Nine Jimmy Rimmers – Arsenal and Football

Lukas Podolski
Welcome to Lukas Podolski. Especially welcome in what I hope is a statement of intent from Arsenal that this summer is going different to last year. That there might even be a plan. OK, so we were thoroughly screwed over by Barcelona, but the club’s collective management drifted through the summer with no obvious attempt to control events.

Wrapping up the Podolski deal now is hopefully a sign of a more assertive style. Much of course still hinges on coming third, or fourth at a pinch. Third place means that more early transfer business becomes easier and both will be needed to guarantee Robin Van Persie is with us next season. But a good start has been made with a proven international striker to share the load up front.

Man City
There are plenty of permutations to come this season, but City’s win last night is marginally in our favour. It gives them the strongest incentive to take out Newcastle at the weekend. And that comes after Newcastle’s trip to Stamford Bridge. The game itself wasn’t that exciting. Mancini finished it off the way you would expect from a traditional Italian manager defending a one nil advantage, with five defenders and three holding players.

Roy Hodgson
This season Roy Hodgson has taken a group of mid-range players, pulled them together as a team and guided them to a position where they are punching above their weight. He did the same thing at Fulham. Now it seems he has the same task again. So maybe the Club England committee just decided to get real.

Personally I think that he is as good a choice as any who would take it. It all went horribly wrong at Liverpool, but it’s debatable how much that wad down to Roy Hodgson. Look at all his replacement King Kenny has achieved, with the budget for massive spending on Andy Carroll, Jordan Henderson, Stewart Downing and Charlie Adam and wonder. Raul Meireles, who Hodgson took to Liverpool and King Kenny sold to Chelsea is playing regularly and scoring crucial goals.

Of course being England manager is a thankless task that requires a healthy dose of luck. The media have been laying into the decision, calling it a shock and astonishing. But this is mainly to cover up their embarrassing discovery that it wasn’t their decision to make. They crowned their mate Harry and said he was the only possible choice.

There’s something about Harry
To be fair to Harry, he has handled the announcement of Hodgson’s appointment with a lot of good grace, saying that he is very fortunate in life. And so he is, a very well paid job with some good players, nice house, car etc and a talented dog as well.

I wouldn’t have grumbled of he had got the England job but there is something about him that makes you think twice. Don’t know quite how to define it, but the FA obviously think so too.

The best media excuse is that it came down to some row with Trevor Brooking over West Ham. I doubt it. I think that England have made a pragmatic long-term choice. The long-term bit may be a bit optimistic because I think that the trend to club before country will continue and may even go further to the clubs’ advantage. But good luck to Roy.

Arsenal don’t play tomorrow but it’s a big day with our three rivals all playing their catch-up games. Then it’s just two to go for each. Eyes down for a tight finish.

Today we go a game ahead of our rivals as all their fixtures were rearranged for the FA Cup. To keep the hold on third spot in our hands we must win of course. We can only afford one loss now and we have tougher games left than Wigan at home. Next weekend we must play Chelsea. By then hopefully Barcelona will have taken more out of them emotionally and physically than Spurs managed yesterday.

That doesn’t means that the guys can relax tonight of course. If I was Arsene Wenger I’d be tempted to make the squad watch QPR v Arsenal and Wigan v Man Utd back to back this morning.

But who will play tonight? The yellow card accumulator is off so, apart from Koscielny serving his second suspension tonight, we can only lose players through injury. But this is our last weekday game of the season. After this there are four games a week apart, so the need to rotate players is reduced. With all eyes on the prize of automatic Champions League qualification we have to be giving 100% to each game.

Obviously Djourou stays in for the suspended Koscielny and Santos probably stays in for Gibbs. Rosicky will return from being rested against Wolves.

I expect the team to be:

_______ Szczesny ______
Sagna _ DJ _ Verm _ Santos
_________ Song ________
___ Arteta ___ Rosicky ___
Walcott __ RVP _ Benayoun

The only question could be whether Arsene Wenger decides to rest Benayoun. But he’s only played a couple of games recently and he cannot feature in the next one against Chelsea anyway. I think that success in this final run-in has a lot to do with not screwing up stupidly. So I would hope we err in favour of old pro’s now. As long as they’re on top of fit bodies, let’s have the wisest heads for these last games.

I must admit that Santos worries me slightly. He is a wonderfully ‘free’ player, unconstrained by the words ‘left’ or ‘back’ and creates good attacking options. So far it hasn’t seriously cost us, but it does mean that Vermaelen, Song and Benayoun need to keep track of whether he’s left a dangerous hole that needs covering.

