4-4 - Our nuts need a little tightening.

For one of the first times in the history of this blog i am going to have a moan at Arsene Wenger. His comments after the game have kind of made my bad mood darker. I'm going to nit pick here I'm afraid, like it or not.

“I believe that we produced an excellent game and the positive side is that we were really superior to Tottenham."

Well going forward we were pretty good, not excellent. I feel we could have been a lot more clinical with our finishing and decision making, again there was just too much overplaying. However now I'm going to get really critical.

"The negative side is that we didn’t win and I believe that was down to a lack of maturity. I would like to keep the positives tonight because I believe we were really outstanding and I don’t believe that the lack of maturity is linked to experience."

So it was down to a lack of maturity, but experience has nothing to do with it?

The meaning of maturity: The state or quality of being fully grown or developed.

Right young players are not mature; as they are young they are not experienced, as they have not played as many games as a 'mature' player. So there is a link Arsene. You just wont accept that we need a midfielder that has grown his pubes and knows how to damn well defend! We have to win something this season Arsene, its time to admit that letting Flamini go was a big error.

Wenger was also critical of our negative approach to the game in the closing minutes of the game,

“I believe we were too cautious, we wanted to keep the ball in a negative way instead of scoring goals number five and six."

Again, excuse making, we had a corner and Sagna wanted to take it short and keep it in the corner, Fabregas told him to go away and delivered it into the box, and Spurs broke away.

Times like that you just need to get to the final whistle, keep it in the corner or buy a cheap free kick, tick down the clock. There is no need to Ponce around weaving pretty patterns! So no Wenger, we lacked experience AGAIN, it was a stupid decision by Fabregas. Would any of the other top 4 teams to that?

I say this now and i mean it. No title for us this season. If we do win i will make a donation to the Arsenal Charity.

Now, the defence;

I could easily blame Clichy's naivety and Almunia's blunders but I'm not going to single them out.

I'm going to rate the defenders 1-10 and go through their game;

Almunia; Poor, poor game. Stark contrast to the Big Al we have seen this season, we was woefully out of position when that comb over cunt hit that 40-yard screamer. That was forgivable though. The second isn't so forgivable. Huddlestone hit a shot and Almunia hit it out into the path of Darren Bent, a schoolboy error for a goalkeeper, it hit him in the face but he should have got hands behind it. It didn't swerve a great deal and it looked like the Almunia of old. Poor. 3

Sagna; Didn’t do much wrong, not much to say really. No moments of brilliance or no moments of poorness. Not up to last seasons standard yet. 6

Gallas; Fantastic game in my opinion, little wrong. Makes a change really. Shows that he and Toure can't play together. Silvestre or Senderos would be his ideal partner. Nice goal. Could have closed down Jenas better if i wanted to be harsh. 8

Silvestre; He is improving every game i think, a good goal and didn't do too much wrong. MAybe could have closed down Jenas too. 7

Clichy; Fantastic until he got naive. Then the shit really hit the fan, he could have pumped it up to the corner but he decided to try and play pretty. He has not learnt from previous mistakes. 5

As you can probably tell i am not happy. For the first time i am doubting our ability to win things, today the team needed to win for the fans, you had your atmosphere at the start Arsene. The place was alive with Arsenal chants but the team didn't deliver until just before half time.

We need to be ruthless, the past 10-11 years has set the standard very high and at this rate we are going to get nowhere near those heights.

We finished teams off in the first 25 minutes of games in the glory years, now we are giving up good leads against our fiercest rivals.

People are getting fed up.

I am a member of the BBC 606 message board and this user has wrote a very good article;

Anyone else a bit disillusioned?

Ok firstly I want to say I love Arsenal and Wenger and would never support another team, even if we became as bad as Tottenham.

However...at the close of the transfer window when our rivals had strengthened and we had seemed to have weakened with the loss of experienced players such as Gilberto and Flamini without adequate replacements (in my eyes) I was absolutely gutted.

However I showed my faith and did my best to be positive that Wenger had something magic up his sleeve. I fear it may have been false optimism.

It annoys me that our fans pay the highest ticket prices in the world and our club are unwilling to spend the market rate for players worthy of our club. I'm totally for the youth policy and i'm glad we're not run like Chelsea/Man City but I think that our fantastic youth need to be supplemented with quality, experienced players from time to time. I know we are paying off the stadium debt but we still have more money than before the move.

Can anyone realistically see Arsenal win the league this year? I doubt it and thats because our strength in depth is so far behind Chelsea's and Man Utds. Our team couldn't win the ball back against Hull because we played WITHOUT a holding midfielder. Our team concedes goals to set pieces regularly because both our CBs are short in comparison to the physical forwards in the PL eg. Didier Drogba and Kevin Davies.

I love Wenger but I feel he is somewhat sacrificing the quality of our team in order to stubbornly prove a point. I just hope that he can strength in DM and CB in the January window as I cannot see a sustained title challenge this year.

Am I the only one who is becoming disillusioned that our great club is not going to see silverware again during Wenger's reign?
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Update after 4-4 against Tottenham:

I still find the fact that we haven't got any proper holding midfielders or CBs who are commanding in the air ridiculous and results like tonight's show how bad it has become.

When will we learn to close out matches?

By 'Wengers Magic Hat.'

An enlightening article and i agree with pretty much every word of it.


To be honest I'm gutted we didn't win today. I feel let down, how many more times will we be disappointed?

Right, i apologize for any errors. Blogger is crap.

Anywhoo il be back soon.

Take care.