Passing the time

So Ade has scored for Togo after some cracking Cameroon defending, RVP also got in on the goalscoring act with an unchallenged header against the mighty Scotland, England managed to defeat the mighty Slovakia, I can hardly contain my excitement, what a fine weekend of international football, who needs the Premiership? If only the Premership was run as nobly as the international game is run by the highly honest and reputable Sepp Blatter:

"He is working to make a lot of money and I'm working to have football as a social, cultural event around the world, being a school of life, bringing hope, bringing emotions"

Enough of the sarcasm, the above statement by Blatter is a huge steaming pile of festering turd, dishonest and stinking to its core. The Premiership does bring in a lot of money because it's bloody excellent to watch, it's the most exciting football around, the same can certainly not be said about the international game these days. The international footballing calendar is full of meaningless games, and even the major tournaments are full of weak sides and more meaningless games, even the best games are nowhere near the best Champions league game quality. The only thing FIFA have helped produce under your command is a never ending stream of tedious mundane football, sort our your own house before you start insulting your neighbour's superior mansion.

The Poos of the Turds have been generating more Cesc headlines out of nothing, simply magical journalism from them again, Arseblogger has it spot on with his analysis. The pathetic spitgate flobs on, with Sky trying to dig up more cat turds every week as they have nothing else interesting to talk about. Cesc was interviewed the other day and the annoying hack interviewing him kept asking him rather stupid leading questions about Hull's accusations, Cesc sidestepped all of them very nicely but this didn't stop Sky trying to spin it out into another lame story. The fat Hull chairman Paul Duffen has been rather too keen to comment on events in the media recently. Given the number of times Phil Brown has changed his story already and Hull's failure to submit their 'evidence/lies' on time, it does appear a bit rich that this fatty seems to think the FA's inquiry is sure to find that 'something took place', whatever that means. I think I'm just a bit too angry today.

Win an Arsenal shirt competition

Firstly my kind thanks go to Soccerpro.com for kindly donating the pricely sum of one Arsenal shirt as the prize to this slightly bizarre and random competition of my own creation. The full range of Arsenal merchandise available at Soccerpro.com can be seen here, if you are lucky enough to win then they may even give you something other than the standard home shirt if you ask them really nicely and promise to tell all your friends of the excellent service that Soccerpro offers, it really is quite a brilliant service, great merchandise at such reasonable prices (Stop the shameless plugging you twat. Ed.)

To enter the competition either send me (1979gooner@gmail.com) a humorous poem or send me a caption to the above photograph of the esteemed Alastair Campbell and the lovely Sir Alex Ferguson. Whichever I find the most amusing shall win, the leading poem so far is this sterling little effort about the mighty Emmanuel Eboue:

"Here’s a little Eboue themed version of the Sinatra classic – “My Way”. I like to call it “The Eb-Way”;

And now, Arshavin’s here;
Eboue may face the final curtain.
But again, the crowd will cheer,
They’ve only come to see Eboue

Eboue dived, in gay Paris.
He even scored at Highbury;
And more, much more than this,
He did it The Eb-Way.

Regrets, Eboue’s had a few;
But in Le Boss, he found a partner.
So when the Gooners boo,
He’ll always be Arsene’s Pass Master.

Eboue danced some crazy dance;
Fell over on so many touchlines,
But more, much more than this,
He did it The Eb-Way.

Yes, there were times, Im sure you knew
The Emirates crowd were heard to boo.
They never want Eboue to shoot,
So he put on his Tigger-suit;
And did it the Eb-Way.

Eboue laughed, Eboue cried.

When taken off, against Wigan,
And now, the tears have dried,
Eboue’s back – of this we’re certain .

To think, they say he’s cack;
And others would have turned their back,,
But not - not Eboue,
he did it the Eb-Way.

Cos if you take, my Eboue away
And for the Arse he’ll never play
To do the things only Eboues do;
To hear the cheers, when all are boos.
The record shows he took the blows -
And did it the Eb-Way!"

Flash Diaby and chums

Seeing as I'm off work at the moment I thought I'd use my time productively to produce a colourful image containing some of our favourite football heroes, I can hear 'don't give up the day job' echoing around cyberspace already. It's a good effort for a three year old anyway.

The international break is now upon us, so we can be guaranteed some rather substandard football, the typical chorus of praise for anyone with a criminal conviction in the England football team and maybe Blatter or Platini inventing some new rules to try to scupper the English game. I can't be bothered with international football, so I thought why not take stock and reassess the squad as it stands.

In terms of goalkeepers I think we have a top notch number 1 in Almunia and an excellent understudy in Fabianski. If Gallas stays then with him, Kolo and Djourou we have three solid centre backs, while Clichy and Sagna are both top full backs, and Gibbs has shown some promise as back up. Personally I don't think any major surgery is required at the back, arguably our midfield has been at fault on more occasions than the defence by not helping out and shielding our back four.

