The Goon Blog

Its hectic at TGB HQ this week so its another late update.

Tonight the Champions League group stages kick off with our first game away at Standard Liege and it looks like we may be kicking off with a weakened side. Robin van Persie is missing, as is Almunia, Nasri, Walcott and Denilson not making the trip.

Eduardo looks set to start after having had his ban revoked, Bendtner will hopefully get a run down the middle and will probably be flanked by Eboue of Diaby, it will probably be the former who gets the shout.

Sanchez Watt has been called up to the squad and might stand a chance of a run out, I’m hoping we will get to see Wilshere strut his stuff and Ramsey get a go to add to that goal he scored against Pompey, they could be very useful unknown quantities for the opposition in some situations this season.

Id have a little flutter on Eduardo getting a goal or two tonight, so far he has been banned after a dive, a stone wall penalty was then rejected by the referee a week later and then his ban was revoked. He knows how to unwittingly grab the headline this bloke, it seems part of the script that he should score tonight.

We have our usual back four but we are missing Almunia through illness, Fabianski is still recovering from an ankle/knee operation so it means Mannone looks set to play between the sticks. All I know is that Ive seen him play once, hes inexperienced, 21 years of age and had a mare on loan at Barnsley when he was 19-20.

I think it would have been wise for Wenger to buy an old experienced keeper as number two because personally, you can’t go through the whole project youth thing with keepers. Lets just hope the defence get their arse in gear because they have been deceptively awful, it looked so strong for a few games but all of a sudden, 8 goals have been conceded in 4 games. Its very strange.

We need a win tonight and more importantly a clean sheet. Over the last few seasons we have conceded goals through habit more than anything else, so tonight we need Gallas and Vermaelen to continue building their promising partnership and shield the keeper.

A lot of Gooners have travelled out to Belgium for this game so hopefully they will be rewarded with a good match and a nice win, heck, we really need one.

For the game I will be over on Twitter for the most part so come say hello.

COME ON YOU GOONERSSSSSSS

’till tomorrow.

Afternoon guys, I can actually type which makes quite a change today.

It has literally just been announced that Adebayor has been hit with two FA charges, one for his stamp on van Persie, the other being his celebration.

He is fast heading for a six match ban, personally, I would add another couple of games onto the ban for City’s ridiculous defence of him. Mark Hughes claimed that he wasn’t actually running towards our fans…

Robin van Persie’s celebration is also being investigated because a City fan has claimed that he mouthed a swear word towards the City fans. An eye for an eye I suppose, I don’t see how swear words could kick off a riot and its not like he ran the entire length of the field celebrating is it.

Onto the rule changes by the Premier League then, the statement read as follows:

“As of next season clubs will be required to have a squad named of up to 25 players, of which no more than 17 can be over the age of 21 and not home grown,” Scudamore said.

“The definition of home grown is trained for three years under the age of 21 by somebody in the English and Welsh professional system.

“Clubs will have to declare their 25 at the end of August when the window shuts and then again at the end of January.”

I think its a good rule to bring in, we pass it with ease but Chelsea and Liverpool do not have quite so much breathing space. Presumably the quota has been brought in to try and improve the standard of English players for the benefit of the national team, whilst also stopping clubs such as Citeh stockpiling tons of experienced footballers.

The Premier Leagues reasoning for the rule changes are:

“It’s not in the club’s interests to stockpile players. It will make buying home-grown talent more attractive,

“We’re not going down the route of a nationality test but what this will mean is that you just can’t buy a team from abroad.

“We think it will give clubs an extra incentive to invest in youth. We think that one of the benefits will be that it will help the England team.”

I echo Arseblog’s thoughts on this when he says it may well inflate the English market even further, the price of English players is so inflated that out of 100 million you could only get Lescott, Barry, Rooney and Ferdinand. You could get players of that quality or better from another nationality for a fraction of the price.

