We could banter all day about the merits of Man City and the financial imbalance between MC and the rest of the PL (ex. Chelsea), but three points are still to be settled today and they are to be fought over by two fine squads of players. However one player stands head and shoulders above the others and that is Cesc Fabregas.
Admittedly Tevez is a fine player and City’s recent results have relied heavily upon his non-stop energy and fine finishing, but Cesc is THE man, not only on this field but on any PL pitch.
We have had some sterling performances in his absence, we have seen Nasri realise the promise AW saw in him, Jack Wilshire excite the whole of the British media, Chamakh start his Arsenal career with a flurry of goals, but since Cesc’s injury we have struggled to maintain our fine start to the season. We have lost unecessary points thanks to sloppy play, points that I believe we would have won with a fit Cesc.
Last season we slumped to an ugly defeat 4-2 at City, quite frankly we were humiliated by a side who were in the process of rebuilding and then there was that Adebayor goal. Today I hope for better from us, I do not expect us to win easily but based upon the Chelsea performance and adding in the Cesc factor, we can get a result. Losing Wilshere is a blow though Rosicky has been improving and deserves a start.
Will Wenger try to fight fire with fire and pack the midfield as Mancini does, thereby leaving Chamakh as a sole striker, or will he start with Theo on the right and try to out attack them? My preference would be to throw caution to the wind and go at City, starting Walcott because MC have problems at Left Back (they have only Bridge, Lescott and Bridge to choose from., over €45m of LB !!!). No Kolo is to our advantage, and I hope Mancini chooses to play Ade over Silva who looks a fine player.
My team would be:
Fabianski
Eboue Squillacci Djourou Clichy
Cesc Nasri Song Rosicky
Walcott Chamakh
Attacking I know, but why not, we are never going to outmuscle a City team that is based upon power, so let’s play to our strengths.
Manchester has been a centre of industry for hundreds of years and was the focus of the German air attacks outside London. Over Xmas in 1940 475 tonnes of explosives and 37,000 incendiary devices were dropped on Manchester by German bombers causing enormous damage and loss of life. In contrast, the first Gay Supermarket in England was opened in Manchester’s Canal St.
Can we win? Yes. Will we win? Why not.
COYRRG
Arsenal News 24/7
arsenalarsenal.net 
Nice stuff BR. I agree on this one of playing to our strengths & attacking. Its holding a lead that worries me 😉 Oh well, not long to wait till all will be revealed.
COYRRR
Morning all
A good read Raddy, thanks.
Lovely day in London. If Mancini plays 5 in the middle we’ll never get through 😦 need Squidgy and Djourou to be on top of their game today and for Song – if he’s the holding mid-fielder – to just do his job!!!!!!
Maybe Arsene’ll tell Song he’ll get a chance to score next Saturday against Wham 😉
Yes. lets go for them.. I wonder how an attack of Chamack and Bendtner would do? Two big guys good in the air… maybe surprise MC?
My team
Fab
Eboue Djorou Squill Gibbs
Cesc Song Nasri Walcott
Big Nic Chamark
Oh yeah… Come on Rangers!!!!!!!
Morning,
Fine post Raddy.
I agree Cesc is the key. His body language tells me that he is not quite his old self after the travails of the summer and his comments praising Jack almost sounded like he was saying ‘look you don’t need me, here is your replacement’. I know Cesc will give his all for as long as he wears his shirt – I don’t doubt his commitment.
A win is vital today if we want to stake a claim as one of the league’s top four. Lose, and we will be fighting all season for our CL status.
Yes we MUST make a statement, just as we did against the spuds in the LC. I think BR picked the team we will see, but not the one I prefer. But I recognise the advantages of a Theo/Chamark twosome
Yeah, leave out the second best player, the one that has created the most goals this season……….thank god you’re not our manager……..
Nice, I agree with the starting line up,and well said Rosicky deserves to start i hope Wenger could start with him, he is a great player and make some good tackles as well… Walcott the other man to look at and i am sure he will cause them lots of problems
Morning DKD,
Get out of the wrong side of the bed did we?
Perhaps you’d like to explain who you think is our second best player and why?
As far as I am aware, the club does not produce a list ‘the best players’ so it is a purely subjective view.
my team
Fab
sagna Squillacci Djourou Clichy
Cesc Song Diaby
Nasri Chamakh Arshavin
MY PROBLEM TODAY IS ALEX SONG. ARSENE SHLD TALK TO HIM TO SIT BACK AND COVER D DEFENCE AND CONCENTRATE ON D JOB OF A DM AND FORGET ABT GOING FOR GOAL, HE CAM DO THAT IN SMALL GAME NOT IN BIG GAME.
