Who Will Be Captain?

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal9 Comments

Morning All,

It seems Fabianski will get his chance in the next few games, with Lehmann almost definetly leaving this summer.

There’s a report here that Flamini will stay, but until we hear anything official it can’t be a done deal.

There is also some debate over the captaincy see here. Wenger:

“I want to analyse the season after it has finished. At the moment he will be my captain until the end of the season.

“I believe he has learned a lot this year and I can only say that his commitment and desire to do well was exceptional. For the rest, I wouldn’t like to go into any individual assessment at the moment.

If Gallas isn’t captain next season I can’t see him staying. I don’t know who it would go to really, maybe we need to bring in someone who can really lead the team. Love him or hate him, Gallas was good in the first half of the season, but the Birmingham game really sums up what happened to our season and his actions there were not those of a leader.

Who else do we have who can captian a side?

We need some reinforcements, Nick Townsend talks here.

Wenger says he’s targeting to quality players, that might be all we need I think, a winger and a defender, maybe a striker too?

What positions do you think we need to reinforce??

Arsenal 2-0 Reading Highlights And Walcott

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal

Sorry for the lateness of the post.

Yesterday we beat Reading very comfortably, 2-0 at the Grove. It was our first victory at home since the 11th of February, when we beat Blackburn 2-0.

Highlights here.

Arsenal 2-0
(HT 2-0)		 Reading
Adebayor 30
Silva 38
Bookings:
Kitson 28
Bikey 58
Sonko 71

The match itself was the most one sided I have seen this season. Reading had few chances and didn’t play well going forward.

We should have scored several more than we did. Theo had a shot which hit the bar, and a Van Persie free kick richocehted off the underneath of the bar and out!

It was pretty frustatring in that respect, we completely out played Reading with some good passing moves, but we didn’t score more. I thought RVP played very well as did Fabregas who had a stormer in central midfield.

Meanwhile Man Utd almost lost at Blackburn, an 88th minute Tevez equaliser gained them a point. It jsut shows how close we would have been had we picked up a few more points.

Wenger said this here:

In this match we showed what quality we do have and that the team is strong.”

“We are still ambitious – we have 74 points and want to finish with 83 points which is a decent total. We want to finish off as close as we can to the winners of the league.”

“We showed pride and responded after the disappointment of last week. We have to bounce back because the strong always come back stronger.”

“We have a very young team with a great future.”

This is true and there’s not much more you can say really. We want to finish as high as possible and get 3 wins from our remaining 3 games!

Theo wants his chance upfront next season here.

Fabregas confirmed his future lies with Arsenal. Click Here.

Busy day ahead so just a quick one, got to go!!

Flamini Contract And Reading Preview

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal

Reading, Saturday 19th April, 1245 KO. Ashburton Grove

I’ll be at this game. Click here for BBC preview.

Line Up

Lehmann

Toure Gallas Song Clichy

Walcott Gilberto Fabregas Hleb

Adebayor Van Persie

There’s a good chance Theo Walcott will get a start today, he has impressed going forward, and now that some of the pressure is lifted maybe Arsene will be thinking a bit more attack minded.

Song will probably start again, unless Wenger has a reshuffle and puts Toure at centre back and Eboue on the right. Senderos probably won’t be back. I think Le Boss wants Song to get some games under his belt to step up for next season. He performed well at the African Cup of Nations so it will be good to see how he does.

Of course Mad Jens is in there as well! Apart from that unchanged.

Coppell commented earlier in the week about changing the Reading line up after their defeat at Craven Cottage, which has been hyped up a lot. Reading have a poor away record, but in the Premiership everyone is good enough to beat anyone on their day, and Reading are scrapping at the bottom of the table. We still have to see this season out so a good performance and plenty of concentration will do fine for me!
We are still linked to loads of players, none of whom we will sign.

Also Wenger had this to say about Flamini’s contract situation:

“We are getting close to ‘yes’ or -no’”

He wants to stay and I believe him. But as long as he has not signed, he is free to sign where he wants. We have set ourselves a target at the end of April to finalise the situation, one way or the other.

“April is an absolute deadline because, afterwards, we have to make decisions in the transfer market. My first target is to keep the team together, but we want to continue to respect our wage structure. That is very important. Flamini has to fit in that.”

This is all good stuff, and I think there’s a good chance he might stay. I know thats what we need.

Here Wenger agress with my opinion that defensive errors have been our problem this season.

Arsene looks ahead to the Reading game:

“Now is a good opportunity for us to show mental strength and to finish as well as we can, as high as we can because second place is still possible.”

