OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration. There are a few reasons the EPL should be celebrated. It provides a level playing field, as the success of Leicester this year would demonstrate. It provides a fantastic place to park black money, which Abramovitch and his groupies would testify to. Finally, it also is a fantastic advertisement for the idea that money can buy success. City being one good example. OK, so are Barca, Real and Bayern. But not all clubs in their leagues can do the same.
No, the above are not why the EPL sucks. It sucks because it is not footbal at all. It is an overly glorified cross between rugby and football. Truth be said, British school children want to become rugby players. If at all they are interested in sports. Of course, in addition to pocket billiards and computer games. And some of the ones that fail to make it in rugby land up in football. Take one look at Wayne Rooney and you would know what I mean.
And the ardent followers of the game often defend this colonisation by rugby as the uniquely British “robust” brand of football. My foot! It is a street brawl transported into the football stadium. And to think that once upon a time, Britain and particulrly the FA was the undisputed world leader in setting standards in the game.
Today we continue with our new regular feature ‘Your Vote Counts’ which gives you the opportunity to see if your opinion is in line with the majority.
Following the defeat against Barcelona, consider this …..
On Tuesday, in addition to playing some magnificent football, Barca gave a master class in cynical fouling (otherwise known as professional fouling) and simulation with the intention of getting an opposition player carded/sent off.
We seek to emulate the Catalans in their brilliant style of play, but should we also follow their lead in the mastery of the less virtuous dark arts?
Arsenal generally try to play fair; to play the game in the correct spirit …. and that may have cost us the game on Tuesday.
Once Mertesacker went to ground and missed the tackle, our remaining 3 defenders had to deal with the forward movement of the most potent front 3 in the history of club football.
Bellerin, Monreal and Koscielny all had the opportunity to bring down the player with the ball before play entered our box. But they didn’t. The good guys stayed true to type, Barca scored and with it our chances of progressing in the Champions League evaporated.
Earlier in the game, I can think of at least 2 occasions when The Ox was dumped on his backside when a quick break was on. We got a free kick, the player who fouled wasn’t carded and our advantage was lost – Barca had successfully dealt with our threat.
There are 2 polls today, the first relates specifically to the passage of play leading up to the first goal …..
The second poll is more general. Many of us will have seen incidents in recent games when our players have had contact in the box and stayed on their feet, whereas a ‘Suarez’ would have gone to ground and won a penalty. Are we just too nice as a team? Would we win more games if we played the continental style of gaining any advantage we can even if it contravenes the spirit of the game?
We saw the good and the bad of Arsenal yesterday. The result and subsequent reaction from AW have added fuel to the ‘we should have bought X, Y & Z’ campaign. No one wanted to write a report on this game, so I have just bulleted the key points as I saw them and invite you all to add your perspective on the game.
For 70 minutes we got our game plan spot on and the players executed it perfectly apart from the vital ingredient of taking our chances when they were presented.
A moment’s madness when Mertesacker forgot his discipline and ventured way too high up the pitch (we’ve seen this from him before)
The failure of our defenders to be as cynical as Barca and ‘take one for the team’ by bringing down the player before the ball got anywhere near our box
Bringing on Flamini, it should have been Elneni but he wasn’t even on the bench – why?
Mertesacker laying the ball off to Flamini instead of clearing it out of the box
Flamini being Flamini
Arsene stating we made the same mistake as we did against Monaco as if he had no responsibility to ensure the players understood what went wrong in that game. He should have drilled them in how to avoid making the same mistake again.
We have all heard interviews with ex-players where they’ve said that Arsene is not a ‘shouter’. He prefers calm and tranquillity in the dressing room before games and at half time. Yes he can get angry, but that is usually after the game when a performance has been poor. Arsene’s assistant managers also know they have to buy into the ethos and any over exuberance from them is viewed with disdain.
Our players stroll out onto the pitch in relaxed style, none of the fist pumping huddle stuff Southampton engaged in at The Emirates.
Arsene doesn’t necessarily see the role of captain as that of an on-pitch leader. With Cesc and BSR, it was a means of elevating the status of a player in order to try to keep them at the club. In Mertesacker he has a captain in his own image. A very nice guy, but not a marauding shouter by any means.
