Fighting spirit

Great mental attitude, good sprit, fight, real determination, a genuine desire to win: if I had a pound for every time I’d heard Arsene Wenger roll out any combination of these phrases about the current Arsenal team, I’d be able to embark on a flower-buying spree the like that Elton John has never seen.

While I understand Wenger’s attempts to convince himself, the fans and, most of all the players themselves, that they do indeed have all of these attributes, the problem is… they don’t.

If they did, and with one of the easiest run-ins we’ve had in years, we would be on the brink of being crowned Champions this weekend. If they had an ounce of good mental attitude, spirit, determination and fight, they would have been able to defend a lead. And not just a slim lead – a 4-0 lead, a 2-0 lead at home, a 1-0 lead with 10 seconds to go.

Instead, all we can do is look back and wonder how we didn’t take:

2 extra points from Sunderland away when 1-0 up with injury time expired

3 extra points from Spurs at home when 2-0 at half time

2 extra points from Wigan away when 2-1 up with ten to go, conceding an own goal to give them a draw

2 extra points from Newcastle away when 4-0 (four fucking nil) up in the middle of the second half.

2 extra points from Liverpool at home when 1-0 up with 10 seconds to go.

2 extra points from spurs away when 3-1 up after 43 minutes.

1 extra point from Bolton away when drawing with one minute to go.

Now I know there will always be a game or two in a season when you are pegged back. But that’s 14 points conceded from good positions at the end of games. And it’s in addition to terrible defeats at home to West Brom and Newcastle, and equally frustrating 0-0 draws at home to Birmingham and Sunderland.

Spirit my arse.

Should I stay or should I or go...?

Yesterday’s blog provoked a fair amount of debate (two responses is exactly double the number of responses of any previous post) about who is and who isn’t good enough in the current Arsenal squad.

While I’ll admit I was a bit provocative to include Chamakh and maybe Sagna as ones who should go, the point is this team simply doesn’t have what’s required to make the very top level. Our first 11 is strong, but what comes in when we get injuries – and we get injuries about as often as Premiership footballers get super-injunctions - isn't good enough.

Wenger surely now has to admit that his masterplan will not achieve the desired results. What’s required is a shipping out of those not good enough, replacing them players who have the attributes we lack: leadership, strength and the ability to see out a game.

So who should he keep and who should he sell?

Manuel Almunia

When Almunia retires he will have a lengthy career working kids’ parties. Demand for clowns is much higher there than in football grounds so, although the money isn’t as good, he’ll at least be busy. Far too many errors and the defence no longer has confidence in him – which is the last thing our defence needs.

Sell.

Lukasz Fabianski

Also error prone but, more worryingly, he is small, lacks presence in the box and appears to have wrists about as strong as Ashley Cole’s willpower in a lapdancing bar offering buy-one-get-one-free. May make a decent enough number two ‘keeper. But as for number one…

Sell.

Woijciech Szczesney

Commentators’ nightmare, but our best ‘keeper by some distance. Although he’s prone to the occasional error of judgement – like last night’s penalty, for example – he is still young and already looks like a strong presence in goal. He’s a bit like Miley Cyrus: At the moment, it’s not quite right. But in a few years it will be fine.

Stay.

Laurent Koscielny

Koscielny is quick, which is a good attribute in a centre back, and has excellent games on occasion. However, he also dives in too much and makes bad decisions, meaning he gets booked a lot. Good enough to be at the club, but you’d like to think when all the centrebacks are fit he’d be the one on the bench.

Stay.

Bacary Sagna

With our style of play, you can forgive our fullbacks not being the greatest defenders on the basis that they are good going forward. Sagna used to be a classic example of this. But of late, he’s been too negative going forward – and his defending has deteriorated too. He’s a bit like former-Christian-vocalist-turned-slutty-pop-princess Katy Perry: used to be very good but is now very bad. That said, I accept he has the quality to turn things around.

Stay.

Gael Clichy

When Ashley Cole turned out to be the world’s biggest prick, we all revelled in the fact we could sell him and simply bring through a ready-made replacement. Sadly, Clichy took a dip in form – which has lasted for two-and-a-half fucking years. Clichy will, at least twice in a game, mess around with the ball in his own half to the point that he loses it and gives up a chance.

Sell.

Sebastien Squillaci

Cheap stop-gap buy. Not good enough.

Sell.

Thomas Vermaelan

Vermaelan is the best defender at our club by a mile and scores a few going forward too. However, he gets inured about as often as Gazza wakes up concerned about where his keys and wallet are and wondering why his Hush Puppies are covered in puke. That said, he is the best we have and I look forward to seeing him and Jourou partnering our central defence.

Stay

Johan Durou

See Thomas Vermaelen almost word-for-word.

Stay.

Kieren Gibbs

Yet another injury-prone Arsenal defender, but also another good talent. Got to play more, and should be in the side ahead of Clichy.

Stay.

Emannuel Eboue

Sell. Or give away for free. Or put him down. Or something. But he must not play for this club again.

Sell.