This is so true for us, we have to play for our pride and for second spot, if Avram and Chelski beat us to it I won’t be happy.

Anyway, I feel sick, so I’m off. Plus I have a game to get to!

Lehmann To Start Again?

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal

Jens Lehmann will probably start against Reading on Saturday.

Reading Previews here and here.

The 38-year old, will get a chance due to Almunia’s wrist injury.

Almunia is going will for a fitness test this morning according to Arsenal.com, but it is touch and go. Lehmann will most likely play again after being in goal against Man Utd as well.

“Maybe Manuel Almunia will be available, I don’t know. I will make a decision on Friday morning. He got injured in training on the Friday before Manchester. We sent him for a scan and there was an inflammation so he could not play.

“But Flamini is not back, Sagna is not back and Tomas Rosicky is out.”

If Lehmann does play it will probably be one of his last apperances for us, he’s on the way out, because he wants first team football, he hates Almunia playing ahead of him and he has caused such a fuss this year that I think Wenger has to offload him.

‘Mad Jens’ has had ups and downs for us, his early days at the club saw some calamitous mistakes, especially in clearances!

But he was in goal for the whole of the unbeaten season and has seen a lot of success with us. This year his moaning and slagging off of poor old Almunia has been pretty low, but that’s Lehmann, a crazy German really. He had the same sort of rivalry with Oliver Kahn when Kahn was Germany’s No.1. Wrighty7 weighs it all up here.

Anyway, elsewhere, yesterday Lauren said here that if we had a few of our more experienced players (like him?) then we would have won something this season.

“I felt I was still able to contribute to the team. When you have experienced the highs and lows we went through and when you have competed against Chelsea and Manchester United in the past, it helps you in difficult situations not to lose your head.”

Fair point, but that’s not the route we have taken. If we still played Lauren then we wouldn’t have discovered Bacary Sagna, and to be honest I think that the side can now mature together. It’s all very well criticising in hindsight, but I think Wenger has a great record of picking the right time to let players go.

Next year with more experience and a bit more steel I reckon we’ll be mounting a stronger challenge. Remember the sort of football we were playing before Christmas? Amazing stuff. If we can keep our heads down then it could be our year.

Ian Wright has left the BBC (Click here) because he felt like they were using him like a:

“comedy jester to break the ice with Alan Shearer and Alan Hansen “

Those guys are pretty awful sometimes, anyway, good on you Wrighty, good luck on Gladiators!!

Transfer news: we’re linked with the Palermo striker Amauri here. Make what you will of it!

Arsenal

Arsenal Transfer Rumours Plus Senderos, Traore

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal, Transfers22 Comments

The season is not yet over and already the transfer rumours have started in earnest. David Villa is suggested as a  transfer target here.

He wants to play in England and he is a proven goalscorer: (David Villa Video). He probably would cost £20 million but would be a worthwhile signing. He’s also linked to Liverpool due to his partnership with Torres in Spain Internationals, so I hope we get him.

“I watch the Premier League a lot and the team I’m most attracted to is definitely Arsenal. If an offer comes in I’m hungry to test myself in England.”

The Sun links us to Gomes, whilst Ben Arfa is linked with us but has dismissed the rumours, till the end of the season at least. Feyenoord’s attacking midfielder  Jonathan de Guzman this is a bit less likely really.

Good analysis of the media coverage on Wenger recently, click to read Arvind Gooner’s article .

Arsene reckons Man Utd will overcome Henry and Barca here.

“It will be an English team that wins the Champions League. I wish that Thierry Henry wins it but Manchester United will be super-favourites against them.”

Traore On the Wing

Traore is to switch to the wing. He says he wants to follow in Eboue’s footsteps, I hope he doesn’t because right now Eboue hasn’t been a great conversion.

Traore is promising and used to play on the wing anyway. He is a pretty attacking player and he looks good he played well on the wing in the Reserves’ 5-1 win against Derby on Monday.

Senderos Anguish

Senderos has been calling home to his parents every night because he is so upset after we lost to Liverpool in the Champions league. Wenger gave him Sunday and Monday off, that’s why he didn’t play against Man Utd. Click here. His father said:

“He was not feeling too good after Arsenal went out of The Champions League.”

“Firstly because he is a winner and his team had been knocked out, and then because he was angry with himself.”

“Knowing his character as I do, I can fully imagine him bursting into tears in the dressing room.”

Eduardo injury news

He’ll be having treatment alongside Ronaldo in Rio, he was pretty excited about that! His cousin commented on his progress:

“When he took away the plaster, on the 31 of March, he was only managing to move the big toe of his foot. Today (Wednesday), he has already moved the foot a bit”

It’s good to hear Eduardo is progressing, we’ve missed his goals since he has been injured, I hope he can make a good recovery.

