Chelsea's moneymen too strong

As I arrive home tired and slightly bedraggled I have had a fair amount of time to cogitate over today's defeat to our rather unsophisticated brothers from West London. Firstly Chelsea's side was full of experienced multimillion pound players who have played together for several years. Secondly I don't like them but they are probably the hardest side to beat in the world at the moment, there simply isn't a club side around that is so packed with talent that can also defend so solidly.

Drogba is almost their club emblem and epitomised just what a shallow bunch of hypocrites they are as a collective, on one hand he is one of the greatest strikers of his generation, but on the other he is also one of the worst sportsmen of his generation and behaves like a small child with an ASBO on regular occasions. That is Chelsea, they are not a pleasant group of human beings and their success has been purchased by a Russian criminal with blood on his hands, but they are a bloody good football team.

There were many reasons for our defeat today. The main one in my eyes was that Chelsea were better in the two keys areas of the pitch, they were more potent in attack and more resolute in defence. It does not help that two of our best strikers were out injured and that as a result we lacked a focal point, Eduardo looks low on confidence and really could do with a goal at the moment. Drogba is a physical beast and scores some simply incredible goals, his first was a fantastic finish and the second an unstoppable free kick.

The big concern for me was that he seemed to know that Gallas was the weak link, he kept away from Vermaelen and targetted Gallas from early on, this battle he comprehensively won and this turned the game in Chelsea's favour. Anelka is also a very dangerous player, his pace and instinct were always a threat on the counter. I thought Traore and Vermaelen did well today, but Gallas and Sagna did not. Sagna was at fault for both of the first two goals, he left Cole in far too much space on both occasions, sloppy defending, while Gallas was poorly positioned for both. In stark contrast to our defense Chelsea mopped up numerous shots and crosses by just playing with discipline and staying tight.

Overall it was not a 3-0 game to watch, we controlled the game for long periods, we had some decent chances in both halves which we failed to take, our midfield looked neat and tidy for the first seventy minutes. The problem was that we didn't take our half chances, Eduardo demonstrated this best by taking an extra touch when in a great position through on goal in the early second half. We didn't test Cech enough, there were too many slightly heavy passes and touches in the crucial areas. And when we did score at a time when Chelsea looked nervy, the referee bizarrely ruled it out for 'dangerous play' when Eduardo did nothing of the sort. Then when we had a good penalty shout that the referee ignored Vela being barged to the ground. It was not to be our day.

The performance of Andre Marriner does deserve a mention, and if he was not bribed the it was truly one of the poorest refereeing performances I have seen for a while. He let numerous fouls from Chelsea go unpunished, particularly from Mikel and especially in the second half. Mikel had committed at least two, maybe three, yellow card tackles before the ref bothered booking him. Having been booked he then committed a blatant act of dissent by picking up the ball and walking away with it when we tried to take the free kick, the limp and inconsistent Marriner did nothing and undermined his won authority once more. There was zero consistency with his decision making, he allowed Ivanovic to play rugby on several occasions, while every time an Arsenal player was hauled down it was invariably just a little chat and a license to foul from the impotent ref.

Overall our weaknesses were exposed once again, despite being the better side for long periods we failed to make it count and were left cursing some slack defending. It is no surprise that we came up slightly short because Chelsea are a very good side full of experienced 30 million pound players. Chelsea are side that have been built with money in an unsustainable manner, it is a miracle that Arsene even has us competing with them, I would rather see us win nothing but do things the right way than become the amoral money machine that Chelsea have become.

Listening to Arsene's comments in the press conference I cannot disagree with much he says, the decision to disallow our goal certainly made a big difference and the scoreline certainly flattered Chelsea. However we have conceded 18 goals this season, that is more than either Villa, Man City, Stoke or Birmingham, and that is not good enough. The balance is not right in attack either, without RVP and Bendtner we lack the players to suit a three man forward line. Above all we must remember that we have a fantastic bunch of talented players and that we are not far off having what it takes, the understanding and solidity that Chelsea have cannot be created overnight, it takes patience and time to build a successful team.

Injuries - oh f*ck and dodgy foreign surgeons

That's exactly what I thought when I heard the news about RVP needing surgery on his ankle injury which will keep him out for possibly the rest of the season. Watching the above video also makes me angry, to me Chiellini has gone in dangerously on RVP, this was a 'friendly match', he slides in with studs up and with a straight leg and nails RVP's standing leg, it was a bad tackle and it has cost us big time.

