November 21, 2009
Well it’s 0-0 at half time in the Sunderland game, things running reasonably smoothly if a little sluggish. Arsenal need to move up a gear in the second half.
Meanwhile I’ve been trying out some new football boots from the guys at Soccerpro. I gave the Nike CTR360 Trequartista boots a go and they are fantastic. I wore them for the first time with my 6 a-side team the other day and I noticed the difference. They are light and feel pretty good on your feet.
Overall I would say they’re sleek and stylish without making you look like a Cristiano Ronaldo wannabe. They’re comfy and look stylish, but not too flash.
I haven’t had a new pair of boots in years and my old pair were looking a little battered. Nike have done a good job on the Nike CTR360 range, there are loads of features, laces angled to the side, pads on the sides improve ball control.
I went for the artificial surfaces studs as that is what I usually play on these days, but they work equally well on turf too. If you want to you can go for moulded studs made for grass surfaces, or proper studs, which are a little more expensive.
They are listed under soccer shoes on the Soccerpro website, if I were you I’d try and get my hands on a pair!
October 28, 2009
A good result against a half strength Liverpool team tonight.
We played a mixture of subs (Eduardo, Gibbs, Ramsey, Bendtner), reserves (Senderos, Sylvestre), injury returns (Nasri) and youth players (Gilbert, Eastmond).
The game saw some end to end football by both teams. Arsenal’s passing was exquisite at times, although it got very sloppy towards the end.
Babel was awful for Liverpool and negated almost every attack they attempted, I am glad we didn’t sign him.
Merida’s goal was fantastic, as was Insua’s, Bendtner managed to finish Liverpool off with a good strike on 50 minutes.
Eastmond made a decent debut, I was also really impressed with Nasri – he was fantastic, and looked really hungry for the win. Wenger may have a selection problem with him back in contention.
Overall a good performance, Sanchez Watt, Gibbs, Eduardo, Ramsey, Merida and Nasri particuarly impressed me. Senderos and Sylvestre had good and bad spells in defence. I wouldn’t like to see them against higher quality than Babel and Voronin to be honest.
So through to the next round, with the important game against Tottenham coming up on Saturday at 12.45.
October 18, 2009
3-1 is a respectable result against Birmingham City, they played an organised game, with the usual physical approach.
It was what you would have expected, and they weren’t pushovers. Two early goals left me thinking that we would cruise to victory.
But Mannone’s flapping at a looping header in the box allowed Bowyer to make it 2-1 before half-time and we seemed to lose fluency.
RVP and Cesc were misfiring, although I was impressed by the workrate of Emmanuel Eboue, or Bouman as the mental man sitting behind me insisted on calling him all afternoon, in between shouting about the state of English football.
Walcott’s injury is a worry – he looks like he will be out for Tuesday, and it just causes another hold-up to his recovery.
The team looks good, and we are consistently moving up the table, what with Chelsea losing and Liverpool losing out to a beach ball.
Wenger has the balance right in this squad – as long as we don’t get bogged down in injuries.
The game looked in the balance for most of the second half – I’ll put that down to jadedness after the Internationals.
In the end Arshavin pulled something special out of the bag, and curled a lovely shot round Hart in the 86th minute.
A pleasing result, and another win. I think we now hold the record for most goals scored after this many games of the Premier League season.
