The Goon Blog

So today is here and hopefully it will provide a good end to a rather shite few weeks, the latest kick in the bollocks is the news that van Persie will be sitting on the sidelines for the rest of the season after the Dutch FA lied to us over the seriousness of his injury, van Persie is devastated, Wenger is livid and all in all, its not the best build up to our biggest game since we played Chelsea at Wembley in the FA Cup last season.

On that occasion we choked and we can’t afford for that to happen again, the front three have to snaffle any chance mustered against the Chelsea defence and start the massive defensive shift we are going to need to put in, Denilson would be my favorite to partner Alex Song in the middle of the park and offer more stability and a work ethic that Diaby, Nasri or Rosicky don’t have.

The defeat last week at Sunderland means that we have to win this one to stay in the title race, an 11 point deficit at the start of December wouldn’t be unassailable but you have to ask serious questions as to whether we are good enough to wipe out that points difference. I don’t know if being at the Grove is a good thing today, last season we went to Stamford Bridge and came from behind to win, we played at the Grove later on in the season and got our arses kicked, is that still going to be in the players minds?

We have to have William Gallas out there, the thought of Senderos or Silvestre against Didier Drogba fills me with dread and Gallas will be sweating spinal fluid to get his eye sorted for the game this afternoon, the lest back slot is one that is asking lots of questions too and I think either one of Sagna or Eboue will play there.

The isnt much more to say on this match, we’ve just gotta win it. Eduardo needs to fire, Arshavin is a big match player and needs to shine or some people are going to start getting a bit peeved with him, Song and Denilson have to bos the midfield for Fabregas to fire in the passes for the front three.

I’m excited but very nervous, losing doesn’t bare thinking about because however many goals we have scored, at the end of November the big L column would read 4 which isn’t title winning stuff.

“we do have to be wary of this Standard team, they have a habit of raising their game away from home and tonight we will have to be careful”

Actually, they are a very poor side indeed. I got that wrong.

I missed the first half, and consequently both the goals. Looking at various blogs and match reports we seemed to play rather well in the first half and took the foot off the pedal in the second. I hope that is true because what I saw in the second half didn’t please me much, it was similar to the Sunderland game in the way we lacked that cutting edge. I haven’t harped on about how van Persie gave us that cutting edge but we are really missing him at the moment, Wenger said any team would miss his ’super class’ and nobody can argue that we are missing him.

Despite Denilson and Song having very good games, (Denilson making a welcome return from injury), we were shocking at the back. Liege hit the post twice and if they were a better side would have got a couple of goals at least, this is really starting to grate with me because without much of our favoured front-line we can’t outscore teams as we did before. We just don’t have the same firepower.

A quick bit on the goals though…. in their own way they were both superb, Nasri’s finish was top top class although he made it look so easy, its moments like that that show you just how good these players at professional level have to be. Denilson’s goal was superb, the sheer power behind the ball and the fact it swerved both ways bamboozled their ‘keeper and netted the Brazillian his second of the season on his comeback.

These last couple of games I have been thinking of the difference a bullying, powerful striker would make and you can’t really argue that it would give us another dimension, someone in the Drogba mold could bulldoze defences and get us very important goals. Eduardo and Vela can’t do that.

On those two, Eduardo is a class finisher, I’ve always thought that but right now what he needs is goals and he needs them quick. Vela is a player with a great amount of hype around him but he has settled here now and has to prove his worth, he isn’t doing that at the moment. We have seen him do it at Carling Cup level but we are yet to see him do anything of the sort in the Premiership. In frame he reminds me of Pato at AC Milan, I just hope he can cut it here, I really do.

We can now look at the weekend and the game on Sunday, I suggest to the boss intensive defensive drills. He can say all he wants about Sunderland only having one effort on target in the entire game on Saturday but if that one effort goes in we are at a disadvantage straight away, Chelsea have been scoring just as many goals as us in previous weeks and I somehow doubt we will be able to outscore them, we will have do defend very well too. I’m nervous about the game to tell you the truth.

The game last night gave us three more injury victims, Gibbs has a broken metatarsal so we won’t be seeing him for a long time, Arshavin has had to have his head stapled after his clash of heads with Gallas, who has a nasty swollen eye and an ankle niggle.

Great.

