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.

Time to mash those S*uds

Its time for the North London Derby, its time to take revenge for that beating we took in the Carling Cup semi-final.

You all know the S*uds have had a naff start to the season, but after Redknapp's arrival there they will probably be looking at this game in a totally different light to what they would have been looking at it a week ago.

They got their first win at the weekend and anything but a loss will be like beating us 10-0 to them. Wenger is of the opinion that despite 'arry's appointment, nothing much will change for a while;

"don’t think that [the new manager] will change a lot for this game.

“Certainly in the longer term future, the fact that Harry has taken over will change things for Tottenham. But I believe, in this specific game, it is more about how well we will play. That is more important than anything else.”

I think it will be a rejuivinated Tottenham team that will be chasing the ball all over the place, thats why i hope we attack and peg them back, an early goal would be fantastic to dent their confidence that would have risen after the Bolton win.

I think we need to have Song and Fabregas in the middle for today, Modric was dangerous at the weekend and we need a player to sit back and stamp on the little buck toothed rat, Fabregas on the other hand needs to be up the businuss end of the pitch doing what he does best.

I think we will start with Theo because he can try and get in behind the defence and cause mayhem, Adebayor is a constant threat, once described by Paolo Maldini as one of the toughest players he has ever played against. A compliment indeed. I think Theo will be rested for the two games after this against Stoke and Fener.

Adebayor wants to win this game for the fans. Saying;

"We know it is going to be tough. The fans love these games. We have to give everything, we have to make them happy and we have to win. We just have to win."

We do have to win this game, we have to win the Stoke game on Saturday and the Man Utd game the week after that. This is a critical part of the season, any dropped points will be punished, but tonight is a special night because we will be up for this game, the S*uds will too but i think we are out for revenge. Big time.

Hopefully the fans will turn the stadium into a couldron of abuse for the Tottenham players, and as i said, a goal in the first 20 minutes and they might just sit back and try to limit damage. They dont have the physical players to try and kick us, i think its time for us to get a little physical today against the likes of Modric, i dont mean kick him off the park, just using physical strength to let him know we are about. They will get dangerous if he starts scampering about.

Paul Merson thinks we don't want to win this as much as we want to win against Man Utd and Chelsea. Lets just say that 5-1 beating hurt. It pissed us off, its time to put them back into their place, i think over the last couple of seasons the NL Derby has been a fantasic game because the Spuds were after 4th, and they did get close once.

Maybe there is a certain amount of jealousy towards the success we have had, but there are a few Tottenham fans that are not deluded like the ones we so often laugh at, some are decent football fans and commend us on our style of football. Miss Goon is a Spurs fan and we were watching the West Ham game and she said;

"Adebayor is such a brilliant player"

Some praise indeed.

Tottenham are a team i dislike but they are not the worst team to watch, i would prefer to watch them over Liverfluke. I respect their attacking play and they respect ours.

Anyway i think tonight will be a close run thing, it all depends on the first 20 minutes i think, if we get an early goal i see us running out 3-0 winners. If it goes past half time and its still 0-0 anything can happen.

And i mean anything. No form book for this game.

Enjoy.