Arsenal Cannon Goes Missing; No Gunpowder In The Amoury

Arsenal 0 - 2 Schalke

Match report

I have never had the privilege of watching a live Arsenal game. I hope that Arsenal travel to Southern Africa soon, as that represents my best chance of travelling to watch them live. I know, it would be a pre-season tour but hey... I get what you can.

I often wonder what the atmosphere inside the Emirates stadium is like. I watch live Barclays English Premier League games every weekend from the comfort (and loneliness) of my house. I have noted how Liverpool fans sing "you'll never walk alone" before every kick-off at Anfield. They will sing it at the start of the second half and at various times during a Liverpool match- win or lose.

Then there are stadia such as Carrow Road, St. James Park, Britannia .. to name but a few. I listen to the noise the fans make in these places, often for 90 minutes. They cheer their team on, they jeer/taunt/insult/harangue/ harass/ the opposition the opposition. This tactic does not always work for them in that their teams do not always win, but boy to come away with a result from such places you really need to work your socks off and be strong mentally. Bear in mind I observe all these things from my TV screen and my sound system.

I have observed how at the Emirates stadium, you can barely hear the Arsenal fans except when the team is winning. When the team is not playing great, Arsenal fans are often quiet in the stadium and the away fans (who are the minority) can be heard singing their lungs out as if they are the home team. Now, It could be the  acoustics in the stadium, or it could be the television director playing tricks with the stadium sound, favouring the away fans, but I think you get where I am going with this rant.

I could be wrong, but from where I sit (which is several thousand miles away from the stadium) I don't hear the Arsenal fans willing the team on when the players need it most. Instead I hear groans, moans, whistles and aahs when the team are not playing well. The Arsenal players need us now to lift them up. To hail insults at them or the coaching staff will not bring as back to winning ways. The team has lost confidence and appears to be jaded. Not even Steve Bould knows how this happened. But it has happened. The team looks  tired, slow, blind-folded, clueless and one legged.

At home, you would expect Arsenal to have troubled Schalke. I think most fans, myself especially, can live with defeat if I feel the team really played to their best, created chances but were just unlucky on the day. What I cannot live with is the lukewarm performances I am seeing in the past two defeats. This is the most worrying thing for me.

We can point at our lack of creating chances, our poor defending, our jadedness etc but the truth lies here; our midfield is not strong enough nor balanced. Arteta, Cazorla, Coquelin and Ramsey is not a very strong midfield, nor is it balanced. It is made worse by the fact that our best striker, Podolski is not getting a run through the centre when it matters. African Brother Gervinho (ABG) is something of an Emmanuel Eboue at the moment. He has great potential but will he ever really realise it? At his age, I tend to worry. I thought playing him through the centre will make a Thierry Henry of him. why? because he has the same type of awkward dribbling skills, speed and ability to turn in tight spaces. He has been playing as a winger throughout his career and now Wenger decides to use him as a striker. I can see why. And he has shown glimpses of that potential so far with the goals he has scored.

Santi Cazorla looks tired. Period. He needs a rest. A few substitute appearances might do him good. Thomas Vermaelen, for a team captain, does not cover himself in glory when it matters during a game. Aaron  Ramsey cannot play in a wide position. Francis Coquelin is a bad omen. Everytime he plays, we seem to lose.

Andre Santos is not playing very well from an attacking point of view at the moment. We spoke too early about the Steve Bould effect on this team. we are still too easy to break down and we do not close down quickly when we lose the ball.

The worst thing for me is this: we are not playing to the best of our ability. I cannot live with that.

Arseblog does a good job conveying my feelings about the game and the team at the moment.

I will continue to support The Arsenal though. Hopefully the cannon, together with the gunpowder and cannon balls will be found soon and we shall start to fire once again.

COYG!!

Gunners Leave Gun Powder At Home: Cannon Fails To Fire At Canaries

I have been away for the better part of a month. I that period, I hit a 12 year old boy with my car on my way to work, at a curve and while avoiding a head-on-collision with an on-coming truck. Don’t worry, the little boy is fine, he was discharged from hospital last week Tuesday. He didn’t break any bones (miracle!) just some cuts and bruises. There is a God somewhere I swear!

Also during that time, the real football went on break, giving way to international games and just to show you how much I care for internal football compared to Arsenal FC, I had this to say about internal football:!
The real football returned with Arsenal once again.

We travelled with our cannon to shoot some canaries. I know, I know, it’s an over-kill to hunt a canary with a cannon. Much to my frustration/bemusement/anger/hopelessness, we failed to fire our cannon even once! It turns out we forgot the gun powder back home.

We had to improvise by throwing pebbles at the canaries from under the Carrow Road tree, while they chirped, danced from branch to branch and defecated on our collective heads.

We could not start our moves from the back. Every time Don Mannone played a short pass to his defenders, Norwich closed us down, forcing the ball back to the keeper and he would hoof it up-field. You would think a team with our technical ability would pass their way from the back regardless of the opposition pressure. This tactic proved very effective for Norwich on the day; expect more and more teams to do the same for the rest of the season.

Arsenal not only lacked confidence but they lacked ideas. I thought that the Norwich goal would wake us up and bring down the wrath of  the Arsenal cannon upon the Canaries. Instead we remained under the tree, throwing pebbles at the Canaries as they chirped and shitted on our foreheads again and again and again….

Arsene Wenger looked like a man bereft of ideas. The entire team lacked a spark. Nobody could rise above the collective mediocrity that I was seeing. I wished a certain Abou Diaby had been fit for this game. Irritating and frustrating he may be on occasion, but he is a maverick, capable of doing something absolutely strange/ridiculous/outrageous/fantastic/magical/you name it.

Questions really have to be asked why Arsenal keep being this toothless time and time again when it matters. I endured the Mancies United game earlier that afternoon with my brother-in-law (yep! He is a Manc-ie!). I noted how they looked sharp and full of energy. Manchester Shitty too had a tough game but they kept at it, eventually winning with 10 men and coming from a goal behind.

Arsenal on the other hand looked tired, did not trouble the Norwich goal or keeper the entire afternoon. Yes, let us give credit to Norwich for defending very well, but let us look at ourselves and admit we were poo on the day. I will not bother to dissect individual poo, suffice to say everybody was poo. The tactics were poo. In fact there were no tactics. We were just playing and hoping to somehow score.

Onto matters more positive, Tonight we face Schalke in the Champions League. This is an opportunity to “put things right”. I hope for the sake of the team that we win tonight. Failure to win will knock our confidence even further down. We cannot be feeling sorry for ourselves; we need to get right back up and continue fighting.

The latest injury news is not too bad, we should be able to cope without the Ox; we have Serge Gnabry. Bacary Sagna, Emmanuel Frimpong and Jack Wilshere played 90 minutes each in the under-21s on Monday, meaning they should all be playing in the first team very soon. I am really looking forward to having especially Sagna and Wilshere back playing, but surprisingly, or rather strangely, the 1 player I really want back is Abou Diaby.

I know Jack is a special player and Bacary Sagna is the best right-back in the league, but for me, the player we really need is a fit Abou Diaby. I just have this funny feeling he is the key to our success. I can’t quite put it into words, but it’s just a gut feeling I have. There is something about Diaby that will bring success to this team- if he can be fit long enough.

So, let’s keep going, don’t let disappointment keep you from supporting The Arsenal. Remember that we never do things the easy way, and the season still has a long way to go so perhaps it’s a good thing that we are faltering now because there is plenty of time to rectify these weaknesses.

Enjoy the Schalke game wherever you are.

COYG!!