The great midfield battle
Have Arshavin and Luzhny become one and the same?
Fast forward 10 months and though all still at the club, none were available when the Blues came to Highbury. Seventeen year old Cesc Fabregas and Matthieu Flamini, starting his first league game, scrapped like mad but if not outclassed, they were certainly overpowered by the triumvirate of Lampard, Makalele and Tiago.
Truth be told ever since that day our midfield has always felt a bit inferior to theirs. Prettier perhaps, happy to scrap, but ultimately a little inferior.
This weekend, however, things may just be a little different. The pitbull like Essien and wily out Lampard are still there, but maybe, just maybe, we have the answers.
Cesc Fabregas is playing as well as he ever has. And then there is Alex Song, on form barely conceivable a year ago. It’s a massive challenge and opportunity for the thus far this season outstanding Song. It’s a chance to mix it with the big boys, particularly after his inexplicable admission from last season’s FA Cup semi final line-up.
It says something about our central defensive situation that when the pair clashed heads on Tuesday, I was more worried about William Gallas than Andrei Arshavin.
I’m fascinated to see how it pans out and I’m beginning to think Denilson will be the third man in the middle. Perhaps I was a little hasty in asking exactly what he brings: those of you who argue it is greater solidity may have a point.
Either way, it’s a great test of our credentials.
Seen this before…
Cole will undoubtedly get boos this Sunday, though personally I’m kinda over it and a bit bored of it too. It’s just a shame things went so badly wrong with one of the very few genuinely excellent truly homegrown players that we’ve produced in a very long time.
Let’s just hope things turn out a little better with Gibbs.
Goodplaya responds
Andy Mack says:
Goodplaya says
Yeah, kinda see your point. On the one hand it’s looks like a decent mix, on the other it gives you nothing special.
jar0909 says:
Goodplaya says
No, no, no. Keep as many players in their correct positions as possible.
16 Responses to “Goodplaya on Friday: the midfield battle, Luzhny/Arshavin, Gibbs/Cole”
who will play at left back? Silvestre or Traore? I would go for the better defender against a team like chelsea. if they are hitting long balls into the channels for Drogba you will need a player with a decent chance of winning those battles. Traore just wont. whats more, set pieces are crucial and Silvestre is very good on set pieces.
I would go with Denilson in midfield. Either him or rosicky but I feel with ros he may desert his defensive duties more readily than Den would. I would then place Ros in the front 3 instead.
Theo just coming back from injury can be saved for later in the game againt tired legs.
Eddie should return while Vela again offers good ability from the bench.
Hope the wingers do their job…If they are agressive, we can win it..
I am not convinced by articles about us needing an anchor man in midfield. I think since departure of PV, Wenger wants a midfield where all defend and all can attack.. PV used to slow play down which is not the case of Song. We were never good in Europe because of that.. The new team is one which can be good in domestic football as well as in Europe..Everyone in midfield carries his weight…
I think we should go for
Almunia
Sagna, Vermaelen, Gallas/Silvestre, Eboue
Cesc, Song, Denilson
Walcott, Eduardo, Arshavin
gazzap, wenger said that the left back berth is between eboue and traore. to be honest, i would be happier with eboue there…
Edu didn’t bring anything special to the team, he was just a good, competent player that all title challenging teams need.
For Edu read Denilson.
To the tune of the Thierry Henry song:
Arsene Wenger went to Brazil,
Looking for a player, a player with skill.
They said to him
‘We got the player for you,
he aint got a passport and his name is Edu’
Edu, Edu, Edu Edu, Edu Edu, Edu Edu
(repeat noisily ad infinitum or until someone lamps you)
He was a legend and a sign of how good our midfield was circa 2001-2004 when he couldn’t command a regular spot.
we seem to have a way of stepping our game up with the big teams so my money is on arsenal, besides the lads will want to impress and the media negativity’ll feed their passion. I’d go with
…………………….Almunia…………………………..
Sagna…….Gallas………Vermalaen…..Silvestre
Fabregas………………Song…………..Denilson
Rosicky/Nasri/Eboue……Eduardo………Arshavin
Rosicky will be better because fabregas is likely to be marked wicked..so a we’ll need some one who can drop back, help the MF and create some magic which rosicky can do.
Goodplaya, i had the same doubts as you with concerns to song and denilson. Sons has proved me wrong and now denilson is winning me over, i suppose the last few years of not winning trophies has left us frustrated,but by now i should of learned to trust in wengers judgement. funnily i think this current team is just as good going forward if not better than any other wenger team, its just we need to get a trophy, if it werent for chelski and manure spending bucket loads of cash over the past few years we prob would of won the lot. WENGER IS GOD.
This place will be jumping, with both set of fans in full voice, but only one will be winners…….
