Blackburn, in case we've forgotten, beat the Gunners 2-1 at Highbury earlier this season, thanks mainly to an outstanding performance by Brad Friedel. They're a little dinged up at the moment, though, with David Thompson definitely out and David Dunn possibly out. However, Damien Duff is set to return and play for a bit: http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/030313/21/dvdcb.html In this preview from the oddly named 4thegame.com site - details of David Seaman's milestone; Tony Adams speaks (although I have trouble understanding what he says): http://www.4thegame.com/previews/form124426/brfcafc.html This game is on live in the U.S. and Canada - PPV in the States, Sportsnet in the Great White North, 10 a.m. ET. It will show up on Fox Sports World beginning next Wednesday.
No milestone for Seaman - looks like he's out, along with Sol and Paddy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/2830411.stm
mmm A tricky tie. Blackburn are flying at the minute and have returned from a lovely week in the sun. There may be trouble ahead.......... i'm going to be the ultimate pessimist here and predict that our unbeaten run ends today.
OK, for whatever reason the PPV wasn't offered here so I have to ask, what the hell is going on? I've been following one of those online matchtrackers and getting really pissed off! How are we down 2-0? Anyone? Is it the Ray-Edu combo in the middle? Is Taylor making mistakes? I just don't understand.
My cable went down for some reason - my friend's cable was also gone so I couldn't watch the game . . . a 2-0 loss? What happened? From the live text, it appears that there was no D (Keown got hurt) and our midfield didn't not take control. The injuries and fatigue? is beginning to hurt us. No confidence going into Valencia. Also ManUre can take over . . . it appears it comes down to the game with ManU but I may be speaking too soon if results like today's continue. Next game is going to be another tough one - Everton and Wonder Boy Rooney. No Keown, No Campbell, No Viera - ARGHHHH!!!! I love Arsenal's flowing football but the lads have got to step up when it counts. No clean sheets for a while and that really bothers me . . . it's the old sports saying - Offense gets the glory but Defense Wins Championships.
Listening to the live radio feed, Arsenal didn't seem to have many quality chances, if any. Blackburn's defense seemed to be pretty tight all throughout the match. With ManUre's win, the Gunners only have a 2 point edge. It's a tough loss to swallow and the race has just gotten tighter. No room for error now.
I know that Arsenal still holds it's own destiny in all 3 competitions but ughhhh . . . I can't help having a panicky feeling . . . we could be out in 2 competitions by the end of this month and maybe trying to keep up with ManUre . . . I won't be a happy camper if ManUre wins the EPL and/or the CL and our boys take home nothing . . . ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Be glad you missed it. Everyone--and I mean everyone--was off their game today. Horrible stuff. As soon as Keown went off, the defense looked like a swirling mess. Gilberto filled in and took a while to find his defensive boots. Cygan was abysmal. He looked totally lost even before half time. Has anyone ever seen a centre half play so poorly for Arsenal? Some credit due to Blackburn and Duff, but we certainly didn't make it difficult for them. The only promising sign, and all the Gooners in the bar had to show loads of patience to see it, was Freddie and Thierry sparking to life at the end. But I use the term "sparking" purely in the relative sense. The whole team was flat, the possible exception being (hold your breath folks...) Ralph. Valencia, then Everton coming up. Keep your fingers crossed Keown will make a quick recovery.
The worst performance since our final away game in the CL last year! Cygan has to go. HE HHHHAAAAASSSSS TO GO! I find this hard to say, but bring back Stepanovs! Why oh why did AW sell Matty Upson? If we finish with nothing this year that will be the question. All the plaudits and the raving about how good this Arsenal team are worth nothing. If we have pretentions to take over from ManUre then it won't be about skill it will be about character. The next 2 weeks will truly determine if The Gunners are made of the right stuff or just a bunch of flash in the pan woosies!!!
