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Monday, August 31, 2009

McGeady vs Eduardo

"Is it a dive? Never in a million years. A dive is when you try to influence the referee, you throw your arms up and so on."The quote above is what Tony Mowbray said following Aidan McGeady's yellow card for diving yesterday. I have a degree of sympathy with McGeady, we have seen in the past few days just how randomly the media can react to extremely similar incidents. After all what is a dive?

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Alan Green - complain to the BBC here

Go to the BBC I-Player link and listen from 23 minutes exactly, listen to the Arsenal caller who dares to politely suggest that Rooney may have taken a dive and won the penalty for Manu. Listen to the way in which Alan Green, an ugly version of Eamon Holmes if this is possible, is downright rude to 'Dominic' from London. Alan Green is not only biased, he is rude, offensive and brash when it is

Pathetic Dean hands game to Manure

I was slightly surprised to see Bendtner left on the bench, Eboue retained his place after a fine performance in the week, while the midfield trio of Denilson, Diaby and Song played with Cesc missing out due to injury. Manu started with the lone striker Rooney flanked by the irritating Nani and the expensive Valencia. The game started as it continued with Arsenal domination.United were poor, they

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Rooney a saint and Eduardo is scum

I am fuming. I will keep this brief and come up with something more in depth tomorrow, but the manner of our defeat today was incredibly cruel. Watch the replays of the Rooney 'penalty', it's a very soft decision indeed, he has lost control of the ball, he throws himself down before contact is made, the contact is also not great, Almunia does largely pull out of the challenge. It can go down

Beyond contempt

It is at times like these that one gets a real handle on the complete lack of objectivity in the media, they love telling people what they want to hear and care little for the truth. Whether it be the Sun blaming immigrants for all our problems or insulting foreign footballers because they are an easy non-English target, it's the same lame pathetic stuff that we've become sadly used to putting up

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Moronic media makes me mad

The media reaction to Eduardo's dive last night has been completely out of proportion to the crime, if ever there was an example of just how inconsistent their reactions are then this is it. It was a very soft penalty, it was a 1% penalty, we were indeed lucky, however it clearly did not affect the result, Celtic are mediocre and offer a similar threat to Hull City in the attacking department.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

New solidity continues as Celtic's challenge fades

Celtic were outclassed in both games, whatever the ins and outs of both games, whatever the excuses, whatever the pundits say, they were simply not good enough to threaten our passage to the Champions League group stages. Part of this was down to Celtic's lack of quality, but a decent chunk of it was because of several improvements Arsene has made to the side and setup since last year.The whole

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Hart attack and Pompey demolished

The squad was rotated as many of us had expected, the 4-3-3 formation showed it's considerable versatility as Eboue, Diaby, Gibbs and Eduardo slotted into the side. The beauty of the 4-3-3 is that when it is going well and the players are moving for each other, it is so hard to defend against as players can roam around and pop up where you least expect them, midfielders can join the attack

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Half job done, morale and spirit

A lot has been said by various pundits about lucky Arsenal's win against Celtic, I would suggest that these idiots listen to what Pat Nevin had to say on events, he clearly wanted Celtic to win but was freely able to admit that Celtic had been utterly outclassed and that Arsenal thoroughly deserved their victory. There's not much more to say than that really, we didn't need to climb through all

Sunday, August 16, 2009

What storm? Lodging it up one's critics derrieres

As usual I got things horribly wrong. An expected battle turned into a veritable stroll in the park, a lot of credit must go to Arsene and the players for dismantling a very decent Everton side so comprehensively. We saw pretty much the eleven we expected, Diaby's injury resulted in Denilson's start, while the tough decision was which two of three to start out of RVP/Eduardo and Bendtner. RVP

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Goodblog and quiet before Goodison storm

There are blogs and there are blogs, undoubtedly one of my favourite reads is Goodplaya and he has just recently revamped his site, it looks rather impressive and I suggest anyone who hasn't checked it out does so. There is so much dross out there, so many people just repeating the same old tired rumours and made up stories, that's why I think I find Goodplaya so refreshing. He offers balance,

Monday, August 10, 2009

Valencia, 4-3-3, the defense and the squad

So we lost 2-0 away to Valencia in our final pre season game, the result matters little, and there were some definite positives as well as negatives to take from the game. Our first half side looked solid enough, while the second half eleven did not look as handy, the most interesting thing we've seen in the pre season has been Arsene's deployment of the 4-3-3 formation.I am in two minds over

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Celtic await and last minute action?

So it's Celtic, it could have been better and it could have been worse. Under Mowbray you can guarantee that Celtic will play football the right way and that will be to our liking. Undoubtedly the away game on the 18th of August will be the tougher of the two fixtures, especially given as it comes just three days after our away game at Goodison Park. On the rare occassions that I have watched

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Big Friday

So it's almost underway, and an early pivotal moment tomorrow is the Champions League draw. We are in the 'non champions' path and will play one of five unseeded sides, as we are seeded. The teams we may face include:FiorentinaAtletico MadridCelticAnderlechtFC TimisoaraThere's not much doubt that the top two of these five would be the toughest, Celtic would be in the middle and the bottom two

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Regrets and offensive gluttony?

I have always like big Phil Senderos. It therefore saddens me to hear that he is on the verge of joining Everton. Everton have today confirmed that the two clubs are locked in negotiations. Obviously big Phil has only a year left on his contract and is not a first choice player, so the money makes definite business sense. Football is not just a business, it is more than that to us the fans, I am

Monday, August 3, 2009

Monday Bumblings

In many ways 1979's short summary of the Emirates Cup is all that need to be said about the pre-season friendly tournament, in which we used 21 players I think. Its a nice little run-out for the players and the fact that 110,000 tickets were sold over the two days is a nice little earner for the clubs involved.But its bad measure to try and guage how the squad is looking. The biggest surprise,

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Jack in the box? Bullet points

Unfortunately I didn't get to watch the whole of the Rangers game yesterday, some of us only managed bits of the game and were interrupted by pesky work related problems, damn it. I happened to stumble upon Goodplaya's review of the Emirates Cup and agreed with most of what he said. As I'm exhausted having worked all weekend I'm going to sum up my thoughts in lazy bullet points, please feel free

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Emirates Cup et al

Two fine Andrei Arshavin goals capped an exciting afternoon's activity at the Emirates, we also got a few hints as to how the boss is seeing things for the season ahead. Wilshere was the stand out player for me, jinking past defenders with ease and showing a maturity beyond his years. Djourou got the nod at centre back, as Thomas Vermaelen was nursing something minor, and looked solid enough.