).
Clearly, as many of us have said many times over the years, there is more to our injuries than bad luck. However, I wouldn’t trust that Mirror article one bit. First of all it is the Mirror, so they aren’t likely to say something positive about Arsene if they can avoid it, right? Secondly, the claims that the training is “old-fashioned” or whatever doesn’t really add up with what we actually do know about the club using all sorts of gizmos and modern contraptions to monitor fatigue and all sorts of things so it’s not like Arsene is just saying “hey, my methods worked in 1997 so they must work now!”.
Having said that, something is clearly wrong but it may also be more than one thing. Maybe the pitches at Colney are too hard, maybe the training sessions should be arranged differently, maybe the training sessions are too long, maybe those magical bath tubs aren’t doing any good after all, maybe… etc.
Just watching Farca v $hitteh.
Interesting how Farca players are diving far less than they did under Pep.
Lars,
The first team training pitches at Shenley are exactly the same as the pitch at The Emirates, so it can’t be that.
Maybe they do all their running on the anti-gravity machines so that when they run on actual ground ……….. ? 😉
Yaya Toure now suffering from RVP disease, i.e., wishing he never left.
It seems Bayern Munich have been using a new fitness coach this season. He’s half Welsh and half Chinese – goes by the name of Dai Ving.
Holic
You have Mail.
howdy ‘hol an all
spent day spraying
noxious chemicals
on
crumbling timbers
mine and those
but
have to say
the mighty ox
poldi poundin it
and
fab divin’
the way
you’re sposed to
dragged me brain through it
.
COME ON YOU RIP ROARIN’
.
now
to read
the write up
and the drinks
bet you’re
all talkin
shite
😉
Trev: I know the pitches are the same and I also know for a fact that the pitch at the Emirates is hard like bloody concrete. But why couldn’t it be the pitches just because they are the same? Not that I think that really has anything to do with the injuries, mind.
nice ‘hol
as usual
gonna get
me dinner on
before
i scale the north bank
of
the drinks
.
plenty words aplenty
me empty
There goes your money Lurky. 🙁
Lars,
I guess it could – but logically Sagna, as our longest serving player, would be one of the most likely to suffer, yet he probably has had about the fewest muscle injuries.
I think there are other reasons – i’ll try and get it re-written tonight, then you can destroy it with that blessed Swedish logic of yours. 😉
I’ll do my worst, Trev 🙂
Song the bench warmer 🙂
There are a couple of interesting syllogisms about Arsenal’s injury record:
1) Arsenal have a poor injury record
Despite this being obvious and longstanding, Wenger has not resolved it.
Therefore Wenger is an idiot.
2) Arsenal have a poor injury record.
Despite clearly being a highly intelligent man, Wenger has mot managed to sort it out.
Therefore it must be a difficult problem.
Guess ehich of the above I espouse.
COYG
118 trev
by your
national stereotyping
of sweden
i can only assume
you would characterise me
as a waffly wordy boozer
who
doesn’t know
how
or
when to shut up
.
😉
Oh
and
tabs
several gooduns
up above
good man yerself
amongst others
.
always
an edifying
time spent here
.
cheers ‘hol as always
.
had beef casserole
.
Daisy-licious
Heh at #111, Trev. I got it if no-one else did. 😉
Öskar
Notwithstanding NBN’s sterling work done the other day, I thought I’d go on Wikipedia and see how much the City squad, which is out of the CL at the same stage as us, cost. According to wikipedia’s admittedly unreliable figures (although no doubt not more unreliable than other sources), the sum total of the current first team squad (excluding loanees like Barry and Sinclair) comes to over £361 million.
Three hundred and sixty one million pounds.
Food for thought that when the summer comes and the morons start their “spend the money” dirge.
Öskar@126 – I think we all got it Öskar – we just maintained a discrete silence 🙂
a blind man
on a galloping horse
clearly missed out
oskar
Not as good as ‘Holic’s soup joke in the headline imho.
you talkin to me
weird
Trev and Lars – the Sagna theory says it all for me.
You cannot copy or short change hard experienced aged and seasoned legs.
Youth legs just don’t cut it hence why professional cycling teams all choose age and experience over youth.
Seasoned legs are used to the rigour where as youth legs are very susceptible to any change in training routines.
Too much too quick is the recipe for disaster as far as fitness routines go.
You another
sawbones
aussie
?
or
can i nationally
stereotype
and
say you eat
the right
fifty coloured food
combined
with
buckets of swally
?
.
not
mutually exclusive though
wilko
competition
radio
zico
.
dublin
.
must say z
.
felt elated and de- fl
.
never gonna see
the stare again
.
Played
two off
stupidity
rather
have
heard
walkin on the edge
or
paradise
Top Gooner Tim Sherwood has said that he has held talks with Daniel Levy about rebuilding the Spud squad? Now, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t they spend over 100 million last summer on “rebuilding?”
A Spurs fan told me that not a single one of their summer purchases started the game against Chelsea last weekend.
Another £109,000,000 down the toilet then.
Evening, cba,
Good to see you, nicely fed and watered. Sorry seeing Feelgood hasn’t made you, well, feel good, if you see ….
i’m
not dublin anymore
no money anymore
gonna miss
wilko
heartbreakin
but
crackin fu kin shows
i’m guessin
GENIUS
evening trev
just feeling
a bit
melancholy
wilko always a big favourite
Time to whomp the spuds yet?
our absolutely terrible ability to deal with injuries has to be our biggest weakness. it has probably cost us 2 titles since 2005 to say nothing of our cup chances. and, yes, we had 2 players’ careers ruined by thugs and another’s nearly destroyed and only managed to come back to full strength after literally multiple years of rehabilitation and playing back into form. but our injury problems have cost us any chance at the title this year, which we probably could have come close to if only we had kept theo fit for half the season and ramsey fit for the full season. our injuries are just astounding actually. to be on top of the injury table year after year after year is starting to become unforgivable. a hard problem? no doubt. but we have as many players out right now as united, liverpool, and city combined. there’s no way to prescribe a solution looking in from the outside, but it seriously needs to be dealt with somehow. the winning teams just keep players healthy, and there are clubs in this league much better at it than we are.
and just to heap it on while i’m thinking about it. the quality players we have sold off recently ie. not on the downside of their careers seem to be having better injury records than with us. that’s just what it seems like to me without having hard numbers in front of me. but is that just down to bad luck?
some of it, more recently, is probably down to the fact that some players are overplayed due to other injuries and lack of cover, the forbidden “red” zone, but that probably doesn’t completely explain the fact that we have 9 first teamers out right now, some without return dates and 2 who will not return this season. and we shouldn’t forget how we started the season with podolski, ox, arteta, cazorla, theo etc out for somewhat significant periods.
