Silly Billy

If one believes what one reads then William Gallas is no longer Arsenal club captain, I can't say that I'm particularly disappointed if that is the case, one hardly gets the impression that Gallas has been an inspiring figure during his spell in charge. Certainly Gallas' recent words that spoke of events in the dressing room have made his position untenable, he broke the unwritten rule that this kind of stuff must stay behind closed doors. One just wonders how deliberate this was from Gallas, was he keen for an early return to France or was he just not thinking?

I'd rather not comment than insult Gallas, while his achievements as captain speak louder than words, these include alienating a large portion of the dressing room and at times not behaving in a manner fitting for an adult let alone a club captain. However the man has played well at times and should not be made a scapegoat for all our failings, after all there is a man called Arsene Wenger who made him captain in the first place. Was he really a sensible choice for this role? It could be argued that he could have been an Arsenal great, if he had been played alongside a taller commanding centre back and if he had not been handed the responsibility of captaincy for which he seemed so ill suited.

As I always thought if Gallas is no longer club captain, then one cannot see him staying at the club, leaving Arsene with some rather interesting problems in the centre back area. Gallas has not been a bad player for the club by any means, however he is definitely no commanding centre back His partnerships with Toure and Silvestre have left a lot to be desired at times, but Gallas could not be expected to be a type of player than he has never been before, he should have been paired with a more commanding and physically powerful partner as he was at Chelsea.

It is now time for the rest of the squad to stand up and be counted, this is no time for bickering, it is a time for solidarity. I hope this is the stepping stone for Johan Djourou to gets some games and develop into one of the finest centre backs in the world, Arsene has been hinting that the time is now for the young Swiss. Toure is out of tomorrow's game with a calf injury, meaning that it will surely be Silvestre partnering Djourou, while Cesc's suspension and Theo's injury should hopefully see maybe Ramsey and Wilshere get a start each, with Eboue at right back. However there are rumours that Hoyte will come in at right back with Eboue pushed into midfield. I'd also like to see Manuel made captain.

I hear you saying 'Why Manuel Almunia captain?'. Well, he's a good bloke, he's been a very consistent performer for the past couple of seasons, he's not too young, he's got a good view of things from goal and frankly who else would make a better skipper? I thought it was only a matter of time before the Gallas situation had to be resolved, and being optimistic, it's good that it's happened sooner rather than later, we can now rebuild and get on with without Billy. We need a popular captain, someone who can encourage and not alienate the young players, tomorrow against City is already looking like quite a big moment in our season. Come on you Gunners!

Gallas reveals depths of our problems

Well what has Billy gone and done now? The Telegraph has a good piece here setting out exactly what he said, apparently, whilst on duty with France this week, although its also widely reported that he has a book on the way as well. So believe what you will.

Either way, the private life of the Arsenal dressing room is now public knowledge, and it ain't pretty. However, for the most part, I completely agreed with what Gallas said:

“Maybe, against Manchester [United], it was the whole team that fought for victory. But when you stop fighting together, there comes a time when the midfield will sink, the defenders, unfortunately, can also sink. That’s what happened against Villa.”

"We are coming up against teams who are not scared to play football against us, who are not scared to take us on at our place, and this is becoming dangerous. We are not brave enough in battle. I think we need to be soldiers. We have to be warriors."

Good stuff Billy. Well said. Exactly what I want to hear from the Arsenal captain. But then he goes a bit wrong:

"When, as captain, some players come up to you and talk to you about a player ... complaining about him ... and then during the match you speak to this player and the player in question insults us, there comes a time where we can no longer comprehend how this can happen. I am trying to defend myself a bit without giving names. Otherwise I’m taking it all [the blame]. It’s very frustrating. I’m 31, the player is six years younger than me.”

So someone who is 25 years old had a go at Billy G during a game and poor little Billy-kins is not happy about it. Big fucking deal.

Early reports have suggested that the only player at Arsenal who is 25 is RVP, but that is not correct, as both Bacary Sagna and Manu Eboue were 25 this year as well. It is also not beyond the realms of possibility that maths is not Billy's strong point and that he was referring to the 26 year old Adebayor, or even the 27 year old Kolo Toure. Frankly though, it wouldn't surprise me if all of them thought Billy was a twat.

Remember ladies and gentleman, that William Gallas is the man who threatened to go on strike at Chelsea because he would not tow the line with Mourinho.

