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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Thanks heavens he’s fine

Head cuddle.....Little Jack Wilshire gets a headhug from the big Swiss

This has been his breakthrough season. Every player has one. Every sportsman as well has one.
For Johann Djourou, season 2010-2011 has seen him show the world what he can actually do. If you ask me, he is better than stalwarts and household names from the past of the club such as Sol Campbell. Nothing personal against the big man but this Swiss bloke with an intimidating frame is a better deal than his erstwhile senior colleague.
Last Saturday, if you ask me, it was no coincidence that our spectacular, historic collapse at St. James Park happened when the Swissman was off the pitch. Soon as Johann hobbled off in the 47th minute, I feared the worst. Many pundits prefer to point to Abou Diaby’s 55th minute dismissal as the turning point of the game and the moment when we lost our grip on the pitch. Methink it wasn’t
The real pivotal moment was Johann’s departure. His departure allowed the clumsy and ineffective Seb Squillaci to enter the game. All apologies to Seb, he has morphed into a modern-day Pascal Cygan, whose clumsy and heavy-footed movement frustrated both teammates and fans alike. Arsene Wenger’s preference of Cygan over Matthew Upson forced the latter to demand a transfer and was eventually sold to Birmingham City.
Cygan was of course third or even fourth choice to Campbell and Kole Toure during the era of the Invincibles in season 2004 and the brilliance of that glorious group of players greatly masked his incompetence. Anytime he was on the pitch, we were guaranteed to concede goals. He was however a lucky man cos he was surrounded on all sides by some of the best footballers in the world at that time. Players like Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira and Sylvain Wiltord happened to be his teammates and what more, they were all French!
So in the midst of so much excellence, it was almost impossible to spot the ugly duckling.
And so Cygan found himself winning trophy after trophy, while riding on the shoulders of other players’ efforts. By the time though when he was sold in the summer of 2006 – after we lost that forgettable Champions League final to Barcelona in Paris - he had been found out and pushed further down the pecking order at Arsenal. The fact that Villareal even agreed to pay 2million Pounds for him was because he was included in the deal that took Robert Pires from Arsenal to the Spanish side.
It is such a clown that Squillaci is striving so hard to emulate now.
So seeing him saunter onto the pitch was something of a precursor to doom. I thought he had been out to pasture after getting himself red-carded against Huddersfield the previous weekend in the FA Cup. Don’t know what happened to the normal three-match suspension that accompanies such straight red cards. Except we had been involved in game on another planet, I recollect that we only played Everton between the Huddersfield game and Newcastle. So, seeing Squillaci firstly squeezed on the reserve bench and lo and behold, finally strolling onto the pitch to replace Johann was an unexpected surprise.
The rest as they often say, is history.
Even though it was the unlucky Koscielny that conceded the two penalties that accelerated our capitulation and helped Newcastle onto a very undeserved draw, I’m convinced that those penalties wouldn’t have happened if Johann’s partnership with Koscielny had continued for the rest of that afternoon.  On the day when he scored his first goal for us, how sad that Johann had to exit with a knee complaint.
Well, it looks so far that Johann’s substitution was a precautionary move. Reports from inside the Swiss camp, where he has reported to join the national side in their preparations for their friendly against Malta, confirmed that he only picked up bruising against Newcastle. Nothing was broken, or torn, or twisted as first feared.
There is even the likelihood that he will be fit to file out against Wolves this Saturday. But I trust the ultra-careful Wenger, he’ll be saving the big Swiss for Barcelona, next week Wednesday in a top billing Champions League showdown.
So, at least the big man is back. For him, this has been a rubicon-crossing season. He has cobbled together a fine partnership with Koscielny and together, they have helped take us to second spot on the league table and into our first final since 2006.
Compared with Squillaci, he is royalty. He is a handsome prince to Squillaci’s ogre and if he stays fit, we surely do have real hope of winning things this season.
He’s back and with him, hope springs anew for the rest of this season. 

Monday, February 7, 2011

Newcastle 4 Arsenal 4 / Vieira lays into them

On a record-breaking day when 41 goals were scored on a single day of the English premiership, Arsenal and Newcastle produced eight goals between them. But the real story; the headline grabber would be how Arsenal threw away a four goal and contrived to produce draw out of a nailed-on win. It was, to put it mildly, headshaking stuff.

