Match Reports
ESPNSoccernet: Arsenal threw away the chance of a fifth straight Premier League win as West Ham battled back to earn a 2-2 draw at Upton Park.
Telegraph: Redemption Sunday for Rafael Benítez but, come May, an equally important narrative from the weekend’s football could be Arsenal’s sloppiness in failing to punish slips from so many rivals in the Premier League title race.
Match Video
Why, it’s the Arsenalist of course!
Man of the Match
Alessandro Diamanti, all he did was come on and win the game, I mean get the point for West Ham. You could say we were naive, you can blame Chris Foy, but Diamanti changed the game.
Quote of the Day
In our job you have no luxury to miss opportunities, unfortunately. You have to get points when you deserve to get points, and sometimes to get points when you don’t deserve to get points. Today we didn’t get the points and we deserved to get the points. We play well, we are a strong team, and we want to learn, of course, to finish these games off when we can and that’s basically the most important lesson of the day. — Arsene Wenger.
Chris Foy
I promised to look Chris Foy up in my archives, and sure enough I came across two examples of his refereeing prowess: the insanely officiated Charity Shield match at the beginning of the season and Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Bolton back in January. While liveblogging the match yesterday I commented that Foy was “having a nightmare” but in retrospect, that’s just his officiating style; utter shite. He will allow Ballack to elbow Evra in the face just like he will allow Diamanti to elbow Cesc in the face. He will allow Hines to try to break Clichy’s ankle, the same way he allows Kevin Davies to murder people in broad daylight. But the one thing he can’t stand for is a tap on the ankle in the box! That’s a stonewall penalty!
The thing is, as much as I’d like to blame Chris Foy for his mavericky, throw away the rule book style of refereeing, you can’t. He’s consistent across the board and Arsenal need to just adjust to him. Besides, if we’d have put in a single decent fucking cross last night we would have easily won that match 3-0 or even 4-0.
Sorry for the cursing there, I have no other way to describe Bolton’s striker than to call him a “Kevin Davies.”
Arsene Wenger and the Four Keepers
In Mooney, Manny, Fabby, and Sneezy Arsenal have four goal keepers and not a one of them seems ready for the rigors of an entire season of football.
Mooney (Almunia) seems to have done something wrong and is now in Wenger’s dog-house. Exactly what transpired after the City game is not public record, but from the press conferences and interviews one could make a guess that Mooney either lied about getting a chest infection and was subsequently dropped or that he was dropped and that Wenger used the chest infection excuse. I know, I’m not really telling you anything! That said, my suspicion is that Mooney was the one who caused the problem and the reason I say that is because Wenger had a sly smile ever time he said “chest infection.” Either way, I can’t see him coming back in this team except as an emergency replacement.
And now Manny (Mannone) seems to have made a hash at keeper as well, though we really shouldn’t be too hard on the lad, he’s young and it’s not his fault that he is learning his trade in the toughest league in the world and playing for a team which seems to enjoy throwing away games. I’ve seen enough of him to think that he has a bright, bright future but that he needs to learn his trade before playing in these high pressure games. His reaction time is absolutely amazing, and while some people think that Mooney might have saved that penalty, he went the right way but Diamanti hit an unsaveable penalty, one inch to the left and Manny saves it. As for the free kick, that left-footed in-swinger to the near post is hard to parry away and probably not something he’s seen before.
Fabby, I haven’t seen enough of him to be convinced. In fact, back in pre-season, folks like East Ave Arse were already saying that Manny was better than Fabby. Frankly, they both suffer from lack of experience so for me it’s 6 of one… We’ll see, he’s going to be tested by Liverpool on Wednesday.
Sneezy is Arsenal’s unknown, but if Manny isn’t ready and Fabby isn’t ready then Sneezy is, erm, double-plus unready.
No offense to any of these keepers but this is something that can only be solved in the transfer window. Funnily enough, Arsene supposedly ran the rule over Robert Green and considering the fact that his mistake gifted Arsenal our opening goal, I’m not surprised he decided not to go for him.
Conclusions
Throw away a lead twice in a season? Could be costly, but certainly not a problem. Throw away a lead twice in a week? That’s a problem.
