Massive Fixtures Ahead : Arsenal Title Credentials On The Line

They said "Arsenal will be tested by Swansea"; Arsenal won the match. They said "It will be Napoli who will really test Arsenal"; Arsenal won the match- comfortably I should add. We lost against Dortmund but they were champions league finalists last season and Arsenal did not make it a walk in the park for them did they?

Arsenal Flying High But Tougher Tests Lie Ahead

Arsenal are 2 points clear at the top of the EPL and there still remains doubts, in the minds of the so-called football pundits at least, whether Arsenal are genuine contenders to the title. Who cares what they think, Arsenal are top of the league and Arsenal fans are loving the view from the top :). My honest opinion is that it is too early to predict who will win but we will get a better idea at the end of December.

Moving on from foretelling the title winner, Arsenal are heading into the start of a very difficult period in the season with some tricky ties coming up. Staring with the home match against Chelsea tonight in the Capital One Cup, Arsenal host Liverpool followed by a visit to Dortmund in the Champions League and then to Old Trafford to face Manchester United in the League and they face an equally daunting task against a flying Southampton side at home in the league.As if that was not enough, Arsenal will arguably have an even tougher December to follow with games against Everton(H), Machester City(A), Napoli(A) and Chelsea(H). It is incredible how these big fixtures have all been put together. No wonder people are reserving their thoughts on Arsenal's credibility, because if Arsenal get past this storm of massive fixtures unscathed, or at least not battered, the title would be Arsenal's to lose.

A short note on tonight's match. Arsene knows that a critical phase is approaching in the season and I think he will be forced to prioritize here. He would want his best players to be fit for all these fixtures ahead and I think he will take a big gamble if decides to start with any of his regulars in tonight's match. Whether he will take that risk remains to be seen.

The Fall From Grace - Part I

Is he to be blamed?

So we are out of the trophy hunt. Yet again.
Our hunt for a trophy(if we are looking for one at all!) continues for yet another year.

I doubt anyone would have expected such a trophy drought when Arsene was sweeping everything before him when he first arrived at Arsenal. The pinnacle of his achievements would unquestionably be the 2004/2005 season when Arsenal won the league without a single loss all season. After the victorious campaign, I still remember what he claimed to the world : "There will be a new power shift from Manchester to London". He could not have got it more wrong.

It would not be wrong to say that Arsenal are no longer a power house.(The talk of "power shift" is out of the window)! They are a good club no doubt. But, we are no longer a force. It was made apparent by our tame defeats against Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and more recently against Bayern Munich.We were well outclassed in all these matches. Even Arsene admitted it. After the defeat to Bayern, Arsene claimed "Bayern were class". (Of course, that means we are not!). Defeats against League Two side Bradford and Championship side Blackburn suggested we were not even close.

Is it the fault of the Board or Arsene or both? We can blame whoever we want to but the fact remains that Arsenal have become just another average team.

Arsenal's Ambitions Revealed

Arsenal's Ambitions Questioned Again

 So, the transfer window is about to come to a close and Arsenal have made no signings so far. Did we actually need any signings? We have never broken any transfer records during Arsene's reign before have we? In fact, we have never spent over 16mil pounds on a single player! Yet, we read in the media and from fans about "Arsenal to spend 40mil on this....." "30mil on that...."....."60 mil on pair....". You just have to wonder how people come up with such outrageous claims.

I do not intend to bore you with all this. We all know how we have fared when it comes to transfers. But I want to share something that I came across yesterday.

BBC 5 live broadcasted a short interview with the Galatasaray chief yesterday( I don't remember his name). What he said in the interview took me aback, as much as the interviewer himself. As you all know, Galatasary recently completed the "high profile" signings of Wesley Sneijder and Didier Drogba. Asked about how far Galatasary wanted to go in the UEFA Champions league, he replied "All the way!". He actually claimed that Galatasary were now well equipped to actually win the tournament.!
\
Now many people will say it is a foolish claim. And I agree. Two players won't win you the Champions League. But, what does it say about the club and the people running it? The way I see it ,"AMBITIOUS" is the right word to describe them. They made it to the knockout stage and now they sign two former Champions League winner to boost their chances of going far; how far;we can't answer that. But what is true is that they have at least increased their chances to go all the way.

Back at Arsenal, we sell our players to other clubs every year and buy "unproven" talents every year and the what we hear from our chief and the manager is "We can compete with the best".