Arsene relies a lot on his players’ intelligence and probably believes that they should have the professionalism to self motivate – but is that expecting too much?
There have been times in recent years, and demonstrably in our last 4 or 5 performances when the team has been less than the sum of its parts. We’ve dropped points against sides where few if any of their players would get into the current Arsenal line-up …. why?
We are going to need to be a cohesive and determined team unit to beat Leicester at the weekend. The players will need to buy into a strategy for the game and must fight for one another. We must win more 50/50 battles than we lose. In short, we need to be a better team than of late.
The question I would ask is … “Would we see a more battling performance from our players if the dressing room pre-game was more of a fiery cauldron than a yoga retreat?”
This site is blessed with a healthy ‘return’ of accountants amongst its contributors … ‘return’ is the collective noun for accountants. As a genre, they don’t suffer fools lightly. Here are some pointed responses to the mythical £200m in the bank story that is being widely touted on the net.
The following comments are all from qualified accountants:
GoonerInExile
For the love of God can people stop talking about £200m sitting in the bank….it’s one number from a set of accounts….surely we all have more than one brain cell and understand that it’s not ours to spend today.
First I’ll put it in basic terms:
It’s pay day you receive your monthly wage, let’s say for arguments sake £2k.
This month you have to pay for your mortgage/rent, food, rates, clothes, fuel etc.
Do you have £2k to blow on a night out in London?
Hopefully the answer is no.
Now let’s get to the Arsenal figures:
Fixed Assets (Land, Buildings, Investments) £596m
Current Assets (Stock, Debtors and cash of £228m) £323m
Current Liabilities (Creditors, loans etc) £273m
Long Term Liabilities (Mortgages etc) £314m
Add first two deduct second two Net Assets are £330m
Now let’s understand something, Net current assets are £60m, so the most “cash” we had to spend was £60m, we have to generate profit to keep paying mortgage without reducing our cash more, in 2014/15 we would have lost £8m if it wasn’t for profit on player sales of £28m, if anyone failed to notice we didn’t sell anyone this season so that’s going to be more than likely. Loss in 2015/16 and out cash would have gone down by whatever that loss is.
So please stop regurgitating nonsense heard on media outlets with the sole objective of winding Arsenal fans up.
If the fans that want to believe we are so bad are correct can someone explain me this….how the f*** are we even 4th? Because everyone else is rubbing this year? Well that doesn’t really hold water does it?
We should have spent £x million on players as we haven’t got a squad capable of doing anything great, but the manager is also poor for not getting the most out of these average players?
Sorry you can’t have both, either manager bad and players get him out of jail, or players bad and managers system and tactics gets most out of them.
TerryManciniHairTransplant
Frustrating isn’t it GIE?
Funny that the ones who bang on about £200 million have little to no understanding of interpreting a balance sheet.
I know quite a few other chartered accountants who generally interpret the figures as you and I, they have no choice, it’s there in black and white
There is one colleague, an Arsenal season ticket holder who though agrees with the general premise feels we fail to take enough risks. Fair enough, I don’t agree but it’s his point of view but whilst having a beer with him the othe day I mentioned I know some people who think we have £200 to spend today, we both spilled our beer from laughing.
RA
A special well done to GIE, for trying I suspect without any hope, would help people to understand what is obvious to us, that a company’s working capital is just a snapshot in time and is continually changing.
As it happens, I got paid for some work I did for a friend and got his check yesterday and banked it, without giving away personal info, let’s say it was for £750.
So with £750 in the bank, or ‘cash’ as some like to see it, I am off down to buy a laptop today, so that I do not have to keep borrowing my buddy’s crap one.
Only….I’m not. Why? Because if I did that I would not be able to pay my share of the rent in two weeks time, and I also have to pay my share of the fuel costs here.
So this magical, mystery £60m, or whatever is the current flavour of the blogs, that Arsenal had at the end of May last year, did that include payment in advance for some season tickets in the current season, or does some of it have to go towards paying salaries, or our debts, or, or, or.
I fear we are not getting the message across Exile and I wish you luck with that. 😀
Ed: Do you wish to cross fiscal swords with these assessments or has the message finally come across?
Many among us will have recognised that the teams we struggle against are those who operate a ‘high press’. By this we mean that they don’t wait for us to get into their half of the pitch before engaging us but look to regain possession as soon as the ball is lost by pressing as a team high up the pitch. They will often double or treble up on the player in possession of the ball.
