He went on, “The fact he is intelligent and reads the game well, the fact that he’s more at ease in the middle. On the flank, today you need more pace, more change of direction, more agility. He has the stamina, the power and the quality to be a central midfielder or a central defender.
“At the moment, I have players who have more experience than Calum, but in pre-season I will play him there. Debuchy can play there, Monreal can play there so you can say we are not out to buy a central defender. And Gabriel will be a great central defender, believe me. So we have now sorted out the centre backs.”
Obviously not good enough for our correspondent whose words I chose not to publish. But I didn’t publish them because he disagreed with myself or my fellow editors on the site. I hit delete because there was no argument. Report half of one comment and call Wenger an idiot. Suggest that because he won’t buy a central defender and Wenger is an idiot. Add for good measure add that anyone who doesn’t see the world from the same point of view as yourself is an idiot.
It’s a sad reflection on where we are.
There is an article on the Arsenal History site called “How the Arsenal fans almost destroyed a wonderful player“. If you are interested in how things worked in the old days it is maybe worth a read.
But I am left more and more ruminating on the fact that there is something wrong, not with some Arsenal supporters, but with the attitude of many more across the country.
From the anniversary notes
12 May 1910: Arsenal announced that talks with Fulham to rescue the club had come to nothing, and the directors of Woolwich Arsenal FC had opened discussions with Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea, to see if their boards wanted to buy all or part of the club.
The complete Arsenal on this day index is now here with around 5000 major events in Arsenal’s history recorded.
It was a defensive mistake last night, but the over riding root cause was finishing, not defenders.
In the cold light of day, we play nineteen matches at home, in about sixteen of those, teams park the bus, indulge in rotational fouling, time wasting, hope for and often get a ref who will indulge them., their keeper plays well. Usually, we cope, score early or hit a goal or three in a short spell. But mathematics, the law of averages and percentages and that sort of thing states that every so often, we as the superior team will be mugged by such tactics. One in twenty At home? That’s in essence what happened last night.
Not saying we cannot learn things from last night, some poor finishing, poor approach play, and very poor corners, a player or two a bit rusty,but these things happen, learn, become more resilient and move on.
Mandy – agreed.
Tony – the other thing that was striking last night was that as soon as Swansea scored, loads of people left. Now there were still 5 minutes + injury time remaining. Prior to the goal we were absolutely battering them and a goal (to Arsenal) looked inevitable. After Swansea scored we certainly lost momentum (although still made several more half chances) – if the crowd had remained and got behind the team then I think we may still have got at least an equaliser. After all, Arsenal are well known for scoring late goals…
Really poor. Having said that, the support through most of the match was pretty good.
There is no doubt that a significant portion of the fanbase are thoroughly spoilt. Nothing less than high-scoring entertaining wins in EVERY match will suffice. Plainly, that will never happen.
Tony Attwood, although I do not have any comments because of limited time at my work place, I gave myself time to read your article and I am very happy to learn from what you written on your above article, those who have an OPEN MIND and SOUND IN MIND will understand your words and learn from there. I would appreciate you continue to email me such articles on my email address.
Tony,
Irony intended.
Of course it’s Arsène’s fault. After all he gave us the Invincibles season and the run of 49 games undefeated. Last night we ended an 11 game sequence. That’ s less than one quarter of what we have achieved in the past for God’s sake and (using simpleton maths which is quite wrong) the team must be less than a quarter as good.
Never mind that the referee showed his true colours by not carding Swansea players for agricultural challenges, they were, in my opinion, lucky not to have two sent off and we should have had a penalty. We then got mugged at the end when we showed an all too familiar tendency to get caught out when in full on attacking mode.
Alexis and Walcott both had excellent opportunities to score, instead shooting straight at Fabianski who was like a ‘ball magnet’ all evening. These things happen, we must now start another unbeaten run at Old Toilet on Sunday and win our last three games.
We should also sign the Swansea goalkeeping coach, if he can work that well with Fabianski he should be able of transforming Szcz and Oooospina into the best in the league by some distance.
Andrew Cranshaw
I’m glad to see someone mention the ball magnet thing. If I were capable of laughing at the time, I would have laughed : the tame shots were one thing, but it was probably the low cross from Wilshere which zipped into his arms which did it for me.