Ive just about had enough with all this handball malarkey, its got more media coverage than just about anything recently, there could be an outbreak of Bubonic Plague sweeping across Europe but the Thierry Henry handball would still be first in the running order.

The standard of journalism as a whole has been decreasing rapidly over the past few years but these past few days have shown them up to be horrifically bad at their job. Their blinkered, bias and hit seeking headlines and stories are actually pretty offensive to me, I thought they might value the general publics intelligence slightly higher.

The press have become so desperate for hits that the likes of Stan Collymore have got a chance to spew their views on the game in newspaper columns. This is one moment of genius from the nutty forward:

“And I would actually like to see the Premier League comprised solely of the 20-25 clubs who have been the biggest and most successful sides in modern history. I think those teams should form the top-flight whether that be Leeds United in the third tier or Newcastle United in the second tier.

And there would be no promotion or relegation which would allow those teams to grow. Then you would guarantee some of the world’s best derbies, like Sunderland v Newcastle, happening each season”

Sunderland and Newcastle? SUNDERLAND AND NEWCASTLE? Can you see where I’m coming from here?

Mr Squeaky Clean Collymore who denies ever cheating in his entire football career (I take it he never ever pulled a players shirt, did a sneaky little handball, moved a free-kick from its proper position etc etc) wants hard-line action taken against cheats which is fair enough, he went so far as to shame a few of them on his Twitter page:

“Mandatory 8 game ban for divers & cheats. Eduardo,Ronaldo,Henry,N’Gog, the list goes on.”

No mention of some of the biggest culprits out there…Gerrard (dived for England penalty), Lampard (FA Cup final), Joe Cole (lead to an England goal v Croatia) and who can forget Wayne Rooney’s dives? Wheres the English players eh?

Hes a typical, stupid, deluded and borderline xenophobic man with a penchant for funny habits and writing absolute crap.

I’m not saying Henry didn’t cheat, he did cheat and I’m convinced in those play-offs there were lots more players that cheated. If it was Wayne Rooney doing what Henry did in the World Cup final would he be castigated like Thierry Henry has been? Ermmmmm. No. Point proven.

Stan Collymore is not the only example of hysterical journalism, John Cross of the Mirror who has written some good articles in the past was guilty of it:

‘Disgusted by Henry’s cheating. Status as #Arsenal legend has gone. He is responsible for biggest cheat since Hand of God. Gutted for Ireland’

Oh dear.

And the old crackpot Myles Palmer was deeply touched by Henry’s handball it seems:

…

Thierry, you are a sickening cheat and a shameless liar. You’re a disgrace to the sport that’s made you a multi-millionaire. You’re a bottler who has never scored in a final in your entire life and you make me sick

…

What a scumbag ! What a pitiful, cheating scumbag ! Thierry Henry, you are the scum of Paris, the scum of world sport, the scum of the earth.

“scum of the earth” – whats he done? Touched a football. Hes not committed genocide, set off a suicide bomb or crashed planes into towers. HES TAPPED A FOOTBALL WITH HIS HAND.

Bloody hell.

This is not a topic I really want to revisit to if you have an opinion please air it in the comments because the chances are there will not be another chance to go back to this subject, on this blog in particular.

I want to talk about Arsenal, this is an Arsenal blog but over the past few years I have just found myself getting more and more wound up by the media. Thierry Henry is a man I greatly admire and I challenge anyone who may have been in the same position as him to make a different decision, they wont.

Football returns tomorrow and I will be here with a pre-match blog so stay tuned

There has been some good news for a change and it concerns Eduardo, who has signed a new long term deal with the club, both parties seem very happy and heres to many goal-filled years for our Croazillian. We know his character after what happened to his leg and we have all seen the quality he possesses.

Le Boss said:

“We’re delighted that Eduardo has signed a new long-term contract with us. Eduardo is a special player with huge talent and natural goal scoring ability, and we’re all so happy that he has committed his future to Arsenal Football Club. “We have also seen in his come back from injury, Eduardo is a human being full of courage, bravery and commitment. His full recovery from this injury is a testament to Eduardo’s character. We all look forward to enjoying Eduardo’s performances in an Arsenal shirt for a long time to come.”