Aussie @ 132: But Sagna joined us when he was 24, playing for Auxerre before that, hardly ‘aged and seasoned legs’ and he has covered probably the longest distance on the pitch among his Arsenal contemporaries.
However, you are right in the sense — and Arsene has often pointed this out — that because of rapid physiological changes young players do go through a series of injuries around 20 year mark and we have seen our fair share of those (Cesc, Theo, Jack).
But, given that we consciously focus on blooding youngsters and giving them early chance we must also have a complementary training/fitness plan that ensures this somewhat inevitable physical ‘setbacks’ are least disruptive to those players’ careers. And I think we most likely have such a rigorous and methodical plan.
First problem is such a plan evidently is not working well.
But more importantly, even for players who have passed that ‘fragile’ age they seem to gather more injuries on average in an Arsenal shirt. As matt foley so astutely observed in the last two posts, players leaving Arsenal tend to improve on their injury records. (At least seems that way, I admit to have no data backing that ‘appearance’).
A part of that could be overplaying — Ozil for instance already had played almost as many minutes this season as he had played for RM all last season — or a part of that could be subtler, maybe highly sophisticated ‘before the times’ training exercises that do not have long enough trend records to perform solid statistical correlation analysis.
I am sure this is something that the club had tried to get to the bottom of — last season had seemed to be a turning point in terms of injuries — but as long as there are no improvement in this aspect it should continue to be an area of great focus.
We are not even as much of a high-pressing team as Dortmund, Barca or Bayern …
Time to disappoint the spud lickers and their huge legion of meedja cronies?
I would hesitate to attribute our injury toll to incompetent training methods on the say-so of a guy with a history of criticising practically everyone who doesn’t follow his methods. Arsenal, Man U, and the England World Cup XI being just the latest in his gun sights. To suggest AW has a blind spot in his otherwise proven football brain is too simplistic.
Does anyone really believe it couldn’t have occurred to AW that Arsenal training could be the problem and that he would have sought expert opinion on the matter? It’s not like we haven’t heard that one before, so why wouldn’t he have picked up on the notion?
My totally non-professional opinion is that our injuries probably result from a greater workload demanded of a weaker squad than those we compete with. As ecg pointed out in #96, it was evident to anyone watching Rambo’s last games before his breakdown that he was tired and not performing as well as he had been earlier. That’s a mind thing as much as anything, and when a footballer’s mind isn’t fully concentrated he’ll be slower to react to protect himself.
Without the kind of quality in depth some clubs enjoy AW walks a fine line with his players and perhaps pushes some of the squad just that little bit too far. imo.
Öskar
We’re pretty much on the same line, Dr F. I was distracted by a phone call half-way through my previous and hence didn’t see yours.
Öskar
Nothing scientific here, Oskar, but squad depth surely cant be the cause of this problem. Back in the seventies teams like Liverpool won the league with a playing squad of 13 or 14 players. On terrible mud patch pitches, which surely cause more rather than less injuries!
Its a mystery worthy of the gret Sherlock Holmes, and no mistake (guv’nor).
Squad depth is key, IF, when it means players play more games because there is limited cover for them. As for ‘back in the seventies’, things were vastly different then, with the mud patch pitches you mention actually being much safer to play on. As this article … http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/health_and_fitness/4970176.stm … explains:
“Pitches are harder these days and players at the top are fitter, faster and stronger. The stresses players’ feet endure are hugely different to 20-25 years ago. Grass pitches are often sand-based to improve drainage. These will be watered to increase speed, and not necessarily to make them softer. It can be like running on concrete.”
and:
“The pitches are a major factor. … Premiership stars play on gorgeous surfaces day in, day out and any slight change in conditions will mean their feet may not be conditioned for that surface. … Bones respond to load and if you don’t provide the high load the bones can become weaker and vulnerable. … if the workload is intense without rest or players just work on soft surfaces they again become susceptible to fracture.”
This article … http://www.towerswatson.com/en-GB/Press/2013/06/Football-injury-research-shows-predictive-magic-sponge … is also interesting and endorses what I wrote previously:
“Managers concerned about injury levels, but without an unlimited budget to spend on expanding the size and depth of their squads, can still be proactive. A high average number of minutes played in a season is a key factor leading to higher injuries for a player and this is a risk that can be controlled somewhat by substitutions.”
It also names premiership clubs which ‘have been consistently badly affected in recent seasons’ and, curiously, Arsenal does not get a mention!
Öskar
Just got around to watching the recorded 2nd half and all I can say is Robben has a larger repertoire of dives than Greg Louganis. The referee couldn’t stop admiring all the pretty dives. Full gainers seemed to be his favorite.
All credit to Vermaelen for filling in admirably in a very difficult situation, it must be said.
Dr F- my point about Sagna was that he is no longer 24 and he is now seasoned and hard and runs more than most and is beyond the injury prone age.
I believe that arsenal and arsene as the leader of the club have made a conscious and calculated business decision to blood youth and not overpay on players and take the calculated risk with injuries of that age group.
And maybe that is and has been a good business decision at the time for the club to be somewhat of ahead of our time, but unfortunately the football club part of the business suffers somewhat.
All teams have youth, but I would not expect many clubs in the top echelon of champions league have a team age near except maybe dortmund.
Here’s an early common knowledge quiz for the Holics this morning. (DK Gooner get ready. You should know this one)
Whose current squad costs the most (inc: players who cost over the odds) out of Citeh’s and arrrsenaal’s?
Answers on the back of a S*purs match day program (provided it’s not being used as bog roll or some dirty shite like that)
😉
Peace out ya’ll
Just in case anyone asks, the prize will be a cup.
Trev@137: that is indeed true, but I think four of them were injured so couldn’t have been selected. Not that I am too sure they would have been anyway, mind.
