Preamble
I said quite a bit yesterday, so today’s blog will be brief. Think of it as your chance to get a word in!
Match Reports
ESPNSoccernet: Gunners cruise past Wolves.
Telegraph: Arsenal staged another work of symphonic beauty last night, even if this latest masterpiece was constructed in two movements.
Match Video
The Arsenalist has MotD highlights, a smaller highlight reel, and both manager’s interviews.
The Good
Arsenal has now scored 55 goals in all competitions, scored 36 league goals, and have a league leading +22 goal differential. My regular readers know that I often use goal differential as a key statistic to point to relative strength of a team. It’s not perfectly correlative to strength (Liverpool was +50 last year and finished 2nd behind the +44 Man U) but it’s a good indicator of where a team will finish — within 1 place or so. Even more broadly, Arsenal fans can point to the goal differential and say that at the very least Arsenal are one of the top three teams this season so far. We certainly are scoring goals at a crazy pace and I have been told many times that Chelsea supporters fear Arsenal more than any other team in the league.
As for yesterday’s match, Aaron Ramsey was very good for my money. I know he’s a bit smaller than Song, and not quite as confident but I can see a lot of positives in his game. If he can learn to be a little less flustered by opposition midfielders and a little more tidy with the ball, both things that come with experience, he is going to be one hell of a player. His tackling alone is something that has been basically missing from Arsenal’s midfield since Vieira left. Not to mention the fact that, like Vieira, he’s more of a box-to-box midfielder than Song who plays better deeper.
And Cesc… Cesc now has 6 goals and 9 assists and has netted or assisted in all but two Arsenal matches — West Ham and Pompey. He has added strength, speed, and goalscoring to his arsenal of midfield talents. Cesc is the best midfielder in the world right now.
Robin van Persie has 7 goals and 7 assists and has created or scored a goal in each of Arsenal’s last 8 league games. In fact, van Persie is in such good form that he has bumped Tottenham target Ruud van Nistelrooy from the Dutch team as their number one striker. With his touch and goal scoring ability, I feel the same way as Arsene Wenger and I wouldn’t swap him for anyone else. Thank you Adebaywhore for leaving to City, you cleared the way for the emergence of Robin van Persie.
Man of the Match
Despite Cesc’s incredible match I have to give Man of the Match to Alex Song. Rambo was doing ok, but he was making mistakes due to the harried pace of Wolves’ midfield. It’s no coincidence that when Diaby went down, Song came on, and the midfield tightened up, kept control of the ball, and subsequently scored. Song was man of the match simply for being the glue that kept the team together.
The Bad
Despite the fact that we are getting Denilson and a host of other players back, I hate to see Diaby go down injured. It looked like they were checking his knee ligaments, so fingers crossed it’s not serious.
The Ugly
Now we head into a 2 week Nationalism break where pretty much every Arsenal player goes out and plays in pointless friendlies. That would be bad, but throw in that France has a two leg qualifier and that 3/4 of the Arsenal team are French and I really have a bad feeling about this break.
Even if everyone does come back unscathed, touch wood, the team turns around and faces our most physical challenge of the season; an away trip to the 8 foot tall wild eyed alien killing machines in Sunderland. I can’t think of a worse team to face immediately after the nationalism break.
Conclusions
In the Chelsea v. Man U match I am rooting for a 4-4 draw, with 4 career ending injuries, and 8 red cards.
Seriously, the only acceptable outcomes are a draw or a United win. If United win, it would put them on 28 points and just 3 points ahead of us with a game in hand.
I mean if someone has to win, then I suppose I’ll root for United. Ugh, I need a shower.
Two Arsenal players are in the French squad..
Kevin Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 10:11 am
@haho,
Regular readers are accustomed to Tim’s exagerrative writing style, I suggest getting accustomed to it as literal references are no fun
haho Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I am accustomed (and a regular reader but not always commentor) but just thought I’d point it out.
Tim Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
@Kevin, hyperbolic even
Kevin Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
@Tim, much better… my thesaurus was in the shop
Chelsea just won. I was rooting massively for Utd but it wasn’t their day.
Is there an easier team to hate than Chelsea? Not because of being an effective unit, but because their players are the biggest pricks and whiners (ie Ballack, Drogba, Cashley top 3). I just don’t even care about Spurs anymore, I concentrate my full hater energies in that blue Russian excuse that is a Premier League club.
