Arsenal Thread

BobbyBox said:
Sounds like Arsene is going for two players in January? quite exciting that he has actually come out and said it, hopefully they are both quality/proven and not youngsters :))

It has got to be a striker and midfielder really, I am hoping so anyway.

Rosicky is back, if he gets anywhere near the form he was in last year that will be great (and he can stay fit). Give Cazorla a bit of a rest.
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Too many players being linked. Hunterlaar is old news now :LOL: seriously it ridic all the names due to the amount of money supposedly we have.

Some say Theo wants to stay and sagna may leave lol.
 
bebo said:
I really need to hear you vent m8 ! I`m shattered ! I just pray we won`t be in 14th place and try to convince new signing :COAT: in 30 days from today. Sczy was very good btw.
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Right back home from the emirates and not in a good mood.

Where do i start?

ok lets start with our attacking play. umm actually lets move on because THERE IS FUCK ALL TO TALK ABOUT AS WE DID FUCK ALL attacking wise.

Next up our midfield. hopeless. fucking hopeless. all arteta, wilshere, carzola did was fucking pass backwards and sideways all fucking game. i was literelly falling asleep for fucksakes during the game! that is a first. imagine that. falling asleep inside the stadium watching your team play. something is not right.

Now on to our Defence. U see i think this was the only thing we did OK on. yes ok we let in two shit goals but i am talking about our defence as a whole. it did ok. What made our defence look shit was our attacking play. we did fuck all in attacking and we did fall all when we had the ball! So it gave people the illusion that our defence was shit but tbh honest it wasnt. shezney made 2-3 world class saves and mertesaka and vermalen made some great critical tackles.

Its just that when u play shit in the rest of the pitch and chasing a goal, your defence will look shit.

Right, on to the fans and atmosphere. We started off in a positive mood chanting and singing but shit hit the fan 2nd half.

we was angry and fustrated at our team that keep passing sideways and backwards. no one willing to take a shot on goal and constant shitty reasons why we lose the ball(holding up the ball too long, making silly passes etc etc).

once the 2nd goal went in i kicked the chair in front of me in anger. never been sooo FUCKING angry for a long time. was ready to punch someone tbh and fucking left the stadium after that shit went in.

I overheard some arguing among our fans on the way into the tunnel as well. not good.

U see i have tried to be patient with wenger. i have tried to stop wanting him out and lowering my expectations for him and this club but this is just too much for me. what am i to do now? Shall i now expect our team and wenger to do no better but to qualify for uefa cup? Because THAT is the only way i would be satisfied with this shit from wenger and the team.

This is unacceptable. everyone in the stadium feels my anger. we all booed the useless players on the pitch.

I dont think i can back Wenger if this keeps on happening. He has turned players liek carzola, podolski and even wilshere as average shit players who cant shoot from more then 2 yards away from goal or knows how to pass forward.



/rant over
 
Love the rant and analysis Jonney. Only saw the highlights of your game but from what it sounds like I didn't miss much. I feel bad for Arsenal fans, I much rather see your club do well than Who-is-our-coach-today-Chelsea and Man Shitty. Can't believe what a value Michu appears to be for Swansea appears to be though..wow.

Don't know what your opinion is as being right in the midst of things.. but you'd almost expect Arsenal fans to hope for the departure of Walcott in Jan. Seems like that saga's distraction is the last thing the club can use right now.
 
Well now we can't pretend everything is ok, cause obviously is not. It's 2 points out of the last 9, and the quality of football on display is dreadful.

I think possession football and lots of touches and number of passes gives you an illusion of superiority, and when the team does not create much, pretty much makes up for this boring game we're talking about. Innocuous possession and not enough objective, direct play. For most teams, when they're 25 meters out, if there's an opening, they have a shot on goal. Not Arsenal. This over working possession does my head in!

That's more or less the point said by Jonney, except I wouldn't include Cazorla in this mix. He's one of the only players in our squad who still tries some long range efforts (although Wenger is beginning to instil his "pass it into the net" philosophy). This allergy to shooting is something that always have bothered me.

Now, once again, I have to say Arsenal are too predictable. I've said it before and had my comments slammed here, but Wenger himself admitted in his own peculiar words that the team "lacked sharpness and couldn't move the ball quickly enough", thus not creating chances. To me, that's a fancy way of saying we are predictable.