One reason for our non-impact injuries could, theoretically, also actually be that the players are, so to speak, too fit. The more perfectly tuned you are the closer you are to the breaking point, and not all experts are convinced it is a good thing to eat nothing but super-healthy food at all times. The thinking behind this is that the body needs some excess fat to use as an energy source when you work yourself into the ground (which you do when you play a PL game), and when you’ve run out of that the body then basically starts to eat itself which results in injuries. Consequently, if this is to be believed, what you really should do after a game is not have rice, chicken and carrots in perfectly weighted portions but rather a beer and a kebab because the body needs energy quickly and lots of it. I have absolutely no idea if this is true, but I guess at least most players would like that a whole lot better than having steamed veggies post-match 🙂
Ooooooooooooo, that’s a hard one Goonertown. 🙂
Interesting theory, Lars – I’ve read about that business of the body starting to eat muscle if it had run out of fat before, though not in this context.
Not something I have to fear in the near future 🙂
DK 😆
“Hands up, if you hate spuds”
BB@94. Very interesting read.
Trev@98. Look forward to your article. 3 weeks????
I must say re the constant stream of injuries that it can’t just be down to bad luck. It’s been like this for far too long now.
Öskar @146 has hit one nail firmly on the head: “a guy with a history of criticising practically everyone who doesn’t follow his methods.”
Also a guy who obviously very much in demand – I mean he’s helping the Welsh squad. Aaron must know him then.
I think there’s a huge lack of hard evidence in some of the postulations around this, which some posters have at least had the honesty to acknowledge. One thing that strikes me if I compare the City squad with ours is the great predominance of seasoned players bought at great expense over our more youth-based squad. So maybe the “younger limbs” theory has something going for it.
One thing I’m sure of – the boss is not static in his thinking. He has moved away from the French-based acquisitions of the early days to more Spanish and German players when the tea leaves showed that trend. He seems happy for players to seek out the best available treatment for their injuries, not rigidly insisting on a number of experts favoured by him. Why should he be any less flexible in his attitudes to diet and training methods?
I’d rather trust him that some so-called expert ferreted out by a Mirror journo – I would first be very suspicious of said journo’s motives.
I think it’s difficult to see a trend in all this. Bacs, BFG and HFB for example have played the most minutes this season (at a guess) yet keep going strong. (BFG is amazing, turning out class performances one after the other, week in, week out – maybe he’s an android.) TV5 is a similar age to them, yet has had problems. So have Arteta’s old mature legs. And Podolski is no spring chicken – he’s had problems too this season – what was his injury record like at Köln? I see he averaged 29 league appearances (out of 34) per season in the 3 seasons he was with them before joining us.
IF (a big if) there is any truth in the argument that we have more serious injuries than our rivals, then I would rather ascribe it to our reliance on younger players – and maybe pushing them a little too far out of necessity – than anything else. It can become a self-reinforcing cycle.
A final word – Agüero is a seasoned player, has just come back from injury and now may be out again. Has he also been fed the wrong diet or pushed too far?
Whatever – it’s potentially good news – they’re not the same team without him.
I saw the sportswriter Patrick Barclay at a party I went to for work last night – resisted the urge to walk up to him and berate him for his terrible article on Ozil the other day!
Talking about Podolski (well, I was anyway), I guess the injury list will mean he gets more playing time. A silver lining if ever I saw one. He looked up for it on Tuesday and I hope he starts against Spuds.
It is fascinating why we have so many injuries. My feeling is that we have so many is for a number of reasons. I’m really looking forward to what Trev has written given his expertise in the area.
We have very technical players, we generally play at a high pace and tempo, we play a pressing game and rely on plenty of movement from our players. Add this to the physicality and speed of the Premiership it means that there is more stress on our players. It would be very interesting to match distances covered, passes attempted and completed and key actions and see where we end up in the table.
We have suffered number of traumatic injuries over the last few years but there has been an increase in muscular injuries and strains recently – Ramsey (thigh), Arteta (calf – recurrent), Gibbs (calf), Ozil (hamstring), Podolski (hamstring).
Aussie correctly stated that muscular strength and endurance develops over time, however football is an intriguing blend of speed, flexibility, agility, strength and endurance. Unfortunately as we get older we become more prone to muscular strains despite the improvements in our endurance. Balancing the requirements for football necessitates very specific training and recovery programmes. A player although very fit coming from a less strenuous league is more vulnerable to injury ( as are younger players) which is probably what has happened to Ozil.
Now add to that the following. The best players will play the most – simple and true for all levels of every sport. The more you play the more likely that you will become injured. Although we have one of the best pitches on this Earth we play at grounds that are bog-like, have long grass or are like cow fields (Mersacker at Sunderland) as managers endeavour to negate the technical prowess of Arsene’s teams. The schedules are intense for some nine months or so with a requirement of peak fitness despite playing at times every three days. As Lars noted that such finesse and fitness for prolonged periods (whilst trying to rest and maintain peak fitness) leaves the players vulnerable to illness and injury.
Referees in the Premiership are not as stringent as in other European leagues so from my perspective we suffer more fouls than other teams. This adds to fatigue and muscular stress.
I find it very difficult to believe that such a meticulous manager, with state of the art training, monitoring and medical facilities is leaden in his training and rehabilitation programmes. I agree with DKG in his views of Arsene.
I have no ready answer, I wish we didn’t have so many injuries (or bad luck!) but realise that it it’s a complex juggling act.
Sporting injuries generally tend to stem from over training or some type of gaming accident.
Generally!
Dkgooner- i think you are right @160 that we seem to have a much higher reliance on our youth more often and bring them back a touch early as the squad needs them and that is a self perpetuating cycle.
It certainly does seem like we have had one go out and one come back for the last few years.
Hi All
Now if Poldi showed half the get up and go he did in the 2nd half he would find himself in the team week in week out, great strike it was past Nuer before he could blink. I would love to see Poldi show that same desire every week for 90 mins.
Fantastic defending, the only blight was Santi letting BS run striaght past him for the goal. The captain put in a great effort and defended incredibly well, sadly not a outlet like Gibbs who can run the channels. The married couple in the middle very strong again as has now became the norm *Thank God* Bac was solid but a little exposed in the 1st half as Ozil seemed frightened to sprint, and now we know why.
The Ox was outstanding, his final ball was dissapointing at times but when he drove at the Bayern defence they were scared and worried. For me he absoultly has to start every game till the end of the season. He is a young man who has missed alot of the season and could cope with it in my humble opinion.
