Arsenal v Celtic, UEFA Champions Lg., 26th Aug - 19:45 (ITV)

[patrick42uk]

Bendtner didnt really surprise. I know his ceiling and my expectactions are as low. Its Diaby that I dont get. Expect much more from him.

Fair play to Tony Mowbray for not making a meal out of the whole diving fiasco. I know one or two prem managers who would milk it for all its worth

 

[fabo]

I bet Eboue scores tonight.

:wink:...inevitable after all the criticism he got pre-match.

Comfortable win but just want to talk about the Eduardo incident. I was embarassed at the time tbh - my celebration was a little muted as I was surprised and disappointed. Not going to try and condone what he did but the reaction from ITV and the media in general has been nothing short of a joke. Reading a paper this morning and they mentioned how his horrific injury was not pre-meditated but the dive was - what sort of a f**king comparison is that. English lovechilds Gerrard and Rooney have enhanced their careers by diving and nothing about it.

Don't want to see Eduardo do it ever again but he's not some villain here.

 

[sammy89]

Meh, I'm one of those 'defend your man to the death' kind of guys

 

[kel varnsen]

here's what wenger said three years ago:
<a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/a/arsenal/4842424.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/footbal ... 842424.stm</a>

wonder if we'll see eduardo play on saturday and if wenger is a hypocrite.

 

[Cruisio]

One thing about arshavins goal, or rather his celebrations:

Was it just me, or did it seem like nobody came to celebrate it with him? like he was looking for someone to celebrate with but no one came and only much later did some fellas come and high five him...

Is he really that unpopular?

Its already been mentioned once but the only problem I had with it is that he didnt seem at any stage to want to thank Ramsey for the pass, which I was disappointed with because it was a great reverse ball from the young lad.

On the penalty incident again: annoyingly this is probably going to stop us getting alot of legit penalties for a while. Also, Kel, c'mon man, calm the fudge down. We've all agreed it was wrong to do, but as I keep saying, its in the past now and I would bet you right here and now that we never see Eddy dive again all season, so if you want to feel its disgraced the whole club, then do so, but dont snap at people who dont agree with that view. The cold hard facts are in terms of double standards for Eboue and Eduardo here is this - None of Eboues dives ever got us a penalty or a goal, whereas Eddys did. Remember when Eboue dived to get the free kick in the champions league final that led to our goal? Didnt see too many people having a massive go at him that time. The cold hard truth of the matter is that dives that lead to us winning games, are alot easier to swallow than random dives all over the pitch

 

[True Gooner]

Prove? This is baseless accusation

From Le Prof himself:

"I believe it was not a penalty but I'm not sure if the keeper touched him. Eduardo might be a bit cautious because of the injury that he had. He might have jumped out of the way."

:x

Yes, Yes.. Who would have guessed? lets drop the "bu..bu..but what about his horrific injury? surely he wasn't aiming for it! the goalkeeper just sneezed and he thought it was his knee!" Just come out and say sorry ffs, and lets move on.

Cripes - are you still taking the moral high ground? It's not like he denied that it was a dive either. Wenger defends his own players shocker!

Compare that to the the time when Sir Alex Ferguson told Geoff Shreeves to **** off because Shreeves asked him whether he thought Ronaldo dived.

here's what wenger said three years ago:
<a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/a/arsenal/4842424.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/footbal ... 842424.stm</a>" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

wonder if we'll see eduardo play on saturday and if wenger is a hypocrite.

What kind of dream world do you live in? Of course he's not going to do that, not when the stakes could well be a million of pounds.

Secondly, the article is about implementing rules so that players are detered from diving. He's never said he would ban any of his players that dive. Stop stirring **** up.

They've no ****ing right to make up rules after the incident to take place.

Don't get me wrong, Eduardo was wrong to dive and that puts him in the bracket of players that have dived in the past including Messi, Fabregas, Babel, van Nistelroy, Henry, Rooney but I don't think you can treat him as serial diver a la Gerrard, Ronaldo, Eboue or Drogba. Give him the benefit of the doubt because that's what fans do. If you still can't stomach the sight of him go watch some other sport.

I wouldn't mind if they did ban him if it guranteed that every other offender will also be banned but that's never going to happen and the manager has no obligation to take the moral high ground. It makes absolutely no sense no matter how 'nice' it sounds.

 

[raphael_as]

You know what pisses me off most about Eduardo's dive - yeah I'm upset he did it because I like to think we're better than that, but I can live with a player going down too easy now and then - no what really upsets me is that it has now completely overshadowed a pretty dominant performance by the team when we weren't even playing that well.

So now all the pundits get to go on about how (instead of having the tie well in hand without Celtic really threatening to do anything) Celtic apparently had us under the cosh, were inevitably going to score and maybe even steal the ties, and we had to cheat to get out of it.

It's complete bollocks to be frank, but you already saw the ITV commentators going on about how the dive was the pivotal moment of the game and how it completely changed the complexion of the match....did it my arse - yes Celtic were seeing more of the ball in the middle of the pitch then in the first leg but to say they were threatening us is wishful thinking of epic proportions. The best chances of the match to that point had all gone to us.

But there you have it - Eduardo's completely unnecessary bit of cheating (and honestly, there is no way to defend him here it was bloody obvious to everyone watching (except apparently the ref) that he was going to go down the second he saw Boruc come towards him) has now somehow smeared the entire team's performance and not only in this match, but over the last 3 weeks as well - no one remembers that we have no scored 15 goals in 4 games while rarely breaking out of 2nd gear. No one remembers how excellent our defense has been...no it's all about the 1 second that Eduardo decided that he needed to cheat.

