Happy Thanksgiving From The ArseNole

Hello everyone, just wanted to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and safe travels to wherever you all are going. We all have much to be thankful for, like Cesc Fabregas getting the captaincy and January fast approaching, so everyone enjoy your Thanksgiving and I will talk to you all on Friday. Cheers!

Fabregas Named Captain, And Rightfully So

Morning all. I told you I was redesigning the site and everything, and that is still the case, but it is taking longer than expected so I'm going to continue posting on this one for a while. Today it was confirmed that Cesc Fabregas, one of the greatest people to ever live, is the new captain of Arsenal Football Club. And I don't really think anyone can argue with that appointment. If you look at the potential benefits compared to the potential problems the benefits far outweigh them. He's young and could potentially be the captain of the club for a long time, granted he stays at Arsenal. I think this will encourage him to stay at Arsenal and give him the spotlight that he was going to eventually want anyway. He's fiery and can not only lead by example but is also not afraid to yell at someone when they need it and praise someone when they deserve it. He won't ever do what Gallas did and bitch to the press about a dressing room squabble, and, perhaps most importantly, he loves Arsenal Football Club in the same way that Tony Adams and Patrick Vieira do.

Arsene Wenger confirmed the decision, stating that William Gallas would still play for the club (unfortunately) but that he has been permanently removed as captain:

''William will play against Kiev, but the captain of the team will be Fabregas.'' I do not think I have to especially explain why I make the decisions, but it is a permanent thing.''

Wenger also spoke about how we still need to have a team full of leaders even though Cesc will be the voice of the club:

''I believe the captain is the voice of the club towards the outside, and is one of the leaders of the team. However, I do not believe in just one man in the dressing room who sorts out all of the problems. A successful team is a shared leadership inside the dressing room. He (Fabregas) will be one of the leaders, but not the only one.''

I feel like there has been a huge weight lifted off mine and a lot of other people's shoulders this morning upon reading this news. The Gallas captaincy was marred by the Birmingham game last year, the ensuing results which cost us the title, and a terrible start to this season. With a new captain, and the new captain being Cesc at that, it really feels like a whole new era for Arsenal, one that will lead us to glory.

Gael Clichy supported the decision to give Cesc the armband:

"It is a new start and I am sure Cesc will do well."

"He has been fantastic for us over the last couple of seasons. I think it is a good choice from the boss and I am sure all the players will give all their support.

"When we were losing 1-0 to Sunderland this season and he scored to get us the draw, that showed his character.

Now the rest of the playing staff is still a problem, don't get me wrong, there will have to be changes. Players need to be brought in to improve our depth and talent as well as to show Cesc our ambition because his quality far outweighs the majority of the rest of the squad's. We most certainly need another center back, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Gallas sold in January if a decent offer comes in. He's a team cancer and isn't good enough to play in the team anyway.

Another midfielder and another wide player certainly wouldn't hurt either. With Eboue and Walcott injured, it really exposed our lack of depth on the right with us having to play Diaby out wide and Song and Denilson in the middle. That midfield couldn't start for Wigan at the moment, so it certainly shouldn't be starting for Arsenal. It would be nice if we still had good old Gilberto, because he could certainly be useful during this trying time for the club.

But the fact is that it is now a new era of Arsenal Football Club and it's up to Arsene Wenger which way we go with it. He's changed the captain, but his next move is the most important one. Does he strengthen the squad in January and make the additions neccessary to be competitive, or does he "keep faith in his youngsters" and "try not to hurt their development" by refusing to buy yet again. The wise choice would be the former, because the latter could put his position at Arsenal in serious jeopardy.

Come on Cesc and come on you Gunners!

F**k Off William Gallas

After William Gallas' outburst yesterday, he has been removed as the captain of Arsenal Football Club. I'm absolutely thrilled, I can't wait to see the back of him and I hope Toure or Cesc gets the armband. Gallas has brought so many problems to Arsenal and a cancer like him had to be removed. Arsene, it appears, finally woke up and saw what everyone else has been saying for a yeah and a half, that Gallas is no captain and is a disgrace to our club. If you want to read more about it, read Arseblog or this article on SkySports.

In other news, still working on the new setup for the site so thanks for your patience. Leave your thoughts on Gallas if you want. Cheers.

ArseNole Temporarily Closed For Renovations

Hello everyone. I haven't posted in a while because I am working on the latest chapter of the ArseNole, in which the site will be completely renovated and redesigned. I am hoping to have it up and fully operational in the next week, although there is no telling how long it could take. If you have any ideas for the new design or some features you would like to see on the new site, please email me at ArseNole{@}arsenole.com. Thank you for your patience, and I will let you all know as soon as the new site is up and running. Cheers!