Will be hard now to contain the boo boys. Just when Wenger said in the press Arsenal needed to push strong in December to keep in the fight, you lose at home to Swansea! Great.

Well, credit to Swansea, it has to be said in the end. They go to play football regardless of the ground they're visiting, so hats off to them.
 
I don't think anybody has slammed you for saying Arsenal are predictable? saying Arsenal are shit yes, but I can't remember anybody slamming you for saying they are predictable? maybe disagreeing?

Lacking sharpness and not moving the ball quickly enough suggests that Arsenal are tired and lethargic. I don't know on what planet that could be Wenger admitting they are predictable? strange comment by you?

Now the question should be why are our team so lethargic and tired? this needs to be addressed, because it is ridiculous that we are in this shape coming into December. We need a few more quality players and rotation in the squad.

If we can't win our home games then we are in trouble. Swansea are a good team and are in great form, but we have to be winning these games at home. The run of games we have up to xmas should be a time we can get quite a few points on the board, but now it is highly doubtful.

The form we are in and the fans going crazy just spell disaster, unless the team can turn it around really quickly.

If we don't get a win against West Brom at home, then it is going to go crazy and West Brom are doing quite well at the moment.

All very depressing :(( We need to get cracking get some points up to Jan and then reinforce.
 
Lets not forget that Arsenal lost against a very, very good team...
Concerning Cazorla, take a good look at the second goal and how he let Jenkinson down. He put two steps forwards thereby shutting the last opportunity for Jenkinson to pass off.
This is of course no assessment about Cazorla's season until now. Just wanted to point out that you can't always blame defenders for "stupid" goals.

Today the poor man's Arsenal won, and what a fantastic style of football Swansea are playing...all credit to this wonderful team.
 
I know I shouldn't joke about such serious things... but I think Wenger playing Gervinho as centre forward might have precipitated that.
Hope PHW gets well soon.

Bobby, I think you're in denial when it comes to acknowledging the predictability of Arsenal. "Sharpness" is a very vague and subjective word in the Wenger lexicon. But if we don't move the ball quickly enough and create chances it means not only we are lethargic but also that there is lack of movement, dynamism and quality in our interplay.

Another thing that annoys me is how Wenger plays the same formation against Swansea or Manchester United.
I think every time we play United, Ferguson knows exactly what to do to neutralise Arsenal. This has been shown time and again.

It's not only Wenger's fault, of course. Some arses need a pretty hard kicking. I don't see enough desire from many players.
 
Rentboy said:
I know I shouldn't joke about such serious things... but I think Wenger playing Gervinho as centre forward might have precipitated that.
Hope PHW gets well soon.

Bobby, I think you're in denial when it comes to acknowledging the predictability of Arsenal. "Sharpness" is a very vague and subjective word in the Wenger lexicon. But if we don't move the ball quickly enough and create chances it means not only we are lethargic but also that there is lack of movement, dynamism and quality in our interplay.

Another thing that annoys me is how Wenger plays the same formation against Swansea or Manchester United.
I think every time we play United, Ferguson knows exactly what to do to neutralise Arsenal. This has been shown time and again.

It's not only Wenger's fault, of course. Some arses need a pretty hard kicking. I don't see enough desire from many players.
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I don't think it was down to predictability that we lost, I think it was down to us playing rubbish and the other team playing better than us.

Whatever Wenger uses the word 'sharpness' for it definitely isn't anything to do with predictability.

I'm not saying they can't be predictable, I just disagreed that people were 'slamming' you for saying it a while ago and that from Wengers statement it meant him admitting that we were predictable. Your second go and explaining it is correct "lethargic but also that there is lack of movement, dynamism and quality in our interplay" but again this has nothing to do with predictability :))

Anyway it is all very depressing and EVERYBODY needs to pull their fingers out, Wenger, Players, back room staff, Board etc absolutely everybody needs to work their arses off to change this around. I include the fans in this, they need to sing their hearts out and not moan every time players make a mistake (Think of Ramsey here for one). They need to at least start off the games singing and getting the team going, if at the end we are playing shit and getting beaten then ok do what you want. But it isn't going to help anything if the fans are shitty from kickoff, singing songs about how Wenger doesn't know what he is doing etc

Anyway, we need something positive against Olympiacos and then West Brom to fucking get going and stick two fingers up and fight.
 
I think Champions league qualification is going to dictate whats happens in the future. I'll be the one who says it and say that maybe were better off if we don't qualify. It was hard enough to write that, let alone think about it. But maybe the board will take a hard look about how things are ran once this happens. Any thoughts?
 
