PL: Blackburn Rovers vs Arsenal | 25/02/06

[the dawn raids]

fabregas was better once hleb came on; the whole team was. but before that he was, much like the bolton game, just aimlessly hoofing the ball upfield wasting possession. reyes was invisible, as once again, was pires. we go from the wingers making a huge impace to them being completely invisible for 65 minutes. and once again, wasteful in front of goal; will someone at least try to take a shot? **** me.

 

[AFCFan4Ever]

Sorry but these things have to be said.....

- Senderos is a freakin liability and should not start another game unless it's an absolute must. He's clumsy, gets caught off of position a lot, and can't play with the ball at his feet...gives it away a lot of the time. He let Craig friggin' Bellamy abuse him today FFS and he damn near cost us 2 goals against Madrid. I don't care who we have to play next to Toure but Senderos is toast IMO.

- Gilberto....see the first two sentences from above. He's been found out since Vieira left. :roll:

- As far as Henry goes, I won't go into much detail because I'm too mad and don't want to type that much lol...all I can say is, please do us all a favor and just let it be known you want to leave, it's crystal clear that you do so why hide it anymore? You don't give 100% anymore and you think you're bigger than the rest of the team, some captain huh. You deserve to be the bench after crap like today, it's just sad that our manager doesn't have the balls to put you there.

I wish Wenger would show some steel and start fielding a team that actually looks like it wants to win...hell if we're gonna go with the youth movement we'd might as well play them, at least they look hungry. I would love for him to field the following lineup for the next few games (even though there is no chance in hell of it happening)...

Lehmann
Eboue Toure Djourou Cole
Hleb Cesc Diaby Reyes
Walcott Van Persie

I don't care if we get beat 6-0...at least it'd be good to see some players who actually care and want to try.

I'm done ranting now...get it sorted Arsenal, this is disgraceful. :cry:

 

[choi12911]

Too much pessimism here. We'll win easily. We have Diaby who can take physical players out of the pitch. We also have Abedayor who is capable of winning most of the headers. We have Toure Eboue back and even Cole may play. RVP might be back too. I think we'll field a very strong line-up and I can't see us losing to Blackburn at all after such a fine performance against Real.

I'm going to hold you on that mate. :wink:

well well well.... :wink:

Yeah. Sorry about that. Just couldn't picture Arsenal losing to a **** team like Blackburn at the time.

 

[universialemcee]

why do we always start to try when we're losing?

 

[JazzG]

I don't care what happens in the CL but if we don't finish at least 4th this season will be a complete disaster, we have to focus on the league because time is running out and in the CL even if we get through there are other teams who far better than R.Madrid and we have no chance against them so putting all our eggs in that basket is a risky tactic.

 

[AFCFan4Ever]

It's sad because it's looking more and more likely that our only shot of CL football next year is to win the damn thing this season...even getting into Europe as a whole looks in doubt right now. Ugh.

 

[KingReyes]

rennie is a ******.
best still though was when he got in the way of fabregas thus not letting fabregas get the ball and bellamy runs down the other end and nearly scores.

Seriously during the game before that happened I was like "What the **** is the ref doing in the middle of the pitch all the time?" "Get out of the way you ****" And then it happened! :roll:

 

[orion]

Another day in the office it seams.

Except for that 15 minutes spell or so after Hleb's introduction when we started to look something like the team we used to be, unfortunately a real game of football still lasts for a whole 90 minutes.

Of course our spell came when Blackburn midfield started to draw back as we still seam totally inept when pressurised high up the field.
It's come a long way, when a brief bright spell in the game that ends in defeat seams like improvent from what's been on offer lately. (Haven't seen the Madrid game).

Obviously we'll be a better team when the injury list shortens, but there''s still so many questions to be addressed when the season is over and not much time with the World Cup looming.

 

[Viper]

The positives out of this game: Hleb is getting his form back.

 

[brady]

all i can say about henry now is that he should please play better so that someone would actually want to buy him... oh and the other good thing about that is that we might actually be a better team.

 

[rizan]

Arsenal boss Arsène Wenger: "I'm very sad because I don't think we deserved to lose this game.
"For maybe five or six minutes in the first half we suffered a little bit, but overall we were always on top of the game but we couldn't score.

"We lacked a little bit mental sharpness maybe because of Tuesday night but overall we gave absolutely everything physically until the last second of the game."

source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/4726966.stm

This is the problem, that he thinks there is no problem.

Yes, we do have a problem and what is it ? Scoring goal. Football is not a game of passing, scoring goal is what football all about. Chelski did that, last season and this season. In our previous seasons we have a few midfielders who did that, Bobby and Freddie. They scored more than 10 per season. What about this season ? Freddie - none ? Not so long time ago, somebody mentioned about Plan B. Out Plan B is not Adebayor or Baptista. Plan B is scoring goal, just like Liverpool has Morientes and Barca's Messi. When our beloved captain couldn't score or rather said played very badly, we need a player who can do that. Lupoli was subbed because of this but can he do that ? He's out of position, he's a striker and should have subbed earlier. I'm missing Robin as he is the plan B, he can score. Or maybe walcott, because he can do that too. Wenger shouldn't talk about inexperienced side or Tuesday's game recovery. The players are athletes, it's their job because their body for sure will adapt on any game after another.

I don't remember who's the legend of Real Madrid but he said s'thing like this "when the opponent scores 1, then we'll score 2". That's all my points.

p/s: Yes, we are suffering - shouldn't be offside balls, since Robin against Chelski at home.