Interesting BR, very interesting! 🙂
I would find room for Diaby in my team, but Theo’s pace could be a winner, if he uses it.
Tell me BR, do you and GG9 belong to a secret society?
What does COYRRG and COYRRR mean? I won’t tell anybody else … obviously! 🙂
COYRRA
RA
Come On You Rip Roaring Reds.
Comon The Arsenal we can do them nothing to be afraid of..
And Celtic please…..
BR I think he was referring to me leaving out Nasri.
Oh I didnt leave out nasri, then maybe he means JW? Who is suspended. Rangers 2-1… Kenny is the man!!!
3-1
Now for The Arsenal to do the same!!!
Manu have scored a very good goal and go into half time 1:0 up.
The 7′ Stoke defenders just stood and watched one of the smallest players on the field head a goal. Que? It was a very clever goal though.
Neville should have had a red card for his tackle on Etherington. What a cowardly non-decision by the ref. Disgusting!
Follow Follow…….
Hernandez looks like a good buy, we must agree AF is a great manager….. love him or loath him!
Walcott and bendtner on bench. rshivin and Denilson start
Come on Clichy, they are ripping you to pieces.
RA, COYRRG is the call from an old lady in the NOrth Bank about 40 years ago and has been carried on by strange screaming women ever since, though it is clearly not their sole copyright!
Come on you Rip Roaring Gunners
(you will often see COYS, which refers to those plums down the road)
Feisty game so far and Cesc is being targeted. A red and two yellows after 15 mins, now we will see if our lads have grown up.
And Clichy just made a tackle!
AA by OUR corner flag!!
Hi BR
We are showing odd bursts of beautiful THRUST
World Cup leftovers between DeJong and Cesc.
No way will we finish with 11 men
Cesc, Den, JD and Song are terrified of tackling now
We need to DO THE CRAB
Keep the ball
Giving it away too cheaply
Afternnon all.
4 yellows can we finish with 11 men.Djorou is absolutely awful,has got caught at least 4 times.We need 3 points not 1. Hand on heart we are not playing well, but if only that penalty had gone in,we would have breathing space.
man of the first half …..Fabianski.
I would bring Theo on, and although AA is not having his best game,yet another assist.
Kelsey,
Bring Theo on for who, AA?
Why do we always have to make things so difficult? Cesc buries the pen. – game over.
Instead we will have to fight to the end and with the very high likelihood of having a player sent off.
Still one up at half time is better than I imagined
With so many MF’s booked we cannot take off AA who has no card.
I would wait for 15 mins and replace Song or Denilson (if they are still on the pitch!!) with Diaby. Then bring on Theo with 20 left for AA
How did Joe Hart slip through our hands – he’s massive!!!!
Anyone feel like they might want to write a match report?
Diaby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m not sure thats a good idea we’re already giving the ball away far too much.
I think key to second half, how AW uses substitutions
Ok I take it back – Song can do whatever he likes, he seems to anyway
“We’ve only got one Song, we’ve only got one Song” YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEsssssssssssssss
Excellent substitution. More THRUST from deeper
Crab with thrust. Crab with thrust, baby
Prince Bendy on
GGGGGGGGGOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL
Wooooohoooooooooo
Made hard work of it against ten men but 3 points and a clean sheet is a good day’s work
I love our new keeper 😉
Song must take a whole lot of credit after being booked in the first half.
Nasri is becoming nearly as important as Cesc.
Sky Sports commentary are so biased it’s a joke.
Only week link was Djorou IMO
Well done lads
Can I buy a blog round………….FANTASTIC result
Kelsey,
“Nasri is becoming nearly as important as Cesc”. What, and Fabianski???
Now there’s something that would not have slipped off the tongue last season!
MotM Fabianski
i not y
It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong, so here it comes. Yesterday I said I feared the difference between the two teams may be Hart. Well, I was wrong.
IT WAS FABIANSKI. Sometimes its just sooooo good to be wrong.
Hi Micky – what a result, never any doubt 😉
Mancini just said that city were one of the best teams in the PL and redknapp reiterated what i said about Nasri.
Great result. Anyone watching the second half would say we deserved to win by 3.
However, I must say I was very disappointed with City. They got comprehensively outplayed lacking fire and passion. To see Song and Denilson boss the midfield allowing Cesc and Nasri to bamboozle the City defence must have neen a nasty wake up call for Mancini.
I thoght Squill had a good game as did Fabianski who looks a proper GK. Good on him.
