I love Arsenal’s first home game of the season. The pitch looks particularly green, the kit looks especially red and there is hope in the air. Granted, that hope may be diluted by the time that Manuel Almunia wafts through that air and clean misses punching the ball following a corner, but still it’s a start.
I'm delighted that the clock & 'stands' are back although I have always ignored the quadrants anyway and still sung "We're the North Bank Highbury", so it's business as usual as far as I'm concerned, it's just official business now. I’m glad to hear too via REDaction that “The Wonder of You” is no longer to be the music we run out to. It might be a song that people like, in isolation, but it should never have been our entry song.
The song played while the players wait in the tunnel to enter the pitch should be a piece of music that hits the opposition with awe, instilling fear, to make them brown their kecks. It should induce true trepidation at entering the field of play, tangible unease at facing Arsenal and our crowd. Arsenal’s pitch entry song should be potent as hell, to induce a diarrhoea-like dropping of the opposition’s stomach that says “you’re going to lose today, you piece!”. That kind of song is not a pleasant Elvis Presley ditty.
We all have our thoughts on what would be the perfect song and I used to love how we came out to ‘The A-team’ in the 80s. That is pretty current now too, with the film out. But we need something harsh rather than funny, albeit something that the Premier League would allow and which wouldn’t bring on heart attacks. Sunderland used to come out to ‘Dance of the Knights’ by Prokofiev, which is a fearsome, obdurate slab of classical music that says “Siberian hard labour in winter” better than any sentence could.
Arsenal could do with finding a piece of bastard classical music that is equally fearsome, or failing that perhaps go for some true terror and inflict something like Slayer’s “South of Heaven” or “World Painted Blood” on unsuspecting opposition (just the music mind, they could probably do without the lyrics). If these don’t scare our visitors from their intention to take points off Arsenal, it would certainly scare a few locals. The opening two minutes of "Seasons In The Abyss" (apt for our recent campaigns some might say), with an abridged version of the ending, would have most opposition giving up on the spot.
On the pitch, this season’s home opener sees us gifted with an obvious banker, promoted Blackpool at home. Title-chasing Arsenal versus drop fodder Blackpool. One a team of high scorers, full of confidence and eager for more willing flesh. The other, Arsenal.
Blackpool have waited 40 years to play Arsenal in a league match, on even terms. They will have fans nearing 50 who will have never experienced their side playing in such a fixture and they arrive fresh from lording it over a Wigan side that thought they were still in pre season. Their manager has a long-held ambition to face Arsenal and reveres Arsene Wenger. Please Arsenal, do not balls this up and give wide-eyed tourists Blackpool a one-goal lead with a startling moment of goalkeeping ineptitude.
To be fair to Almunia, he saved us at Liverpool last week. The early signs were not safe for the health of clean sheets or clean pants to be frank, when Manny run amok through his penalty area like a drunk at a wedding and wafted his arms vaguely near a corner. The ball went right past him and could clearly have led to a Liverpool goal. It was hideous. Proof, not that it remains needed, that he needs to be replaced humanely.
Almunia was slated in some quarters for letting the Liverpool goal inside his near post but, to be fair, the shot from Wash Ngog was belted at pace and was a cracker. If anything, I felt that Almunia may have saved the belter if his feet hadn’t been rooted to the ground, but few keepers would have saved it. Almunia made some astute saves late on though, before Pepe Reina made a timely donation to the Arsenal title fund.
In the meantime, we are left still waiting for the infamous new Arsenal goalkeeper and it looks like any chance of that is between Fulham’s Mark Schwarzer and Manchester City’s Shay Given. We have been after Schwarzer since the end of last season, Given has become plausibly prisible from City because they have opted for Joe Hart as their number one.
Fulham turned down a bid of £2 million for Schwarzer some months ago and are now reputed to want Carlos Vela plus cash to release Schwarzer. Either Fulham have acquired a particularly niche sense of humour lately or they are being plain stupid. If Mark Hughes now wants to bring in his former City keeper Given to replace Schwarzer joining Arsenal, the question we all pose is why not just cut to the chase and sign Given?
The episode brings into sharp focus the inanity that is Manchester City. They just don’t get football. All teams like, if possible, to have good cover in all positions. This usually translates to having a second-choice player who is perhaps 2/3s the calibre of the player that he covers, leaving him an adequate replacement and someone who is quite happy with that arrangement thank you.
City though are dumb: they rack up first-team players, to create what they think is a high-level squad. The reality is that their cover would be any other club’s first team players. These are players who are used to being regulars and will not take kindly for too long at being out of the side. Who are City going to play in central midfield from Gareth Barry, Nigel de Jong, James Milner, Yaya Toure and Patrick Vieira – apologies if I’ve forgotten somebody – that those left out won’t be severely narked?
In attack, City have replaced the superb player/nutcase Craig Bellamy with the highly-rated/nutcase Mario Ballotelli. Have I missed something here? Is Mario Ballotelli the Italian for Craig Bellamy? Baloney may be hard work but Ballotelli won’t be pleased if others are preferred to him. Come January, expect a few mooted narky departures from Eastlands.
Sevilla may have a departure of their own shortly, if reports of their French defender Sebastien Squillaci coming to Arsenal prove to be fruitful. Did I need to say that he is French? Nah. It’s an interesting move, Squillaci is a good player. My Dad would have been very pleased, he was well impressed with him at Italia '90. No, seriously, we need the numbers in defence, so if Arsene Wenger is prepared to spend money on him – or frankly on anything – then he must be good. Spend, I say.
Defensive height is a must as although I believe that Vermaelen and Koscielny will be a very effective partnership, against most Premier League teams, I just fear that their collective lack of height will be a problem against the rest. We have a short defence and, frankly, that must be addressed or it will just be a targeted weakness. Score twice in the opening 20 minutes against Blackpool though and we may not need to worry too much about defence for now.
Source: Simon Rose, The Online Gooner on 19 Aug 10
No comments:
Post a Comment