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

Not surprised, but still not nice to hear. Why do Chelsea never seem to suffer these injuries and we permanently seem to have half a team out?

We do seem to have rubbish luck with injuries.

I mean, we justifiably cop a bit of flak when we rush guys back and cause problems ourselves with pulled hammies etc, but broken bones, sprained ankles and the like are just really sh*tty slaps in the face.

Kosc on bench

Sanogo starts

sanogoal clinical finish

He scored. He actually scored a goal. In a proper match for us.

My word.

Yup, I totally hear you on this front. Hopefully this new fitness coach fixes stuff quickly, although Jack's latest wasn't a training issue, it's a c*nty tackle issue.

Where's Welbeck? He's not even on the subs list...

dodgy hamstring brummers

Sanogoal is now official Sagoal!

Clip

http://arsenalist.com/f/2014-15/arsenal-vs-dortmun...

offside? lol

2-0, guess who

Have only listened to the Arsenal.com commentary but sounds like a great match, just the kind of scalp the boys need to get the confidence back up. With Koscielny & Giroud back I'm expecting 3 points this weekend!

Sanchez again was a class above, the Ox is in a good bit of form too. I still can't believe Sanogo scored a goal.

Resting Koscielny for this game worked out too

Sounds like Arteta's done his calf and will be gone for a while.

Ajc's preferred solution won't be possible with Wilshere now out for a while.

So now we've got the Flamster as our main man... but we should really be inserting some coq in there I reckon

Perhaps with Koscielny back we could see Chambers tried there too - has been lots of talk that he's destined for the position eventually, but not sure if he's mature enough yet?

That's an interesting thought Paulm, or better yet go 3 at the back like so!

                       Szy

         Chambers Per Kosc

  Bellerin Flamini Ramsey Gibbs

      Sanchez  Giroud    Ox

Would be bloody interesting to try.

The more I hear from Klopp the more I like this guy.

We could do far worse than get him in as Arsene's successor.

I think Klopp is great. 

Congratulations to Sanogo. How was he for the rest of the game?

3 premier league games between now and next champions league game. WBA, Southampton, Stoke. 7 points minimum required I think. 9 ideally.

Fantastic win. Recorded it to watch after work but unfortunately the other Arsenal fan in the office announced the result so just watched the highlights instead. He did the same after the last CL win too so my wait to fully experience a CL win continues! Bit annoyed I missed out on Sanogo's goal too. Good on him, genuinely thought he might go a second season without one. Sanchez is just out of this world. Feels very much like Henry where we just know we have this one guy in the side who is simply too good for any opposition. Guess the difference being Henry also had several other players around him (ie, Vieira, Campbell, Cole, Bergkamp, possibly Pires) who were genuinely the best players in the world in their positions. 

May aswell try it, he's got to be better than Flamini!

Ox and Gibbs are having fantastic seasons.

Ok fun game time for lineup geeks like me...

What does our side look like fully fit?

                        Szczesny

Debuchy-Mertesacker-Koscielny-Gibbs

                   Arteta-Ramsey

             Walcott-Ozil-Sanchez

                          Giroud

Bench: Ospina, Chambers, Monreal, Wilshere, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Cazorla, Welbeck

That's mine, but I'm not 100% on it... I've built that around wanting to have Sanchez, Ramsey, Ozil and Walcott on the pitch as I see them as our best 4 offensive players... very tough to leave out Cazorla, Wilshere and the Ox though... 

I wonder how we'd go with a midfield diamond sometimes you know. How pacy would this be...

           Arteta

Ramsey    Wilshere

            Ozil

 Walcott   Sanchez

Just realised something funny but sad... despite the disclaimer of everyone being fit I still didn't consider Diaby!

Coqaulain is out on a season long loan in france I believe, hence him not being listed in the squad.

I have a copy of the Amy Lawrence Invincible's book, and it's a fascinating read, especially in the context of this season. You have to think that after yesterdays performance some of the players (especially Flamini who knew and played with most of them) may have suggested the team read it. The determination and teamwork was hopefully not a one off, and is a sign of things to come.

Jack out for 3 months

FFS. According to the Daily Mail he's been out for 40% of his first team career so far. Missed 119 weeks and played only 95 times in 5 years. These kind of injuries never used to happen, maybe having massive physical players made a difference in that respect. In the unbeaten season for instance we went through the whole season with virtually the same starting 11 aside from people like Edu and Parlour sometimes coming in.

Will have to get a copy of that Invincibles book. Enjoyed the interview on the Tuesday Club the other week. Alan Davies' comments about Henry being massive stand out in light of recent injury problems. You didn't really notice it at the time because everyone else in the side was huge, but when he came back for that brief loan spell he looked twice the size of anyone else.

Not that it ever occurs for Arsenal, but everyone fully fit at present that's pretty much it, but I'd just swap Walcott up front for Giroud and have Ox on the right. Wilshere to takeover from Arteta long term as already discussed at length. Surely now with Wilshere and Arteta out there can be no feasible excuse not to sign someone in January. Prices go up massively now everyone knows we're desperate though.

