Gunnerrific

I’m going to paint a picture and a tale about how the Arsenal beat my girlfriend. To quote my girlfriend’s sister:

So does Carmen always lose in Carmen vs. Arsenal?

My girlfriend is flying in to see my family on Tuesday. It will be a standard three days of libation and merriment for my family and her. Much fun will be had by all. However, she threw a wrench into my plans, my very serious Arsenal plans, when she scheduled her flight during a match.

How could she? The Arsenal kick off against Watford away was at 11:30am local time. Her flight was scheduled for an 11:50am arrival. Factor in a trip to the airport, waiting, and then a trip back and I would basically miss all but the last quarter of the match. This is all compounded due to the fact that my parents, who I am currently staying with over the holiday’s, have neither Fox Soccer Channel or any sort of DVR equipment.

So, to see a match in it’s entirety I must see it live or wait until January 3rd when I get back home. I’m obviously recording all of the matches back home for second viewings, but I’m the type of supporter that needs to see a match live if at all possible. I will go to very, very great lengths to see a match live.

So in talking with my girlfriend after the plans were made I informed her of the seriousness of her errors. Being the gentlemen that I am, I was ready to sack up and miss most of the match. A combination of YouTube and ATVO should tide me over later in the day, so I was all set to commit to this for the love of my life. However… she quickly told me to send her the other flight times.

Curious. Maybe she was willing to alter her flight plans for me and the Arsenal? I obliged and let her know via e-mail that there was a later flight that suited the match well. Moments later I received a notification of her new arrival time, and I rejoiced. I would now be able to see all of the match live.

I could have sent a cab to pick her up. I could have missed part of the match. But my girlfriend knows where she stands with the Arsenal. Isn’t she great? I’m paying the difference on the ticket and somehow she seems to be okay with this… I wasn’t actually expecting her to do this but she continues to surprise!

If there were a match recap for this it would probably read something like: Theo Walcott scored his first premier league goal in the match. Leave it to a 17 year old rookie to score on my girlfriend.

Come on Arsenal!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I’ll be enjoying a delicious turkey dinner with mom’s good old out-of-this-world stuffing. I hope you’re doing the same, and I’ll see you tomorrow for Watford.

Here are some English highlights of the Blackburn match for your holiday festivities.

Come on Arsenal!

Well that’s more like it. Arsenal beat Blackburn 6-2 in a thrilling match that shouldn’t be soon forgotten. Despite periods of inconsistency with appalling play the team played extremely well.

Blackburn went up 1-0 inside the first three minutes. This is a trend that is now to be expected. Toure was called for a foul inside the box that could certainly be argued both ways. Nonda, who scored both goals, slotted it home despite Lehmann’s best efforts. And again hopes were dashed early at the Emirates.

But fear not readers. Vice Captain (and now Captain) Gilberto equalized just 7 minutes later. For the rest of the first half we dominated play, and even went up 3-1 through goals from Hleb and Adebayor (penalty). Save for the penalty goal we suffered, we were pretty much dominating the match in the first half. It was a glorious period to be a gunner.

However, it didn’t last long. Coming out of the gates in the second we lost all semblance of good play. Passes were shoddy, turnovers were frequent, and possession was slim. Blackburn took one back in the 69th to everyone’s surprise, and the game was once again on. Blackburn had several chances that they could have capitalized on, but we somehow managed to keep them at bay despite some questionable defense.

I believe it was around the 72nd when Flamini came on that Arsenal started to shine again. Passes became more accurate, touches more deft, and we looked like the good old red and white again. It was no surprise then that three more goals poured in.

Robin Van Persie scored twice within three minutes, and then Flamini two minutes later. We stuck that knife deep into Blackburn, twisted it around real good, and then poured some salt in the wound. It was a lovely way to cap off the match. If there were any more of those early-leavers in this match then I hope they feel adequately depressed.

