Don’t believe the hype, we have no squad

We’ve had the chance thrice. Not once, not twice, but thrice to have a good look at Arsene Wenger’s squad players. The back-up who are expected to fill in once in a while whenever the calvary are unavailable or need to simply take a break.
In the category of squad players, belong the likes of Manuel Almunia, Kieran Gibbs, Seb Squillaci, Emmanuel Eboue, Denilson, Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky, Nicklas Bendtner and like it or not, Andrei Arshavin. They are the flotsam and jetsam that Wenger often calls upon to do a job for him when the regulars, whom I call the calvary, whom Jose Mourinho calls the ‘untouchables’ are unavailable.
Since the turn of the New Year, we’ve had the chance to have a better look at all the afore-mentioned players because the FA Cup and the Carling Cup have afforded Wenger to use his full team. So far, the squad players haven’t done themselves proud at all.
Twice, against Leeds in the FA Cup third round and against Ipswich in the Carling Cup semifinal, Wenger has had to wheel out the calvary to rescue the team after the squad players have had their chance to show what they’ve got – and bungled it. Firstly, it was at the Emirates where the ‘squadies’ huffed and puffed in vain against Leeds and even fell behind after Denilson hacked down a Leeds player inside the box. It took the introduction of Fabregas and Theo Walcott to save our bacon and force a replay two weeks later.

Night of a million stars..Arshavin destroying Liverpool at Anfield in 2009.
Since then, he has lost form and motivation.

Yet again, against Ipswich in the Carling Cup semis. The ‘squadies’ lost the game meekly and without guts, forcing Wenger to use the calvary to steamroll Ipswich in the second leg and book us into a first final in four years.
Looking at our ‘squadies’ individually, every single one of them, except Denilson, is a full international for their respective countries. But within the confines of Colney Creche, they are treated as tin-gods and serenaded by Wenger as the best young players of their ilk in the world. Such kid-gloves handling creates the impression in the minds of these over-pampered players that they are indeed very good, when the real truth is that they are basically very average players.
I can’t see any of the ‘squadies’ walking into any starting eleven of any of Europe’s top ten sides. It is indeed hard to imagine the likes of Denilson, Eboue, Squillaci or Bendtner displacing any player in Chelsea, or Man Utd or Bayern Munich in their respective positions. Trying to imagine them claiming a shirt in star-studded Real Madrid or Barcelona is just taking things too far. Too ludicrously far.
Arshavin perhaps could hold his own elsewhere and in any clubside of pedigree around the world. But the Russian had gone backwards, so alarmingly in the past one year that it is now a formidable risk to vouch for his effectiveness. I watched him plod around the ground against Leeds in the first leg that ended 1-1, that it was hard to believe he was the same player that scored four goals against Liverpool at Anfield in March 2009. So terrible was he that even the mightily-clumsy but egomaniac Bendtner looked a better bet than him. What a downturn for such a classy player!
Yes he scored a huge, huge equaliser against against Everton the other night, but such cameos are too far apart to rely on him game in, game out. The fact that he's coming off the bench is even an indictment with someone of his mercurial abililties.
Like them or hate them, those are the players on whom are silverware hopes rest upon. Even though they were not collectively good enough to beat the likes of Leeds and Ipswich Town, we will have to live with their limitations as we enter the serious part of the season where trophies are the be-all and end-all.
Let’s just pray and hope that nothing tragic in terms of injuries happens to the calvary. Because if it does, then we can kiss our trophy hopes goodbye for yet another season. Because also, I cannot for a second fathom Denilson doing the job of Alex Song; or Eboue stopping the likes of David Villa and Lionel Messi; or Bendtner attempting to score past Carlos Puyol or Victor Valdes.
If they couldn’t cut it against Leeds and Ipswich, they won’t survive against Barcelona and Man Utd when the chips are down.
Can you for a second imagine the incredibly-fragile Rosicky standing up to the hard-tackling Darren Fletcher? Rosicky can’t even stand on his own two feet for five minutes without hitting the turf at the slightest touch. How then can he ever hope to survive a ‘cuddle’ from the no-nonsense Fletcher if need be.
So far, Nasri apart, the scourge of injuries haven’t been too hard on us. Almost all of Wenger’s first eleven starters have remained fit till now. Fingers crossed, our luck will hold. Because if the unthinkable happens and we have to do without the likes of Fabregas, Wilshire, Djourou, Sagna or Chamakh, then our hope of winning anything this season would simply go up in smoke.
Because fact is, Arsene Wenger has no reliable back-up to these ‘untouchables’. Bitter, but true.