I know what you're saying but perhaps a stretch to say we had 5 or 6 of the best players in their positions in the whole world... that's better than Barcelona in their prime period and they won way more than our invincibles era side... 

In saying that I reckon we're not far off that squad these days. If you're comparing Sanchez to Henry then perhaps if we line up our current players against the ones you've listed we get an idea of where we're at;

Henry - Sanchez

Vieira - Ramsey

Campbell - Koscielny

Cole - Gibbs

Bergkamp - Ozil (Bergkamp was said to be a striker but adapt the 4-4-2 to today's structures and he was more a 10 like Ozil for me)

Pires - Oxlade-Chamberlain

You know, we're not a world away from that team... add in the fact that most of the current guys listed above are younger than their counterparts and we're pretty well placed... 

If you then take the rest of the invincibles squad (well, the players who contributed anyway...) and line it up next to the rest of our current squad, we get an idea of our depth now compared to then;

Lehmann - Szczesny

Stack - Ospina

Toure - Mertesacker

Keown - Chambers

Cygan - Bellerin

Lauren - Debuchy

Clichy - Monreal (note: Clichy was 18 at the time and started 5 games)

Edu - Rosicky

Gilberto - Arteta

Ljungberg - Cazorla

Reyes - Walcott

Wiltord - Giroud

Parlour - Wilshere

Kanu - Welbeck

Aliadiere - Podolski

Bit of a stretch with Bellerin next to Cygan but that illustrates our current shortcoming quite well I guess. It's worth noting Keown only made 3 starts in that season too.

After the above we still have the following not included; 

Diaby

Campbell

Gnabry

Sanogo

Flamini

Interesting to compare... if nothing else! 

Great comparison. I don't think it's a stretch at all. 5 or 6 maybe bit far but certainly 4. Vieira, Campbell and Cole were all widely regarded as the best players in their positions in the world during that 02-04 period. Bergkamp as a number 10 from about 98-01, possibly not anymore in 04 and Pires would have been up there. Hard to compare with what other teams won in different leagues though and we never had the squad depth to rotate players and keep up the same level as you have illustrated. Under Wenger there has always been too much of a drop between our stars and players that come in to replace them. That Invincibles side should have won the CL though. Would have been Monaco in the semi and Porto in the final but for Wayne Bridge of all people. That was the year we should have done it. You can only wonder how different history might have been if Wenger had beaten Mourinho in that final.

I've always felt Sagna was the only post Invincibles player we have had who would have made that 11 but Sanchez now gets in there too. Perhaps in place of Ljungberg but would need a change of formation.

Be good to get back to winning ways in the league this weekend. Sanchez probably needs a rest but don't think we can afford to leave him out at this stage. Ideally take him off if we're cruising.

how about Fabregas AJC?

Wouldn't take WBA lightly. Any win will do here, no matter how scrappy.

Would make the bench with Van Persie but never starts over Bergkamp.

The club showing true class as always by joining in the put your bats out for Phillip Hughes tribute, tweeting this photo from the training ground. I don't own a cricket bat so put some other sporting gear by the front door.

He also featured in the official magazine a few years ago as he was good friends with Nick Compton (grandson of Denis) who took him to games and got him into football so they also tweeted this one:

Good result this morning. I thought it was nice they got David Pleat out of his retirement home for a day to co-commentate this match (NOT)

Doddery old git was tedious as f#@k.

Shame we have picked up 3 more injury scares. Monreal, Gibbs and the Ox

Will definitely take that. First half we were in complete control after WBA passed it round their back four the opening 10 mins. Second half they slowly started to change things up and offered more of a threat going forward. Thankfully a great run by Cazorla and superb header from Welbeck got us over the line. 

Hopefully the injuries are only minor and they're all fit for Soton midweek. Will be another tough test i'm sure.

Excellent result in light of the turnaround. Early Sat kickoff after a Wednesday champs league game is just farcical stuff from the FA. TV rules as usual.

In Spain and Germany among other countries, their governing bodies will go to great lengths to give as much recoverypreparation time as they can to their european representatives, yet England still bends over for the tv schedule year in year out. 

Clean sheet was the main thing this morn, that's two in a row. Flamini and Ramsey did very well defensively. Kosc was awesome, aside from a couple of concentration lapses with the offside line but thankfully we got lucky there. 

Yea it is very hard to compare - particularly with centre backs, they don't seem to stick in the memory like attacking players do! 

We'll have to agree to disagree on the top players thing - In my opinion I would put Henry as perhaps the best for that period along with the original Ronaldo. Vieira and Campbell I'd have as maybes, but definitely not Cole with Roberto Carlos running around in his prime, and as much as I loved Bergkamp (my favourite ever player) and Pires, they had guys like Zidane, Rivaldo, Nedved and more to compete with... 

After coming back and re-reading my enormous geeky post (apologies to those bored by that sort of carry-on!), I feel like our current squad  is deeper and younger, and although those 5-6 top top players are ahead of our top 5-6 now, I think there is genuine potential there to emulate some of those guys.

Whether this team will develop with Wenger or not will probably hinge on the rest of this season (and perhaps next), but regardless of that our squad is potentially our best in the premier league era. That's something to be pretty excited about.