Thoughts From The Top Of The Blue Quadrant

1. Article by Perry Groves (no, not that Perry Groves - Arseblog user Perry Groves)

So the new Premier League season is less than a week away, the transfer news is lukewarm, and Sky are hyping up our first game of the season, against West Brom. And for once, I’m not really all that excited. Sure, I’m looking forward to coming out of Arsenal tube at about 12:30 on Saturday, into a hopefully warm summer’s day, realising I’m going to be late if I don’t get a shift on. Then strolling up the stairs over the railway, surrounded by singing fans all celebrating a return to normality, seeing the stadium resplendent and the crowds outside, doing the usual queue hopping to get through the turnstiles as quickly as I can, avoiding the people who don’t know how the card system works (still, in our third season!).

Then there’s my two-steps at a time run up the stairs (a superstition) – just about the only exercise I get these days – a quick stop to grab a slice of pizza (another superstition), and then going through tunnel 102 to my part of the ground (yep, another superstition – for an atheist, I sure am superstitious, at least when it comes to the football) and the final, painful climb to the top of the stand. I’m now on my third season as a season ticket borrower - it’s not mine; I’m lucky enough to have a friend who’s sold it to me for the past couple of years - and it’s been nice to see the same familiar faces week in, week out, in the same seat, even if it is so far back it’s like watching ants run round after a poppy seed.

But the pleasure of the ritual aside, it’s been a bittersweet experience for the last two years, and especially the last few months of the last season. The Birmingham game, no matter what we tried telling ourselves in the aftermath, did end up defining our season. It was all there – appalling tackles from the opposition, bizarre refereeing, an inability to defend set pieces, an even more unforgivable inability to take chances handed to us on a plate, blatant penalties not given to us, and the mother of all strops from our Captain.

Ah, our captain. When we signed him a number of my Chelsea supporting friends believed they got the worse of that deal, and for the first six months of last season (his second, after his injury-plagued first season), I would have agreed with them. His equaliser against Man U at home was worth it alone. But since then he showed a worrying line in emotional outbursts, a lack of concentration on the pitch, and a general lack of leadership. By the end of the season it was pretty clear that it was Cesc that was the leader on the pitch, and indeed it’s been Cesc that has been making the soothing noises to the press, especially the comments about FC Barcelona’s behaviour. More about him later.

Back to Gallas; as other people have noted, he appears to be an experiment that went wrong (a bit like Frankenstein’s monster) and it’s a worry for the new season that Gallas is still captain. Maybe he’ll learn and grow from the experience, and I can’t imagine him taking demotion gracefully, so it seems like we’re stuck with him and hoping he has managed to suppress his emotional tendencies. Speaking from my own experience, you don’t become a good manager overnight, and last season could have been instrumental in making Gallas a great leader on the pitch. Even toward the end of the season, he was not congratulating Bendner for scoring a goal against Liverpool that could have revived our flaccid title push – behaviour that caused Cesc to go and have a word with him (and it didn’t look particularly friendly).

Anyway, back to Birmingham. The sheer ridiculousness of that game, which took out our best practitioner of our Plan B football, cast a funk over the team that took pretty much the rest of the season to shake off. The first half of the season could be summarised as large swathes of brilliance dotted by patches of idiocy, and the second as large swathes of idiocy dotted by patches of brilliance. Let’s not forget that in the second half of the season, Arsenal were beating, away from home, Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool and could, and should have, beaten all three fairly comfortably. We again showed we can outplay anyone, yet couldn’t win when we needed to. Of course, in all three games we can point to poor decisions (all three winning goals in each game came from dubious refereeing decisions, especially so in the Liverpool game), but we can’t ignore the fact that we fail to kill off games. And that’s not even starting on the appalling run of draws after the Birmingham game.