ARSENAL 2 Chelsea 1
Goodplaya will be rating the whole team 10 come Monday.
Please Please Arsen, “by any means necessary”
aaahhhh for feck sake VanP season is over – 4 to 5 months out with that ankle injury – check out arsenal.com
I’m disconsolate about the RvP injury. What the hell is up with our luck? We’re not out of the title race, but as far as I am concerned, this will scupper our season – compounding our other injury problems – and lead to yet more miserable hysterical overreactions from the online Arsenal community. I’m sick of it. Yet another season wrecked by injuries, sure to be made more crap by idiots with a ‘complexity complex’.
I’ll explain, lol…Arsenal have for the last 3-4 seasons had by far and away the worst injury record in the premier league. This is irrecoverable fact. Doubt me? Well, Physio room bears this out and the length of the injuries we have suffered bears this out and the timing of the injuries bears this out, and the importance of the players who have suffered these injuries bears this out and….etc. As far as I am concerned, this is down to luck, nothing more or less. There’s no Arsenal injury superstition here, no injury-prone players conspiracy theory either. It’s just a string of really annoying coincidences. Sometimes things really are that simple.
But I read, for example, the Arsenal-Mania forum earlier today, and it seems people cannot accept that. Apparently, luck is too boring, too simple, too childish, too bereft of complications. Saying our problems are down to luck does not blame anyone. Which is wrong, apparently.
Well, I can’t be bothered continuing on that tangent to be honest, I’m just annoyed because when I read about the RvP story on the official website, my reaction was a resigned ‘wtf – surely we don’t deserve this’.
If it feels as if I’m selling you a sob story here – “woe is the Arsenal….poor, poor us….when will our terrible luck ever end” etc – then tremendous. Bloody tremendous. Because Arsene has assembled a brilliant squad bursting at the seams with talent – indeed, possessing more talent than Chelsea and Man United, and with Liverpool the veritable Ringo Starr of the Big Four in terms of talent and class, more than them too.
And yet we’ve never had a realistic chance to see them at full strength in over 3 years. So, timid and pathetic as this may sound, it is a sob story really.
I notice Lampard and Drogba and Cole are back for Chelsea. That’s their injury crisis over. What was that? One, two or three games? To be fair, the Blues aren’t having an unusually lucky period with injuries, just an average period. But when you compare to Arsenal…(and Liverpool, although I notice that whilst their situation has been terrible, they haven’t climbed above Arsenal on physio room this season, and we have certainly had just as many ‘key player’ injuries…to Nasri, Fab, Song, RvP, Eduardo etc)
I would love to hear from Goodplaya about this, because it does my head in…maybe Arsenal fans can sharpen their knives, in preparation for a long season of blaming and moaning, on the giant knife sharpener Thierry Henry-haters have erected outside Dublin.
Hope I’m wrong but I have a bad feeling about Sunday think we’re going to well beaten . Other than that RVP is a huge blow and is it only me or has Eduardo been very underwhelming this season , he has yet to show any form at all .
Sorry for the negativity , Gome on d gooners !!!
That was a reasonable outpouring of emotion lol. Incidentally I still believe Arsenal will beat Chelsea, I still believe we have the best squad, and before the latest RvP news, I still believed we would win the title. However football teams can only cope with long-term injuries to key players such as RvP if the injury is an anomaly, relatively speaking. RvP is just the latest in a long line of many other Arsenal players, some of them very important as well, to get injured. It’s not like he’s going to be alone with Colin Lewin.
Plus if he was out only six weeks, at least we could look forward to his return if we cocked up the intervening games. I’m worried if we don’t win at Chelsea AND Liverpool, or at least get one win and one draw, that the boys will be deflated as a result.
But fuck it: come on you gunners! Lets stuff Chelsea. I haven’t lost all faith. To paraphrase Arsene Wenger: now can be our time. We may be ‘cursed’, figuratively speaking, on the injury front, but by god we still have more creativity, vitality and invention in our game than Chelsea could ever dream of. Although I don’t know that that is saying much. What the hell does Ashley Cole have to dream about except swimming round and round in circles in a pool of money?
http://anotherarsenalblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/injuries-oh-fck-and-dodgy-foreign.html
does rvp really need surgery?
I used to think that Spuzz had all the rubbish injuries and they couldn’t look after their players properly. Now it’s us. Wenger brought in new conditioning methods, so it can’t be ignorance. I believe Wenger suggested it was the higher level at which the players now operate. Like thoroughbred horses, they are sustainable to the slightest strain, knock, twinge or bug. Worth investigating I reckon.
I just started reading your site – thanks for writing. I wanted to inform you that it’s not displaying correctly on the BlackBerry Browser (I have a Blackberry 9700). Anyway, I am now subscribed to the RSS feed on my PC, so thanks again!