Crisis Club

It took great courage to summon the mental strength to haul my laptop up and actually get something written. The facts are in front of us, the arguments on both sides heard. Hell, we even saw a little preview of what the season is going to be like. This was an anomaly, you say? Well maybe, but a defeat is a defeat. It might be that we will never be humiliated in that way for a long, long time, but it will definitely surprise me if we got any points at all against the big boys. The one positive is in retrospect. Fans were screaming at the end of last season when things had not quite gone our way – we thought we couldn’t possibly be feeling any worse. Well, that position seems almost enviable now, since at least we had the summer to look forward to. Now we stand on the brink of a disastrous season. No, it does not look pretty.

Manchester United 8-2 Arsenal. Sunday, the 28th of August, ranks in my memory as the worst day in the Wenger era. And as to Manchester United’s performance, it wasn’t even a “gr-eight” one. They had two amazing finishes from Ashley Young, two great free kicks, a penalty, and some stereotypical Arsenal defending to help them achieve that. Arsenal on the other hand, played it safe – they did not want to attack, defend or link up play at all! Aaron Ramsay’s poor form in midfield continued as he was a mere passenger and rarely made a useful pass. Walcott and Arshavin, were, as in previous games, extremely ineffective. Andrei even got himself a yellow in the first half for good measure, and so had to be extremely cautious while tracking back for the rest of the match. Jenkinson at the back looked completely lost and allowed Young to get the better of him quite a few times. Koscielny wasn’t completely fit, and it showed. Djourou looked a shadow of what he was last season. Traore’s positional sense was as sharp as Clichy’s. Robin van Persie was out of it too, coming up with the most terrible penalty I have seen him take to date. That was probably the turning point of the entire match – we just said, “to hell with it” after that miss, and what followed was painfully unbelievable. All through, I kept hoping that I would get up from this nightmare only to see the match hadn’t quite begun yet.

Jenkinson, not surprisingly, ended up being yellow carded twice, and was sent off in the second half. Theo Walcott, that accomplished defender, finally played right back, a role he has been crying out for since he joined us. The younger version of Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain played in front of him on the right wing, and as I had mentioned in my preview, did get to make his debut.

What is stupefying about this match was that despite conceding the number of goals we did, Szczesny actually didn’t have a bad game (De Gea, on the other hand, did. That first goal had a charming Almunia air about it), and neither did Coquelin, the young defensive midfielder who, with this debut, was eased into life in the Premier League. Five of those eight goals came after Coquelin was subbed for Lansbury (another League debutant), and even before that, we were just too open. As Zonal Marking (amazing website that offer tactical analysis of selected matches) reports, our back four were pressing extremely high up the pitch trying to play the opposition offside, but that is not a good idea when you’re playing with no pressure on the ball. Even then, we did not press as a unit, and as mentioned earlier, Traore’s positional sense was amazing, and Jenkinson just did not know what to do with Young. So, he took the easy option and let him score. The first goal too showed how shockingly pathetic our defending was, with no one even looking at Welbeck when the return ball came in until it was too late.

The Young and Hazardous

Arsenal FC needs some football players. That much is un-debatable. It is also un-debatable that they need players in every position bar between the sticks, which is just plain weird because until last season, all we wanted was a keeper (well, and a defender)! It is fitting, then, that this post begins with a little ode to the amazing Wojciech Szczesny. I spelt that without looking it up, by the way. Yes, that’s how much I love the guy!

The famous anecdote while he was with the youth team sums his attitude perfectly. As the referee was inspecting the net in his goal, Chezza turned to him and said he shouldn’t bother because the ball wasn’t going to hit it anyway! It didn’t.
The guy has been a revelation since starting for the first team last season after an injury to Fabianski. And there has been no looking back. His run is even more amazing when you consider the fact that he broke both his arms while training in the gym a few years back. That is what you call a comeback. Never short of confidence, with a little bit (well, quite a bit) of arrogance about him, he is the keeper we had all been crying out for.

The defense looks assured with him between the post, something that wasn’t quite happening with Almunia and Fabianski. His performances this season too have been spotless for the most part. The penalty save against Udinese, which, surprisingly, seems so long ago now, was immense – both in terms of quality and what it means for our season in general. It was undoubtedly the turning point of that 25 million pounds tie. He had riled up Di Natale before the kick was taken, and Di Natale put in some serious venom behind the shot. Chezza took a few steps forward and pushed it over the crossbar. Ten minutes later, we had scored and were ahead.

Anyway, with that game done and dusted and the big pay day assured, the focus immediately turns to transfers. Contrary to my expectations, winning the game did not see a trillion credible rumors surface. My hopes of us signing Kaka, Sneijder and Benzema were dashed. At any rate, it did break out today that we had almost completed the signing of Park Chu Young. Erm, who?

He is the captain of the South Korean national team and plays for Monaco in France. He is 6 feet, 26, and we have apparently agreed a fee of €3 million, rising to €5 million with add-ons. He is thought of extremely highly in South Korea, and according to my Youtube scouting, seems to be technically very sound, and loves to take players on. Also, he looks to make passes all the time, and links the play up well. All the ingredients to be an Arsene special!

So with him supposedly at the Colney for a medical (reported by the excellent Young Guns Blog), we have a whopping £87 million in our kitty with Wenger wanting to buy at least two more players. He confirmed that Nicklas Bendtner would also be sold, which would add about £10 million to that figure. Now we’re getting to dizzying heights, as we would have £97 million to spend on TWO players. That’s some serious quality. We could actually bid for Christiano Ronaldo.

Joel Campbell, that Costa Rican sensation who was just waiting to light the Premier League on fire, has reportedly been denied a work permit. What a pity. Wenger had admitted, though, that he was taking “a little gamble” when signing him, and well, he seems to have lost that particular battle. We will miss the 50-odd goals he was surely going to score for us.

Speaking about banging the goals in, Young’s scoring record is not great, but that just might be due to poor service. Also, the last two signings from Monaco have worked for us, and none of us came with a good record. The latter of those two was Adebayor. The other was someone called Thierry Henry. Ring any bells?