The Ramsey Deal is good for Arsenal

With Ramsey going to Forest loan it works in Arsenals favour most of all. True Forest get a very good player for a short period (whether the loan gets extended will depend on a few things)
The obvious is fitness, he's been out for a long time and needs matches to get sharp again to be at his best for Arsenal. But with a shocking injury like he had there may have been the hesitance to get stuck in again in case it happened again.
Playing in the Championship which is a little more rough and ready will surely bring this element of his game back to the fore.
And what with the mixed fortunes of the Arsenal midfield this year, with Fabregas out, along with Diaby, and with Denilson not performing to a high enough level, it can be good to fast track him back to the team, rather than nurse him gently.
So we will have a match fit, match sharp player who is ready to go. Good deal for Arsenal this one.

Arsenal lose Again

We really should update the post match reports on here, never mind actually get some blogs going.

I digress. Arsenal have only gone and lost for a second time this week, to a team beaten 6-0 earlier in the Champions League campaign. What's more to boot, Cesc is injured. Hamstring injury apparently, which is always a minimum of two weeks out usually, maybe more depending on the severity of said injury.
Now luckily it would take a monumentally bad set of results to put Arsenal out of the Champions League, basically because of the head to head record with Braga, but it can happen, which at start of play today was near unthinkable.
Admittedly it wasn't quite a full team, it was a half team, but the players selected and out there should do better against this opposition.
Conceding two late goals make this all the more galling as well. It happens to often (see Saturday defeat v Tottenham) and highlights a worrying lack of concentration.
I will admit a didn't see all of this game, thanks to a lack of Sky Sports, and a silly presumption this would be a win, and I'd pick up the highlights, but I did follow via Twitter and the BBC what occurred and its a more horrifying way to discover you have lost. None of the lead up and just a bam! there it is sensation.
It isn't a crisis by any stretch, not yet anyway, but two defeats in a week when so much more was expected is not a good prospect.

The Problem... and Solution?

I tend not to have a lot of negative feelings toward Arsenal. Those feelings tend to surface with poor performances and dropped points, which is obviously how I feel right now. When we put in good performances and happen to drop points, I’m not too bothered but these past games against West Brom, Newcastle and Tottenham are all too indicative of what we’ve seen in the past five years.

We all know it’s been five years since a trophy has been hoisted by our boys in red and we’re reminded of that all too often. Back then we had tons of class in Bergkamp, Henry, Pires, etc. but looking at our current squad, we’re not too far off that. Wenger has mentioned a few times that this current squad is the most talented he’s had and he may have a point, but no matter how much talent you possess, in order to win trophies you need to have that cutting edge. Coincidentally, “mental strength” is a term frequently used by Wenger, but funnily enough, I don’t remember him mentioning this before Vieira left.

Although it may be obvious to some, the departure of Vieira has led us down a scary path. In every squad you have different personality types, however, you also need that drive and determination, which comes from a select group of one or two players. Vieira was ours, Keane was ManUtd’s. As of right now, Terry is that player for Chelsea, while Rooney and Ferdinand carry the brunt of it for United. And looking at our squad... do we have anyone? Fabregas carries the team to a certain degree, but I think it’s fair to say that the departure of Flamini saw the closest resemblance of determination and workmanship fade away.

We’ve been contenders for the League and came close to winning some cups, but the drive that Vieira instilled into the team was infinitely important to our success. It was probably time for Vieira to leave in 2005 because of the continuing transfer rumours and his wanting to leave, but Wenger’s biggest mistake was not replacing that mentality in the team. This doesn’t even mean replacing him with a similar CDM, but simply signing a veteran player who would lead by example and demand more from his teammates. There’s too many nice guys in our squad and too often we see our players shrug at a stupid loss when they should be stark raving mad. I love these guys, but when Walcott or Fabregas (or Wenger for that matter) talk about the positives after a loss, I’m truly sick of it.

