Picasso comes to Arsenal/ Wenger and Fergusson

Arsene Wenger rightly described the outgoing month of January as the busiest his team has ever witnessed since he arrived at the helm in 1996. By the time we file out against Huddersfield in the 5th Round of the FA Cup on Sunday, it would be the ninth game we have played this month.


In this month, we have been the busiest team in all three professional leagues in England. Those nine games coming in three different competitions – the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Carling Cup.


In all those games, 3-0 has been the commonest scoreline. We won by that margin on January 1, New Years’ Day against Birmingham at St. Andrews and were to repeat it three more times against West Ham, Wigan and most recently Ipswich Town. Leeds also shipped three against us but their midfielder, Johnson’s 40-yard cracker ensured a respectable scoreline of 3-1. In all, of the eight games played so far, we have won five, drawn two and lost one. In the process, we scored a whopping 16 goals and conceded a very commendable three. In the plus-minus analysis of today’s football, that is a chest-thumping +13 goals difference.

Djourou in action against Leeds in the FA Cup...the big man got a
big break in January

What do all these mean? It simply tells Wenger that the players in whom he has placed his abiding faith have repaid it to the height of his expectations. Which is why he has foot-dragged, dilly-dallied and slouched his way through the transfer month of January and finally came up without any addition to his squad. Despite injuries to Thomas Vermaelen and Seb Squillaci in the centre of defence, Wenger - as intransigent as ever – stuck to his guns and braved it with Johann Djourou and Koscielny. He stuck his nose at everyone else and rode the storm with a threadbare defence.


He kept on telling us that he hadn’t found anyone out there better than what he already has. Typical Wengerspeak, he was saying that it was safer to wait for his injured ‘faithfuls’ to heal rather than dipping into his treasure chest and buying a new pair of legs. In other words if you aren’t familiar with Wengerspeak, he was saying that his bunch of players are the best in town.


So, Wenger played 720 hours of football with just two central defenders. If calling a bluff is an art, Wenger proved he is the Picasso of brinkmanship. Thankfully and luckily for the master of double speak, he was proved right. Not only did Djourou and Koscielny mature impressively as a defensive pair, the goalkeeping department also underwent a makeover as the highly-touted Wojciech Szszesny rose form the bench to jump ahead of the queue. Talk of a defensive reshuffle and this was it in huge doses.


All three – Djourou, Koscielny and Wojciech - could not have been considered in Arsenal’s starting eleven at the beginning of the season. In their places, cue TV, Squillaci and Almunia. The latter has since fallen on hard times and out of favour, while indifferent form has afflicted Squillaci. Injuries may have limited TV’s appearances but if fit, he is Wenger’s Number one central defender. All these circumstances have contrived to push Djourou, ‘Kos’ and Wojciech to the fore and they have grabbed their chances with both hands. The outstanding results of January have also helped their individual cases and as we stand on the brink of Carling Cup glory next month, Wenger has come out to declare Wojciech as his No 1 goalkeeper.


Those three names, along with form of the rest of the calvary have combined to justify Wenger’s undeclared but silent determination not to make any purchase. Rather than bring in the likes of Christopher Samba and Gary Cahill, Wenger has instead shipped out players to get playing time. Accordingly, Emmanuel Jay-Thomas, Aaron Ramsey and Henri Lansbury have all been farmed out to continue their education elsewhere. Just last night, the forgotten Carlos Vela joined the exodus by signing for West Brom till the end of the season.

Contrasting fortunes....Ramsey had to go down to the lower league
to get some action

 By not buying, Wenger has cast a vote of confidence on his current. While everyone else around us have been flipping open the cheque book, he has done the opposite. Man City brought in Edin Dzeko. Aston Villa poached Darren Bent. Liverpool nicked the extremely-good Luis Suarez. All such business suggest dissatisfaction and unhappiness in those teams. Not so for Arsenal and Wenger as far as the transfer window and the month of January are concerned.


He is not alone though. His old foe and perennial battle-hardened clogger, Sir Alex Ferguson has also not seen the need to plunge into the market for reinforcements. Instead, like Wenger, he has sent out the likes of Frederico Macheda to get playing time elsewhere.


Is there a message in these inactivities? Are both old foxes knowledgeable about things we the fans don’t? Of course, yes. Tried and trusted squads are built on years and years of collective grooming and careful planning. Which is what both men – the oldest surviving coaches in all of Europe – are noted for.