What stopped us from killing those games off? As ever, it’s the people we’ve got on the pitch. Our success in the first half of the season came down to the ability of some players to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and get goals. Two players in particular; Cesc and Eduardo (though Flamini did also contribute, again more on him later). Eduardo was a great buy last season and one of my favourite moments last season was at the West Ham game, where my erstwhile friend M (who’d missed most of the games thanks to working abroad, asked at the kick off “So what’s this Eduardo like then?” and I replied “He’s amazing, he gets the ball and he just knocks them in…..like that!” as he slotted a cross in.

We all just know that if the ball had been with Hleb, or Eboue, the ball would have been passed around until the defence got hold of it and it was hoofed away. Cesc scored some vital goals early on in the season. And Flamini got a few too; including one absolute blinder against Newcastle (definitely in the top ten of favourite Arsenal goals). But the problem of not scoring enough really could be down to two people – Hleb and Eboue. Hleb’s gone and whilst he’s a fantastically skilful player, he has almost no end product. Early in the season, he was looking like the kind of player that could make the difference, but he quickly fell back into his dribble, dribble, jink, dribble, lose the ball, run round like headless chicken style that so endeared him to Arsenal fans the world over. As for his attempt to say that he was tired of the hectic lifestyle and pressure for playing for a top club like Arsenal – frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard such total guff. He looks pretty likely to be yet another player to leave Arsenal and not fulfil his potential (from Anelka and Petit, to later departures such as Pennant and Bentley).

And Eboue. What is there to say about Eboue? He’s quite possibly the most unpopular player ever to play in an Arsenal shirt (at least whilst he’s still wearing it). Opinion on Eboue is divided; some Arsenal fans want him sold off immediately, others want him beaten up a bit first and then sold. I've yet to meet anyone recently who has a good word to say about him. His time had come at the Spurs game at the Grove; at one point, Robbie Keane brushed past him and Eboue took the opportunity to roll around on the ground as though shot. Keane wandered over to him to berate his gamesmanship, and Arsenal fans started shouting at Keane to give Eboue "a shoeing", "a kicking", and I heard one bloke shout "kick the diving cunt!".

Now, Keane isn't exactly a popular player amongst Arsenal fans but this is ridiculous; asking him to kick one of our own players must be unheard of. Random behaviour aside, he provides few goals, and few assists. Though assessments of a players performance can't be done solely from statistics, an attacking midfielder is there to create and score goals. He simply doesn't do this. Worse, his antics have caused the team to lose concentration at vital moments and we have conceded because he's too busy faking an injury than doing his job. And even worse than that, he often goes missing and doesn’t bother to track back and defend (which Hleb, to his credit, did do, and did more than Pires). I really can’t see why he’s still playing for us, except that maybe we can’t find anyone stupid enough to buy him. Maybe we should get him an English passport; some stupid club in the North-West would probably throw about £15m at us for him.

Whilst I’m on the subject of the playing staff, this summer has seen a hilariously inept attempt by Adebayor to boost his pay packet. Now, this seems to be over and he’s staying with us, but to try and engineer a pay rise from £35k a week to £80k by proposing a move to Barcelona, or AC Milan, whilst saying he needed it for his retirement (he’s 24), is up there with Ashley Cole’s “I nearly crashed my car” statement. Empathising with footballers is tough enough without them coming out with this sort of guff; do they not realise that almost all the people coming to watch them every week – and paying their wages through season tickets, Sky subscriptions, merchandising etc – earn less than that amount each year? How on earth can they even begin to get any sympathy (as this is an Arsenal blog, I won’t go into the Ronaldo transfer here, except to say that slaves generally didn’t get £120k a week and their pick of the prettiest prostitutes in Manchester)? Sadly, football being the way it is, he’ll score a hat-trick in the first game (to beat West Brom 3-2, our final goal coming in the sixth minute of injury time, of course), and everyone will be singing that bloody awful song again.