The funny thing is that you only have to look back at Vieira’s last game (FA Cup Final in 2005 against Man United) to see what I mean. We were outplayed for the most part, barely made their keeper work, but the determination of our squad brought us a trophy that day. In recent years we couldn’t have held on against Man United in that situation. We had a strong midfield in Vieira and Gilberto to protect the back four, but our defence that day was Lauren-Toure-Senderos-Cole. Not our greatest crop of players in defence. Cole was probably the best LB in the world at that time, but a Toure-Senderos combination would scare me in a cup final and Lauren wasn’t the most skilled of defenders. Still, we held on against the onslaught of Man United and won the trophy on penalties. Not a great performance by us, but it shows when you have that determination and work-ethic, you can win games like that.

After Vieira left, Henry took over and as amazing a player as he was, it was doomed from the start. Thierry was used to that mentality, but he never possessed the leadership required to lead an Arsenal team to success. Especially not the leadership qualities to lead a much younger side compared to the Arsenal generation he was brought up in.

And as I mentioned earlier, with Flamini we didn’t have the most skilled or talented player in the world, but he showed how hard work and determination can cement a player in the starting XI. He is no Vieira, but re possessed the quality that made his teammates work harder and cut the number of mistakes. He wasn’t nearly as talented or vocal as Vieira, but when you see a player working his balls off beside you, that makes you want to work that much harder.

In the end, we let him go because of salary demands, and instead of his winning mentality in the midfield we saw Diaby and Denilson step into his role in midfield. Two players who I believe are more talented than Flamini (especially Diaby), but two players who are also prone to huge mental errors and the all too occasional poor work ethic. Diaby was supposed to be the next Vieira and even though he possesses similar physical attributes, but he’s one of the dumbest players I’ve seen on the pitch. With Denilson, I can’t count the number of times he hasn’t tracked back properly that resulted in an opposition goal. Flamini could never be accused of that once.

So the question is, where do we go from here? I truly believe that our squad has improved from a year or two ago, but when will we see that work ethic, discipline and leadership back in the squad? For me, the answer lies in young Jack Wilshere. We have some players in Nasri and van Persie with an edge to them, but just watching Jack in the squad this season has given me confidence that we have that player, and he’s showing signs of it already.

Looking at our Premier League games with Wilshere on the pitch, our goals for and against are 15-7 (2.14:1) and without him we are 13-8 (1.62:1). In addition, you’ll find that the opposition have never scored twice when Wilshere was on the pitch. When you look at our PL losses, Jack came on as a sub after already being down 2-0 to WBA, lost to Chelsea at the Bridge, but he didn’t play at all against Tottenham, and his performance against Newcastle was the only positive in that dreadful 90 minutes. I’ll admit, the evidence isn’t completely overwhelming, but we see that there is value in Wilshere as an 18 year old, compared to the more experienced Denilson and Diaby.

So what does this really mean in the end? What I see is an incredibly committed, determined and hardworking 18 year-old, who possess all the talents of becoming a world class player and a first-class leader. He’s a winner and adds a real spark to the midfield, which is something we’ve lost in recent years. If “mental strength” is required for Arsenal to be successful, Jack matches his talent with that mental side of the game. In addition to being a teenager, he’s not afraid to give his teammates hell, like he did with Chamakh a few games back. If his leadership skills continue to develop, I have no doubt who our next captain will be. He has all the makings of it.

Maybe Wenger saw this all along or maybe he hasn’t or maybe I’m completely wrong. With that being said though, I think all realistic Gooners know that there is something lacking in this squad. We may be able to win a trophy this year, but the all too familiar mental breakdowns have shown its ugly face on a number of occasions this year and continues to put our impending success in question. If we are going to get it together and win trophies on a consistent basis, we need this mental edge and leadership, and all too often we seem complacent and willing to put up with mistakes. Something that Vieira would never accept when he played for Arsenal Football Club.

Maybe, just maybe, it will take an 18 year-old to show these adults how its done. If he does, I’ll name my first kid after him. I just hope my future wife loves Jack as much as I do and feels the same.

The Arsenal - My Generation

by tictoc

I've been an Arsenal supporter for the best part of 20 years and that time can be divided into two very different periods; those years that Arsene Wenger managed the club and those years that he didn't.