Looking forward to Wednesday night it seems we will be missing Almunia, Denilson and van Persie from the squad, there will be more on that and the importance of the game tomorrow.

’till then.

Right, I dont normally do stuff like this but the National Television Awards are out and my best friend was in a Drama that is up for the award.

The programme was called A Place Of Execution and was on ITV earlier this year.

It would be great if you could vote for it, my friend deserves it and the drama made very, very good viewing!

You can vote here: http://www.nationaltvawards.com/default.aspx?page=22

Thanks so much.

No blog of note today guys, I landed on my thumb playing football and I’m no doctor but ive self-diagnosed a dislocation and christ, it hurts.

I can’t write 500 odd words very well with one hand and it is going do drive me insane.

The news in brief:

• Eduardo’s ban has been overturned, making him available for the trip to Belgium.

Ermmmm…..thats about it.

I’m in pain.

Much more tomorrow hopefully.

Afternoon.

Ive just about calmed down now. The performance from us was poor, be it a post interlull hangover I don’t know, but the urgency, pressure high up the field and overall hard work was just not there and a scintillating start to the season has been turned on its head. Played 4, won 2 lost 2.

Excuses are there, we were without Arshavin, Nasri and Walcott but we have been without two of those all season. You can blame the international break but it was the same for both teams, we were crap, lets just face it.

Adebayor showed us why we were so happy to see him leave, first he left his foot in on Fabregas, then he proceeded to stamp on van Persie’s face, then score and run the entire length of the pitch to goad all the traveling Arsenal fans who gave him such support last season.

The two losses we have suffered do not mean the end of the world is about to happen in Arsenalistic terms, we have gone to Everton, City and United and got three points. What we have to do now though is get 15 points from our next 5 games because they are all teams we should be beating.

Anyway, there are a million and one match reports around so I will get onto the big talking points.

Number 1

Look at the direction of Adebayor’s leg, that was intentional no doubt. The referee let him off as it was early in the game but that is no excuse. Cesc could have ended up with a broken ankle and quite frankly, Adebayor was still lucky to be on the pitch after that.

Number 2

Cowardly, violent and downright dangerous. This is again, clearly intentional. The contact that was made was literally centimeters from van Persie’s eye, if Adebayor had raked his eye there is every chance he would have been left with permanent damage.

Number 3

How stupid can you get? Just how stupid is this man?

Number 4

The first goal was clearly offside, Micah Richards in goalside of the last defender. Doesn’t hide the fact that Almunia should have done a lot better than he did.

Enough of the moaning, we can scream and shout all day but it will not change anything, Rosicky came on and made a big difference, possibly showing that we lacked that extra bit of creativity. Yes, on another day the result may have been different and the scoreline is misleading but a loss is a loss.

The recovery must start in Belgium on Wednesday because losing can become a habit and we need to snap out of it now. Liege are not an easy team to beat so we will have to be better than we were yesterday.

I think today is just the start of the fallout of yesterdays game but the lads would do well just to learn from the performance and work their arses off to put it right in the coming weeks. I was told by Neil Ashton of the NOTW that van Persie may face a charge of bringing the game into disrepute for his statement released on the official site after the game, I think that it is very rare such an eloquent, articulate and strong statement is made by a player. There was nothing wrong with it what-so-ever.

More tomorrow.

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gif’s courtesy of gunnerblog.com

This is slightly later than planned so sorry about that. I had this dream last night, I was playing for Derby County against Arsenal and it finished 4-4, even though I was playing for Derby (yes I know, my brain doesn’t know what side its bread’s buttered on), I wanted Arsenal to win of course.

Strange one.

Anyway we flew out to the oil rich lands of Saudi  Arabia yesterday to take on Manchester City with their elongated cunt of a center forward named Emmanuel Adebayor. He has been chatting with a few papers, spinning a few lies but we know thats what he does and it will hurt him more if we don’t bite on that but just jeer and heckle the crap out of him today.