My feeling he was a footballing Magneto for the night peaked at that moment.
Very valid points Tony!!
@Mandy Dodd
May 12, 2015 at 9:37 am
I am 1000% with you!
Last night performance show that Arsenal is not yet ready to compete for title next season.
1. Arsenal require five world class signings to win the premier league, above them a replacement to Arsene Wenger. Wenger has yet proved limitations in tactics; Arsenal need a top striker, Giroud is just slow downing the game; our defensive midfield still a case to solve; if Nacho is better than Gibs, then we strongly need to sign a world class left back, and finally it seems we lack a goalkeeper, a world class one!
2. That said, A. Wenger has yet proved he can’t beat Jose Mourinho, that means, Wenger will never win the premier league while Mourinho is in the League.
3. Almost all Arsenal players lack of fighting spirit, it is amazing how much the passing completion is high, maybe the best in Europe, but when they lost the ball, they don’t fight to get it back like Bayern and Barcellona manage to do it. They just keep the ball in the midfield and do not manage to penetrate into the box; then what is the goal to keep the ball? What it does matter to have a ball possession of around 70% and 0 attempt on target during 45 minutes?
4. Most of times, when Arsenal concede first a goal they do abdicate immediately and stop to play correctly, also they can’t push high the ball to make a growing pressure to the opponent.
5. Arsene Wenger is too stubborn to reject all good advises from others, even from his best friends!
To be honest, I had always thought Fabianski wasn’t as bad a keeper as some would have us believe. While with us, I admired his ability to hold on to a ball as he hardly dropped a catch. The stats show he has the lowest number of dropped catches in the league and the highest catch (ball magnet?) rate in the EPL.
Being one who has defended Fabianski in his Arsenal years I wasnot surprised about his performance. I was gutted about the abuse he received in those days. Yes he made missies nut the moaners always only looked at those mistakes and never at his good performances. The aaa took away a lot of his confidence.
It’s not so bad though is it?
We only need four points from three games to virtually guarantee third place.
So no panic!
In reality whenever arsenal loses i do not sleep but yesterday i slept like a baby why?? Yes we should have had one or rwo penalty but that was not to come as the motherfucker ref had an order from above to make us draw or lose. Secondly we had all the chances to score but that ass of a man(fabiaski) was on our case. Lastly we lost honourably ,but we need those super watches to be given to both coaches so that when a ball crosses the line;the visiting coach plus the home coach are alerted with those super watches so that they will both have a clue on what is happening both ends.
Mertesacker’s goal vs Spunks, we never got any tangible replays like deleting everything to clearly show us if the ball crossed the line or we will never tell if the ref like mr friend was showing us had any thing indicating that it was a goal,he would have ignored it completely.
Otherwise i thank the boys for the good work and lets start our run again at oldtoilet against the devils. Lets go Gooners
Mandy
Arsene Wenger isn’t the type to criticize the players by name and always looks for positives, but if you read his comments you can pretty much figure out who he blames for this loss.
Generally, you blame your offensive players for not winning the game and your defenders for losing it.
This approach might be at times overly simplistic, but in this case I think it fits.
You’re not gonna win every game ( for all the reasons you mention in your post), but you shouldn’t lose this one either.
If you accept Chelsea’s defense as the league’s standard, then you have to ask yourself where do we fall short of reaching their level.
In my view it is the concentration and positioning.
While it is easy sometimes to get caught out when under pressure ,Arsenal looked very comfortable on defense last night ,mostly because Swansea were content with defending their own goal for most of the game.
Bellerin gets beat easily on the wing, but he is a young player and Montero is a very tricky customer, so I will give him a pass. He will learn.
It’s Koscielny and Ospina , who are both out of position on the play and are both too close to the near post.
Mertesacker is exactly where he should be, just inside of the near post.
Koscielny , on the other hand , unless he is man marking Gomis( which he probably should’ve) , should be just inside of the far post.
This is a set up that’s being drilled into Central defenders’ from age 12, and when Koscielny sees the tape , he will hang his head in shame ( figuratively speaking).
Ospina, on the other hand , gives himself too much room to cover at the far post.
We win as a team and we lose as one , but if you are going to analyze the game to learn from it , that’s where biggest mistakes were made.