Arsenal 2 Everton 1

Midfield battle...Fellaini and Song fight for the ball

David Moyes delights in taking on the big teams and making life difficult for them. He has carved out a reputation based on frustrating the perceived big sides of the premiership and last night at the Emirates was no different. Despite their lowly 14^th position, Everton are always a handful for the royalty of the premiership. Last night again, was no different.

We kicked off on the same night as Man United and Chelsea as a full programme of premier league action got underway after a weekend of FA Cup ties. After overcoming the surprisingly strong challenge of Huddersfield two days earlier, this was supposedly another test of character and Moyes’s Everton made it even stiffer.

After an initial 15 minutes that saw Everton taking the game to us, we finally found some rhythm and gradually asserted ourselves. A fine interchange between Robin Van Persie and Cesc Fabregas in the 20^th minute, which saw the Dutchman backheeling a perfectly weighted pass onto the path of the onrushing Spaniard, opened up the Everton defence but Fabregas’ shot was wide off the mark agonisingly.

We continued to make inroads into their defence with Van Persie and Walcott taking turns to run at Sylvain Distin and John Heitinga in the middle of their defence. It yielded nothing, except a Walcott snapshot that Mike Howard in goal for Everton saved comfortably with his legs.

The game turned on its head in the 33^rd minute when an Everton ball over the top, cleared our defence and a Koscielny attempt to boot it out only helped it into the path of the lurking Louis Saha. He had all the time and space in the world to pick his spot and shoot coolly past the exposed Wojciech Szszesny in goal. Fabregas immediately led the protestations that Saha was offside, which was correct but Koscielny’s inadvertent interception had diverted the ball into Saha’s path, thus rendering his offside position invalid.

The boos rang out en masse around the Emirates as the game progressed and an incensed crowd directed their anger at Lee Mason and his officials.

We regrouped in the second half though without Alex Song, who had picked up a thigh strain and had to be replaced by Abou Diaby. Everton sat back to soak up the expected onslaught and were doing a pretty good job of it until the introduction of Andrei Arshavin and Nicklas Bendtner in the 70th minute for Jack Wilshire and the perennially ineffective Tomas Rosicky.

The leveller came to a huge relief when Fabregas lifted a delightful ball over the top of the Everton defence and Jack Rodwell’s weak attempt at heading it only helped the ball into the path of the lurking Arshavin. Unmarked and unsighted, the little Russian coolly slotted the ball beyond the stranded Howard and redeemed himself before 60,000 relieved Gooners in the stadium. After being behind for a greater part of the match, it was game on now.

The clincher....Koscielny's header wins it for us

Events took a happier turn just five minutes later when an unmarked Koscielny turned instant hero as he rose to head home a Van Persie corner kick at the far post. The celebrations involving every Arsenal player who joined in at the human heap by the corner flag said it all.

Everton threw on the big Nigerian Victor Anichebe, who only scores once in a full season, when I thought I glimpsed the more dangerous Jermaine Beckford on the bench. Poor choice by Moyes but good for us though as we held on for a precious three points.

In view of Chelsea and Man United winning their respective games, it was vital, crucial, vitally-crucial that we sealed this win and maintain and fine form so far this year.

It wasn’t plain sailing though as with all things Arsenal and on a night when most of our players were not at their best, we still did enough to bag the three points and hang onto the coat tails of Man United, who seem to be gathering an ominous head of steam with their unbeaten spell now stretched to 24 games. It is 14 games now left in the league this season and apart from an away tie against us at the Emirates and their visit to Stamford Bridge on March 1, it is hard seeing them lose anywhere else this season.