If we played Flamteta togehter in the middle it would allow Santi,Poldi,Ox and Giroud abit more freedom to express themself more in the attacking 3rd. When Rambo and Wilshere are back then we can go back to a pairing of defensive/attacking in the middle.
As for injuries as discussed above its a concern that any indercation that is given regarding a time line for an injury is always way off. I know set backs can happen ect, but how can this be the case 80-90% of the time. I am sure im not the only one who adds 2-3 weeks on top of stated time frames. This does need looking into.
Cheers
Sorry Goonertown, but your reference in 165 to “some type of gaming accident” flashed pictures in front of my eyes of Bendtner on the fruit machines – I trust that wasn’t what you meant. 🙂
Fruit machines = one-armed bandits (what are they called nowadays?)
dk, within the industry at least such a machine is, these days, called a VLT (Video Lottery Terminal). The purely mechanical machines are long gone, they are all electronic nowadays.
DK – I must say, your response at 168 flashed pictures in front of my eyes of Bendtner’s pink boots. I stopped short of his Paddy Power briefs! 🙂
All I can see now that Bendy is mentioned is a twat trying to dry hump a taxi.
The sooner he’s gone the better.
Lars.
I had new state of the art “fruit machines” here in the bar.
They were video with full HD touch screens, they had a choice of nine different popular fruit machines plus a poker and black jack game, very nice.
The locals didn’t play it though, because they “didn’t trust those computer thingies”.
So I brought back the old fashioned ones, which of course are also powered by a computer chip, but you can see the rolls spin……. Fuckin’ yokels. 😉
It’s all about appearances, H2H 🙂
Still no definite prognosis on Ozil;
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/26544491
It seems that way Lars.
It just summons the image of hayseeds with pitchforks and fackels fearing for their lives with this onslaught of new fandangled technology. a bit sad really.
😆
I see Rambo has a bit of a set back as well, this is all too often regarding injuries. I can see Ozil now falling into this now as well, it will be a 2 week injury, sorry I mean 4 weeks, Ooo sorry I meant to say 6 weeks, did I say 6 weeks I meant to say out for the rest of the season.
I know Aw has investigated the phenomenon at our training ground which lead to the pitches being relaid, but I think we may need to take a closer look at the physio`s maybe because this is all too often. Set backs and relapses are part and parcel of injuries but we have it too often for there not to be somthing in it.
Interesting dialogue re the injury plague. An oft cited reason is the lack of rotation and squad depth — but let’s face it, the Invincibles were not exactly the deepest squad nor one which saw a lot of rotation. But they were individually bigger and more powerful, and much more seasoned collectively than any of its successors. You have to look at the complement of the players in the more recent squads, which featured two different clusters — young, less physically mature players, and on the other end of the spectrum, more seasoned professionals who happen to be slighter in stature or physicality (e.g., Arteta, Oezil) as more of a reason for longer timeouts for injury. Also, the growing lack of trophies has forced more of a reliance on first team players in all competitions, which cumulatively has an impact on these players.
Behind Bars in Munich;
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26562558
Hoeness sent off for 3½ years.
I hope he bought Robben with the dodgy money and they can find a way to bang him up too.
Morten Olsen, the Danish national manager, has said that Bendtner has such a large body, he needs to be playing regularly to keep his fitness levels up.
I would have thought that NB’s problems stem not so much from a large body as from a small brain.
Afternoon all,
Dr Z @90 – Haha, still angry with Eboue? Let it go Doc 😉
Bath @92 – Yep, very fair comment.
Harsha – Cheers and agree with you completely that getting over that hurdle and winning that first pot is so so important for this group of players.
dk@106 – Haha, certainly a dodgy geezer. Think he made his fortune from bog rolls if memory serves (though I might have dreamt that), but somehow quite apt if true.
cba – Cheers and howdy. Thanks for the usual many hehs. Hope you manage to secure a ticket for that May gig to alleviate the melancholy.
BB – Thanks for linking to that article. Certainly prompted a very interesting debate. Great contributions all. Is this Dutch chap angling for a job I wonder? Obviously impossible to comment on Arsenal’s training methods from the outside, but I would question his use of the word “prehistoric”. I would very much doubt his assertion that AW’s training methods haven’t evolved over 16 years or that he doesn’t take advice from the very best in this area. That said, non-contact injuries do appear to have become a regular feature of seemingly each and every season so it is certainly worth investigating.
As a completely non-educated guess, I would agree with Ecg, Oskar and others who postulated that they were as a result of relying on a smaller squad (or at least a smaller pool of players who AW entrusts with a starting berth), as compared with other squads who have to deal with the additional burden of Champions League fixtures and all the travelling that that entails.
Mark me down however, as another who is looking forward to Trev’s more informed view.
Lars@154 – I’ve relied on that Beer and Kebab diet for years. Sad to report that I am still some way off achieving full match fitness 😉
Amazing video – never thought I’d see such a thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TPjx1DMaEw
Great stuff dk. Think Robbie Fowler tried (unsuccessfully) to overturn a penalty decision a fair few years back at Highbury. Didn’t stop him from scoring the penalty though, bloody bindipper!
I wish Harry Redknapp had been tried in Germany!
Harry Redknapp’s been trying everywhere – never made it though. 😉
Haha 🙂
tabs@186. Thanks for that – I knew there was another incident once.
Seaman actually stopped the penalty but Jason McAteer scored from the rebound.
Didn’t Arshavin do something similar? against blackburn, I think.
As for the “fair play” by Aaron Hunt, it was pretty much a dive in the first place.
Aaron Hunt: He [the referee] pointed to the spot quite quickly and I told him that I’d actually contrived it slightly. I did look for the contact, but then I noticed that their defender pulled out of the challenge. I fought with my conscience for a moment, but I don’t want to win that way.
His first intention was to cheat.
DK – is it me, or have you gone all nostalgic today?
My cousin went through a similar period with his Wasaap statuses. He brought back Atari’s, commodore 64’s and choppers.
🙂
Quite right dk. I stand corrected.
H2H: the Arshavin incident was at Fratton Park, the Pompey player clearly got the ball and Arshavin pointed to the corner flag and tried to tell the ref it wasn’t a penalty but the ref was having none of it for some reason. We won 3-0 in the end, Bendtner scored two (one of which the penalty) and Carlos Vela got the third.
By the way, check out the team we had for that game!