We have just one player in the current available squad who instinctively plays in this way, Alexis Sanchez. How many times have we seen him chase ball across the pitch only for the opposition to frustrate him because the rest of our midfield is sitting back and enabling them to bring the ball forward virtually unchallenged. Welbeck is another player who works hard for the ball and Elneny also seems to be out of that mould – I can’t wait to see those two in the side.
I think it is fair to say that Arsene doesn’t generally favour the high press. Lately it seems that he has chosen to absorb the pressure for 70 minutes when playing against the HP sides, waiting for them to tire, and then to make his subs and become more adventurous. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If our finishing is not up to scratch, the strategy fails.
Pep Guardiola is a master at coaching teams in the HP system. Barca were brilliant at it under his management and now he has recreated it at Bayern. It’s not so difficult when you have players of that quality – but in the EPL we now see it being employed by teams whose players are not of our standard – Southampton, Liverpool and the miscreants down the road (and no doubt man city next season). All of these teams will cause us problems.
There are two questions I would ask:
Why don’t Arsenal play a high pressing game? Is it because we don’t have the players who can operate in that system – or simply that the manager doesn’t favour it?
Why does our passing game fall apart when we are being pressed all over the pitch? Surely our coaching routines should enable us to deal with this.
Any ‘experts’ out there who can explain this to me?
If I continue in the way I am known to express myself I am apparently a doomer but others who can be far more critical than me don’t even get a response.
I actually thought apart from the now familiar juttering start that we were very unlucky to not win and there is no doubt that their keeper was on top form.
I don’t have the technical knowledge of others such as GIE and there is no doubting our stamina but I feel every game we play we are getting more and more predictable that I can see the next move before it happens and therefore if I can see it so every team we play will have a plan to stop us which in recent weeks has led to no wins in four vital matches whilst the other contenders march on despite dropping the odd point here and there.
We really either don’t have a different way of playing or AW will not alter things dramatically.You decide.
We will know in the next month if we are still in with a shout of the title or (dread to think) in a battle for forth yet again.
The margins in so many games are getting finer as the seasons roll on.
I don’t usually get involved in a discussion about refs but in the first half he showed a definite bias against us.
I am not going to critisize any one player only to say the Kos/Gabriel partnership is not as good as I thought it would be.
It now becomes very much a mental thing for all of the top 5 either to sustain winning or getting back to winning, and we all know which category we fall into.
GoonerB ……..
I have a feeling that many will not want to discuss anything Arsenal or AW related his morning. I think a lot will run for cover which I wish didn’t happen because to get the Yin and Yang going we need all the regular contributors from those more negative to those more positive.
I am somewhere in betwixt most views. On one hand I recognise that we had a more difficult run of fixtures recently (say compared to Spuds). As such the league title is still on and there is till reason to feel hopeful. Have a look at GIE’s input and predictions from late yesterday.
On the other hand I would say that we don’t take care of our own business well enough. I get that the ref was awful and agreed. This would have influenced the balance of the game to some degree. Not enough though for me that we shouldn’t have been able to overcome Southampton at home with the team put out and the players available to us. The referee thing has now also been used too much to explain away poor results.
I get their keeper had a blinder and that it was just one of those games. The problem is that every season we, more so it seems than any other team, seem to drop points against teams whose keeper has his best game of the season. Now I would look at why this happens so often and wonder if there is something about the way we attack that is slightly different that gives a keeper a better chance to put in these performances.
Unfortunately we just don’t seem to take care of our own business and look at our own failings and weaknesses. That needs to be done first before we start portraying ourselves as some unlucky put upon club.
Chas ……
I don’t understand how those who like to constructively criticise can recognise:
that the ref was bent
that Forster had a brilliant game
we created more than enough chances to win by 2 or 3
But still want to have a pop at management for:
lack of tactics
lack of signings
thinking Giroud is a striker ( 🙂 – amazingly it didn’t seem to be him that was culpable last night).
Aren’t you simply
a) reacting to the result and the fact we didn’t score or
b) simply carrying on seeing things with your own confirmation bias?
