By Tony Attwood
Hands up everyone who remembers the time when every day the press would trumpet the “fact” that Arsenal had “now” had “50” cards under Wenger. (Obviously substituting a different number every week).
If you do then you know your Wengerian history, and you probably know that this was one of the greatest made up stories of the Wenger era. The number of cards was wrong, and the fact that the number of reds of every other club was ignored showed one thing. Arsenal’s number of reds during that period was by no means the worse.
Fact 1: So let’s start with today’s red factetta. Arsenal have the best disciplinary record in the league this season, with 27 yellows and 3. At heart we are softies.
Fact 2: Arsenal actually don’t have a chronic defence. In fact Arsenal have the best defence away from home in the top league, letting in 0.87 goals a game.
Amazing!
(Well I have to say that as it is in the title).
Fact 3: We have played WBA 129 times and no one has been at all of them – obviously. But something of slightly more interest is the fact that West Brom have a goal difference across all these games of -59.
Fact 4: No club in the top league has scored more goals after the 76th minute of games this season than Arsenal. We have 15.
Fact 5: For the first time in living memory Arsene Wenger lost his voice yesterday.
The team pillow case
Fabianski,
Sagna, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal;
Arteta, Rosicky;
Gervinho, Cazorla, Podolski;
Giroud.
(Well yesterday we turned the league table into the league chair, so time to change the team sheet too).
Meanwhile lurking on the famous West Bromwich beach, listening to the waves on the shore just a thirty second stroll from the ground, a selection from the following:
Szczesny, Jenkinson, Gibbs, Vermaelen, Miquel, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Podolski, Coquelin
And don’t forget the referee. Case study 15: West Bromwich Albion is available, and the full index of articles in order of publication is now available here.
Recent posts…
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The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches.
The sites from the same team…
- Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
- The Arsenal History Blog from the AISA Arsenal History Society
I also recall the days when we were unjustly slaughtered by the press for our so called terrible red card tally. I also recall that a good number of those red cards were for retaliation against the unpunished misdemeanour’s of the other teams, notably Man United. Then as now we got no protection from the ref so had to dish out our own retribution.
It is also instructive to recall that when we were getting our 50 cards, we aware heavily criticised by an agenda filled media and the halfwits who mindlessly absorb and regurgitate their nonsense for being over physical.
Subsequently our approach changed whereupon open season was declared on us on the pitch by antediluvian British managers like Allardyce, Waroick, Boothroyd, the orange bloke from Hull backed up by a media who decided we were physically weak and we were portrayed as moaners.
Solution: ignore the agenda driven media and treat them for the low life, murdered child’s phone hacking scum they are.
Good thoughts and facts, mate, but, allow me to disagree a little bit. I think given that Nacho is fresh from that knock, he will be rested in favour of Gibbs, who for me will be fresher and better suited for a start.
Secondly, I just can’t see a line-up without Aaron Ramsey, especially with Wilshere still out. For me, Rosicky will be the one to drop out for the Welshman.
Finally, Podolski has no chance of starting this game. the wide position will, I think, be occupied by either Santi, depending on if Rosicky starts, if he doesn’t then it will be Chamberlain. The German ran out of gas a long long time, and Wenger has chosen to restrict him to cameo appearances
Nice stats Tony, and hate to be the person to pick up on a minor point, but Podolski seems to be doing rather well starting and also sitting on your bench at Ramsey’s loss. I personally think Ramsey will start after his recent performances and form.
shame on u, where us Aaron man, he shall be in starting line up before everybody else……
🙂
if ramsey scored he would have been motm already
ddododon’t know why west brom fans are booing cazorla, but our away fans responded with , oh santi cazorla, what an away fans..
Gervi is brilliant, ***k media trying to destroy our players….
What was Webb talking to long. hmmm something promising.
Just wondering why dont le prof, take out Giroud? He is tired
Now where did the 5 minutes come from?
@Kampala, coz it helps to leave a tall bloke up the other end to fire long balls at, and ties up their defence.
Webb has his intentions he would not even see his liner for offside,
We have beaten Webb. And WBA also in between.
Although it did feel like we were getting a dose of Fergie time.
WHOOSH WE HAVE SURVIVED WEBB,KEEP IT UP GUNNERS.
@robl so having long balls is given extra time for the time the ball stays in the air!! Thanks robl never knew that.
@ Kampala, that’s why the Stoke games feel like they are going on for ever.
Phew!! What a relief. Hooray for Super Tom Rosicky! And of course for all the players for holding out for a vital win.
Good win for the team, despite Webb. Another tricky game out of the way and another valuable three points.
hate football, hate EPL, why do i have to go through all that tense, thanks god we won..
by the way, the penalty started from a long ball after a NOT foul given against giroud, really, why do Webb hate giroud and gervinho that much, and screw u probert for the last 5 min uuu raised, even when u got only one thing to do against arsenal u try your best….