The midfield is the area of great interest for me. Offensively we now have the options to dismantle any defence known to man, in Walcott, Nasri, Arshavin, Fabregas we have top attacking talent, while the likes of Eboue, Vela, Wilshere and Merida provide a varied mixture of back up.

Defensively we have a bit of a problem. Song is our only 'defensive' midfielder, while Diaby is possibly the only other midfielder who can defend. Song has performed admirably in recent weeks and if he continues in this vein, he may prove his doubters wrong, however even if he does this can we have a squad which contains just one truly defensive player? Diaby seems to have developed in his recent run of games, if he can become mroe consistent then he can be a great all round driving force in the centre of the park. Denilson has also developed well over the season, a neat and tidy ball player with discipline, but is he really anything more than a poor man's Cesc? Ramsey has potential but is again more in the Cesc mould. Overall I just don't think we have the right balance in this area. The likes of Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Francis Coquelin and Emmanuel Frimpong may start pushing for places sooner rather than later, do not forget.

Up top we have an abundance of riches again. RVP has stayed fit, if Adebayor puts the effort in then he is a great asset, Bendtner has come on leaps and bounds, while Eduardo has the Midas touch. Young Carlos Vela is hardly a bad fifth choice forward, while there are other young talents waiting to come through.

If everyone is fit then most of the team picks itself, there are a few areas of contention, for example which of our three centre backs are the best partnership? which two strikers are the best pairing? The hardest area to call though appears to be the centre of midfield, picking two players here to give us enough solidity but also enough attacking craft is not easy. Denilson-Cesc would not work for me, not enough defensively and too similar to each other. Song on current form with Cesc would have to be as good as any, though if Diaby can play like he did against West Ham every week one could certainly see him partnering Cesc effectively in the future.

One thing that is clear is that the current competition for places is a very good thing. Realistically however there is no way in the world that we will be able to hold onto all these fantastic talents, some very hard choices will have to be made in the next couple of years. I find it hard to imagine that barring any major injuries we could keep Cesc, Diaby, Denilson, Song, Ramsey and Coquelin all happy in the same squad. To play devil's advocate, what would you say if 50 million was offered for Cesc in the summer?

The lowest common denominator

The way the media selectively report the facts is hardly isolated to football, if any of you have an interest in science then Ben Goldacre at the Guardian is always excellent at pointing out lazy and irresponsible journalism. At least when it relates to football no one dies because of the media's sloppy standards, however when news relating to health is reported innaccurately in can quite easily result in people dying unnecessarily a la MMR scare for example.

However this is an Arsenal related site so I'm not going to bore you with talk about your prostates (pardon me if you're female and feel left out as you don't have one). I just happened to notice an interview with Nic Bendtner that was covered by Arsenal Mania at the end of last week, for some strange reason the English press didn't cover his comments at all:

"That is still hard for me to understand, and perhaps because I am young I am still making mistakes with how I speak to the press in England, because they are looking to trick you and cause a problem with your team mates and fans more often than they are trying to report the facts of the sport.

"It is nothing like I have seen before, but perhaps if I was older I would know to stay away from certain newspapers.

"Sweden is like Denmark, probably too polite to make up rubbish about players but in England it is not the same, anyone can print what they want and the truth is not so important. But I am learning this just as I am learning on the field also.

"At the end of the day, people will believe what they want and I try not to be distracted too much by these things, although it is not encouraging when you hear the fans boo you or complain because of a missed pass or shot."

Honest and spot on Mr Bendtner. The behaviour of such journalists is not just unprofessional, it is a downright embarassment. Obviously on the day that the mighty Jade Goody is honoured with a six page special in the brilliant Sun newspaper, it would not be fair to accuse the English media of residing in the gutter and writing any old dishonest drivel to make money, however I am not a fair person and I would like to accuse them of precisely that on this very day.

Call me hypocritical, I can be too quick to criticise sometimes, however what I will never do is deliberately misrepresent the truth to further my own interests. The media's response to Phil Brown's virtual breakdown last week was another good example of the exploitative vultures that they are, never let the facts get in the way of a good story; Myles Palmer summarises events succinctly here and gets across the rather sad human element to the story that the media are so keen to avoid. Do not believe all you read in the press, let the facts do the talking and make your own minds up, the problem these days is that our sad excuse for journalists are making it harder and harder to see the facts beneath an ever expanding sea of dishonest slurry.

Toon destroyed

Like Arseblogger the poor quality stream made it tricky for me to get a great picture of the first half, I was also rather compromised by something a little closer to home which meant I had to be in close proximity of the toilet, I won't go into too many details on that front though.