The same was true for Kieran Gibbs' fractured metatarsal, the game was over, we were cruising two nil and the Liege player slid in out of control with his studs up, clobbering Gibbs after the ball had gone. Both tackles were reckless, it matters not whether the ball was won or not, sliding in with your studs up should not be tolerated in the modern game, the problem is that refs are too stupid to pick up this kind of malignant play, they prefer to send people off for pushing someone in the chest or other kinds of harmless handbags. Until dangerous play is punished consistently in proportion with the threat it poses these kind of needless injuries will continue to happen far too frequently.

RVP has been advised to have surgery by a Dutch foot and ankle surgeon. Obviously it is hard to speculate as to whether RVP needs an operation, but it is rather obvious that there are a lot of rather cunning surgeons out there who are only too happy to milk the footballing gravy train for their own wallets. If RVP has a lateral ligament rupture which I suspect he does, then our Dutch man has produced evidence to say that reconstruction gives better long term results.

Nothing is sure in science and medicine, no matter what some people would have you believe, one can always find evidence to back up one's opinion, it is invariably the interpretation of the evidence that is key. If RVP has a lateral ligament rupture that to me is seems that having early surgery is not the sensible option. There is a lot of evidence to back this view up (1, 2).

"There are other reasons to consider functional treatment as a method of choice. First, as has been reported by many authors , secondary operative reconstruction or delayed repair of the ruptured ligaments of the ankle can be performed years after the injury if necessary, with good results that are fully comparable with those of primary repair. Therefore, even competitive athletes may be treated functionally at first, with the realization that 10 to 20 per cent may need elective secondary repair. Second, functional treatment saves the patient from additional trauma to the tissues and complications that are caused by operation."

The above quote comes from one of the most authoritative texts in the scientific literature on managing lateral ligament ruptures. If one assumes that RVP has a lateral ligament rupture then not only if he was managed without surgery would he only have around a 10% chance of needing surgical repair later, he would avoid all the potential complications of surgery and be back playing quicker than following surgery. With surgery he is practically certain to miss the rest of the season.

Obviously this is all speculation, but it would not be the first time that an 'eminent' surgeon has advised early surgery against the best interests of the patient. Privatised surgery means that surgeons will be much keener to operate on patients when the benefits of surgery are minimal at best, this is the way of the world.

There is a well known German surgeon who performs 'hernia repairs' on lots of footballers with a remarkable technique that has them back playing within two weeks. Some surgical experts would say that this surgeons' technique is nothing but complete bullsh*t quackery and that the surgery involves around just making a cut, then doing bugger all to repair the hernia because most footballers have groin strains, not hernias in the first place. Michael Owen had his hernia 'repaired' in Germany by this quack, I suspect Nicky Bendtner may have also gone for the same expensive placebo treatment. Interestingly this strange hernia repair technique has absolutely no evidence behind it, there is nothing written on it in the scientific literature, I am just surprised that more people have not smelt the rat.

I am indeed a cynical bastard but we do live in a rather cynical world, the moral of the story is that it is always worth considering what people have to gain from the particular advice that they give.

Ten, metatarsals and dodgy refs at all levels

So it's ten years in a row in the CL, a comprehensive enough win over Liege means qualification is now guaranteed. The big negative for me was the injury to Kieran Gibbs. Not only does it mean we are short of our best two left backs for several weeks, but it was a great opportunity for the young Englishman to cement himself in the side as our first choice left back, it is really bad luck for him. Gallas and Andrei Arshavin should both recover for the chavs' visit on Sunday, but the gap at left back is a big problem, hopefully Traore can step in and do a job, big question marks remain over his defensive positioning though.

Am in the middle of watching the reserves tonight, they are playing against a strong Villa side that includes the injury prone Stuart Downing. The game started off in a pretty competitive manner, one very poor tackle on Wilshere went unpunished while several other cynical Villa lunges were also ignored by the bald cretinous ref. The bald tosser than proceeded to book Bartley for a tackle that was rather innocuous, he then sent off Merida who looked to have been kicked off the ball by Fabian Delph, somehow Delph got just a yellow. The ref and his assistant looked to be well away from the action before deciding upon this rather harsh red card that ultimately looks to hand the game to the Villa reserves.