If a Redknapp said it, it must be true 😉
Raddy’s head-line was clearly the catalyst for this result. Looks like Cesc wants to win the Carling Cup 😉
Almunia just threw up 🙂
Raddy – you’re a hard man to please, whats wrong with us bossing the midfield??????
Oh shit, I’m dribbling
I agree with AW that often it is harder to beat 10 than 11.
BR, I wasn’t disappointed with City it shows you that even when we are not at full strength we have a better all round squad than pehaps we thought.
in hindsight I am glad jack missed this game,’cause for sure he would have got booked.
Chesney will be in goal at newcastle,for sure.
my man of the match was Nasri.
BR,
“disappointed with City”….eh? They played exactly as I suspected they would. I do not believe for one minute that we would not have won had they not been down to ten men, if anything, we looked very shaky after that with the half hearted tackles.
After the second, we eased into our legendary crab and thrust style. Loved it!
I cannot believe how happy I am. It is beginning to hurt.
Who really knows what would have happened if it would have been 11 against 11 though Fab made a very important save in the first minute..I thought we kept our composure far better in the second half
oh and Djorou is crap 😉
Oi Kelsey,
Don’t start coming over with all them negative waves, man 🙂
Sorry friends, MC have been my second team since the 60’s 😦
I think I have been misunderstood, I was pointing out that Mancini must be disturbed, not me. He had a midfield that cost almost £100m and they got completely outplayed by a midfield with a total cost less than he paid for YaYa
Hello kelsey, have you got time to write a report?
Andy Gray is gonna say ‘we’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen’ 😉
That early Fab save was very important.
Perhaps JD wasn’t our best player but he was better than the MC defence ….. At last a clean sheet
A good goalie will get you 10-12 points a season. Well today flappy got us 3, well done boy and long may it continue. Everyone played well and the killer for me was Song and Denilson in the middle, imo if Diaby had been on rather than Den it could have easily been a different outcome…but who knows and right now who cares ? Come on you gooners !
BR,
Second team?!!? I want that blog drink back immediately, and in your case, it was a bottle of NZ Sauvignon 🙂
Great win!
We deserved all three points and always had more quality on the pitch. City fans were really up for it after the sending off, I think that made it hard for us.
JD was disappointing.
All we need now is RvP to come back, and we’ll look more dangerous up front. As much as I like Chamakh he’s not clinical. He always gets a reaction out of the defence though. Pens and red cards galore. Must be the hair gel.
To see how crap some of our support is, read the 90 mins comments from our old friends. It makes for very amusing reading.
Who would imagine we just beat one of our main rivals at their manor by 3-0 and we missed a penalty?
Song is the anti-Christ and Denilson is a total disgrace etc etc etc moan moan moan, If one cannot enjoy a fantastic performance as we gave today, it is time to give up.
Thank goodness I am here with the sane ones
Micky.
It goes back to the Subbuteo days 🙂
Mayank,
I would play RVP in place of AA right now. Chamakh brings so much. He also drifts left and right, so RvP would always find himself central just in time to bang in a few.
A NZ SB is a fine idea Micky. I will break one open right now. I deserve it…..
When we were 3-0 down to WBA at home we showed real desire to try and get something. Not this bunch of overpaid whatnots.
BR.
Mmmmmmmmm, thinks….ok then, have your bottle back.
Denilson is a new man Raddy – he’s much stronger than before and really reliable.
The stuff they spout about Song is just a joke – I’m not convinced he should be playing in such a forward role but with Denilson on the pitch thats OK. If its alongside Diaby we would be in trouble.
Bang on Peaches. Denilson adds a different dimension to this team, he has improved immensely and played a fine game today
BR,
Re your comment 6:42. I have seen. Unbelievable.
Micky,
I advocate dropping Arsh before every match but his goal and assist stats just don’t allow it. If Theo hits the same vein of form he had, then I see Arsh, RvP and Theo as our fist choice top 3.
Sane ones.
I made a point,well actually a few times that JD was out of his depth, in fact from the opening minute and he didn’t get better.Apart from that what I meant about 11 against 11,is that City are basically defensively minded and even with a man down I don’t think it gave us such a huge advantage,until the closing minutes.
Fab really looked assured and no flapping.
it’s about time we had a bit of luck as well, and all in all it was a great win.
They have been brain washed to have songitis over there
Raddy – was Denilson included in the Brazilian squad for the World Cup, even if he didn’t play maybe he got some coaching from Gilberto?
kelsey – I agree that Djourou does look like the chink in the armour but today Clichy really let him down by going awol so much – each time Djourou got turned by Tevez it was because Clichy wasn’t there.