It is incredibly childish of Billy Gallas to go into these issues in the first place. Billy G was not even involved in the quarrel, but he tried to stop it and was told, presumably, to mind his own business in no uncertain terms by a 25/26/27 year old who was involved in the argument. Its simply not newsworthy, but Billy wants to be "insulted" by what happened.

Now if Gallas was any kind of captain, then if he felt that he had been disrespected, he would have a quiet word with the individual in question and sorted it out man-to-man. If appropriate, I would expect Gallas to have involved the other senior players, or even the manager.

I expect that if Ian Wright ever told Tony Adams to fuck-off, which he must have done at some points, then big Tone would have done the right thing. Perhaps let Wrighty cool off first and have a chat after the game. Or punch Wrighty in the face and tell him who is daddy is. Maybe Wrighty never would have sworn at Tone in the first place. Either way, Tone was the boss. Gallas is not.

When you add this latest disaster to the catalogue of other recent team incidents, including the Adebayor/Bendtner bust up last year, Song disrespecting Toure in the Stoke game, and reports of pre-season fights between Walcott and Song on the training ground, the picture is extremely bleak. In fact, its no chuffing surprise that we are so inconsistent as it seems most of the first team squad are ready have a hissy-fit at any given opportunity.

What is worse than all of this, is that I have always thought Wenger was an excellent man-manager, a genius at motivating his teams and engendering die-hard loayalty from his players. The appointment of Gallas as captain is now one of Wenger's biggest mistakes. When added to the long list of high profile departures from the first team squad in the last 12 months (Diarra, Flamini, Hleb, Senderos and Gilberto), I begin to think that we are in a real mess off the field as well.

The sky is falling in

If you know the Chicken Little story then you'll know what I mean when I say that some people need their umbrellas and some don't. It's very easy to criticise and polarise the argument, for example the 'with us or against us' strategy is a classic of this slightly unsubtle and inflexible strategy. I guess that some people just love to stick their fingers in their ears while shouting "I'm right, you're wrong, nah nah nah nah nah".

The other day I wrote about where I felt we were going wrong, it was criticism of sorts I know, however I like to think I kept things in some kind of perspective. A lot of the criticism I've read elsewhere has also been very reasonable, however some of it has been typically childlike and disrespectful to a man that has done so much for Arsenal Football Club. I would be very interested to know if there is any credible evidence that Arsene Wenger has 'lied' to supporters, personally I very much doubt it exists, there is either no evidence at all or some people have believed what they read in the Sun again.

I must reiterate that the majority of Gooner reaction has been very sensible. However if we choose to believe the 'all or nothing' brigade then we were world beaters after the Manu game and hopeless failures after the Aston Villa game. Of course neither is true, the truth is somewhere in between. For example I am amazed at some of the criticism that Manuel Almunia has received in recent weeks, he's been one of the most consistent keepers in the premiership for a while now. The point is that we have excellent individuals in our squad and our squad is not short of numbers, we just lack a certain type of player in certain areas.

Just to finish, it's always much easier to criticise than to suggest practical ways of improving things, so given that so many people are criticising Arsene's transfer policy this summer, just who would you have bought this summer? By the way you can only name players that were actually transferred or definitely available for transfer in the summer. Flashing the cash is not always the answer, ask Tottenham for one, their situation does put things in perspective somewhat, but some Gooners still shout loudly for the indiscriminate cheque book flashing.

So rather than indulging in mindless criticism and kissing the badge while pledging undying loyalty to the club that they show so little respect, I shall be interested to see if these people can suggest some actual solutions to our problems. It's very easy to suggest that we need a six foot eight centre back with Walcott's pace and Bobby Moore's tackling skills, bit it's a very different thing to actual go about bringing one in.

Honestly I don't think any of us would have a hope in Arsene's position, to go about bringing in the world class experienced players we need is much easier to talk about than to do, at least I have enough insight to realise that Arsene's judgement of players in the transfer market is a damn sight better than my own, it appears that not everyone has this insight. At the end of the day we're 4th in the league, still going strong in the cups and there's no need for the umbrella quite yet...........

ps Good luck with your recovery Theo, he is likely to require surgery and will take a few months to get over this before he gets back on a football pitch

Living in denial?

There has been a lot of analysis of this season's efforts so far, some would say there are too many opinions on show and that there are too many knee jerk reactions to one off results, I therefore always try to be cautious with my words. The season is now about a third gone, so we now sit in a reasonable position from which to judge our manager and our team. The question for me is could anything have been done better to avoid the problems that we have encountered so far?