My biggest source of joy from the game was the never-say-die spirit that inspired the comeback from our boys. It was only the second time all season that we had won a game after falling behind. It is all well and good to score first which is something that comes naturally to us, but team character and fighting qualities are called upon when a team learns to fight its way back into a game from a position of defeat. Man United are masters of such situations and it may yet deliver another league title for them if we also do not pick up that attribute – and fast.

Last night, we showed we could.

Let’s rate our boys for the night after a difficult win eked out in more difficult circumstances 

Ratings: Szczesny 6, Koscielny 8, Djourou 7, Clichy 7, Sagna 7, Song 6, Wilshire 6, Diaby 6, Fabregas 7, Van Persie 7, Walcott 6, Arshavin 6, Bendtner 5

Now that we’ve lost Samir

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. It is a handy phrase to describe this moment in time when we go into February; into a crucial month that will mark a watershed in the life of Arsenal football club as a sporting enterprise that can actually deliver on potential and promises.

Arsene Wenger has staked his entire coaching career and pedigree on the ‘youth project’ which he embarked upon these past six years. After a multiple of hiccups; catalogue of near-misses and endless heartbreak, the moment has finally come when he and everyone else knows that his ‘special ones’ must finally deliver.

We go into February on the back of a very successful Christmas-cum-January programme, in which we only lost a game - to Ipswich – and successfully remained unbeaten in 13 others. It was a period of solidity that placed us above the likes of Chelsea and saw us overtake ‘pretenders’ Man City in the race for the title.

As things stand now, we are the only team in England who are in contention for four trophies. In the league – the apple of Wenger’s eyes – we look to be the only genuine rivals to Man United as Chelsea and Tottenham have dropped out of reckoning. Man City may still have a say in the final destination of the league but their inconsistency and disunity will always count against them.

The FA Cup, of course has seen us progress into Round Five, where yet another lower league opposition in form of Leyton Orient lie in wait. If Wenger juggles his playing cards well, we are bound to go all the way in this one with Man Utd, Chelsea and Man City the only real heavyweights left in the cup.

The Carling Cup is almost, almost in the bag if we can outsmart Birmingham on Sunday, February 20. That leaves the “little matter” of Barcelona in a home and away tie in the Champions League. We leave that analysis for another day. Fact remains that on the first day of February, 2011, Arsenal football club are alive and kicking in four competitions.

Unfortunately, we enter this most crucial of months without our player of the season, Samir Nasri. His 14 goals; endless assists, coupled with delightful movement and excellent vision has contributed greatly in bringing us this far. A player described by the incomparable Zinedine Zidane as next big thing; the future of French football; has lived up to that accolade and stamped his authority on this team. He is the player most likely also to step into the boots of Zidane, whose time coincided with the most successful era of French football.

Sadly, we lost “the future of French football”, last Sunday in the FA Cup, to a left hamstring injury that may rule him out of action for the next three weeks.

So without Samir, what or who do we have in the armoury to drive us through this moist pivotal of months?

My most obvious candidate is of course Cesc Fabregas. At 23, he is a man in a boy’s skin. A Trojan; a warrior; a one-man battleship in the midst of the fiercest storms. He dragged the team almost single-handedly through many tempests last season and our failure to crown his efforts with silverware tempted him to consider Barcelona’s advances throughout the summer. But he ignored his Catalan homeland and chose to stay with us. So far this season, he has scored nine times and underlined his value to the team by leading from the front. He is getting once more into his fearsome groove and deadly abilities as we approach the business end of the season and in the enforced absence of Samir, he remains Wenger’s go-to man. But unlike last year, he’s got some help this time.

That help comes in the unlikely shape of a fit Robin Van Persie. Two weeks ago, he scored his first hattrick in professional football against Wigan. This came after nine, stalemated attempts at two goals in a game. Normally at this time of the year for the past two seasons, Robin has always been missing in action on account of one debilitating injury after other. His history of injury setbacks are well-documented and frustratingly-consistent so much so that he has hardly ever been involved in our season run-ins. 

