Arsenal's new Triumph TR7

Of course I don't mean the 1980's 'Sports' car - I'm talking about a certain Tomas Rosicky who had a triumphant game against the Villains on Saturday. Very impressive indeed, compared to his recent, rather lacklustre displays anyway. 


I've been disappointed with TR7 for quite a while now. He's never set the club alight with the sort of displays that we'd see from him for his home country which enticed Wenger into buying him in the first place. Injury has played it's part in that of course and he has been unfortunate but he's never hit that 'Peak', not in my opinion anyway. Hopefully this season he'll hit those heady heights. 


On Saturday he was given the captains armband and had an inspired game. Leading by example, spraying passes everywhere to get others involved and setting up a goal for Chamakh. He clearly enjoyed the role. So did the rest of the team. It was a result very much needed after some poor, disappointing performances recently. 

I don't feel the result has lifted us fans and convinced us all that the table has turned again yet. But it is a step in the right direction. 


With a Carling Cup quarter final game against Wigan to come on Tuesday where inevitably part of the team will be rested, we'll have to wait until our next fixture to really tell if Saturday's result has boosted the teams obviously frail confidence. 


There still remains a huge hole in our defence. We shipped two goals far too easily against Villa. Even with Song actually playing a 'defensive' midfield role instead of trying to do his best impersonation of an on form Cesc Fabregas (badly), He failed to do a job in supporting Kosh and Seb who I thought did a fairly good job. I think Song wants to be what he isn't and therefore tries to hard. When he has a good game, he has a very good game. When he has a bad game, he's  not the worst player on the pitch so he gets away with it. I like Song. He's still young and will be an important player for us for a long time. But please Alex Song Billong stick to your role on the pitch consistently.


Clichy was caught in two minds yet again for the first goal which, although should have been wiped off by the ref for interference by Carew, could have been avoided with some basic simple defending. The second goal we were collectively at fault for. The cross should have been blocked, the header should have been prevented and Clichy needs to learn to jump higher on the line! 


It's indecisiveness that has cost us so often this season, either by the defence or the goal keeper. This still has to be addressed. Yes we miss Vermaelen but it's the team's defensive mindset which is the problem, not just the quality of the Centre Backs. This needs to improve or we will not win a single trophy this season. Not even the League Cup. 


Over all though, It was great to see that despite conceding yet again in a manner reminiscent of a certain game that shall not be mentioned, the mentality in attack was to ignore the score and go for it. And we did just that. I think 4-2 was a flattering result for Villa. We could and should have had 6 or 7 had it not been for Friedel's good saves, last ditch defending or yet again, indecisiveness up front. 


Come Sunday evening, we're sitting 3rd in the table, two points behind the shit and only by a slightly superior goal difference for the chavs. So, thanks to our closest opponents also having mediocre patches, we're still in the fight for the League title. 


Nasty November is almost over, just one more game left in this horrid month......


So it's Wigan in the league Cup on Tuesday. Robin Van Persie should start for the first time since his return from long term injury. I should imagine Walcott will start too with Eboue back from a knee ligament injury which turned out to be much milder than originally thought. Thankfully. 
It will be a tough game, but I think this is one trophy our young/fringe players can achieve if Wenger gets the mix of youth and experience right as he has done so far. 


Wenger has asked all Gooners to 'keep the faith'. Words I have often used myself to my fellow Gooners. 
And I, for one shall do so. He insists he will continue to take the League Cup seriously and weather permitting, we should hopefully see another convincing cup performance at the Grove which, again is sold out. 


Elsewhere:


Manure sit top after hammering Blackburn 7-1. Well, if you were Fergie's best bumchum/buttbuddy/arsemate/bottomfriend/sphincterpal and he'd offered you a bottle of 1890 Lafite Rothschild Antique red, you'd tell your players to bend over and take it up the jacksy too wouldn't you FatSam?! 
So they are still unbeaten but only 2 points ahead after many a bore draw. Someone asked me if I was worried about the shite going unbeaten - 'Invincibles' style. I just laughed. 
Manure will lose this season and I hope we are the ones to inflict that loss in December.


