Treble’s still on…

Arsenal tonight played their Carling Cup Quarter Final against Manchester City who are currently top of the league and more better off than we are.

Both sides played their ‘B’ teams so to speak, except Koscielny and arguably Djourou no first team players flirted with the starting eleven, Van Persie and Walcott were rested, Gervinho and Vermaelen were on the bench with other former first teamers like Arshavin on the bench also.

Manchester City opted to play their ‘B’ team also, but most of their secondary eleven is filled with last season’s regulars like Zabaleta, Kolarov, Toure, De Jong and Johnson, with first choice striker Aguero coming on and Dzeko who’s been fairly regular this season also starting. It was Aguero who was the difference maker, scoring with seven minutes of normal time remaining to break the dead-lock and send City through to their second Carling Cup semi-final in 3 years.

There wasn’t much wrong with Arsenal’s performance, other than anyone scoring, youngsters like Miquel, Frimpong and Coquelin and especially Oxlade-Chamberlain showed us there’s a bright future (as cliché as it sounds when it comes to Arsenal) of young talent to come. Every player tonight may not have been the most skilful on the pitch but showed passion and that’s exactly what we’ve lacked in matches like last year’s Carling Cup final and aftermath when we slipped from title contenders to fourth.

The main issue was however, our goal scorers. Park-Chu-Young may take some time to adjust to the new league but Chamakh tonight didn’t impress. I know some go through goal-droughts but he had so many chances tonight, especially one in the dying minutes to grab a late equaliser.

All-in-all we need another new striker, whether that’s Podolski or me, we need someone who can get a few goals and aid the team, at the moment, that’s not Chamakh or Park and they’re not played enough to be played into form because they aren’t good enough.

Decent performance and three trophies still on but we had chances to win it.

R.I.P. Gary Speed (1969-2011)

This morning has put everything into perspective, Football results don’t matter. Last night there were people complaining that Arsenal didn’t beat Fulham, that Manchester United had a winning goal disallowed and others calling for Steve Bruce’s removal as Sunderland manager. Yes, every game has millions of pounds on the line in the long-run and every fan wants to go home happy and entertained, but the shocking news of Wales Manager Gary Speed’s passing this morning puts everything that happened yesterday and later today paling into insignificance.

I refuse to speculate how or why Gary died, the speculations and inquiries or for the correct authorities to make and report. According to early reports from credible sources, Gary took his own life early Sunday morning. why? Like I already said it’s not my place to say.

It’s undoubtedly true that Gary Speed was a lovable character in the game of Football. Maybe it’s a little cliché, obviously no-one comes out and says heartless about a person who has just passed on unless they were a convicted criminal. However, Gary has always been someone I have respected and I’m sure someone everyone who are fans of the game respected too.

Speed recorded over 500 appearances in the Premiership, the first player to reach 500 in the Premier League and a record 85 international caps for Wales, the most for an outfield player. It is not just Welsh, Leeds, Everton, Newcastle, Bolton or Sheffield United fans will mourn the death of Gary Speed today, its not a loss for Wales or those clubs, its a major loss for Football.

Condolences go out to his close friend and family, today we’ve lost a great player, a brilliant young manager, but more importantly a good man.

R.I.P. Gary Speed.

Shake my hand.

Just when you believe you have this game figured out, one idiot has to go and mess things up again, the one person you don’t expect it to be is the leader of Football though.

Sepp Blatter has always been looked at as a bit of a tool, the apparent corruption of FIFA, his stance with wearing the poppy on the shirt are just recent examples of his idiocy. However, despite how incompetent you may believe Sepp to be, no-one quite expected this comment:

“Maybe one of the players has a word or a gesture which is not the correct one, but the one who is effected by that, he should say that ‘this is a game’.We are in a game, and at the end of the game, we shake hands, and this can happen, because we have worked so hard against racism and discrimination.” – Sepp Blatter (16th November 2011)

Firstly, Sepp’s very quick to make the interviewer perceive that a lot has been done to stop racial discrimination, and he even says that it’s not in Football at all, but doesn’t both his comments contradict themselves? How can racism be out of Football if players are still using “word or a gesture which is not the correct one” as in words or gestures deemed as racial or discriminative? Arguably Mr. Blatter is saying that all the recent alleged incidents are in fact isolated ones and that Football is not a sport tolerating racism and that it’s not at all rife throughout the game. With that I would have to agree with Mr. Blatter in that I too believe the recent Suarez/Evra and Terry/Ferdinand incidents here in England are isolated matters and most if not all players and those associated with the game are far to well educated to realise using such phrases or gestures is inappropriate in whatever context. I also believe Football is not to blame for racism, it should never tolerate it, but the sport is not the cause for it, and it’s also not right to say that it’s right because “this is a game”, poor education from an early age is the real cause of racism, that and people’s ego making them believe they are untouchable when they are not and should never be.

