Another whiner!

As you all must have realized by now, no matter how much I appreciate the vision of wenger to play beautiful football, the constant whining of arsenal and their boss irritates me to no end. And here is the newest rant boy, Van Persie taking a shot at chelsea and barcelona for trying to "bully" referees into giving decisions in their favour. I can see this working, if at all, for fouls committed on them and not for fouls committed by them. And stats never lie and tells a clear story with chelsea on top of the fair play table in EPL and Barcelona on top of La liga fair play stats.

The season has been specially hard on arsenal and its players because of them being in contention in every competition and losing out in the last leg of each one. I have always believed that this Arsenal team will not win anything worthwhile. Beautiful football is one thing, but to win the silverware you need winners in your team. People who have been there and done that are really important when get towards the end games. That is the reason most analysts have Man U as favourite and Chelsea as second favourites for this years EPL title rather than Arsenal which are the nearest to Man U in terms of points.

I hope Wenger goes somewhere other than the barca academy and buys some balls for his team, the current team definitely cannot muster any!

Yawn..,

A weekend like no other in a while... no football in any of the leagues that I follow. I am close to having withdrawal symtoms. :-D :-D

 

Men vs Boys

Man U are going to win their 19th premier league title. Yes, I have said it with 9 or so games yet to be played. The reasoning is solidified with todays superb performance from them. They played some very bad football for the better part of 90 minutes, they go down to 10 men for about 20+ minutes or so and yet score a late time winner against a bolton team that played like a top 7 team. The drive and belief when they went down to 10 men was just amazing to watch. There is a lot of strength in this squad and it is for everyone to see.

On the other hand, the skilled boys from Arsenal come back losing 2 points to West Brom! If this doesnt tell a story I dont know what does. Everytime Arsenal have a chance to put their foot into the title race they take a step back. Its almost as if they are happier to play second fiddle and keep crying on how the world is unfair to them rather than going out there all guns blazing! I am see a sixth season of silverware drought for them...

A whiplash and tears!

So, the much awaited second leg of the CL clash between Barcelona and Arsenal was set to happen at Nou Camp. Last season, it was a resouding 4-0 loss at Nou Camp for Arsenal which was preceded by a relatively decent 2-2 draw at the Emirates. This year at the Emirates they had gone one better and actually beaten the Catalans 2-1 and there were hopes that they may maybe manage a draw if not a win at Nou Camp.

With these high hopes the gunners reached Nou Camp only to be gunned down mercilessly in typical barca fashion. 67% possession, 10+ shots at goal, 5 corners and numerous close shaves at the goal drowned the gunners. They could not muster a single shot at goal, the one goal they did manage also needed to be scored by a barca player! What fabregas, what nasri, what wilshere... the midfield didnt belong to anyone but Xavi and Iniesta. Arsenal was dominated from the start and they never recovered. With this being the truth, the match still was marred by the controversial sending off of Robbie Van Persie. You would of course feel bad for RVP as it was a very very strict call. But that being said, he feigned ignorance to the whistle. Most have agreed to this being a possible reason, but I have a different take on it and its very circumstantial and hear me out.

RVP is one of those players who can do magic with his left leg and do very little with his right. Like Messi, like Mesut Ozil, like Ryan Giggs, like Van der vaart, RVPs left foot is just an awesome weapon, while his right foot is just a pale poor cousin in terms of skill and accuracy. This being the case, at every given chance all of the above players try to get the ball to their left foot to shoot at goal. In the particular attack that led to the sending off of RVP, he has sprung the off side trap. He was under no pressure to shoot as defenders were no where near him and he was possibly outside the D or very close to being outside the D, which meant he had enough space to change his orientation on the ball. He had already controlled the ball beautifully and he had all the time to get the ball to his left foot and then put the ball where he wanted to. But instead he chose to go for goal with his right foot, with no clear vision of the goal or where valdes was. Does that make sense to you? Is that logical having seen RVP all these years? I think he heard the whistle, he was frustrated coz that was possible the first chance he had got of any nature in the entire match and to know he was offside, was frustrated and lashed at the ball.

There you go... my take on the whole episode. :-) And please wenger, please... stop crying, stop depleting the rainforests. In many ways, this could be the best thing that could have happened to the brittle arsenal team. They dont have the Carling Cup to worry about, they dont have the Champions League to worry about, and they possibly wont have the FA cup to worry about. So all they need to do is concentrate on the league. While at the same time Man U has to still worry about many a silverware and mounting injuries.

Believe it or not wenger, you could actually win the league this year! Go for it!!

Too little too late?

It has been quite a week or two in the world of football. To start with we have the Man U vs Chelsea match followed by the Man U vs Liverpool one. Both were much awaited matches as this would signify the way EPL would go in a big way. For all practical purposes the EPL season was Man U's to lose. And Arsenal just following them as they always do to no avail. After the Arsenal draw to Sunderland, these two match wins could have put Man U out of the arsenal range even for the most ardent of arsenal supporters. But as we could see, Man U lost both the matches and I think in quite convincing fashion.

Chelsea defeat of Man U was of special interest to me because I think of the current top 4 or top 5, I think only Chelsea have the heart and legs to take on Man U as the season winds up. But I also do think this has come a little late in the season for chelsea and they still need to win every match they play and also get a couple of matches going their way and they then get to a fighting position this season. I still think Man U will take the season, but they have had a bad spell off late with a draw in CL, 3 losses and a win in EPL and riddled with injuries.

C'mon Arsenal, what if the Carling Cup is gone, what if the CL is gone, what if the FA cup is about to go... there is still the league to be won! Go for it, for once... please! ;-)