Podolski + Lineker coverage - and over a million site hits

What a fantastic start to a summer that I hope shall see several transfers of top quality talent into the Arsenal.  The board and manager know that the shambles of last summer cannot be repeated, and the early signing of Lukas Podolski is a very encouraging sign that they have learnt their lessons.  Podolski is a top striker, his record speaks for itself, even though he did not set Munich on fire, his goal scoring record there was still decent.  Mean Lean has a great Cologne fan view on Podolski as a player over at ArsenalVision that I would thoroughly recommend.  Podolski is a very positive signing, a fantastic move for the club that not only massively strengthens our squad, it also sends out a strong message of Gooner intent and may well have implications in terms of keeping certain players.

Thanks to all those who have sent complaints into the BBC about Gary Lineker's classless mocking of Arsene Wenger, the blog piece I wrote mushroomed into quite a story and was even covered in the Daily Mail.  Great credit to the Mail for covering Lineker's woeful behaviour in the manner it deserves, it is telling that a massive majority of reader comments on the Mail website are very much anti-Lineker.

I shall wait and see what the BBC do before casting further judgement on the BBC, I think the minimum Arsene Wenger deserves is a formal apology from Lineker, in fact I have written to Arsenal to encourage them to make a formal complaint about Lineker's behaviour.  The general tone of the program was quite pathetic in the way in made fun of a manager who was being abused, especially given that he had to endure large quantities of racist abuse from the Stoke fans throughout the game.

The fact that Pulis defended the behaviour of Stoke fans on MOTD, including the sick abuse of Aaron Ramsey, and that the BBC allowed him to do this says a lot about both Pulis and the BBC.  Pulis deliberately incites hatred in his own support in order to create a cauldron of hate at the Britannia and this is the key behind Stoke not being relegated, referees are afraid to penalise them at home.  Stoke City Football Club are a nasty stain on the Premier League in my opinion for this and many other reasons.

Finally many thanks to all our regular readers, we have recently surpassed the one million hit mark and I certainly think that is some kind of achievement.  We may not please everyone with what we write, but frankly we do not try to, we simply want to express our opinion on all matters Arsenal related.  Thanks for reading.  Big game tonight, just can't decided who I want to win, maybe I will just have to enjoy watching someone lose, that's unless it's a draw of course.......

BBC and Lineker sink to new lows

The behaviour of Stoke fans was bad enough yesterday in itself.  Aaron Ramsey was abused by a majority of brainless Stoke fans for daring to have his leg broken by the aggressive Ryan Shawcross' reckless tackling, while Arsene Wenger was abused by the Stoke fans in that classless manner that is sometimes tinged with a rather significant dose of xenophobia.

The coverage of events on the BBC's Match of the Day was biased and offensive.  They largely ignored the shameful abuse dished out to Ramsey and made a joke of Arsene Wenger being abused by Stoke fans.  Then at the end of the program, Gary Lineker did his Arsene Wenger 'impression'.

I have to say, words almost fail me, it was childish, offensive and utterly pathetic from a grown man who really should know a lot better.   There was also a rather unpleasant streak of xenophobia running through Lineker's mocking of Arsene Wenger.  It is a disgrace that a public sector broadcaster such as the BBC, which is meant to be impartial, should cover events in such a partisan fashion and allow a presenter to mock a manager in such a fashion.

It was a new low for Lineker and the BBC in my opinion.  I have complained and would urge everyone else to do the same, make sure you mention the failure to cover the Ramsey abuse and Lineker's offensive 'impression'.  Lineker should lose his job for this, no impartial presenter should behave in such a deplorable manner, it was utterly shameful.

                                          Complain to the BBC LINK

Stoke City fans: I hope you're proud

Firstly the game, a point gained given Newcastle's spanking at Wigan and Stoke's decent home record against top sides.  Still, we comprehensively outplayed Stoke for the vast majority of the game, and a mixture of bad refereeing, poor finishing and bad luck saw it end as a draw.  This is life, sometimes you don't get the rub of the green, but overall a draw is no disaster for our 3rd place quest.

Stoke are a dire dire football team who demonstrate most things that can be bad in sport.  They are a team with many thugs who have learnt to exploit poor refereeing, a lot of their deliberate fouling is pathetic and clearly something coached by their manager, their 'rugby' tactics are an embarrassment to the game, especially given that this is not a side assembled on a shoe string budget, many millions have been spent, interestingly Stoke's net spend over the last few years is way greater then ours.  The fact that this team of violent thugs also sees it as acceptable to dive to ground when barely touched is rather amusing too, for example Whitehead's laughable dive in injury time today.