The Chavs' poor form is thankfully continuing after a draw with Newcastle. Long may that form run. Goes to show that you need a solid foundation in a football club, not just a sugar daddy. With their decent players ageing faster than Dorian Gray after accidently glancing at his picture, they have no future. 
They don't seem to have any decent youth players coming through the ranks apart from a certain Josh McEachran who is supposedly as big a prospect as our very own JW. Ha ha!! 
With sugar daddy Roman going sour with his spending, how will they compete for titles in the next few years? Inevitably, the media is awash with stories of how Roman is of course blaming wonky browed Ancelotti and apparently wants Barca's out of favour manager. Fickle fuckers the lot of em. 


It was Liverpool's turn to capitulate against the scum on Sunday. Poor finishing from 'World Beater' Torres - again. Dye your hair blonde again Torres - the bleach clearly sunk into your brain cells and helped with your accuracy and decision making!
Yet again Skrtel scores at the wrong end. Cheers Liverfools. I suppose I should just give Spuds some credit, but I just can't. It is physically and mentally impossible. 

The Premier League served up a record amount of goals this weekend since the 1998 Arsenal Double Winning Season. Up yours La Liga. 


Here's how the table looks as of Monday 29th November 2010:

Man Utd	15	31
Chelsea	15	29
Arsenal	15	29
Man City	15	26
Tottenham	15	25
Bolton	15	23
Sunderland	15	20
Stoke City	15	20
Newcastle	15	19
Liverpool	15	19
Blackpool	15	19
WBA	15	19
Blackburn	15	18
Birmingham	15	17
Aston Villa	15	17
Everton	15	16
Fulham	15	15
Wigan Athletic	15	14
Wolves	15	12
West Ham Utd	15	12

So roll on Tuesday and good luck to which ever team Wenger fields. 


It's Fulham at home on Saturday the 4th of December; our first fixture of the festive season. 


Home form is more worrying than our away form unfortunately, so this game is no way a gimme. 
I hate Sparky Spews and desperately want him to lose his job at the end of the season after relegating the Cottagers, so a good sparky spanking will be a great Chrimbo present please lads!


Now to continue the new feature of the blog: Here's this weeks football related babe(s). Of course I have to include something for the ladies and/or any of you who tend to swing the alternative bat. I'm here to please everyone! Enjoy:

Clode, Sawyer and Jackson walk away sexily after setting fire to White Hart Lane ..... in my dreams!

Freddie Ljungberg - Arsenal Legend

....and Freddie in his Arsenal Heyday!

Hope you enjoyed! T'il next time. 

In Arsene we Trust!

Arsenal go Jekyll, and Hyde away from the title.

It's been over two days since Arsenal's capitulation against the enemy at the Grove. I've needed that amount of time to calm down after being left seething with anger, frustration and severe nausea.

I've had time to think, to evaluate and with a dashing of help from our London neighbours Chavski, I can finally bring myself to think clearly enough to write something that makes sense - to me anyway.

My Twitter account has been awash with comments, moans and rantings towards the players, some of them directly at the players who have Twitter accounts, Wenger and of course the media. The papers and various other media sources have loved the capitulation served up by the Gunners, who have brought all of the negativity upon themselves with what can only be described as a Jekyll and Hyde performance.

I won't go into individual performances. In my eyes, aside from the subs that came on, every player had a good first half, and an appalling second half. Some may argue that Fabregas was fairly consistent and had a glorious shot in the second half which was well saved, but I don't care about that. 

In my eyes the overall second half was pathetic, annoying, frustrating... I could go on but like Arsenal's players in the second half, I've capitulated.

A common observation is that we missed a leader on the pitch.
Who is our leader? Cesc Fabregas.
What does a leader do? He rallies the troops, helps organise, kicks his team mates up the arse if needed and most importantly leads by example.
Did Fabregas do that on Saturday? No.
Accurate observation then.