Fabianski
Sagna
Song
Djourou
Eboue
Walcott (64)
Denilson
Ramsey (82)
Arshavin
Bendtner (78)
Vela
Substitutes
Mannone
Bischoff (64)
Coquelin
Emmanuel-Thomas
Merida (78)
Randall (82)
Frimpong
I remember Arshavin not getting a stonewall penalty against Blackburn H2H, but don’t remember him turning one down?
Ah, cheers Lars! 🙂
tabs@193: You stand corrected thanks to Wikipedia, not to my very dodgy memory. 🙂
Heh 🙂
Cheers Lars.
I knew it was against one of those broke arse former PL teams. 😉
BOOM!
Didn’t anyone notice that Amaury Bischoff actually played in that game, btw?
‘Arry really did a number on ol Pompey and surprise, surprise, it looks like QPR could be heading the same way;
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/06/qpr-debt-177m-report-premier-league-relegation
Well in Lars.
Yeah, I saw that the PI come on as a sub. Looking at that line up must surely make even the doomers appriciate what we now have.
They are some scary numbers H2H. 65M loss, wage bill 17m more than total turnover. No doubt ‘Arry will pull his “nothing to do with me Guv” stunt again.
Whatever happened to PI? Did he go elsewhere or did injuries finally do for him?
He’s now playing for the mighty Preußen Münster……. Yeah, exactly.
More info;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaury_Bischoff
Blimey. Right up there with Park as AW’s weirdest signing.
Amaury Bischoff P(ermanently) I(njured) – if you don’t mind. 😉
As for QPR, the writing was on the wall, even before Arry joined them.
Tey were offering players 100 grand p.w. Not just one or two players, but a great deal of them even their keeper. I remember when they signed Remy, He was all set for Toon land untill QPR swooped in and offered him twice as much moola and off he went.
Add to this a stadium with a capacity just over 20k and that;s a recipie for disaster.
Harry is the recipe for disaster.
Ask Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, QPR, West Ham ……
The only one who did well out of Harry was Rosie. 😉
Just looking at that squad @194.
Now tell me that getting 4th place (or 3rd ?) with that little lot is not like winning a trophy.
As you mention Arshavin v. Blackburtn, and Podolski is squeezing ’em between the near post and the keeper I may as well link to this one. I’ts a good memory, he scored it just as my breakfast was being served in the bar at bottom. Thanks Andrey. 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DutXm1t7cVE
http://bakerstreetnyc.com
Heh Indeed Trev, tantamount to Wales winning the WC.
Or The tiny Totts finishing above fifth. 😉
H2H@208 – Indeed. Just mad what has gone on at that Club. Don’t know whether you would have got to have seen it in your neck of the woods but that QPR documentary a while back when Colin Wanker was in charge really did lift the lid on how brainless some of these rich owners can be.
Trev – Wasn’t that Portsmouth game sometime around the Champs League semi against the Mancs. Looking at that side, I’m guessing we were resting a few – Almunia, Van Persie, Adebarndoor, Nasri, Fabregas, Diaby Gallas, Toure etc. A few of them were probably injured though. Still a great achievement, as you say, to have got top 4 with that little lot though.
Great goal 8Ball.
TABs @186
Fowler did tell the ref it wasnt a penalty but missed the penalty and scored on the follow up if I remeber right.
The great David Seaman said if Fowler tried to say it was a penalty he would have thrown him into the lake the next time they went fishing. Great interview after the match.
I think it was on the beeb, wasn’t it tabs? I did see pieces of it, brainless indeed.
Cheers ’71, yep already corrected by dk above. McAteer knocked in the rebound. Fowler should have just knocked it wide! 😉
Can’t remember the channel H2H if I’m honest. May well have been the beeb.
I FUCKIN HATE PIGEONS
it’s not necessarily apples to apples with regard to comparing arsenal’s injuries to the rest of the teams that aren’t involved in cup competitions and europe, but we are 3 standard deviations above of the current mean with ozil out (that’s 10 players total). and while bendtner’s injury may be dubious and diaby’s chronic, we’re not measured any differently than another club. we haven’t been leading the injury league perpetually, but we’ve been right there for several years now at least. it doesn’t seem like just bad luck.
and
cj egghead
on bbc2
thick as pigshit
arrogant as
.
the combination
is
drivin me to. distraction
.
air and landbound weasels
.
speaking of TGSTEL, here’s a little story for ya:
P-A-R-T-Y
Mediawatch is no fan of the ‘footballer as role model’ brigade, putting stars onto pedestals with the intention of following them with cameras to pick up on any wrongdoing or misdemeanour. They can then be knocked down and beaten, all of us wringing our hands and outrage-ing to anyone who will listen: “Won’t somebody think of the children.”
That said, sometimes players do make it very hard for themselves indeed. And Nicklas Bendtner makes it harder than most.
On March 4, Bendtner spoke before Denmark’s friendly against England at Wembley, insisting that he had an unfair reputation for a love of the…erm faster things in life.
“People think I’m a psychopath. The perception of me is never going to be positive if clubs talk to people who have a negative view.
“Of all the things said about me, I’ve only done one thing wrong. That was in Copenhagen (a drink-driving charge).
“The image people have about me is I’m all about partying, that I’m indifferent to football. It’s as far from reality as could possibly be.”
Fair enough Nicklas, you’ve charmed us. We’ll give you a second chance, and assumed all those reported stories were just a load of old bollo… oh wait, what’s this, just nine days later? A story about Nicklas Bendtner back home in Denmark, you say? On the same night that Arsenal were playing Bayern Munich?
So, what was Bendtner doing on Wednesday evening, giving out sweets to children? Working in a soup kitchen? Or just lounging about at home, musing over his hat-trick at the same stage of the Champions League four years ago? Let’s just let the Daily Mirror explain…
‘Nicklas Bendtner accused of threatening Copenhagen taxi driver in drunken rant’ reads the headline, and it gets (a lot) better from then on.
‘Arsenal striker Nicklas Bendtner has been accused of threatening a taxi driver and going “berserk” on a drunken night out in Copenhagen on Tuesday night.
‘The striker reportedly “ran amok” in the Danish capital’s trendy Norrebro district, allegedly threatening the taxi driver before unbuttoning his trousers and rubbing against the side of the car.
‘The 26-year-old also reportedly whipped the taxi with his belt and told its driver, “I will f*** you” as well as calling him a “little bitch”.’