Llorente Confirms And Another Defeat

Llorente Is Hot Property In Europe

So, Llorente has finally confirmed that he will be leaving Athletic Bilbao. However, Arsenal fans will be slightly disappointed as he only plans to leave at the end of the season. Asked at a press conference if he will be leaving, he said:

"Yes, I'm leaving on June 30. I want to try other things."

Guess what.
Arsenal slumped to another defeat.
A 2-1 defeat at the hands of Olympiakos last night means that Arsenal finish second in their group behind Shalke. It was hardly a shock really.  A second-string side playing in one of the most difficult places in Europe did not make it any easy; although it would not be wrong to claim that even the first team would have struggled with the kind of football that they are playing, or not playing lately.
I had mentioned in my previous post that Arsene is looking to concentrate on the EPL by sacrificing  the top spot in the group, which is justified in my view given our poor league position at the moment. We cannot expect Arsenal to do a "Chelsea" and win the Champions League. We have to be realistic.

Ox Took to Twitter To Express His Frustration

 I do not want to get into details of yesterday's match but, the better team won. The positive from the match was that J.Meade's performance at left back was really impressive. Ramsey et al failed once more. Alex "The Ox" Chamberlain vented his frustration at the defeat through twitter: "Its times like this a club needs to stick together to pull through. Trust me this hurts us just as much as it does the fans #AFC". Are these signs of dissatisfaction spreading across the Arsenal dressing room? Only time will tell.
Looking forward to the weekend's match against West Brom followed by the mid-week Capital One Cup tie against Bradford City.

WINTERBURN:ARSENE STILL THE MAN FOR ARSENAL

IS WENGER STILL GOOD ENOUGH FOR ARSENAL?

Arsenal FC legend Nigel Winterburn has come out in defense of Arsene Wenger. He said:

  "I think Arsene Wenger is the right man for the football club and I'm sure he can get Arsenal Football Club back to where they were several seasons ago if he was allowed to bring in some real top-quality players."


He further said:

"I love the style of football that Arsenal have played over the years under him"

Do you agree with Nigel? Should Arsene be given a chance based solely on his past credentials? If so, for how long?

In other news, Arsene has named a second-string squad for the trip to Olympiacos with  some completely new faces in Akpom,Ansah and Monterio in the first team squad(click to view complete squad list). It is quite clear that Arsene is happy with 2nd place in the group. I don't blame him for that. We can keep our regular players fresh for the weekend.

WENGER: WE WILL CHALLENGE IN THE FUTURE

ARSENE WENGER

Arsene Wenger recently told the media that Arsenal will challenge the best teams financially in the future because we are well placed financially at the moment. In saying so, Wenger revealed a critical facet of his character : living in the future and neglecting the present.

There is no doubt the future looks bright for Arsenal off the pitch. But what about our exploits on the pitch? Yes the off-the-pitch aspect is as important as on-the-pitch aspect but neglecting one for the other can only spell disaster as we have seen so many times with so many teams in football and other sports. What Wenger has done is that he has prioritized the "off field" aspects while almost completely neglecting the "on filed" aspect. This has been felt more and more every year since 2006. The figures speak for themselves. We have made more money and won absolutely nothing after 2005/06! We have been steadily increasing the number of sponsors and the amount of money they "pay" us while at the same time, we are experimenting with young and inexperienced players and expecting them to deliver trophies on the pitch!On top of that, we are selling our best players to get some extra cash! 

ARSENAL FANS WOULD LOVE TO SEE WENGER IN THIS PICTURE!

 Wenger is not, however,  responsible for everything, we all know that.In fact, some even speculate that it is entirely the fault of our board. But we are tired of hearing such statements like "we will challenge in the future","our future is bright", "we have a young team" every year, Mr. Wenger. We desperately want to hear "This is our year......","This our night.......","This trophy is for the fans......".

WHERE IS ARSENAL'S "BEAUTIFUL" FOOTBALL?

WILL THE NEXT GENERATION DELIVER BEAUTIFUL FOOTBALL OR TROPHIES?

One of my friends told me a few years back : "Arsenal will play some pretty football but they won't win anything." It was the 2006/07 season. I don't think I need to say more about that season! Now when I think over what he said, sure he was right when he claimed it. But I wonder. Do we still play "pretty" football?

