by Tony Attwood
Sometimes it is hard to recognise all this stuff as football. There’s so much off the pitch, that there hardly seems any room for the old ball kicking thing.
Just consider some of the stuff doing the rounds…
Arsenal: injuries, injuries, but a few returnees. A tunnel with light in it for once (unless the light at the end of the tunnel is the express train travelling in the opposite direction. With our luck you never know.)
Liverpool: law suits, law suits, a buyer who has just walked away, another law suit, a buyer who says he probably won’t build a new ground after all, a bank who want their money NOW. I liked the Guardian’s comment about RBS being certain to pick up a load of dosh, plus interest, and so not caring who owns the wretched club. They are, said the Guardian, laughing all the way to the b…. Quite so.
Man U: the unheard of. A player, and not just any old player, but clearly your best player, is having a row with the manager. And not playing too well. Poor Rooney. Messes up with his wife. Messes up with Sir F Word. You have to feel for the poor lamb.
Chelsea: Benayoun has criticised the medical team at Chelsea after they went out on a booze up and “missed” detecting the seriousness of an achilles injury. Actually I made the booze up bit up. But well, this is a blog. So making things up is ok.
Uefa/Fifa: They are left looking at Serbian violence and wondering how it came to this after they have repeatedly fined Serbia and other countries £3000 a time for naughty behaviour, and warned them to be good people too. Surely everyone expected them to take notice by now? What more could Uefa have done? Well…
Dundee. OK not the biggest of the big time, but they are seemingly about to vanish from the face, owing £365,000 to our old pals HMRC.
Thugs United – the new grouping of managers who send out players to “get at them”, and who protest when their names are spelled out. They “can’t understand it” and claim that “everyone watching football knows they are fair.” A new phrase emerges – “he’s not that kind of a manager.” You have to feel sorry for them.
So back to our lads. Here’s what our Billy predicted a couple of days back
A Goalkeeper
Eboue, Koscielny, Squillaci, Clichy (Djourou, Nordveit, Eastmond)
Song (Denilson / Diaby)
Fabregas, Nasri (Rosicky, Vela, Lansbury)
Arshavin, Chamakh, Walcott (Bendtner, Jay Em Tho)
Cesc Fábregas will not be in the team against Birmingham – so one down. But Gibbs will be, so I guess he’s a possible sub. And Wilshere, who was left out of the calculations because he appeared to be playing for both England’s full team of no-hopers and the under 21s, and quite possibly the under 16s at the same time, in the end didn’t play for England Nil, so could well play for Arsenal and score a few.
Theo’s chance of playing is apparently small, so he could be bench material too. That makes it one down, one and a half up. Almunia is still out with an elbow injury and Vermaelen is out – we got that right. Mr W’s prognostics were, “Sagna is 10 days, Vermaelen is 10 days, Almunia is a question of days but Van Persie looks to be a bit longer.”
On Bendtner he said, “He is the closest he has been to his best for a while. He was really, really handicapped by groin problems but they have gone now.”
So, yes we are up all round. Jack didn’t play for England, Bendtner is back, Theo is semi-back, Gibbs is back. Not bad.
Funny old game though.
Not all doom and gloom Tony, just most of it. Forgot to mention, I like your hat, touch of the Oscar Wildes`s eh?
More and more reasons that Im glad to be a gooner and am sure the next few years will see our stability pay dividends (sadly Im not a shareholder Lady Bracewell-Smith is still ignoring my calls). Our recent mini dip in form is my own fault for being away from the UK for too long. So have decided to come back and add my voice in the ground again. Great article as ever Tony, positivity in our cause as always.
It could have been better, but it could have been worse.
It will certainly make Wenger’s team selection quite interesting.
Will Gibbs oust Clichy? Will Bendtner be preferred to Chamakh?
And when Almunia returns from injury, will he or Fabianski be sat between the posts? Will Squillaci or Koscielny play alongside Vermaelen? There is quite a competition for places beginning to develop.