Arsene has spoken again following Villa game, firstly he responds to the suggestion that he should have brought in another experienced player in the summer:

"Not really, we had no player we really wanted and for now we have no regrets. You cannot explain the own goal of Gael Clichy by the fact we haven’t got an experienced player in midfield. I think we were not, as a team, sharp enough to dictate the pace and be dominant in the fight [against Aston Villa]."

It is true that the lack of an experienced player did not 'directly' result in Villa's goal, however I find it very hard to believe that our lack of experience has nothing to do with our lack of consistency. I am sure a lack of experience is part of it, however it is certainly not the whole story. Villa created several very good chances as our defence gaped like the Rift Valley, the defeat was no fluke.

I think Ted was getting rather warm with his recent piece that explained our love of playing the technical possession game, this tactic does not have much margin for error; if we are on our game we can beat anyone, however if we are off it then we can look very average indeed. I would argue that our playing style encourages inconsistency, this playing style is what our players know best though, we have a very small side of excellent technical ball players; we are therefore excellent when we are playing well with the ball at our feet, however when things don't go to plan we don't have many players who can win the ball back or get properly stuck into the opposition.

The lack of a shield for Cesc has been talked of, for example many people thought Alonso should have been recruited in the summer. I don't think this is a problem that can be blamed on not bringing in one player, although the loss of Flamini has certainly hit us hard; it appears to be more of a systemic problem, we don't have the right balance of players in our squad to be able to vary our approach, we are a one trick pony of sorts. Wenger has openly admitted the lack of consistency, however he must look harder for the rational explanation as it is there staring him in the face:

“You have to accept that the game is played by human beings and sometimes physically they have a drop. It is very difficult for us to have a rational explanation about what happened today. I believe that the team want it but it was just like a few other times this year where it is unexplainable why we don’t really play at our 100% potential.”

Our group of players are the best bunch of technical footballers in the land, we are the most pleasing on the eye by a mile when things click, however our unique brand of beautiful football is a high precision machine, and there is so little margin for error then when things slip a little, we cannot grind out a result and things fall apart. Michael Essien spoke of this and frankly I can see his point, to a degree.

This is not the only reason for our inconsistency, other factors (in my opinion) have included our lack of a rock solid centre back pairing, losing big Phil for Silvestre and some slightly dubious tactical decisions. Just to demonstrate my point, just think of the great Arsenal sides of Arsene's reign, there have always been some beasts in there, the likes of Vieira, Adams, Keown, Petit, Edu and Parlour would invariably have the bottle for a good old battle.

In my eyes you can only progress from openly and honestly looking at where you have gone wrong, learn from it and go about putting it right. Our current team does not have the correct balance, we have too many technical ball players and no one to win it back, we are also terribly small as a side and have no one who can dominate aerially in defense, as a consequence we can be terribly one dimensional and predictablein attack while the defence leaks goals. It's time Arsene faced up to this so when can address these problems asap.

Cesc - Time to rest Fab4?

Its been a bad weekend for Arsenal and Mr Frustration is back in town big time. Every Gooner you meet will tell you just what is wrong and happily reel off the list of players who are not good enough, or that Wenger is retarded and should be sacked.

Nicholas Bendtner has got most of the stick for Saturday's performance. I said before the Stoke game that this was a big run of fixtures for the young Dane - he has started against Stoke, Fenerbahce, Manure and Villa, got no goals, I can't think of any assists and bizarrely, his best performance was against Manure (in which he was ok). It has not gone that well for him, and he will be feeling down about it, no doubt. But let us not forget that Nikky B is Arsenal's 4th choice striker and that he has carried a massive burden these last few weeks. It would have been a hell of a lot easier for him to play against teams like Stoke, Manure and Villa with Adebayor, RVP or Eduardo next to him. RVP only managed it for 10 minutes before getting red-carded against Stoke for being an idiot, and Nikky only got 5 mins with Ade on Saturday before taking him off. Vela also looks a great prospect, but lets not get carried away that he can solve our problems with a Mexican magic wand. Would be great if he could though...

Now, I am not going to tell you that Bendtner is the next Didier Drogba (or even Adebayor), but lets not hammer him too hard when there are quite blatantly other massive holes in our team. Did the rest of the team serve Nikky B up chance after chance only for him to spoon them into the stands? Not at all. Strikers are there to finish the chances that they are given. He barely got a sniff most games and the rest of the team must share the blame.

1979 made the point that the centre back pairing of Gallas and Silvestre remains weak, and that we don't protect them in midfield. And of course he is right. Arsenal are all over the place at the moment. We have all been saying it for months.