Not so good to hear about Senderos, he does seem a bit low on confidence at times, hopefully he can recover too because he has a lot of potential for Arsenal, many good centre backs struggle at first, he’s still young, and I’d like to see him mature at Arsenal, not elsewhere.

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Wenger Talks Plus Hleb and Flamini Rumours

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal1 Comment

Morning,

Just thought I’d mention, if you haven’t subscribed to the ArseSpeak RSS feed you can do it by clicking here! It makes it much easier to keep up to date with the latest posts, why not try it!

Wenger says he’s not afraid to spend big in the transfer market, I guess we all knew that anyway though, he just doesn’t always need to. Really we just need a few quality players, big or small amount doesn’t matter.

There are rumours concerning Hleb and Flamini see here.
Bayern and Juventus are linked to Flamini, while Hleb is being followed by Inter (more ice-cream promised) with more interest from Real Madrid, Juve and Barcelona.

It would be very damaging to us if we lost these guys, they have been two of our most crucial players this year, and to lose half of your first choice midfielders would be hard. I think it is speculation, but a very real possibility.

The Flamster will hopefully sign a new deal in the next few weeks while he’s out injured. Hleb I hope will also see how good he has it here at Arsenal.

They should remember the curse! Players who have left under Weneger never do as well at their new clubs!

Sagna says he could spend the rest of his career at Arsenal. He loves the club and it shows, he has been one of the most consistent performers this year making the right back slot his own! I hope he does stay for a long time.

Glen Little really wants to beat us on Saturday. It’s funny, because Reading players always seem to make these comments, I remember Dave Kitson saying something similar a few months back!

Ade says here that the team owe it to the fans and his mum to win the remaining games.

“What we have to do to achieve things. That is the most important thing now.”

“It is difficult, but I know my mum will be somewhere watching the TV, so I have to play for her, all my family and all the people who love Arsenal.”

“We have to win all those games now, to play for our honour and for our fans.”

“The fans have been great to me this season, always singing my name and taking me into their hearts.”

“I hope to do something better next season than what I have done this year and hopefully bring something home for this club. Those are the things I am fighting for.”

Rosicky is continuing to recover from his injuries back home in Prague.

Interesting stuff here at Arsenal Vision, some really great analysis on the untruths of the media and our squad. Turns out we have a good goal return from the strike force, just lack goals from midfield:

“The fact still remains that Arsenals strikers; Adebayor, Van Persie, Bendtner, Eduardo and Walcott have scored more goals than any strike force in the league except Tottenham’s.”

“56 goals from the Arsenal frontmen. United’s Tevez, Rooney and Saha have 39”.

Wrighty7 backs Gallas against the backstabbers out there, I have to agree. People seem to be looking for scapegoats, especially Adebayor and Gallas. They were both being praised by everyone two months ago, Gallas was a fantastic leader and Adebayor a goal machine. Now Gallas apparently should lose his captaincy and Ade is awful.

How stupid, people should get real and see how much good work they have put in this season. Wrighty also bigs up our excellent full backs Clichy and Sagna.

Hoping we can keep the squad together,

Cheers

Why Arsenal Stumbled This Season

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal5 Comments

The season that started so brightly for Wenger and his young squad ultimately ended in tears. Literally in tears, shed by Gallas on the St. Andrews pitch if you take the results at face value. Unbeaten at the beginning of 2007-08, when and why did Arsenal fade away?

Firstly the goal difference of each match shows a very real drop in league form after the 26th game of the season. The run until then had been near perfect. The first major blip you see for games 10 and 11 was the 2-2 at home to Manchester United and then 1-1 with Liverpool away.

Analysis of Arsenal\'s League Results

Graphs courtesy of Arsenal Stats Centre

The first League loss at Middlesbrough actually came after a 3-1 loss in the Champions League dead rubber at Sevilla away. The Arsenal beat Aston Villa away 2-1, drew at Newcastle 1-1, before succuming to Middlesbrough 2-1 away too.

In retrospect this looks like four fatiguing away games slowly taking their toll. But the team still bounced back. Arsenal lost 1st place on Game 29. Game 30 came against Chelsea where Arsenal slipped further behind.


Arsenal\'s League Positions

A bit of nifty work on Excel highlights the point where the form turned bad. Games where Arsenal scored first are highlighed, because the pattern is fascinating.

