The Goon Blog

I hate the word ‘Soccer’, it should be football and nothing else. As you know, the Americans have also adopted the Football name for another sport, American Football. You may not have the knowledge about it that you do about the hideously named ‘Soccer’ but you can get some quite brilliant sports betting odds.

As not everyone can be in the USA at the same time the only real way to bet on it is via online Football betting.

The NFL is currently spreading globally and has an event that is similar to the ‘39th game proposal’ the Premier League may explore, this year at Wembley (the 3rd year of this growing brand), the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers go head to head.

Tampa Bay are of course linked to the Glazer family, who own Manchester United.

So its Carling Cup time again.

I was going to give you a rundown of any new faces in the squad but somehow I managed to lose every single word I wrote so I’m going to have to do it another way a bit briefer.

Here’s the team that may line up:

——————Szczesny—————-

Gilbert—Senderos—Silvestre—Gibbs

——Ramsey—Randall—Merida—–

——Wilshere—Vela—Traore——-

There is the chance that Traore could play in midfield, or Merida may play out on the wing but its very hard to predict, I expect Wilshere to be out on the right side of Vela but again, he could slot into midfield.

Rory Deacon might get a place on the bench after playing his way into the thoughts of Wenger by having a fantastic start to the new season. A name you may not have heard of before.

Gilbert gets the chance to prove his worth again after a real rocky few years that has seen him go from a very promising right back to somewhat of a troublemaker and failing to play to his potential, Senderos will probably pick up the armband – something he has done in previous years – and he will have the experience of Silvestre alongside him.

Randall may well be in his last chance saloon at the club after failing to impress last season and building on his Premiership debut against Sunderand a couple of years back, having a goal ruled out for offside if I remember correctly.

I’m looking forward to this one, it has the ingredients for a very good game and its the only chance some fans get to watch a game at the Grove. For all those going have a goodun’.

More tomorrow.

Someone with an awful lot of time on their hands has created something of a monster… a game where you can be Adebayor.

You basically have to run, stamp on van Persie’s head and then slide to your knees in-front of the Arsenal fans, give it a try, for some reason I didn’t seem to do very well…

Find it here.

I could preach about this game and moan about stamping on someones head whilst proceeding to piss off a whole bunch of Arsenal fans but hey, if it was the reverse, stamping on Ade’s head im sure we would love it.

Or swerving a car with Cashley in off the road.

Now thats an idea….

Hmm

Afternoon all,

So yesterday we closed the gap on Sp*rs and Citeh but remain quite some way behind Chelsea out in front. Not a bad weekend by any means and we did everything possible to close down the points deficit. The league will come alive in January/February time, especially when Chelsea lose their African players.

One trophy we should be concentrating on this season is the Carling Cup, I believe there is a big case for playing some of the first team and really give the cup a decent shot this year. The kids can get to the quarter finals but beyond that it gets much more challenging and some older and better heads are needed. Carlos Vela is going to make his first appearance of the season which will be nice to see, there is a hell of a lot of hype around him and I have not always understood it with some of the displays Ive seen. I can see the potential though, he has a hell of a lot of it, he could be a genius in a few years time.

Bloody hell, I’m starting to sound like Myles Palmer.

Tomorrow I’m going to have a Carling Cup kids 09′ feature giving the lowdown on the players that will be playing in this years competition.

Robin van Persie has been talking about his form this season and he is a notoriously slow starter, I fancy him to score next week and maybe go on a little run getting 4 in 6 games or something like that. His scoring record has never been prolific but he creates chances too which evens it out in some ways, he missed some sitters on Saturday and admits he needs to improve:

“I wasn’t so pleased with my own performance though. I just missed too many chances and that is something I have to work on.

“There were a lot of them [on Saturday] especially the one that I controlled on my chest. I was totally free but didn’t expect to be. That was my own mistake but it was a very good pass from Cesc. I should have done better but I’m confident it will be OK very soon. Still the main thing was the three points and they were very good for us.”

Robin isn’t the type of player that will get us 30 goals a season, he will get 20-25 in all competitions, for out and out goalscorers the only one we have is Eduardo who does very well on that left hand side but it means he doesn’t score as many as he would do if he was played in the middle of the park. I still think there is a case for playing either Bendtner or Eduardo in the middle with van Persie on one of the flanks with the other, Wenger knows what he is doing though and its not like van Persie has been bad this season. He just prefers to score absolute smashers rather than scrappy goals like Eduardo can do.

One thing I have noticed since he has been at the club is that he vary rarely goes for placement over power, if he gets a shooting opportunity he more often than not smashes the ball as hard as he can which is fine if it is on target.

van Persie is also one half of an ever recurring story at the moment, the story about him and Vermaelen having their bust up in the Ajax tournament a few years back. Speaking about it he said:

“He is hard and played very strong on me physically, I was a little bit upset about that. So I told him in nice words!

