(The not-so-temporary quite-official) Gooner Thread

Ramsey and Arteta out for Chelsea game, jack is on the wait and see list.

bugger. 

good to see Wenger come out in the press with a bit of venom aimed at the cocks, they didnt even look like playing. 

I also saw (but dont know if it is correct because it is a ridiculous number) that we had 77% of possession!!! that is nuts for 2 EPL teams to be playing each other.

Yet we didn't really creat a clear cut chance. Lloris made 2 saves from a shot from outside the box and a header from a free kick and that was it.

Plus our 50,000 corners we had were all complete shit. How hard is it to put a decent ball in?

Looking forward to Galatasary assuming we'll lose Jack we're now looking at:

                            Szy

Chambers Mertesacker Kosc Gibbs

              Flamini     Rosicky

Sanchez              Ozil                Cazorla

                      Welbeck

Reasonably strong, the question is whether or not Flamini/Rosicky have the speed to cope with the opposition midfield. We'll need them to deliver something special. Or we drop Coquellin in the deep end which I'm a fan of.

So if Sanchez starts against Gala can we assume he will again come off the bench in the league fixture?

Well with Ramsey definitely out and Wilshere probably out he'll have to start won't he? He's our best player and has to be in the lineup regardless.

I'm really really unsure on this eh. I can't see the logic in making both Sanchez/Cazorla mid-week/cup players when they're good enough to be starting. Surely it's The Ox & Podolski who should play those roles...

Well I never

We always get these niggles year after year. So much for this Shad Forsythe character sorting it out. Or was that Sham Fraudsythe?

Lucky we have those "10 players who want to play in the middle" I guess then Arsene. Let's put up a solid defensive display against Chelsea this time. We cannot go out gung ho and get bettered again. Draw would usually be a good result there, although we're getting to the stage now that we have to start winning games at some point.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Chambers is suspended too for 5 yellow cards. Wouldn't mind seeing him in the DM role which is supposed to be one of his positions. Got to be better than Flamini whose legs have completely gone in any case. Except of course we need him in defence now.

Be keen to give the Ox a run in the box-to-box role next to Flamini... the ox's best performances have often come in a midfield role rather than on the flank. 

Given the bloke only started after the world cup I'd suggest it's a bit eager to label him "Sham Fraudsythe"...

Heh, was just a joke I'd seen on another forum. Something clearly has to change though.

went to the game on Saturday - Spurs were awful.  No real plan apart from putting 10 guys in their box and leaving Adebayor on the halfway line reading a book.  Didn't try to press anywhere, and even when they got the ball, they didn't try to break or anything - just happy to lump it forward and stay in their shape. Big club my ass.

Funny/interesting stories of the day were as follows:

1) got off of a tube at Arsenal tube station at about 3, and there was 1 pissed bloke chanting away all by himself the whole way out of the station. When he got on to the street he screamed (to nobody in particular) "come on everyone, is this a local derby or are we playing fucking Leicester?" Some other bloke walking the other way said the most middle class thing back to him - "calm down chap, we don't want any bother", to which drunky responded with the classically bewildering "there will be no bother if your Spurs mate, you'll be going home in a cab".

2) In the ground some nutter turned up to his seat besides Potter about 20 minutes in to the game, going on about all his boys are spread out around the stadium. He went to the bathroom to refuel about every 10 minutes (not even my bladder is that bad), spent all his time at the seat complaining loudly about the "filthy yid/jewish cunts" and then left with 15 minutes to go because him and "his boys were going to sort out the filthy yid fans when they came out". For £85, he seemed to actually watch about 10 minutes of the game.

It did raise an interesting dilema about the use of anti-sematic language at football. If I was at a game and someone was loudly and obviously using racist language, I would tell them to pull their head in. When this guy started loudly and obviously going on about yids and jews, I was thinking to myself that it is just as bad and I should do the same. Problem was, at that moment the Spurs fans started chanting "Yid Army" about themselves and it kind of made my "now now dear boy, there is no need for that kind of language" speech completely redundant. 