He is in good form so we need to put an end to that today, personally I wouldn’t mind if his hamstring snapped in half whilst trying to score or Eboue ran on with a baseball bat and decided to hit him for a home run. The defence needs to click today because Citeh have a fair few attacking options, Tevez and Robinho are out which is a bonus but Stephen Ireland is the heartbeat of the team so I’m sure Song and Denilson will be charged with marking him out of the game.

We went with 4-3-3 against United so we will be going with 4-3-3 against Citeh, I’m hoping that Eduardo replaces the injured Arshavin up front because his movement is second to none and I really think it will cause Toure some problems, we know he is not the Toure of old and is prone to errors and nobody will know them better than our very selves.

One player that needs to step it up now is van Persie, he is traditionally a bit of a slow starter in a season but we are into the second month now and he needs to get going, he scored a decent goal for Holland this week and he now has to show that for us. Speaking ahead of the game he has been diverting the pressure onto Citeh by saying:

“At Arsenal we would never buy a player who costs £40 or £50million, If you look at clubs who have spent that kind of money then I don’t see them playing as a team. If you look at our transfer policy then you can see how players respond when the manager puts faith in them.

“If you think of yourself as part of a group then you are prepared to work hard for results together. A £40m player feels the pressure. They are going to be judged more than some guy who has come through the youth policy and then he thinks in terms of one person not the team.”

Citeh have started better than I expected, I had thoughts of them being totally disjointed but they have been efficient rather than breathtaking. They have spent some stupid money but I think their manager is shite, I don’t rate Mark Hughes one little bit, he was shite as a player too.

One thing I’m hoping I don’t hear today is the Adebayor Elephant song, we all know what it is and after the Wenger complaints the other week we can’t go and sing a song that is borderline racist because the media will pick it up and quite frankly, we are better and more inventive than that.

I hope Bendtner scores today, he was brilliant for his country in midweek netting 2 goals in 2 games, his celebrations will be interesting if he does, I’d love it if he ran up to a team-mate and pretended to headbutt him. That would raise a few wry smiles.

Right, I’m up for this. Come on Ade you lanky streak of piss, do your worst. You were called Adebarndoor for a reason.

Till tomorrow.

At last, we are close to a return of proper football!!

I will save the majority of the team news for tomorrow but it has been confirmed that Arshavin is out of the game at the weekend and possibly the next two games after that. Like I said yesterday, its more than annoying. The boss was not happy:

“We are upset because he should not have played. He was not in a condition where he could afford to play 90 minutes. We took him off against Manchester United because he was injured already at half-time. He will be out for Saturday, Wednesday and certainly next Saturday.”

Was it Guus Hiddink’s fault? Was it Arshavin himself? I think the blame lies with the player myself, especially after Hiddink left it to the player to decide.

Denilson is sorry that Adebawhore and Toure have gone. I’m not.

The boss has been saying that Arsenal is the best place for young players to come to and develop their potential and believes that the plans FIFA have to stop transfers of under 18’s will lead to players with massive potential not being noticed. When it came to the Arsenal academy itself, the boss was again defensive:

“It is ridiculous because I heard some people say we sign here 30 or 40 players,” said Wenger. “We have no room for 30 to 40 players; we sign one or two. And if you look today at the home-grown players nobody has more than us in the Premier League. We are ahead of everybody.

“If we buy a young boy – because there is compensation there – we give him a programme and give him a chance to play. We promote, we educate and we integrate. That is why we have success in the way we do it.”

I maintain the opinion that by the 2014 world cup the England national team will be full of youngsters that have at some point been trained at Colney, we can see how good some of the kids at the club are and hopefully they live up to their potential and give us a national team to be proud of…because Arsene Wenger will have gone a long way to producing it.

The 4-3-3 looks set to be kept when we go up to Citeh tomorrow afternoon to face the long, greedy streak of piss that is Adebayor, its hard to argue it has been anything but a success judging by this season so far.

Much more and a match preview tomorrow morning. Till then.