How on earth we managed to throw away as four-goal lead and hand Newcastle a draw out of certain defeat, will be talk of the league for years and years henceforth. Yes, we gave the game away from the 51st minute when Abou Diaby got himself sent off. That moment may yet turn out to be season-defining in the bigger picture of title-chasing and if the truth be told, it told the story of the character of this team.

Things couldn’t have gotten off to a better start. We were one goal in 46 seconds thanks to Theo Walcot who outran (as always) the Newcastle pair of Coloccini and Williamson before sidefooting beyond Andy Harper. Two minutes later, it was 2-0 when Andrei Arshavin lifted a fine freekick on the edge of the box onto the head of Johann Djourou for a pin-point header that went in under the bar and left Harper helpless again.

By the tenth minute it was 3-0. Walcott turned provider as he latched onto a Diaby pass to outrace the Newcastle’s Enrique before crossing perfectly for Robin Van Persie to score decisively from close range. We kept pouring forward as confidence amongst the players reached the heavens.

It was to yield more fruit as Bacary Sagna bombed forward in the 26th minute to send in a fien cross from the right, which Van Persie met with a bullet header that flew past the hapless Harper for 4-0. At that point, it was game over as far as all were concerned. Right? Wrong it later proved.

Moment of madness...Diaby reacts violently to Barton 's tackle




 A clash between Abou Diaby and the combo of Joey Barton and Kevin Nolan in the 51st minute saw the Frenchman laying hands on Barton’s throat and shoving Nolan strongly to the ground. The referee, Phil Dowd promptly expelled him and down to ten men, the complexion of the game changed. Newcastle sensed an opportunity for a fightback and buoyed by an angry crowd, the players responded on the pitch.

Suddenly, from beaten men, the Magpies found a new lease of life to pepper our area with aerial balls and raid after raid. They got a breakthrough when Laurent Koscielny was adjudged to have fouled Leon Best in the box. The hated Barton stepped up to plant the ball beyond Szszesny and thus began the fightback. It soon became 4-2 as Best latched onto a loose ball in the area to fire beyond the diving duo of Koscielny and Szszesny. Another penalty awarded for a seemingly innocuous challenge made it 4-3 and with their tails now firmly up, it was a matter of time before Newcastle leveled. They did it with the best goal of the game, courtesy of Cheik Tiote, who blasted in from 26 yards into the corner of the post and thus sealed what must be one of the most-memorable comebacks in the history of the game anywhere in the world.

Arsene Wenger rightly revealed that our players were psychologically damaged after the game. Anyone would be after climbing down from a position of supreme strength that only four unanswered goals provide, to throw away two points and finish with a nerve-jangling draw. Interestingly, his assessment of a remarkable afternoon make some sense amidst all the mayhem:

“I cannot measure how angry I am because no one has managed to do that. Mathematically, it is two points dropped but psychologically the damage is a bit bigger because everybody is of course very, very disappointed in the dressing room”.

Ex-captain and club legend, Patrick Vieira put his big boots into the players by slating them with these words:

"Like everybody else I was quite surprised. It does show that in football if you don't work hard until the last minute, if you don't have 100 per cent commitment, anything can happen. Newcastle is still a difficult place to go to."

It was shades of Tottenham allover again. The night of 30th November 2008, when we also contrived to throw away a 4-2 lead and allowed our North London neighbours claw their way back to 4-4 replayed itself again yesterday at St. James Park. This time, it was even a worse performance considering that we were comfortably 4-0 up at a stage, not 4-2.

The only consolation would be that lessons will have been learnt, because collectively ours is not  a poor team. The position of second on the log in a very, very tough league as the English premiership is not something you achieve by default. Or mere luck. Only hard, gritty endeavour puts you there and luckily for us, the damage inflicted on our collective psyche and title aspirations were tempered with Manchester United’s defeat three hours later at Molineux at the hands of Wolves.

It reduces the gap between us and them to four points and maintains some ray of hope that this season’s title is not yet all signed and sealed. Long as we keep our heads and focus on the task at hand and do not allow thuggish behavior from the Joey Bartons of this world, lure us into needless sending-offs.

Ratings are as follows: Szszesny 6, Sagna 7, Koscielny 7, Djourou 6, Clichy 6, Diaby 6, Wilshire 7, Fabregas 6, Walcott 7, Arshavin 6,  Van Persie 7, Rosicky 5, Eboue 5, Squilaci 5.