Iwobi and new signing Elneny both impressed against Burnley with many crediting Iwobi with the Man of the Match performance. His composure, control and understanding of the game are way beyond his years. We should be careful not to burden him with too much expectation, but we can be excited about what is undoubtedly another midfield talent Arsene has produced.
The player I want to focus on today is Elneny. There has been much discussion of his intended role in the midfield, and the role he played in Saturday’s game.
It was assumed he was back-up/competition for Coquelin, but lo and behold, Arsene played them both. Surely Arsene would never put out a team with two holding midfielders … and he didn’t.
No, Elneny didn’t play HM, he covered every blade of grass and was the epitome of a box-to-box midfielder. If you look at M.E.s performances for Basel and read what Arsene has said of the player, it is clear that he has a lot more to his game than just breaking play up and keeping it simple.
So if Elneny wasn’t brought in as another ‘Coquelin’ then where does he fit into our midfield. Sadly Cazorla’s latest injury together with his advancing years means that he may never be a first choice midfielder for Arsenal again. Who knows whether Wilshere will ever be able to remain injury free long enough to establish himself as first choice in our midfield?
This got me thinking. Every well managed team has a production line of players coming through and strives for a quality back-up for every position.
Arsene likes Ramsey – a lot! I’m pretty sure that along with Ozil, Sanchez and Koscielny, Ramsey is always one of the first names on the team sheet. The best players need to be protected and rested on occasion, and are the ones that the big spending clubs try to pluck from our midst. There are rumours that Barcelona have shown an interest in Ramsey. From what I can see, Ramsey and Elneny have a lot in common. A superb engine, a good range of passing and an eye for goal.
So there you have it – my conclusion is that Elneny was brought in to bolster our midfield options in the short term, and to offer an alternative to Ramsey in the long term. What do you think?
As I understand it, based on what I have heard here and there, it would seem that preliminary talks have taken place with UEFA between representatives of some of the big money European clubs, including Manure and Juventus.
The clubs’ representatives have made it clear that they think there is a need to move on and capitalise on the promotion of top grade European football.
This really means they want to take the opportunity of better marketing of top European football worldwide, and incidentally making buckets of cash for their owners. There is, too, the lingering suspicion, although I understand it was not mentioned specifically, that the clubs want shot of Platini’s alleged election bribe to the smaller countries/ leagues, that they would be included in the group stages of the CL, if they voted for him to be UEFA president, because they are just seen by the clubs as pointless fodder who are bumped off by the bigger clubs in every tournament, and thus making those games very boring for TV audiences.
Let’s face it – the TV companies are probably behind this, or are in cahoots with the big clubs, as they want value for all the money they have poured into the CL – and when money talks – everyone jumps, especially UEFA and the clubs I suspect! 😀
Something like this plan was always going to happen, at sometime in the near future, and if it is not this one, it will be something along these lines eventually.
That means if the current Premier League-leaders, Leicester, somehow managed to win through in May, they would qualify for Europe, next season, but if they won the following year instead they would not qualify for Europe. Got it so far? 🙂
Milan, for example, another one of the clubs pushing for this change to qualifying, but who have sometimes been rubbish in the Italian league, and possibly may not qualify for the CL next season, and also Manure who are also currently rubbish in the Premier League, and seem unlikely to make next season’s Champions’ League would both become permanent members of the new European set up in 2018, if they get their way.
In addition, both the Chavs and ‘Pool may well be in the elite clubs’ group for 2018, too, even tho they are also unlikely to qualify for next season’s tournament, though this not a given.
Step forward the European Clubs Association, representing the big fish European clubs, including all of those other teams who would like to be guaranteed reserved Champions League places from 2018.
The ECA’s executive board, comprising plenty of bigwigs of the biggest clubs, including the Manure chief executive Woodward and [no, I cannot believe it] our very own Arsenal boss Ivan Gazidis, (I am sort of beginning to like this cunning plan a lot more) have made it clear to UEFA that they are deadly serious about making this change happen, and want it applied to the next Champions League TV deal which happens to start in 2018. Funny that!
In effect, cutting to the chase, the so-called ‘elite’ want their clubs to have reserved invitations to every CL club tournament in the future, Not that surprising I suppose. Hogs at feed?
