2011年8月29日星期一

Arsene Must Go

Here's a nugget of defensive wisdom I am going to hand to Arsene Wenger absolutely gratis. When you are trying to play an offside line, the players in midfield need to put pressure on the opponent with the ball.These girls have never had a cube puzzle in their lives! Sorry, I withdraw that.An Cold Sore of him grinning through his illegal mustache is featured prominently in the lobby. My opinion is worth nothing because I haven't worked half a day in football. Arsene, as he demonstrated with his tactics at Old Trafford, knows best.

It was like watching a car crash. And perhaps, in a perverted kind of way, this needed to happen. The club has been going backwards under the current manager for a while now, the majority of supporters (surely) now want him replaced, and – given the complete balls up the club have made of the transfer window – the time has come to accept reality and try and move on. ‘Forward' is the club motto for the 125th anniversary season.Great Rubber offers oil painting supplies keychains, And indeed, it is time to move on. Conceding eight goals in a game is the stuff of the late 19th and early 20th century. Humiliation isn't the word for it.Polycore Floor tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, Tellingly, Manchester United's starting line up apparently had an average age of 23.1 years. Arsenal's was five months older.If so, you may have a zentai . So the excuse of it being a young team is no defence. The plain fact of the matter is that Alex Ferguson has shown – by a margin of six goals – that even when it comes to developing a young team, he is the master to Wenger's apprentice. This was no case of men against boys.

Pride comes before a fall. Arsenal's stadium has celebration of Wenger's achievements all over it. I can see fans throwing the remains of their half time beer at images of him on the concourse walls at the next home game. He has re-shaped the club and helped it to move stadium, but – allowed to indulge his fantasy of building a team of players developed from youth level by himself (and challenged by no-one) – he has lost his way. People are now being charged caviar prices to watch sausage fare. The club will struggle to sell out the next few Premier League Saturday 3pm home matches even though they are not on television. And that message, if nothing else, should get through to the board of directors even if an 8-2 defeat fails to.

This game demonstrated clearly that neither the personnel nor the coaching are good enough for Arsenal to defend well enough to win trophies. There is no point in my berating individuals, although I will just say that if Johan Djouoru ever plays as a centre back for the club again, it can only be after he has experienced a period of defensive instruction under a coach worthy of the name.

I haven't had the heart to watch any post-match interviews the manager might have given. He will probably have claimed that if Robin van Persie's penalty had gone in it would have been a very different game. Not with the tactics and personnel on the field for Arsenal I'm afraid. The one heartening thing was to see some of the players having a go at each other about their perceived mistakes. At least it showed they gave some kind of a damn. Anger certainly isn't allowed in the cosiness of the dressing room, where raised voices are frowned upon. But that is one thing that is missing from the London Colney crèche (copyright Myles Palmer). Players taking each other to task and getting things sorted out.

Most of the first team squad cannot speak highly enough of Arsene Wenger. And no wonder. Most of them would not be able to earn half as much as he is paying them elsewhere. And the ones that can are keen enough to jump ship, so the loyalty of quality players cannot be bought.

Paul Merson, summed it up. "It's so bad it's unbelievable." And yet, it was almost expected. The most damning aspect this is that it was entirely predictable. In the build up to the game, the 6-1 defeat from February 2001 was recalled. I actually stopped caring towards the end. A bit of me wondered if ten goals for United might mean the dismissal of the manager. As I went and eat some dinner rather than watch the post match coverage I didn't catch Alex Ferguson apparently stating (a text later informed me) that United eased up towards the end as they didn't want to rub it in.

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