Abou Diaby

One of my more contentious victims yesterday. Diaby had a good game at Spurs, and showed what he can do. The problem is he only does it about one game in five. He’s a bit like Kerry Katona: on paper, it’s all good (blonde, busty pop star). But in reality it’s just all wrong.

Sell.

Cesc Fabregas

Fabregas is, and showed again for 70 minutes against Spurs, the most talented player at Arsenal. Sometimes when he’s out and Wilshere is freed up, I think we don’t miss him that much. Then he comes back, plays passes like he did last night, changes games and shows he is a world-class talent. That’s why it makes this verdict so hard to make. The issue of Fabregas’s future has become a circus bigger than the club. He has become bigger than the club. He could have stopped it, he chose not to, and for that reason…

Sell.

Tomas Rosicky

I feel sorry for Rosicky because like Eduardo and hopefully not Ramsey, he has never been the same player since a horrific year-long injury. No longer makes any kind of impact.

Sell.

Samir Nasri

When Fabregas goes, Nasri will be the big star of this team. He has the potential to be our current-day Robert Pires.

Stay.

Denilson

So fucking bad I forgot to put him down as one we should sell yesterday. His nickname should be ‘The Crab’, because he only ever goes fucking sideways. Had a strong year after Flamini left, and would probably benefit from a run in the team. But he isn’t going to get one…

Sell.

Aaron Ramsey

May never be the same, but hopefully will pick up where he left off. Captain of Wales, but that’s no reason to sell him.

Stay.

Alex Song

Song has improved no end and is a decent enough midfielder. But he always slows the game down when we are moving forward. Wenger should tell him to stay behind the halfway line and only get involved when there’s a tackle to be made. He’s a bit like Cheryl Cole: sometimes it all looks perfect and I can see a long, rosy future for us. While other times I want to rip his fucking throat out and scream in his face until he sees sense.

Stay.

Jack Wilshere

Wislhere is going to be one of England’s greatest ever… chavs. Frequently involved in bust-ups, knocked up his ex-chick at 19 and unable to string a sentence together, Wenger says he is “an intelligent boy”. He is certainly a fucking good footballer and, although he is likely to bring the occasional dark day to the club’s front door via some dodgy front pages, we will have to learn to live with it and appreciate his ability on the field.

Stay.

Andrey Arshaavin

Tricky. A genuine match winner who hasn’t won a match for us in over a year. One more season to prove he can be what he shows too rarely.

Stay.

Rob van Persie

The thing that scares me the most about Robin van Persie is that we will grow impatient of his injuries, sell him, and watch on as he becomes one of the greatest strikers in the world. He is just so, so good on his day, which is pretty frequent when he is fit (which is pretty not frequent).

Stay.

Theo Walcott

It’s not easy playing a game of football after you’ve just driven a Formula One racing car around a track for two hours, which is why Theo probably only ever gives us 45 good minutes in a game. But they are pretty shit hot minutes when he does do it. He is, what they call it on Sky, a great “impact player”.

Stay.

Marouame Chamakh

Had a great first few months at the club, albeit scoring mainly against shit teams at home, and showed real potential. However, we only put high balls in the box when he’s not on the pitch, and he’s gone right off the boil. Doesn’t really look like he can come back from it either.

Sell.

Niklas Bendtner

Now this is tricky too. I think Bendtner is arrogant and sometimes abysmal. But sometimes we need a bit of arrogance, and he’s not always abysmal. Wouldn’t make anyone’s first choice of strikers, but decent enough at mixing things up when he comes on. I’d keep him.
Stay.

Carlos Vela

Never quite made it – and now he’s gone out on loan, he’s probably gone for good.

Sell.

So there you have it. That’s eleven I’d sell (in addition to Lehmann who will retire, Mannone who will never play and Frimpong et al who are just reserves). What that tells me is we have a pretty decent back bone of a side and, by shipping out these players – many of who will generate quite a bit of cash – we have the chance to add some genuinely quality players while staying within our spending principles. Simple enough.

We won't though.

Tucker’s luck

I’ve never booed an Arsenal player. Not in nearly 30 years of watching games. I may occasionally voice disapproval, comment to someone stood beside me that a player’s having a ‘mare’, or even call for Wenger to get someone off. But I would never boo them. Because any player wearing the shirt is representing Arsenal, and booing them isn’t going to do anything to make them play better – only worse.

I’m also one of the more tolerant fans – giving players a second chance, forgiving their shortcomings, realising that football is a game of confidence and that players have dips in form or make ill-judged decisions.

What I saw on Sunday, however, was nothing short of unacceptable. What Emmanuelle Eboue did when he pushed a player – who was running away from goal – to the ground wasn’t just a bad decision, miss-timed, the result of being beaten by a better player or due to a dip in form. It was completely unprofessional. And it cost us any hope we had of winning the league.

