Expect a thrashing on Matchday 8

Home Alone... Van Persie, Vermaelen, Fabregas and Vela at the O2 arena in London while their teammates are all away on international duty

The much-derided international break is upon us once again and as football fans, we’ve been forced by the powers-that-be to accept these unsolicited and annoying interregnums in our football menu.
When it all kicks-off again next weekend in the English Premiership, we play host to those cloggers from St. Andrews - Birmingham City. If you’ve been disillusioned with the recent yo-yo form of the Gunners, occasioned by that earth-moving loss to West Brom and rubbed in by the capitulation at Stamford Bridge, despair not.
The reason? There will be a roasting at Emirates on October 16 on Matchday 8 of the premier league anyou don’t want to miss it.Birmingham will be on the end of a thrashing the types Blackpool and Braga got when they came calling very recently. Notice that all three teams share the letter B? Well, that’s got nothing to do with this bold prediction.What it has a lot to do with, is the fact that there isn’t a real international break at the Emirates.
For reasons of injury, poor form and even a suspension from the national side (in the curious case of Carlos Vela), Wenger suddenly finds himself working with a near-full cache of first team players. Unlike all other international breaks where the entire first team disappears into all corners of the world, this time around they are mostly staying behind at Colney. The ‘crèche’ as Myles likes to call it.
It must be a big blessing in disguise for Wenger. Two uninterrupted, glorious weeks to work with players like Theo Walcott, Kieran Gibbs, Robin Van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, Nicklas Bendtner, Manuel Almunia and Vela, all of whom he ordinarily would have lost to the their national teams at a time like this.If all goes to plan, all of the afore-mentioned stand a good chance of making the starting line-up against Birmingham on October 16 and therein lies my optimism and confidence that Alex McLeish’s side will be roasted.
Outcomes of football matches are never set in stone and notoriously have a way of surprising you. True indeed. But looking at our recent reverses in the premier league and the thoughts of what-may-have-been if we had an injury-free side available to choose from, it is safe to predict that things will take an upward swing after the international break. On account of all the returnees burning to take to the pitch and show the rest of the league what it has been missing.
Even long-term absentee Aaron Ramsey is pencilled-in to make his comeback next month and if this doesn’t call for optimism, nothing else will.
After Birmingham, we welcome Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League and thereafter, we go to the lions’ den of Eastlands to face a very dangerous-looking Manchester City. There surely is no better time to have everyone fit and raring to go. But first, Birmingham feels the fury on Matchday 8.
Watch this space for the glowing match report bound to follow on October 17.

Just before the return of Aaron

A football boot must be one of the most-paradoxical things ever invented by man.
Designed and perfected to accomplish the simple but now very sophisticated task of kicking a ball, it is also a very potent weapon of mass injury.
I walked into a Studio 88 outlet in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city during the week, to glimpse the latest range of soccer boots by Adidas and Nike. The chain outlet, famous for its high-grade sportswear brands, did not disappoint me. There were everything from the Microlite, Adidas Predator and other such intimidating names, with all of them bearing studs ranging from plastic, iron and even blades! For aspiring and established sportsmen and women, there was no shortage of footwear equipment to meet all tastes and needs.
But week in, week out now we see professional sportsmen – footballers especially – employ these same exotic shoes to maim fellow professionals. The latest being the brutal, brutal assault by Manchester City’s Nigel De Jong on Newcastle’s Hatem Ben Arfa that left the latter with a double leg fracture, last Sunday.
Using the boot of course to achieve his despicable objective. Mention must be made that Ben Arfa is already the third broken leg recorded in the premiership so far this season . And we are just seven games old into a 38-game season!
Why has it come to this?
It cannot be competition. It cannot be sport anymore. There is nothing fightingly full of spirit or fair-playing about a situation where a professional player goes out with the sole aim of causing grievous bodily harm to a fellow professional. Only the spirit of evil can be behind such action.
To add insult to injury, De Jong is being defended by his Dutch colleague, Mark Van Bommel, who described him as a “sweet guy”. Well coming from a bruiser like Van Bommel, it’s like the devil himself acknowledging the actions of Adolf Hitler.



