Thoughts on the Everton Match, Celtic Preview

Morning all, hope you're well. Been a bit busy over the last week or so so I haven't had much of a chance to write quality articles, and in my opinion it's better to post a few quality articles than post shite ones all the time.

What a start to the season we've had then, eh? I'll admit I was worried that we might draw or even lose at Everton to start the season. It's a tricky fixture every year and I'd say by far the toughest first match of the season out of the big four clubs. Some would argue that Liverpool had it tougher but since we haven't lost to Sp*rs in the league since about 2000 I don't really think of them as being any good. What a performance though by the Gunners. 6-1, and the 1 was in the 90th minute. I will say that I was a bit pissed off when we allowed that goal right at the end, because 6-0 looks just ridiculously good and a clean sheet would have given Almunia and the defense a lot of confidence going forward. But 6-1 is still bloody good and we're top of the league!

Just a couple of thoughts from the match then. I thought Alex Song was absolutely terrific, his work rate exceptional, his passing good, and his closing down extremely good. Something happened to Alex last year that completely turned him around and now he's become almost essential to the team. The problem is, he'll be leaving for the African Nations Cup in January...

I love the 4-3-3 system that we're using now. While I'd maybe consider putting Bendtner up top and RvP on one of the wings, I'm not Arsene Wenger so I have no say. I thought having Denilson and Song in there as defensive players behind Cesc was fantastic, because you saw what Cesc can really do when he can play openly and not worry about tracking back quite so much to cover in front of the back four. Cesc was immense, as he always is when we play well, and it's amazing to think that we scored 6 goals yet none of them came from RvP, Bendtner, or Arshavin. 2 from Cesc, 1 each from Gallas and Vermaelen (who had a very solid debut), an absolute gem from Denilson, and a late one from Eduardo who came on as a sub. That's what we've been missing the past few years is goals from players other than our strikers, and we really got it done against Everton.

Everton were clearly not at their best, and yes it was only one match, but it's just what we needed to start off the season. It should raise the squad's morale and confidence in the team, and push us going forward. Top of the league is a nice place to be, so let's keep it that way lads.

So in just over two hours we play Celtic in Glasgow. An intimidating place to go for sure, but you'd have to say that we are the better team if each team was playing their best on a given day. Injury worries are for Sagna, Denilson, and Cesc, who are all questionable according to Arsene Wenger. It's a problem if both Denilson and Cesc aren't able to go, although I suspect that Cesc at least will be out there. If neither one of them are able to go, who plays in the center of midfield? Song and Diaby, most likely with Aaron Ramsey, who looked good in the preseason but Celtic Park is a tough place to play for anyone, especially someone as young as Ramsey. He and Jack Wilshere exude the same confidence though in almost any situation you see them in, so if he is in there I have all the faith in the world in him to get the job done.

Walcott, Rosicky, Nasri, Djourou, and Fabianski are all still out for sure. The best news of all though is that Andrey Arshavin can finally make his Arsenal debut in the Champions League. Of course last year he was cup-tied after playing in the CL for Zenit St Petersburg, so this will be his first taste of contenental action for the Gunners. I'm going to go ahead and pick Andrey and RvP to score goals as Arsenal win 2-1. Looking forward to the match immensely, and I'll try to get a match report up tomorrow.

Cheers all!

Arsenal Draw Celtic, Arsenal Ratings By Position

Morning all. Let's get right to it then. Yesterday was the Champions League 3rd Round Qualifier draw. The general consensus was we wanted to avoid Atletico, Fiorentina, and Celtics. Well, two out of three's not bad, we drew Celtic. Seems to me that a lot of people are worrying when I don't really think they need to. Yeah Celtic are a decent team but with fresh legs, another year of experience under our belts and a good preseason, we should be able to beat any Scottish team. Atletico and Fiorentina would have been much worse draws than Celtic in my opinion, and I do think that we'll get through Celtic fairly easily. If we don't, then you can blame it on me for being so confident, but I just don't see us struggling that much.

The first leg is supposed to take place in Glasgow on Tuesday, August 18th, but due to a U2 concert there on the same night, they may have to move the match to Wednesday the 19th. Isn't that just wonderful, we have a match later in the week because of f'ing Bono.

So we've got seven days, just one week, until the Premier League season kicks off away to Everton. How we got that as our first match I haven't the slightest idea, because that's a pretty tough one. So while a lot of the transfer talk has died down, yeah we still may sign Chamakh or maybe someone else out of the blue, we pretty much know the squad we're going to have for the new season. So I wanted to try and break it down a little bit and see where we think our strongest/weakest areas are heading into the new year.