Tieneich Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 11:48 am
@Angel, Noted, they are the team that is raked among top 3 in EPL fair play. They had less fouls, yellow cards, and reds than most of other teams. The fact made me dislike them even more.
When you want or need United to score in stoppage time, they won’t. Definitely was rooting for a draw today. Both are strong, but we’ve got enough firepower to take them. Bring it on.
Tim, good article again. I heard some of the players will not be going out to play the friendlies. Rocisky is definitely not. I wasn’t sure if van Persie and Cesc are going or not, but hopefully not. All the healthy french international are going because of the Ireland draw. We don’t even have to go to Arshavin for that one. Although Hiddink has always been much more considerate than “Dumb”enech.
I also agree with you about Diaby situation. The dude has been playing better for the fourth straight half, then got a calf strain. If he ever going to change people’s opinion against him, then he really needs to be in the game. I do also believe that we would have won without Song came on yesterday anyway.
Wolves were attacking hard on the Wing. We conceded a few set pieces, but they were fighting hard until that first own goal. By the second own goal they had gone flat. Some people on Arsenal Mania were singing “Song” as if this Arsenal FC is a one man team. It was truly quite sad. The team fought well, and grind it out the first half. It was truly a team effort, instead of a super star power.
I am really curious though about the harsh criticism on Arshavin. Seems like they guy is not gonna please anyone after the 4 goals against the Pool. But he was new to the league, and people were not used to him. Now the constant multi-men, physical marking is making him uncomfortable from time to time, and all the moaners are calling him lazy because “he set the bar too high for himself” – for one effing game! So are we gonna be criticizing Cesc from now on because he is “setting the bar too high for himself” as well? The hypocrisy of this is almost as great as Bentner being criticized for not able to find the net. Well so is Edu, but Bentner was always under more pressure from us fans.
Anyhow, that was my rants about moaners and groaners.
Lastly, Vela, Walcott, and Denilson should be returning after the break (or shortly after). Hopefully they will make it at Stamford Bridge and Eastland. We didn’t have a striker among our subs last night. It was kinda weird.
Alex Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 10:49 am
@Tieneich, some people are never happy with anything. Ignore them and enjoy the season.
Tim – if you keep touching wood while you write you are going to end up with a sticky keyboard. Nice work as always.
Tieneich Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 11:51 am
@Alex, This season is really enjoyable for sure, and I can see more enjoyments coming. Can’t wait until the International Break is over with. I wanna see a healthy Mozart torment Chelski again.
b Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 11:30 am
@Tieneich, if Cesc suffers a drop in form, then yes people will be critical because they know he has more in him. Just like they know Arshavin has more in him than he showed earlier in the season. It didn’t really bother me any since the team was still winning, but when you watch a whole game and hardly notice one of the most skilled and creative players in the league you know something’s up. Add to that the fact that he declared himself fit to play for Russia and aggravated his injury enough to be out for a couple of weeks, and I sort of understand people questioning his dedication to the cause.
Of course everyone goes through bad spells, but if you want to play in a big league then criticism is something you have to be ready for. Not saying it’s necessarily justified always, but it’s certainly to be expected.
Anyway, he’s caught up with the rest in recent games though, so i expect people to lay off him for a while now and harass Eduardo or something.
Tieneich Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
@b, I can understand criticisms, but I don’t understand about “selling him”, “drop him”, “he doesn’t want to play with us anymore” kind of rant. Same with Bentner and Diaby’s “they are just not good enough for us” comments drift around net.
I just hope some people can see that players are improving. Wenger proved me wrong by playing Denilson and Song the whole last season. And I hope people will give Diaby and Bentner the same chance – even though they do have slow growth.
Anyhow, I am excited about International Break actually. Many of our injuries should be back afterward.
Akash Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
@Tieneich, Diaby and Bendtner = Logarithmic growth.
Song and Denilson = polynomial growth.