Stoke's players and managers sink pretty low, but it has to be said that their fans can often be guaranteed to sink even lower, and this was again proven today.  The unique brand of aggressive, uneducated, vile and stupid individual that follows Stoke City Football Club is quite something to behold and it is not joyful, rather the opposite.  The fact that a rather large number of vermin chose to boo Aaron Ramsey today because this young footballer had the audacity have his leg recklessly snapped by the violent Stoke player, Ryan Shawcross, says it all.  They abused the young Welshman as he left the field too, it was utterly disgusting, some of the most disgraceful and brainless behaviour I have ever seen from 'football fans'.  The abuse dished out to Arsene Wenger was also completely unacceptable, it was also beneath contempt.

To finish on a positive note, well done Aaron Ramsey, he had a very decent game today, obviously he has not been on fine form, but he showed such strength of character to play so defiantly in such a heated cauldron of a stadium.  The media in this country should highlight the large number of truly despicable scum that support Stoke City and who booed Ramsey today, I doubt they will though and this makes a lot of the media just as bad for me.

Football is just a game, if you see it as more important than life or limb, then you need to take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror, you probably have a very sad empty life and you may have something in common with a Stoke City fan.  I would rather watch Arsenal play at home in complete silence than have supporters like Stoke City, they and their club are a disgrace to the so called 'beautiful' game.

Well done Chelsea - UEFA's rent boys lose

I am no Chelsea fan but one has to see the positive in tonight's result that sees Barcelona go crashing out of the Champions League against all the odds.  It was just fantastic to see Barcelona's cheating not pay.

Many of us Gooners went on about the dodgy refereeing and Barcelona cheating which robbed us in last year's knockout stages, the same happened to Chelsea tonight.

Terry was harshly sent off in the first half, Sanchez made a meal of a tiny touch which should have been just a yellow.  Cesc dived for a dodgy penalty in the second half which Messi missed.  Barca again got away with some off the ball shoving.

Chelsea were rather lucky in the end, they rode their luck but they did defend magnificently overall.  They now have four players suspended for the final including Terry and Ramires.  I won't go as far as wishing them luck in the final, and knowing that the scumbag Terry won't be playing is rather amusing.

One has to enjoy Barcelona's pain, UEFA's little rent boys couldn't even beat Chelsea with the help of some rather favourable refereeing.

Meaningless awards and final push

I gave up giving a few rat's giblets about footballing awards a very long time ago.  There is so much bias and stupidity at work that there is absolutely no point getting worked up over who wins the FIFA/UEFA/PFA or anyone else's award.  There is a massive bias towards strikers, there is a massive bias towards certain clubs and countries, also a lot of people who vote have about as many brain cells as Cashley Cole, enough said frankly.

RVP did deserve the player of the year award this year but looking at the selections in the team of the season has to make you chuckle, it is almost as laughable as Henry Winter's Tottenham XI, sorry combined Arsenal-Tottenham XI.  I had the misfortune of looking at the officials Premier League's shortlists for the greatest bits of the last 20 years, it is staggering what and who they have shortlisted, apparently Manu 8-2 Arsenal is one of their top ten games, there is also no room for Jens Lehmann in their best keepers, we have the likes of Given, James and Schwarzer instead, a truly laughable selection!  There is no Lauren, but we have Petrescu, Glen Johnson and Carr! I stopped reading at that point, the Premier League are again showing their complete lack of intelligence with or without a bit of bias chucked in.

Another huge potential joke is Andre Marriner taking charge of the Manchester derby match this monday, he is a poor referee who cannot control players and I think he will struggle badly to keep any level of order next week.  We shall see.  We have Chris Foy, but unfortunately Marriner is making an appearance as our 4th official the trip to Stoke.

I was away for the Chelsea game and will comment briefly with the convenient eye of retrospect.  We were unlucky, we created all the chances and on another day could have put 2 or 3 past the dire Russians.  RVP did not have his shooting boots on, Song is looking rather tired, but it was great to have the mighty Koscielny back in the fold, he has been one of our outstanding players this season without doubt.

The Tottenham result did us a massive favour, Newcastle are close to us but our vastly superior goal difference is useful, I think if we can beat Stoke this weekend, a big if I know, then we will be odds of for 3rd spot.  Things could be tricky if we do not win and other results do not drop though.  I just wonder if Francis Coquelin may be added into the starting XI to give us a bit more defensive beef, it will be interesting to see.

Poor excuses and defending

Having calmed down and re-analysed the Wigan goals from last night it has become rather more obvious as to what went wrong, those two goals killed us, even though we almost got back level, we just couldn't quite recover.  Arsene said:

"We conceded the first when Arteta was out and we could not put the player on because he is not ready. That penalised us for the second goal and after that we had a mountain to climb."