“Now I’m happy he is on my side now. In training everyone mixes up so I play against him. He is tough and it’s good because I am training against proper defenders.”

Robin was notoriously short tempered a few years ago and it is something that he has managed to keep out of his game, it was noticeable when Adebayor decided to flatten his face. Maybe even a year ago that would have sent him over the edge.

We are being called moaners at the moment, the chants at United started it off and we rightly kicked up a stink about it, the game at Citeh was dominated by the Adebayor celebration and stamps and we kicked up a stink and rightly so, but comments like this from Wenger only serve to give these labels credit. Speaking about tactical fouling he said:

“It is not especially aimed at any particular player, but it looks to me that some players make repeated fouls and do not get punished,” said Wenger.

“The yellow card is not linked with the number of fouls a player makes, but only with the spectacular side of the fouls. If some player always makes little fouls – and in the last four games we played, every single team had one player who did that. I am not saying who in particular it is. I don’t want to make any big fuss over it, I just want to make referees alert to it.

“I think the referee has all the rules in the book that if a player makes three or four little fouls, it is a yellow card. If you make one spectacular foul, like Song did on Saturday, even if it is not dangerous you get a yellow card. In their team you had players who made four, five, six, seven fouls and didn’t get a yellow card.”

“I think I will try and speak to them [the FA], yes,”

“We have already talked about it at a UEFA meeting because in the modern game you play always against 10 defenders. So when you can get four against four, or three against three and you get punished and have to start again from zero, it is difficult. This also goes for Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool, everybody.”

Fouling is part of the game and no rule will chance it, there is nothing that can be done. Alex Song is more than capable of giving away lots of these tactical fouls too, you have to grin and bear it or get stronger and simply stay on your feet in the challenge. Its things like this I wish Wenger wouldn’t say.

The timing of blogs has been errattic in the past few weeks but I’ve had a lot to sort out so apologies for that, its pretty hard to keep the motivation to write daily when hits are plummeting faster than a Drogba dive but I will try to keep it going.

More tomorrow.

Some people wanted a defender and a striker brought in in the summer, it looks like we got both in one Thomas Vermaelen.

Two fantastic goals, his third and fourth of the season for us pretty much secured the three points in a game where we were brilliant one minute and infuriatingly sloppy the next.

(scorers: Vermaelen x2, Eboue, Cesc)

At the start we had much more urgency than we had shown in previous weeks, the intent was there from the off and in under a minute Wigan were under pressure. Wigan were poor throughout but that was partly down to how well we played in spells, after Vermaelen got his first goal with a thumping header we seemed to get a little sloppy in the middle of the park, Diaby was effective but infuriating in equal measure, Cesc was there when he needed to be and played a genius ball into van Persie who turned on a sixpence and his shot went just wide. He isn’t himself at the moment Cesc, after he scored the fourth (whilst carrying a painful knock by the looks of things) he celebrated with the team and turned and saluted the crowd.

Maybe his lack of smiley-ness is down to a new hardman image, the tattoos, shorter hair, leather jacket etc. It could also be down to him not being happy over results that are the minimum expectation, not getting over excited over beating Wigan who are, no offence, a poor team this season.

It was a landmark game for Eboue who was booed off the pitch against Wigan last season, he is a flawed genius, he could be such a good player but he really does not do himself any favours at all. His comeback from that episode of last season is up there with the best comebacks of Arsenal players, be it from injury or otherwise. It shows he is a strong guy (maybe not in the physical sense with his reputation) and gives an insight into why he is loved so much by the other squad members. We all love a good laugh at Eboue, his t-shirts thanking God, his thanking of God after scoring, walking out onto the pitch, thanking God, his pleas of innocence after falling over with nobody around him or attempts to cut Nani in half at Old Trafford a couple of years back. You have only came to see Eboue, remember?

This game was the start of a phase that will be so, so important in our season. We have been to United, Citeh and Everton and got a point, we have games against Fulham, Blackburn, Birmingham, Tottenham, West Ham, Wolves and Sunderland all coming up before a clash with Chelsea, we need 15 points out of 18 in those games. We can win them all, but this side has shown its attacking strengths and now needs to show the main ingredient in a successful league side, consistency.

It would be helpful if both of todays games ended up as draws but I wouldn’t mind if City lost, you don’t know how good a team is until they lose because you don’t know how they react to failure.

I’ve got to rush off and write my Sunday column that I should really have started last night. Reaction from the game today, and more, tomorrow.

I have managed to get hold of one Arsenal fan that was in the stands, directly at the front when everything kicked off against City after Adebayor’s goal celebrations.

As it turns out, the ‘Elephant’ song, as it is being coined in the press, was not sung in the stands at all. It was the ‘Arshavin version’.

It turns out City fans were throwing missiles at our fans throughout the game with Gooners being hit on the head with coins, fans that were arrested were walked through the City fans and spat at. Stewards were also guilty of inciting fans.