But this has been the case on many occasions. Cesc’s leadership qualities do exist. He has earned a reputation as our ‘Gerrard’ though I prefer to refer to him as Arsenal’s captain fantastic.

The uproar surrounding 'Barca-gate' in the summer shows how important he is to the club and fans. But does his leadership help the team consistently? When he is injured, does he travel with the team everywhere, sit with the players in the dressing room as a dominant guiding light to encourage the team?
All I do know is that his leadership qualities aren’t always obvious.
He is no Viera that’s for sure. I think he will be one day but I don’t think he’ll ever be an Adams. Even Viera as a captain could not be mentioned in the same sentence as the legendary Mr Arsenal himself.

Wenger’s theory surrounding leadership is that every player on the pitch should be a leader. Not a bad policy. If that could be achieved then I’m all for it. But I don’t believe in that policy because it clearly hasn’t worked.

Don’t get me wrong. We have really worked well as a team and fought hard together at times. Only recently at Goodison did we see an example of great teamwork and collective battling to win a game. So we can do it but why could we not do that against our most bitter enemy - the Spuds?

You’d think of all teams to up your game and rally and battle as a team against, it would be them. But the opposite happened on Saturday. We capitulated after taking a two goal lead, at home, in front of what was pleasingly an audible, noisy crowd of passionate home fans. And not for the first time - remember Wigan last season?

Wenger has cited complacency when in the lead as the reason. But Arsene, this has happened before on so many occassions. So what do you say to the players at half time when in the sort of comfortable position we were in on Saturday?

 
If Wenger is aware of the complacency issue, why did he not drum it into his player to NOT be complacent in the second half? Surely he must have done.
So did the players just ignore him? Just what the fuck is happening? 

Do the players know how to not be complacent? What is the opposite of complacency?

These theories, questions, queries etc. could go on forever and before we know it, we could be at the top of the league. Why? Because the title race is wide open.
The top four is no longer. Manure have not lost - yet. But they have drawn a lot and are only two points ahead of the Gunners alongside the Chavs who have lost 3 of the last 4.

It’s all topsy-turvy. But the fact that we’re still in the race should not be used to justify any arguments in retaliation to the fans worries and criticisms. (Though some 'fans' do go way overboard and get far too personal) 

We’re lucky we’re still in the race, it’s only because of our rivals’  inconsistencies too that we are in it.

We could and should be seven points clear now as we should not have lost to Newcastle, Spuds and West Brom, two promoted sides and our worst enemy who haven’t beaten us at home in the league since ‘93.
How mad does that make you feel because it makes me feel livid and sick.

Facts are facts though and stats are stats and we are, thanks to the inconsistency of the top teams, still in with just as much of a chance at the title as we always have been. I refuse to believe that we could possibly let another lead like Saturday’s slip. No matter who it is against.

Wenger says he is giving every last drop of his blood to help this team to win. I believe him but want him to stop cos he's proper pastey already. 

The team let us and Wenger down the other day as well as themselves. Losing at home to the enemy hurt a lot, mainly cos it's not happened for so long, it painfully wrenched away at heart strings that hadn't felt any pain for a long time.

I can however, handle the twattish comments by Spud fans after they broke a 17 year hoodoo.Pathetic.

Let them have their latest DVD release. We’ve won the league at White Hart Lane. they will forever be in our shadow.

I just want the players to show how sorry they are and win back our faith again, by using that game as a catalyst to a trophy.

So roll on Tuesday when we have the chance to qualify, finally, for the next phase in the CL. There’s lots of rumour of wholesale changes. Whichever team goes out, there should be no excuse. they should batter Braga to cheer up the Gooners and look forward to battering our next opponents.

I hate Arsenal being compared to our rivals but we all know that the likes of the Manure would be considered a wounded tiger after a significant, poor defeat and all teams would fear a backlash following that.
We need to gauge that kind of mentality and take out our frustrations as a team by mauling our opponents from now.
As fans we have to vent our frustrations not at the players or Wenger, but by being raucous and loud at every game, home and away, in order to show our team we are 100% behind them.