Well I am no different to every other Gooner, so let me tell you what is actually wrong. Laugh away when your ready.

If, as a football team, you cannot really defend and you cannot really tackle, then you only have one tactic to play football. You absolutely must keep the ball at all times. Think most Brazilian or Argentinean teams. You must treasure possession, work for each other off the ball and work the 45 pass moves like we did last year. Go sideways, go backwards, go sideways and backwards. Tire the opposition out by chasing you round the pitch. Pass sideways for 15 minutes. Get bored by how much possession you have until the opoosition dive in. Your superior skill then lets you beat the man (cherio gareth barry), or you get fouled and win a free kick. Its no bloody surprise that Brazilian teams are so good at free kicks - their game plan is virtually dependant on them.

To a greater or lesser degree, Arsenal have played that sort of tactics in recent years. Pass a lot, never shoot from range, then score a wonder goal via 150 passes. Its driven us nuts for the last two seasons, but suddenly we are missing it.

The reason why, as far as I can tell, is that the person the whole system at Arsenal is built around is well off his game. Mr Cesc Fabregas is our Romario, Maradona, Zidane etc. If he isn't purring along like an Aston Martin on a sunny afternoon, then we will all have a bouncy ride. Or end up in a hedge.

Last season Cesc was simply magnificent, but at the moment, Mr Cesc Fabregas is more guilty than anyone else on the pitch for giving the ball away. Mr Cesc Fabregas also seems to be making less effort than anyone else to drop back, make himself available for the man on the ball, take it and give it quick. His tackles are more out of frustration than skill (hence 5 yellow and a suspension already) and he has only scored once (and that was with his head).

This is not the Cesc that we loved so much last season. In fact, I think he our weak link. I know its virtually treason to say it, but there you go. However, along with Gallas, Cesc is part of the Thierry Henry protection racket - Wenger's talismen on the pitch that will not be dropped or rested ever. For a different perspective on how to handle your star player, take a look at the public slating that fatty Rafa has handed out to Torres. Wenger would never ever do that. I bet Torres scores a hatrick next week.

Cesc is suspended against Man City. Its going to be interesting to see who replaces him (I would like to see Ramsey but I think Wenger will pick two in the middle from Denilson / Diaby / Song) and how we do without him. Don't look too much at the result, more about how the midfield works as a unit without their star. Will it be the "relief" of not carrying a deadweight, or will we look rudderless with Cesc? I am betting on the former.

The underlying issue, of course, is that we desperately need Cesc back at his best. Wenger said today that he cannot explain our inconsistency. What I think Wenger actually means is that he cannot explain how Cesc is playing so crap. He has actually been very consistent at it.

Faint title hopes extinguished

Maybe I'm being premature but I now cannot see us winning the league title this year, it's obviously still theoretically possible but there appears a rather wide gulf between what is possible in theory and in practice. Today's two nil defeat to Aston Villa demonstrated just how we are not quite all there from the title challenging point of view in several ways, both tactically and as a team.

I've been out of the country for the past couple of weeks, so forgive me if this all sounds a bit objective when we have just suffered such a sickening home defeat, but frankly what's the point in busting blood vessels and booing the players.

As many people remarked last weekend, our current starting eleven is pretty handy if the opposition turns up trying to play football, however if they come, as they are perfectly entitled to, to defend and play on the counter, then we are significantly less effective. There is also the rather obvious fact that the centre of our defence is simply not anywhere near right.

Tactically the same or very similar happened against Hull, Stoke and Fulham. The opposition knew that they would be likely to be destroyed should they try to take us on in an open attacking game, hence they sat back, defended in numbers and then stung us on the break. We should be able to expect this tactic from the opposition, but sometimes we do not appear to, our tactics remain unchanged and we are stung as we were today.

When this tactical naivety is combined with our suspect centre back pairing, a small midfield that does not do enough to defensively shield the back four and an isolated lone striker, then you have a recipe for disaster. Interestingly the majority of gooners that read this site feel Djourou and Toure would be our strongest pairing at the back, strange that Arsene seems to disagree so strongly. Dropping Gallas appears impossible for Arsene, but it is an option that may well have to be entertained at some point in the not too distant future.

The warning signs have been there for a while, they were apparent in pre season, it's just that our attacking play is frequently so good that it can paper over the cracks. The warning signs were there today, Villa looked sharp and dangerous on the break, even missing a first half penalty. There's no doubt poor refereeing contributed, certainly for the second goal, however one should not live in denial and pretend that the cracks do not exist, they do. I was slightly perplexed by the 4-5-1 formation against such a defensive Villa line up, it really played into their hands.