A message to the football clubs of Europe: It’s worth paying this man £52,000 a week just for the phrase ‘whipped the taxi with his belt’.
http://www.football365.com/mediawatch/9211011/Mediawatch
oh yeah, he’ll sign on somewhere. :eyeroll:
Bischoff was a stab in the dark, Wenger said so himself. He did have some talent but had been injured since forever and was still injured when we got him. He cost next to nothing and was only given a one-year contract.
tabs@215: that Pompey match was indeed sandwiched in between the two ManU CL semis.
http://www.arsenal.com/fixtures/first-team/results?season=2008%2F09
Interesting stat from twitter.
Özil has been injured for 7 ½ weeks in his years at Schalke, Bremen & Madrid. Joins Arsenal – so far already out for 8 weeks (3 injuries)
Makes you wonder is he overplayed, overtrained, or we are the unluckiest team in the world.
cba – Hahaha 🙂 No fan of the pigeon myself, but even those sky rats are infinitely preferable to cj. The man is an utter cock-knocker.
Scruz – Gotta laugh at the Prince of Denmark. What a berk! 🙂
Lars – Yeh fair comment. Thought he cost about 4mill though, no?
tabs: no, he was out of contract so only cost the mandatory fee for players under 23 (which is only something like 500k) and was on low wages.
Pigeon poo story anyone?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264003/Royal-Mail-postmen-refuse-deliver-letters-womans-home-scared-slipping-pigeon-poo.html
Never has the postman seemed so heroic. 😉
Ah, cheers Lars.
cunts on
won’t watch
collaboration
an
abhorrence
chocolat is on
pile o shite too
but
a five minute
dip in
is more
beneficial in one
.
have ms binoche rinsed
and
brought to my bedchamber
Tabs,
Seems you were right about the Pompey / Man Utd games. Blowed if I can remember. All I recall in the home leg of that CL semi vs the Mancs is the fastest deflation of my spirit at possibly any game I’ve ever been to.
Stealth move by H2HFC in the FFL last week while the rest of us were cup-preoccupied. Devious.
ms binoche
sounds
tasty
Heh, cba
Ms Binoche got you in a whirl ?
Classy lady,
she’ll get you with that
romantic classical music.
Her favourite piece is
Eclair de Lune
😉
Not that she can hear it, of course,
I hear she’s a chocolate’ear. 😉
Being an old fart, I loved this.
http://www.wsc.co.uk/forum-index/27-football/891925-football-s-fucked-a-manifesto
enough
of
my lustations
how’s your pin trev
told you before
empathy big time
with flolloped knees
well
that and
the bikini shot of you
tabs posted
when you were
a struggling
smuggler
.
😉
.
GO AWAY YOU RIP ROARIING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
oy
I see Rambo has suffered another setback in his return to full fitness.
According to the Guvnor,he is ‘ having some difficulty in the final stages of his rehab,it looks to be short term.’
Bollocks.
Just given a date today, cba
Replacement op is booked for next Friday.
Still waiting for the nhs to confirm the funds though. Seems they budget for one person at a time – how does anyone control that ?
Spuds are 0-1 down – to Benfica’s only attack so far. 🙂
Excellent trev
.
hope it happens
and
the outcome
gives you
the rest of your life back
Cheers. 😉
Trev – Only remembered cos I was on the other side of the World at the time and watched the game in Speedoes 😉
And good news on the op.
Haha cba 🙂
All going well at the Lane! Totts look so ordinary. Very unbalanced. Sherwood doesn’t appear to have a clue. Play Gnabry and the Ox on Sunday and really go at ’em.
From Paul Doyle’s MBM in the Guardian:
“Half-time team talk: There are only three people that I want Spurs to retain this summer, the rest can go away,” fumes Alex Ritchie. “Lloris, Lennon and Adebayor.” Surely Vertonghen too, he’s one of the top five centrebacks in the Premier League. And Sandro and Eriksen are worth holding on to too. On the other hand, yet another wholesale Tottenham revamp would be amusing so I’m all for it.
Cheers, Tabs.
oh o
hard to ignore
a dozen texts
har de har
and
indeed
har
.
🙂
gonna shut me gob
Goods news on the Op Trev.
Will you be back in action in around ‘ 3 weeks ? ‘.
The rate young Ramsey is going,you will be back before him.!!
har de har again
🙂
Fucking hell, I know the cliche says form goes out the window in derbies but bloody hell Spurs were shit v Benfica. Get as much pace as we can on the pitch on Sunday, defend a bit deep with discipline and we’ll bloody murder them on the breaks.
Clive. Where did you get that about Rambo???
I do think someone needs to have a good old look as to why we get so many injuries. Tommy R now struggling for the weekend.
Hilarious viewing at the Lane tonight. Tottenham beyond incompetent and utterly outclassed, Tim not so nice but dim losing it on the touchline, and Parker, Vertonghen and Sandro all hobbling at the end.
A good Arsenal win at the Lane is well overdue. Fancy it this Sunday.
Cancel Clive. Just seen it. What having problems with the last stages of his rehab actually means is beyond me.
Give the spuds a good shoeing at the weekend and that’s their season totally fucked.
Bring it on.
A song for the POD… Tom Waites – Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oNpUtbBn_I
Öskar
Apropos Ramsey the second link in my #149 includes the following observation from the quoted research…
“Once any player has had a severe injury, they are more susceptible to another one within two years of the original injury. The study shows that this is the principal factor in determining the likelihood of future injuries across the league.”
‘The principal factor’ please note. I think we can relate to that with Theo and Jack as well as Rambo, and others to a lesser extent. It really does beg the question whether we’d be better off NOT expecting badly injured players to be of great value long-term and looking to replace them now, regardless how much we love them when they’re fit. Just sayin’.
Öskar
Evening Steve
I know the Spuds have had 2 bad losses,but form means fuckall in a derby.
So we still need to be on our toes from the get go on Sunday.
Don’t concede a silly early goal to give them confidence.
And we certainly need to turn up with more aggression and energy than we did at Stoke.
Tension reliever?
http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/464683/Bother-for-Nicklas-Bendtner-as-striker-faces-punishment-over-alleged-drunken-incident
Trev: best wishes. Knnes up Mother Brown…
Clive @ 254 knows 🙂
Morning all,
Good news on the knee Trev. Best of luck for next Friday.
Thanks for the mail Clive. Will post pic or pics in the drinks of the NLD preview. Not sure yet if that will be tonight or tomorrow.
