A Happy new year to the legions of readers of this innovative, agile and technology savvy website. This year the site was honored to be nominated for some many global awards. But the one that was most appreciated was for Best Looking and Most Humane Human Being on Planet Earth. Humbled though I was it was hard to argue with.
The resulting celebrations go some way to explaining the lack of review in the last few weeks; that combined with abject referring. It’s hard to know where to start. But a short recap is most probably in order.
The Liverpool game was classic Arsenal at it’s best and worst. A microcosm of our team. Crystal Palace was a surprising ray of light whereas the West Brom game was classic Mike Dean at his best.
I’ve never been too bothered about the F.A.Cup – though it’s nice to win it. With all the up coming games in the League Cup and the NoHoppa cup missing out on round 4 is not the end of the world. BTW, you’ll know when we’ve reached the end of the world because just before the Stop sign there’ll be, on the side of the road, two players sitting there lacing up their boots – Ob1 and Theo. Today we saw how utterly awful and useless Ob1 so often is. Considering the opposition it was pretty telling how irrelevant he was. I mean, playing attacking midfield against a below average Championship team, should be the opportunity to assert your ability. Today, we again saw, that aside from the repetitive backwards and sideways passes that there is very limited talent there.
Losing is not so worrying or depressing. What is though, is the persistence of these players in the Arsenal squad. If you offered Ob1 to any other Premier League team (not just in the top 6) who would take him? I know he’s young but I don’t see progression over the last 2 years. Today he was irrelevant. It’s depressing to have to watch the same thing happen game after game. Unfortunately, this lies at the feet of AW. For some reason he believes in Ob1. I can’t believe anyone else in the club does.
Ob1 redefines turgid. He redefines inept. He redefines crap. He redefines wanker. And worse off, I see no hope for us to off-load him. I see no future for Arsenal that does not involve Ob1. How can that be? Especially, (as we try to turn to the positive) when we have Maitland-Niles and Neilson. And Eddie. And Willock. All of whom have an understanding of the game that dwarfs the midget football brain that is Ob1. I despair of running out of insulting adjectives to refer to him by. He’s so poor he makes me wonder whether Bellend is a class player. He’s such a useless fucker that I wonder whether I’d select Theo ahead of him – answer – hell yes.
Today was somewhat of a fluke – two great goals from their Yank defender – he won’t score again this year. But, generally speaking, NF deserved it more than us. We lacked drive and we lacked finishing. Even though DW23 scored he’s just not a forward that can regularly threaten any defense. If you doubt that, please see he’s trademark header off his shoulder in the first half.
The irony is that the youth in the team provided the shining light whereas the experienced players were the liability. I’ll exclude the BFG from the latter because (1) he scored and (2) I don’t like to upset BFG’s at the best of times. MN and Nelson were very impressive. Willock was slightly below this high standard. I also liked Holdings performance and still prefer him to Chambers. But aside from the wanker that is known as Ob1, Elneny was ineffectual, Debuchy was poor, Theo clueless and DW23 poor.
Loosing is not so annoying. What is, is that this squad carries so many below average senior players that are incapable of stepping up to dominate below average Championship competition. It’s not up to the youngsters to lead the way. Today we needed to see leadership from Elneny, Theo, DW23 and even Ob1. This was the chance (again) for these fringe players to assert them selves. And assert themselves they did. They asserted that they would not get into the Nottingham Forest team.
Sometimes I realize that it’s not fun anymore writing these reviews. In the same way it’s not fun watching this team. The predictability of the sub-standard players, the predictability of inter-play and the predictability of the outcome make it so hard to get angry, agitated or annoyed. Change is a coming. Slower than we’d want. But in a year or two most of these dead-weights will be gone to other pastures. We’ll be rid of their wages and their tattoos.
In the meantime, we have to suffer through wasted opportunities like today. How can we lose to NF? Well, aside from the above, we barely tested their goalkeeper. We did not craft chances, we did not pepper their goal and did not stretch their backline. There is this one-dimensional aspect to our play. When those roles are filled by Ozil and Alexis et al, it can be so sweet to watch. But with these second tier players it just won’t come off. Today we missed Giroud and Jack. Our midfield had no penetration nor dive. It was all sideways. And, it was tedious and boring to watch. This is not the Arsenal we’d seen in previous years. This was slow motion, patched-up and sub-standard Arsenal. Is this what we should expect now? I fear so. Even the “first” team carries too much dead weight. And when we (rightfully) sell Alexis in a few days, we’ll be further shorn of class. As valuable as he is to our team we have to get him off our books. Part of me does not care about the loss of money – after all Stan has more than enough in his pocket change to absorb this loss of £25m or £35m; it’s not my money. It’s more to do with moving forward. If not now then in the summer we’ll lose Alexis. So let’s get it over an done with so we can build for the future.
This year, in my view, never involved getting into the top 4. If we are to return to the Champions League it would be via the NoHoppa Cup. And that is a low probability event. We are not good enough to be in the top 4. If there was any doubt about that you only had to watch our first 22 matches. You can’t lose at Stoke and Watford, draw at West Brom etc and believe your team is one of the top four in the country. I never did. But I do care about next season and the one after that. I do care about our squad and the balance therein. I do care about Ozil. He’s the one truly world class player we have. We have to build a team around him. We have to keep him at Arsenal. Alexis has shown where his interests lie – not that I blame him – but Ozil has not said anything (via the usual channels that Alexis has used). He is ours to keep. But you have to believe he’s watching these developments. Assuming we let Alexis leave now then we have to bring in a replacement now. I don’t think Mahrez fills that position but I’d be more than happy to see him come to us. Let’s take some of that Ox money combine it with the Alexis money and bring in a couple of players. Let’s sell Debuchy and Theo.
What’s disappointing about this review (aside that is from the usual woeful commentary) is the lack of passion. I don’t care as much. I did not care today because it’s all so predictable. I was upset with Dean because of the dropped 2 points at West Brom. And because Dean is an utter cunt. And I’m upset that rather than hold CuntDean accountable the retards at the FA prefer to take the easy option and go after AW. It’s amazing to think the future of football in England is in the hands of such retarded fools. This is a multi-billion pound business being run by pea-brain, old-boys who have no earthly understanding of the game. The success in England is despite these morons not because of it. Wenger is completely right in his observations about referring. How can Dean still be considered a top-flight ref? Dean is the Ob1 of referring. How is there no accountability? Why are there so few refs that can handle premier league games?
Do you know how much these Premier League refs get paid? About £70K. That’s what the best players in the EPL earn in a couple of days. Yet the best refs are treated like serfs. This is a multi-billion pound business. You get what you pay for. And £70K will get you CuntDean. BTW, how much do NBA/NFL refs earn? Upwards of $175K – and there are 6+ refs for those games.
The truth is it’s not his fault he’s a cunt – it’s the fault that the PGMO (the Professional Fame Match Officials) organization headed up by that ex-ref Mike Riley chooses to support this level of incompetence. This is the root cause of the problems. You combine the PGMO with the FA and then you’ll understand why the future is so bleak. No change is capable of originating from the basterd child of these organizations. But, because they are sheep, they will follow others. So we are dependent on the other European leagues (or even the US) for new ideas and approaches.
Oh a feel better now after that rant. It’s a sad day though when my passions are only aroused not by Arsenal but by our incompetent refs and related organizations. OK, enough bullshit for one day.
-LB7