Gunnerrific

That’s right. Situation normal, all f*cked up. It started with the Moscow draw, worsened with the Everton draw, and went downhill since the loss against West Ham. We’ve had the occasional glimmer of hope, like the Liverpool win, but over-all our performance thus far has been tragic. For each step forward, we take two back.

My post about the four problems we have still holds true in my mind. Morale, leadership, player rotation, and consistency in finishing. Of course a brutish midfield presence is needed as well, so maybe I need to change this to the 5 problems Arsenal needs solve. Moreover, Arsene needs to solve them. It’s a hard time to have faith in our French Manager but he’s pulled off bigger miracles in the past.

It’s being reported that Henry is unlikely to be fit for Saturday’s Tottenham match. Sweet Holy Jesus I can’t believe this is getting worse. Henry didn’t play that well on Wednesday, but he’s our all-star. Having him on the pitch will always increase our odds of winning. I hope he recovers quickly but it’s not looking good. Howefully Lord Van Persie can help us out again to do our goal-scoring.

Can you imagine how much less frustrating it would be if Manchester and Chelsea weren’t running away with it? They just can’t stop winning while we slip and goof or way out of contention. I think at this point we’ll be in great shape if we can finish third, and somehow pull off another good Champion’s League performance.

Meanwhile the Guardian is reporting that the Emirates stadium has been linked to the recent death of the Russian ex-spy. That’s just strange. I think the police must be confused. You see, Emirates is where Arsenal is being beaten into frustration, not where an ex-KGB agent was murdered with radiation. Rimshot.

There’s one thing that is certain though.  And that is that this particular gunner is staying positive.  Optimistic.  Wishful.  Dreamy.  Call it what you will, but I’m behind the boys to turn this around.

This is a short post tonight as I’m much too inebriated to write a well composed, thoughtful post on what was truly a wretched game. We went down early to an American striker, which I unfortunately have the responsibility in calling out in my pre-match report.  The only saving grace was a set-piece from VP11 which saw a bit of fight left in the Arsenal side.

I don’t know what Arsene was thinking with the line-up.  I understand that the team is playing 2 games a week for several months.  I understand that some of our players need a rest.  But did he not understand that we abso-fucking-lutely needed a win?  Song was wretched, and we only looked decent after Cesc came on. If anything Song should have come on in the second, after we’d secured a win. I was fine with Flamini and Hoyte in the back line, but without Cesc and Gilberto constantly showing for the defense, we couldn’t even successfully get the ball out of our own half.
Senderos looked particularly lost in defense and gave up several balls unnecessarily.  Then he went on to claim a second yellow, that was absolutely deserved I feel, and with 10 men and a goal down all hope was lost.

Lehmann was my man of the match as he was forced to make much to many necessary saves.  Without his goalkeeping we would have lost by much more than a goal.  After him was Cesc, who despite playing for 45 minutes, helped to give the Arsenal a bit of respite.
There really isn’t much else to say about this match.  We lost, we didn’t play well, and we’re in trouble.  All that we, the Arsenal faithful, can do is get behind our team.

Oh to be a gooner.

Arsene Wenger was just as mad as the rest of the English football world that Thierry Henry was snubbed by ‘the press’ that vote for the European Footballer of the Year Award. However Arsene was absolutely thrilled that Henry won the Gunnerrific Player of the Year Award.

All the news sites and review shows that I watch seemed pretty adamant about how much Cannavaro did not deserve this award.  It’s quite interesting that ‘journalists’ vote for this award, and then the media turns around and disagrees with it.  Why can’t these guys row in the same direction?
We’ve got Fulham away today. It’s a huge, huge match and I can’t stress the word huge quite enough. Just fucking huge. In order to get over the hump with our poor finishing consistency and be competitive with the league leaders we just flat-out have to win this match.

Historically speaking, we own this match.  The last time Fulham scored in this fixture was 2001/02.  Add in the fact that we have won this fixture every occurrence this century, and you should figure this match is a shoe-in. But, as Goodplaya wisely states, the team simply can’t do that.  If we just expect we will win this, Fulham will.  The boys are going to have to work for this win.

Like the rest of the Arsenal blogging family, I think this is the perfect opportunity for a strong 4-4-2 with VP11 and TH14 leading the charge.  I think our strongest midfield for this match would be Gilberto, Cesc, Hleb, and Rosicky. Then I’d keep Ljungberg and Walcott on the bench as wildcards that could come on at any time for added fitness. Given the choice, it would be Walcott.
In defense I think that Eboue, Toure, Senderos, and Clichy would do nicely while Gallas and Lauren are still out.  And as always the permanently furious Jens Lehmann should mind the net. He minds it well, assuming that our defense doesn’t give Fulham’s strikers any time.
Arsenal can win this match easy.  It’s all about consistency in the defense, controlling the midfield, and capitalizing on our opportunities. That’s right, if we have a shot on goal, we need to convert it.  I think that if we can just do these three things, the match will be in our hands.  Easy, right? I think that after last match, these things are even more clearer now. The team has to know it, so I hope that we can do this one right.