The Point Where Arsenal\'s Season Went Wrong

Ananlysis Of The Matches Where It Went Wrong

The first bad result is in the FA Cup at Old Trafford, where a weakened side lost heavily. The Arsenal then lost top spot after drawing at Wigan, having surrendered a five point lead to United at this point.

The Champions League results against AC Milan were a bit of a blip. The players were possibly more focused on these big games than those against teams like Wigan and Middlesbrough.

After Sagna’s injury at Chelsea the team surrendered a lead and then conceded two at Bolton, and this pattern continues, as Arsenal lost their leads in the the next four games. This shows just how fragile the team was, the defence especially brittle.

At home Arsenal only drew during this period, but only scored first there in the two games at Liverpool, the rest all required equalisers.

The terrible run highlighted can be summed up in the fact that in 13 games Arsenal went out of all three major competitions. The confidence of the young squad was affected, but in some ways this was not a collapse. The results don’t show the full picture.

The problems can be simplified into four categories:

Defensive Errors

A key point in the awful form, conceding too many in the last few games. All the goals from Liverpool and Manchester United in the last four games were preventable, stemming from a lack of concentration. I suspect some of it has to do with confidence but concentration is needed.

Squad Depth

The thin squad provided little cover for wingers and few experienced defenders or strikers. Arsenal were predicted to struggle at the beginning of the season so the good form was surprising. The team performed well until the Spring, and showed potential, but it is a common for small squads to fail through the Spring. Here, fatigue showed through in the last month resulting in costly mistakes. The team requires signings of one or two key experienced players who can bolster the squad, maybe three if you count the ‘keeper.

Injuries

This follows on from the last point. Wenger lost an in form Van Persie early in the season, then Fabregas too, whilst in form. Fabregas hardly scored after the injury, and definitely suffered from a break in playing time. Rosicky was key on the wing for the large part of the season, was also injured.

The mother of them all was the horrific leg break Eduardo suffered. Undoubtedly this had a negative psychological impact, as well as ruling out a key striker, who Wenger said, “would be like a new signing”  in the new year.

In terms of defence, the team lost experienced Toure, although Senderos filled in admirably. Then Sagna was also injured, which exposed our defensive problems further whilst desperate measures were taken, playing Toure out of position.

Key decisions

More controversial is the point that key decisions went against the team. This cannot be an excuse for failure, but it does provide some context to compare to the psychological state of the side. At Birmingham, a last minute debatable penalty was given, resulting in two points dropped after a terrible game. Again, against Liverpool in the Champions League arguably Toure did not foul Babel, but a penalty was given seconds after Walcott’s run put Adebayor through for a goal to put Arsenal in front.

I am not slating the players, Wenger, or the club. Almost every player invested a huge amount of effort this season. Wenger was right at the beginning of the season when he said the team could achieve great things. They have played fantastic football regularly this year, and mounted a title challenge.

The side needs to aim as high as possible. They now sit, only four points behind Chelsea after their 1-1 with Wigan. Once the season is over Wenger needs to focus on strengthening the squad and maintaining the quality within the side. The key to success is stability in the team and in management.

Arsenal Title Hopes Over Manchester United 2 – 1 Arsenal

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal

First off,

We didn’t deserve to lose yesterday.

Highlights here.

Man Utd

Ronaldo 54 (pen)
Hargreaves 72

 2-1
(0-0)		 Arsenal

Adebayor 48

Even Fergie was a little gracious:

“Arsenal had some great moments, they were brilliant at times. They bossed the first half.

We played some of the best football we have this season.

It was a great game to watch, but to be honest after I saw us concede another lead through silly mistakes I felt a bit sick.

Don Howe approved of the decision to include Song, I did too. He has some good tactical analysis here.

All the idiots who are going blame Wenger and the players etc. etc. etc. can shut up. We are an amazing team and if it wasn’t for injuries such as Eduardo, Rosicky, RVP and bad luck then we could have had success this season.

Ade had some great chances to put us in front in the first half, and we had some great passing moves.

Hleb was menacing in the hole, RVP was contributing from the wing, as was Clichy and Fabregas was pulling the strings in midfield.

Gilberto had a shot blocked by Song in the area after a corner and we looked dominant.

I thought we should have been in the lead and we were playing well, Eboue was even making some good runs and passes.

We came out in the second half and scored, RVP put in an excellent cross and Adebayor had a header which came off his arm. I thought it was a deserved goal and a decision going in our favour for once after all the hard luck we’ve had!!

But within minutes that horrible feeling was back, another penalty conceded, this time for a Gallas handball in our box, where there really was no need for it to happen. We just can’t hold on to leads at the moment, and it seems to have defined the last third of the season. Many of the goals we concede are not actually in open play, but dead ball situations.