.. This was one result i took absolutely no pleasure in predicting accurately. The news is worsening. Wenger has said that Keown will be out for at least 21 days with a hamstring ailment. This means Igor will be wheeled out alongside Cygan on Wednesday if Sol doesn't mend. All eyes will be on Roma doing us a favour!!!!!!
I was at the game today and Arsenal were very poor. Pires did nothing and the attack looked short of ideas. Henry was inventive as ever although he hugged the touchline for much of the second half.
Folks, this was the worst Arsenal performance I've seen in at least two seasons (and, no, I didn't see last season's Juventus match). We created exactly one really good chance - Henry's free kick early in the game that Friedel flew across to save. There were a couple of other chances where you say "decent save Brad," but nothing of true quality. The entire club - with a couple of exceptions I'll talk about below - were poor. And that starts from the manager on down. Let's see...you've got one central defender already out, out of two starters one lacks confidence and the other's 37 years old. So what does Wenger do? Puts Gilberto, Jeffers, Wiltord, Toure, and Warmuz on the bench. No true defender. Now, my take is that Gilberto actually played surprisingly well, and I don't think he was responsible for either of the goals, but I've got to think we'd have been better off with a true central defender back there. Like (gulp) Matthew Upson, and that's the first time you'll see me hint that letting him leave might have been a mistake. Gio was poor at LB, and on Tugay's goal he somehow managed to actually position himself INSIDE of Cygan. It was a mess - Tugay had a guy unmarked to his right, Cygan and Taylor had to cheat that way, and Tugay had easy pickings for the goal in the far corner - his first in 14 months. Ray Parlour showed why he should never play in the team again without Vieira around to cover for his mistakes. On Blackburn's first goal Ray got stripped of the ball as he was heading up the field, then he couldn't clear the ball after Duff whiffed on his first shot attempt, then Yorke made a lucky stab, the ball ended up in prime position to Duff, and it was 1-0. Parlour is all arms and legs when he "runs," but he gets nowhere, and does so slowly. Has anybody seen Dennis Bergkamp lately? You know, blond, square jaw, serious look, usually pulling the strings for the offense? He played the full 90 but was almost completely anonymous. Edu was below average, Ljungberg was very disappointing, as was Pires, and Henry didn't do much until late in the second half. And Cygan. I'm in the "give him a chance to adjust to the EPL" crowd, but today he was abyssmal. He and Taylor couldn't communicate, Cygan's distribution, supposedly his strong suit, was poor, and he looked like a beaten man for most of the match. I personally don't think he was the primary person responsible for either Blackburn goal, but he was bad, just the same. Finally, I want to give credit to Blackburn. They aren't my favorite non-Arse team in the league, but they were well organized today, they capitalized on their few chances, and - this is where I was surprised - they did a nice job on defense, especially when it came to cutting off Arsenal attackers right before they could pull the trigger and get a shot off. I didn't know this, but they've now beaten Arsenal, ManUre, and Newcastle at home this season, and that's impressive.
Right on, dwinkler. Reading your post made me re-live every excruciating match detail. In the interest of self-therapy, allow me to ramble. I have been waving the flag for little man Gio, thinking he could hold his own at left back. Wrong. Gronkjaer left him for dead in the FA Cup match, and it happened again today. He should have glued himself to Tugay on the second goal, and was perfectly positioned to do so...but then he mysteriously fled to cover an imaginary man in the box. He seems reluctant to throw himself in the line of fire. The bright spot in back was Gilberto, but he got caught waaaaaaaaay down the pitch several times, and a better counter-attacking team would have flogged him for it. I don't expect we'll see him in that position again. Pires was a mile off his game. You could see it in the first three minutes after he knocked a few passes long. Not only was he not tackling (somewhat forgivable given his attacking prowess), he was making no pretense about it. Edu seemed rattled by the tough tackling and never asserted himself in the game. The easy scapegoat is Cygan. Every time the ball floated toward him I wanted to stick my face in my pancakes. If Parlour and Edu need PV for them to look good, well Cygan needs Sol just the same. Keep in mind Blackburn scored twice without Cole, Dunn or Thompson. And Sukur could have walked a third one in if he hadn't miraculously stopped, thinking he was offsides. Credit to them for digging in when top players were hurt. Wish I could say the same for us. It's true the team had gone 20 games unbeaten, and some people are likely to take the occasional loss in stride. But this game was huge, people, even by the every-game-is-huge standards. After failing Wenger's self-imposed "test of character" against Roma, and knowing that ManU had won one-nil earlier in the day, we needed something from this match. But no one looked interested in winning until the game was clearly over. This was not the Blackburn match at Highbury, where I think luck was working against us (and so was Brad Friedel). We got outplayed, comprehensively. By my count, we created exactly zero good chances on goal. Okay. Enough ranting. If anyone has gotten this far down in the post, could you tell me if there is a soccer bar in Charlotte, NC? Going for work on Tuesday and hoping to catch some CL action.