Whilst Arsene Wenger brought immediate success to the club we are now at a stage where either his tactics, of even employment, as our manager is being questioned by many in the game.

There are those asking Wenger to consider the way he sets up Arsenal to play their football whilst some believe it is time for him to leave all together, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to officially voice my opinion on the matter based on my experiences with supporting Arsenal.

I suppose the best place to start with reviewing my life following Arsenal would be the day I first became a supporter of the club, and I remember that day well.

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't give you the exact date, but I do remember the conversation I had with my mother following a day in Primary School where all my friends were talking about the football teams they supported. It was 1993 and I had just joined a school in Surrey so, obviously, most of them supported Manchester United. The odd one supported Chelsea, the odd Arsenal, and some supported clubs that I had no idea existed at the time but I had none and didn't want to be left behind.

I had to pick one, but I had no idea which one to pick.

My parents were not fans of football and so I had no club thrust on me from birth and I had to ask my mum who she thought I should support and it was then that she told me her father was always an Arsenal fan and so, before I could name a single player or fact about the club, I became one of them also (and would tell this to anyone who would ask).

For a while I was a fan by name only (rather like a lot of the Chelsea fans I meet today) and it took me a little while before resembling anything like the modern day supporter I am now, who’s emotional fortune rises and falls with the form of the team, and this happened by firstly falling in love with the players. It is fair to say that the club was a distant second in those early days as I started following Arsenal at the start of the 1993 campaign.

The 1993-1994 season Arsenal finished 4th whilst winning the European Cup Winners Cup with a 1-0 score line.

We achieved success in my first year as an Arsenal supporter and it was not the first time I had witnessed a 1-0 score line to get us there.

This was also the season that it took us an amazing (by today’s standards) 42 league games to score 53 goals whilst proudly conceding only 28 goals (10 goals fewer than the champions) and it was this year I was first introduced to the phrase 'boring boring Arsenal'.

Understandably then, my hero’s of the club was pretty much the entire back line...in fact, when ever I played football in the park I always wanted to be a defender because those were the players I was trying to emulate. I wanted to be Tony Adams and when I thought of Arsenal, and when I think back to The Arsenal, I think of those days when we taught the rest of the premiership how they should defend.

This is why when I play football today, I still play in defense. I grew up learning to play in the position I wanted (and still want!) to play in for the masters of 1-0 football and I didn't care at all for those who claimed we were boring.

At the end of the 1995 season Arsenal finished 12th and reached the final of the European Cup Winners Cup for the second year in a row.

This was a disappointing season, but there was a silver lining that I didn't know at the time and this was it: undoubtedly, the events of that year set in motion a chain of events that led to The Arsenal going an entire premier league campaign without being beaten.

And it all started with the departure of George Graham.

George Graham was sacked that year after it was proved he had taken a bung some years previous (although some would say he isn't the only manager of a north London team to be guilty of such a crime) and so he, with his unflinching philosophy of football that won very few plaudits from the neutral, left the club and his full time replacement, by the name of much forgotten Bruce Rioch, came in.

In 1995-1996 Arsenal improved their league standing to 5th place, with thanks to new signings David Platt and Dennis Bergkamp, with the closest to silverware coming via the semi-final of the Coca-Cola cup where they were defeated by Aston Villa.

We had a new manager for the first time in almost my entire life, certainly the period in my life which I could actually remember, although not a lot had changed in the way we played or the players I was worshipping.

We had conceded only 32 goals that season, less than any other team that year, and still had the tag of boring. Did we care? Did we hell. We were The Arsenal and we were proud of every single 1-0 victory we could muster. We knew no different and showered praise on the defenders that kept so much pressure off David Seamen and boasted about the way we had mastered the offside trap.

We had mastered it so well that it inspired a scene in the 1997 film 'The full Monty' in which one Chippendale wannabe was trying to teach a 'dance' move to another Chippendale wannabe before simplifying it and describing it to the others as ''The Arsenal offside trap''; before explaining that, ''Lomper 'ere is Tony Adams right? Any bugger looks like scoring, we all step forward in a line and wave our arms around like a fairy.''