Anyway Ronaldo put the ball away after having to retake the penalty for encroachment in the area by Park. he slotted iot away in the same position, bottom left, just out of Lehmann’s reach.

Their second goal came after Evra was tripped needlessly right in front of our box. Hargreaves went for it and Lehmann was too far over, it went in the empty right hand side of the goal. lehmann didn’t even move, he knew it was too far for him to reach.

We put on Walcott, and then nearer the end Bendtner, both did well. Bendtner had several headers saved by Van Der Sar and created chances. Walcott had a few good runs and played well generally.

We looked like we might actually get another goal, bombarding their defence, we were playing for our season and our pride.

After a superhuman effort on our part, the final whistle went and we lost.

Thats all you can say. We now want Man U to beat Chelsea because I really want second place.

Wenger said here: and here

“This team is amazing, They keep going and I am so proud of all of them.

“I feel we were very unlucky not to win the game, but we have to accept what happened.

“In the last two months we have had a blip, but we have not had much luck either and you could see that again today.

“I believe this team is good enough to win things and our biggest target now is to keep the group together.”

“we don’t feel there’s a different technical quality between us and Chelsea and Manchester United,”

“I’m not an idealist [and] I feel we must win trophies. We lacked a bit of maturity in some games but trophies will come.”

“The winner is praised beyond reason, the guy who does not is slaughtered,”

This is all so true, and I feel that although the result was painful, I feel good in a wierd way, about next season, the players we have and the style of football is amazing and we have a great future.

Wenger knows the squad needs adding to, and he knows they need to mature, but I hope we keep it together because we do have something amazing.

Manchester United Vs. Arsenal, Line Ups. It’s Make Or Break Time

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal

Morning all,

Looks like we’ve got:

UPDATE:

Lehmann

Toure Gallas Song Clichy

Eboue Fabregas Gilberto Hleb

Adebayor Van Persie

Lehmann has come in for Almunia and Song replaces Senderos. It is his first start for a long time, and I hope he can replicate some of those excellent performances he put in for Cameroon in January. Eboue again sarts ahead of Walcott, why not put Toure and Gallas in the centre and Eboue at right back, it seems to make more sense to me, then we would have our stringest possible lineup in my opinion. Arsene knows? Pretty standard line up, I think this is quite strong, the only problem is Flamini’s injury. Gilberto I hope can nullify the threat from United’s Midfield, especially Ronaldo when he cuts in from the wing.

Wenger knows that the whole season will now be probably defined by the result at Old Trafford today. Click here.

“It will be the greatest achievement of my career to win the Premier League now because we are swimming against the stream at the moment,” said Wenger.

“For us the game on Sunday is the game of the season. If we do not win this game we have no chance.

“We will fight until the last second of the championship.”

Fighting talk from Wenger and it’s all true. Exactly what yopu want to hear at this stage and I hope he can inspire the players today!

He comments here on the refereeing recently:

“In 11 years [at Arsenal] it’s the worst I’ve seen,” he said. “It is in every game. It is difficult to understand. It damages the confidence of the team and then you become more vulnerable, but it is like that.

It is true that the decisions that we have had go against us have hit the team hard, but we can only fight back, we can’t blame refereeing decisions for our loss of form, and I don’t think Wenger is, but they haven’t helped us.

He knew about the risk with his youth policy he tells Sky Sports.

Theo Walcott has garnered a bit of positive attention after his run against Liverpool, attention which is well deserved.

Cesc says a draw today would be as bad as a loss. That is true and I think we are going out for the win as always.

RVP agrees, saying that we aren’t going to change our style of play today.

So make or break time today. I m pretty cautious about the match, but I know we can achieve if we play right on the day.

Manchester United vs. Arsenal, First Thoughts

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal1 Comment

We have a big game tomorrow.

Sunday 13th April 1600.

Manchester United

At Old Trafford

Big game.

The Arsenal news is:

Man United’s draw 2-2 at Middlesborough last week showed that they are not unstoppable.

We lost out at Anfield on Tuesday, disappointing, and unlucky. I hope the psycholoigcal impact is not too negative, but I can’t help thinking it will be.

We have to throw everything we have at this match to keep respectability and the pressure on Man U and Chelsea, and remember the title is still a ‘mathematical’ possibility.

Realistically I’d just like something to cheer us up and to erase the pain of all the bad results recently. Where better to end them than where they began at Old Trafford when we lost 4-0 in the FA Cup!

Good luck Arsenal, we’ve nothing to lose except the game!