Arsenal are a team that is custom built to outscore their opponents and two things seem to be happening with this team at this moment: they are both not scoring enough and not defending their lead. Silly mistakes at the start of the season were papered over by eye-popping scoring displays; 6-1 at Everton, 4-1 against Pompey, and 6-2 against Blackburn Cloggers. Silly mistakes in the last two matches have not been papered over with eye-popping scorelines and so Arsenal have suffered point-wise.
Tellingly, Wenger didn’t talk about the need to defend the lead, he talked about the need to be more clinical up front, to put in a better cross, and to take our chances. For those of you out there who were hoping that these two examples this week would lead to a defensive revolution, you might as well bury that hope deep, deep, inside. Arsene is going back to London Colney with only one thing in mind: get this team to score more goals.
I’m not pushing the panic button, yes we wasted a chance to gain on everyone this weekend, but this team has the quality in every position (except maybe keeper!) to win the League(s). We just, I guess, need to learn how to score more goals.
I think a 5-6 goals per game average should be safe. Maybe.
I am so frustrated after watching this game and I want to blame the referee but in all honesty I think this result is 100% arsenal’s fault.
Now we have a number of issues within the squad that we can deal with, but the most “dealable” issue right now is the GK position. We simply do not have a world class goalie. we have three good GKs but not a world class goalie.
Think of all the potentially crucial goals we have conceded. Portsmouth – Almunia’s error makes is 2-1
Man Utd – Almunia’s decision making costs us a penalty
Man city – Bellamy’s goal while struck hard, was down the middle. I have no doubt Van, Cech would have saved it
Brimingham – Mannone’s erroe makes it 2-1
West ham – Manonne should have pushed the ball away from the goalmouth. He is young true, but that will mean nothing if we don’t deliver a trophy.
When you see Van de Sar at 2mill, Given at 8mill it makes me wonder why he just doesn’t go out and buy a good GK, like Jussi.
Again there are many things we can look at for our defensive frailty but the GK is the most recognizable and can be easily rectified
I don’t think the keeper situation is easily rectified. Name me one who’s the right sort of age, would cost less than 10 million and would come in Jan?
Tim Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Brian Jensen of Burnley is a guy I’ve liked since he blanked us in the Carling. He had an 11 save game against Liverpool which they lost 4-0. In fact, Jensen is pretty much saving Burnley’s season. He’s already had 43 saves this season!
Jaaskelianen is another good keeper and probably more in the Arsenal mode (able to play sweeperkeeper) he kept Bolton in that game against United with 6 saves.
Thomas Sorensen from Stoke is another. He’s had 3 clean sheets, had 10 saves against Everton in a 1-1 draw, and kept the sheets clean before getting injured against Chelsea.
If you want to dip into the League Championship there’s Steve Harper from Newcastle who has been amazing this season, starring in Newcastle’s league leading defense. Marshall from Cardiff has single-handedly won matches for them, if you feel like going for a 24 year old. De Vries from Swansea leads the league with 8 clean sheets — out of 14 matches.
The keepers in the League Championship are getting worked too, all thoseguys I’ve mentioned have been making 5 saves a game for their teams.
There are keepers out there, cheap, readily available keepers.
Shobo Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 9:31 am
@Tim, I rate all those keepers. Schwarzer I think is also pretty good. Didn’t Man City snag Shay Given for 6 million? Unbelievable purchase that.
Joe Hart is also pretty good (if a little young and inexperienced).
Szchezny looked really calm during pre-season, much more so than Manny, but then who knows how he’d perform week in week out.
b Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 11:23 am
@Tim, There’s a reason why those keepers like Jussi and Sorensen, who have been in the Premier League since forever, are playing where they are, and it’s that nobody who’s buying players at big clubs thinks that they’re good enough. A keeper at a bad team is almost always going to look good, sure he’ll concede a goal or two but the opponent gets so many shots off that he’ll get a boatload of saves. A big club is going to concede fewer chances, but the ones that do get through tend to be more difficult to deal with, and that same keeper is going to concede those too.
And there’s a huge difference in the class of opponents in the Championship and the Premier League. Some of those guys might be good enough for the Premier League, i don’t know them enough to judge, but they won’t be immediate fixes, which is what we need.
If we’re buying our way out of this, it has to be a proper world class keeper, and such keepers are few, far between, and they cost an arm and a leg. There’s a group of semi-young guys out there like Adler, Akinfeev, Mandanda, etc. who are probably better than any of our guys right now and could grow into world beaters, but i very much doubt that buying them is just a matter of calling and getting a quote. Certainly in the case of Akinfeev, CSKA have about as much money as god so they don’t need to sell and they’re probably paying him twice what we could offer anyway.