Whilst Eddie had this to say:

“I am very pleased to have signed a new long contract with the Club. I’m very happy and I hope to stay at Arsenal for as long as I can. This period is good for me now. I feel strong in my body and I feel ready to play 90 minutes every three days if it’s needed. “I went to Croatia last week and everybody was telling me Arsenal play the best football in Europe at the moment. I agree with that. We feel we are strong now this season and we’re all going to give everything to win trophies.”

Its a big few weeks for him now as it seems he is the player that will be given the responsibility of filling the void left by the injured van Persie, it is also the latest in a long line of new contracts in the past eleven months since Ivan Gazidis took his position.

We can all breathe a huge sigh of relief about Kieran Gibbs who has not broken his foot or ankle, the club have confirmed. I doubt he will play on Saturday afternoon though and Mikael Silvestre will probably fill in for him.

There has been quite a big hoo-ha over Thierry Henry’s handball last night against the Irish and I can’t stand all this bollocks about him losing his ‘legend’ status at the club, nor can I understand that it is being pointed back at US. If you have not noticed in the past few years, he now plays for Barcelona, not Arsenal. Get over it.

Thierry will always be an Arsenal legend in my eyes and thats that.

More tomorrow.

Desperate times call for desperate measures it seems; van Persie is going to have placenta rubbed on his ankle by a Serbian witch doctor in a bid to recover from injury just that little bit quicker – if you didn’t already know, he is out for 6 weeks with a bollocksed ligament. Maybe its the baby particles in the placenta that invade his ankle and make everything hunky-dory again. It better bloody work or one angry Arsenal accountant is going to be knocking on some very scary Serbian housewives front door.

Making stuff up that is so stupid to be believed is such an easy way to make money. I’m going to go outside and mow my lawn and sell the cuttings to a rich French footballer who wants to desperately learn the English language. I’ll tell him turning them into a soup ’soothes the vocal chords with pure Englishness, aiding speech of English’. Someone would have to believe it.

It seems we may need to send Gibbs off to van Persie’s placenta rubbing woman to mend him too, he got broken on under 21 duty tonight according to Young Guns. Hopefully its not serious.

Arsene Wenger has said how he will not be using Samir Nasri in the holding role when Alex Song jets off to get injured I mean when Alex Song jets off on ACN duty, tipping Denilson to fill the role. Le Boss said:

“No, [he is not a replacement], I do not say that he could not, Samir is very tactically astute, but he is attracted forwards. He loves the offensive game.

“We have Denilson who can fill that role. He is more suited than Samir at the moment. Samir is more a player who has pace, is versatile around the box and can finish. It would be a sacrifice to put him down there. Also he has a little handicap in the air.

“He likes [that defensive role] and certainly, technically and tactically, he can do it but I believe he can be more efficient up front.”

It is an area that had been attracting a lot of speculation before van Persie got injured and the hacks targeted our forward department and started linking Marouane Chamakh with a move to us again. It will be Denilson’s chance to make himself indispensable to Wenger, I rate him highly and thought his back injury came at a time where he was turning himself into a cast iron starter. Hopefully he picks up where he left off when he recovers from injury – he is expected back imminently.

Emmanuel Eboue has been talking about how he wants to be the next Eddie Murphy, he could make a re-hash of Beverly Hills Cop, shooting baddies whilst doing one of his funny dances to the Crazy Frog tune, something like this:

Its been a rather bad week, what with all the injuries and stuff, hopefully we don’t have any more bad news before the game against Sunderland on Saturday but as I am writing this I am hearing rumours of an injury to Aaron Ramsey.

More tomorrow.

So it looks like we have been hurt by the international break once again with van Persie being stretchered off against Italy in a friendly with a pretty serious injury, reports have said he has either cracked his ankle or torn ankle ligaments but I’m told that he has broken his metatarsal.

After having a relatively injury free period over the past year his luck with injuries has taken a turn for the worse again and you have to feel for the guy, he looked in real pain when he was being taken off and I just hope beyond hope the injury isnt as bad as first feared, we should have Theo coming back along with Vela to soften the blow but van Persie has been enjoying the best form of his career this season.

The man most likely to replace him, Eduardo, scored twice tonight and hopefully that will do his confidence some good heading into a few tough games against Sunderland, Lieige and then the London derby against Chelsea.

I’m really really pissed off that we have paid the price again for letting our players go out on international duty to play in pointless friendlies. Is it really needed?