An Appeal To Arsenal Fans

"Man City sign........Manchester United sign.........Chelsea sign.........(even) Liverpool and Tottenham sign.......Arsenal linked with......."

I think the sentence speaks for itself here.

While other rival clubs of ours are busy signing players, most of us Arsenal fans are celebrating the 'big' players being linked with moves to the club, most of which are obviously fabricated. The more worrying thing for me is that we do this during every transfer window!


Its not that we do not sign players at all. We do. Over the years we have we signed Chamakh,Squillachi, Santos, Arteta, Mertesacker, Gervinho, Giroud....... after being linked with Ronaldinho, Sergio Ramos, Yaya Toure, David Villa, Fernando LLorente among others.

People come up with fantastic stories every year and every year, most Arsenal fans fall for it; every year. The more ridiculous the story, the more popular it is. The writers get their desired number of hits on the story and the readers get their dose of  "day-dreaming".

You have to look no further than comments on such stories. Comments like "...now Arsenal will win it this year......Arsenal triple winners this year.......Invincibles again.....a new dawn at Arsenal..."..... it goes on and on. And if you reply to such comments with comments like "we have not signed anyone yet" all you get is.... don't make me swear now! 

It is not a crime to be apprehensive. Being naive and "living in a bubble" is.

I am not saying we must be pessimistic about our team. We should always remain hopeful. We should hope that it will be different this year. But, we should keep our celebrations to ourselves until we actually sign a player or risk being ridiculed by "other fans" year after year.

You also do not have suffer the disappointment of broken promises......because the promises might not have been actually made in the first place!

Arsenal Slip Further Into Mediocrity

Arsenal 0 Manchester City 2
The scoreline was by no means a major shock. The EPL champions were in town.
You call them a "plastic" team or "money-bags" or whatever you want. They have a good squad and we knew it would be a difficult game. The Arsenal team have not covered themselves in glory by giving very erratic performances all season. On top of that, we had to play with 10 men for most of the game after Koscielny was sent off just 10 minutes into the game.

The most worrying thing for me after the match was that we never had the zeal, the drive to beat or at least compete with the opponents. That was the most disappointing aspect of the match. Yes, Wilshere,Sagna and to some extent,Szczesny had a good match, yet again. But a team consists of 11 players. Where were the others? There were a few sparks here and there but not consistently for the full 90 minutes.

Very few people would say we do not deserve to be mid-table, where we have been for the whole of the season. We are likely to finish mid-table come the end of the season on this form. I am not telling fans to switch teams or start calling for Wenger's head or put pressure on the board for spending lavishly in transfers. We should not react to the situation; we should respond to it. Keep supporting the club and get behind the team and the manger. They desperately need our support. What is true though, is the fact that the fall of Arsenal is truly complete. It really has been a great fall from the top to mid-table mediocrity.

Let Us Pray For Arsenal

Lets Pray

We must think positively. We must be optimistic.....True.

But if you tell Arsenal will win against Man City, even when Man City are not at the top of their game, even if they have not won at our home since 1975, that is asking too much, at least for me.

Here is an Arsenal side who have been so up and down this season. They have not hit the "world-beaters" level this season when they went "up" but when they stooped.....they stooped so low that they lost against a league one side playing with first team regulars and missing out, perhaps on the only chance to win a trophy in all these years. We have been very poor and inconsistent all season. There were a few bright sparks in some matches.....which were duly distinguished in the following match.

If you still tell me we will win.....that we can rely on the team that we have(at least this season)....that is beyond optimism....And if we tell this to the Arsenal board....they don't have ears to listen to the fans but fingers to count the money they make......The only thing I(and we) can do is....pray. Pray that Man City have a bad day in front of goal and Arsenal nick a goal or two.

Let Us Pray Together For Arsenal.

CHIT-CHAT

Today is a very important day for Arsenal FC. An important player of our squad,Jack Wilshere is playing tonight for the Arsenal reserves after a 14 month injury layoff that saw him miss the entire season last year.

It will be some time before he makes the first team.But non the less, it is an important step towards making it to the first squad.His return is good news for Arsenal who could benefit from the return of the outstanding player.His return is now more important as Diaby is out injured and we need that "assured" type of player in our midfield like Wilshere who can dictate the pace of the came while also creating countless scoring opportunities.

Midfield however is not at the top list of my concerns because it is a position where we have surplus replacements, also rightly claimed by Le Boss.My main concern is the striker's position. I do not(sadly) see any player in that position at Arsenal who is capable of scoring 20+ goals this season.Even more worrying is the fact that there are 20+ goal scoring talents at clubs that have traditionally been labelled as clubs below Arsenal. Everton have Anichebe and Jelavich (maybe Fellaini too),Sunderland(Fletcher),Aston Villa(Darren Bent),Tottenham(Jermain Defoe,Adebayor and maybe GarethBale), Southampton(RickieLambert), Reading (Shane Long).A club like Arsenal must have a world class striker,I don't see one at the moment. Gervinho could surprise me and score 20+ but he seems to be scared too many times to score especially when it matters(misses against Man City and Chelsea this season).Giroud too seems totally lost at Arsenal.He is already a flop to me.He missed  two chances that could have given us 4 points.Although, I will add that this is his first season and he will take time to settle.Maybe next season he will do better.But I would suggest Arsenal fans not to expect many goals from him this season. Podolski is a great finisher no doubt, but the manager is playing him at the left where he will not get many opportunities to score.And who is our other option?Chamakh? I think the manager knows how "good" Chamakh is.So he would prefer to use a false striker maybe like Barcelona and more recently by Spain.This could be a good option but what we must realize is that WE ARE NO BARCELONA or SPAIN.Our other option,Wallcott is pacey but too "lean" to be a striker in the Premier League.

The way I see it, I think Arsene should mix the "false striker" and the traditional number 9 kind of play with Gervinho upfront and maybe Giroud once in a while.It will be more likely for us to get goals then....ofcourse, from one of our midfielder!