Posted by SmartArse
Phew. Well we got away with that one didn’t we? Really didn’t look like we were going to score until Pepe Reina rather generously decided to hand us a draw and join the growing brigade of keepers this weekend seemingly hell bent on making our keepers look respectable by comparison so we don’t buy a better one. There are certainly some negatives to discuss, but first, a little fun at the expense of Pepe Reina.
Arsenal fans all over the nation react to Reina's error
Oh the irony! After all the recent chatter about our awful keepers (more on that in a bit) a man who is pretty much indubitably one of the very best in the league, one who I swear doesn’t even make mistakes, just had to go and drop an absolutely almighty howler. Humongous. Ha ha, you sly little twat, that’s whatcha get for your ‘hilarious’ behaviour with Cesc. That’s Karma, fool. In the words of Radiohead, “This is what you get, when you mess with us.” Would perhaps be funnier if a goalkeeping mistake didn’t bring to mind all of ours from last year, but still pretty damn rib-tickling.
It gave us a draw we probably deserved, even if only because they weren’t exactly good enough to deserve a win either. We were a) absolutely ponderous is possession b) punished for individual mistakes and nearly lost the game as a result. A little worryingly familiar right? Today’s performance had a rather stronger whiff of last season than a brave new dawn. It’s a well worn adage that 10 men can be rather hard to breakdown, but we didn’t half make it look especially difficult. In an entire half of football we only actually forced 1 actual effort on target with Theo’s reasonably threatening free-kick. Perhaps Rosicky’s effort was sneaking in too.
Unsurprisingly a few individuals were particularly culpable. Arshavin is taking an absolute pasting on twitter. Lazy players make especially good scapegoats, but he really was awful. When you make Glen Johnson’s defending look good you know you’ve had a bit of a shocker. Less obvious culprits were present in the shape a pedestrian Diaby, a fairly peripheral Chamakh and the slightly underwhelming Nasri. The latter especially didn’t have a bad game per se, he just didn’t quite take the game by the scruff of the neck the way his pre-season promised. Neat passing, but no thrust. Not quite ready to step in for Cesc yet then.
Rather more surprising was the fact that the limited thrust we eventually mustered came largely from Tomas Rosicky, a man I felt was likely to follow Eduardo’s sad route to the exit. He was far more direct than he’s been in absolutely ages, offering penetrating passing missing elsewhere and was very unlucky not to pick up the equaliser himself after an excellent driving run. Rather fitting then that it was I’m pretty sure his cross that led to the goal. His performance certainly qualifies as good news on a day a little short on it from an Arsenal point of view. It would be fantastic to get a fully firing Rosicky back on a regular basis.
So it was certainly a performance which provided more questions than answers, though a few cautionary points are worth making. It was of course only the first game of the season, and to be fair, I’d have definitely taken that result before the game. Patchy performances are par for the course at this time of the year. Remember last year United managed to lose to Burnley early on. Getting a draw at Anfield isn’t really in the same ballpark. Plus we were missing three members of our spine, who are, with the probable exception of Tommy V, probably our three best players and others, like the awful Arshavin, haven’t had the most ideal of pre-seasons with injury niggles and whatnot.
And so it is that this post, like most others here and elsewhere at the moment has to return to those issues. Interesting that a few keepers have raised the potential issue that the grass may not always be greener and all that with some seriously shocking goalkeeping this weekend, but all that is rather erased by the performance of a certain Joe Hart who demonstrated that a world class goalkeeper is an absolute necessity for sides with title pretensions. For now we’ll just settle for a keeper who doesn’t flap quite as much as Manuel Almunia did today. He looked as terrified as every Arsenal fan did every time Liverpool got a set piece. Not inspiring. At fault for the goal? Difficult to say as Ngog absolutely mullered it in, but his positioning was seriously questionable, far too much room at his near post, and his reactions surprisingly slow. So probably. The flapping was far more terrifying.
We’re probably gonna end up spending an unnecessarily large amount on Mark Schwarzer, but really I don’t care. If money’s an issue then to hell with it, I’ll sell my house and donate the funds to the cause. Seriously being homeless is a small price to pay to stave off the threat of goalkeeper induced heart attack. I don’t want to die young.
The issue of an extra centre back was initially staved off by Koscielny’s reappearance after half time, which probably saved an immense amount of discussion on Joe Cole’s tackle. Especially when the meaningless, ‘he’s not that kind of player’ stuff was wheeled out on Sky. Joe Cole to be fair, probably actually isn’t. He’s just a rather rubbish tackler who tries it all the time anyway. Like Scholes. Or Jack Wilshere, who was probably lucky not to be sent off himself. My immediate reaction was wince, oh shit is he going off? And to the letter of the law he could have:
“Reckless” means that the player has acted with complete disregard to the
danger to, or consequences for, his opponent.
• A player who plays in a reckless manner must be cautioned
“Using excessive force” means that the player has far exceeded the necessary
use of force and is in danger of injuring his opponent.
• A player who uses excessive force must be sent off
Certainly possible to file both under the latter category. Dangerous, reckless, not malicious, but still red cards. If we want to really address the issue of the sort of tackle that buggered Aaron Ramsey we’ve got to admit when one of our own was probably just over the the line of acceptable. A quick congratulation to the Sky pundits for coming to the conclusion that it was indeed a red card with few excuses. And he’s English, normally they get let off scot free.
At any rate the whole centre back thing suddenly became pertinent with Koscielny’s rather harsh red card for two yellows. First probably deserved, he did kick a man in the balls. Second not, clearly not deliberate handball. And as Andy Gray pointed out, inconsistent refereeing, an accusation that could have been made a few times. As a result we are suddenly left with just Thomas Vermaelan and the untrusted Havard Nordveit for Blackpool next week. Will that speed up our pursuit of new players? Can only hope so. Really don’t like having to use Song there, we miss him in the middle too much, but sadly it may be too difficult to sort in less than a week. Otherwise we’ll have to hope Blackpool don’t attack too often.
For a game with so few shots on target that was rather a lot of points to discuss wasn’t it? God I love football. Not the most inspirational of starts, but equally not bad enough to panic. Time to get to winning ways next week. The return of Cesc won’t exactly harm matters.
‘Till next time. Come on the Arsenal!