So these three players have contributed to making me wonder why I bother shelling out a grand or so to watch them, although one of them has moved on. Some people have said recently that the days of liking and respecting players have gone. I wouldn’t necessarily go that far; after all, Adebayor was a nightmare at Monaco and is a known troublemaker; Hleb has something of an interesting background (growing up in Byelrus with a father dying of cancer from the Chernobyl cleanup can’t have been a barrel of laughs), and I’d like to see a psychiatrist report on Eboue; I suspect it’d be fascinating reading. In some ways, I quite like the way Flamini left – after all, if the company I work for had tried getting rid of me a year ago after dumping me on the bench, then decided to keep me for a season, I’d be a bit wary of signing a new contract with them, especially if an Italian firm came in offering to more than double my salary and move me to a city with rather more sunshine (and better food) than London.

Let’s not forget that the Flamster comes from Marseille and would likely find the culture of Milan more to his suiting, and quite frankly I don’t blame him at all. He never slagged off the club, or London; he was gracious and thanked the fans; he finished his contract without any dark threats to play badly, and should we play him again at some point (assuming AC Milan actually qualify for the Champions League at some point) I’d happily applaud him.

But that’s not to say we won’t miss him. Flamini is one of those players that many fans like to see – like Ray Parlour, Oleg Luzhny, and going back to my namesake – that aren’t necessarily the most talented or skilful (in the case of Oleg, not talented or skilful at all), but make up for this with hard work, constant running, determination, and the occasional lovely goal (ok, Oleg didn’t do that either). They are the kind of player many fans can identify with. The question is now, who will replace him in midfield?

Diaby, whilst on a good day looks disturbingly like Vieira, is absolutely shocking on a bad day, and those bad days happen far too often. Part of that is that he’s been played out of his natural position out on the wing, but being on a strange bit of pitch doesn’t stop your ability to pass the ball to someone with the same colour shirt on, or stop your ability to run back up the pitch to chase the ball you’ve gone and lost. As for the other options, well, we’ve sold Gilberto, Alex Song is improving but still scary, and Denilson who’s not bad, but too much like Fabregas to make a good partnership, mean that we’re still lacking a strong core to the team. I can only hope that we’re about to make a move for a strong defensive midfielder or that Wenger has as trick up his sleeve. The fact that we’re only a few days away from the start of the season proper without a strong, tough defensive midfielder worries the pants off me, and the fact that we’ve not signed anyone yet, and not giving a new signing time to meet up and train with the team for a couple of weeks before the pressure is on, worries me more.

As for the question of killing games off, with Nasri and Walcott we’ve got some interesting alternatives to the usual pass pass pass pass pass pass shoot oh-no-it’s-been-blocked tactics so favoured of Hleb and Eboue. I hope that the lack of urgency and imagination was down to those players, rather than the training they were getting, but I’m not too sure. I believe that the team’s natural tendency to want to look good rather than want to win showed through a bit too strongly last season; hopefully the fresh blood of Nasri and Vela, and greater experience of existing players like Walcott, will tip the balance more in favour of actually winning.

Other than that, the season ahead could be an interesting one. Wenger’s been making statements that he’s trusting in youth, which is all well and good, especially since in recent years it’s the senior players who have gone bonkers – Cole, Campbell and Gallas, I’m looking in your direction. Just like the start of last season, there are fundamental weaknesses in the team, and again it’s not clear they have been addressed. And in general, there are things that concern me, both with the club and the game in general. I’m hoping for a season in which:

1. Van Persie stays pretty much uninjured. He’s fantastic; I really think he’s one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen in the flesh, and he’s also got what’s euphemistically called “character” – in other words, he’ll kick and fight to get his way, even if that means the occasional elbow. I personally think that those crazy Dutch people have cloned Bergkamp. But he keeps hurting himself in strange ways, which is no use to anyone. I said to a number of people at the start of last season "If Van Persie stays fit, he'll win the league for us, as he can do things no other footballer can do". But he didn't. So we didn’t. Let’s try again, shall we?

2. We stop making stupid defensive mistakes. Clichy and Sagna are fantastic, the best players in their position in the league (though Evra comes pretty close), but both Gallas and Toure make basic errors that they really shouldn’t be doing any more. Senderos still looks baffled on occasion, but is better than many fans think, and both Song and Djourou are too raw. But not conceding really, really stupid goals would help that panicky last twenty minutes that so enthralled us last season.

