I don’t really want to waste too much time dwelling over Saturday, I think everything that could be said has been said. Both the sending off of Diaby and the injury to Djourou affected us badly, coupled with one of the worst refereeing performances I’ve ever seen in top of a wonder goal from Tiote (a player who just recently has resembled the new Nigel Quashie). Its vitally important that the team build a siege mentality now, that they believe the whole world is against them and so they stop making stupid fucking clumsy challenges in the box and score 6 goals before they capitulate 4 goals.
Every none Arsenal fan I know got caught up in the hysteria of the Newcastle comeback, and most have initially confused my referee complaints with bias or sour grapes. I’m not – the referee also incorrectly disallowed a perfectly valid Newcastle goal, it just happens that most of the bad decisions went against us. A soft second penalty, every free kick you could possibly give, he even gave a corner for a blatent goal kick and booked our keeper for being suplexed into the floor. Incredibly awful. Even Graham Fucking Poll thinks so.
One thing the game highlighted (again) is that Squillaci and Koscielny are simply not a good partnership. Both need to play alongside a rock of some sort – Squillaci even manages to make Djourou play well under his level, so the inexperienced Koscielny has no chance. And now Djourou is being shipped on to Switzerland to visit a clinic, where he will be put to sleep to dream about winning medals forever. Presumably they will bury him next to Thomas Vermaelen.
Essentially we’re pretty much fucked. Song isn’t a central defender, and if Song plays in defence that means he isn’t playing in his regular position, Denilson is and that means we have two players playing in positions they can’t play in.
Still it could be worse, we could have to rely on Jonathan Woodgate, a player who took a full year to make his debut for Madrid after signing for £13.4m in 2004 only to score an own goal and get sent off. Talking of terrible debuts….
FernandLOL Torres let me down – anticipating him to score a hat trick and then kiss the badge in front of the Scousers fell short. He had two shots and a largely uninterrupted sulk. Apparently Carragher has become the target of a metropolitan police investigation after every body realised he had £50m in his pocket for 90 minutes. It’s too early to tell just how effective he’ll be for Chelsea, but the fact that a team with Drogba/Anelka/Torres managed just one shot on target speaks volumes both about Chelsea’s creativity in midfield and Liverpool’s belief and organisation in defence.
I watched the Old Firm derby, I enjoy watching amateur football occasionally, and it lived up to it’s reputation. I was hoping for a bit of Kyle Bartley, instead Rangers played a 40 year old David Weir instead. I can see why, you don’t want a young lad in the middle against you biggest rivals after just a week of training with the team, only Arsene Wenger pulls stunts like that. It was quite a good game all told.
Fantastically a player got sent off for diving. Well, it was a second yellow. You may remember before me complaining about referees holding back on cards when a player has already been booked, instead waiting for an “orange” type infringement, a second yellow worthy of a red. Well, the referee didn’t bottle it, it was a clear dive, a clear yellow and he sent him off. Excellent.
I’ll be honest, you hear a lot of bollocks about Scottish refereeing, but the referee got 99% of the decisions right, he was well placed at all times and despite handing out 400 yellow cards and two reds, kept the match largely under control in a difficult atmosphere. Contrast that to the hapless cretin we had to put up with on Saturday, I’d say Neil Lennon has never had it so good.
Do you want cheering up? Ryo Miyaychi, Arsenals new signing (who had to go on loan immediately due to a work permit issue) made his debut for Feyenoord on Sunday. Kid looks good – consider that he has effectively only ever played Japanese University football up until now. Check the highlights here.
Finally, thankfully, the great Manchester United unbeaten run has been beaten. By Wolves. I won’t laugh too much as we’re playing them on Saturday, but fucking hell am I glad that shower of shit was stopped in it’s tracks. The only thing worse than Manchester United remaining unbeaten so far this season was Richard Keys wanking himself off over it on Television every week. Well, first he got sacked and now finally someone has had the luck swing in their direction enough to nail the coffin on that dream shut for another year. It was only galling because this is the weakest Manchester United team I’ve seen in years, dreadful in the midfield and worse at the back than Arsenal at times, somehow they’ve managed to get to February without losing. In fact, had we not conceded 4 second half goals on Sunday, they’d have conceded one more than us, but we did, so they haven’t.
Oh, and also…. Interpol are not investigating Satuday’s game, or Rosicky, or unfortunately Phil Dowd. They might however be investigating the sudden disappearance of our back four, an unexplained absence that lasted 45 minutes on Saturday afternoon from about 4pm. Don’t believe everything you read on Twitter which stems from a French website that is largely the equivalent of Goal.com (eg. shit). They got the Nasri transfer right a few years ago, and little since. If you make a million guesses, one of them might be right.
