Anger/frustration vented – check

Today is Sunday, some do not enjoy this particular day of the week. Often it is referred to a day of nothing, I actually quite enjoy them. Most will get the Sunday papers in, have some toast and coffee, and then potter off to a DIY/garden centre. My plan is to get the blog done and then take it easy until one, when I am playing football – I cannot wait. Hopefully I should be back in time to watch the Spurs v Reading match.

Why am I waffling on about events which are irrelevant to Arsenal Football Club? Well when we lose or concede a goal I get this awful sickly feeling in my stomach – I hate it. Yesterday we lost and were atrocious, which means talking about it only hurts more. I usually am quite an optimist, when we lose I take the positives and resist laying into players or the manager, however today is different… I guess I better talk about yesterday’s game then.

Now I am not going to give a match report on the game, I will simply work my way through the things that are bothering me. Firstly I truly believe Arsene picked the wrong team. I am clueless as to why Diaby played left midfield. What is that about? I understand during his recuperation from injury, playing him there was a way of easing him into the game but now he is fit and needs to play central. When he does, he is awesome. Surely Wenger could see from the Everton game how effective he can be. So instead of playing Rosicky left he went with Diaby left and Denilson and Fabregas in the middle. Fabregas is clearly shattered, which I find strange as he did not actually represent Spain so really he has had a week off. Fabregas should be rested/dropped. For me it would do him good, now in the comments yesterday I am pretty sure every player got a hammering at least once by someone, including Cesc. I am not going to get on his back, I just think he needs to sit a game or two out. We miss Gilberto badly, as much of a disaster our defence was yesterday (I shall discuss that shortly), we really miss him. We do not really have another player like him – firstly a central midfielder that is experienced – we have Fabregas/Denilson/Diaby/Flamini, all young. Secondly one who sits in front of the defence. Fabregas and Denilson are very similar players, both love to play, both offer good passing but do we want two players along side each other who are so similar? Neither of those protects our defence, surely we need a balance, hence the combination of Gilberto and then either Diaby/Fabregas. I would be inclined to go with Gilberto and Diaby for our game against West Ham.

Moving onto the wide players – ignoring the fact Diaby played let (he did ok), Hleb was terrible. Actually terrible. The thing is, I know what he is capable of. He was brilliant at the early stages of this season, and excellent in the Champions League last season. He has been poor of late and needs a spell on the bench – I do not want to see him sold but I do think he should be dropped. Play Freddie there, he gave us more running than most when he came on. Up top, you see how I am leaving defence until last, we had one player who ran his heart out – Adebayor and one who looked useless – Baptista. I have been hesitant to criticise the Bap as I want him to do well. I want him to be this difficult to handle powerful centre forward. He is not though. His touch once again yesterday was absolutely awful, he missed a decent chance too. He should not start any games now, we either go with one up top, or if Hleb rediscovers some form, play Freddie of Adebayor. Adebayor is the only player who appeared to give a shit yesterday. He ran and ran, and he hit the post twice. He will start every game now up until the end of the season, and rightly so.

At the back we apparently had our first choice back our – good lord what a complete shambles. Crouch was excellent, there is no denying that but seriously we could have dealt with him if we had actually defended properly. We were all over the place and I hope they all got a complete bollocking. It was basic stuff really. One thing that really bothers me with our team is how many goals we concede off crosses. In my opinion when I coach defending my first question I ask the kids is how can we limit conceding off crosses? One bright spark usually pops up and says ‘by preventing the cross coach’, exactly. Why oh why do Arsenal not do this? Why do they not press the person with the ball. Take the Crouch header for example, stunning header however how much time did Aurelio have to cross it – he had forever. Forever to look up and pick his man out. Eboue needed to get to him, get there quick and get tight. Embarrassing. The two centre backs need to take a long hard look at themselves. They are both experienced players, they need to show the way forward or risk being dropped for Senderos and Djouoru. One thing I do not understand is why Senderos was not use for Crouch’s aerial threat. He was on the bench wasn’t he. Very odd. Djouoru was not, I presume he was injured? The guy is 6ft 4, he might have been able to deal with Crouch a bit better. Clichy was positionally poor and offered nothing going forward. His crossing was crap. I think he does have a bright future though.

I could go on and on but I won’t. My point is that I struggle to remember the last time we actually played well, I think it was the League Cup Final. Since then we really have been atrocious. Even the victory against Villa was uninspired.

I am going to play centre back today, I am 5 ft 9 but if we concede off any crosses I will be devastated. I expect a clean sheet and a performance which looks like we care, Arsenal did not even come close to that yesterday.

A long week for them at the training ground. Maybe this result will be a powerful wake up call for the players and manager.