The thing that stood out for me though, other than our scintillating attacking football in the second half, was Mark Halsey's truly pathetic refereeing. Some people seem to think that it's good common sense refereeing to never get your cards out, but frankly these people are nothing other than morons. Halsey is completely unable to control a football match. His reluctance to punish serious foul play and numerous cynical fouls allowed Newcastle's cheating to prosper, making this a much trickier game that it should have been with the rules properly enforced.

Halsey's prolific incompetence was perfectly demonstrated by his failure to get any card out for a quite deliberate forearm smash by Steven Taylor on Andrei Arshavin's face, replays show rather conclusively what a premeditated and unpleasantly violent act this was, however the great Halsey saw the offence and kept his cards firmly within his cowardly pocket. In fact almost every single time an Arsenal player got past a Newcastle player they were tripped or yanked back, this was demonstrated perfectly when Ryan Taylor cynically tugged back Clichy twice in quick succession, again a free kick was given but no card, it's simply incompetent to allow this kind of cheating to go unpunished.

The first half was a rather bitty affair on many fronts, the fact that Newcastle were allowed to play the man as a ball routinely made it rather hard to retain possession. Other than a rather soft penalty decision Newcastle didn't create much clear cut, while Bendtner and Van Persie both forced excellent saves from Steve Harper.

The second half came to life after Bendtner scored with an excellent header from the free kick following Clichy's recurrent attempted shirt removals. Newcastle equalised pretty much straight away, Gallas failing to clear and Martins expertly poking the ball into the bottom corner leaving Almunia with no chance. Then our class told, there was a certain poetic justice that the filthy Steven Taylor had limped off to the touchline to leave Newcastle with just ten men on the pitch when Diaby strode clear after a slick one two and finished clinically into the roof of the net. It didn't take long for Nasri to slot a stinger past Harper's near post to make it 3-1.

It could have easily been five of six in the end, Harper made a couple of excellent saves, while some rather annoying selfishness from Van Persie saw him twice ignore Bendtner who was in a much better position to score, Diaby also had time to crack a fierce left footed drive firmly against Harper's left hand post. Overall a convincing win, but being a bit of stubborn git I was left happy bit a bit frustrated at Halsey's rank incompetence and inability to control a game of football. Most of the time the better side will come through games like this, however idiots like Halsey do inevitably mean that cloggers like Newcastle have a much better chance of getting something from games like this than they should do. As has been noted elsewhere Newcastle's 'great supporters' were somewhat absent by the end of the game, it does leave one to wonder what these fickle fans have done to deserve their esteemed reputation?

The media manure factory

The utter tripe that has been faithfully swallowed by certain sections of the media in recent days has beggared belief. This nonsense in the Mirror typifies the kind of journalism on offer these days, even a three year old without a brain would be ashamed:

"However, as footage from a Champions League tie with Bayern Munich appears to prove, not only has Fabregas apparently spat at a player on a football field, he also received a yellow card for his troubles."

Arseblogger covers these kind of issues brilliantly in this week's Arsecast, it really is essential listening. The Ballack incident really does sum it all up beautifully, some idiot has simply misinterpreted a youtube video, added 2 and 2 to make seven, then hey presto a massive incident is made retrospectively of something that was nothing at the time. It has even gone as far as the Bayern director of communications Markus Hoerwick having to come to Cecs's defence by stating that nothing at all happened. The clear xenophobic trend in the press is also rather distasteful, but we all know that don't we.

The Newcastle game tomorrow is important, with Villa facing another tricky fixture there is a chance of opening up a bit of a gap. Bendtner must surely start, while it's anyone's guess as to who will be rotated in the midfield and defence. Personally I'd like to see Walcott and Arshavin continue to give us the pace and width, while it will two of Song/Diaby/Denilson in the midfield, and two of Djourou/Toure/Gallas in the centre of defence. One thing that has been troubling me lately is the slightly patchy form of our once outstanding full backs, maybe I'm expecting too much but I do think that Clichy and Sagna have got some real room for improving their recent performances.

A poem for Phil Brown

It's a great shame that the whipping of your dour football team,
has been clouded by the imaginary events that have been vented from your spleen.
Sometimes it is much harder to take defeat like a man,
even if losing was not part of Hull's great world dominating masterplan.

The match itself saw your team fight with all their might,
even if some of the delaying tactics were somewhat less than being polite.
So why not concentrate on what you and your team have achieved,
rather than flying off the handle and subjecting the public to a lunatic on heat.

I know you see yourself as the headset wearing big daddy of the world,
but criticising the opposition's fashion sense does seem more than bit absurd.
While it also appears that your memory may be playing tricks on you,
next you'll be saying that Fat Sam is a slim altruist who comes from Timbuktu.

All that has passed your lips in recent days smells distinctly of sour grapes,
in contrast our 'whinging' Arsene has behaved with a great dignity and grace.

Whatever the motives are behind your transformation into a deranged freak,

I hope you learn the valuable lesson that it pays to think before you speak.