Gunnerrific

I can’t believe how many news stories I’ve seen over the past couple of days analyzing Arsenal. Our beloved club has become the foremost subject of scrutiny. It’s as though every journalist, analyst, and commentator has come out of the woodwork to take a sliver of Arsenal and put it under the microscope. If Arsene Wenger reads the news like the rest of his he must be feeling a bit overwhelmed for a manager that has managed to finish third in the English Premier League (or so we assume at this point).

Is this all deserved?

Wenger Overhwlemed Much?

I don’t think it is. Yes, we should all be talking about Arsenal. Yes, we should all be critical of Arsenal. But no, we should not talk as though the club is ending as we know it… or that Wenger needs to be let go… or that huge drastic changes must happen immediately… it’s just too easy to try and sensationalize the situation we are in. I will not play into the histrionics, but merely laugh at it. I bet Arsene Wenger is doing the same. I imagine him to be daydreaming about responding to all of this with just one long, drawn out, Frenchly accented, “Uhhhhhhhhhhh…”

Rumors today swell about Arsenal making a bid for City keeper Joe Hart. The part of the article I love the most is “A fifth consecutive year without a trophy…”. Great. Because we need more reminders of that, and using that sort of statistic is pretty ridiculous. Am I wrong here? I mean, it’s not like there are 10 trophies handed out every year to all the different teams… it’s hard to win a trophy. And for each competition, there is only one winner. Sure, given our history, we are expected to be winning some silverware. But at the same time, a dry spell for five years surely can’t be used as a statistic in every single case one makes. If that’s the case, let’s start talking about United and Chelsea as the teams that ‘have never had an unbeaten season’.

There’s not too much news today ahead of the Manchester City match. Bayern beat Lyon. Inter surprised Barcelona. Frankly, I hope Barca come back to win it. It would look better on us.

I don’t really know where to start. Everything seemed to be going so well for our makeshift squad as we were 2-0 up against a woeful Wigan in the 80th minute. That should really be the end of the story. Unfortunately, the B team we had on the pitch forgot to finish the game and allowed Wigan to score 3 goals in 11 minutes. Our title hopes were ruined yet again.

The first half was frustrating and full of the typical ‘Arsenal problem’ in which we pass the ball around a lot without taking a shot. At one point one of Walcott’s crosses was handled and it was an obvious penalty. This was missed, but it was clear at this point that we had an advantage. Later, while running down the right side, Walcott then chose to cross a ball that he obviously should’ve taken the shot on. He still seems gun shy at times.

Fortunately Walcott’s goal in the 41st relieved all the tension. A perfectly placed shot buried in the back of net and we were on top. This is the type of goal we need Walcott to score. He was on the run, receiving a well placed pass from Bendtner, and confronted with defenders all around. He still managed to pull his way through and muscle a shot off.

There was a brief moment of tension when Watson went down in the box. Anyone that is claiming that Nasri’s pull on Watson was a penalty is an idiot. Nasri barely tugged on him and he fell down like a huge sack of pitiful potatoes. It was embarrassing, and I’m glad the ref made the right call.

In the second half, Silvestre managed to find himself completely unmarked to receive a corner perfectly on the head. 2-0 and Arsenal was just having a walk in the park.

At the 80th minute everything fell apart.

The first Wigan goal was a fluke. We had men all over the box and the pull back from Moses seemed completely accidentally placed. Watson happened to be in the right place at the right time and drilled it into the back of the net. You could say that our defenders were misplaced, but in looking at the replay it seems like we were just unlucky. We had every passing lane covered except for the unlikely pull back, which wasn’t even intended. If anything, it was the play leading up to this goal in which we allowed far too much space for Wigan to move up the pitch.

The second Wigan goal was a fluke. Fabianksi was a nightmare. There’s no way around it. Despite it being his birthday he was completely unsure of himself. Throughout the whole match he appeared to be questioning himself and lacking confidence. When the mistake came, it was a bad one. He had both hands on the ball but just didn’t hold onto it. Of course Bramble was right there to nod it into the back of the net.