If ever a film scene could fully explain the feelings of the neutrals towards one football club, then this was that scene. We weren't particularly liked, not to be watched anyway, due almost entirely on the reliance of our defense to see out a victory.

And as well as Sam Allardyce thinks his team defends, I've yet to see any of his teams referenced in Bafta winning films...

In September 1996-1997 Arsene Wenger joined the club, taking over from caretaker manager Pat Rice, in which he quickly signed an unknown 20 year old Patrick Viera, culminating in a 3rd place finish.

When Arsene Wenger joined the club I was 12, and just starting secondary school, and recall a conversation with a fellow Arsenal fan in which we both agreed that we did not like the signing of Arsene Wenger. He has just signed from a team in Japan and this was not the type of league we wanted our manager to come from. What we saw was a foreign manager, in a perceived much lower league, joining the club and bringing his friends with him.

I did not trust Arsene Wenger, which probably did have something to do with the fact that I was 12 and hated everybody (especially the French), and did not expect much of him nor believed he had proved himself as a manager capable of improving my football club.

In reality, Arsene Wenger had already proved himself plenty by winning the French league title in 1987-88 and the UEFA Cup winners cup in 1991-1992; and whilst in Japan had quickly taken a club from fighting relegation to the next year winning their National Cup competition and finishing second in their respective league campaign.

When researching his time in Monaco further its also interesting to note that he was responsible for signing a young, internationally unrecognized, George Weah along with other stars such as Glen Hoddle, Jurgen Klinsmann and Youri Djorkaff.

If at the time I had known that Wenger had a tradition of singing Spurs best players, and others that would go on to be regarded as some of the very best of their generation, then maybe I would have been a little bit happier in his appointment...

And in reality Patrick Viera did replace John Jensen who was only really famed for scoring one goal in his entire Arsenal career (perhaps one of our most eagerly awaited goals ever) and I think it is fair to say that Viera was a better signing for the club than Jensen was ever likely to be.

But I say all this with the ability of hindsight; and so at the time of our new manager joining us, whilst not expecting much in terms of silverware, I reverted back to my default position of supporting the back four more than the club itself.

That was until the start of the 1997-1998 season and is when the so called 'Wenger Era' really started.

In the 1997-1998 season Arsenal won the League and FA cup double under Arsene Wengers first full year, thanks to the players already at the club and new signings such as Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars and, one of a few young French strikers to join the club under Wengers control, Nichols Anelka.

It was 1997-1998 that we got a glimpse as to what Arsene Wenger wanted to create at the club and the direction he wanted to take us and it was from this moment on that the club was effectively his. He had free reign to impose his idea of football on the pitch and what I have witnessed is a complete transformation of the not only the team, but the philosophy and standing of the club in the eyes of many including our biggest critic, the neutral.

This wasn't done in that season, it took us longer than that, but the seeds had been sown.

That team still had the old guard in defense with Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn on either side of Tony Adams, Steve Bould or Martin Keown in the center and all just in front of England’s numbers one goalkeeper, David Seamen, and they were still the players that I cheered the loudest.

But the club clearly had a much more attacking aggression to them and this was undoubtedly going to happen when Overmars, Bergkamp, Anelka (who was absolutely electric) and Petit sat along side other attacking players such as Paul Merson and David Platt (despite what some recall, we already had players at the club with an ability to score!).

They had the confidence to go forward knowing that they had one of the best defenses in World Football, plus the likes of Viera and Ray Parlour, to recover the ball if they lost it.

For many, it was also the manner of Arsenals Premier League winning goal of that season that really epitomized the change of culture of the club (well, it wasn't really the winning goal as it was the fourth of a four-nil win over Everton at home, but it was the one everyone remembers due to the fact that it was 'Mr. Arsenal' himself who scored it).

Tony Adams, who in his many previous years at the club had been part of a very much flat back four, ran through the field to be played in, fittingly, by Steve Bould to score a left foot half volley into the back of the net.