I wasn’t able to see all of this match live. I am currently back in Oklahoma City, where apparently a pub doesn’t exist that carries Setanta Sports (the network showing the match here in the states). I managed to find some live feed from a Japanese network though, but it was quite spotty.

There were two ten minute periods where I was only able to hear the commentary from ATVO. This was a blessing in disguise though, as the commentary on ATVO is directly from the stadium itself. The chanting and random shouts from the crowd are thus all the more prevalent, so it felt more like I was there.

Fabregas and Gilberto are really starting to work well together. Gilberto’s unsung antics in the back of the midfield continue to impress me, while Fabregas is starting to really develop his own style of play and dominance. He does well in setting up the flow of the attack and really controls the pace of the game. Rosicky looked really good until the start of the second half. I’m pretty impressed with how well he has settled in to the Arsenal style.

As I mentioned earlier the defense was a bit spotty. It will be quite nice to have the experience of Lauren back as I think that is where the real root of the problem is. Inexperience in the strikers or midfielders can always be masked by the opposition, or covered up by just yielding with a pass-back. Inexperience in the defense though will always result in goals being scored. This is just the nature of the beast, and like consistency with the rest of the squad, we as supporters should always be ready to see goals slip in.

Around the rest of the premiership, all of the rest of the teams that we needed to drop points did not. It’s disappointing when the the rest of the teams above and around us continue to win. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do and we are dependent upon other teams dropping points.

Lovely Christmas time means that we have matches back to back every week. On Tuesday we’re up against Watford away. This is another should-be-gimme match but I’m sure that the youngsters will make it thrilling like they always do.

Come on Arsenal!

Gunnerblog should really be praised for what was a brilliant write-up for yesterday’s Liverpool-Arsenal clash. We managed a 37 goal win over the bumbling Liverpool side.

Lehmann’s world cup note sold for about a million euros. That’s just as insane as he is! Meanwhile, negotiation talks will start soon about his future. I hope he stays with the club, though he doesn’t have much left in him.

Arsenal.com’s full write-up of the postponement is here, with a fabulous picture of the foggy pitch.

The classic ArseWeb has a write-up about the Arsenal Ladies winning against Blackburn. Those Arsenal girls sure know how to win, they should maybe let the boys in on the secret.

Zidane is apparently a silly twat, stating that Cannavaro deserved all of his awards. Apparently his so-called ‘friend’ and team-mate Thierry Henry is someone he didn’t feel like mentioning. I just hope all the stories have omitted parts of the conversation, like they normally do.

Over at Arsenal, wtf? Freddie Ljungberg is being called out for his on and off pitch antics. Particularly the headaches, the wages, the shit talking, and the poor form as of late. I don’t know that we need to let him go (or even mention it), but a stern talking to could just do the trick.

As usual Arseblogger gets it right in regards to Arsenal banning flags in the stadium. It’s a really poor idea and the club shouldn’t stoop this low.

There is some insight form FSC correspondent Bobby McMahon over at his blog in regards to Arsene’s recent behavior. It’s true, he’s been quite emotional.

Dwight4007 – Arsene Wenger has been having some emotional control issues lately. Given his fantastic success over the past 10 years, is he displacing some frustration over the play of his young team onto opposing managers and match officials?

Bobby – Probably.

Accurate and genius.

And finally I thought you might enjoy a nice little movie of Kung Fu volleys. Of course VP11′s super strike from earlier this season is featured.

I’ll start by calling Portsmouth a disaster. Yes, we pulled off a draw after going down by two. But, we went down by two. It’s completely unacceptable for The Arsenal to go down by two goals after 47 minutes, at home, against Portsmouth. If it were yesteryear and the team of 03-04 were on the pitch, this would have been a walk in the park.

I think I could best describe the team’s effort in the first half as pedestrian. It was a pedestrian pace that resulted in a mediocre effort. We did have several opportunities that James continued to push away, but we lacked an urgency and conviction that we ought to always have with us. There were several periods of that first half where we basically looked masturbatory while passing around the back line, back and forth. Where was the movement? Where was the tenacity? I know some of it was in the stands in a black coat.