The third Wigan goal was a fluke. N’Zogbia manhandled his way across the outside of the box while Clichy, Silvestre, and Campbell all tried to prevent any sort of shot on target. The strike was perfect, curling inward and off the post.

Fluke fluke fluke. We are very susceptible them.

Here’s the deal.

We are missing Fabregas, Arshavin, Gallas, Vermaelen, and Song, and Van Persie is still not fit for a full 90 minutes. That is 6 players out of our starting 11! At the end of the day, with those sorts of injuries, we are just not going to win as much. Someone really needs to do some investigating to find out why we are susceptible to so many injuries that last for so long. I’m less worried about Wenger’s choice of Eastmond over Eboue or Traore than I am over the fact that we keep getting destroyed by these injuries.

Given the number of injuries we’ve had to deal with as of late, it could be worse. Given how long Van Persie has been out, it could be worse. As of this point, it seems as though our 3rd place spot is guaranteed, and it could be worse.

In other news, Torres is out for 6 weeks, making Liverpool’s attempt to take the 4th spot all the more difficult. It appears as though for the first time, in a long time, the traditional top 4′s reign will be over. Fortunately Arsenal isn’t the odd team out.

With Manchester only winning a point today the possibility of Arsenal winning the league, all-be-it without Fabregas, seems all the more… possible. Despite our consistent reign of injuries we suffer we do have an easier schedule, still, than the United or Chelsea. I’m not sure how far we will be able to go without Fabregas but the side that played Barcelona really didn’t do all that terrible.

And apparently in this thing called the FA Cup Portsmouth shocked Tottenham to advance to the finals. Arsenal’s not in it, so I really don’t care that much.

The gents over at FootyLatest.com wrote a short post about the 5 players Arsenal should offload. I think I agree with every single one of them: Almunia, Silvestre, Gallas, Campbell, and Rosicky. However, the real issue is who do we sign? You can’t just offload all those players and spend a boatload of cash to replace them. The issue with Arsenal, which Wenger and others have outright stated, is that they don’t have the money to go and buy big name players. That’s why our squad consists of skinny but skilled little kids like Theo Walcott. Until we pay off the stadium and start sitting on some money, or perhaps win a trophy, it will be business as usual.

In other news, Messi’s name continues to show up whenever I search for news about Arsenal. It has been several days since that defeat so this needs to go away fast. I wish for one second that I could have a football conversation with someone that didn’t have to involve Messi coming up. He is a punk.

So I haven’t written a post in what is pretty much forever in blog years. I thought I would head things off before it got out of hand and I really hit the 1 year mark. Don’t insult me too much, but don’t disappoint me either.

The season has ended in a rather spectacular fashion. We bombed out of the Champion’s League in a nightmare match against a team we know really well, and we are barely scraping by with yet another fourth place league finish. I am really frustrated with this. We are an amazing team and have some good players, but I shouldn’t be that upset… back at the start of the season I had a feeling we were in for this again.

We really didn’t make any significant signings last summer, and we have no real veterans on our team that are well established. I have been, and will continue to be, on the same page with Mr. Wenger when it comes to the notion of breeding young talent into exactly what you want. However, that’s not going to work if you don’t have any all-stars on your team. The closest players we have to that are all players that have gotten their start at Arsenal. I don’t have any faith in a squad that has finished fourth for this many seasons AND has a manager that continually says the team is strong, and he doesn’t need to buy players.

That’s right… Arsene just proclaimed, again, that he won’t be buying any players and that his squad is strong enough. I know of no better example of a broken record. In other shocking news, Dick Cheney disagrees with Obama’s policies and Andy Samberg makes funny music videos that people feel the need to share with each other, over and over again. Now I’m really worried, because he can’t keep saying this every season and expect the board to be happy with it. Maybe if he finally said that 4th place is pretty good, and that finishing there is higher than 16 other teams is also pretty good, it’d be easier to swallow the same medicine. Otherwise, the board simply can’t tolerate this forever.