I’ve not heard the Arsenal faithful being referred to as the 12th man for donkey’s ….. .but fuck that, let’s break another record and give the team a 13th man. I have a felling that they need OUR leadership.

So that's that horrible subject covered. Now I'd like to introduce a tiny new fun segment of my blog:

Football related babe of the week:

Just something, that as a red blooded male, I felt was missing from the blog. You can't have football without babes and beer. As pictures of beer aren't exactly as titillating and just make you want to go down the pub, I'll leave them out and with the current economic crisis, you could all do without me teasing you with sexy pictures of chilled amber nectar. So here is a fit football related babe of my choice for all you ladies and gents to drool over, envy, comment on, bitch about or whatever. Enjoy!

This is the lovely Sky Sports News Presenter

Charlotte Jackson.

Also, to get you involved you can suggest football related totty - male or female - (we have to be fair to the Lady Gooners too!) by emailing them to: arsenalranterblog@gmail.com and I'll add them randomly to this section each week. If you want to be added to a mailing list to receive the ArsenalRanterblog as soon as it's published, please send an email to the same address with the ridiculous word: 'Rantmebabyonemoretime' in the subject box.

One more final note: I'd like to mention a great Gooner and blogger who's been nominated for 'Best Young Blogger' in the 'Not100% Awards'. 

Siany Macalarny. 


I recommend you check out her great blog archive and get voting ASAP! 


click on this link to vote: Siany Macalarny .....all the best Sian, you helped inspire me to start the ArsenalRanterFC1886 blog and you've been a great idol. Good luck! 

Arsenal break a sweat and chip a few teeth on Toffees

Arsenal on Sunday continued to show the grit and determination that wins Premiership titles as they narrowly beat Everton at Goodison Park.

It’s the way we’ve played for the past few games, not so much pure football, more poor football. But the way we’ve defended as a team has helped us get a couple of good results against teams we could have drawn or lost against given the recent lack of real Arsenalish performances.
Gone are the billion passes, flicks and great team goals. Now we seem to be grinding, scrapping and taking the odd chance to nick a goal. Then scaring the ghoulies out of the Gooners watching with hearts racing faster than Walcott’s legs. We’ve still scored the odd good goal and can still pass ok but no-where near as fluently and as often as normal.
Our goals tally on and off target and number of chances have dipped dramatically in recent games, plus we’re still missing the same ratio of chances. Not good.



During the Wolves game I felt a rush of emotions I’d not felt as an Arsenal fan for a long long time. I felt even more of a nervous wreck, I was scared, my confidence had wained.....I felt like SpongeRob Brownpants.

And I felt the same against Everton. I can’t remember the last time I felt confident that Arsenal would win. But we fought hard, worked hard, and chewed up all they could throw at us for most of the game. Until Cahill, inevitably, scored from close range. On that goal, I’d like to  thank Alan Smith - ex-Arsenal legend, for his ‘Commentators Curse’. At 2-0 up and with Fabianski making great saves to keep it that way, old Smudge decided to say “They just can’t beat him”. Twenty-six seconds later the score was 2-1. Cheers Smudger. We make things hard enough for ourselves as it is and we don’t need ex-Gunners making things worse, so from now on -  Shut-it!!


Anyway, so we were hanging on for what seemed like an eternity by Calvin Klein, Cesc scored a technically brilliant goal and Shavva set up Sagna to score his second for the Gunners!
As I mentioned, Fabianski made some brilliant saves again today but I'm not gonna go over the top until I’ve seen him keep this form up for at least 20 games in a row. After all, he is just doing what he’s paid to do. But well done Lukas.

I’m hoping that if we can get through ‘Nasty November’ in good shape and get back to our confident pure Arsenal style, but know that if we are under the cosh against the likes of the Chav’s and Manure’s we’ll grind out a good result, then I think we are going to win the title this season.