If anyone wants to see and hear this old fool check out last night’s Arseblog Google hangout.
Have a good Friday.
bt8 – Great story about those postmen. As far I’m concerned, their attitude stinks.
I’m here all week!
Anyone with a pair of FA Cup tickets. Please let me know.
😉
Morning all. I have never been more anxious about a home game v Arsenal than I am today. Spurs are frankly a shambles at the moment. What’s new I hear you say. Tim the PE teacher appears on the verge of a breakdown and, as has been mentioned on here, if you get at us from the off it could be carnage. TABS, your prediction of 0-2, I would bite your hand off for that I’m sad to say. I shall be there and hope we can give you a game. Goonersince54, hope you are right re form not counting for the derby!
Ramsey out for two more weeks at least. It was a minor injury, back then in December as long as I remember. Three months minor injury. Why I am not surprised? Because I’ve already seen this before.
Major injuries aside, Vermaelen and Rosicky are two of the many minor injuries I remember, that were/are lasting for years and are yet to be solved.
We are going into the most significant period of the season with half a squad. No Walcott, Ozil, Ramsey, Wilshere.
Every season the same.
But, today Arsene finally admits that Arsenal are reviewing medical and training methods.
Reviewing? Seriously?
If the medic tells me after the scans that the player will be short term injury and after three months there is no or little sign of improvement, that means only two things. Either he was wrong in the diagnosis, or he was wrong in the medical treatment methods. Either way he is wrong. If that happens once or twice, than it is forgivable in my book. But it is a trend at Arsenal.
And no one is responsible.
So what’s this buzz – Roberto Martinez being lined up as the eventual replacement for Le Boss?? could work actually imo…and do we know for sure that Boss has signed a new contract?? spill the beans holics!
I agree to the fact that form books gets thrown out of the window when it comes to derbies, this one is no different.
Arsenal are on bare bones, spuds are in poor form yet these 2 teams conjure up the best possible game when it comes to rivalries, before our game there will be a crap between united and fools and i for one am rooting for united( sickening feeling).
Podolski needs to play every game from now till the end of the season, form or no form if we dont utilize our best striker now when else will we?
Without Aaron, i am sure that Ox will play every game too,so if thats the case please lets beat the spuds by pace ox in the middle and gnabry playing wide than playing the conservative arteta-flamini pivot.
Arsenal lost at whl last time in 2 minutes of hara kiri, we were split wide open and it was embarrassing to say the least. That it resulted in a re look by the whole team and the coming together of Per and Kos is a different story, that game was sickening.
Gunners need to win this to get the momentum back for the league, we should have no other distractions now on as we only have the league and one cup semi final in april for the fa cup final will be after the league is over.
For spuds, this is their cup final, the way they are playing i wont be surprised if united finish above them even now, i dont give a damn for either, but for us this is 3 points and that is a must what with next weekend a small matter of a visit to the voyeur and his men’s ground.
Lukas get your shooting boots on, flamster dont be stupid and go charging like a hound dog, rozza and santi, be yourself and we should win this.
It’s good to hear that the board are reviewing their medical and training methods.
Overtraining and identifying risks, diagnosis and forecasts of injuries are important for a championship winning side.
🙂
Oskar@252: Thanks a million for that link – one of Tom’s most beautiful, melancholic songs in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities.
Prophetic too:
“Now the dogs are barking
And the taxi cabs parking
A lot they can do for me”
And you’d almost think he’d been reading this blog:
“The one-armed bandit knows”
Made my day 😀
I see Özil says he was feeling the hamstring from the 2nd minute.
http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/arsenal-record-signing-mesut-ozil-posts-injury-update-message-to-fans-on-facebook-picture/?
The 2nd fucking minute FFS
Why didn’t he get himself the hell off the park then?
Makes a manager’s (and a physio’s) job much more difficult when a player is so irresponsible. I can understand him staying on for a while to see if he could run it off, but not for 43 minutes.
Don’t footballers have anything between the ears?
Considering that we played 53 minutes with 10 men in the first leg and 43 minutes with 10 men in the second leg, I think the rest of the lads did us proud.
Özil out for 3 to 6 weeks apparently.
What is it with muscle strains and The Arsenal???? Surely it is beyond time to start looking at this??? It’s bordering on the ridiculous.
Dave, I hope you are right about your boys being a shambles.
Goonertown@265: “… a Premiership winning side …”
SteveT@265: Spurs risk losing Walker and Sandro to muscle strains on Sunday.
Agüero is facing a third period out this season for City, plus they’ve had injuries to Jovetic (long-term), Kompany and Silva (just off the top of my head).
I think our focus on AFC can be misleading – other teams get problems too.
Dave @261 – Haha so that’s two of us hoping for a 2-0 win to the Arse then mate 😉 Your prediction of 1-1 yesterday didn’t last long then! 🙂
All jokes aside, still reckon it will be tight – it always is at the Lane. If Sherwood insists on playing two up front though, I will be very hopeful that Arsenal will win.
dk – Agreed. Staying on for 43 minutes in those circumstances is impossible to defend.
SteveT@269 that should have been.
Not sure we can blame Özil for staying on. I read somewhere that he said he didn’t realise how bad it was until half time, which sounds perfectly plausible. It happens all the time that players play on without understanding they are injured, you simply don’t feel the pain as long as your body is full of adrenaline and other assorted chemical compounds which numb the pain.
This
you simply don’t feel the pain as long as your body is full of ******* and other assorted chemical compounds which numb the pain.
Dave,
I’ve heard from a good authority that your only failing is that you watch 11 cocks.
4pm Sunday will however be after the watershed.
You owe it to yourself to go and retire to a silent and dark room.
I think this is a good opportunity to link to this then, Dr Feelgood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNHxTWOKvgM
DK am I supposed to respond?
Afternoon all.
I saw nothing of the spuds game yesterday, did see segments of their game against Chelsea though, they shot themselves in the foot in that one. The week before was against Cardiff and although they took all the points, I can safely say that even the most die hard of spudies would acknowledge that that was a poo sandwich of a game. Losing to Norwich wasn’t that great either.
All that counts for nothing though, as mentioned above, form goes out the window in these kind of games.
Afternoon fine Holic`s
We need a very close look at our training methods and our physio`s as any date we get on comebacks is normally 2-3 weeks out, a one off you can understand but this seems to be all the time now.