Wigan need watching. They are playing for their Premiership survival and will want something from every game no matter who they play. They have industry, pace and a few bits of top skill too. But an Arsenal team that’s really on it should win tonight. Let’s keep this in our own hands.

Come on you Gunners!

It wouldn’t be neighbourly though to finish without some reference to yesterday’s events at Wembley. Martin Atkinson was kind enough to give Harry Redknapp something to talk about other than getting thrashed. This is of course the same referee that saw enough of Balotelli’s assault on Alex Song to decide it didn’t even merit a yellow.

Now he’s gifted a goal when the ball wasn’t close to crossing the line. He’s having a bad week. But he’s only human. Which is why we need to support referees with the technology that’s bean available for years. And no-one can argue that the game would have been delayed any longer than the time taken by the Spur’s players’ protests yesterday.

Of course, that only explains one Chelsea goal Harry! What about the other four? And there we were hoping for a gruelling 120 minutes. Even before yesterday, Spurs fans that I work with were beginning to fear that their pursuit of Champions League football could go horribly wrong. I will try and be sympathetic and reassuring;-)

What more could we have hoped for, really? Victory against Man City, Tottenham lose at home and Chelsea draw at Fulham. Plus they’ve both played a game more now.

Now we have to press home our advantage against Wolves and Wigan, the two bottom clubs in the league. Mind you, it’s the clubs at the bottom that can find that extra motivation to beat you. We need to be thinking QPR rather than Man City for both games.

What now for Chelsea? Sixth and still grappling with FA Cup, League and Champions League. Of course, we shouldn’t get too snide, we would love to be in three competitions too. But it’s going to be quite a challenge: Spurs, Barca, Arsenal, Barca!

Spurs deserved to lose today. They were poor against an enthusiastic Norwich. They could easily have lost by more as Norwich had a couple of decent penalty shouts. I say decent shouts, I mean absolute bolt on penalties. Harry says he got the tactics wrong by dropping Parker to go 4-4-2. Is this the stuff of international management?

Now they share 59 points with Newcastle. They were OK today. But Ben Arfa was exceptional. Newcastle’s season had been amazing. Alan Pardew gambled on players that others passed up on and all of them have paid out for him.

So, Arsenal 61 from 32, Spurs and Newcastle 59 from 33, Chelsea 57 from 33. Game on!

It would be nice to claim that I knew we could do it.  But I must confess that I was a pessimist yesterday morning.  The terrible, effort-free performance at the San Siro and the downward momentum from going out of the FA Cup as well left me very fearful.

Strangely, that feeling began to lift even before we scored.  OK so the first goal was soft, Vermaelen’s defensive colleagues had left him with the impossible task of covering two advancing forwards single-handed, but it was clear that Arsenal really had come to play.  Tottenham had the run of the first ten minutes, but not over the Arsenal team of Milan or Sunderland.

At one-nil down I was even wondering if I could feel good about a narrow defeat if it was accompanied by signs of regained fight and skill.  As it was the North London Derby I swiftly pushed such soft thoughts out my head, of course it would still hurt in the morning.  But such were the hopeful signs that it did cross my mind.

After the first goal we stepped up our attacks rather than fold and Spurs’ second goal was against a turning tide.  And it was never a penalty!  I really don’t think that either Gibbs or Szczesny brought Bale down.  Mike Dean gave the penalty immediately, but then seemed uncertain what to do next.  If it was a penalty then surely someone had stopped a clear foal-scoring opportunity?  Surely someone had to get a red card?  Dean consulted his assistant for a long time.  What were they talking about?

It was one of those occasions when you wished you could hear, rugby style.  Clearly the assistant couldn’t tell Dean which player had felled Bale, because no card followed.  Did he even agree that it was a penalty?

Anyway, Tottenham were two goals to the good and Adebayor was obviously enjoying his birthday.  But not for a lot longer, because despite being two goals down, Arsenal were now flying and creating chance after chance.

Perhaps being two goals down rather than one actually helped.  The Arsenal players had nothing to lose now but their souls.  There were some frustrating moments though.  Walcott burst through on goal brilliantly with a fantastic burst of pace and then wimped out of the responsibility of shooting, passing to Van Persie who was surrounded by three defenders.  Rosicky had a great flicked on header superbly saved by Friedel.