American striker Brian McBride has been playing quite well this season, so I’ll be keeping my eye on him during match. If anyone is going to do us in, it’ll be him. Fulham is currently riding the top of the second half of the table and their season has been fraught with much more hardship than ours.
They’re by FAR, the greatest TEAM, the WORLD has ever SEEN!

Arsenal captain Thierry Henry was named the first Gunnerrific Footballer of the Year on Monday, beating out Champion’s League winner Ronaldinho and International teammate Zinedine Zidane.

The 29-year-old striker, who captained Arsenal to a thrilling Champion’s League final in May of this year, won the prize with one vote from the author of Gunnerrific, narrowly beating out all other competition finalists.

Henry is the first Frenchman to win the award since the prize’s inception earlier today.

Thierry Henry’s accomplishments of 2006 outweighed the competitors in all areas. In club play, he captained his domestic club to the Champion’s League final only to lose a man down in the last 10 minutes. He also helped his young Arsenal squad rise to 4th place at the end of the season, ensuring further Champion’s League opportunities.

Henry also helped France to the finals of the World Cup, only to see another dramatic defeat in a penalty shoot-out.

On top of team performance, Henry was also the leading goal-scorer in the English Premier League in the 2005-06 season.

Thierry Henry rose to fame during his time at Arsenal at the turn of the century, playing alongside one of the strongest English teams to grace the premiership.

In other news, Sepp Blatter, grand poobah of FIFA, announced that video replays will never be considered as long as he is in charge of the organization. Am I the only one hoping that he is quickly dethroned? Citing that any slow down in play would hurt the game, he argues that this technology should never be used.

Has anyone done testing or research into how long it could take to overturn a ruling? I’m thinking somewhere on the order of 5-15 seconds. I don’t understand where the problem is.

Also, Fabio Cunt-avarro won the European Footballer of the Year award. I’ve no idea why. Just who are these ‘journalists’ that vote in this competition? It’s surprisingly organized by a French publication that must have no national allegiance for it’s own players. Ridiculous.

The Loss

It was a crushing defeat at Bolton over the weekend. It never really looked like we were going to win this match but there were a couple of flashes of brilliance that made it seem like a draw was possible. It was a decent team performance with flat-out poor finishing. The side still has trouble capitalizing on opportunities and when we give the opposing side just one opportunity they know how to finish.

We went down, again, within the first ten minutes. We gave a striker too much space, again, and a brilliant strike shocked the team. We dominated possession and created opportunities, again, but failed to put the ball in the back of the net. Truly disappointing.

1. The Referee

One of Bolton’s players, Kevin Davies, pushed Eboue down in the 20th minute. It was an offensive and potentially injury-resulting action and it should have resulted in a red card. The ref, who had a clear line of sight, felt that a yellow was enough.

Let’s think about how an Arsenal player would take this. First, Bolton has basically assaulted one of your fellow teammates. Then, the match official completely fails to gain control of the situation and penalize the player accordingly. From this point onwards, every Arsenal player now had to look out for themselves’ even more than normal because the ref had set a precedent that this behavior was acceptable. Thus, the entire mindset of the team was shattered. Not only did we have to win, now we had to protect ourselves, and be just as offensive back. Bolton pulled us down to their level, and the ref just let it happen.

Aside from this match, refereeing has affected our game on too many occasions. The team needs to move on after these appalling situations, no matter how hard it is. It’s one thing to lose a match and later point at bad decisions, but it’s another to let these decision negatively impact the play and morale of the team.

2. Leadership

In this match, more than any other, I noticed a serious lack of leadership and coordination. I’m starting to question both Henry and Gilberto in this role, as I have never really seen either of them pumping up the squad and pulling the team together. After a well defended play or good chance on goal, someone needs to be clapping, yelling, and egging the team on. Instead we have someone that is either silent with their head down or yelling negatively.

I don’t see how the team can get over our current problems and low-morale without a strong leadership presence on the field. We definitely have one on the side of the pitch and in the locker room in Arsene Wenger, but we have truly missed a ‘Viera-like’ role.

Not only is this role important in controlling and dominating play in the center of the pitch, but it also helps to keep the team copasetic. I hope Henry can start to do more of this, but it’s hard to imagine a striker filling this role. And just a couple of weeks ago I was praising Henry during these times of doubt… now I’m just not sure.