Two interesting articles on Sanchez:

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896/premier-league...

http://www.espnfc.us/club/arsenal/359/blog/post/20...

I find the Goal perspective quite fascinating. If he is indeed slowing play down he's doing so in fantastic fashion by banging in goals. However I do think it's better to iron this stuff out early in a players spell with a team rather than later on. However if Barcelona couldn't get him to change his style how will Arsene?

Oh and the mother of all LOLS:

http://www.espnfc.com/story/2060790/former-arsenal...

peoples thoughts on this? (alexis being dropped as he doesnt fit the team style etc)

Just put it down to adapting to a new league and Wenger not really having much of an attacking plan or knowing what his best lineup is yet. We've been a better attacking unit when he's been on the pitch because he makes things happen with the ball.

As for Santos, what an appalling piece of business that was. We had to spend the same again a year later to correct it.

ive certainly enjoyed watching alexis to date

I think, while Sanchez is a very good player, he still loses the ball far, far too often. It opens us up to counter attacks, and with a pretty shite defensive midfield contingent we're quite vulnerable to that.

I do counter that with the fact that he runs his bollox off in defense. He has the balls to try the impossible and it comes off some times!

ramsey out for 6 weeks, hamstring tear. shit... 

arteta out for 2-3weeks.

Koscielny in doubt for CL game. 

jacko's isnt as bad as first thought, but unsure if he will play in CL

Having another think about the Sanchez story, I think it's much more likely Wenger was just as usual focussed on CL and Chelsea and didn't want his current main man playing 4 times in 10 days.

Anyway, live on ESPN 2 again tomorrow, 7.45am. Clocks going forward means I can only really watch the first half before work then try and avoid the result all day to watch the 2nd half after work.

Edit: Also thanks for the story Frankie, how did you manage to get tickets? Really sad to hear about idiots like that, thankfully it's just the odd moron.

This is apparently our list of injuries for the last decade. Love how it excludes Reyes' wisdom teeth. 107 hamstring and 82 thigh injuries seem ridiculous. Would love to see a comparison for other clubs. Bruised lung sounds nasty, think that was Theo in an international friendly from memory. In some good injury news, he is back in full training next week. Can't come back soon enough for me.

How do we compare to Chelsea/United/Liverpool/Barcelona/Real Madrid/Bayern Munich during that time frame? Because while that looks bad, without other teams to compare it has no context.

Take Diaby out of the equation and that would look a lot different probably!

Yeah am trying to find a similar graphic/list for other top clubs to compare, but I do suspect those numbers for hamstring and thigh injuries are very high. We seem to have one of them every other week! 6 broken legs seems high too given it's a rare enough injury that it's always news when it happens and we have been on the end of some horror challenges (Ramsey, Eduardo, Diaby). And 2 knee ligament ruptures per year has to be on the high side too!

Diaby would be a decent number of the injuries in each category I would imagine, aside from the bruised lung which was only Theo!

Arsene celebrates 18 years in charge today. As much as I feel he has taken the club as far as he can and want him gone, that's an incredible achievement and worth celebrating. In comparison, in the weekend Spurs were on their third manager in the last 3 North London Derby matches.

Cocks had 18 since Wenger arrived in 96.

I gather recalling Jenkinson is not an option or he is not actually wanted?

I think it was a season long loan with no recall option.

Here's a comparison;

http://www.espnfc.com/arsenal/story/2065310/arsena...

Arsenal 889 injuries since 2002, ManU 792, Chelsea 620, Liverpool 551

Of that 889, Walcott 42 and Diaby 40...

Posted awhile back about this. EPL rules state that a player on a season long loan can only be re-called during a transfer window.

So even if we have no defenders left Jenko isn't coming home until January minimum.

Positives: Welbeck. 3 very well taken goals. Will be a huge boost to his confidence. Also wrapping up the game early so we could rest some players in the last 30. Ospina coped well coming on cold.

Negatives: Szczesny. How many times is he going to rush out and concede penalties like this? I was amazed when the commentator said it is only his second red card at Arsenal because he's done it far more than twice. Also not great seeing Sanchez with an ice pack on his foot but that could well be a precaution only.