Back in July I warned that if Arsenal didn’t buy a new keeper they seriously risked the ire of the fans. It wasn’t just that Almunia and the other keepers were unconvincing, they all have their moments of conviction, but more that… well, it was  just that buying anyone would show that Arsenal understood the mood of the average fan.

So, I think the club have a really big problem that they need to deal with. More than just getting a keeper in who can win us a few games Arsenal need to get a keeper in who will show the players and fans that they are serious about winning. If they don’t and come matchday against Liverpool we see Fabianski lining up in the pink and black I suspect that there will be more than a few angry voices on this blog and all of the other 10,000 or so Arsenal blogs that are out there.

My advice to Arsenal is to buy a damn keeper and buy one now. Hell, buy two, just in case the other one breaks. You have the money, so think of it as an investment in supporter’s good will. Because if Arsenal don’t buy a keeper and start the season struggling with error prone players in defense, there will be a flood of negativity that even a Pollyanna like myself will be incapable of holding back.

Looking around the internet, the flood has begun. Gooners are pissed off that we didn’t buy anyone, with some thinking that Schwarzer was going to save us 9-12 points this season. I highly doubt that, as I said in that column above, Schwarzer isn’t that good. His value was more in the fact that he isn’t Fabianski.

There were a lot of people dreaming that we might get someone like Buffon or in my case, Shay Given. But it turns out that Arsene was just looking for an “anyone” and that anyone was Mark Schwarzer. I refuse to believe that Arsenal went after Schwarzer with a supposed £2m bid if Arsene Wenger, who looks at numbers and statistics all the time, thought that he would save Arsenal 9-12 points. We had the money and if there was a chance to pick up 12 points for an extra £2m then I’m sure Wenger, a trained economist, would have done the math and just paid the money.

I’ve often said that what complicates Arsenal signings is that Arsene looks for “Goldilocks” players: they have to be just right. I think Schwarzer was the “just right” keeper: he was older, on the end of his contract, an improvement (however slight) over Almunia and wanted to come to Arsenal. But at the same time he played for Fulham and from what I understand, Fulham wanted some outrageous fee for him. They probably felt like they had us over the barrel and could extract the most out of us for a 37 year old. I almost think that if we had offered £4m, Fulham would have asked for £8.

All of which is a moot point. Once Fulham realized that they couldn’t pay Given’s salary in a loan deal and that Man City wasn’t going to do a Bellamy and subsidize the loan the chances of Arsenal signing Schwarzer went to pretty much nil. And when Fulham’s backup keeper suffered an injury we probably would have had to pay outrageously outrageous fees to get Fulham’s only keeper. That and Mark Hughes is a known Arsene-hater.

So there you have it. The window is closed and Arsenal didn’t sign a goalkeeper. We don’t know all the details of what Arsenal were looking at buying apart from the ones who we actually did buy: Koscielny, Chamakh and a very scary looking Squillaci. All three of those players add a lot to the team in areas that we sorely needed last term. One could even argue that the increased aerial ability of the team with the addition of Vermaelen, Koscielny, Squillaci and Chamakh will help protect our keepers. We will have to see.

The one thing I’d like to address is that question I heard a lot of yesterday in the papers: does the fact that we haven’t signed a keeper mean that we’ve lost the title? That’s just plain stupid. We’re undefeated in the first three games and that includes a tricky away trip to Blackburn where Almunia nearly had a man of the match performance. We haven’t yet seen what Squillaci adds to the team, we haven’t seen a fully functional Cesc Fabregas, and Koscielny is adjusting to the league. There’s so much depth to this team that it’s preposterous to start writing them off in the third game of the season.

So, let’s not join in with the professional haterz and write the team off. After all, it’s only September.

I’m not saying that I don’t understand where the anger comes from. Read my article again, I fully understand why people are pissed. If anything, what I’m most worried about is that Almunia will get an injury and we will be stuck with Fabianski. But even that is speculation. Maybe that won’t come to pass. Maybe Wenger will instead play Sneezy if Almunia gets injured. For the time being, we have who we have and I can’t see any choice but to get behind them and hope that Almunia has the kind of break out season that he had two years ago.

After all, this is the same Arsene Wenger who stood by Alex Song, Eboue, and all the others who the fans thought were crap and watched as they grew into world class players. I have to admit that it would be almost a Christmas miracle if Fabianski turned into a world beater but hey, what else can I wish for?

I know, a time machine!