 

[kel varnsen]

I wouldn't mind if they did ban him if it guranteed that every other offender will also be banned but that's never going to happen and the manager has no obligation to take the moral high ground. It makes absolutely no sense no matter how 'nice' it sounds.

of course he won't. wenger is a hypocrite. always has been, always will be.

though, same goes for most managers.

 

[Illusion]

Eboue was great, probably his best performance in an Arsenal shirt as an attacking player.

I felt Denilson, Gallas and Vermaelen were also excellent. Rest of them were fairly pedestrian.

Agreed.

Denilson has been quality in all of our games so far this season, really pleased with that.

 

[Clrnc]

Anyway, I don't understand the Diaby criticism, he did well in his role, defending attacking decently, thats all. He didn't break up our plays, nor did he lose the ball too much.

And we Gooners need to be united now. Why the **** are we quarelling still about the Eduardo incident when the outside world is all attacking us now

 

[outlaw_member]

really? it seem to me arsenal fans are just as clueless and classless as every other set of fans. if you read the comments here on mania, most fans seem to accept eduardo's cheating. they defend it with "everyone else is doing it" or "there was contact" or "eduardo is such a nice guy" or "who can blame him, he was injured for such a long time" etc etc.

only a few arsenal fans here on mania have stated things as they really are. eduardo cheated and it was a disgrace to both arsenal and football in general.

I've never agreed with either assertions. Our club nor our fans are any more classier than any other club or set of fans that are out there.

 

[USArsenal]

i cant believe people are still going on about it..

 

[scruzgooner]

nice little piece on the mirror:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Arsenal-3-Celtic-1-Wenger-s-boys-cruise-into-Champions-League-group-stage-article133623.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Ar ... 33623.html</a>" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

eduardo disgraced himself and the team diving for the penno (a la pires during the unbeaten run against pompey). however, i agree with everyone who says garrard, rooney, etc. would have gotten far, far more kid glove treatment about it. the article above is full of a vitriol i've rarely seen in the media. clearly martin lipton has it against eddy for more than the dive last night.

This is what I was talking about. Never, ever, would you see that sort of tripe written about an English player diving. It's because Eduardo is a foreign player diving against a British team. F*cking tragic!

I detest diving, but I detest even more the hypocrisy the media display in dealing with these instances. These w*nkers can't pick and choose when and where they take the moral high ground. Pathetic!

i read your post after having found the link, and nearly answered you with it. i think you're dead on, and the mirror are a bunch of partisan hacks who hate arsenal for their success.

 

[kel varnsen]

really? it seem to me arsenal fans are just as clueless and classless as every other set of fans. if you read the comments here on mania, most fans seem to accept eduardo's cheating. they defend it with "everyone else is doing it" or "there was contact" or "eduardo is such a nice guy" or "who can blame him, he was injured for such a long time" etc etc.

only a few arsenal fans here on mania have stated things as they really are. eduardo cheated and it was a disgrace to both arsenal and football in general.

I've never agreed with either assertions. Our club nor our fans are any more classier than any other club or set of fans that are out there.

of course we're not. arsenal fans are just as clueless and classless as everyone else.

 

[A_Gooner_Matata]

Some are, some aren't.

 

[True Gooner]

I wouldn't mind if they did ban him if it guranteed that every other offender will also be banned but that's never going to happen and the manager has no obligation to take the moral high ground. It makes absolutely no sense no matter how 'nice' it sounds.

of course he won't. wenger is a hypocrite. always has been, always will be.

though, same goes for most people.

Fixed. :wink:

 

[sabret00the]

Lovely stuff from Denilson, more like the original player we saw a few years ago.

It was a lot like that wasn't it, was actually quite beautiful.

 

[outlaw_member]

It was a lot like that wasn't it, was actually quite beautiful.

It's great to see him play at moment. Without being tasked with either the main defensive or offensive duties, he can go about playing his own game contributing on both ends of the pitch. I think the current balance we have is absolutely perfect, with Song as the shield, Denilson as the link and Cesc as the creator. Things could get pretty complexed if it's Nasri alongside Cesc instead, but obviously it has the potential to be even better.

 

[kel varnsen]

It was a lot like that wasn't it, was actually quite beautiful.

It's great to see him play at moment. Without being tasked with either the main defensive or offensive duties, he can go about playing his own game contributing on both ends of the pitch. I think the current balance we have is absolutely perfect, with Song as the shield, Denilson as the link and Cesc as the creator. Things could get pretty complexed if it's Nasri alongside Cesc instead, but obviously it has the potential to be even better.

balance is one thing, but this was celtic. i think we still offer little going forward. only in glimpses do we really see what this team is capable of. song is too passive and defensive, denilson hesitates a bit too much on the ball and diaby, well, let's just say he is no cesc.

i think we have no chance on saturday unless cesc plays. last night's midfield with denilson, diaby and bendtner all there, simultaneously, was awful at times.

 

[outlaw_member]

Our Celtic performance owed to Fabregas's absence more than anything. Diaby and Bendtner are something else, but a Song-Denilson-Cesc trio has worked very well. Nasri or Rosicky would definitely add another dimension to the midfield, but my worry is that it's going to come at the expense of Cesc's freedom.