Finally a cup after 9 years

The goal that won the cup! Aaron is somewhere under that heap

 

Captain V lifts the cup

Aaron the crown prince who will be one year wiser next season

 

Wizard of Ozil

Sometimes one man can change the direction of a club. Bergkamp was already playing for Arsenal when I started watching Arsenal, so I really don’t know how it would have been when he signed. But now I know how people would have felt back then. We have a similar star in the team now, who has raised the team’s confidence, brought some cheer to the crowd and a whole lot of zip to the way the team plays. The man is Ozil, Mesut Ozil. Take a bow.

 

And the league table has never looked so good for a long time…

Away kit and Football vines

Arsenal launched their new 2013/14 away kit yesterday! Some pics from the official site below

And since I got introduced to vines recently due to my wife…I was researching on that found that Football clubs are already at it. More info here

This is hilarious!!!

Someone is having some fun at the expense of Wenger!!!

Premier League 2012-13 in numbers

Thanks Guardian for all the stats…

Meanwhile I thought this was cool

 

Guard of Honour to Robin Van Persie!

No.20 leads United to their 20th title

He left Arsenal last year for 24 million pounds and joined United with the ambition of winning a trophy. He refused to take more money and join Manchester City.

He went on to score 24 goals leading the league for top-scorers and assisting in 8 goals.

So the Gunners will have to give a guard of honour to the 2013 champions when they visit the Emirates next sunday.

A lot happened in the last one month

Well its been a month since I posted on this blog and a lot has happened in the last 30 days in the football world. Not just in England but in Europe as well as in India!!!

Lets talk about about Arsenal first. We got beaten in the CL match against Bayern. It was expected and 3-1 sounds quite harsh. I was on my annual anniversary holiday and so missed this match. But thank god I missed it 🙂 Would not have wanted to see us beaten that badly. And if we thought Europe was bad, we lost to our London rivals Spurs. I thought we might at worst come up with a draw int hat match, but the high line that we left back at the defence proved costly against two of the fastest players in the Premier League – Bale and Lennon. we gotta see if we can make up for the lost points in the next 10 matches and finish on top of the Spurs like we do every season. All I can say is it needs something short of a miracle for that to happen.

In the other Champions league matches, Real overcame a resolute United though under some dubious refereeing decision. But the fact that in that current situation, Mourinho made a tactical substitution and Fergie did not proved costly. United looked like the better team but in the end, it was the Spanish team that reigned supreme. And Real have been having a great 8 days in which they beat Barcelona twice and drew and beat Manchester United. Mourinho will be happy to lift the Champions League once again. So if he does that will be Real’s Decima, yes the 10th one.

Its not nice to talk about your rivals when they are in a crisis. But it looks like Rooney and United are not in the best of relationships. Its strange when you see Rooney not being part of a United game-plan. Ferguson has used the hard working Wellbeck in some of the most critical matches this season along with Van Persie. So it would be interesting to see what happens to Rooney’s future come summer.

In the 67th edition of the Santosh Trophy which returned to the Kerala shores I think after a long time was a heart break for the locals. The team reached the finals after a long long time. I don’t remember any instance in the recent past. We were in the semis last year but that was it. Doordarshan’s programme display screwed up and I got to see the extra time of the match. And honestly I thought we played well during those 30 minutes and had majority of the possession during that period and hence the better chances. We did an Arsenal by not converting those chances and then paid in the end in the sudden death. But I saw3 some promising talents in the team and hope it augurs well for the team and some of them feature in the Indian team

Some stats to chew

Some of the premier league stats and where we stand against the best in the league… The story so far in 2012-2013

Top scorer of the league – boo hoo Robin Van Persie – 18 goals followed closely by Suarez at 17.

Arsenal’s top scorer – Theo Walcott – 11 goals and 5th in the standings, followed by Olivier Giroud who is 18th on the stnading with 9 goals. Cazorla and Podolski are not far behind on 21st and 22nd place with 8 goals. Not bad

Top assists in the league – Podolski, Gerrard and Mata are tied at the top with 9 assists each. So Mata and Podolski are proving to be very valuable players for their respective teams. Walcott is 6th in the assists list with 7

In terms of player discipline none of the Gunners feature in the notorious 26 players who have received maximum yellow or red cards. There are 2 United players (Rooney and Scholes), one Liverpool (Suarez) and two Chelsea players (Ramires and David Luiz)

Fair Play toppers of the league – Southampton has received the least number of cards (25Y) so far followed by Arsenal (23Y 2 R).

 

 

 

Monreal – will he be the real deal?

I think so…but we needed him badly!

Ignacio “Nacho” Monreal

Monreal has represented his country Spain at youth level, Under-21s and has made nine appearances for the national team since making his debut against Macedonia in 2009.

He started his career at Osasuna before moving to Málaga in June 2011.

Welcome to the club!

Why Gibbs injury could be the worst thing to happen to the Gunners this season

Kieran Gibbs has been ruled out of action for atleast three weeks due to an injury he suffered in the match against Liverpool last night.  His thigh injury can make him miss premier league matches against Stoke and Sunderland as well as the all-important Champions League match against Bayern Munich.

An injured Gibbs struggles to walk out of the pitch

His replacement in the Liverpool match is the most inconsistent left-back Wenger has ever signed, Andre Santos. Quite often we see him advance into forward positions when he would be better off staying back and shoring up the defence. He doesnt just drift into wide left areas but he drifts into centre forward areas as if he is our striker. And I remember him attempting couple of long rangers which went high into the stands when a ground pass to a fellow midfielder would have been the better option.

So if we expose our defence to Andre Santos, it would be like committing suicide. I know that the Brazilian is a much better player than what he has been displaying this season. But I don’t think at this level you have any time for trial and error. Wenger in his post match interview did hint that he will go for a replacement for the injured Gibbs.

We do have couple of easy matches in the premier league and we should ensure we get the 6 points in these two matches. Else we can really fall behind in the race to the fourth spot.