The face of violence..De Jong chasing after Cecs Fabregas

Arsenal have consistently been on the receiving end of such barbaric behaviour and as I write this, our own dear Aaron Ramsey is emerging from a traumatic period after being put to bed by Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross. He was our third player in four years to suffer that fate after Abou Diaby’s ankle was broken in a game against Sunderland by Dan Smith in May, 2006 and Eduardo was almost killed by Birmingham’s Martin Taylor in 2008 . Now, thankfully, he will be returning to training in three weeks. The league he left behind nine months ago though seems to have descended into more bone-crunching violence.
Wenger has campaigned long and hard for something more decisive to be done to stop this sort of assaults but the lily-livered FA has done nothing. Just at the start of the season, he described Stoke City as playing rugby rather than football, prompting Tony Pulis & co to lodge a very-petty protest demanding action against Wenger. What a waste of everyone’s time.
Methinks Ian Wright’s suggestion that any player who breaks an opponent’s leg should himself be banned for the period of time the injured player is out of the game, makes all the sense in the world. It’s quite simple and logical. Once you put someone out of the game, you as well stay out yourself.
It ought to make serial-killers such as De Jong think twice. After shaming Dutch football at the World Cup finals by executing that nasty kung-fu kick on Spain’s Xabi Alonso, the thuggish De Jong is clearly not keen on mending his ways.
After that leg break in February 2008, Eduardo never recovered his sharpness in front of goal again. Physical wounds will heal, but the real healing remains psychological and without that, a sportsman is just another lump of flesh. It was sad and heartbreaking watching him struggle in vain at every attempt to rediscover his lost touch and finally, seeing him left behind on the substitute’s bench when it became clear he was not going to be player he was before the injury. His sale to Shakhtar Donetsk in July was the final admission by Wenger and Arsenal that he was permanently damaged.
Fingers crossed, young Aaron will re-emerge as the midfielder of promise we all saw early last season, who was maturing excellently before our eyes.
Fingers crossed, the FA will wake up and save our game from thugs, muggers and yobs pretending to be footballers.
The English premiership is marketed around the world as the best the game has to offer. Doing nothing about the likes of De Jong will ruin all that and reduce it to a place of fear and intimidation.
Surely, not a place for the likes of Aaron to return and flourish.

Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0




Brothers at war..the painful tackle that almost ended Diaby's season last Sunday

  Funny enough, our second defeat of the season did not rile so much as the first against West Brom eight days earlier. Was it because this latest one was very expected? Quite possible.
Sitting through this game, you had that feeling of inevitable surrender hanging over you all through. As you watched us try to pry open the meanest defence in the league it didn’t look as if we could pull it off and deal Chelsea an unlikely second straight defeat. Well, London Bridge withstood our tepid barrage and struck back decisively and brutally.
Once again, this wasn’t a gut-wrenching loss. Afterall there is no shame in losing 2-0 to the champions in their own backyard. As Wenger rightly suggested, the result from Stanford was never going to determine the outlook of the league come May.
It is early days still, and lots and lots of games to go, but for all our so-called progress this year and good start, we were reminded very firmly where the powerbase of this league lies.
Yes, we pressed them and even shaded the possession. But methinks it was all part of Chelsea’s gameplan to allow us have the ball and shuffle it around the middle and in the wide areas – all the waiting to pounce and hit us on the counter. And how perfectly their strategy worked.
For us, you learn more from defeats if you are a good team and so we live to resurrect our title hopes yet another day. Like I said earlier, there is no shame in losing to Chelsea and yet-another punishing Drogba strike. Not too long ago (pre-Mourinho that is) it was us dishing out the torture to a sleuth of Chelsea coaches and their teams. Gianluca Vialli, Ruud Gullit, Claudio Ranieri and even Scolari all lost regularly to us year after year, with London bragging rights firmly belonging to us.
The tables turned under Mourinho and two wins in about 14 games later, we have failed to live with our London neighbours.
We go into an international break on the back of this defeat but more battle remain to be fought and it is positives from such games that will shape the way we approach those battles as the season unfolds and twists in ways most-revealing.