KampalaGun
It is good to know I am not standing out alone in my level of suspicion of that lot. The lack of a replay on something that looks very very close is totally inexplicable in my book. There’s no logic behind only showing the confirmation , goal or no goal, on the ones where a goal is given. You need to see it on the ones where it is not a goal ,too, to be certain everything is in order.
KampalaGun
Good idea to give the teams access to the GLT
Re the Spurs game you refer to . I saw that on TV and to me it looked a good on the line save by Lloris who then moved the ball forwards to make it safe. This was confirmed on the Russion stream ( I was watching on) SloMo replay during and after the game.
I know a lot of people on Untold screamed “cheat”, but it was a good save.
Russian stream
Yeah, our run was bound to end at one point, only that it came against a lowly team. Let’s focus on doing ManU and qualify for the CL directly.But yesterday’s game showed that Theo is really out of form!
Tony, can you please get this idiot Robert Makuta off the comments please? What a cock
blacksheep – I echo your sentiments. He’s an absolute twat.
TailGunner – I love the ‘slo mo on a Russian stream’. 😉
Tony were you on the North Bank near 102? because I heard the shout also. I also could not believe the goal until I saw the technology replay.
There’s truth in ‘With Friend like that who needs enemies’.
@ Robert Makuta
Arsene speaks better English than you.
”some advises”. .You belong in the nursery
Last night’s loss of 3 points should be regarded in perspective.
In January, against all the odds, we visited Man Citeh and won 2-0.
If we had lost that game and won yesterday
both results would have been in accord with forecast. Three points to us. End of.
Agreed Nicky 3 points from the two games however you don’t have to be happy about it.Having the City points in the bag last night was careless to say the least.
@Porter,
Not happy, merely pragmatic. 😉
That Barclays Asia Trophy, news at main site.
> Everton will take on Stoke City in the opening match of the tournament while the first test for the Singapore Select XI is to take on FA Cup holders Arsenal.
The 2 winners play for the trophy, and the 2 losers play to determine 3rd and last.
Which I gather means that if Arsenal and Stoke were to win those two games, that Arsenal would play Stoke for the trophy?
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20150511/barclays-asia-trophy-ticket-information
Maybe they (Arsenal) could take RObert Makuda on the plane, and drop him in the ocean some place convenient?
oh Dear! Wenger lovers! what a pile of tripe.
Arsene is clueless and a lump.
Terrible terrible coaching.
Arsene, u should be ashamed.
and what a classless man….having a pop at Swansea.
Agree Tom, we win and lose as a team, and also that was a game we should by rights, never have lost. We were a bit wasteful and inefficient up front, and yes, that was a catastrophic series of errors that led to the goal, which on balance of play, they most certainly did not deserve. But one to take on the chin, and continue to eradicate the frequency of these lapses, I think we are on the way but clearly not there yet
On reflection the team was not going to go full out and risk injury especially with ManU match looming, but i would have though a win at home would be easier. United has DeGea, probably better or at least equal Fabianski or not? I think the FA is a must for them so we may well see below par performances til then.
We all agree that the sharpness was not there at all. Just going to watch the breakdown.
Wow. Spot on as usual how he breaks down our good and bad points.
Anyway just spotted something. Please watch the Swansea goal in slow motion if you can, Ospina dives INTO the goal instead of SIDE WARDS to his left post, no wonder the ball was in by the time his hands touched it.
Strange.
//
On a different topic:
Garry Monk to replace AW when he leaves? 🙂 🙂 🙂
” A young man is apt to think himself wise as a drunken man is apt to think himself sober .”
My take is that they all (we) go through that ‘ stupid’ hormonal phase , but most of us do grow up , get an education and move on ; while many never do and are stuck in a cycle of perpetual imbecilic angst , nonfulfillment issues and unjustifiable anger. They never really learned to ‘let go’ .
Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
Chili Davis
Some may even appear to be cute , brainy or precocious to some ; disturbed or flawed to others .
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-arrest-of-a-teen-aged-youtube-star
In my opinion we need 11 world class players with me as manager and with Tony Atwood as my assistant
Yeah, the world class players crap again. Until now, I don’t even know what world class means anymore.
Thanks for finally writing
Wenger is rubbish, everything is rubbish.
Loved it!