Nine Jimmy Rimmers – Arsenal and Football

Steve Bould
Not official yet but apparently Steve Bould is the man who will take Pat Rice’s place beside Arsene Wenger next season. It’s hard to know how appointments like this will turn out. As fans we know less about the impact different coaching staff make. But Steve Bould is Arsenal through and through and was a class act as a player.

If he can add some discipline and awareness to our defence he will have a big impact. Instinctively this feels like a good decision. Some hoped for Tony Adams but I suspect that might not have been a happy working relationship. Until he makes it or decides not to make it as a manager I think that he could make a brooding number two.

So good luck to Steve and also Neil Banfield who steps up from Reserve Manager to join Boro Primovic as a first team coach. More preparations made early for next season. Encouraging stuff, but so much still hangs on the last game.

The New Kit
Another preparation for next year has also been announced. The new kit. Don’t like it. I mean it’s not terrible is it, just completely uninspired.

“Err, what shall we do this time. Dunno, could just stick some hoops on the sleeves and socks I suppose……three hours later…….yeah, that’ll do, some hoops. What’s a popular colour other than red or white?”

Do we have to have a new kit if that’s the best we can do?

Bye bye Blackburn.
Their chances were already slim and they needed a win. But Wigan wanted a win too and they got it. They’re safe now and Blackburn are down. Wigan and Martinez deserve it for the type of football they play in the Premier League on the budget they have.

Steve Keen has done his dignified best but Blackburn have neither survived or endeared. There are plenty of rumours about how little Blackburn’s owners really understood about the realities of the Premier League. No doubt they get it now.

So now it’s down to QPR and Bolton. Owen Coyle’s team need to win and hope that QPR fail to get a point. Given that QPR have to play Title-hunting Man City, whilst Bolton play Stoke, I’d say that Bolton have a decent chance. But still only a slim one. Hope they pull it off.

So far Arsene Wenger has resisted much rotation. Van Persie’s one hour break was his first in weeks.

Momentum has been everything as we put our season back together. But it looks as if chances will be taken on the Carling Cup. Park has been promised a start and looks like Oxlade-Chamberlain will get one too.

In the last round, Arsenal lined up like this:

_______ Fabianski ______
Jenks _ DJ _ Miquel _ Gibbs
___ Coquelin _ Frimpong __
Ox-Cham _______ Benayoun
__________ Chamakh ___
_______ Park _________

Two defensive midfielders, two strikers! Call it 4-4-2 in a whisper? Maybe! Miyaichi, Ozyakup and Aneke also got some time on the pitch.

That was then, against Shrewsbury. This is now against Bolton. The opposition is tougher, but is the need for a break for several players.

Let’s start at the back. No reason why Fabianski shouldn’t get a start. Well yes there are reasons but he will get a start.

Two of that back four are not available. Djourou filled in at rightback for Jenks and hop-along against Stoke and may need to against Chelsea. So, more practice or a rest? If he gets a rest, who is the alternative? Yennaris got a name-check from Arsene Wenger when he listed the possibilities for rightback cover duty.

On the left? Who is the alternative to Santos. Vermaelen? Rumour has it he’s going to get a bit of pitch time, but I can’t see his comeback involving ninety minutes out of position sprinting up and down the touchline.

Djourou and Squillaci in the middle? I guess it depends on just how many are getting a rest.

The remaining six from last time all look possible starters. That would give us:

_______ Fabianski ______
Yennaris _ DJ _ Sq _ Santos
___ Coquelin _ Frimpong __
Ox-Cham _______ Benayoun
__________ Chamakh ___
_______ Park _________

Against Bolton? “Do y’feel lucky, I mean do ya?” Well, you’ve got a point there, but How much does the Carling Cup matter to us this season?

Last season it mattered in a way that it hadn’t for years. The priority was win something, anything, even the Carling. Then, of course, we didn’t. Let’s not go there now, it’s not essential to the point.

“Which is what?” Don’t interupt or I’ll lose this. Which is, that this season, now after the nightmare start, is about playing in the Champions League in 2012/13. Or not.

Which means that the Carling Cup doesn’t matter right now, when we are clawing our way back into contention. Follow that to it’s logical conclusion and you rest everyone you can.

A win is a bonus and a loss doesn’t hit the morale of many who have to play in the next league game, see?

Yes, but! Then, I hear you say as you put down you glass for emphasis, “we go to Chelsea, lose, and all of a sudden the pressure’s back on again!”

Which is probably why Pat and Arsene don’t work this stuff out down the pub with us.

To be honest I’ve lost me thread now so I’m going to make a move. It’s only Monday night afterall. See you tomorrow lads!

For most of the media of course, what Arsenal must do tonight is completely annihilate Dortmund by at least five goals.  Then they will point out that in the draw, Dortmund came out of Pot D, that Arsenal should have got ten and will now fear a close fought game when the Germans visit London.  ‘Gunners fear London Blitz’ has just got to be used in a tabloid somewhere hasn’t it!

But what would a good result be?