Wilshere then got a yellow for bugger all. In between this frenzy of crap refereeing Watt had given us the lead with a handy glancing header from a Merida set piece, then after the ref card Villa made the extra man count with a couple of rather average goals. Bloody frustrating stuff, it goes to show that at least the lads can get used to being on the end of poor refereeing decisions from a young age, preparing them well for the equally useless officiating in the Premiership. The ref lost control of the game early on, failing to punish some awful early tackles, he then compounded this by throwing the cards around like candy and wrecked the game with an out of place red card, promote him the the Premiership I say, muppet. The Arsenal reserves ended up fighting hard in the second half but unfortunately failed to get a second goal.

Back down to earth

There were many contributory factors to this defeat. The fact that virtually our entire squad had played quite a few international minutes over the previous week combined with a lot of air miles would undoubtedly had an effect. The number of injuries we have been subjected to of late also made a difference, the recent injuries include RVP, Diaby, Clichy, Gibbs and Bendtner. Sunderland are no mugs and have a very decent home record. All this combined with a bit of bad luck meant that we lost a game one nil which we really need to be winning if we are to challenge for the title.

The injuries and fatigue will have meant that Arsene didn't have a great deal of choice when it came to the starting eleven. I suspect Arshavin was not fresh enough to be starting, Theo was also only just back from injury and not ready for a full ninety. I think that this meant that our starting eleven didn't quite have the pace and directness in the front three that you need to break down a well organised opposition defence. Having said that we controlled the game, overall a stunning 65% possession was ours over the ninety, we just couldn't turn this domination into piercing the onion bag.

We weren't far off though. The first half saw some very decent chances come and go. Rosicky tested Fuller early on with a stinging low drive that was expertly kept out by the Sunderland keeper. The best chance of the half fell to Eduardo who, after some great build up work with Alex Song, got the ball stuck between his feet, his mis-hit effort went agonisingly wide as Song followed up and was only inches away from sticking it into the empty net.

The Sunderland goal was an utter fluke and anyone pretending otherwise is being a tad dishonest. Bent won the initial header but it wasn't threatening the Arsenal goal until a remarkable Sunderland miscontrol at the back stick saw the ball fall perfectly for Darren Bent to slot home, if the ball had fallen anywhere else it would have been safe enough, it really was a piece of great fortune for the average Bent. It must be admitted that we did freeze somewhat after the first ball was won, Rosicky could have reacted a tad quicker, but then again we would not be saying that if the miscontrol had gone straight at him for an easy Arsenal clearance, it really was a massive slice of luck for a Sunderland side that didn't look like scoring.

Despite going close through Arshavin late on and being denied a good penalty shout after what looked a clear foul in Vela in the box, we didn't create as much as we should have given our domination of the possession. You have to put the ball in the net if you are going to win games like this and we didn't do that. Even the nil-nil that we deserved would have been a bit of a frustrating result, less frustrating that losing to that scabby Bent goal though. The directness and pace of Walcott and Vela seemed to make a bit of a difference, arguably Rosicky and Nasri are a bit too similar to each other and we needed a bit more pace and directness to support Eduardo up front. The media's version of events are fantastical to say the least though, Sunderland did not win the midfield battle, they had 35% of the ball and rarely threatened, in reality this was more of a self inflicted result, we had the opportunity to win this game and we simply didn't take it.

Injuries and tabloid misinformation

So the meaningless international week has left us with at least one significant problem, if not two. Firstly RVP has sprained his ankle and will be out for a few weeks, despite hacks at the Sun speculating wildly when they didn't even know the true nature of the injury, he will NOT be out for the season, and it is not possible to predict exactly how long it will take him to recover.

I am amazed that tabloid hacks with no medical knowledge feel capable of speculating on injuries and try to predict exactly how long players will be out for, they are idiots. Recovery from injury is an unpredictable process and even the experts can only give rough estimates, sometimes even these are wrong. RVP will be out for a few weeks, it's impossible to predict with much more accuracy than that really. Even with extremely detailed scans it is still impossible to predict accurately how long injuries will keep people out for, you just can't tell I'm afraid. Honesty doesn't sell papers though.

Kieran Gibbs has also picked up an injury playing a very 'meaningful' game for the U-21s, despite the tabloids claiming it is a fractured metatarsal, the club have not yet released the details of his injury but I am sure they will let us know shortly. This could leave us in trouble at left back, Traore may be the man to come in, hopefully it will not be Silvestre.

