Arsene Loses His Cool Before Vital CL Clash

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So tomorrow, we take on the mighty Bayern Munich in the Champions League.

This afternoon, Arsene Wenger had one of the most hot-tempered press conferences I have ever seen in his 16 year reign as Arsenal manager. You can tell the pressure is getting to him and he is getting extremely irritated by people saying he doesn’t take the FA Cup seriously, being accused of not having the desire to win trophies and about “wrong information” about him signing a 2 year extension to his current deal.

In the press conference, a watching Mikel Arteta looked very awkward sitting along side Arsene, as he had a go at the reports and their questions – answering with sarcasm and anger.

The usually charismatic and charming Arsene was feeling the heat, or maybe he was having a bad day. Either way, there could be signs that things are starting to crumble.

We all know it has been 8 years since we won a trophy. But where does the blame lie? There are Arsenal fans that think Arsene should go, and bringing someone else will solve all our problems. There are those that hold Arsene Wenger up on a pedestal as a God. The truth is somewhere in between.

Admittedly, Arsene has his flaws, but so does every manager. And these are magnified the more results don’t go our way. There is no doubt that Arsene Wenger is a fantastic manager. Whatever you think of him now, he has done miracles at this club. But I just don’t think he has the support he needs, especially from the board, and Silent Stan.

Arsene doesn’t have the resources he needs – and who would say that new manager would do any better with the same financial backing. There’s no doubt in my mind the best man for the job, under the current board is Arsene Wenger.

And onto tomorrow’s massive game.

Bayern, as you will probably know, are in sensational form. They are top of the Bundesliga by a staggering 15 points, have a goal difference of +50 after 22 games and lost only one league game so far this season. And away from home, they have scored 27 goals and only conceded one.

So a simple game on our hands then.

But this is when Arsenal usually pull it out of the bag. Arsenal frustrate, amaze and disappoint in equal measure. When no-one gives us a chance, we are capable of defying the odds.

There is no pressure on us and we have nothing to lose.

Wishful thinking perhaps, but with Arsenal I always believe that on their day, they are capable of beating absolutely any team out there. I have to believe that, I am an Arsenal fan.

It’s eleven v eleven out there and we have to believe we can get a good result.

We Don’t Want The FA Cup, 4th Spot Is The Real Trophy

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So Arsenal have been knocked out of the FA Cup by Blackburn Rovers.

Cup competitions always give us shocks and today it was us yet again. Only recently Bradford City knocked us out of the Capital One Cup.

So it’s just the same old story really.

We rest some of our “regular” starters, give a few reserve players a run out and then try but ultimately fail in progressing to the next round. But wait, we can’t even use that as an excuse any more, as like the Bradford game we had a very strong side out.

And just like the Bradford game, Gervinho was the man to miss a sitter which would have made all the difference.

He might be good for the Ivory Coast but for us he’s useless. Didier Drogba he is not.

Anyway, the FA Cup isn’t a proper trophy anyway, 4th spot is where it’s at.

And look on the bright side, this paves the way for Arsenal to have a glorious Champions League campaign and life the European Cup!

One can dream can’t they?

Is Match Fixing A Threat To English Football?

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According to Europol, there have been 680 football matches that have been fixed around the world as part of a massive betting syndicate and apparently one of those was a Champions League tie played in England.

Reportedly, there are around 425 match officials, club officials, players and criminals are “suspected” of being involved.

We already know about high profile match-fixing in countries like Italy and Turkey, where players, officials and club staff have been punished with prison time. But this is the first time England has been implicated with match-fixing since the Betting Scandal of 1964 (according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia).

According to Europol, the Champions League tie which was played in England took place in the last 3 or 4 years.

And that’s all that has been revealed as “investigations are ongoing”.

So they haven’t strictly said that an English team was involved, as it could have been a European referee or the opposing team that was involved. But until all of the details of the investigation are revealed then it is all conjecture and hearsay.

But I will leave you with this clip, which is food for thought…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvANmxeiA5Y[/youtube]

A Frustrating Game For Both Sides

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Well that was certainly a game of two halves!

Liverpool had a game plan and executed it fantastically well for the first 60 odd minutes. Disciplined, focused and well drilled, Liverpool could have scored 3 or 4 in the first half and I wouldn’t have complained. Suarez and Sturridge were causing all kinds of problems for our back four and goalkeeper, who seemed hell bent on making stupid mistake after stupid mistake.

The first goal Liverpool scored was shambolic and that gave Liverpool the confidence they needed. They sat back, absorbed the feeble Arsenal “pressure” and caught us on the break – and every time they went forward they looked dangerous.

Their goals were a combination of ambitious forward play and shockingly poor defending.

For the first goal, Sagna slipped, Vermaelen tried to clear the ball with his wrong foot and Liverpool capitalised. Then minutes later, Szczesny tried to do a Cruyff turn on Daniel Sturridge and almost paid the price.

And the second was poor defending, especially from Santos, who is one of the players I can’t believe makes a living from playing football. There are players you see now and then, and you wonder to yourself how the hell did they become professional footballers? And he is definitely one of them.

But Henderson’s goal seemed to kick Arsenal into life, and within 8 minutes we found ourselves at 2-2 and in with a real shout of winning the game.

On 64 minutes, Jack Wilshere, who was once again our best player by a country mile, floated in a fantastic cross for Giroud to head home. Our tails were up at that point and our attacking pressure told as Theo lashed a fantastic shot past the helpless Reina.

That gave us a good 25 minutes to nick the winner and we gave it a good go – but the frustration wasn’t so much the effort but the quality.

In times gone by, we would have made the pressure count but for all of our attacking play in the last third of the match we couldn’t find the breakthrough. Giroud had a decent chance from a corner but put his free header well over, and Podolski played him in for a guilt-edged chance from only 4 yards out but the Frenchman fluffed his lines.

But it is hard to criticise a player that obviously gives 100% and is still finding his feet in the Premier League.

In terms of performances, our defending was diabolical in the first half and there’s no getting away from that. And when Santos replaced Gibbs, we looked even worse. Fortunately in the second half when we were doing all the attacking that didn’t matter as much.

The game could have gone either way and I suppose both sets of supporters will feel frustrated as a draw wasn’t really what each side needed. A win for either team would have been a big boost but it wasn’t to be.