Nine Jimmy Rimmers – Arsenal and Football

Will Arsene Wenger change anything tomorrow?  Well why would he when we are on such a fantastic run of success.

The only hint of an enforced change would be the same as last Saturday – Laurent Koscielny.  He was withdrawn at the very last minute before the Villa game with tendinitis.  All the reports I’ve seen suggest that he will be fit to play tomorrow, but he remains the only fitness doubt at this stage.

So what about squad rotation?  No big pressure here.  Our exit from all other competitions means few midweek games and we don’t play again until Sunday afternoon.

I guess that the biggest headache at the moment is maintaining the enthusiasm of Aaron Ramsey, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gervinho, who are all effectively chasing the last place in the team.  Robin Van Persie clearly plays as long as he is fit.  Theo Walcott plays with confidence when he has Sagna behind him and confidence is everything with him.  The consistency of Arteta, Rosicky and Song has been as much a part of our revival as Van Persie’s goals.

So who will be the eleventh name on the team sheet tomorrow?  My guess, and that’s all it is, is Gervinho.  So I’m expecting to see:

______ Szczesny ______
Sagna _ Kos _ Verm _ Gibbs
________ Song _______
___ Arteta __ Rosicky __
Walcott _ RVP _ Gervinho

QPR will of course be without Djibril Cisse who seems determined to see out more games suspended than he he gets to play.  He’s already missed three and now he starts a four match ban. Cisse is the sort of gamble that clubs like QPR get forced in to making.  He has great talent but doesn’t have the temperament to make it count.  He could save you from relegation or just take early baths and sit in the stand.  But he’s what you can afford.

QPR’s attack has also been blunted by injuries to Heidar Helguson and DJ Campbell.  Both are apparently on the mend, but doubtful.  The big decision for Mark Hughes though is whether he puts philosopher king Joey Barton back on the pitch.  He was booed off in the Liverpool game, before the fightback began. Does he add a fighting edge that drives his team on?  Or is he a liability that disrupts any attempt at flowing football.  Personally I’d throw him on.  QPR have more to lose from flowing football than Arsenal.

This should be a straightforward game if Arsenal run out with the right attitude.  A desperate QPR could punish anything else.

Come on you Gunners!

Never mind that traditional New Year feeling of optimism and hope, the football world seems to have seriously got the hump.  Arsene Wenger is angry with Lee Probert.  Kenny Dalglish is angry with the FA.  Joey Barton is angry with referees conned by players feigning assault by other players (yes really).  Neil Warnock is angry with Robin Van Persie. John Hartson is angry with Arsene Wenger.  The only person having a ball right now is Martin O’Neill.  The way he’s going he’ll turn Nicklas Bendtner into the league’s top scorer. Or perhaps not.

Most of it’s born out of personal frustration of course.  Where Joey Barton gets his ideas from is anyone’s guess.  When will we have the have the first player suing a referee he wonders?

On Twitter yesterday he wrote: ‘I wonder how long it is before a club sues a referee for making a bad decision?  Or a player sues another for playacting.’

Dunno Joey, perhaps it will be when someone is pulled to their feet by the neck and then gets a red card when the person who attacked them falls dramatically to the floor like they’ve been taken out by a sniper.

Or maybe, like Gervinho, you can just take your ban and give the world a break from your banal spin-doctoring over your latest red card.

Another bout of amateur spin-doctoring comes from Liverpool Football Club who claim that the outcome of the Suarez investigation is a complete travesty with no justification whatsoever.  But ahem, by the way, they’re not appealing it.

They’re not appealing it because they wouldn’t have a prayer of success.  Anyone who has an interest in this issue should take the time to read the investigation report here.  To try and cover their retreat, Liverpool throw out a couple of completely spurious attacks.

They attack the outcome as one which only found Suarez to ‘probably’ be guilty.  They are clutching to the word ‘probable’ in the standard of proof required.  They are trying to give the impression that the FA panel has done something unusual and harsh.  Completely ignoring that the standard of proof used by the panel was the standard set out in the FA rules that Liverpool and every other club are signed up to and that this is the standard of proof used in the civil courts across the country everyday of the week.