This weekend's trip to Sunderland will be tricky. Steve Bruce has recruited some handy players and has organised them into a fairly solid unit. Lee Cattermole is a long term victim to injury but Cana is expected to be fit for the weekend, would this be a good game to try the Ramsey-Song-Cesc midfield trio? I think it would. Certainly Emmanuel Eboue will be on the mic, apparently he wants to be the new Eddie Murphy, expect him to be cruising down a street near you looking for some loving, but seriously, I don't think Emmanuel quite has the intellect of the legendary Murphy despite his great intentions of making people happy.

ps Good news on Gibbsy, he has no fracture and will probably be back to face the chavs in just over a week, it shows that some tabloid hacks should save their breath until they have the full information

International football is toss

Just a brief post to say the above. International football is frothy warm urine compared to the clear red cabernet sauvignon of the champions league. Bring on the end of the inter-lull.

The Unwritten Rules of Penalties

I tread lightly as I am intending to bring up one of everyone's favourite subjects, namely diving, referees and what we do about it.

I only saw the replays of David Ngog's acrobatics against Liverpool and he has been roundly criticised for his disgraceful and theatrical dive that earned the Scousers an ill-deserved point. At least that is what the papers said this morning. By the afternoon, some of the papers' internet sites are carrying articles asking why video technology still hasn't been brought into play. Apparently a video replay will clarify all incidents and the referee will never make a mistake again - see this in the Telegraph.

As usual, I am not so sure its all that simple. So lets start from the top and see where we get.

1. A penalty is given for a foul in the box. So thats pretty easy so far.

2. A player will sometimes commit a foul that does not actually make contact with the opposition player. For example, the use of dangerous play such as a high foot in the tackle, is a foul even if no contact is made. However, its rarely the case that defenders get punished if the incident happens inside the box.

3. Many fouls do involve contact with the opposition player, but are not enough to bring the player down. What is unclear in the majority of those incidents is whether the foul actually affects the player with the ball. For instance, there is an unwritten rule that so long as the striker gets his shot away, then the subsequent leg-breaker from John Terry is not a foul. The same is not true outside the box - it would be a free kick awarded and a card for Terry.

4. Strikers get pissed off that constant fouling from defenders goes unpunished. The unwritten rule is that so long as the defender makes contact with the striker, then the striker is allowed to throw themselves to the ground, turn forlornly to the ref and say "I had no choice, he touched me softly just behind the ear, its a penalty"

5. Outside the box, players regularly and routinely anticipate bad tackles, hurdle the challenge, collapse in a heap and get a free kick from the ref. There are two unwritten rules for this situation. The first one is that if David Beckham can do it, then so can I. The second unwritten rule, is that if a player expects to be fouled, then why wait for contact which might cause injury, when he can miss all contact altogether and still get a free kick?

6. Inside the box, as David Ngog shows, the hurdle and collapse routine is disgraceful cheating. Unless Steven Gerrard does it.

7. Occassionally, depending on the moods of the season, other factors have to be taken into account, such as whether the player was heading towards goal or away from it, whether a goal scoring opportunity had been lost, whether the player had lost control of the ball or not. This unwritten rule is all about not giving a penalty when you don't think the striker deserved one.

Ok, so everyone still with me? There is so much subjectivity in the subtleties of the rules of fouling that its basically impossible for a ref to get in right. Trying to remember that a collapse outside the box is a free kick to the striker, whereas a collapse inside the box is a free kick to the defender is never going to lead to consistent decisions.

You can also show video replays to me and 1979 all day. Although we are both Arsenal fans, I would bet we disagree on most decisions on whether a foul should be given, let alone whether it deserves a penalty. We're as bad as Rednapp and Souness on Sky:

Jamie Rednapp:- "Definite penalty. Stonewall decision for me. Thats a quality ball from Lampard, pure quality. Gallas just touches Drogba with his finger-tips, just there, you can see it on the replay, and the big man goes down and starts twitching like he is a decapitated chicken."

Graeme Sounness:- "Fucking shut it Rednapp, you lame arsed cunt. Drogba should be sent off for being a ponce. Have that it your face pretty boy. And that..."

Apart from calling 1979 a pretty boy, thats pretty much how it is. And given that we are footballing experts that this world has rarely seen the likes of, then what chance has a video ref got? Thats right. None at all.

Maybe we could have Souness and Rednapp miked up and watching a live screen for every game of football in the world at all times - every ref in the country can then press the panic button and it goes through on a random selector either to Graeme "Fuck me in the arse if thats a pen" Souness, or otherwise the striker goes wild as soon as Jamie "Stonewall quality gay penalty" Rednapp points to the spot. It would be at least as effective, and probably more entertaining, than the current lottery.