If you are a regular reader you are going to get so bored with me on this, but let me have my day. This is, after all, my finest hour.
At 10am Saturday I predicted Everton 1 Arsenal 7 Click on the score to see the whole article.
No one else came anywhere near that. BBC Radio 5 Live had Mark Lawrenson on Friday at 5.20 telling us it would be an Everton win. He said Arsenal had too many players injured to win.
And yes, you can see his point. No Theo, no Nasri, No Rosicky. Two big players sold, and even the reserves not being available. Diaby out, Wilshere not ready to play (I got that right too), the reserve keeper crocked, Djourou injured.
Worse we were picking that so awfully lightweight Denilson – all he did was score the first, save a certainty off the line, and play some nice passes in between.
And probably the most awful bit of all is that ESPN didn’t even know how pathetically stupid they were. They chose an ex-Evertonian as the co-commentator, and then spent most of the match saying “is this the worst you have seen Everton play?” and “is this Everton’s biggest ever defeat at home?” They might as well have said to each other, “when did we ever make such a huge mistake in terms of the way we set a programme up.”
So where do we go now?
According to the media, down. We won’t make the top four, because the squad is too thin, the defence too weak, and that Denilson is so lightweight. So let’s enjoy it while we can and see if we can give anything other than the result as evidence that something rather good is going on.
!: The Lord Wenger said, this is it, my project is ready. So he’s come out and said, after four years work, here we are. Not the first time he has done such a thing. I still have the tee-shirt of Wenger saying, “We can go the whole season unbeaten.” Did we do that? I can’t remember. (And yes I know he said it one year early – but that is not the point, it is that he announced a team as ready, when at the time others were not at all sure).
2: We won 15-8 on goal attempts, which shows that Everton were not just rolling over and stopping – they were trying through the game, and were simply snuffled out by the defence.
3: If you count shots on target we won 9-5 – do not forget all those Almunia saves. And nine shots producing six goals!
Of course I personally will never forgive Ramsey for taking a wild shot when he had players he could pass to who would have scored and made it the 7-1 predicted here, but you know, you can’t be greedy.
One other little thing – this injury lark.
Theo was picked for the England game on Wednesday last week, and sat on the bench, and came back with a back injury which kept him out of this game. How do you get a back injury on the bench?
But I would say it is not just us that has injury worries – Villa had 3 injured, Manchester Arab had 3 injured, Manchester IOU have 5 injured, Liverpool have 2 injured and four “doubtful”, while Birmingham have seven injured and one suspended. I am sure it never used to be like this at the start of the season.
Maybe we should have an injury league table, like a height league table and a weight of player league table, and an age league table. Oh and then we could do one based on points and goals.
Still there are worries. The News of the World today says that we are going to sell Cesc next summer. The Lord Wenger says, “We are not in a weak financial position, we don’t need to sell anybody. Cesc has always been very committed, this is his sixth year, what he wants is to win trophies for the Club.”
And now on to Celtic Park. 60,000 but not always as noisy as you might expect. As for the score, I was planning to do a series called “All Tomorrow’s Parties” (named of course after the Velvet Underground song) just like on saturday morning, giving the score of each game before it happened. But having got the first one so right I wonder if I can do it anymore.
But you don’t write blogs to hide behind the cushions, so I’ll consult the crystal whatnots and see what the score is going to be and then let you know before the game.
Don’t forget to go back and re-read the first “All Tomorrow’s Parties“ – the greatest triumph in the history of Untold Arsenal.
PS: Seen any backtracking from the Doomsayers yet?
(c) Tony Attwood 2009 – read it all again in half an hour under someone else’s name on Team Talk.
oooh! ooooh! can i brag too? i predicted 5-1, although its not on record anywhere. Anyway… great to see arsenal converting their chances, and looking really hungry for more. And well done to all those traveling. At one point i thought: wow, everton are really getting behind their players in the second half… hold on, those are the away fans!
hahaha..why are all these fellow gooners asking us not to get carried away…i’m loving it and i don’t care..gunners goona destory united 8-0 and celtic ….never mind!!
Other than the score, i think we had two big positives yesterday. 1. Vermaelen looked very good. Good movement, great timing, read the game well, and a beautiful headed goal. 2. Cesc grabbing his shirt and patting the badge after his first goal. Just to let everybody know where his heart is :). So what’s your prediction for celtic? I go 2 – 0 to us in the first leg. poker rakeback
Tony, nice post as usual… We’ll be waiting for your predictions for the future games…
Arsene REALLY Knows…
great, well done. vermaelen and gallas look like a great team, but is one or other of them does not play, we will have trouble. i saw both players make outstanding interceptions yesterday – the kind that senderos and djourou cannot accomplish. it would be nice to have another one or two centre-backs with pace and experience. an other thing – did anyone notice how well adebayor and toure played yesterday? adebayor especially looked frightening. let’s hope that doesn’t last.