Robin Van Persie.......Injury free for once

 Thankfully though, we enter February with a very-fit and hungry Robin in our playing ranks. At 26, the same age with £50million man Nando Torres, an injury-free Robin Van Persie is a very dangerous player to come up against. In his five years at Arsenal, he has delivered consistently when not hindered by injury. He’s scored good goals against the toughest defences of the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea. He remains one of Europe’s most-feared strikers, but that is, if he is fit. 

Wenger helps put in perspective how much Van Persie means to the team and what his absence has cost both player and club:

 “What he has gone through has been difficult. A player who is injured a lot is fragile. He feels useless and is without his job. He is without his happiness, of course. On the other hand, it has made him a lot stronger mentally because he had to fight against disappointments.”.

Thankfully once more, the Dutchman is with us in this crucial phase of our season and in search of a player to fill in the gap left by Samir, Van Persie’s boots are more than capable of doing the job.

My final candidate for the vacancy left by Samir is the erratic Theo Walcott. This season has been his most fruitful in front of goal as he has netted ten times already. He is famous for his lightening pace and often nothing else, but people often forget that nine times out of ten, a quick player will get an upperhand over his opponents and win games for his team.

Just days ago, Fabio Capello was man enough to admit that he regretted not taking Theo to the 2010 World Cup finals – a tournament in which England bombed spectacularly. He has seen the youngman reconstruct his game admirably all through this season and become a handy joker for Wenger and Arsenal.

Any team with a player of Theo’s speed must strike fear into the hearts of opponents. We were all witnesses to how Tottenham unleashed Gareth Bale on Maicon - supposedly the world’s best right back - and destroyed the Brazilian’s reputation in two games. Now Inter Milan are willing to pay  £40 million for the Welsh speed machine.

Theo, who ironically learnt his trade alongside Bale at Southampton when Harry Redknapp was coach there five years back, is even quicker than Bale. It is only in his decision making and application that he remains second-fiddle to the Welshman.

But with him on the pitch, you can always expect the unexpected. He has matured this season and silenced his many critics. With a leeway now to starting games in the absence of Samir and getting more chance to run at opponents, we may yet see glimpse more of the unique talents of our English enigma.

So methink there is little cause for alarm, long as the injury curse doesn’t strike again.

Samir’s hamstring may have given-in at a most-inopportune time of the season but its only for three weeks and in that time, the window may have opened for yet another member of the cast to prove that cometh the hour, he is the man.  

 

Arsenal 2 Huddersfield 1

Squillaci stuffed...and rightly too

I’ve said it before here on blogosphere and I’ll repeat it once again in the light of events of yesterday at the Emirates. Seb Squillaci is the weakest link in our defence; the Michael Silvestre reincarnate; the Archilles heel of our back four.

He rubberstamped that unenviable reputation yesterday when he got himself sent off with a brainless bodycheck of Huddersfield’s  Jack Hunt who was bearing down on goal with menace and intent. His positioning and reaction were all wrong and lazy as he intercepted the Huddersfield man and soon as it happened, I knew it was a caution. The red card looked a tad hash but on replay, referee Mark Clattenburg  really had no choice but to send him off.

For someone who was returning to the team after a three-week lay-off that had seen him fall down the pecking order as the Koscielny-Djourou axis impressed very much, you would think he would take this opportunity to remind everyone that he was still around the house. Rather, he imploded spectacularly and put his teammates and the 50,000 odd crowd that was watching under a pressure we all did not need.   

The 40^th minute expulsion proved the turning point of the game and despite our lone goal lead from Nicklas Bendtner, Huddersfield came out in the second half smelling blood. Credit must go the lower league side as they took the game to us and put us under severe pressure. If you were a first-time visitor to the UK and a friend happened to invite you out to the Emirates yesterday to watch the FA Cup game happening there, you would not be far-fetched to think that the Gunner’s opponents were a Premier League side.