Agony to listen to the radio commentary.
Will reserve judgement on Webb until I see the game on screen, but it sounds as if he deliberately tried to stuff us today. It was mentioned that he was being very keen on time-wasting, hence the 5 minutes Fergie time.
All I can say on hearing that, is that it must be the first time ever for him!!!
Did anyone see Probert laughing and rubbing his hands – when Wenger complained to him about Webb ignoring dangerous fouls from WBA players? It’s all so blatant.
How many of our players did Webb book? 5? 6? I lost count. Someone fouled Rosicky so Webb booked him (1st half). How many kicks did Fabianski receive? One of our players was stamped on. Typically, no foul given.
So very well done, Arsenal. You are truly brave, and I hope that unlike so many others, you remain honest to your beautiful football. You bring me JOY!
I was so happy seeing our dearest Rosi score and smile like that, it’s been so long then. and for me, it is always such a pleasure to have him with his happy, beaming face.
Bian jumping and showing his smiling, pleasing face – that was when I know WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!
my god, the AAA almost got out, thanks god we won, will they can moan about mertesacker is useless, and destroy him like they did with vermalean, and then get astonished, just like with ramsey and gervinho, when he come back to form and blame Wenger for not motivating the team.
agree with kampala, giroud should have been substituted, we should have held the ball more, but in the end it didnt matter, we won, 3 ppoints, waiting 2moro london Derby to see who win or both draw i hope
did u see Wenger and Bould complaining together, arent they i. fight?
aaanyway west brom deserved credit for the game it was tough but their problem was we are the Arsenal….
Again salut for the away fans, they were brilliant
Unless the Press Association miscounted, we received 4 yellow (Ramsey, Rosicky, Arteta, Koscielny) and 1 red (Mertesacker) today. And we out-fouled WBA 15-7.
The BBC reported, that today is the first time Rosicky has scored more than 1 goal in a game for Arsenal.
How did Vermaelen look coming off the bench?
I’m not sure that Webb was really trying to get us today, if he were he would have called Kos for the incident in the first half when he missed the ball and the W Brom player fell over in the area. I just felt that he was useless. Wrong decisions probably about 75/25 in favour of W Brom and a competence score of 65-70% (weighted). I will await the ref review to see how far out I am. A great result from a team who all worked their socks off. COYG. Now for third place!
I’m kind of with Andrew Crawshaw on this one. Webb wasn’t really out to screw us. He was useless. But I said ‘kind of’. What I mean is that Webb did make it harder for us to get the victory, with a few foul calls, and of course the 5+ mins of injury time. Of course, if Webb didn’t have the history that he does, I’d probably give him the benefit of the doubt for those.
@rantentta more to come,spunks play tomorrow and then they rest the coming week.(we might get probert in between or the usual suspect mike shit dean)We play Everton mid week and then play Fulham away,chelski and spunks wont be playin. We will be playin earlier all our matches for your information.@yassin the AAA are sewer rat there are always in the sewers so we need to keep them flashed.
Oh and Webb intercepted Arsenal’s pass/clearance twice. That can’t have helped us either 🙂
Rosicky Motm: 2 goals and 1 clearance of the line. Super Tom Rosicky.
Who are we playing next week? No BFG for us.
Yeah! We won. We deserved to win. WBA had their chances but so did we and with 10 men. Sorry Guardian that your negativity couldn’t have followed a loss…we win, we win.
Actually I might have to reverse my stand on Webb. I’ve jst been reading through a live blog if the match, and it just reminded me of how many incidents there were that went WBA’s way. I think Webb might have learnt a few tricks from Dean as to how to keep a low profile.
@Kampala Gun
Thanks for the info. re: Ars ‘playing matches earlier’. Probert will certainly be doing a match or 2. My guess is Fulham, as he messed up a match for Ars last season against them, but he will be picked for a match against a kicking (bones) team, that’s for sure.
@Shard
Funnily enough I went to a liveblog page, after the match, and was reminded just how many fouls were given to WBA – which weren’t fouls at all. One must never forget that Webb will always allow violence and dangerous play against Arsenal’s players. That’s what makes him a top ref. Do you remember Rio Ferdy’s kung fu kick on Sagna? You know, the one where Rio’s studs tore Bacary’s shirt, and the webbmeister was 5 yards away, and didn’t even give a foul, but then sent Sagna off to have his shirt changed?
This is what Arsenal have to deal with, and I think that when Mr Wenger talks about “mental strength”, he’s referring in part to how the players deal with the clear bias shown by refs to our players. And that is why I see our players as being “brave”.
Shard,
next week Norwich. And I will be there!!!! 🙂 🙂