______

What was the atmosphere like towards Adebayor before the game and up to the point of his scoring?

The atmosphere was full of hatred towards Ade, he copped for plenty of stick, Every touch of the ball the gooners screamed ‘Wa**er’.

Were the Arsenal fans singing that Elephant song?

I heard the Elephant song being song on the concourse on entering the stadium, it was not song out on the stands ( not what i heard).

When the trouble started, what happened and how did the stewards and police react?

After scoring his goal Ade ran towards us there was only 4-5 stewards stood at front of stand, i threw the stool just as he slid to his knees. Lots of fans were streaming down steps towards front when reinforcements of Police and stewards arrived. fans were pushing and jostling with Police and stewards for quite a while after game had restarted. The Stewards were swearing at fans, I was arrested just as Citeh scored their 4 goal i was taken through Citeh fans who spat at me.

After the game did any trouble kick off between fans?

I’m led to believe there was aggro after the game, the police station i was in stared filling up with fans from 1700hrs.

It can be seen on a few video’s that the police had to stop some of the City fans getting to the Arsenal fans…presumably looking to cause trouble, were you aware of this at the time?

The Citeh fans to our right were chucking coins, a chap stood in front of me was struck by a coin also a friend in the upper tier was struck.Apart from that it was more goading by Citeh fans.

What was the reasoning of many of the fans so called ‘abuse’ towards Adebayor? Anger at his treatment of the club? His pre-match comments about the Arsenal fans?

His abuse was borne from his lack of effort last season with his pay rise and flirting with Milan was the main cause, his pre match comments only fulled the flames.
This game was sold out very quickly & tickets were hard to come-by as people wanted to let the c**t know how they felt.

_____

In other news today you will have seen that Adebayor has issued some sort of warped justification of his celebration last weekend.

He just got stick that players get week in, week out. As you can see above the racist version of the Adebayor song (sung mainly by City fans when he played for us) was not roundly sung in the stands.

Cesc has waded into the row with pictures of his leg cut by Adebayor in a challenge.

This is hopefully the last mention all this will get, I’m fed up of talking about it and quite frankly, Adebayor doesn’t deserve the attention he is currently getting.

Match preview tomorrow, til’ then.

Afternoon all, its another manic one today.

Last night was all rather stressful wasn’t it? I couldn’t quite believe it when within 5 minutes we were two goals down, the row z allergy continued to spread and it cost us the first goal, Eduardo trying a suicidal backheel to Cesc, it failed, they scored.

A couple of minutes later Gallas was judged to have fouled a Standard player in the box, despite minimal contact and questions over whether the contact took place in the box. The penalty was awarded, they scored, oh dear.

What followed was 40 minutes of quite spectacular crap. The passing was diabolical, Clichy was all over the shop, Eboue, chosen over Sagna, was pretty poor, Gallas had a funny few minutes and it seemed Vermaelen was the only one who could pass the ball or just keep calm.

Cesc looks out of form, Song has gone off the boil and the returning Thomas Rosicky was still some way off his best, but he ran his arse off and put in a very promising display in my opinion. He adds an awful lot to the side.

Diaby was awful, his only non-disastrous moment was when he skipped past 2 Liege players to play in the hard working Bendtner to hit home a quite lovely finish. That changed the perspective on the game.

It was more of the same in the second half but our leveler came from an awful piece of refereeing, Cesc crossed, Song and Vermaelen were offside, then Song hand-balled it into Vermaelen who stabbed it home. How it was given I don’t know but I said straight away, that broke the camels back, we are gonna win this now.

And so we did, two minutes later Eduardo managed to somehow get the ball into the net off his knee, it was written in the stars that he would score, even if he was having the game from hell. Was it his worst performance in an Arsenal shirt? Probably, but he still scored and thats what he is paid to do.

We won, we played more than badly but the three points are there and I would rather play like that and win than play brilliantly and lose again.

Clichy is having a mare at the moment, I would really consider playing Gibbs against Wigan at the weekend, even if it is only just to give Clichy some time out. I have no idea what is wrong with him but he needs a boot up the arse, and fast. Cesc needs to get to grips with games and start getting on the ball more and finding his passing range, that said, a ‘bad’ Cesc game is as good as many players ‘good’ games.

We have 9 first teamers out and the chances of that number decreasing before the Wigan game are minimal, this side has to get real and improve because I can’t stand another performance like that.

Like I said though, playing badly and winning…I can take that.

If we were playing a better side we would have been in serious trouble, but we weren’t and no team really send shock-waves through European football this week.

There will be more team news tomorrow ahead of the game this weekend and you can catch that all here tomorrow. I will hopefully be bringing you an exclusive interview with one of the fans caught in the Citeh melee after Adebayor’s celebration at the weekend.

I’m gonna get a beer. More tomorrow.