They also accuse the FA of producing a 115 page report to try and justify their wrong decision.  Liverpool are trying to imply that the length of the document is unusual and signifies that the FA are trying to bury a weak argument.  But actually there is nothing unusual about the length of the report at all.  It is typical of legal documents the world over.  If it were shorter, they would be accused of a cover-up.  Liverpool should either appeal or walk away quietly.

Meanwhile the feverish business of the transfer rumour mill goes on.  The January window is worse than the summer because you get the same level of rumour but less actually happens.

The transfer gossip is disappointingly thin this Friday morning.  So I thought I’d try and help it along by pointing out that Arsenal’s goalscoring drought and fabled defensive frailties could be dramatically solved today by a double swoop for Premiership bad boys Craig Bellamy and Joey Barton.

Although no official approach has been made for either so far, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has been made aware of their availability.

It’s a move that would please many former Arsenal stars, who have issued a plea to embattled boss Wenger that it is time to ‘win ugly’.

‘With just six days to go, there is a need to move quickly’, advised former Arsenal boss Fred Bleeding-Obvious.  Whilst club officials are firmly denying any interest at the moment, Wenger is notorious for playing his cards close to his chest.

But then, who would believe a story made up of no more than a collection of sentences like that, so maybe I won’t bother.  Or maybe I haven’t got the point of this footy blogging thing yet.

Out there in the world of serious sport journalism where hardworking professionals get serious money to sell newspapers bring us the truth, it is reported that Arsenal have offered Bolton half of what they have previously been reported as offering for Gary Cahill.

Another story seriously contemplates the idea that Arsenal would accept an offer from Wolfsburg for Rosicky, allowing a third attacking midfielder to leave in two weeks.  Then there’s the report that Arsenal are about to swoop for an unknown, 16 year old from France!

Actually you know, there’s something about that last one….

Stay happy folks, it’s a Friday after all!

Well I suppose that 0:0 is the ultimate antidote to 4:4. Aside from the couple of incidents that everyone’s talking about this was a dull and nervous game. Both clubs are under pressure and it showed.

We didn’t seem to have any idea in the middle other than to push it out wide. That could have been worse, because Arshavin and Gervinho were able to move it forward well, but the central players didn’t follow it up and whenever we reached their box we were indecisive and mostly harmless.

We never looked like we controlled the middle of the pitch and I’m afraid I just can’t imagine Rosicky being the player who puts that right. To me he seems an opportunistic player who can make the odd burst of activity and pull something off. But he doesn’t look someone who reads the game and pulls the strings.

If, as seems certain now, both Fabregas and Nasri are departing we are going to have to bring in some new central creative talent. Ramsey and Wilshere are good, but I don’t think they’re going to pull this off alone.

In the meantime you’ve got to wonder whether Arshavin could do a job in the middle.

At the back I thought we seemed to hold our nerve and our concentration.

Which leaves the brainless bits. Gervinho needs to learn that you can’t give anyone a slap, no matter whether they deserve it or not. Now if I were the ref, then obviously I would have said something like “that’s a red mate, except it was Joey Barton so he had it coming.”

But it doesn’t work like that and Gervinho needs to learn fast. Alex Song should already know. He should know in this multi-million multi-camera world there’s no way a stamp is going to escape notice. If he doesn’t get a red in the post I will be amazed.

Did the Gervinho incident start with a dive? No. With the benefit of seeing the replays on TV I think that there was contact and so he was entitled to go down. A penalty would have been harsh but it wasn’t a dive. That’s what the referee obviously thought. It’s just a shame that he immediately turned his back and didn’t see everything that happened next.

So, a nervous start and point. One player suspended, could become two. Not a great start, but the main business right now is still the transfer Market and seeing off Udinese.

Securing some more quality players whilst playing three games in eleven days isn’t easy, but yesterday’s performance shows that it is a vital task.

Well Arsene started it I suppose, promising a busy summer!  Did I miss anyone out of the Sunday paper rumour fest?