Tim Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 11:51 am
@b, Akinfeev is highly overrated anyway.
ensen isn’t an international but Sorensen is the Danish #1, and Denmark topped their WC qualifying group. I think he’s about as world class as it gets.
Jaaskelianen was awesome for Finland against Germany and is World Class in my opinion.
Steve Harper is English so I take it back, there’s no way we should sign him, he’ll cost twice as much and be half as good.
Marshall is backup for Scotland, which is an improvement over our current situation!
Mandanda is interesting, he’s an African Francophone and we all know how Wenger likes those!
Yan Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
@Tim, Ahaaa!! Quoting Internationals when needed!! LOL
@mia
I’m not talking of getting a Buffon or Casillas, but as I mentioned someone like Jussi at Bolton. Would def be in the 10mill range. Van de Sar was playing at Fulham and Fergie got him for 2 million.
Even though Utd lost look at how he deals with Aurelio’s free kick in the first half compared to Manonne against Diamanti…thats what experience brings, thats what we need!
Hard loss, but it ain’t the end of the world. I was listening on Live 5 and I have to admit once West Ham pulled one back I had a bad feeling it was all going to spiral out of control.
I do think Almunia would have saved the free kick, not so much the penalty (because really those are by and large a crap-shoot).
That said, it’s easy to say Wenger should have played Mooney in hindsight, but he’s obviously done something wrong, I mean we all know how loyal Wenger is, often sticking with players through a bad spell even when there’s reliable backup.
If we were going to draw or lose a game, this was the weekend to do it, what with Pool beating the Mancs and Tottenham losing. If only Chelsea had slipped up too.
Mia Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Actually the one thing Almunia could do sometimes was save penalties. Not that I want him back. Nor Jens either, though I still have a soft spot for him – he is in the doghouse apparently for going to some beer fest so he’s probably available on a free …
Quite honestly, I didn’t see our problems as being up front or in the back yesterday. The two OBVIOUSLY GLARING problems were Eboue and Diaby giving the f’ing ball away no stop. If we would have had a decent outside MF in place of Eboue yesterday, there would have been goals abound. As much as he touched the ball, and then subsequently gave it away, any half wit who could control the ball would have gotten the ball to the place it needed to be…in the box!
Diaby also sticks out in my mind as just useless to us at the moment. To me, controlling the ball in a 3 square yard space, all the while working towards the inevitable tying of your gangly serpentine legs in a pretty little bow and giving up possession is getting very old, very fast. This team is dying to get the likes of Nasri and Rosicky in the lineup on a CONSISTENT basis, to move the ball up the field.
I do have to disagree somewhat with your mention of the crossing. I agree the crossing from Eboue and Clichy is at times horrific, but yesterday in particular, the pinpoint crossing from Sagna leads to the first goal, and nearly the third as well when Van Persie was unluckily denied a header goal by the leg of Green. The crossing as a whole though does need to be more consistently pinpoint, as this has become a HUGE part of our offense in the past few years with our LB and RB positions constantly flying up the wings.
Tim Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I didn’t want to name names, but I’m thinking specifically of a particular left-back who kept balooning crosses into the Thames river.
Arsene Wenger also mentioned the piss-poor crossing in his presser, so it’s not just me.
Diaby is hit and miss. I don’t like that he’s basically a 4th striker and that pushes Cesc into a holding-ish role, but really that’s Diaby’s strength. In that spot I rate Nasri and Rosicky way higher than Diaby but they were both out. Cesc is an even better option but with Denilson out he has to pick up the defensive duties. Gods know that Diaby can’t do it.
I should put a camera up in my house that just shows me watching the game. I literally have my hands in my head when Diaby tries to dribble out of defense.
Yan Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
@Tim, I was thinking about Cesc maybe defending more due to the impending 5th yellow on song? I counted a number of times when song was doing the cesc role, and cesc was lying deeper. That maybe had something to do with the result too.