3. Rosicky plays some games. He wasn’t too bad, when his balsa-wood frame wasn’t splintering all round the pitch. He might even win some matches for us. Ok, that’s a long shot.

4. That we get Eduardo back. He really was something special before his horror injury, and let’s hope it doesn’t cause those knock-on injuries that have blighted Diaby, and that psychologically he’s ok. Saying that, he seems a pretty tough cookie. On that note, it’s interesting to find out that all the stories about Martin Taylor having spoken to him in hospital were totally fabricated; Eduardo himself was said to have responded “If he did come to visit me, I’d tell him where to stick his apology”. Good lad. Anyway, he seemed to be just about the only person in the Arsenal team who understood the fundamental, basic law of football – get the ball in the back of the net and don’t worry about the details. Some of his goals, such as the two against Everton, were wonderfully simple. Run faster than the defender, send the keeper the wrong way, that sort of thing. If we do get him back, fit and well, he’s our plan B and hopefully an inspiration to the rest of the team.

5. Nasri and Walcott fulfil their promise. Walcott still needs a bit more confidence in front of goal, but he’s fearsomely quick and seems to get on well with the team. Nasri looks like a good buy, but then again, as Arseblogger has pointed out, we thought that about Hleb. And Reyes. Let’s hope he’s more like Sagna or Eduardo.

6. Bendtner and Adebayor grow up and get on. I’m not asking them to be best buddies or anything, but acknowledging each other on the pitch would be a good start. Passing to each other might be better. At least we now know, with hindsight, that Bendtner might have had a good reason to be pissed off with Ade. Saying that, Bendtner does seem to have that special Scandinavian way of being able to enjoy making enemies (see Raikkonen).

7. That Adebayor realises what a twat he’s been, and makes up for it by scoring 60 goals. Ok, that’s another long shot. But improving his shots/goals ratio is vital, as he didn’t look too smart for large periods of last season.


8. That Eboue stops being a cock and puts all that energy he spends being a cock, with the falling over, pretending to be injured thing, into playing football as well as he possibly can. That’s a very, very long shot.

9. That Almunia carries on being quietly good. I suppose having a defence in front of him that remembers it needs to actually defend, rather than watch as opposition strikers saunter past them, then complaining it was someone else’s job to stop them, would be a help, but he hasn’t looked too bad. He’s certainly cut out some of the rash mistakes he used to make, but I’m still not quite convinced.

10. We buy a decent, tough, central midfielder. Barry would probably suit me fine, frankly, as he’d get the job done, but £18m is a ridiculous sum. Alonso’s just as good but he looks like his star is on the wane, and again, stupid money is being asked for. Speaking of which, there’s some really crazy money doing the rounds these days - £13m for Andy Johnson? £19m for Robbie Keane? I wonder what kind of drugs are being consumed in club boardrooms around the country. I’m beginning to wish I was a football agent.

11. Fabregas doesn’t get injured (see, I said I’d get back to him). He’s a gem, one of the players that comes along once every decade or so, that’s just so good he operates on a different level to everyone else on the pitch (our last one was Henry, so we’ve been pretty spoiled in that respect). His ability to make space with a quick turn, his rapid thinking and ability to pick out a player on the run, and his tenacity in chasing down the opposition make him one of the finest midfielders I’ve ever seen. I was lucky enough to see his home debut and still remember that after about ten minutes, people started turning to each other saying “He’s a bit good this one”. He’s also much tougher than meets the eye; he can bundle much bigger players off the ball, and then has the skill to get away from them. He’s the life and soul of the team, an example to the younger players, and represents what is good about Arsenal and Wenger’s philosophy. Please don’t get injured. Oh, and one more thing about Cesc – my favourite memory from last season was him telling Rio Ferdinand to "Fuck off!" after the equaliser at home to Man U, which was hilariously shown on the big screens to huge cheers. More of that, please.

