The Goon Blog

Niklas Bendtner turned jeers into cheers after his classy finish put us within eight points of leaders Liverpool.

To be honest, it was a rubbish game with one bright light, Robin Van Persie.

The first twenty minutes were quite encouraging, there was urgency pace and good passing but it always ended in nothing and by half time people were totally and utterly fed up. There was one comedy moment when Capi Toure and Manuel Almunia collided with each other on the edge of the box, you have to think what a fuss would have been made if that ended up a Bolton goal. There would have been a lynching party out looking for them.

I will talk more about Van Persie’s game later on in the post but the critical moment arrived after Van Persie clipped a brilliant ball into the path of the onrushing Niklas Bendtner and he slip home a really nice finish to silence the boo’s that rung out earlier when he misplaced a pass, they were pretty harsh i thought.

Now, Van Persie. Without him we would be fighting a relegation battle at the moment, he is in fantastic form at the moment and he is winning us games on his own. I do believe that with a whole injury free season behind him he could become one of the worlds best players, he is without doubt one of the worlds most naturally gifted footballers. Far more so than the fake Ferrari smashing Ronaldo.

His first touch is awesome and there are few players with a better one, his close control is just superb and he knows where the net is as well. But he is such a talented player he can create goals out of nothing and score them as well, just check the Liverpool and Chelsea goals, he is capable of turning the game on its head in a split second and this is bound to be the year the world takes notice of such a gifted footballer.

He is our bright light, there is no doubting it. He has been plagued with injuries but now he really is starting to get a lot of games under his belt and as long as he is cleverly managed by Arsene he will hopefully stay injury free all season.

One thing i did watch yesterday was Match Of The Day, after much laughing at Alan ‘hard nut’ Shearer’s orange fake tan, i saw Jay Simpson give a very good account of his talents at West Brom. He does look a very good player and drew praise from the Arsenal hating pannel they always have.

There is not much more kicking around today, tune in tomorrow for the latest.

Til Then.

Morning all,

Cast your mind back to the Aston Villa game at Villa park, Toure started and Almunia was captain. Today against Bolton, they are both playing again and this time, Toure will be captain.

Now what has happened inbetween these games?

Of course, Kolo handed in a transfer request.

My take on this is Kolo is still peeved at not being given the chance to captain the club, and then being overlooked when it came to the vice-captaincy, then he was dropped because quite frankly he has been poor for the past year.

Toure then retracted his transfer request after a meeting with Wenger, in which he probably said he would be promoted to vice-captain instead of Almunia, meaning he captains the side whilst Cesc is crocked. Wenger said yesterday,

“Our vice-captain is Kolo Toure, He will play tomorrow and so when Kolo Toure plays, he is captain. After that it is Robin van Persie or Almunia.”

Blackmail. Thats what i think this is. Why are we letting Kolo Toure threaten to leave the club if he doesn’t get the vice-captaincy?

That is the only conceivable event that has happened between the Villa game and this that could explain this. I really feel sorry for Almunia because he gives his all and is worthy of his place in the side, but can you say that about Toure at the moment? No. I’m a massive fan of his but I’m really against this.

Its emerging as some kind of captaincy game here, we have had seven captains this season

Williams Gallas (15 games), Manuel Almunia (2), Cesc Fabregas (4), Kolo Toure (3), Lukasz Fabianski (2), Robin Van Persie (1) and Mikael Silvestre (1)

What kind of joke is this? SILVESTRE HAS BEEN GIVEN THE ARSENAL CAPTAINCY AT SOME POINT! This is outrage. It really is.

Anyway, rant over with.

Talking of Arshavin today i found this quote from Arsene and my take on it is that he is being priced out,

“There are a lot of managers who talk openly about players they would like. [The press] contribute highly to that. I am under pressure to talk about players that maybe I am not capable of buying.”

Hmmm, what do you make of it is, maybe its just me but that is not sounding very positive to me.

Wenger is in his element at the moment, he is spreading his wisdom on the current recession, just look at all the articles on Arsenal.com.

here, here, here, here, here.

That’s just this week! I have to say there is no better manager at economics than Arsene Wenger, we are privileged to have such an intelligent, astute, classy and highly regarded manager as Sir Arsene Wenger because without him this club could be in real trouble right now with the Emirates loans.

The club is in very good hands, trust the wiley fox.

Reports yesterday suggested we were after a defensive midfielder, today Arsene has rejected that, stating,

“at the moment, we are not looking to buy on the defensive side of our game.”

This is the downside of Arsene, in the defensive department he is nothing short of diabolical. He has not had a real sturdy defence since the nineties when we had that all English back four. I think Wenger tries to compensate for his lack of defensive nous by adding creativity and potency to the attack. Just think what Arsenal could achieve with a half decent defence!

Now onto the boxing match we take part in later, I think we will revert back to 4-4-2 for this game with Nasri given the free role, being allowed to wander in from the left and interchange with Diaby and Denilson whilst Van Persie is partnered by Adebayor up front, and you sense that once he gets a couple of goals he will go on a run this season.

The defence will be Sagna/Toure/Djourou/Clichy with Gael seemingly over his muscular strain thats annoyed him these past few weeks.

I think we will win 2-1, it will have to be another hard fought draw and i think there will either be lots of yellows, a sending off or an utterly hideous referee.

I don’t know what one id prefer. There will be links in the comments so be sure to add this site to your favourites.

Anyway, talk to you in the comments and i will post again tomorrow.