Dortmund did come out of Pot D, supposedly our weakest opponents, but they could actually be the toughest.  Let’s not get carried away by Saturday, we are still in deep recovery mode.

Rational analysis says that losing one away game in the group stage is not the end of the world.  But where we are now it would damage the fragile confidence we have just found.

A draw is the minimum for Arsenal tonight and it would have to come with positives to hold on to as well.

But what we really need is a win.  Can we do it?  Yes we can!

Dortmund have a good home record and some decent players.  Midfielder Mario Götze is very good indeed and will have to be carefully contained.  But I think we have a better team overall and, if we can play with confidence, we can get a win.  Like Saturday, any kind of win will do.

But what is the best way to go for it?  The absence of Ramsey and, more importantly for this game, Rosicky means that there is no middle path for Wenger tonight.  He must either send out a midfield biased to defending with Frimpong, or attacking with Benayoun or Arshavin.

Personally I would prefer attacking with Arshavin alongside Arteta but I don’t think it’s going to happen.  I think Wenger will start with Frimpong and then bring on Benayoun later.

Sorry, I mean of course that Pat Rice will decide to bring on Benayoun later.  Arsene Wenger will be chewing his tongue off in the stands trying to show UEFA more respect than they deserve for ninety minutes.  And wondering if they’ve spotted the eyebrow morse code chain he’s been practicing all day with Pat, Boro, Vic and Colin.

For my sins I’m on a late finish at work tonight, despite having a Gooner for a boss, so I will be frustrated too.  I will be on the train for the first half, glaring at that row of bars on my phone and frantically stabbing at the refresh symbol.  How hard it can be to build more phone masts or write text commentary more frequently.  I will probably have killed the battery by Bethnal Green.

Come on you Gunners!

Yesterday I blogged about Arsenal up front, now let’s look at the midfield. This really comes in two parts – one is about Arsenal going forward and that story is largely about whether Fabregas it staying or going; the other is about providing the first line of defence.

Lets I think that Arsenal need a new Remi Garde or Gilles Grimandi. They were not the most technically gifted players Arsenal ever had, or the most youthful, and a persistent knee injury limited Garde to just 30 appearances. But they had an important job to do and they stuck to it. Their task was to ensure that what Arsenal had, they held. When you saw Garde or Grimandi on the touchline waiting to come on you knew that Arsene had said to Pat, ‘this is as good as we’re going to get today, let’s make sure we hold on to it’.

I don’t think we have enough players like that today. The only defensive midfielder we have is Alex Song and there have been occasions this season when he hasn’t stuck to the task. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an anti-Song piece, I’m still a big fan, but we need more. There are games, or stages of games, where he needs help or needs to be replaced with fresher legs. At the moment, the replacement options are Denilson and Diaby.

I always thought Denilson was a promising player, but his development seems to have stalled and he isn’t the real deal as a defensive player. He doesn’t look too bad in Champions League games against middling opposition, but he struggles to make an impact in the intensity of the Premiership.

Abou Diaby promises to be a Patrick Viera type, who can play from box to box. Sometimes it’s true, but not often enough. The rest of the time he goes missing or dawdles on the ball until he gets mugged.

It may be that Frimpong can play this role in the future. He was being talked up by the club pre-season last year before his cruciate ligament injury sidelined him. But even when he is fit again he is just young. A bit of maturity can be an advantage for this sort of player who needs the discipline to be single-minded when you’re one nil up at Old Trafford with eight minutes to go!

Is Scot Parker that kind of player? He could well be and in the West Ham fire sale he could be the right man at the right price.

Alternatively, a budget-busting move for a new central defender could mean the option of Djourou or Koscielny doubling up as cover for both midfield and defence.

Attacking midfielders tomorrow. Have a nice day now.

Birmingham played well with the strengths that they’ve got.  Arsenal, pretty much to a man, played poorly.  Wilshere, Nasri and Van Persie had better games than the rest, but none of the team distinguished themselves.

Maybe they were only prepared for Birmingham to stifle play and wait for the odd break.  They didn’t seem able to respond when Birmingham were much more positive than that.  I think that the inability to respond when the other team doesn’t stick to the script has dogged us all season.

We were out played in the middle of the pitch, unable to drive the ball forward often enough.  I don’t think that Rosicky has what it takes to be the main creative force in the centre.  The only bit I don’t get about the way Arsenal ran out yesterday was why Nasri wasn’t the one deputising for Fabregas in the centre.

Looking at the players on both sides I think that Birmingham were tiring more towards the end of the game and we could have shaded it in extra time.  But we all know what happened.

Birmingham were the better team and they won.  Arsenal should have been and didn’t.

They will be hurting today, particularly Szczesny and Koscielny, but they don’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for themselves.  This is the whole season now in the next nine days.  They have to pick themselves up and get on with the job.  Arsene Wenger and Pat Rice have to get eleven fully focused players on the pitch for the FA Cup replay who want to show they are good enough rather fearing the worst.

And every Arsenal fan in the ground needs to be urging them on as well.

C’mon Arsenal!