Vito’s mistake? Yes. But that didnt cost us. What did cost us was the inability to outscore ‘em this time. As Mia said yesterday, if you need goals, as much as I support Super Nick, he isnt the answer. Late subs plus the lack of good finishing, plus Cesc performance (I think it was sub par). Plus a little luck (rvp’s last minutes header). I think Vito will be given 3 or 4 more games. And if another GK will be coming in in jan, how about AZ’s Romero? P.S.: Remember Iker’s flop vs Milan only last week. We all will make mistakes eventually.
kidkle Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 10:13 am
@Yan,
I really have to agree with the late subs. I mean i feel for nicky and eddy when they come on with less than 10 minutes left (about 3 in nicky’s case). really what can you do in that spell of time. eddy might be able to clinically finish the single opportunity he might get, but nick definitely needs more time. it’s really unfair to them.
just gutted about the result, looking forward to sending scum down the table where they belong next week tho.
Is the carling cup game v. liverpool on TV this week??
Tim Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 9:35 am
No.
Setanta is carrying Barnsley v. Man U.
It might be carried on the dot com, we’ll see.
Shobo Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 10:19 am
@Tim, I imagine if they were covering it (with moving pictures) they’d probably have an ad for it up or something. Fingers crossed though.
RE: Diaby, frankly I’d rather see Ramsey played in that position. I know he isn’t as defensive (lol) and not as tall (also, lol) but his passing is better and I figure if Cesc isn’t having a good day at least Ramsey might.
Jet Pinoy Gooner Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Ramsey does not posses the physical strength yet in a game like that. He will be pushed around. He needs a bit more time to get into it like Walcott. I do agree though that Ramsey has better judgement on the ball than Diaby
Matt Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
@Tim, Match is on ESPN360 here in the States.
Tim Reply:
October 27th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Matt….
YOU ROCK!
I’ve said before that I can deal with the current goalkeeping situation in the mean time because there’s other areas that need strengthening and that still holds true. However the current GK situation cannot be a long term problem. It is imperative that Wenger buys a quality international keeper. The fact that our keepers cannot really make their international teams speaks volumes about how below par they can be. If Wenger truly believed in building a proper defense he needs to start with a goalie who can shot-stop, command the box, collect crosses and distribute intelligently. All our keepers seem to lack one or another of these qualities. It’s no coincidence that some of our best years occurred when we had an international quality goalie i.e. Lehmann and Seaman. There’s quite a few good goalies who could become available – Akinfeev or Lloris comes to mind. However I don’t see Wenger spending 5-7M on a goalie for some reason but the likes of Shay Given when he was on Newcastle or Robert Green yesterday shows that on their day a goalie can be make the difference in points. Shay Given saved Newcastle’s bacon more times than I can count and Green’s save from RVP’s header in the last 5 minutes yesterday salvaged their draw.
While we’re on the subject of cheap keepers, Stoke’s backup keeper, Simonson had a blinder against Spurs, is he usually that good?
The Carling on tv: it’s on sky here which means the dot com won’t be able to show it live.
On the keepers: agree with b: there’s a reason why the ancient ones like Sorenson aren’t playing at top clubs – he wasn’t even good enough for Villa once they got a bit of money and top-six aspirations. As to the young, unproven ones, I’m very sceptical. Remember how good we thought Foster looked at Watford? Remember how people once raved about Green? I very much doubt if anyone affordable and available is better than what we’ve got.
Sneezy looked very promising against West Brom, the only time I’ve seen him; Mannone has had one very good game and two or three poor ones; I’ve seen Fab maybe ten times – one blinder, one shocker and a few I can’t remember. I guess we’re all hoping he has mysteriousy improved since we last saw him and he’ll prove it on Wed and become our new number one . . . I’m not holding my breath, however. As I said yesterday, our defence is going to be vulnerable all season so we need to evolve a strategy for dealing with that reality. No sitting back if we go a goal up. All-out attack for 90 minutes.
Let’s remember that Man U plucked Van Dar Sar from the obscurity of Fulham. How’s that move working out? They also plucked Saha but he was too fragile to make the grade.
We need an experienced keeper, so we’re after a 30+ player. Or if we’re after the young’uns, might give Bousanis (sic) the Australian Liverpool keeper, who’s rated as both the greatest prospect in the world, and the most promising Australian in the world. Both reasons for Arsene to spend.
Why are we ‘mickey mousing’ w/ our keepers? We are the only at our level who really don’t have a solid keeper right now. I’m not looking for spectacular, just competent. You cannot be putting rebounds back into the field of play and then look at your defenders for help. You cannot muff the first shot you face no matter when it comes. We cannot have that.
ctpa Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
We are the only club at our…