Can Cesc develop into this player more quickly than anyone has thought? He is quickly becoming the dominant force in our squad by controlling the flow of play, kick-starting the offense, and dictating the terms of the match. At 19 though he is no leader yet and his temper still gets in the way.

3. Rotating Players

Without Van Persie, Henry, Gallas, and Rosicky, the team looked like it was struggling to be recognized as the good old Arsenal. Rosicky, who is clearly going to be a pick over Ljungberg after his recent injuries and poor performances, could have added quite a bit to this match. And don’t get me started on Adebayor up front, who looked as lost as the kids from the Blair Witch Project up front. With Van Persie or Henry you at least see some confidence and well-thought passing.

Gallas will need to find a spot on the first squad, but I’ve no idea where that is. Perhaps he can play in the left or right-back positions depending on Clichy and Eboue’s performance. Senderos and Toure are great together, and when Lauren comes back then I think those four could be a dominant back line. Don’t get me wrong, Clichy and Eboue are hard-workers with plenty of skill, but they have momentary lapses that provide the opponent with too many opportunities.

We need to get over this injury slump so that a full squad is available for Arsene. I’d be so much more confident in our side if we had a similar-looking line-up day-in and day-out. Thank god we have a deep bench, but at this point there is little reasoning in calling it that, as our bench players see just as much time as the starters. If the team can recover from it’s current injuries and prevent any new ones we’ll be a revitalized and stronger side.

4. Finishing

We had 14 shots to Bolton’s 10. 7 of those shots were on goal, to Bolton’s 8. We had 4 more corners with 11 in all. We also maintained possession 55% of the match. But we lost. In looking at the stats, you’d have to assume that Arsenal won this match, but unfortunately that just wasn’t the case.

Every week that we lose our stats look the same. We dominate the game, we have more shots on/off goal, and we end up losing. How? To me, it comes down to finishing. In my mind, we really played a good game on Saturday. We just gave Bolton 3 chances that we shouldn’t have. Then, we didn’t capitalize on 3 shots that hit the post. These shots have to go in the net for these stats to back-up the match.

Everyone talks about Arsenal ‘playing their game’, which involves precise and quick passing. I don’t know that the style of game is failing us so much as it is the lack of finishing. Every opportunity on net needs to count. It didn’t take Bolton a whole lot of effort to capitalize on the few chances they had. With world class players on our side, we need to get better about making sure every shot counts.

Staying Positive

Now that all that is out of the way, I’m looking forward to see how things pan out. We’ve got a match at Craven Cottage on Wednesday against a beleaguered Fulham side. We’ll have a stronger team available and I’m sure more than one gunner will be looking for some vengeance. During last season’s stream of losses it was hard to be a gunner, but as always it’s worth it in the end. We’ve just got to stay positive and hope the team can pull things together.

As to whether or not we are out of the title race, I think it’s a moot point. In one hand, Arsene has ruled it out, thus the will to win might dip a bit. But at the same time this might make the team want to prove him wrong! It’s always possible for Chelsea or United to fall apart. It’s also always possible for Arsenal to start winning regularly. I don’t think it’s worth speculating beyond that.

Come on Arsenal!

So it’s Bolton all over again on Saturday. This match has consistently been a thorn in our side for many years now. The squad looks so different nowadays so hopefully the new blood can do us some good.

In interviews on ATVO both Ljungberg and Toure pointed out that this game has always been difficult. Despite that, Ljungberg called upon the team for decisive action this weekend so that we can scoop up some vital points. Toure also admitted that the problems Bolton have always posed will be difficult to overcome, but the whole team knows how important this match and the possible points are.

There is also a bit of bad news out of the camp in the form of a light Henry injury to the neck. As a result he’ll be out this match. With Van Persie sidelined for yellow card abuse, our front line will look a bit out of shape. You’ve got to assume that either Walcott or Baptista will be in helping Adebayor out. I’d almost like to see Baptista up front and Walcott on the wings again. Gilberto should be back so our defensive midfielder role is covered.

This means that the three other coveted midfield spots will be up for grabs, but we know Cesc is likely to fill one of them. So then who will the two wingers be, Ljungberg, Hleb, Walcott, or Flamini?

The last time we were without Henry for a match we beat Manchester United away. Hopefully the team will feel the same sense of urgency and duty without our regular captain on the pitch, and fight hard.

In other news, Hleb has been named as the Belarus’ Player of the Year. There should be no big surprise there as he is the most predominant Belarusian playing football now. Let’s see how much the best Belarusian footballer can help us against Bolton!

Come on Arsenal!