Goalkeepers: Manuel Almunia, Lukasz Fabianski - I'd give us an 7 out of 10 here. I think Almunia is pretty solid. He's shown over the past two seasons that he is an above average Premier League goalkeeper who generally makes the saves he's supposed to make. If you were ranking him among Premiership goalkeepers, where would Almunia rank for you? I think I'd have him behind Reina, Van der Sar, and possibly Robert Green and Petr Cech, but nobody else. That's not that bad considering for a long time he was a career backup for us. Fabianski is a good backup, who with some playing time can be good for us down the road.

Right Backs: Bakary Sagna, Emmanuel Eboue - 9/10 for me. Sagna is clearly one of the best if not THE best right back in the league. Solid defensively and good going forward, even if his crosses are sometimes a bit lacking. Eboue is also a much more effective right back than anywhere else on the pitch.

Center Backs: William Gallas, Thomas Vermaelen, Mikael Silvestre, Johann Djourou - I'm going to go with a 7/10 here, although I'll say it's still an incomplete judgement on this group. We haven't gotten to see enough of Vermaelen to know how he'll do when he's up against players like Drogba and Torres. Without Toure on the team, Djourou needs to make this be his breakout year, and Gallas needs to really step up and be a leader on the back line. I just hope they glue together and we find a good partnership in there.

Left Backs: Gael Clichy, Armand Traore, Kieran Gibbs - Before last year I would have said this was a 9, but this year I'll say it's an 8. Clichy had some sketchy moments last year, but I still think he's a great player for Arsenal. He's great getting forward (even if he hasn't ever scored for Arsenal yet) and he's pretty good defensively, not to mention he's still definitely young enough to improve. Gibbs and Traore are both super pacey players who are in the same mold as Clichy and Cole before him. I think they can both be great, although Traore may be moved up to the left wing.

I'll get to the midfield tomorrow, so we can make this process last through this week that will undoubtedly be full of anticipation for next weekend, and it'll culminate with my season preview, which will probably come on Thursday.

Just one more thing today. I went to see Green Day in Orlando this past Wednesday, and we had tickets in the pit. Amazingly, I ended up right next to a fellow Gooner, Dan from London. So it was great to be able to talk Arsenal in such a random place so far away from London. He even wore an Arsenal wrist band, so I have to give him a shout out. Cheers Dan, and up the Gunners!

Arsenal Needs More Than Just Arshavin

Morning all. We had a pretty big match yesterday against Everton, and after going the inevitable goal down, Robin van Persie managed to equalize. And I have to say, it was a fucking fantastic goal. The problem is that we gave up a goal before that and had almost no attacking presence until that goal in the 92nd minute.

As I was watching the game I tried to picture how Andrei Arshavin would help us during the match. I decided that he would have probably taken Denilson or Diaby's role, either in the center attacking role or on the right wing. Denilson wasn't especially good, but he is no right winger and when he's in his natural position in the middle I do think he's pretty good. Diaby wasn't very good either, but he did at least make the assist on the one goal we scored. Could he add something where those two couldn't? I think yes, he could. The thing is, we have players already that play in the central midfield attacking role and on the right wing, named Cesc and Theo. I still can't see, when everyone is healthy, where we are going to play Arshavin. I haven't really found a good answer from anyone and it's hard to see where he fits into a healthy lineup. Mind you, Arsenal seems to almost never have a fully healthy lineup, but I just worry about what the implications of his signing could be. Theo's contract is up in the summer and if we didn't renew him because we signed Arshavin I'd be pretty upset about it.

I've mentioned all those points before though, about him not really having a natural place in the squad when Cesc and Theo are healthy (and there's also Rosicky, who should be back soon), but the real problem is still in defense. The goal Everton scored was not spectacular, they didn't break the defense down with skillful passing or immense skill; they just crossed into the box and Tim Cahill (one of only two or three players that you would worry about scoring on Everton) headed it in over Clichy. I love Clichy but one thing you can certainly say is that he is not the tallest defender in the world. Baines had way too much time to cross the ball and had nobody even attempting to come close him down. It's like someone giving Ray Allen an open three pointer in the corner, it's going in. Same way here, if you give a professional at a top flight club that much time then he is going to hurt you. Just poor defending all the way around and that seems to be the theme of our matches this year. Clichy hasn't had a good year, Toure/Gallas haven't been good, Silvestre is just terrible, and only Djourou has really looked decent and shown his potential.

Does Arsene really not think we need a new defender? No, he knows we need one, because he said we needed a "powerful defender" just last summer, when we were all saying the same thing. Silvestre cannot have been who he had in mind to fill that role. I can't imagine what is possibly going on in his head but anyone who has watched Arsenal this year would see that we have a number of deficiencies that Andrey Arshavin will not fix by himself no matter how well he does.