Sorry couldn’t keep off some geek jokes!!
great gb&u today,
i especially liked that you put losing diaby as a negative. i can tolerate people on other blogs shedding some positive light on the injury as it helped tighten our midfield, but actually being happy about it is not right imo. we are losing too many players right now but as you said, hopefully we should get a few back to help us through our tough holiday schedule.
even though the midfield was a bit rushed i agree with tieneich that we would of eventually got it together with the talent and technical ability shining through in the end. i was hoping diaby could get the uninterrupted run out song got last year and hopefully see the benefits towards the latter half of the season but the injury plague will never leave.
again great post, shame about toothless united, but at least we keep second spot and chelsea at home isn’t too far away!
Free scoring is all l can say, our next match is against Sunderland and we are not sure of the extent of Diaby,s injury but hope it was not intense otherwise we have to think of a holding midfielder other than Ramsey cause we need an understudy of Song. May be Eastmond should play be given 30 minutes in the Sunderland match.
Ramsey with Song has potential as a combination. Ramsey gets seriously underrated in the press, probably because he is Welsh.
I think Eduardo is doing fine, despite having apparently lost his ability to finish. Those were decent strikes yesterday and – more important – he is making nicely timed runs. I was baffled by the ‘Kennedy’ on the t-shirt and wondered this morning if I’d hallucinated it, but Yan must be right, it’s a place in Rio?
No Merida on the bench yesterday, and no Craig Eastmond, despite the Young Guns site saying he was in the squad. Was there some special young players gig going on or did Wenger think an away game in the rainy Midlands wasn’t the right place to give a couple of the kids a few minutes?
I think the Africans are still playing qualifiers so Eboue and Song won’t get a rest.
Tim Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
@Mia, he is wrong a lot
Mia Reply:
November 9th, 2009 at 4:10 am
Tim, he wasn’t completely wrong: Eastmond travelled as the 19th man; he was seen there on tv but not finally named in the squad.
Also, Young Guns wasn’t necessarily wrong about Barca scouts watching Benik Afobe playing for the under-17s. They weren’t in fact at the under-17s World Cup, as you suggested, and therefore watching a whole number of kids from different countries. England wasn’t at the current under-17s tournament being played somewhere in Africa; what the scouts were watching was an Azerbaijan v. England qualifier, played in Azerbaijan last month. That’s a god-forsaken place, a long way for them to have gone, so who were they there to look at and talk to? Perhaps an Azerbaijan kid; perhaps another England kid. But since Afobe looks to be a star in the making, having scored in all the qualifiers he has played in, my money would be on him. That isn’t of course to say that he’ll be persuaded to leave Arsenal for Barca, but it does suggest Young Guns’s inside info may not have been wrong.
I would have wanted our momentum to continue, but a rest is not neccessarily a bad thing. Hopefully, the internationals we not cripple any more of our players.
The happiest moment of yesterday’s match is when Drogba got a flying kungfu kick from Evans. Seeing this cheater rolling on the ground like a baby is so funny. Yes, I’m maybe a little bit evil, but I was happy, really.
CONTENT STOLEN FROM UNTOLD ARSENAL.
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LRV Reply:
November 9th, 2009 at 5:25 am
Why do people steal content from others? What do they stand to gain? If you like the content and want others to read it, couldn’t you just add the link in a comment? Very silly.
CONTENT STOLEN FROM UNTOLD ARSENAL.
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haho Reply:
November 9th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Almost makes me proud to be Dutch (and therefore, your neighbour)
cheers.
Simon Says Reply:
November 9th, 2009 at 3:20 am
love the post, but length man.
that was practically an essay.
Diaby to be out 3 wks w/ his calf strain.
Ferguson now whines after every set back. Ref didn’t see this, or didn’t call that or shouldn’t have called that or couldn’t keep up w/ the pace or my “butcher’s dog” ate my homework. The man is losing the dignity he should possess in his position. There is no crying if you’re the EPL champion. Man U had no one in their MF who was going to create a goal for the only player who was shooting on net-Rooney. Everything Giggs tried has been seen countless times before and Chelsea’s defense was excellent and alert to Man U’s tired routines.
Darren Fletcher now blames the his yellow card on Wenger’s indirect criticism of him affecting referees. Boo-hoo.
Man U down 1 goal and Ferguson brings on Obertan. No Macheda? No Nani? Owens comes on and never even gets a sniff. That 80mil looks pretty good right now in your creditors bank accounts:)