We’ve all being waiting for the Gunners to consistently find that grit and determination to grind out tough results when required for a long time. It’s been the one ingredient that Manure and Chavski have had for years which is why they have been the only title contenders for the past five years.
Following Manure’s lucky draw against a Villa side that typically capitulated (when will these teams learn to stop sitting back and play for 90 minutes plus Fergie time instead of thinking the games over half way through the match - Tossers) and Chavski’s 0-3 mauling by Scumderland at Chavford Bridge, we now sit in a healthy second place, just 2 points from the top and a point ahead of the Shite!

Barclays Premier League Table
Last updated: 17:17, November 14, 2010

	Team	P	W	D	L	Pts	F	A
1	Chelsea	12	9	1	2	28	28	5
2	Arsenal	13	8	2	3	26	26	12
3	Manchester United	13	6	7	0	25	26	15
4	Manchester City	13	6	4	3	22	15	10
5	Bolton Wanderers	13	4	7	2	19	21	19
6	Tottenham Hotspur	13	5	4	4	19	18	17
7	Newcastle United	13	5	3	5	18	21	16
8	Aston Villa	13	4	5	4	17	15	18

So, what am I worried about?! Am I being a little melodramatic about the way Arsenal are playing? Should I wash the brown from my pants and buck my ideas up? Of course I should.

Looking at the facts; these last two games have been away from home against tough opponents desperate to stay in the league. We have players still getting match fit after returning from injury, we’ve not had any new injuries so far, we’ve been defending as a team, Cesc’s form is improving, even Sagna scored today!

Here’s one to ponder; when we play our beautiful flowing football and get hacked to bits, we get injuries left right and up front. Since we’ve decided we can’t beat them so we’ll join them and are now hacking back, we’re injury free. Hmmm?

All in all, we’re in very good shape, we’re just in an un-Arsenal like shape. It’s not what we’re used to and we’ve been treated to such beautiful footballing eye-candy for so long, we get a sour taste in our eyes when we have to play Stokishly.
So let’s celebrate our rise up the table, let’s praise the toughness of our team. We can compete with the thugs of this world without breaking legs, yes we’ll pick up the odd red here and there but like I said before, I’d rather see the toughness of the Viera, Adams, Keown era return to the Gunners as that missing ingredient if it means we’ll be lifting that elusive trophy come May 2011.

Interesting that Nik B was not in the squad following his alleged outburst in the Danish press last week about not playing enough. But we were assured by WenGod that it was a medical matter and he would not be making the Denmark squad either. So he’s either pulled something in training, or he’s got a sore arse/earhole from the verbal spanking I’m sure Wenger gave him. I can only say what a lot of other Gooners have also said - ‘Nik, you’ve just come back from Injury, you’ve never been number 1 up front and you didn’t take your chance to claim that mantle whilst Van Persie was injured. So shut up, get your head down, get amazing in training and you’ll play more.’


Jack and Kieran have been called up to the England squad for this weeks Interruption - ops,  I  mean International. Crapello will probably leave them both on the bench though. Idiotini.
If Jack doesn’t get the nod ahead of over-rated thicko Gareth Barry for a friendly against France and doesn’t give Kieran a run out ahead of Cashley then he should be sacked. I personally want him sacked anyway, Sack the whole effin FA for hiring him in the first place as far as I’m concerned, but we’re stuck with him, so I can only hope he finally sticks to his original word and plays some youth in the team when he has the chance. We’ll see.  

Lastly, much praise to all at the ground today for an uninterrupted minutes silence for the fallen. There are always grounds where some muggy cnut - usually a chav, who decides to belch, whistle or shout loudly then brag to all his/her muggy cnut chav friends - “that was my belch on the telly innit” - these people don’t deserve to be able to afford a ticket to matches. CNUTS.

Let’s hope that after the International friendlies we still have a fully fit squad and that we mash us up some Spuds next weekend!

Rant over and out. 
Please comment negatively or positively, join me on Twitter and/or the ArsenalRanter Facebook page. Enjoy.