12. Keep scoring goals from set pieces. We actually starting getting ok at this last season, to the point that a corner became a chance to get a goal rather than just a way of getting the ball back to the oppositions keeper in new and interesting ways. And, fact fans, apparently Bendtner has the record for the quickest goal by a substitute – 1.8 seconds, against Spurs last season. Bet you didn’t know that.

13. Someone sorts out the transport from Ashburton Grove. It’s ridiculous – 60,000 people into a couple of tube stations, all on the same line, just doesn’t fit. I suppose the East London extension (from 2011) should help out but until the Piccadilly Line can run more than one train every four minutes, we’re doomed to spend half an hour outside queuing after each match, and getting armchair fans complaining that everyone leaves early. I don’t leave early except under exceptional circumstances, and have supported us for long enough to know you should never leave a match early. Saying that, I understand why some people are tired of queuing. Maybe I should go down the boozer more, but I suspect family life might take something of a downturn.

14. And one last rant – referees. How can they ask for more respect, when on the first game of the new season, a Manchester United player grabs a Portsmouth player by the throat and doesn’t even get booked? It’s pretty typical now, and it’s one of the reasons why players simply have no respect for the referees. Why accept a decision against you when you’ve seen the ref ignore other, worse infringements? We’re so far behind some other sports now – such as Cricket, Rugby Union, American Football, Formula 1 – in using action replays that it’s making football a laughing stock. The more paranoid amongst you would say that this is done deliberately to favour certain teams, but you’d be a fool and a Communist to believe that the English game is in any way corrupt, unlike those foreign leagues in Germany, Spain, Italy and France. In any case, action replays aren’t totally foolproof, as shown in the Rugby World Cup Final in 2007 (in which the footage was ambiguous), or in Formula 1 (where the footage seems to be used to make preferential rulings in favour of one team, Ferrari). But they are still better than nothing; the modern game is too quick, the stakes are so high, and the pressure the players are under to perform, mean that it’s in players interests to bend the rules in their favour as much as possible. That’s not to say that this can be stopped – merely that when they do this, they should be punished, fairly and equally. Action replays can help cut out the more egregious refereeing decisions (Kuyt vs Phil Neville being my favourite from last season) and should be implemented as soon as possible.

15. That, this season, those worries we have had at the start don’t come to pass, and we win the league. Champions League I’d like, but frankly Liverpool winning it by being spawny gits debased it for me. We only failed by four points – four points! – and by stopping some of the basic mistakes we keep on making, we’d go a long way to winning the league. Four points really isn’t much, especially since Man Utd really struggle without Ronaldo and don’t seem to have done anything about a Plan B over the summer. And the Chelsea issue of trying to play Lampard and Ballack in exactly the same part of the pitch doesn’t seem to have been resolved, new manager or not, which could cause trouble on and off the pitch (as it did last season). So I’m hoping for a long-term injury to Ronaldo and another civil war at Chelsea.

So that’s my hopes for the season. Not much to ask, is it? So we start off the new season and I’m starting to wonder if it’s still worth it, what with the annoying players, defensive mistakes, the pass-the-ball-289-times-before-trying-a-shot-on-goal tactics, the lack of a killer instinct, and all those other faults, but then I know that as I finish my dodgy pizza, wishing they still did the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels (on which note, why can’t they do those – they were fantastic and a nice little nod to the club’s largely unsung Jewish heritage), I’ll start shouting out the names of the players along with everyone else.

Maybe it’s that I’ve started to come back down to earth after ten years of winning something almost every season, and need to get back to where we were in the mid-nineties, or even to the eighties, where doing ok in the league with a good cup run would be the mark of a good season; back to where most football fans spend their lives. But then again, this is Arsenal – we’ve got the best manager in the world, a great board, a superb stadium, a mixed, generally easygoing and funny fan base (who, in fairness, are a bit quiet) and some of the finest young players in the world playing the best football you’re likely to see in this country. Keep working hard, play as a team, take the chances handed to us every game, cut out the stupid mistakes, hope that we don’t get too many injuries, and we can win.

We can do better than third, you know.