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!

Win Marred By Wilshere's Loss

Wilshere Will Be Badly Missed

It was a resolute performance for the 1-0 win from Arsenal yesterday. We were able to cling on to the one goal lead ,especially when we were under immense pressure in the second half after we lost Jenkinson to a red card. The win was more important as it meant we are still in the race for a top four finish after Spurs had earlier won their match against Newcastle.

We witnessed some excellent football in the first half from Arsenal. Wilshere and Cazorla were involved in most of the attacking threats that we had against Sunderland. The only downside in the first half was that we could not score more goals when maybe we should have because the slim lead placed us under immense pressure in the second half. The second half did not start well. We lost Wilshere, our main man, on 50 minutes to injury. And then Jenkinson got sent off for a second yellow following a rash challenge. We had to play the last half an hour with ten men and just about hung on for the win. We missed very good chances to go up 2 or 3 goals up and had to thank Szczesny and Sagna for helping us keep a clean sheet.

The good thing to come out of the match is that we were resilient as a team and were hard to break down even after being reduced to ten men. But the biggest loss is undoubtedly Wilshere. He will be a big, big loss. He has been such an influential player for Arsenal. I wonder how we will cope with his loss. His loss could be season defining for Arsenal, such is the importance of this player. Lets just hope we perform well without him and pray for his quick recovery.

After the match, our players were looked extremely tired and fatigued.Our next opponents are Blackburn at home in an FA cup tie on Saturday, which means our players will get some well deserved rest. Thank god we don't have Champions League match this week!

POST EVERTON : TOP 4 SPOT SLIPPING AWAY!

I don't think I need to say too much after the match. The facts speak for themselves:
1) After 14 games,Arsenal are in 7th position
2) We are 12 points behind league leaders Man United(its goodbye to the EPL trophy....again!)
3) We are 5 points behind 4th placed West Brom
4) We are 2 points behind our rivals Spurs and 1 point behind top 4 hopefuls Everton

WILSHERE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO STOOD OUT

 Yet, the most important fact is that we are not playing well and, it does not look like we will be very soon. Yes, some players like Wilshere had a decent game but what about the rest? Wallcott scored and was almost anonymous for most of the game( like always). Ramsey got into good positions to score and wasted everything( like always). The rest.....we do not plan to finish mid-table do we? Surely we must do better. I dare say we were lucky to just draw 1-1 yesterday night. We were outplayed many times especially in the second half. Its against the high-flying Swansea next and honestly,things do not look good for Arsenal.

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.  

THE BUSINESS END

So, the international break is over and we are back to some club football. We are in for some cracking matches this weekend and the weekends to follow.It is now what is described by many as "The Business End" of matches when games come thick and fast.

Points gathered during this time of the season often decides where a team finishes in the table. Arsene described this in his own words recently:

"In October the moment of truth starts for the team.The league establishes itself a little bit and the Champions League goes to decisive moments."


Especially after an International break, matches are often very difficult for teams to cope with as players are fatigued and not in ideal condition for matches.Added to it is the fact that international breaks are always accompanied by injuries to some players(Kos and Wallcot are out for at least the next game!).This makes the matches even more important.

Our next 4 matches read Norwich(A),Shalke(H),QPR(H),Reading(A).The very next match is against Manchester United(A) before we head to Shalke(A) and then host Fulham(H).Only then will we get a 7 day break before we host the North London Derby against Tottenham.It will be breathless football before that!
So, hold on to your seats, because we are in for some treat!

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!