I wouldn’t call the first half as bad as everyone else has been. Just mediocre, with no goals. The second half, after we went down from the second goal, resulted in quite a few opportunities and much quicker play. After Gilberto equalized you felt like we really had a chance, but some of our urgency was lost.

It goes to show that when backed into a corner the youngsters will fight hard. As I’ve said before, when it’s not a juggernaut team and when we aren’t backed into a corner, we just don’t look threatening enough.

The two goals were brilliant though and I’m thrilled we were able to escape with a draw. We needed a win badly but you take what you get. We really did have a slew of chances in the second, and any one of them could have gone in. It was an absolutely thrilling match in the second.

Aliadiere had his first start in quite some time and he looked fine by me. You can argue that after Adebayor came on, the game changed entirely. However, it was only ten minutes after going down by two, so I wouldn’t blame Aliadiere with all that. Aliadiere had some good chances and even better passes. He gave the ball up in some pretty silly situations though so I can see how he would get blamed for this. I still think he deserves a bit more of a chance. Alongside Henry he might look better, not that anyone wouldn’t.

The stand-out defender for my taste was Clichy. He was tenacious, he pushed up the sideline, and he defended well. Djourou, Toure, and Eboue played alright but played scrappy when both goals were scored.

Hleb had a good and bad game. On one side, his leading pass to Walcott through four defenders, that led to Adebayor’s goal, gave me a boner. On the other hand, he still has some problems in holding up play too much.

The average age of the Arsenal squad that played on Saturday, minus Gilberto and Lehmann, was 22. In the scope of football, this is too young not to expect problems. We’ll always be the Arsenal, and we’ll always be contenders, but when the average age of your squad hovers in the low 20′s, you can’t expect us to win every match.

Given the tender young age of the squad, we really should be quite happy. We’re in 4th right now and we have had some really big wins this season. If we can hold on to these players for awhile things will be quite different. It just goes back to the same old points, which almost aren’t worth bringing up anymore. We need to be consistent, capitalize on our opportunities, and dominate the midfield, but it’s hard to do that with youngsters.

Confidence. Yup, just flat-out confidence. But it wasn’t an action that was meant to put confidence in the players that were started… It was a ploy to boost Hleb, Van Persie, and Cesc’s mental state more than anything else.

Imagine being one of these young players and finding out you are benched. The immediate reaction would of course be “How could he!?”, but it wouldn’t last long. It’s easy to look at Arsenal’s line-up against Wigan and see that Arsene was so confident in his younger side that his best youngster’s could be rested. This should make Hleb, Cesc, and Van Persie, and everyone else, realize how vital they are to the squad.

Then in the 75th minute Arsene finally makes the move. Not wanting to waste all three subs at once, Cesc and Van Persie came on to save the day. And save the day they did.

Cesc took control of the midfield with his usual gusto. Van Persie began meddling with the Wigan back line and thus required more coverage. Adebayor was a bit freed up, and it was only a matter of time until one of them broke through.

Now these guys, these kids really, know that Arsene is banking on them. Before this, they were part of the team and they were expected to perform. Now, they are part of the team and expected to perform above the rest. This is really the official beginning of the new dynasty. The squad is now deep enough to afford this display of reliability and confidence.

I still feel that these subs were entirely too late though. If given more of the second half, I think that we would have been much more dominant. Arsene typically subs at the 60th or the 75th, but I wish he would break that rule. Sometimes subbing at the 55th would do just as well. We barely won that match (in the 87th), and if we hadn’t, everyone would have been screaming about the subs coming on too late. Thus, it’s important that Arsene not forget how he felt in the 86th.

There isn’t much team news ahead of Portsmouth on Saturday. We’ve got the same injuries lined up so there shouldn’t be too drastic a change to the squad. I just hope Wenger doesn’t risk too much again… with Liverpool on Wednesday I am sure he is likely to rest some players again, but it can’t be at the cost of a loss.