As both Arsenal and Manchester United bed-in for the title run-in; neck to neck in first and second spots, their two managers must know that the players who brought them this far so far in the season, can surely take them all the way without any addition.


Therein lies a lesson to the chasing pack.

Ipswich can’t stop the march to Wembley

We are going to Wembley...the players go bonkers as the realisation hits them

And so we make our way into an actual cup final since 2007. It is in the same competition where we did it then – the Carling Cup – last time out. We contained Ipswich for exactly an hour and broke down their resistance with good goals all round from the much-maligned Nicklas Bendtner; confirmed defender now masquerading as occasional goalscorer Koscielny who also happens to be namesakes with a certain African dictator clinging on stubbornly to power despite an election that voted him out of office; and yes, the ‘non-leader’ Cesc Fabregas.

So we are going to Wembley to face one of relegation battlers, West Ham or Birmingham City, who have both shipped in three goals from our world famous(!) strikers in the recent past. Life couldn’t be better as a Gooner, ay? Not really. At not what you would have thought after the first half of last night’s game when the score stood at nil-nil and the Tractor Boys were still ahead of us on account of that lone goal they scored in the first leg.

Just as we all shook our heads in resigned wonder at the halftime of last Saturday’s game against Wigan when the score was a miserable 1-0 despite the mother-of-all-bombardments on their defence. So did we all wonder if we would have to endure a night of more frustration yesternight. Well, cue Jack Wilshire, who in my most humble was the stand out player on the pitch. His well measured, 35-40 yarder of a pass to Bendtner turned out to be the secret code to unlock Ipswich’s hardworking but tiring defence.

The ‘Bendtnerman’, also now a new father, still had to figure a way of getting past Carlos Edwards who was marking him. And therein lay one of the moments of the season for me. The thing with Bendtner is that he is so predictable and clumsy that even fans in the stand can read his next move miles and miles before it happens. So for defenders faces with our ego-drunk Dane, he must be one of the easiest attackers in the world to mark. Devoid of speed, he actually makes defenders jobs even easier.

Emotion overflow as Cesc is overwhelmed by it all

But on collecting Wilshire’s glorious pass, the Bendtnerman executed  a swift leg-over-cum-dribble that would have made Christano Ronaldo really proud. Leaving Edwards for dead, he drove into the Ipswich box and with defenders approaching from all angles, he composed himself enough to aim for the far, right hand corner of the goal and lo and behold, it went in for a delightful gamebreaker!

The relief around the Emirates was as palpable as the beauty of the goal itself. Only a frustratingly-enigmatic character like Bendtnerman could have pulled that off. Whatever else he has done wrong this season so far, forgiveness was swift and total last night. Probably he really needs a regular run in the team to repeat his heroics and his chestnut-out-the-fire form for us late last season when Van Persie was missing with injury and we were suffering in front of goal.

However, whatever we all think of him, Bendtnerman redeemed himself and his fledging place in our collective hearts last night with that collector’s item.

Koscielny doubled his season tally with a thumping header just three minutes later off a good, good Andrei Arshavin corner kick. His ‘pregnant-woman’ might suggest that a lass somehow behind the scenes is probably due to deliver him a bouncing little tot. Who knows? He delivered for us most crucially himself last night and the passion and energy with which his goal was celebrated by all and sundry in the red shirts showed the players are as desperate as we all for some silverware. Even the Carling version.

The ‘non leader’ wrapped things up beautifully in the 77th minute by appyling the finishing touch to a 70-yard move involving him and another maligned Gunner, Arshavin. It was a coup de grace that Ipswich never recovered from and rubber-stamped our passage to Wembley and within sight of what I will term a well-deserved trophy at last. For a club the size of Arsenal, it is a welcome development too far-between and too infrequent. 

Stand out performances on the night came from the smallest player on the pitch and the smallest in most games involving us this season – Mr Wilshire. Alongside him, Fabregas, Bendtner and Djourou all shone.

Ratings: Szcznesny 6, Djourou 8, Koscielny 8, Clichy 6, Sagna 5, Denilson 6, Wilshire 8, Fabregas 7, Arshavin 7, Van Persie 6, Bendtner 7, (Subs: Eboue 6, Nasri 4, Walcott 4)