I am not impressed with this excuse.  Arteta was injured, this was key and I cannot argue with that, however we still had ten other men on the field.  Surely the team should have adapted and other players should have dropped deeper to cover Arteta?  This did not happen.

What happened was, Theo chickened out of a challenge to contest Sagna's knock down header, Wigan broke down their left.  Theo jogged back, Vermaelen and Song were nowhere to be seen.  Santos got dragged across to the Wigan left, Djourou and Benayoun were well behind Di Santo in the middle and couldn't make up the ground, that was the opener.  Great credit to Yossi Benayoun for tracking back and almost blocking Di Santo's finish, but where were the others, players like Song, Vermaelen and Djourou.  They were too slow to spot the danger and react for me, this is irrespective of Arteta's injury.

The second goal was poor but nowhere near as poor from a defensive point of view as the first.  Walcott lost the ball in midfield, dribbling where he should have known better, Wigan knocked the ball around nicely, Moses skinned Sagna down their left, then his cross somehow evaded our defence, we had enough men back, Song's position was not great, neither was Djourou's, and the latter slid in but got only minimal contact on the ball, Gomez then slid the ball home, Szczesny was inches away from getting hold of the ball.  It was a poor goal to concede.

Overall we just couldn't keep up our head of steam to get those two goals back, although we came close.  Looking back it does appear that this is a problem with both the team and individuals, it is systemic.  Just look how Benayoun saw the danger for the first and steamed back, it shows the importance of having a whole team of players with that mentality and team ethic, for that reason I really respect Benayoun, he is a true professional.  Walcott doesn't track back enough for me, Song doesn't show enough defensive discipline, Djourou is dodgy especially compared to Koscielny.

We just seem to have be so erratic in this regard, some games we do it, some we don't, the naivety and lack of appreciation of the danger in the build up to Wigan's opener was really depressing.  This cannot be blamed solely on Arteta's injury, we need to be more disciplined defensively in every minute of every game.  Sort it out Arsene, we need Champions League football next season.

Kamikaze shambles

What a start, we were utterly shambolic at the back and so terribly naive, caught out by Wigan on the counter attack, they killed us and took a shock lead early doors, Di Santo not being tracked by anyone and somehow working the ball into the net after Szczesny had almost stopped him.  Wigan then got a second, some more shocking defending, Sagna tricked by Moses, his cross was not cut out and Szczesny seemed to have two hands on the ball, obviously he didn't and it was two nil, a terrible start and a mountain to climb.

We were terrific for the rest of the first half, and in honesty we should have been ahead by half time, Vermaelen did halve the deficit with a terrific powered header from a great Sagna cross, we had countless other chances though, Benayoun forcing a fine save from Al Habsi, Djourou shooting a few inches wide with the keeper beaten.  Wigan did look dangerous on the counter attack and our defensive frailty persisted, a really worrying sign.

The second half was poor, we didn't really get going and Wigan do deserve a lot of credit for this, they defended well and made things difficult.  One has to add that the referee Andre Marriner, ignoring some of his woeful decisions in the second half, allowed a ridiculous amount of cheating in the form of time wasting, a didn't produce a yellow card until injury time and it allowed Wigan to time waste, time waste and time waste, it was quite pathetic.

Wigan players routinely held the ball and walked away with it after free kicks had been given against them, it was blatant cheating but the useless Marriner did nothing to stamp it out.  There were numerous examples of kicking the ball away after the whistle had gone, there was a lot of feigning injury from Gomez and Di Santo in particular.  I don't massively blame Wigan for it, but how on earth can a qualified referee allow this kind of systematic cheating in order to waste time?  It is beyond belief.

All in all though there were too many poor performances tonight and I think we lost discipline, we left ourselves too open as a team early on and paid a heavy price, it was ultra naive.  Arteta's injury didn't help but Song put in a rather woeful shift, his defending was indisciplined and lazy, his distribution poor, Ramsey didn't do a great deal good, Walcott was largely anonymous, Rosicky was tremendous though.  The substitutions came too late, Gervinho and the Ox came on when we had already gone flat.  Our lack of a good second striker is obvious, if we had someone of quality on the bench then this would have been the kind of game RVP needed some more support up top.

Tonight summed up our season, there was some brilliant high tempo attacking play at times, but overall it was all wrecked by some really naive and indisciplined team defending.  Well done Wigan, I truly hope you stay up.  We have now made things much harder for ourselves, what could have been an eight point gap is now a five point one and it puts a lot of extra pressure on us for Sunday.  So frustrating to see such gaping holes in our defence, a 0-0 would have been easier to take than this kamikaze shambles.