First of all, what is "pretty" football? Does it mean playing quick,short-passing game; or quick one-touch passing game; or passing your way to the goal; or passing and scoring lots of goals? Most would claim that short,quick passing game is what Arsenal like to play. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But a key component that made our game "pretty" was one-touch play. The Invincibles were masters in the art and mesmerized the world with such plays. The next generation at Arsenal that came close to emulating the same style were the players from 2006/07 season with Fabregas,Hleb and Flamini at the heart of everything. I dare say such football is a thing of the past if one looks at the type of football that we play at the moment. Infact, Manchester United and even the so-called "smaller" teams like Swansea and Southampton arguably have better chance of winning the title of "pretty" football!

The irony is that we did not win anything when we played "pretty" football and it does not look like we will win anything when we don't play "pretty" football : ( .

ITS 13 IN A ROW FOR ARSENAL

CONSECUTIVE KNOCKOUT TOURNAMENT NO. 13

So, Arsenal have qualified for the knockout phase of the premier European club competition, the Champions League for the 13th season in a row. It is some achievement. Even the so called “great” teams like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus have not managed the same feat. It is a commendable achievement no doubt.

As much as the achievement is commendable, it also remains a fact that all of these teams (barring Juventus) have won the Champions League in the same period at least once but Arsenal’s best performance has been finishing as runners up, once. Herein lies the irony. Is competing bigger than winning? Is consistently reaching the knock-out phase bigger than winning the tournament itself? Arsenal fans need no reminding of such questions because they have been asking the same questions for the last 7 seasons as Arsenal have failed to win any trophy yet have qualified for the group stages of the Champions League consistently. There is no specific answer to this question. However, yesterdays match in my view, gave away some of answers to our questions.

Yes,we won the match 2-0 but still we never played like we would win against any team. In fact, in the first half, we were lucky to be 0-0 thanks to some poor finishing from our opponents. Even in the second half there were quite a lot of nervy moments for Arsenal. We will not be as lucky in all the matches that we play. The need for a leader in midfield and defense was so evident in last night's match. You could see that our players were nervy. They were perhaps a bit awed by the occasion because they knew how important the match was. As I have mentioned so many times in my previous posts, we must be defensively solid. The only time we were solid in Europe was when we reached the Finals in 2006 when we did not concede for almost 900 minutes till the final where we were dealt a cruel defeat. Every other season we have conceded more than we scored before heading to the exit.It is a fact. And based on this fact it is quite clear that unless we get a defensive solidity in our team , we will might not fill our trophy cabinet.

WALLCOT OUT! AND CHAMPIONS LEAGUE PREVIEW

WHERE DOES HIS FUTURE LIE?

Arsenal play host to Montpellier in the Champions League tonight and it has emerged that Theo Wallcot will miss the match due to injury. On the bright side, Gervinho is back in the squad and so is Gibbs. In the case of Gibbs it now seems as a matter of "when" rather than "if" he gets injured again. Such a pity.He is a decent player but injury has ruined him.

The situation with Wallcot is getting stretched by the day like rubber. There have been news of breakthroughs but until the deal is not done, anything can happen. Personally, Wallcot is not among my favorites and I would not mind him leaving especially after Wenger admitted he would replace him with "one of the best" if he was to leave.(Oh Mr.Wenger, we won't fall for that again!)

There are also rumors in the media that Henry is signing for us on loan again.Mr. Wenger too told the official Arsenal FC site www.Arsenal.com that Henry could be given a chance.Well, it would be a welcome no doubt for fans like us.Although on the downside,Henry is not the Henry of old. Yet he can give the team a lift and score some important goals too like last season.

Amidst all this, Arsenal host Montpellier in a crunch tie in the Champions League.Securing a place in the knockout phase of the Champions League depends on the result in these final two matches.It is not ideal to leave qualification till the final match but that is the case right now and we must face it.Only a win tonight and at least a point from our next match will guarantee progression to the next match.Arsenal must be ruing the two goal lead they allowed to slip in their last match against Schalke.One thing is certain,it is a must win or Arsenal.However, it won't be that easy as many think it will be. Montpellier will be coming with confidence after they played well against a strong PSG side in the French league. Added to the fact is that they have nothing to loose. Arsenal did defeat their bitter neighbors Tottenham 5-2 in their last match but they were not convincing when they played against 11 in that match. It will be an interesting tie tonight.