Cesc might be comin back next week, sagna and vermaelen in 2-3 weeks, almunia in 3 weeks, van persie in a month, ramsey by december, it looks good for now. Hope we dont have more injuries now. Touch wood.
you miss out man arab :)~~ The manager who seems to be arguing with everyone in his team.. anyhow, he will get a new team every year~~
i would love to see Chamakh and Bendtner up front together. i know that would change our formation a bit, although wenger doesnt seem to mind nick wide right, but i think that they could be a real handful for defenders.
im not sure if our midfielders are the best at playing to their attributes but i think it would be interesting to see two big front men for arsenal.
How on earth did Cesc manage to injure himself again?Din’t he declare himslef FIT for the internationals?Does that mean the injury aggravated later on whilst he was off the field? WTF??
“…but Van Persie looks to be a bit longer.” I have no idea what is going on with this guy. When he went out after TWO whole matches, Wenger said he’ll be back in 2 weeks. Then it became 6 weeks. Now that it is almost 6 weeks from the incident, its a month from now??
Maybe some people’s bodies take a tad longer to heal than others. But surely this is something to ponder, wouldn’t you say?
It is so disheartening to see that we don’t even take him into our calculations when planning for a match any more. He is easily the most talented player on our team, and I believe this with utmost conviction, but this is plain ridiculous!
Good times lie ahead for the Gunners. When will Robin join the party?
It could also have been player suits, useless laws, revolting Uefa and pathetic not that kind of managers.
Who owns Liverpool could be a very tricky question to answer in the next days, weeks.
And I do have a feeling that Rooney might be doing his last season at Old Trafford. Having an argument with SAF in the open is the best way to go to Madrid … And it could turn the financial result a bit more balanced at the end of next season. The Glazers would love to get some cash from selling Rooney in their hands I think.
And maybe SAF will finaly call it a day after that as he then has nothing more left to make a top team, apart from some very old players.
And now let us just hope that it really is daylight we see at the end of the injury tunnel….
Is Harry Potter’s uncle guest editor this week?
Rooney to real Madrid!
Liverpool to The Championship!
Serbia to…..stay the same .
@ Terence
You’re right!
I’d add:
Tiny totts back to the mediocre position they are used to be in!
Man Shitty back to the oil well where they all came from!
Barscsa back to the DNA of their grandparents!
And Bulldog Sam Arlarldyce back to the elementary school to finally finich it!
p.s. I’m from Serbia, and those idiots that stopped the match in tuesday are drugged criminals and vandals. Of course we are not all like them.
i dont see how lpool can ever go in decline….same with utd
basically they will always have owners coming in bailing them out….they are too big a club to go into administration….classic example is happening in front of us.
I see no reason why one can’t support our manager but also justify some criticism at him.The keeper situation should have been resolved 2 seasons ago, and personally I feel we should be aiming higher than Schwarzer,who is aging and not much better than those we have already.Sagna started his career with us and it was noticeable from day one that he appeared to be a long standing first teamer,yet he and Clichy have regressed mainly because of tactics.This all out attacking policy isn’t working with the players we hav, as the other top sides have shown how vulnerable we are to the counter attack, the very thing that in the past,we were masters of.Thanks for the stats guys, but then again a top 4 team will always have a very low percentage of home losses.In Ramsey,Wilshere and Gibbs we have some excellent prospects,with others not far behind.I refer to tactics again as if you look at players like Rosicky and Arshavin and to an extent Nasri,their natural game has changed to fit into our system.I still believe the shoot on sight from the dege of the area would pay dividends.Walcott,Gibbs and Bedntner return this weekend, yet Vermaelen obviously has more than just an Achilles problem,and that concerns me.Cesc has had ongoing hamstring problems for over a year and that again is disturbing.nevertheless,Birmingham will be a good test and 3 points is imperative,even at this stage of the season.