Just read Arsene’s post-match comments. When asked about Cesc’s contribution, he said “You cannot single one player out today for an average performance. What is very interesting for me is that the cohesion of the team, the fact that we played for each other, and if we can keep that in the team we have a chance.” I’m glad he said this because noone stood out with his performance. Cesc got 2 goals and 2 assists but everyone else had played a part in making that possible.
Another thing which caught my eye was his comments on away games.. “People are surprised, but you know that we were last year the team that scored more goals than anyone away from home. And we had a long unbeaten run in the Premiership away from home. Of course it is a surprise to win with such a score. But we know we can do it away from home.” Is this for the boo-boys? I think so because last season, the away-support was really awesome.
Well said Tony. The scary part about yesterday game is that everyone can score and the drastic change of strategy after the departure of Adeboyor. We do not seems to have a central attacking point, and everyone looks dangerous, the team are so mobile with our relentless passing and running. We need to keep up the good work!!
I have had several emails giving me predictions. If you want to have a bit of fun over this please send your predictions to Tony@hamilton-house.com and write in the subject line
All Tomorrow’s Parties
and I’ll try and bring them together for a predictive post on Tuesday morning.
You do realise that if any of us had gone to the bookies and bet £10 on Arsenal to win by five or six goals we’d be laughing all the way to the b… Actually no, because I never laugh about banks. I’m going to have a new t-shirt made that says
Tough on banks
Tough on the causes of banks
but that’s another story.
This is unrelated but I think it is necessary to highlight just how poor the journalism at Le Grove is.
‘The Killer Viper’ wrote an article concerning Arsenal’s formation and style of play, which was generally quite positive. The controllers of the site Pedro and Geoff proceeded to change the name of the article to ‘Diaby is our best tackler’, which led to the positive article being slated by the typically negative Le Grove readers. TKV, was naturally angry and asked for it to be changed, which it hasnt.
I just can’t believe how poor some of the journalism at Le Grove is.
Cheers for some of great pieces on here.
Have been visiting over the summer and it makes a greatand pleasant change from a lot of the other stuff on the net.
– off topic as well and I apologise – but saw the piece referred to by Gooner interesting and well written – if you read arsenal column echoes some of the analysis pieces he has been writing – sad about the title change but to be honest to be expected!!
crystal whatnots and finest hours aside, is this not what we have all been saying since the year dot.
personally i am only a new recruit to this positive way of thinking. i have to admit to being concerned a year ago when arsene didnt get the CD or DM that e-arsenal generally demanded at the time. but realising that there are two sides to every story, and discovering the other side of the modern arsenal, as well as uncovering the shenanigans of the rest of the clubs we play against, has given me a new outlook .
i now describe myself, to any fool that will listen, as a ratchet supporter: if we do well, my pleasure increases, and if we dont it increases as well.
i missed the prediction blog before the game, too busy bricking my dreambox while trying to tune in espn, but after the preseason we had, was this result not a foregone conclusion?
everton and villa both suffered yesterday, both their squads looked flat and uninspired. chelsea were lucky not to lose yesterday, their first coming from a dodgy free kick decision and their second at 92 mins. dont get me wrong, both goals were class, but chelsea were no arsenal yesterday. man city seems to be a credible threat and we will have to wait and see how manu and pool get on, but i’ll wager they’ll be no arsenals either.
Good Vibes all day long. I have completely lost my voice and have a terrible sore throat at the moment. But do I care? No. I’ll be glad to have everytime with performances like that. Lets just have a solid 2 goal advantage over Celtic and I will gladly live with another sore throat.
Hey I like your offbeat site.
If you require any assistance in putting up written pieces I would be honoured to put my two penneth worth in.
Im a supporter sinxe the double season 71/72 so I must be a plastic fan or something.
My background is International law and Ive written some good stuff regarding building cases between huge International contractors and African gouvernments. (actually it was quite borring sometimes but some spicy countries).
Anyhoo would help in any way I could if you required .
All the best
Stu.
my predo was 8 -0 but i guess we will get there hee hee…
maybe against hull or birmingham will do nicely
Against celtic, 3 – 0 to the arsenal… denilson, cesing one!ven 5 with Eduardo addc van p and bendy… Ah that 4? I’ll take it. with Eduardo adding one more!
All the Everton game proves is that Wenger has lost the plot, we need a new CB and DM, we should never have sold Flamini, Hleb and Diarra. We have no ambition. Wenger has passed his sell-by date. And we should all give up and slag off our useless team.
BTW a local sports radio station (Nairobi) recently run a show where listeners were invited to predict which player would hit 30 goals in the EPL this season. Arshavin won by a country mile!
Ian, you forgot to mention Song and Denilson who are useless players and not worth to be in an Arsenal shirt. 😉
Very true Walter.