The stuff in all this that is most likely for real is that a deal is there soon for Gervinho and a deal for Samba is being contemplated by Arsenal and Blackburn.  Blackburn’s Chairman reveals that Samba ‘has an ambition to play for Arsenal’ and that they might reluctantly have to go a long with it.

You can understand that reluctance when they’ve already lost Jones.  I mean, it would be like us losing Fabregas and Nasri in the same window wouldn’t it?

If these two deals (or a different central defender) do come through soon it will settle nerves around the place as a firm signal from Arsene Wenger that he really does intend more change than normal this summer.

I’m not going to write a deep analysis of how Eto’o and Barton could work well in the same team, though I suppose stranger things have happened.  Inside I’m torn between the prospect of having to think positively about Joey Barton and the images of Arsenal heads dropping against bottom-half opposition!  I’m going to lock that all away in a dark corner for now as 90% of this transfer stuff is rubbish anyway.

Perhaps the sane thing to do is ignore all the Sunday papers in June and follow the example of of Arsenal blog ‘A Cultured Left Foot’ – which today spurns transfer speculation for an appreciation of Anders Limpar.  For more recent fans, he was sort of Andrey Arshavin in an earlier life.  Anyway it’s well worth a look.

Great memories, that dreadful ‘rag-doll’ away strip.  That game against Coventry with Limpar’s hat-trick – even Perry Groves scored, but mind you the Coventry captain got Arsenal’s first with a bullet header past his own keeper!  Brian Moore (?) described it as one of Arsenal’s most spectacular goals of the season!

Ought to be fairly straightforward this didn’t it?  Just pick a team from the club second from top to beat the club second from bottom.  But it’s more complicated than that.

It’s a Manchester derby day with first against third.  One or possibly both of our main rivals will drop points this weekend.  We wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity like that.  Then again this is the same Wolves that tripped up ManU last week.

The real weight on Wenger’s mind of course is the Barcelona game next Wednesday.

So who is rested?  Who plays?

The good news is that all those on international duty seem to have survived unscathed.  So no new injury problems. Djourou’s injury against Newcastle is not anything like as bad as reported in the couple of days after the game.

But Djourou/Squillaci is surely still the toughest choice Wenger has to make.  It comes in two parts. Can Djourou play both games? Squillaci v Wolves or Barcelona?  The second question is a no brainer, so if there is any doubt about a positive answer to the first then Squillaci plays on Saturday.

Clichy and Koscielny both travelled this week but didn’t play, Sagna played the whole ninety minutes.  Eboue travelled further and played the whole game too.  Can Sagna play three games in eight days?  Can Squillaci do his job and cope with dozen or so occasions when Eboue will get stranded out of position?  So the right-back choice is quite a tough one too and I worry about Sagna and Djourou being rested at the same time.

In front of the back four I think we will see Song, Denilson and Fabregas.  Diaby  is banned for putting Joey Barton on the deck  – shouldn’t be an offense that I know but we can’t have it both ways on referees I suppose!  Denilson could still be nursing his hamstring but he isn’t listed as injured at the moment.

Up front? Walcott, Bendtner, Rosicky, Arshavin and Chamakh all played in the midweek games and that could mean a break for Theo at least.  Will he rest Arshavin too?  The problem is that neither Bendtner or Chamakh really give their best playing wide.

So picking a team against the bottom side is just as tough as any other.  But Barcelona is the big one, so I will hazard a guess at:

___________ Szczesny __________
Sagna _ Squllaci _ Koscielny _ Clichy
_________ Song _ Denilson _______
___________ Fabregas __________
Bendtner __ Van Persie ___ Chamakh

What do you think?

What a horrible game!  It’s hard to know what to say.  If you can’t keep calm when you are four-nil up then when can you.  Joey Barton knows what he is doing and Abou Diaby clearly hasn’t a clue.  He gave Phil Dowd the one decision he couldn’t get wrong.

It’s too easy to makes ourselves feel a bit better by taking it out on Dowd though and a lot people on the web and phone -ins are doing that.

We should’ve been able to hang on.  Arsenal were poor against a poor side.  Very disappointing and a big motivator for Manchester United in the evening kick-off.