What I am most offended by is how out of touch Blatter seems to be, had he have made such comments in an interview forty years ago many of those who listened would have applauded, thought he was a genius and that these offended players were just overreacting. That’s because of the time, in the seventies a comment like that would be well-received, however, less than twenty years later many people would have called for the head of Blatter then, so how can he even believe a comment like that would go down well in the year 2011? Really, a hand-shake?! This is almost as bad as that journalist telling players like Evra and Ferdinand to get on with it, in fact it is as bad seeing as he’s effectively saying racial abuse, an offense so bad the MET Police feel it their business to launch an enquiry doesn’t matter.

I don’t believe Blatter’s a racist, but the seventy-five year old isn’t half out of touch, and this is why Blatter MUST resign.

My Top Five Games

Listening to 'The Tuesday Club' podcast in its former incarnation 'Its Up For Grabs Now', the Keith Dover special, they listed El Presidente's favourite games, so here's mine, although not all Arsenal (because I'm only been to about two dozen Arsenal games which haven't been half as enjoyable.

5) Arsenal 2-0 Charlton Athletic; March 2003
An odd choice to the common eye, but there is a reason. As a seventeen year old, I only started supporting the Gooners alongside my hometeam Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2002 after watching the FA Cup final and being captivated by Freddie Ljungberg and his red hair. Who remains one of my favourite players. So my Gooner supporting Uncle, got three tickets for Arsenal versus Charlton in early Marxh of 2003 which we won 2-0 after goals from Jeffers and Pires, privileged to see Francis score one of his four league goals for us and Pires play. It was also Freddie's return from injury, which as a child made my day.

4) Wolves 3-0 Sheffield United; May 2003 (Nationwide Division One Play-Off Final)
Two months after seeing my new love Arsenal, I went to see my first love Wolves and their attempt to become one of twenty in the 2003/2004 Premiership, Wolves had been a little bit shoddy against Sheffield who has finished 3rd compared to Wolves 5th place finish. However, after travelling on two trains, and sitting in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium for what felt like two hours before kick-off, we were away, after six minutes, Mark Kennedy scored, sixteen minutes later, Nathan Blake made it two, and on the stroke of half time, Kenny Miller (who was my favourite player for Wolves) made it three. At half-time we went back to 1970s days and after watching a documentary on how the Barclays Premier League was formed, David Dein said "You either went for a pee or a burger..." which was what it felt like, the queue for the loo was about 2 miles long, and we missed a couple of minutes of the second half where Paul Butler (who in 2011 has grown into a hybrid of actor/musician Jack Black and actor/comedian Matt Berry who plays Douglas in IT Crowd) gave away a penalty for a flimsy handball. Legendarily, my Dad opted for nature calling whereas I opted for "oh crickey, there's been a crowd roar must be a goal". It was of course a Sheffield United penalty, saved by Wolves legend, the unfortunately now retired Matt Murray (the greatest keeper England never had), anyway, my Dad missed the save as he trotted up moments after Murray palmed it into the crowd. Wolves went onto win 3-0 and gain access to the ‘promise-land’ for one season at least, but it did throw up some great memories as I’ll explain now.

3) Wolverhampton Wanderers 4-3 Leicester City; October 2003
Technically, the season tickets my Dad had belonged to him and my Uncle, so naturally, I didn’t go to many early games, but one I did go to, my first was a cracker. Wolves had only won one previous game before that, 1-0 against Manchester City, so when they went 3-0 down in thirty-five minutes even to Leicester, there was no way they were going to win, right? Wrong! Seven minutes after the restart and Colin Cameron got one back, eight minutes later he scored from the spot to make it 3-2, another eight minutes later and Alex Rae equalised to make it a cracking game and then to top off one of the most exciting games in my footballing history, Henri Camara scored his first Wolves league goal to make it 4-3 to Wolves and win the game, one of the greatest games I’ve ever witnessed in my life, so good only one game that season and two more games in my life could be any better.

2) Arsenal 0-0 Manchester United (Arsenal won 5-4 on Penalties); May 2005 (FA Cup Final)
Unlike the previous game, this one was dull as anything, two hours of nothing spectacular, until the penalty shoot-out. Paul Scholes had his saved from Jens Lehmann and with his last kick of his Arsenal career, captain, Patrick Vieira scored the final penalty of the shoot-out to win the FA Cup (currently, Arsenal’s last trophy won) for Arsenal. Due to the fact it was a cup final, my first FA Cup final, it obviously has to go on this list, and it was still a great game at Cardiff with a great ending compared to my last Cup Final at Wembley in our 2-1 loss to Birmingham City this year.

