Why is that stinking* Yid posting in here?
*shittytogs
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Goals from two substitutes. Arsene knows.
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Three points from the love of my life on St. Valentine’s Day. What more could I ask for?
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Some right fixture congestion building up after that 5th round home draw to Hull. The 6th round is fixed for 12 March and a replay will have to be pencilled into this schedule now:
Tue 23 Feb - European Cup - Barcelona (h)
Sun 28 Feb - Premier League - Man U (a)
Wed 2 Mar - Premier League - Swansea (h)
Sat 5 Mar - Premier League - Spurs (a)
Sat 12 Mar - Premier League - West Brom (a) or FA Cup 6th Round
Wed 16 Mar - European Cup - Barecelona (a)
Sat 19 Mar - Premier League - Everton (a)
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The Specialist in Failure will no doubt be throwing a strop over the congestion.
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That late February / early March fixture pile up when I was fighting on 4 fronts always tested my management skills on Football Manager.
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Plenty of scope for the Specialist in Failure to get his excuses in early.
Some smell of shitty underpants in the past few posts in here.
The smell of shitty underpants is coming from the Woolwich fans at the juggernaut coming at them from up the Seven Sisters Road.
You wrote off their chances back in August you stupid cunt.
Never had any doubts about the potential and talent. With all the young talent we have though, I was indeed quite down in the dumps about the slow start to the season which saw us take five weeks until mid September to register our first win and saw us languishing well off the pace at such an early stage in the season. Once we got that late winner at Sunderland to break the duck, we’ve never looked back. I’ve felt since about late October that we would win the title.
Only a fool like you could dismiss this pool of Spurs players ‘As poor a Spurs team as i can recall having the misfortune of watching in a long time’.
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I see wegner the cunt has backed high ticket prices
Replay is just what Arsenal need. With returning players (Welbeck, Cazorla and possibly Wilshere) and fringe players (Chambers, Gibbs, Elneny, Iwobi, Campbell) all needing game time, it’s a perfect opportunity to get them a good workout and have them ready for the run in.
Clever out of Wenger to play for a draw, knowing it doesn’t effect the first eleven.
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Calling shitty togs @carryharry
The now customary last 16 exit in the ‘Champions’ League looks to be a formality for last seasons EPL third placed team.
How was Ear to the Ground tonight mate?
He’s lucky Ear to the Ground doesn’t air on a Thursday night.
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Such a great knowledge of the game, who would have thought Barcelona would put Arsenal out? How did he see it coming? Amazing.
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Michael Walker in the Paper of Record today quite rightly putting the boot into the Specialist in Failure
It was a German managed by a French man but it said something stereotypical about English football: Arsenal versus Barcelona on Tuesday night and as the respective captains tossed a coin for kick-off, it was startling to see Per Mertesacker – all 6ft 6in of him – tower over 5ft 7in Andrés Iniesta.
Someone with concerns about the nature of English football could have taken a snapshot and asked: what’s wrong with this picture?
It was incongruous and spoke to the perception – held beyond England and occasionally within – that there is still too much emphasis on physique, speed and drama, and not enough on patience, wit and skill.
And this was Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal. Yet as the game unfolded it became clear we would again be viewing the match via old certainties: English brawn versus continental sophistication. Almost 20 years after he succeeded Bruce Rioch, who succeeded George Graham who succeeded Don Howe, it was as if there had been no change. Where was the ingenuity? What did Wenger do that Graham would not have?
After two decades of the Wenger era, Tuesday’s yield was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain panting full-pelt down the wing and Alexis Sánchez bolting around doing his own individual thing on the other flank.
Now these two are demonstrably fine players, as shown week in, week out in the Premier League, but here they were being assessed in the company of superiors.
What surprised was the level of Barcelona’s superiority. Arsenal were all-out individually and collectively from the start; by minute 71, when Lionel Messi scored his first, Arsenal were still puffing while Barcelona were pacing themselves around the final bend like Eamonn Coghlan 1983.
Aaron Ramsey is a really good midfielder but he looked as immature as Oxlade-Chamberlain when compared with Sergio Busquets. That might sound a bit unfair given Busquets is 27, Ramsey 25 and Oxlade-Chamberlain 22, but then Busquets won the first of his three Champions League and five La Liga titles aged 20.
Busquets is mature and intelligent, always has been. There is the odd flicker of that dislikable yappiness of his past – yappiness does seem to be a Barca feature – but in his midfield and defensive cover work Busquets is like an adult in a playground. He has seen it before. Busquets knows.
With him present and correct, as he is usually, Barcelona can probe, wait, attack. There is a method in their shape and chemistry in their style. No one is out of sync, as Sánchez was for Arsenal. When that has happened – see Zlatan Ibrahimovic – the experience has been short-lived.
What Busquets also gives to this supreme team, as described by his colleagues, is his competitive personality. They like his bite and appreciate what it gives them: freedom.
It is another dimension Arsenal – by direct comparison – lack. As many fans will argue, they have lacked it since the days of Patrick Vieira. The complaint is so common it has become boring, but that does mean it is invalid.
Wenger initially replaced Vieira with Cesc Fàbregas, which worked in terms of passing, but there has been no adequate substitute for Vieira’s leadership and the identity he gave Arsenal.
Wenger’s team were tight and organised on Tuesday, but what else? Understandably they were concerned by Barcelona’s strengths but Arsenal knew all about that long before the draw was made. Was there not intense thought about how Barca could be overcome? Maybe the Arsenal players were too busy tweeting self-congratulatory photos of themselves.
The club – and the manager – are due another round of back-patting this September. It will be Wenger’s 20th anniversary at the club.
But Tuesday night raised a legitimate question as to whether this anniversary should happen. A comparison made before the game was about the two clubs’ respective progress since the 2006 Champions League final. That was Barcelona’s first of four European Cups in the past 10 seasons, plus six La Liga titles. Arsenal have won the FA Cup twice, once against Hull – 16th in the Premier League at the time – and once against Aston Villa, 17th. And they say La Liga is a flat-track division.
Arsenal have had to “cope” with the construction of a new stadium in that time but an argument for leaving Highbury was that it could not generate the income the club required to compete at the highest level. Well, they have been at their new sponsored ground for a decade and are churning hundreds of millions in revenue. Yet Wenger’s frustrated description of his team on Tuesday was “average”.
Wenger, whose salary is a reported €11 million a year, was one of the club men behind the move from Highbury. At a certain management level they were entranced by the atmosphere – and money – generated by Arsenal’s Champions League games at Wembley in 1998 and 1999.
Highbury was Arsenal’s home, it meant something. The benefits of leaving it were meant to be seen in the transfer market and on the pitch by now. They haven’t been; they are seen in the bank.
It is time for big questions at Arsenal – and for Wenger. Held at arm’s length by Barcelona on Tuesday, unable to finish in the top two in the league since 2005, another is whether leaving Highbury has been justified.
Sweet Jesus.
In a quite shocking indictment of the manager, his centre back was taller than the corner forward.
Fire him immediately.
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