Below are the ratings.


*Fabianski (6/10) – A very steady and assured performance by our ‘new’ Number One. He commanded his area well and looked to have an air of confidence around him. No gaffes and silly cock-ups this time and it appears Almunia is finally going to be dealing with some real competition when he comes back. Not at fault for any of the goals and actually prevented a thrashing by shooing Anelka away when faced with a one-on-one. Are we finally seeing the real Fabianski? Or is the presence of a fire-spitting, fellow Pole on the bench galvanising him at last? Looks so, so far.
*Sagna(6/10) – Also had a steady game and wasn’t overawed one bit. Stood up to Drogba and his French national team collegues Malouda and Anelka. The fact that Malouda – arguably the most dangerous player in the league – was silenced all through the 90minutes was a great credit to Sagna.
*Koscielny (6/10) – It was good to measure our new boy against the might and pace of Drogba who remains the ultimate test of any defender in the league. Koscielny did well and wasn’t embarrassed on the night. Though he gave away the free kick that produced the second goal, it was still not a bad day at the office for him. Very nearly scored himself in the 3rd minute off a header from a Nasri corner.
* Squillaci(6/10) – Was sometimes troubled by the pace of Anelka, Malouda and Drogba and almost gifted Anelka a free goal in the 60minute when he fell over. But he did well and showed his experience all through.
*Clichy (6/10) – Also acquitted himself well and was never bullied. He even got ahead as is usual about his game and troubled Ivanovic in Chelsea’s right side of defence. Got chance after chance in the first half to lob in several balls into the Chelsea defence but poor finishing yielded nothing.
*Song (6/10) – Was involved in a running battle with his African brothers Essien and John Mikel in what looked like a personal contest amongst all three. Stood his ground and gave as good as he got. It is still a measure of how far he has progressed that he is counted in the same company as the prestigious Chelsea duo. All in all, he gave a worthy account of himself.
*Wilshire (7/10) – I think he was our best player on the night. Took the game to Chelsea and as we all know by now, showed no glint of fear with all the multi-medalled Chelsea stars surrounding him. That he was automatically picked for such a big game is the final seal of approval for our shining Englishman. He was at the heart of all good things we did in the middle and the way the Chelsea players stood off him sometimes, showed the respect they had for him. A gem indeed, this teenager.
*Nasri (6/10) – Also one of our brightest on the night. Kept plugging away in the hope of breaking Chelsea’s stubborn resistance and was very inventive and full of creativity. Did a lot of nice stuff throughout the 90minutes but almost ruined it all with that wayward pass to Anelka, which drew a foul from Koscielny. The rest, as they say, was that Alex thunderbolt.
*Diaby (5/10) – Recovered from the West Brom nightmare to step up his game here and along with Song, fought Chelsea to a standstill in the middle. A horrible-looking Essien stamp on his ankle late in the first half clearly hindered him as the game wore on and expectedly, he fizzled out before being replaced.
*Arshavin (6/10) – Looked to be up for this one, especially in the first half when he drew top class saves from Petr Cech. He never allowed Ivanovic a moment of peace and his trickery eventually forced Chelsea into substituting Ivanovic for Ferreira. He tired though as the game wore on and dropped out of the picture.
*Chamakh (5/10) – A very forgettable game for our new striker. Now he has seen close-up what damage the likes of Drogba can do and it is hoped that it was a valuable lesson learnt. How very different it would have been though for him, if he had buried that easy-looking 1st minute header that caught the entire Chelsea backline flatfooted. It wasn’t to be however and it seemed to affect his confidence as the game wore on.


Substitutes
*Rosicky (6/10) – Came on for the fading Diaby and took control of the midfield with good running and penetrative passes. He may not have the legs anymore but he sure still possesses the vision.
* Emmanuel Thomas (5/10) – The fact that he was preferred ahead of another striker, Carlos Vela in such a big game must be a measure of how much big things Wenger expects from him. Couldn’t deliver on this occasion but surely now with his league debut out of the way, expect to see more of him as the season progresses.