Monday 28 December 2009

Lazy Mail on Cesc

"Arsenal expect their worst fears to be confirmed on Tuesday when skipper Cesc Fabregas undergoes a scan to determine the extent of the damage to his injured hamstring."

The Daily Mail is making a story from horse shite. The truth is that Arsenal don't expect anything, they simply don't know whether Cesc will be out for a few days or a few weeks. As Arsene explained after the game we will not know whether it is a minor tear of scar tissue or a bigger muscular tear until Cesc has had his scan, hence Arsenal are expecting nothing, it is simply unknown at the current time. The Mail is making column inches out of rumour and conjecture, this is hardly high brow journalism is it?

Elsewhere I found Goodplaya's match report pretty much spot on, the way in which some people have simply called the Villa game 'the Cesc show' is definitely a little bit short sighted. In the last couple of seasons Villa have come to the Emirates and looked as good a side as us for long periods, they have at times out battled us in the midfield area. Yesterday this did not happen, maybe the loss of Barry made a bit of the difference, certainly the development of Song and Diaby was instrumental, but overall we ran the show in midfield and for most of the game this was without Cesc. Obviously I'm not wishing to denounce the importance of Cesc, he is such a gifted talisman for us, but it was a team performance yesterday, and this was the key, on so many occasions last season we didn't look like a cohesive unit as we did against Villa. We need to keep the old feet on the ground though, three points against Pompey is vital if we are to keep the momentum going.

6 comments:

marcus said...

The media seem to be LOVING the whole Cesc-injured-while-saving-the-game story.

Aside from that, I have another media rant from this weekend:

What the hell is this hysterical media gushing over Rooney and Utd's defeat of HULL as if it was an achievement equal to beating the 4th place team? We beat Hull last week and got no media attention for it at all, despite 3 great goals. You'd think Utd and Rooney beat the European champions, the way the papers and sky are going on about it, ffs!

Skysports profiled Rooney and Cesc as the two men of the weekend -- they talked about Rooney as if he'd slayed a dragon. Well sorry there's NO comparison between what Rooney did v. Hull and what Cesc did v. Villa.

Skysports did provide some interesting statistical comparisons between the 2 players, tho.

Cesc v. Villa - played 27 mins, scored 2 goals, 0 assists, 3 key passes and 92% pass completion.

Rooney v. Hull played 90 mins, scored 1 goal, 1 assist, 2 key passes and 64% pass completion.

In the PL this season, Cesc has played 16 games, scored 9 goals and made 12 assists.

Rooney played 18 games, scored 13 goals and made 2 assists.

Anonymous said...

Marcus- Rooney's English therefore the media love him. And Henry Winter at the Telegraph would suck him off given half a chance.

Anonymous said...

The media reported our defeat of Hull as "lucky, lucky Arsenal".
How crippled will the Mancs be without Rooney?

Uncle Mike said...

Can you imagine if Rooney was good-looking, how much they'd fawn over him?

What the hell, Cesc speaks English better than Rooney.

1979gooner said...

Mike,

are you insulting the king of the potatoes Wayne Rooney as not being good looking?

he may not be a Maris Piper but I'd fry his tasty potato head up and dip him in some HP sauce if given the chance

Ted said...

1979 is absolutely right that the Villa game was a team performance. All 14 players put in a good shift out there. Vermaelen was excellent, as was Song, as was Diaby.

Manure are already a shade of last season without Ronaldo, the perma-tanned diver, but he was damn good at it.

In Ronaldo's absence, part of the reason Manure have struggled to find someone to play up top with Rooney is that he is quite a selfish player - shown by the poor number of assists.

But ignore the column inches - its World Cup year and the idiot press think the King of the Spuds can lead England to the World Cup.