Aston Villa continue to win, with all the luck of a team having horse shoes stuck up their asses and leprachauns in their dressing room. We can't afford, in the current economic state, to not qualify for the Champions League, and at this rate it won't happen. We're developing the Highbury Square flats, we're paying off the new stadium, we have fairly high player salaries to pay, and the Champions League provides a lot of revenue towards those expenses. Surely Arsene Wenger, the economist, can see that some investment now will prove to be a good expenditure down the road.

I just worry about the potential problems the club could face if we don't get better soon. Yes, we are on an unbeaten run, but there are a lot of draws in that run against some teams we should probably beat and need to beat if we want to be where we want to be at the end of the year. I know it's unlikely, but I'm still holding out for a couple of new signings in the next week.

And last but not least for the day, The ArseNole turned 1 1/2 years old this week and I'm in a very thankful mood today, so I'd just like to thank everyone that reads or has ever read the site and I especially thank those that keep coming back, like Mike, Joaquin, GPS Justin, Theresa Smith, Danking, Andre, Conolly's Agent, Jamesgillesp, and all the others who have stayed with me through all this time. I can't thank you guys enough. If you're ever in Jacksonville (or in Mike's case if I'm in Tally) then there's a beer for you on me. Cheers all.

Oh by the way! I might actually do a podcast tomorrow...if I come up with some good material. If you could please send in your emails with anything you want me to talk about on there or anything funny or anything at all, then it would be much appreciated! Thanks! ArseNole{at}arsenole.com.

Arsenal-Everton Preview

I'm posting a quick preview now so it'll be up before the match because I know I won't have time to in the morning. Manchester United won today against West Ham so we can't win the Premiership any more. I was holding out hope that the Hammers would pull off a miracle but even Nani being sent off couldn't stop United. So that means this match against Everton is going to be all fun and no pressure. It'd be better if it was a no pressure game because we had the title wrapped up but we'll have to live with this this year.

Injury news ahead of the game sees Robin van Persie being sat out as a "precaution." Robin went off after the first half against Derby and let's hope it really is just a precaution and not something that turns out to be a lot worse. Sagna, Rosicky, and Eduardo will also miss the game due to injury as usual. I miss seeing Bakary out there. He's just so solid. Alexander Hleb will continue his suspension and will also miss the game. Mathieu Flamini could return after recovering from his ankle injury so that will be interesting. It could very well be his last home game in the red and white so if he does get to play we should probably let him know that he served us well this year but he is also a money grubbing cunt if he really goes to Milan and plays in the UEFA cup next year.

I think a lot of the younger players and fringe players will probably get another chance this time, maybe even more so than against Derby because this game really does mean nothing. We could get second if Chelsea slip up though. So I'll go out on a limb to pick the lineup.

Fabianski
Hoyte-Song-Gallas-Clichy
Walcott-Flamini-Denilson-Traore
Bendtner-Adebayor

I thought Fabianski was ok but not great against Derby and he looked a little timid at times, but it was his first start in the Premiership so he'll improve every time he gets a game. I hope Hoyte gets to play because I'd like to see him one more time at least this season and I'd also really like to see what Traore can do on the wing because by all reports he has played there well recently. Bendtner is going to get another run out after playing well against Derby and I'm hoping Adebayor will be out there too because it'd be nice for him to catch Ronaldo in the top scorer category.



Match Prediction: Four of our last five games against Everton have been 1-0 or 1-1 so I'm going for a 1-0 home win with Adebayor on the score sheet.


Now for some other news. With all the talk of losing Hleb and Flamini and not having the money we thought we had and all the other stories we get every year about how bad off Arsenal is, a good story has come along. Bakary Sagna is set to be rewarded with a new contract. This is great news for us because he is the best right back in the Premiership and he is only going to get better as he plays more and more for us. Nobody deserves a new deal as much as he does.

In the search for a new managing director, The Times reports that Arsenal are willing to pay big bucks to find and hire someone who is "right for the job." They say that Arsenal are prepared to offer more than David Gill of Man U and Peter Kenyon of Chelsea make. It could help us keep some of these players that seem to always want to leave if we got a new person in that could negotiate contracts better. This could be a big deal for the club so I'll be keeping you updated on the situation.

And the last thing for today is just something to think about. Gennaro Gattuso wants to play in England, and we are about to lose our holding midfielder to AC Milan, where Gattuso currently plays...catching my drift? If Milan sign Flamini I think we could get Gattuso for an affordable price. He is thirty years old but he is one of the best holding midfielders in the world and could easily replace Flamini in my opinion. He isn't the long term answer but maybe he could hold that position for two or three years while we groom someone to take over long term. What do you all think?

Here's to three points against Everton. Cheers all.