 

[Lukazan]

I just watched Arsenal on Football First and I have to say the criticism of Adebayor I find harsh.

He showed some real nice touches and fought for the team, even late on.. something I could not say for his strike partner.

The part where Adebayor brought down the ball on his chest and shot from a ball in the box was wonderful, should have scored, but the way he gave himself the opportunity was class.

 

[nazo]

Wow i can't believe noone is talking about the not given penalty against Cesc. That looked like a 100% penalty to me but the ref just continued the game.

 

[Lukazan]

There was contact but the way Cesc went down screamed dive to me.

Put it this way, if the 1 goal from Blackburn had been a penalty for the same thing there would have been an uproar on this site.

 

[awooga83]

Yeah i don't think it was a pen minimal contact and it did look like he dived because he was losing the ball.

 

[jaguars4ever]

He may have got the ball, but he 100% took out Cesc to get to it.

 

[Tegh]

Okies, I also just watched it on FF. Why the **** does it take us 60minutes to get into a game? If only we went at the opposition like that from the start, we'd put the ****'s up them and be able to play our high tempo game. They're having to pelt it out of the area every other minute just to keep us at bay, great, we keep posession to look for an opening all the while they're crapping their pants. We had the chances, and another mistake by Senderos cost us the game.

Cesc - penalty, he went down a bit ott, but I think that was due to desperation and fatigue, it was a definite penalty. The fact the ball ran away from him a bit will also have come into play. Gave the ball away a few times, but was at the heart of our best attacking play. In particular, the opportunity that arose for the **** in the next paragraph.

Pires - ****. Offer him a new contract, and there's some serious mental illness going around the board-room. His work rate - ****. His passing - ****. His shooting - ****. His tackling - sorry, not meant to associate him with tackling. We're being counter attacked three on three and this pony **** just jogs back with the guy in posession 2yards infront of him. **** off to Valencia you ****.

Gilberto - mediocre at best, dwelled on the ball and gave it away as usual. ******.

Henry - poor touch, poor work rate, poor captaincy. Should have opened his mouth and told his team-mates to get stuck in, and stop being a bunch of lazy pussies. He and Adebayor are yet to gel, and that's not surprising since they've not played together a lot, but that hinders us upfront. When Pires came on, the two couldn't connect worth a ****. Perhaps he was tired from Tuesday's game where he did a lot of running, and albeit wasn't brilliant, he worked quite hard.

Adebayor - worked hard, great chest to create an opportunity for himself, but the shot was dog piss. Lovely pieces of skill at times, and a great ball for Henry who didn't read it due to the lack of understanding. All in all I'd say he was pretty good.

Eboue - did fine.

Toure - quality.

Senderos - **** me. You get skinned like a kipper by Bellamy, then try to rape him on the pitch as he makes his way into the area. What the hell is wrong with you? You make more than one mistake a game, but, you keep trying - can't fault you for that. Unlucky with the header. Just chill out, you have the talent, you need to get some consistency.

Flamini - Senderos had to cover for him a few times when Bellamy was found alone on the flank, so a bit ****ty positional wise. However, down the flank attacking he was good, even saw the bugger pull a few stepovers at one point in a bid to try and create something.

Lehmann - I ****ing love you. Great work getting stuck in and giving the opposition grief, wouldn't change you for the world.

Reyes - didn't really get the ball, and when you did you didn't offer much. However, you should have stayed on instead of Pires being subbed on. You had the odd rare flash of skill, but when you ran half the pitch only to take too heavy a touch infront of Andy Todd it was a shame.

Diaby - not much coverage of you mate, but you worked hard and ****ed up Lucas Neill, so well done for that. Tried to create openings whenever possible.

Hleb - quality. Offered us outlets for attack, and created openings for others. Again, first touch - insanely immense, best I've ever seen for beating a man. Quality run at goal, and a BEAUTIFUL ****ing chip through to ADE's chest. I really hope you and Reyes begin on the wings for our following games. You were great when you first joined and the injury screwed you up, since then you've had to get your stamina back, and work on consistency and rebuilding a relationship with team-mates.

 

[celestis]

It is simple why we lost , we put away our Madrid beating formation and went back to the one we were losing away with eg why didn't helb start , Fabregas in the middlle and play Reyes behind Henry and Pires on the left wing . We arent a physical team so lets not pretend to be - play to our strengths. The team seemed to have clicked, instead of nurturing that, you know who puts Hleb on the bench brings in Adebayour who still needs time to settle. I am not surprised we looked disjointed plus Henrys first touch deserted him.

By the way Flamini was close to our best player - have a feeling he is going to be one of our best nex year.

By the way those that think that Arsène does not give the players a pasting need to read some of the interviews that the former and currrent players give.

 

[patrick42uk]

I don't care what happens in the CL but if we don't finish at least 4th this season will be a complete disaster,

dont say things like that jazz. its a big possibility that we wont have cl football next year and the sooner we get used to it the better. comments like this make it difficult.

 

[siddharth]

After so many years of struggle in the CL i have come to conclusion that the only way we can win the CL is if we absolutely had to. It's reached to a stage where winning the CL has become a lot easier than finishing 4th. :?

With the current team i just can't see us finishing 4th especially when we have the likes of bolton (who have played 3 matches less) , west ham and blackburn breathing our neck. For a team so finely tuned to score goals we are obviously going to struggle when the midfiled and the forward just can't seem to link up and i don't see it changing soon.