Anyways, I’m beating a dead horse. I would like to see Arsenal spend a boatload of cash this summer on a boatload of really good players. I think that sums it up.

We’re top o’ the league right now and it feels damn good. What makes it even sweeter is the fact that we have a game in hand. So, realistically speaking, we’re top of the league and potentially a point or three ahead of Manchester United, the dastardly cunts. I’ve been thinking about the season thus far, and the season ahead, and trying to figure out what our chances of winning the league are. We’ve definitely got an uphill battle ahead of us.

First, lets look at the quantity of games. So far, we have played 11 games. Of those 11 games, we have won 8 and drawn 3. The interesting thing about these games is that a massive 7 of them have been at home. So, for you math whizzes out there, we’ve only played 4 away games, or roughly 36% of our games away. We’ve played the least amount of away games than anyone else. For the away games that we played away, two of them were in London (West Ham and Tottenham). Of course, we battled against an away crowd, but we didn’t have to travel far for those games. It would be within reason to say that we’ve only traveled then for two games this season.

Now, let’s look at who we have played against. Below is the list of teams we have played, and their current position in the league.

• 2 – Manchester United
• 3 – Manchester City
• 5 – Portsmouth
• 6 – Blackburn
• 7 – Liverpool
• 11 – West Ham
• 13 – Fulham
• 15 – Sunderland
• 17 – Tottenham (hahahaahahahaha)
• 19 – Bolton
• 20 – Derby

If you sample out the positions of these teams and divide by the number of games, it should equal about 10 (the middle of the table). This would represent a fair opposition in games played so far. If the average were less than 10 , the opposition would have been tougher than the average, and the same could be said for the opposite. Our average points of teams that we have played against is 10.72. So, we have had a slightly easier schedule.So, thus far we have had a *slightly* easier schedule than would be expected, and we have played 64% of our games at home. For a team of our caliber (and lets be honest we’re damn good) you’d expect that we should be at the top of the league. If you run these numbers for other teams, it’s not nearly as advantageous.

Now let’s move on to our games ahead. Specifically the next 9 games, which will take us through to the new year. Of those 9 games, 3 of them are at home. That’s right, just 2 of them. And, if you perform the same analysis on the opposition, you get the following.

• 12 – Reading
• 18 – Wigan
• 9 – Aston Villa
• 10 – Newcastle
• 16 – Middlesbrough
• 4 – Chelsea
• 17 – Tottenham (hahahhaahhaaha)
• 5 – Portsmouth
• 8 – Everton

The average position of these teams is 11, which is again a slightly easier position average. However, more of these games are away from home. So, does games away or position in the table matter more? An interesting note here is that Manchester United have 4 of their next 8 games at home, and it’s against considerably easier opposition.

Either way, it is clear to me that the next 8 games are crucial to Arsenal if we are to win the league. We need to take as many points as we can from these games. I wouldn’t be surprised if Manchester United overtakes us for a bit given the schedule, but that won’t worry me. We just need to keep scoring and winning! Come on Arsenal!!!!

Update: Thanks to AC in the comments for mentioning the Chelsea match.. It wasn’t listed on Soccernet.

Robin Van Persie’s unfortunate injury during the Euro qualifiers has sidelined him for what will soon be a month. Van Persie recently stated that strikers need more protection from those trying to take them down. I can only assume he isn’t talking about birth control, but instead about referees. It’s easy to see how Van Persie could feel that way after seeing this horrible picture:

Lately we have been very poor offensively. I know, I know, we are scoring fine and winning or drawing all of our games. That aside, we haven’t looked very dangerous up front. Everyone has been saying how great we look with Henry, and that we don’t miss him. Well, we certainly could use a dangerous striker. In my mind, Van Persie is our best striker, and while he has been injured the side has suffered. I can’t wait for him to get back, just in time for our difficult schedule up ahead.

Let’s take a look at some schmuck’s opinion of Van Persie’s top 13 goals. Why is he a schmuck? Well he stole my wallpapers and used it for his goddamned video. At least he did mention me in the credits. Sweet.