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Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen

While we are waiting for the transfer window to close I thought I would provide you all with a fall-out shelter from all the transfer rumors and instead give you something to talk about that isn’t about Mark Schwarzer’s 80th failed physical. To that end I thought I might compare and contrast what we in the USA refer to as the “Hail Mary Pass” in American Football to what English Football fans refer to as “Route One Football.”

The actual history of the Hail Mary Pass in American football is pretty straightforward. Every football team at every level has what they call a “post” play where they flood the field with receivers who go deep and the quarterback is expected to pick out a receiver who is ostensibly angling across the field in a pattern that goes from sideline to, well, to the goalpost.

This is roughly equivalent to a deep lying playmaker in English football picking out a striker or winger with a long angling pass. There’s no shame in either sport with this type of play because it’s good to mix tactics up and play some long balls to see if you can’t stretch the defense and perhaps give your midfield (or running backs) some space to play. Typically, if the quarterback can’t find a long receiver because they are all covered, he will revert to playing a shorter ball, or even throwing the ball out of play rather than giving up possession.

The term “Hail Mary Pass” is thought to have been popularized in America when Roger Staubach threw the game-winning pass to Drew Pearson in the dying seconds of the 1975 divisional playoff game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings. With just 24 seconds left on the clock, down 3 points, on 4th down, and sitting at the 50 yard line with no chance of kicking a field goal, Roger Staubach threw a “long bomb” to a well recovered receiver who basically was lucky to catch the ball and subsequently waltz right in for a touchdown. Here’s a video of the play and it’s interesting to note the reactions from everyone all around.*

After the game was over, the reporters asked Staubach about the play and he said that he just closed his eyes and, being a devout Catholic, said a Hail Mary prayer. The play was so controversial that the phrase stuck and now refers to any last ditch attempt to score a touchdown by tossing the ball to either one or more (usually more now) receivers down field.

Probably the second most well known version of the Hail Mary happened when Doug Flutie, then playing for Boston College, needed a last minute touchdown. He had 3 wide receivers flood one area of the field (plus the running back), dropped back, waited until they got into position, time runs out, and he unleashes a speculative throw that just so happens to find one of his players.

I’m not taking anything away from the throw. It was a 63 yard toss and not many people can do that. But then again, not many people can throw the ball like Rory Delap either.

As you can see from both videos the similarities are eerie. Delap throws the ball into basically a zone where his teammates challenge the defenders to win the ball. If they win the ball, then they have a chance at scoring. Usually, though, the defenders should win this challenge simply because there should be more of them and less attacking players. The only real advantage in the case of Delap is that English football defenders aren’t used to the trajectory of his throws and some of them even have a curve to them which would be hard for anyone to control, offensively or defensively.

Basically, what Stoke are hoping for on those plays is that the ball will be so odd that it will cause defensive errors and on the ensuing broken play they can bundle something home. They tried a similar tactic on a corner against Tottenham and fortunately the referee called the foul and disallowed the goal. Oh wait, no he didn’t (warning, this video contains unsafe levels of Tottenham).

You can see a similar tactic employed by Blackburn against Arsenal on Saturday. About 3:27 in to this video, you’ll see that Blackburn start flooding the Arsenal box with burly players trying to cause chaos so that they can steal a goal on the ensuing broken play.

2nd half
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It very nearly works for them but the Arsenal defense just holds. The similarities then, between the Hail Mary and Blackburn’s Route One football are pretty obvious: both teams send as many players as they possibly can, down field, toss the ball up, and pray that something happens.

What’s different though is that in American football this tactic is reserved for the dying seconds of a game. It’s a desperation move because it’s so easy to give possession away by just tossing the ball up like that. You’d never see a team try a Hail Mary in the 10th minute of the first quarter, yet teams like Stoke and Blackburn do that the whole game.

Partially this has to do with the way passes are different in American football than English football: the defenders only needs to bat the ball to the ground for the play to be stopped in the USA. That means that the broken play is pretty rare in American football. So rare that when it happens it’s hailed as an Immaculate Reception — we do love a religious pun don’t we?

Still, differences aside, the play has so many similarities that I think it’s appropriate to label Stoke’s long throws and Blackburn’s keeper kicks as Hail Mary plays. After all, they are an act of desperation by teams who think they have run out of other options.

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*There’s so much I could comment on in this video, a referee is hit with a bottle, the Vikings players feeling like they have been cheated and are demonstrably upset, and the commentator’s bizarre comments about getting knifed at soccer games in Argentina are all ripe for the plucking. But I’m going to stick to the topic at hand.

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