I thought I’d post a sarcastic comment after that amazing start at Goodison, but after I posted it I became paranoid that some readers might think I was being serious. The trouble is, there have been so many unbelievable criticisms of Wenger on so many blogs, that they are virtually impossible to satirise.
Readers of this blog are used to a reassuring dose of positivity, but many Gooners don’t know about the site and have been subjected to a relentless tirade of criticism from both the media and fellow ‘Gooners’. For them, the performance must have been particularly welcome.
As Cesc said, the result means nothing in terms of the season. It is only three points. But it was important to remind the pessimistic among us that things aren’t as bad as they might seem.
Yes Ian, I selden go on and read other blogs since I discovered the untold arsenal.
All that doom and gloom is making me sick. This blog is so refreshing and it also sets things in a wider perspective (financial and others) and the participants who give comments are mostly getting a bit further than the “sack the manager” or “sell that usuless X” and “buy a 2,35 meter big CB” that we see on some blogs on the internet.
So I do think you’re on the right place with your sarcastic comment. I liked it anyway
I don’t usually like to promote anything in the Daily Mail but this is superb.
Martin Samuel and Matthew Syed’s interview with Arsene Wenger has to be read.
It just makes me respect the guy even more (if that is possible).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1206377/ARSENE-WENGER-INTERVIEW-The-transcript-Martin-Samuels-fascinating-meeting-Arsenal-manager–I.html
“Worse we were picking that so awfully lightweight Denilson – all he did was score the first, save a certainty off the line, and play some nice passes in between.”
His first goal was nice, perfect little lay off from Cesc and Deni’s strike surprised the sh!te out of me. Last season he had some poor efforts.
He saved a sure goal off the line, but to be fair, whatever player given that position on the post would’ve saved it. Still another plus for Denilson.
I didn’t see too many nice passes from him, to be frank. In the first 25mins of the game I saw a couple go astray and he gave the ball up a few times. But the good far outweighed the bad by Deni in this game.
Song was terrific, a close MOTM for me, but Cesc has to take those honors. Two great goals and assists, some beautiful passing. His leadership was well on display and his work rate was fantastic.
I only predicted a 3-1 scoreline but I’ve also stated that we’ll win the EPL and UCL this season. And although in the context of the PL season, it is only 3 points. It provided some great omens for the potential prosperity of the club this season.
I would still like to see a CB or DM signing, or both, in the next two weeks. Given we want to be in both UCL and EPL contention, a little depth in defense would be nice, considering we certainly have it going forward.
Top of the league… Yay! Here’s to overcoming Celtic 5 nil at theirs. MaraSonga was just pure class though. 4-3-3 Arsene Knows!
While you are at it, can you predict how many trophies we will win this season? 🙂
I predicted we would thrash Everton.
Ian – “many Gooners don’t know about the site and have been subjected to a relentless tirade of criticism from both the media and fellow ‘Gooners'”. This can’t be more true. I can absolutely identify with this statement. Before I came to know about this site, the comments that I read from other sites made me extremely disheartened. I was particularly perplexed by the relentless irrational attack against Denilson. There was not a single bit of objectivity in those comments. But since so many of them were repeating the same thing, i began to wonder whether I might not have been the one mistaken, that that may be I did fail to see the whole picture. But this site changed everything. I realised that I was not alone in my opinion. There are many others with the same opinion and conviction. And while I have formed my opinion based on very causal observation, the comments on this site are really objective and well thought out. I think more should be done to publicize this site.
It is heartening when the centrebacks start scoring .I’ve not seen it since the days of Adams , Bould & Keown,and this present lot defended well in the air.I guess if they concede a goal after scoring six ,we can learn to live with it.
Ive seen a couple of places that Denilson didnt play that well in the first 20mins or so putting some passes astray so I thought I would check up on the Guardian chalk boards – according to them he put 1 pass astray the whole match and that was in the first minute! Just goes to show how first impressions can give a false impression.
My impression was that he had a very good first half and was putting in some very telling passes especially to Van Persie. Of course he was also carrying out his usual possesion passes as well
Disclaimer – There is of course a probability that the stats are wrong.
That gets me thinking and realising how ignorant I am but does anyone know how the player stats are compiled – Presumably a computer algorithm?
all the best
The key to the degree of defensive succeess that we had on Saturday was that Arsenal defended as a team. Almost every player tracked back consistently enough, as a result of which the defence felt assured and had no reason to panic. This in turn reassured Almunia, even though he didn’t have too much to do. For the little that he had to do, he was commanding, and reminded me of the calmness of David Seaman.
As highlighted on this blogsite about six days ago, The Arsenal did not do that consistently enough last season, hence our frailty in that department. Now we just need to continue to apply it consistently and surely “Bob will be our Uncle”.