A Disappointing Draw, But On To United

Morning all. It's a nice day here in Florida, which puts me in the mood to look ahead as opposed to looking back on the last week, which saw 3 crappy results for us. Our most important stretch of matches so far this season takes place in the coming month, starting this Saturday with Manchester United. It could either be the end of our title challenge or the start of some new momentum that could push us on to glory. It's a fixture where they really separate the men from the boys, and we'll surely find out what our squad is really made of.

We'll be without RvP, Adebayor, Eboue, and probably Gallas and Walcott, which leaves us in quite a bind for players. This isn't a match preview so I'm not going to predict a lineup or a score yet but the point is it's time to really show what kind of character we have. I'd love to see Djourou get to play in the match with Toure, but the boss seems to not like playing him very much. We need our key players like Cesc, Clichy, Toure, and Almunia to really have good games if we're going to win this one. I'm excited for the match, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous about it as well.

The good news for the day is that Arsenal are top of the table...the Fair Play table. Arsene Wenger talked about it because he was still mad about Stoke "intentionally" trying to hurt our players, which was really just playing tough.

“You can look at the Fair Play table, who is top? Arsenal Football Club. So first of all we have no lessons to learn from anybody on that front. Look at the team with the least fouls in the Premier League - it is Arsenal Football Club.

“I am responsible for the behaviour of my team and when you look at the Fair Play table, you see that Arsenal are top. And that [includes] the behaviour of the manager on the touchline and the players on the field. I do not make that table."

A couple quick things on this point. First of all, you don't win any trophy for being top of the Fair Play table Arsene, and I don't think any of us fans are busy celebrating being top of that table either and thanking you for your leadership in guiding us to this accomplishment. Second, when we were winning titles, we got loads of cards. Patrick Vieira, the last real captain we had, used to get red and yellow cards all the time. There is nothing wrong with fouling as long as it leads to wins. Would anyone be mad if we were last in the Fair Play table and top of the Premiership? No we'd all be thrilled to have won the title. I've got a new slogan for Arsenal to use..."By Any Means Neccessary." We should go into every match thinking that and we would be a lot better off. If you have to foul someone and pick up a card, then do it. Quit worrying about the Fair Play table and make sure you win matches you should win. Get physical and grow a pair.

That's about all I've got. I may do a podcast tomorrow if you guys send some emails in, if not then I'll just do one next week. But yeah, send some emails in or leave some comments so I can use them in the next one. Let's hope some players get healthy before Saturday. Cheers.

Will Arsenal Win Trophies Under Arsene Wenger?

Just the title alone will bring out the morons who think "true fans" can't question anything about the club, but I'm willing to risk it in hopes that we get some real, honest, thoughtful, opinions. I really want to know what people think in regards to if we will ever win another trophy under the management of Arsene Wenger. I don't feel like I need to reiterate the fact that I am thankful for what Arsene Wenger has done for this club and acknowledge that he has made us a more attractive and succesful club.

Having said that, Arsenal, for the last few years, has been on the decline. In my last post I compared our current squad to the one from a few years ago and it wasn't even close. We are much worse off now than we were a few years ago. Our best player, Cesc Fabregas, will not stick around and battle for 4th spot in the league every year when he could make more money and win trophies somewhere else. He's been very loyal since he came to Arsenal but we can't expect that to last forever without winning.

We've had some seriously confusing dealings in the transfer market, like selling Gilberto Silva because of his age and then buying Mikael Silvestre who is the same age. Arsene Wenger has ignored our deficiencies in defense and midfield, as well as overall depth, and it has hurt our squad. Now yet again our depth will be tested, with Adebayor out for three weeks, RvP suspended for an act of abject stupidity, Walcott out and Sagna out as well. Gallas and Eboue are out this match as well and who really knows what sort of squad we'll have out there. A midfield of Nasri-Denilson-Cesc-Diaby is not acceptable at a top club in the best league in the world. While other clubs improve their squad year after year we settle for letting players leave. I'm not saying spend as much money as Chelsea or Sp*rs but it's no excuse for sticking with a weakened team. It should be common sense that when a key player leaves you should replace them with another key player. FFS we could've gotten Senna to replace Flamini for pretty cheap, and what was wrong with that? He was too old? Silvestre apparently wasn't, and Senna is a much better player than Silvestre.

Arsene Wenger's stubbornness is causing him to continually stick with a youth policy that isn't working. Yes, some of the youth players will one day become good key players in the squad, but not all of them are going to be great players and we shouldn't assume that. He seems determined to prove that you can win without spending any money at all, but it isn't going to happen. When Cesc Fabregas leaves, what do we have left then? Is that going to get other players to want to come play for Arsenal when our best player is leaving? We need to adjust this problem now, yet I can't see Arsene going out and really spending in January to try to help our cause either.