We have some fantastic players, we have a great manager, and it is not even debatable that we have the finest young players in the land. However in my eyes we are living with too many flaws to be making a serious title challenge. The centre of defence is not right, I am also disappointed that a certain young Swiss is not getting more playing time; the midfield does not have the muscle to rough it up at times, while the defence is not as well shielded as it has been in the past. Tactically we are also being found out, however this is partly down to personnel, maybe the players we have only have one way of playing.

These criticisms are not a knee jerk reaction, they represent a trend that has been developing over the course of this season, you simply cannot expect to challenge for the title when your defense is leaking goals so freely and when your tactics do not stand up to the tests that they face over the course of a season. What we must do is hang onto our best players and ensure that we remedy these problems as soon as possible, we can certainly beat anyone on our day in the cups. I really hope we can because it's incredibly frustrating to see us losing in such a manner when we have so much talent at our disposal.

The Arsenal kids serve up a lesson

What a superb performance and result that was last night from the Arsenal kids. Simply outstanding.

But, I'm not going to talk too much about individual performances in the game. Arseblogger gives his usual excellent summary of events here. Jack Wilshere got the full back page in the Sun this morning Jay Simpson got the Metro's back page. Both good, local lads who fully deserve their day in the spotlight.

Instead, lets just take a little stock of what happened last night. Wigan were at full strength with their first available xi last night (Heskey injured), whereas Wenger made eleven changes to the starting xi that faced Manure - Alex Song and Fabianski were the only people who played any part in the game last saturday.

When the teams were announced, several so-called experts tipped Wigan for the upset (BBC's Jonathan Stevenson included, in his otherwise excellent news feed). The tipsters in the papers during the day, perhaps expecting the kids to turn up, were telling the punters to back Wigan. Zaki was the shortest odds for the first goal scorer.

So when anyone tries to tell you that there was no pressure on the kids to play, I really wonder what planet they come from. I have watched a number of reserve games (admittedly on Arsenal TV), but the average attendance is about 25 people. Occasionally more, sometime less. Ok, some of these kids would have played in front of 40,000 fans last year in the FA Youth Cup semi-final against Manure (which we lost over two legs), but this was a 60,000 strong crowd. This team would never have faced this sort of atmosphere before together. Wigan do every other week.

We have watched countless young Arsenal starlets get the jitters big time on this sort of occassion before. Armand Traore must have played a dozen games at this level before he began to settle down (did he ever settle down?), stopped trying to pull off a trick every time and played with some discipline. Same goes for players like Jermain Pennant, Quincy Owousu-Abeie, Lupoli etc.

Yet when the whistle blew, the kids played the full 90 minutes with composure, organisation, discipline, technique and patience. If they had any butterflies, they didn't show it. Instead, they fought hard for every ball - even Wilshere making a filthy tackle in the first ten minutes. The midfield worked extremely hard for each other, closing down Wigan relentlessly, denying Palacios and Koumas space, fighting to win headers, being strong in the challenge. Gibbs was targeted by Wigan early on as the weak link, but he stayed focused, fought hard and easily won the battle over 90 minutes. It was simply fantastic.

If we were slightly more composed in front of goal, or if it wasn't Kirkland having his usual good game against us, then a repeat of the 6-0 victory against Sheffield Utd was on the cards.

For the record, lets also remember that the team that Wenger put out against Wigan in the Carling Cup semi-final in January 2006, which lost to Wigan over two legs, was incredibly strong - Almunia, Gilbert, Senderos, Campbell, Lauren, Hleb (Pires 69), Silva, Diaby (Flamini 45), Reyes, Bergkamp, Henry (Van Persie 79).

That makes last night's performance all the more remarkable. Ok, this was not the semi-final, but Wigan are not some mickey mouse team. They are Premiership regulars who have some extremely good players, but they were thrashed last night by an Arsenal team with more focus, discipline and far more talent. Jason Koumas is the welsh captain, but he won't be making the team soon if Aaron Ramsey keeps it up.

If 7 days is a long time in politics, its an age in football. Last week the Arsenal first team gave a rather limp performance against Fenerbahce and boos (wrongly in my view) sounded at the final whistle from the crowd. What we can all cherish this morning is the attitude and fight the kids showed and the crowd loved it. Well done to them all.