Who are these elite teams? Well it has not yet been announced but it will rely a lot on the clubs that the TV wallahs think are the prettiest – well, perhaps they are more attractive to viewers might be a more concise way of putting it, whether they are qualified through their local league positions, or not.
It will make qualification for next season’s CL particularly stressful I suspect as that could make a big influence on whether a club is included if they are not a really ‘big’ club.
There will be huge money coming in next season for all the Premiership clubs with the new Sky and BT TV deals starting in 2017, and if some elite clubs get into the new CL set up in 2018, if it is agreed by all concerned, that money could easily be doubled.
It seems that in any event there has been an agreement in principle among the usual suspects that these elite clubs will be included on a permanent basis – however, it remains to be seen who makes the cut as ‘attractive’ to the TV viewers, and also that to ease opposition to the plan, certain other league qualifiers will be added to this group of definite starters.
Perhaps the way to smooth this deal through is to expand the size of the competition, perhaps by formalising a pre-league of other clubs who would fight it out, for qualification, as they do now, during the preseason, but the TV movers and shakers probably won’t want this.
Clubs like Everton, Spurs, and Leicester who may not make the cut as guaranteed ‘elite’ members, will be understandably peed off, and perhaps this is a move away from the corinthian spirit of football.
Corinthian my ass! – high standards and doing the right thing have already been consigned to the dustbin of football’s past, I am afraid.
The alleged backroom chat between some of the top clubs does give this supposedly secret plan some credence, and as I have often said before, when money comes calling, all the money hungry club owners bat their eyelashes, put on their best dresses, apply their lipstick and will kiss the asses of whoever offers them the most!
With the end of the transfer window looming and many supporters calling for Arsene to reinforce the squad with new additions, I thought I’d look at the age range of Arsenal’s current EPL squad including some on loan. Obviously age isn’t the prime criterion when assessing a player, but it is the significant indicator in terms of longevity and therefore team development.
When Arsene was asked recently about the signing of Elneny, he praised his attributes and added in characteristic fashion that he was 23 and that 23 to 30 was an ‘interesting’ age for a footballer. We all know what he meant by this. For all but one position, 23-30 would be considered the peak years of a player’s career. The exception is the keeper, where experience is crucial and the toll on the body is less, meaning that they can remain at the top of their game into their late thirties … and guess what ….. we’ve got one of those!
In the past, it was the case that centre backs could still be at their peak into their early thirties, but I would argue that the pace and physical demands of the modern game mean this is seldom the case nowadays. Hopefully Koscielny will prove to be the exception to that rule, sadly it is becoming apparent that Mertesacker is not.
I don’t expect us to sign another ‘first team ready’ player before the deadline on Monday, and maybe the stats below will convince you that we don’t need to.
The area marked in yellow in the chart below represents the age group of those who are considered to be in their peak years (Bellerin is the exception to that rule) . The names in red are unlikely to be with us next season, and those in green are currently out on loan but a good prospect for the future.
I have divided the midfielders into 3 categories just so the pedants among you can tell me I’m wrong 🙂
In an ideal world, the first choice players in every position would be in their peak years – in fact it would be perfect if the second choice option was also in the 23-30 zone.
But that’s not how it works, the top players are in the zone and the back up is either younger hoping to break into the team, or older and with lower expectation. This theory is backed up by the fact that both Ospina and Debuchy are in their peak years, neither are first choice and both want to leave – and who can blame them?
By my estimation, 8 out of 10 of our first choice outfield players are at their peak in terms of age. That’s pretty good and I suspect compares favourably with the other top EPL sides.
So which areas should we be looking to reinforce in the summer?
Martinez is currently gaining experience on loan at Wolves and may be the man to take over from Cech in a few years. We have a wealth of talented young attacking midfielders waiting for their chance to make an impact on the first eleven. Unluckily for them, most of the current incumbents are at the perfect age.
Arguably centre back and striker are the two areas where we could be vulnerable. With Mertesacker coming to the end of his career, and only Chambers as back-up I can see procuring another CB as a priority. As far as strikers are concerned, we will only be able to assess that situation once we have seen Welbeck stay injury free and get a run of games. If he can replicate the form he showed before he was injured then Arsene may well believe we don’t need another striker. Personally, I’d be happy to blow £50-60m if the right striker became available in the summer.
Your challenge for today ……. convince me we need to buy another player this January!
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