No he wasn’t Peaches. I think he went home to Brazil (my guess is he lost his cherry – excuse me for being so blunt, but it may explain his new manliness …..)
Evening all from an ecstatic Rasp 😛
Fab2 – fab
Cesc – diff class
Nasri – superb
Djourou – improving
Denilson – been eating his Wheetabix
Song – fantastic engine
Clichy – never learns
My unsung hero – Squillaci, we’d be up sh*t creek without a paddle if we hadn’t signed him.
Lost his cherry 😉 you guys are so sweet 😆
better than losing his nuts 🙂
Good to see a real team win instead of a manufactured one .
Agree with all about JD. He is young and learning. Also, he has no real understanding with Squil. CB partnerships take time to gel. Of course we have Verm and Kos in the wings. Whatever else, today’s CB’s did keep out about £70m worth of strikers.
Peaches,
As you rightly said, JD was badly exposed by Clichy. I really do think its time Gibbs was given a run.
Mayank,
Totally agree about the Russian Enigma. I cannot crack the code. His goals and assists confuse an otherwise easy decision!
Oh and evening ecstatic Rasp.
We will have to find a different position for RvP as Chamakh has to be the 1 in a 4:5:1
Hi Micky,
Cesc was sytematically targetted again by citeh. I wonder how he felt about Arsène sayng we were going to hold onto him for a couple more seasons?
OK, it’s all down to Clichy.
Ecstatic Rasp,
“We will have to find a different position for RvP”.
Looks like goalkeeper is no longer up for grabs!
I am sure that if Cesc genuinely believes we are on the cusp of having a great team (and we are) then he may be more than happy to stay a couple more seasons. He is certainly young enough to still return to finish his career at Barca. Should that still be an attractive proposition in two years!
well said, micky.
Maybe city will come in for Cesc,Nasri,Wilshere and Song in January 😉
Arsenal Arsenalists,
I must tool off now. Its been a great great day. A pleasure to spend it in your company.
Goon To The Moon. (I will explain where that came from, one day).
Sky were waxing lyrical about how Mancini had so many choices of how to change his team around – did they forget how much had been spent?
Of course not Peaches. Mancini is this season’s love bunny alongside Ancelotti.
The icing on the cake was a beautiful finish from the Big Dane. Welcome back Nik
o.k. peaches.will be done in simple language for tomorrow.
Thanks kelsey, you’re a star xx
62% possession today!!
No team will equal our win at the Eastlands this season.
I love today. Went to a super lunch party after a long lie in with my beloved, then home to watch the game listening to Danish commentators raving about our performance (plus their love in for the 3rd goal).
Now for a single malt chaser to the Sauvignon and a peaceful dream filled night.
A perfect day
Evening all,
Its 10.30pm in my part of South East London, and the sun is still shining!!
Tremendous effort from the boys today.
I always have a scan thru the other site post after a game. I find it absolutely hilarious to see so many people make such big fools of themselves time and time again. Best of all is when earlier comments are rammed right back down someone’s throat by being re-posted.
The slating that Song got from the first minute today was incredible, even by their own usual standards.
I feel real sorry for the Head Honcho there cos his comments really started to get embarrassing. I mean, we beat Man City 3-0 away and he still weren’t happy that Song and Den hadn’t been subbed at half time as he had requested. Laughable.
“jimoh mutiu says:
October 24, 2010 at 11:32 am”
Well said Jimoh….lets keep Song in our half at all times !!
“Crab with thrust. Crab with thrust, baby”
Top quality that Mickey
Didnt see the game here in China but am I a happy camper! Glad to se NB score so soon after returning, and Song has what 3 goals this year? For a long time we complained that no one replaced the goals from MF of Ljundberg and Pires, now it looks like we have a potent midfield once again. Nasri, Cesc , Song all scoring, we should get 30 goals out of the 3 of them.
This is the result we all wanted, not just a win but a crushing win. I also believe we should give Gibbs a run of games and I, for one, hope Djourou continues to improve.. he has a presence we havent had in the CB position since Sol left. He is still recovering from a years lay off lets not forget he is an accomplished international at such a young age.
Just for you then Sharkey,
Crab, crab, crab, crab AND THRUST, Gooooooooaaaaal
You know what I really like about the word Crab, is that it is always used as a term of criticism, and yet it can be so Arsenal Beautiful. Patience, patience, patience, INCISION Gooooaaaal!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um4KOKSnqcQ
Does anyone else feel as good as I do this morning. Work is going to be a total breeze. Thank you Arsenal.
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