Watched the game last night, and when they got the free kick which led to the goal. I turned to my son and said as long as this is on target it will be a goal, thier keepers starting position was horrendous. Beyond that they got played off the park !
Lars – that’s a fair point but Ozil looked to be struggling with his movement pretty early in the game.
Heh at Feelgood 🙂
A PS to all Tom Waits fans and Tom Traubert’s Blues@252: I didn’t realise until I saw a documentary on Danish TV about the trip Tom W made to Copenhagen in 1976, that the “Matilda” he refers to in this song is a Danish songstress called Mathilde Bondo who was in the studios while they were recording the session for TV and afterwards took him on a tour of the CPH clubs and flats belonging to friends of hers – an all-night session.
More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Traubert's_Blues
My two cents on the injury list.
Yes, it’s crap and we do get more then our fair share of them, but we are not the only ones.
Norwich and Sp*rs have both found themselves top of the injury league over the last few weeks, around the time of the last international break they had 7 and 8 players out respectivly. L’pool had their entire back line out for a large part of the season. When Aguero was out at City, Fernindinihio, Nastasic and the Lesbo, were also missing, Kompany has been in and out too.
It’s kind of comparable to the way we think we get a bad deal from the media, when other fans probably feel the same way about the coverage that their team gets too. We all live in kind of a bubble, where it’s Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal. I’m not saying that we have no knowledge of other teams, but our focus is mostly exclusive to our beloved club, which does mean that our views are somewhat distorted.
That said, I welcome the news that their will be a full investigation into our injury situation, as I can’t believe that it can all be fobbed off as “just bad luck”.
Agree completely H2H.
Agreed H2H – to the extent that we get our fair share – whether or not it’s MORE than our fair share, I can’t be bothered to investigate. Just to add some facts to yours, from memory regarding Manure, their really bad spell coincided with having Rooney and the Dutch bloke out at the same time; Vidic, Raphael, Evans, Ferdinand and Fellaini have also been crocked at some point.
Personally, I’ve just been out for my afternoon jog – felt a bit of a twinge in the left groin area. Should be OK for Sunday though.
Cheers tabs, you off to the swamp Sunday or willl you be watching in the away juicer of choice?
dk, as long as you’re not expecting to be out for three weeks you should be fine. 😉
I saw this last night, brought a smile to my face.
Unfortunatly the clip will begin with a comercial, then approx 15 seconds of Jon Stewart talking until it comes to the “moment of zen”.
If you “like” Piers Morgan as much as I do, then it’s worth the wait.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-12-2014/3-12-14-in–60-seconds
Have a bit of a twinge in the knee. Not by any means on the Trev scale though and either I should be back on Sunday or in three weeks. 😉
dk @282. That’s common knowledge. 😉
Interesting, nonetheless.
Porco. That pigeon poo story was dated Jan. 2013 but no word on whether the nice lady has received her mail, or whether the authorities have cleaned up the steps, since then. Still it’s important to read stories like that because it makes me feel less out of date than otherwise. 🙂
Away juicer of choice for me on Sunday H2H. Jaw injury from laughing too much at Spurs last night has ruled me out from actually attending. Likely to be out for three weeks 😉
HEH. 😀
well it’s Friday, so have the first dose of “medicine” on me.
Haha cheers H2H 🙂
Flamini preparing to fist Spurs?
That sounds positevly filthy, 8Ball. 😕
Blogs’ line not mine H2H. All in the delivery i suppose.
H2H 2287: clip will not play in the uk sadly.
Launches ball in a Graham Taylor-esque tactic from one pelanty [(c) Waddle] area to the other for a big bouncy Stokesque opportunity for someone brave. 🙂
Aaah. sorry guys.
What it was was a fragment of an interview that Morgan gave with some broad called Chelsea something or the other, she basically said that it was a terrible interview to him, in which he replied that it was because she wasn’t interesting. she fetorted that it was up to him to make it interesting and that it was no wonder that he lost his job… BURN!!!
http://www.thefa.com/news/the-fa-cup/2014/mar/semi-final-tickets-140314
The FA with a bit of common sense????? Wonders will never cease.
Takes on everybody (twice) and pokes it goalwards……
Avin it. Stick yer yella card up yer arse
🙂
Tabsed it. Bugger.
Well in my dear little Dutch buddy.
Tjcheers Schteve. 😉
That’s not too bad from the F.A. Pretty reasonable prices too.
Shame I won’t be able to get my paws on a ticket.
I’ve been away at Cheltenham supporting sick animals. I didn’t realise they were sick until I backed them. If you’ve never been it is a wonderful thing to attend at least once-you really don’t need to be interested in racing.
I’ve just written to highlight a very controversial comment from Tiny Tim Sherwood last night which oversteps the mark before a big derby. I saw the headline “Sherwood says Jesus has no class”
–never realised he was a theologian . Mind you Salman Rushdie was/is a Spurs fan
If I hear of any spare H2H then you will be the first to know.
Cheers Steve mate.
bt8b@289: I didn’t know – maybe because I’m not common.
dk Just kidding. 🙂
ttg. In private Sherwood probably said he was a wanker too. 😉
ttg@304. Yes, Cheltenham is wonderful – with all those crazy Irishmen celebrating. Unless a horse has to be put down, as this year.
Derby Day at Epsom is also quite an event. And the July meeting at Ascot – not that dreadful Royal meeting – full of posers.
Now I’m getting all nostalgic (again, according to Goonertown).
H2H – Piers Morgan interview with Chelsea Handler here (she crucifies him – great job, Chelsea – shame about the name):
http://www.popsugar.com/Chelsea-Handler-Interview-Piers-Morgan-Video-34339476
donegal
atlantic
down by the sea
i’m guessin
the fish
were
warmer and drier
than me
oy
.
howdy ‘hol an all
Yep, that’s the one dk.
Heh cba, top o the evening to ya. 😉
howdy h2h
H2H. Piers Morgan is really creepy. He laughs like a hyena but he’s clearly fucking furious – he knows she’s publicly humiliating him and pulling no punches, right to the end where she says she wished she’d spent the last hour differently. How did he get the job in the first place?
howdy h2h
.
havin a fargin mare
house
fulla
twats
.
bar somebody for me
see that fat twat
launch him
lwc cunt
.
😉
He probably blew Larry King, Live. 😉
The US have had enough of him already though.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>