Hopefully Santi Cazorla-Claws will bring us a happy Xmas! and all of our troubles will be over :DD

Definitely don't think it will be better to not get into the champs league. It means our new sponsorship deal money will not bring us forward as it will just be replacing the money we would have got from the Champs league and therefor less money to invest.

Plus Wenger will probably be gone and we will be in a cycle probably like Liverpool for a few years.

Hopefully not, but it can easily happen. It's best if we still qualify and everybody wakes up and realises we need a better squad of players. I think our first eleven is really good, but they need quality to replace them when they need a rest or get injured etc.
 
Our 11 is not able to play in a 4-3-3 . I think he should explore 4-4-1-1 something that requires less holes . I think 4-5-1 n 4-3-3 are too similar.
 
This pretty much sums it up for me, from F365:

"Chelsea are also finding life difficult at the moment, with one win in their last seven top-flight matches. But the difference between the Blues and Arsenal is that Roman Abramovich will probably spend £46million on Falcao in January to serve as a (relatively) short-term fix. This financial doping maintains a glass ceiling at the top of the table that Arsenal currently have no hope of smashing through.

For a club that has won the Premier League three times in the last 15 years, it's difficult to accept second best but, as much as Arsenal appear to be in a period of decline, their seven-year slump is mainly influenced by the rising power of money. Wenger spoke of the team's psychological issues after Saturday's defeat and these extend to the club as a whole, with Arsenal forced to acknowledge they are now only leaders of the chasing pack.

With the Premier League out of reach for the foreseeable future, Arsenal realistically have only three trophies they can challenge for each season. Of those, the Champions League has been dominated by one of the best teams in history over the last six years (since they narrowly beat the Gunners in the 2006 final), the FA Cup has been won by only six clubs in the last 17 years (four of which have won the Premier League in that time), and the League Cup is seen as a fifth-rate competition (below Champions League qualification), with Liverpool's achievement last season dismissed by their rivals.

Football is largely uncompetitive and after several years at the top it seems Gooners are only just starting to realise there is no god-given right for Arsenal to win any of these competitions. Complaining fans should at least be grateful that their club is in a far healthier position compared to the vast majority of others in the pyramid.

There are, of course, many things Arsenal fans should feel ungrateful about, with ticket prices at the top of that list. It seems inherently wrong for the club to charge the highest prices in a league they can't win, but at the same time they operate on a supply and demand basis - if the stadium wasn't full every week, the board would have to reassess their pricing structure.

One final point is that while it's painful to see the best players leave every year, this is something that almost every club, especially below Arsenal, has to deal with. Even Manchester United were powerless to prevent Cristiano Ronaldo's move to Real Madrid, while as a Blackburn fan I've watched the winners of the club's Player of the Year award depart in a steady stream, often to fail at other teams - such as Roque Santa Cruz and David Bentley - which only makes it worse.

The clubs Arsenal players have left for highlight the Gunners' position under the glass ceiling, with Van Persie departing to have a genuine crack at the Premier League, Samir Nasri, Emmanuel Adebayor and Gael Clichy leaving for Manchester City's money (or success that is based entirely on money) and Thierry Henry and Cesc Fabregas heading to one of the biggest clubs in the world at a time when they had/have the best team."
 
I honestly don't see what all the fuzz is all about.
Take Man Utd in the 70's and the 80's: nothing.
This is natural and happens in all sports.

Belgium are for cycling what Brazil is for football, yet our last Tour de France winner was in 1976...
Arsenal benefitted years from another glass ceiling where they and Man Utd always were in the run for silverware. Now the stakes are higher. Unfair? The previous glass ceiling was also unfair.

Arsenal loose their best players?
Every club under Arsenal the last 20 years lost all it's best players (often to Arsenal)...what is so abnormal and unfair about that? Nothing.

Did Arsenal something wrong? No. The stakes are higher and Arsenal has no sugar daddy. Are Chelsea and Man Utd worse than Arsenal? No.

That is the way football is nowadays, the way people like David Dein wanted it to be...so don't complain.

I would also prefer real competition where promoted teams could immediately compete or win silverware or where this year's champions could struggle next year. A competition where Akranes, Differdange and Kuopio could win the CL's. Would that be better for Arsenal? Not at all, they would be worse off.