A lovely ball from Walcott slipped Van Persie into the box and he hit the post.  Surely all this pressure had to pay off?  It did, Van Persie was still picking himself up while Gibbs and Arteta rescued possession and fed the ball back into the box for Bacary Sagna to head home.  Fantastic.  Even more fantastic, Sagna picks up the ball and sprints back to the centre spot.  He hadn’t come here to lose to Spurs.

More pressure, more chances and then, out of nothing much, a beautiful curling shot from Van Persie beats Friedel and we’re level.  We might even have gone into half-time ahead, but it was progress enough.  Spurs player’s heads were dropping and their fans were stunned.

Sagna and Van Persie may gave been the scorers but the pressure was created by Song, Arteta, Benayoun and most of all Rosicky.  They dominated midfield and were unrelenting in closing down, tackling and feeding the ball forward again.

Redknapp certainly noticed, swapping a striker for another midfielder at the break but it made no difference.  It was all Arsenal after the that.  Soon Rosicky got his just reward with his first goal in two decades or something and no-one deserved it more.  Tomas Rosicky was our overwhelming choice as Man of the Match – over 70% of the vote in our poll.  Spurs were beaten from that point.  Nothing left.

Theo Walcott, his mind now cleared of self-doubt surged and shot at goal again and again getting two.  It seems to be all about confidence with Theo.  Once he found it, Spurs couldn’t handle him.  They couldn’t handle anything by that stage.  The substitutes had no impact and their play became more ragged.

Scott Parker lunged in on Vermaelen and knew immediately that he was off.  We might have had more but who care.  FIVE – TWO to the Arsenal.

It was one of those unforgettable games that we will think back to for years.  I’m guessing that the White Hart Lane shop won’t be doing a special DVD this time! Maybe just a replica of Bale’s Oscar.

Who cares that it’s Monday morning, nothing can go wrong today!

We will return to earth at some point, we are still clinging on to fourth by just goals scored and we have Liverpool away next week.  But time enough to think on that one later – we ARE fourth and we beat Spurs FIVE -TWO.

Now, what time does my Spurs supporting colleague get to work?  I promise not to be any harsher than his text at 2:0!

After beating Wigan yesterday it feels like we have reached the end of the recovery phase.  Four – nil was the right score rather than just getting the right number of points.  I know that Wigan away is a fixture that we’ve cocked up two years running, but all the same it feels like a suitable statement about this season – we’re back where we should be.

It’s tempting to say now for the hard bit, but that underplays what we have already achieved since that dire day at Old Trafford.  Pulling a team out of a crisis of confusion and confidence is hard, but Arsenal have done it.  It’s just that the next bit is going to be hard too.

The race for a top four slot has got harder thanks to Sheik Mansour and Harry Redknapp.  Much as it pains me to say it, Redknapp has put together the most credible Tottenham team in decades.  Meanwhile City have spent nearly a billion pounds and this season they are getting the inevitable rewards.  We debate the sanity or morality of spending billion pounds on a football club when the world’s in such a state, but there we are, that’s what he’s done, and now Man City and Tottenham are at the races too.

I’m not sure about Newcastle.  Their start to the season has been stunning but I get the feeling we are about to see how deep the quality of their challenge really is.  They picked up a couple of injuries on Saturday that might be hard to deal with.  But for the moment they are in the mix with us.

So too are Chelsea.  Like Newcastle, there are still questions to be answered, but on Saturday they looked like they knew their business again.  Their defenders held their shape and did a good job.  Sturridge looks increasingly good and Drogba looks fitter.  You wonder how different it might have been if Luiz had got a red card early on when he brought down Demba Ba.  He was clearly last man, but Chelsea got the break and made the most of it.

Tomorrow we will see if Liverpool are still on the pace after a few draws that have taken a bit of the gloss off.

But at the moment there’s a seven way fight for the only four positions that mean anything and we’ve got a tough month ahead.  Before Christmas we play Everton (eighth), Man City (top) and Aston Villa (ninth).  These are all going to be harder work.

Looking around the web today there’s all the usual transfer speculation, none of it really stood up with convincing quotes, so I think we might leave it be a little longer yet.  One pretty solid looking story is that Emmanuel Frimpong wants a loan spell, with Wolves the most likely destination.  Sounds like a sensible enough move to me.  Coquelin is probably edging him as chief understudy to Song at the moment and after Tuesday’s shot to nothing against Olympiacos and us going out of the Carling, it’s hard to see what time on the pitch he’s going to get.

Mikel Artea won our Wigan Man of the Match poll after initially being neck and neck with Robin Van Persie.