Wenger has lost the plot. Instead of saying "yeah we fucked up and lost to Stoke and Fulham" he blames them for trying to injure our players intentionally, which is absolute BS. Just because they try to play tough doesn't mean they're trying to injure us. Even with my Under 8's team that I coach, before every match I tell them to "Man up!" I think a lot of the current Arsenal squad could use someone telling them to man up. Beautiful football is wonderful and I love it as much as the next guy but it makes little difference when you don't win anything. A state of decline for Arsenal is not acceptable.

Somebody needs to tell Arsene Wenger that he isn't guaranteed a job forever. If bad results continue then something has to be fixed. If players can be sacked, then managers can be too. This isn't a call for his head, but it's a call for the board to tell him to wake up and realize that this isn't cutting it.

So I ask you all the question, will Arsenal win anything while Arsene Wenger is still the manager?

Arsene, It's Time For Change!

As Samuel L. Jackson would say, "Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these motherf$%&ing goals from these motherf$%&ing teams!" 2-1 to f'ing Stoke City? You've gotta be kidding me. This is Arsenal Football Club? I'm halfway convinced it's just random people pretending to be a quality football club. The time is right to realize that there are holes in this squad and in this club that need to be addressed.

As almost every single Arsenal fan knew over the summer, when we lost Gilberto, Hleb, and Flamini we needed to sign some replacements. Arsene, however, decided he didn't need replacements for any of them. While Walcott has been better than Hleb on the right side, it still puts more pressure on him to play more games with little to no cover behind him in the squad in the form of Eboue. Gilberto was our experienced leader and a good defensive midfielder who had seen just about everything there was to see in the Premiership, yet he was let go for a minimal fee. Flamini you can't do much about because he could leave if he wanted, but after he does leave, a replacement needs to be brought in. The squad just isn't deep enough to have three key players leave and everything be ok without getting replacements for them.

Arsene continually says this is the most talented squad he has ever managed, but this clearly can't be the case. Let's compare the starting eleven from the invincibles team to the team Arsene says is his most talented team, the current one. The one in bold is, in my opinion, the better player at the position. Left back for me is a toss up because they are/were both brilliant.

Goalkeepers: Jens Jehmann - Manuel Almunia

Right back: Lauren - Bakary Sagna

Center back: Toure/Campbell - Toure/Gallas

Left back: Ashley Cole - Gael Clichy

Right Midfield: Freddie Ljungberg - Theo Walcott

Center Midfield: Patrick Vieira - Denilson

Center Midfield: Gilberto Silva - Cesc Fabregas

Left Midfield: Robert Pires - Samir Nasri

Striker: Dennis Bergkamp - Robin van Persie

Striker: Thierry Henry - Emmanuel Adebayor

You may not agree with all of those but I think most people who watched that team in 03/04 will agree that almost that whole starting XI is better than our current one. There is a serious lack of talent right now when you consider what we used to have. And Arsene wants us to believe that the current squad is the best he's ever managed? You're having a laugh. With the exception of Cesc, Sagna, and Clichy, where are the top class players in the squad? It seems lately that Arsene has a habit of buying injury-plagued underachievers (see RvP, Rosicky, Diaby).

You'd like to think that with our talent level going down, our wages would have gone down as well, but this isn't the case. The wages actually rose from last year to this one, even though we lost three big players for us. Who are we paying all that money to? Not many of them deserve a raise and quite a few deserve a pay cut probably.

Arsene Wenger has confused me so badly with the moves he has made the past few years. Some moves were good yes, it was the right time to sell Ljungberg, Vieira, and Henry, but his buying has to be brought into question. It seems as though he wants to sell, sell, sell and never buy to replace. Anyone that has played a couple hours of Football Manager in their life knows that you can't just have a starting eleven and nobody to back them up because injuries and suspensions happen.

What are we going to hear next year, that Jack Wilshere is like a "new signing" because he's 17 now and not 16? I'm sick of all that. It'd be ok if we were doing well with what we have Arsene but we aren't, we're losing to Fulham, Hull, and Stoke City. I want to know the REAL reason we don't sign anybody! It isn't because there is no money available, and all Arsene says is "we couldn't find the right player." Well come on Arsene, I could have found a lot of better players than Silvestre in defense!

It's f'ing ridiculous that we can't even secure wins over the likes of Hull at home and Stoke City. In years past they'd be walkover games that we didn't have to worry about, but now we look at the fixture list and say "oh shite, tough game against Torquay in the cup this weekend, hope we can grind out a result." If only that really was the fixture list. The real one contains Man U, Chelsea, Man City, and Aston Villa this month. It could get ugly. The way things are going right now, it will get ugly. Do something about it Arsene.