Replace the name "Arsenal" by Liverpool or Man Utd and this as valid as what i wrote of Arsenal. And this is written by somebody who actually likes Arsenal a lot. It's just that you guys don't realize how spoiled you are. One can criticize Wenger (and i agree with some of the criticisms) but would it make a big difference if he had bought a replacement for Song and if he would use Arshavin more or Chamakh, or have another striker? To be honest i don't think so. The clubs who spend most money on players are the most succesfull ones (except Stoke City).
 
Not necessary the right players, if you buy enough players there will be one or two good ones.
Remember how City started: Robinho, Roque Santa Cruz and i forget some of their flops...

Just finished the book of David Conn (Richer than God) about Man City and a couple of weeks before i read Arsènal.

You know what the difference between Mansour and the Arsenal board is (among others the guy who just had a heart attack)? Mansour gave money to a football club, the Arsenal board becalme rich with their involvement. If you read that book (from a City fan who is fed up with the way owners behave and who wants clubs to be owned by their fans, look at his Observer article from last weekend about German football clubs), what you see is that after having talked with the Abu Dhabi board (i.e. the man who runs City for Mansour) and after having written about the history of the club, he concludes that the Abu Dhabi owners are the ones who most respect for the history and the fans of the clubs. It shocks Conn as a journalist that billions are poored in a club in one of the most poor and derelict English cities (one can say the same about United though), but as a fan he sees that City and their fans are treated with respect and are profesionally led. He concludes that this is the best board City has ever had although he doesn't really like the idea of a sugar daddie. Then Conn compares City with Arsenal and comes to the same conclusion i have just written after reading the book about Arsenal.

Are Arsenal a proper led club? No.
 
A very weakened team for tonight and understandably so. Likely to be a loss, which is hard to take still.

Be good to get a win and go into the W.B.A game on a tiny bit of a high, but it will most likely be useless anyway as Shalke Dropping points to Montpelier will be slim.

Lets hope the fringe players put up a fight and play well and put them in Arsenes mind. Arshavin and Chamakh need blinders to be even considered to be on the bench, but at the moment we need them to perform for the sake of the squad.

The most important game is Saturday, if we lose that (Or even draw) then the shit will hit the fan, it is a must win game at home.
 
Just a few considerations about what's been discussed above. The previous glass ceiling when mainly Arsenal and Man United triumphed between the end of 90s and start of 2000s: that was achieved with real money from the club and sponsorships. It was a monopoly in some way, but it was nothing like what happens now with sugar daddies. It was only two clubs with vast resources and managers who were well above the average. Money came from the clubs' own means. Granted, both clubs accumulated debts, but they're held accountable for it, they don't have an outside party to bail them out. Leeds United didn't either, they spent in the same bracket (or more) than Arsenal and United and they faced the consequences. After years of dwelling in the lower divisions, it seems they didn't quite learn the lesson, as they are now being taken over by a sugar daddy from the Middle East (overseen by Ken Bates, the same guy who sold Chelsea).

But maybe Leeds United's second shot at buying success could work. After all, there is leniency from authorities to this kind of thing. What we have now is money that God knows where it came from being pumped into clubs at an industrial rhythm.
Financial Fair Play is a joke, we all know it. Mansour's cousin wiring an unprecedented amount of money to City's account and labelling it as sponsorship for the Etihad Airways is just the simplest way of contravention of FFP. It has made a mockery of the whole thing before it even started.

Anyways, we discussed this many times here.

Back on the topic of Arsenal matters, I don't have the slightest worry about us finishing runners up in our group. Last year we topped our group and drew AC Milan in the knock out stages. This season we could have better luck even facing a group winning side. Either that or just face Barcelona again and be done with the CL. Get it out of the way to focus on domestic cups :P

A quick thought on Arshavin: he's one of the boo boys' favourite target. This suggests he is worse than he actually really is. His form is poor, but I have been saying this for a while now, he's still a better and more menacing player than Gervinho IMO.

Well, Gervinho at least is a natural winger. When I see Ramsey improvised as a right winger I feel like breaking my furniture. Seriously, Wenger gets on my nerves when I see this.
Arshavin and Chamakh are internationals, senior players being very well paid. I say just f*cking use them when you need them. But if you absolutely must find a spot for Ramsey in the starting XI, then at least have the decency of using him in his natural position. Change the formation. Don't want to change the formation? Use Cazorla in the wings. There's a myriad combinations to be tested, however we're almost halfway through the season seeing the manager insist in the same things that aren't working.
 