Arsenal are still the favourite media whipping boy this weekend, with various hacks and has-beens having a go.  Sadly we’re all just going to have to take this on the chin for now because our club is the obvious story.  To add to the pounding fron the pundits, there’s news that Jack Wilshere may be out a while yet.

There may be twenty Premier League clubs, but in truth it’s the fight for the top four places that dominates the coverage.  There’s heavy commercial logic here right across the media so don’t expect this to change.

Whilst there might be some nit-picking over various aspects of United, City and Chelsea’s squads, no-one thinks they are going to be uncompetitive.  In contrast, even the most blinkered Gooner would admit that we have had a traumatic summer that followed a terrible closing third of the season.

So we’ve got it all to prove against the challengers for our top four status. To aid the media, this can easily easily be characterised as matey Kenny and ‘arry verses too clever by half Arsene.  So this is our lot until the team can prove otherwise.

What of the challenge from Liverpool and Tottenham?

Everyone agrees that Liverpool have got stronger this summer, but I think the jury is still out on quite how much stronger.  They beat us two-nil, but we were poor and understrength. I didn’t think they looked that special.

I don’t think anyone has really made their minds up about Spurs yet.  They have kept their two most influential players, Van Der Vaart and Modric, but have let go of a number.  In come Parker, Friedel and Adebayor.  Adebayor had just 15 starts last season.  Who knows just how much he’s got to give.

Gooners have been on an emotional roller coaster.  Depths of despair at old Trafford, the surge of relief from the closing stages of the transfer window.  Now we’re sat stationery, we’ve paid for another ride but we don’t know how it will go.

If the Arsenal as a team can be more than the sum of its parts, competition with City, United and Chelsea beckons.  Or will the ‘big top four’ turn in two groups of three?

Hold very tight now!

What should we Gooners make of the world today?  Yesterday Arsenal showed some promise, but some familiar frailties too.

The papers have dutifully filled their pages, but not with anything new.  Some bloke called Fabregas wants to go and may be replaced by some bloke called Mata.  But some other club may hijack the deal.  Meanwhile Arsenal are poised to sign Phil Jagielka, Gary Cahill, Chris Samba and Scott Dann.  But not today.

The Sundays get the best football material during the season but lose out on breaking anything new on transfer gossip.  Some have wrestled a highly non-committal Harry Redknapp quote into a North London blood feud, but Harry’s more likely to be wondering what time to light the barbie.

Presumably today we will see Szczesny, Sagna, Koscielny, Vermaelen and Gibbs at the back and they will show us a bit more nous and composure.  Which doesn’t mean that the likes of Jagielka and Enrique wouldn’t be welcome additions.

Most impressive pre-season displays so far have been Frimpong and Gervinho.  Frimpong looks like he’s going to make up for his lost season.  But he’s still young and there is every chance of him and Song disappearing to play for their African national sides at the same time.  What happened to that Biglia rumour that flashed around the web last week?

Gervinho seems to have great pace and passing ability.  I like the way that he and Arshavin keep swapping sides.  His assist for Van Persie yesterday was inch perfect.  More of the same please!

Apparently Arsene Wenger has told Paul Lambert that Henri Lansbury is staying at Arsenal this season.  It would be good to see him on the pitch today.

Enough already, time to make sure lunch appears before the Grand Prix starts and plan when to reveal the existence of the second Arsenal game of the weekend.  ‘But it’s not even August yet!’

Earlier this week Harry Redknapp lectured Arsene Wenger on the right tactics for the Carling Cup. He said Arsenal should take winning trophies more seriously and stop sending out boys to do a man’s job.

Well, fair does, maybe he’s right. What with being such an experienced manager. After all, he has managed a lot clubs and bought and sold a lot of players.

So thanks for the advice Harry!

Now Harry is wittering on about diving, but 4:1 is 4:1 and from what I saw Arsenal could have had more decisions out of the referee with a load of ‘professional’ fouls from Spurs as they tried to hold the Gunners back.

The rise of Jack Wilshere continues. He feels like a fourth summer signing. Loads of confidence for his age. Good to see Lansbury survived Harry’s team advice, I thought he was excellent too.

Only downsides to the night seem to be a possible injury to Gibbs and another nail in the coffin for Fabianski. Not sure if the latter really counts as a downside. I think most fans have given up on Fabianski and would rather see one of the two younger keepers in as number two.

I hope Gibbs hasn’t got a broken bone. Clichy’s poor form so far could create the opening he needs to break through and it would be tough for him and Arsenal to miss out through injury.

All in all a great night to lift the spirits after Saturday. Come on Arsenal.