As an Arsenal supporter, as a supporter of the back four, this was without doubt the best way we could have possibly scored and resulted in even the commentator declaring 'Would you believe it? That sums it all up'.

It took three years for us to win a trophy again, that being the FA Cup, and four before we would win the Premier League but in the absence of trophies our game and team improved immensely and we were undoubtedly getting a reputation for being one of the most attacking sides in Football.

Due to this, in Wenger's first 9 years he won a total of 3 Premier league titles and four FA cups cementing him in the hall of fame as Arsenals most successful manager of all time.

It was during this time that the players I had fallen in love with as a child slowly left and when Ray Parlour and Martin Keown finally called an end to their Arsenal careers in 2004 it finally signaled the end of The Arsenal that I first supportered, and the commencement of another; and it is maybe this reason why when asked who my favourite Arsenal players of all time are I instantly reply 'Martin Keown and Ray Parlour'.

Yes, I know that neither Martin Keown or Ray Parlour were the best players to play in their position even for Arsenal (although like all Arsenal fans I would argue with all my breath that Parlour was both a great player and criminally underrated), but they were the players that connected me to the team I loved as a child and there is no stronger feeling than the one of nostalgia when it comes to football.

So despite watching, and immensely enjoying watching, great players such as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and current stars such as Cesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie, my favourite players are the ones that embodied my young memories of The Arsenal and are for that reason both defensive players.

I don't think I will ever forget Martin Keown jumping on Ruud Van Nistelroy (okay, it wasn't right but I'm sure that any fan out there can understand why such raw passion, from a Hero of mine, against one of our biggest title rivalries would live long in the memory) or Ray Parlour for scoring against Chelsea in the FA Cup final of 2002 (or captaining The Arsenal to a 5-1 win against Inter Milan in the San Siro in what was one of his best ever performances) and I genuinely feel sorry for any fan that are too young to remember such events.

As of today we are widely considered the most entertaining football team in England and regularly feature in fans '2nd team' polls to back up this claim, which is a complete turn around from the days that I first started supporting the club. However, we have not seen any success since 2005 and for a little while now some fans have grown disgruntled at this. Some call back to the days of Arsenal pre-Wenger due to their belief that we can not win competitions whilst playing the 'pretty' football that we are known for. We are considered weak and defensively poor, although great going forward, and this too is in complete contrast to the team I grew up supporting.

In fact, since George Graham got sacked the only consistency Arsenal fans have known is that they've yet to see Tottenham finish above them in the league (whilst every year hearing that Tottenham will finish above them in the league)!

Everything else at the club has changed and there is most definitely an argument brewing between not only commentators and spectators of The Arsenal, but also between two opposing sets of fans of the same club, from those that want to see the club return to something resembling the hard hitting and defensively sound team of George Graham and those that consider themselves 'football purists', who want to see the same attacking flair from Wenger's Arsenal and argue that (like Barcelona) it can bring in the silverware once more.

Personally, I can appreciate and agree with the arguments coming from both camps, but here is my view: given a choice between the time we had no success in the later years pre-Wenger, and the no success we are seeing at the moment, I much prefer today’s option.

Not because of the football we are playing, but because I can see this good team developing into a great team that wins trophies, whilst playing the football we are playing.

To me, we have always played great football. Firstly, I watched us dominate teams in terms of defending (although not really scoring enough goals at times) whilst today I watch us dominate teams in terms of attacking (whilst being defensively suspect), and whilst the neutral might enjoy watching us much more as the second team, I've never not enjoyed watching us.

The club is on a sound financial footing, rather unlike many of our competitors, and we have one of the most promising youth teams in Europe who are starting to show their potential in the first team with performances from the likes of Gibbs and Wilshere.

And when new UEFA regulations prevent teams from spending literally 100's of millions of pounds on recruiting new players then I truly believe that our patience with Wenger and the team will reap us with great, shinny, rewards.

So for me, I say we keep Wenger and his philosophies. Not because of the neutral, but because he can bring success back to the club.

And no, I make no apologies for the cheap shots on our rivals in this blog, it is the best part of being a football supporter…and I've had enough of it directed towards me!