The previous glass ceiling was achieved because the EPL clubs took all the television money, because Dein and co blachmailed the FA: if youdon't give us all the money we will break away. And once they got all the money they effectively broke away.

The FA has no means te regulate the EPL. The bitter irony of it all is, that if the EPL hadn't broke way, the FA might have created rules to prevent Walker, Abramovich and Mansour to take over...

Arsenal and Man Utd took away money from both the lower leagues and the fans (extremely expensive tickets, beverages and shirts and all that in the club stores). By doing this all those clubs (and of course Arsenal and United weren't the only ones, i just reacted to rentboys post) estranged football from the people. What was once the people's game, became an 'even' for the elite.

The big revolution is not what Abramovich and mansour did, it went wrong before that. You just don't see it because you are biased.

It's like Arsenal complaining that Nasri and Clichy went to City. Arsenal could also buy Nasri and Clichy from their French teams because they had an unfair financial advantage. You might not agree with this, i will give another example. Ferguson is now complaining that Pogba went to Juventus, what about Pogba joining Man Utd from Le Havre? That is considered only natural.

It's all about power in football. The power is shifting now and the fans of the traditional power houses complain about that. I really don't see any difference...with all respect for Arsenal...
 
If you're going to pick apart unfair TV deals you're going after the wrong country. The EPL distributes the money far more evenly than most major leagues. The top club barely makes more than a couple million more than the lowest club. And some of that money also goes to 'parachute' payments.

You have a point on the 'Sky' factor - that people who live in towns with smaller teams might well stay home instead of going, and contribute to Arsenal or LFC or United by buying a jersey, but that's hardly creating a massive divide.

I also think your argument on Nasri/Clichy - any player really - moving from one league to another being comparable. Do you really think the only reason a professional footballer would have left League Un (at the time) for the EPL is financial? Not for a bigger challenge, a bigger league and so forth? Where does that end? Is football ruined the moment a young Bermudian decides to head to Europe to gain actual experience?

If you don't see the difference between spending what you make and livin within a budget and just pissin away an order of magnitude more money then any other club will ever see, no matter how well it is run than I just don't know what to say. There is a fundamental difference there, which is why the vast, vast majority of football fans will always look at City's title, or even Blackburn's (and without a shadow of a doubt the entirety of France will look on PSG's eventual title) with a bit of distaste.

Let's flip it on it's head, Arsenal was very well run in the late 90's, took the sensible decision to build a new, world class stadium. Successfully raised and has now managed down the debt required. All the while playing good football, and keeping the club with a bright financial future. Their reward for running a club the way it should be run? A new oil ceiling, preventing them from ever getting to the top of English football.
 
Arsenal wasn't propoerly run because the owners became super rich by selling their shares and by not investing it in the club. If they had done that, Arsenal would have had plenty of money.

I don't agree with your argument about Nasri and Clichy. THE big challenge would be to win the CL with a French club, but the way the television money is divided (in Europe) makes it almost impossible for a French club to win the Cl (except PSG of course).

You could say that Clichy and Nasri went for the reputation of Arsenal...but a club like Ajax has a bigger reputation than Arsenal (on the continent) and the challenge to win the CL with Ajax is even bigger. And talking about reputation: if they would have done it for the reputation of the club or because they wanted a bigger challenge, they would never have left Arsenal for Man City. I really don't buy into your logic beach...Also don't forget that before Sky poured in all the moeny into the EPL, Olympique Marseille was a bigger team in Europe than Arsenal. Reputationwise they still are because they won a CL, Arsenal never did...

I do agree about your argument about the stadium. That is also the reason why Arsenal narrowly missed out on Mansour. If the city of Manchester hadn't offered the stadium (virtually) for free to Manchester City, then Mansour would never have invested in Manchester City (that is pretty obvious if one reads Conn's book). Now let's pretend that there wasn't a new stadium that went for free to Man City...who was the most likely candidate to atrract Mansour and his money, knowing that the new stadium was the main reason? Exactly....Arsenal....

My next question is to the Arsenal fans in this thread. Be honest. Would you have complained if Mansour had invested his money in Arsenal and if Aguëro, Silva, Kompany, Balotelli and Touré would have played for Arsenal (together with Clichy, Nasri and Van Persie). I'm pretty sure most Arsenal fans would not have complained...
 
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