1) Wolverhampton Wanderers 1-0 Manchester United; January 2004
Just two days before my 10th Birthday, Wolves played Man Utd, my Dad gave up his ticket to my Gran who took me to the game. Throughout the game was constant abuse at Rio Ferdinand who limped off to a nine month ban forgetting to attend a Drugs test. From there Kenny Miller went on to score the only goal to chants of “Champions League, you’re havin’ a laugh” from the ground to the bus-stop. “Let’s all have a disco” also comes to mind too, for atmosphere it was my favourite ever game (not just for the Rio abuse, that was just quite humouring). I didn’t attend the 2-1 victory in February of this year, despite predicting a Wolves win for months (seriously I did!), however, what a game that was.

Those are my favourite five games, not the best, but memorable for me especially the top three.

I’d lov3 to be an Ar5enal fan

So today, we played arguably our toughest game since the Manchester United away game which saw us lose spectacularly 8-2. Today we face Chelsea, who lost Didier Drogba to suspension and really looked poor even with most of their first team in tact, and so did Arsenal, yet we won!

The game was your great end to end derby which was a fantastic advert for the Premier League and showed why defences in England are typically poor this season.

The game started with many end to end chances, Gervinho and Van Persie missed a sitter each, as did Torres and Sturridge at the other end, that was until Frank Lampard scored in the fourteenth minute to put Chelsea ahead. Twenty-two minutes later, Ramsey played a brilliant ball through to Gervinho who ‘jew-goaled’* it to Van Persie to grab an equaliser. It looked like the Premier League pendulum would turn Arsenal’s way with many a chance to make it 2-1 Arsenal before Half-time, however, defensive mishaps by Per Mertesacker and Mikel Arteta meant John Terry could get in and make it 2-1 to Chelsea just before the half-time whistle.

Really, the game could go either way in the second half, if Arsenal could score it would make it an interesting game, if Chelsea got a two goal cushion, it would be over.

Arsenal started the stronger of the two, and scored two goals in ten minutes after the restart to make it 3-2 and actually looked defensively adequate despite keeper Woijciech Szczesny almost getting sent-off for a Professional foul on Cashley. That was until the ball was given away with ten minutes to go and Andre Santos who scored in the forty-ninth minute although you could argue Lakaku fouled Santos before Mata struck the ball.

At 3-3, one man came alive, the Dutchman, Robin Van Persie, who right now deserves FIFA’s Ballon d’Or, even ahead of Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, John Terry slipped as RVP ran through skipped passed the helpless Petr Cech and made it 4-3 and with the game in stoppage time, Chelsea threw everyone forward in a desperate act to make it a 4-4 only for four Arsenal attackers to go up the other end and Arteta to gift RVP a stunning hat-trick with a brilliant swerving strike.

A long way to go before Arsenal are title rivals again, but in this form, they are arguably as good as they were last season, any faltering's from either Manchester club could gift Arsenal back in it in this forever surprising, forever changing season.

Chels3a – Ar5enal

The Sadly Ironic Month of October

Here in the United Kingdom, October is Black History Month, it is also when Kick it Out’s ‘One Game, One Community’ campaign runs. The campaign sponsors Sky’s coverage and is supported by Ford, its also supported by Football players who train wearing the campaign T-shirts.

So how sadly ironic that during this month there have been two complaints of racist slurs in England and another in Spain, which begs the question: Is this campaign working?

Let me set the record straight, anything racist said by John Terry, Luis Suarez and Cesc Fabregas (who will all be mentioned) is NOT condoned. I am warning you now in case you get the wrong idea later on.

Last night (or early Tuesday morning) I started tweeting, saying that I didn’t feel John Terry was an overt racist for his alleged comments on Sunday towards QPR and England defender Anton Ferdinand, looking more into it, I can see I may have been incorrect in my arguments. I still stand by that Terry is not as racist as lets say a member of the KKK, BNP or EDL may be deemed as being, but still calling Ferdinand a “f***ing black c**t” is a racial offense and for Terry to deny this despite video evidence (taken from the Guardian online). Terry, who I tweeted “doesn't make him next in line to lead BNP.” through his racist comments, isn’t an overt racist as he shares a pitch every week with other black players such as: England team-mate Ashley Cole, Didier Drogba, Nicholas Anelka, Jose Boswingwa, Florent Malouda, Ramires etc. and Terry who has been known to exhibit a lot of power as captain of Chelsea would surely refuse to take to the pitch with them.

However, this is not the first time Terry has made such comments, in a match with Tottenham he was said to have called Spurs and England defender Ledley King a “lippy black monkey” and also racially abused Samuel Eto’o in the past as well.

Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t believe Terry says these things because he’s a racist (or at least I hope not because he’s a diverse nation’s captain) I believe he says these things for a reaction and because he’s stupid. The match he’s in is followed by hundreds of camera’s, he’s bound to get caught. I don’t feel he’s a racist, I think he’s just ignorant and stupid, and if he’s found guilty by the MET police who have started an investigation, then he should be punished to the full extent with him being stripped of England and Chelsea captaincies for good and I’d even ban him from the England team now.

As for Luis Suarez, I’m going to skip over that one because I don’t have enough facts to say anything on this one, what I will link is a quote from the Daily Mail article saying Black players should take it on the chin and move on. (Quote taken from Arsenal blogger ‘LadyArse’ on Twitter, I recommend you follow).

Lastly, our old friend Cesc Fabregas in sunny Spain has been found to have said “puto Negro de mierda" which means "fucking black shit" (Quote taken from ‘FourFourTom’ on Twitter, I again recommend you follow) towards former Tottenham old boy Freddy Kanoute. Which actually caused Kanoute to lash out at Fabregas. What is arguably worse about this one, was the fact Fabregas is clearly shown saying it and then got on Twitter to have a self-righteous dig at Kanoute calling him a liar and a coward. What angers me almost more is to think that Fabregas was once heralded so much and now is on the defensive so much after saying something stupid. Again, the term was racist and I don’t believe Fabregas is a racist, much like I don’t feel Sergio Busquets is a racist (he’s just a cheat). However, these outdated terms are offensive and have to be stamped out. Also when you way up the history of Spanish players and fans (referencing the ‘monkey’ chants in a friendly between Spain and England in 2004 and Sergio Busquets’ repeated name calling towards Marcelo in a Barcelona/Real Madrid clash last season) you have to question Fabregas’ motive.

Overall, all this is a massive let down to a month that should be held up as one where players rally together to stop anyone saying these despicable words and phrases, rather than more of it. Although, maybe this is behaviour that goes on all the time and because of it being this month more of it is being reported by players because more action will be taken this month than any other. I don’t feel any of these players are calling for slave-labour to be brought back or hoping these players are evicted from the country like some racial groups do, however, these are all racist attacks and must be investigated, especially those of John Terry and Cesc Fabregas as it got that much of a reaction.

“Sunday, Perfect Sunday”

So the weekend has been a little bit of a sombre one in our household, tomorrow will mark a year since my Grandmother’s passing and the title of this blog is sort of dedicated to her as her favourite hymn was “Peace, perfect Peace” and its also wrote on her gravestone (as I noticed today), so I thought it was a nice touch to alter the title.

Anyway, enough of my personal life onto the Football. Last season, Arsenal thoroughly cheered me up by thrashing Manchester City 3-0, this season, I don’t believe that all this was a coincidence, call me strange, but even as an atheist I somehow believe my Grandmother is having some sort of effect on the Football results in an attempt (which always works) to cheer me up. The first, came in the form of one of the funniest games in history:

Manchester United 1-6 Manchester City
The amount of little Manchester United plastic fans who I’ve had say “I’d 8-2 to be an Arsenal fan” is ridiculous, so for them to lose 6-1, and I mean to lose 6-1 with their FIRST team, not with half their first team squad missing like when Arsenal lost their, not losing 6-1 when they’re meant to be finish nearer the bottom than top, losing 6-1 to their rowdy neighbours is bloody hilarious.

Frankly, United were embarrassed by City, and were it not for a great strike by Fletcher would have been 6-0. I know must United fans will make the excuse that Evans being sent off will have changed the outcome, but City looked so good against a really poor United who have been slipping gradually recently, would have won at least 3-1 anyway.

Arsenal 3-1 Stoke City
Arsenal played Stoke today as well, and although the game was not on the telly and I haven’t had time to watch Match of the Day 2 yet, but I will say, hearing Arsenal smash Stoke 3-1 in what I hear our best performance is fantastic news, and I’ll get a better overview going once I’ve watched MOTD2.

Still, more goals for Van Persie, who proves that he is our best player and people do need to understand why he needs to be rested some days to evade injury.

Queens Park Rangers 1-0 Chelsea
The funniest of the three games may be the West London Derby, Bosingwa and Drogba both got red carded therefore miss the Arsenal game. They also lost 1-0 through a silly penalty and even though they didn’t look terrible with nine in the second half, Chelsea looked a little poor all game and even Arsenal can beat them.

Overall, a brilliant day, best of the season so far, I’d like to apologise though that there’s been a lack of blogs recently, I’ve been on holiday, had a lot of UCAS application stuff to finish and my A-Level work as well, I’d like to get some more done when I can, and now my illness has cleared up, I wouldn’t mind doing a podcast.