Yet another horrible performance against a half strength Sheffield United team. It is definitely a recurring theme, we come close to scoring on several occasions early on and then the other team score and we get bullied for the remainder of the game. In truth we were lacklustre with no-one making anything more than an average performance and 2 or 3 players significantly under par.
Admittedly we were severely under-strength with Gallas, Henry, Diaby, Ljungberg, Eboue, Hleb and Adebayor injured but we made the situation even worse by leaving Cesc on the bench. Wenger has done this on 3 occasions this season and we have drawn twice and lost once, we cannot afford to leave out players of his calibre even if he has a cold. We started with Aliadiere up front and Baptista on the left which, with the benefit of hindsight, was a colossal mistake. Aliadiere is useless and Baptista, a much more proven goalscorer was put in a position where he regularly failed at Real Madrid last year. Please Arsene, give him a chance up front and I'm sure that he wont let you down. I would love to see us play Baptista and Henry up front with Van Persie just behind. Baptista's shooting and heading ability combined with Van Persie's vision and Thierry's overall unselfishness would be lethal. People will say that Baptista isn't good enough from yesterday's performance where his 1st touch was admittedly poor but here is a player who is recovering from injury and a season of few performances, playing on a boggy pitch, playing out of position. Give him a chance!
The complete joke of the evening was Jagielka, a midfielder, replacing Paddy Kenny in goal in the 63rd minute. You would think that we would shoot as much as possible for the following half an hour but it took until the 80th minute before we tested him with a shot from Van Persie where, in all honesty, Robin should have done better. I watch matches now with an extreme sense of pessimism. Whenever Chelsea play, I watch them concede a goal early on but know that they will end up winning the match, mainly due to their set piece ability. When we concede a goal, teams shut us down by pressing and using underhand tactics (e.g. Morgan's punch on Van Persie yesterday) but that is to be expected and we need to cope with this or just stop conceding the 1st goal. (The latter would be nice)
In other news, Anthony Stokes scored another hat trick for Falkirk yesterday and Arsene said that he wants him to stay on loan for another 6 months before he comes back to Arsenal which is fair enough what with competition being high with Adebayor, Henry, Walcott, Van Persie, Baptista and Aliadiere fighting for places. The signs are very good for the future though and I believe that Stokes and Walcott will, in time, be the future forward line.
Right I'm off to start New Years celebrations, have a good one all.
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