Right on Dwinkler. Only thing I was iffy about was Freddie. I didn't think he played that badly. He was the only one who looked like he had a spark and fully committed to the cause. He couldn't shine because there was no one to play off. I love it when he and DB are jazzing together; Freddie's unstoppable diagonal runs and DB's surgically precise pinpoint passes - enough to make you wet! Today the only moisture was drool on DB's chin. He looked like Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo's Nest; after the labotomy!!! He won't be there to help the cause on Tuesday so the very least he could have done was run is ass off today. I watched the game at Nevada Smiths in NYC. One of the lads I regularly see down there summed up AW's part in the problems of the last few weeks. He said Wenger was breaking his own rules. You know taking each game as it comes insteed of messing with the team to save players for "more important" matches. If Arsene keeps chasing the next big rainbow he may end up coming home with no crock of gold at all?
We've had the debate before about whether Cygan or Keown is best for the other CB stop next to Sol, and I think these last two games have proven that, without a shadow of a doubt, Martin Keown is the man for the job. Cygan looks half the time like he doesn't know where he's supposed to be or who he's supposed to mark. Yes, he's probably got the bigger upside of the two, but his downside has cost Arsenal goals in the last couple of weeks. Say whatever you want about Martin Keown. When he and Sol were paired in the center of the backline, they were much more solid defensively. The fact that he's out for the next three weeks is really going to hurt. I still have the confidence that Arsenal can hang on, but I've lost most of my confidence in Cygan. Hurry back, Sol!
A rank bad performance all round. Once Keown went off the defence was a shambles, no-one took responsibility for tackling anyone and there was no leader out there. The midfield was just as bad, no-one looked assured on the ball and passes were being misplaced left and right. I know we had a few players out, but with the size of Arsenal's squad there is no way we should be losing twice to Blackburn this season. All that said, games do go like this sometimes and the players need to react positively, starting against Valencia next week. Hopefully a few of the injured will return, but even if they don't the guys out on the field need to show a bit more character and step their game up when they're called upon.
Lets not get into a finger pointing contest folks. Face it, a draw would have been acceptable against a team that has been killing giants this year, and that was with our first team squad. With the (defensive) heart of the team out - Cole, Seaman, Campbell, Viera, then Keown - we looked about how you'd expect: rudderless and disorganized as hell! And not just in back, but all over the pitch. But, this team has character and a superb manager. Lets show our character as supporters and give the boys some love!
He looked particularly pathetic on the 2nd goal, when he not only failed to challenge the ball before the shot, or even move towards his man, but he even turned and recoiled like a little girl when the ball was kicked past him. Disgraceful. Certainly the team missed its regular backs, and the inexperience/lesser skill of the substitute keeper showed as well. But it was particularly disappointing to me, how invisible Bergkamp was throughout the match. I didn't notice him making a single significant contribution in the entire game. Pires was also ineffective; the midfield didn't control the ball well. The only one out there who looked like he came to play was Henry. Where would Arsenal be without him? After he came out of the Chelsea game, you could see a big difference in his absence. Nothing happened without him.