The way they seized the initiative and bombarded our area was alarming to us Gunners, but heartwarming to their handful of travelling fans. Only an Andrei Arshavin last-ditch tackle in the 55^th minute prevented the marauding Gudjonsson from doing the damage as the visitors lived up to their names as ‘Terriers’.

Wave after wave of Huddersfield attack was either repelled by the combo of Koscielny and the newly-introduced Alex Song or by back-from-the-dead Manuel Almunia in goal. One particular one-handed save in the 63^rd minute off a fierce Gavin Lee header must have made him feel very good indeed. We huffed and puffed upfront as Bendtner reverted to his frustrating style of lackadaisical football and one man down, we had to feed the attack scraps. Rosicky was particularly trying his damnedest to prove why he has no future anymore in this team as he hugged the grass at every tackle and complained endlessly to the referee. He adds absolutely zero to the side and has very clearly lost his legs and a stomach for the fight.

The inevitable equalizer came in the 75^th minute off a corner kick as Lee rose above Rosicky (of all people!) to head home a powerful ball that flew beyond the reach of Almunia. Thereafter, anything could have happened.  As always in such cases, Wenger went to his go-to man and introduced Fabregas as his joker. What a trump card he proved to be (yet again) as he gave us direction. With the prospect of an unwanted replay looming menacingly, Fabregas collected the ball in the 85^th minute and evading three tackles on the edge of the box, he fed Bendtner with a fine, crossfield pass and as the big Dane shaped to shoot in the 18 yard, he was upended by Huddersfield defender, Jamie McCombe. Once again, the referee had no choice but to point to the spot while the offending McCombe was lucky to remain on the pitch.

Talk of a pressure-kick and this was it as Fabregas lined-up to either send us into the fifth round or blow it and condemn us to another needless replay at a time we had bigger fish to fry in the shape of Barcelona in the Champions League.

He didn’t blow it, thankfully. El Capitano held his nerve to send the goalkeeper the wrong way and the relief and celebrations from the players said it all. The intensity of the celebrations was like we had won the FA Cup itself but also mirrored the fact that we had a forgettable afternoon.

Seven changes to the team that beat Ipswich in the midweek, obviously upset the scheme of things especially with returnees like Abou Diaby, Squillaci and Almunia making their first appearances after a combined lay-off of about four months!

It still was not enough excuse to put up a deplorable show but as with all things Arsenal, we managed to shoot ourselves in the foot and make life very difficult for the suffering Wenger on the bench and the faithfuls that turned up for the occasion. I bet after the Squillaci sending off, no single Gooner could relax in their seats as Huddersfield went for the kill with a bloodthirsty hunger.

Ironically, it had all started so well when Bendtner shot us into the lead in the 21^st minute. After that though, things went pear-shaped as first we lost Samir Nasir to a hamstring injury that threatens his place against Barcelona in three weeks. Then Squillaci did his thing.

But with Fabregas around, you can always be assured that we had someone who at least could pull the troops together and understood the meaning of the word, fightback. Once again, as he has done so many, many times in his eventful Arsenal career, he saved us from the brink.

As for the likes of Rosicky and the ‘anti-Fabregas’ brigade leader, Denilson, they add nothing to this team and should be one of the first to be offloaded in the summer. Rosicky as mentioned earlier, has lost any modicum of fight and desire, while Denilson has simply stagnated. He is no way a defensive midfielder and lacks the toughness to play the role. He cannot threaten Song and Wilshire for sure and I personally cannot wait for the unfortunate Emmanuel Frimpong to return from injury and take his rightful place from Denilson.

So we live to fight another day and the fifth round opponents emerged as another lower league side, Leyton Orient. We seem to be getting the luck of the draw; avoiding premiership teams and ghosting our way from round to round, even though the performances have been anything but smooth.

Ratings: Almunia 7, Koscielny 7, Squillaci 5, Gibbs 6, Eboue 6, Denilson 5, Nasri 5, Rosicky 4, Song 7, Diaby 5, Arshavin 6, Bendtner 5, Chamakh 5