Punditry Predictions Purgatory?

What was going to happen in the 2009-10 season?

According to pundits...
Jack Wilshire and Theo Walcott were going to make themselves Certainties for Capello’s World Cup squad. Michael Owen was going to produce his swan song at United and play his way back into the England Squad. ESPN was going to make watching televised football a whole new ball game. The Galacticos mark II were going to dominate Europe. Mark Hughes’ dream team would break into the top 3. The Europa Cup was going to be a success. Federico Macheda would step into Ronaldo’s shoes. Zhirkov would dominate the left side for Chelsea. Liverpool were going to finish Top or there abouts this time. Joe Cole was going to return to The Bridge and start pulling the strings. Phil Brown was going to have learnt a lesson from all his shenanigans and secure Hull City’s place in the EPL. The perfectly round Nike Total 90 Ascente would wreak havoc with goalkeepers all over the land. Sylvan Ebanks –Blake was going to win the golden boot. Robinho was going to knuckle down and Spurs were going to win the FA Cup and have a player in the PFA team of the season.
...And Arsenal would drop out of the top three and be replaced by Liverpool.

Comments

Reasons to be cheerful?

So November arrives with cold weather and grey skies. Arsenal sit in 2 nd place with a great chance to make progress in the Carling Cup with a home draw against wigan Athletic. Poised to win our Champions league group and with six months of the season left have 3 of our five tougher away fixtures out of the way, having taken a respectable 4 from 9. I say respectable as, the Man City away trip aside the draw at Anfield on the occasion of Hodgson’s first game was a good result and the Chelsea game I don’t think anyone can really speak of any injustice. That leaves away games at Old Trafford and Sp*rs (who as we know raise their game for this fixture). With injured players gradually returning and the Polish goalkeepers showing signs of optimism, we’re in relatively good shape. Or so you’d think. Yesterday at the Emirates West Ham were put to the sword late on after some stout defending, a good performance from Robert Green and a couple of missed opportunities. The level of indign...

There's something rotten in the state of Denmark

A number of blogs are pointing out what was evident to me yesterday; as a season ticket holder and Silver member i like thousands of others made plans to purchase an additional ticket for the Barcelona game using the frustrating and irritating online service, but guess what? no joy, just lots of waiting finger tapping and watching the dreaded 'loading' bar (to make matters worse I had asked my missus to do this as I was doing training). But no one got these additional tickets, that is no supporters judging by the general feedback! It seems to me that the additional seats will have probably gone to customers of a corporate nature. Ultimately for such a marquee (to use an American commercialism term) game I suspect that the club where never going to sell to supporters of the club, there is clearly a undercurrent at the Emirates that the club wants to have the stadium full of customers ie; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ognvWIwjKTQ The Emirates of the future? It will be interesti...

PERSONALITY TEST

Played 23, 10 defeats, 4 draws and 9 victories; that's the factual bit out of the way. What does that tell us? I guess it is a set of statistics that reasonably reflect a mid table team. How we got here is something that countless column inches and hours of debate have gone into. How we move forward is the bigger question. Naturally, learning from past mistakes is a key element to moving forward but have Arsenal Football Club done that? Have Arsenal Football Club realised that a clear vision and plan is needed? When you look at the current squad its relatively easy to see where the strenghts are, and the weaknesses. The manager too, has strengths and weaknesses but one thing that is intangible is the personality of the club. Not so much "where are we" as "what are we?" To know what the club is is to know what the upper echelons think, what their plan and philosophy is and how the manager processes that information. We can assume that the club decision makers wa...

ARSENALISM©

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