INGLOURIOUS ARSENAL

“Professional football is no longer a game. It’s a war. And it brings out the same primitive instincts that go back thousands of years.”
Malcolm Allison

As the good Captain pointed out yesterday The Arsenal need to focus on our own game and perform regardless of opponents or outside influence.

The Trip to Olympiacos, while being meaningless in terms of qualification for us has meaning for the Greek Champions; they need to out perform Marseille to get through to the group stage. Arsenal need to balance the context of the game with the desire for a victory. We should be going there to win; that’s the professional approach. It’s also a chance for fringe players to prove a point, not to mention being an obligation to the rest of the group.

At the moment we are like The Inglourious Basterds; carrying on our battle against the odds quietly and effectively while our deeds are kept on the hush- hush by the powers that be.

And like the Basterds we are an effective unit single mindedly fighting back against evil.

Ok, maybe I’m stretching the point but War/Movie analogies are often pretty good at summing up a feeling. I’ll finish by paraphrasing Lt Aldo Raine:

“You probably heard we ain't in the media-pleasin' business; we in the winnin’ matches business. And cousin, business is a-boomin”

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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