This isn’t some personal vendetta against Eboue. At a time when Eboue was, to paraphrase Malcolm Tucker from ‘The Thick of It’: “As popular as the man who fucked the monkey that gave us all AIDS”, I defended him. I stood up for him and thought the treatment he received was too harsh. On occasion when he’s been out of the team I’ve even said we’ve lacked his marauding runs forward and his willingness to run on the overlap. I’ve called for him to play above others. But to play at the top level requires at least a basic level of intelligence, which he clearly doesn’t have – and in my opinion he is not fit to wear the shirt again.

Of course, the collapse of our season and the death of our title hopes – anyone who thinks last night’s result will re-open the title door is deluded – aren’t solely down to Emmanuelle Eboue. In Malcolm Tucker’s words, it was a case of ‘Tucker’s Law’: “If some c*nt can fuck something up, that c*nt’s going to pick the worst possible time to fucking fuck it up because that c*nt’s a c*nt.” But there are plenty of other players who have failed to step up to the plate in recent weeks, including plenty who should be leading but aren’t.

What’s more, the fact we look more nervous than Graeme Rix at a playground every time a ball goes into the box and look about as likely to score at home as Fernando Torres when we go forward, means we have drawn four of our last five (and five of our last nine) league games.

That’s what’s really killed our title, and what we need now is a clearout of the players that just aren’t good enough anymore (Sagna, Clichy, Diaby, Squillaci, Almunia, Fabianski, Rosicky, Chamakh, Vela), the players who are always injured (although not RVP), and the players who don’t want to be there (Fabregas?). It is, as Malcolm Tucker once said, “Time to wake up and smell the cock”.

Only once we have done so will we again begin to show the kind of commitment, ability, desire, passion and, crucially, basic responsibility to win at Man U again, win at Tottenham again, win at Chelsea again and win the league again.

If not, next season is going to be, to paraphrase Malcolm Tucker, obviously: “Like the Shawshank Redemption… except more crawling through shit and no fucking redemption.”

Win the league...?



The end of the world as we know it...

So, that’s it then. After 125 years (almost to the day), Arsenal, the “Bank of England Club”, founded in 1886 by ordinary factory workers of the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, steeped in history and tradition and controlled by committee for more than a century, is now owned by an individual. An American individual. With a moustache.

I’ve spent the past couple of days wondering what it all means and why it matters. I’ve asked myself who or what I actually support. In the past nine years the club badge, the stadium, the board of directors, the backroom staff, the physio and all of the players (except Gael Clichy) have changed. So who or what exactly do I support other than a name and some memories? Maybe it’s Gael Clilchy. I doubt it. But that’s a discussion for another day.

What has surprised me the most so far is the general air of positivity and acceptance around the whole takeover. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing any of us can do about it – if the directors decide to sell their shares they have every right to and a takeover by Stan Kroenke has been inevitable for some time now.

But whether it’s the frustration of not winning a trophy for six years or just a great piece of PR work by Kroenke and his team, everyone seems pretty happy about the whole thing.

I’m not. It’s true that Kroenke has said he will respect the traditions of the club, that he won’t place any debt on it and that he’ll stick with Wenger and the road we have been treading. He’s also a man with good sporting credentials – owning a number of sports teams in the US without placing debt on them. And he’s been very accessible to the fans, with Tim’s Arsenal Supporters Trust enjoying a good dialogue over various matters, including the fanshare scheme.

But Kroenke is a businessman. Businessmen buy businesses to make money. Football doesn’t make a lot of money from simply winning trophies. It makes money either through debt being lumped on to clubs for the owner’s personal gain, through clubs selling their best assets or by these investments being sold on at a profit. This takeover means all of these things are a threat to us now.

What’s also a threat is that if Kroenke pumps his own money into the club for transfers – effectively throwing out our sustainable-living blueprint – we become dependant on him. I’ve said many times in this blog that the day Abramovich calls in his £750m “loan” from Chelsea and walks away is the day they go out of business. I don’t want us to face that same situation five years from now. But it’s now possible.

And while pumping cash into a club for success can bring the greatest stars to your team and plenty of trophies, doesn’t it also remove the romanticism a little? A team’s success used to be the culmination of putting a calculated long-term plan into place so you rose over time to conquer those around you. Where’s the romance and the achievement in buying a trophy by calling on the bottomless pockets of billionaire businessman who sees you as his plaything?

Of course, single ownership also means Kroenke can do what he wants with this club’s history. Our history has, effectively, been sold. The asking price was £730m. Because if Kroenke decides tomorrow to erase all that has gone before him in the famous Marble Halls and that we should be called the Arsenal Nuggets, the Ashburton Rapids or the Go-Go-Gunners, he can do it. Just like that. It’s true the fans have never really had much in the way of power at any club, but while there was a board of major shareholders there was at least a layer of protection against the idiotic. Not anymore.

Kroenke may yet prove to be a force for good at The Arsenal. Single ownership - and foreign single ownership at that - was inevitable, and all we can really do now is hope that in Kroenke we will have an owner who genuinely wants to protect our history and the things we have stood for over 125 years. He’s certainly more likely to do so than a Russian steel magnate. But if doesn’t, I won’t be getting my cheque book out to line our new owner’s pockets.

I'll be on the next Greyhound outta here.

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