Soccer Fan Blog

Good morning and welcome to Suicide Blog.

Those of you who have read comments from Cesc Fabregas and feel that life is no longer worth living please form an orderly queue by the suicide machine and you will be dealt with in strict rotation. Please note that suicides may be recorded for quality and training purposes.

The rest of you please grab a coffee and settle in for the final working day of the week. It’s all gone a bit into overdrive this morning, hasn’t it. Cesc, speaking at some thingy yesterday, shocked the football world by saying that IF he were to leave Arsenal for a club in Spain that club would be Barcelona.

I know, I know. I never saw it coming either. He went on to say that this is what he would like but also that he was in no hurry to leave Arsenal. He expressed a little envy that the guys he’d grown up with, like Messi and Pique, were achieving success, and who can blame him?

Anyway, this means it’s all over for Arsenal now. From what I can gather reading around the club is to be wound up, the ground bought by Sp*rs, all our trophies attributed to them and we shall be forced to listen to In The Air Tonight 53 times a day after our special Phil Collins neck tattoos are finished.

I really don’t see the fuss to be perfectly honest. Here’s the direct quote:

If I leave Arsenal it will be to play at Barcelona. I do not know when it will happen, I am very happy at Arsenal and I am in no hurry to leave. 

Now, I’m not quite sure where the bits about him sorting out his future before the World Cup come from and in what context those quotes were made so I’m not going to start stressing about them. Suffice to say that everything Cesc says which has anything vaguely to do with Barcelona is going to be jumped on by the press over there, whose agenda we all know very well, and the press here who have precisely fuck all to write about at the moment so this is perfect fodder for them.

I mean, look at this load of steaming bollocks in The Sun. The picture is quite fantastic, Arsenal as the titanic, a ‘sinking ship’, ho ho ho. The funniest part though is that the article is written by a Liverpool fan, a bloke who, when he was writing for the News of the World, invented stories about Thierry Henry being booed by Arsenal fans. I have to say I find the idea of a Liverpool fan talking about Arsenal’s ‘sinking ship’ just a touch on the hilarious side. What with their ship having already sunk and that. Still, I suppose he’s got to get his kicks where he can and knowing Arsenal are about to sign Torres must have broken his head. What? Oh, I’ve said too much.

I don’t pretend to know what Cesc’s future holds, I’ve said for a long time I think we could have done a bit better by him, but the fact that he said he’d like to go back to Barcelona one day doesn’t not bother me in the slightest. This is the captain of our club, who gave absolutely everything in the season just gone. He led his team through difficult times, scored 18 goals, created probably as many, played through injury, dragged us back into games like Villa and reacted like a proper captain when all that shit went down against Stoke. It’s that which I’ll judge him on, not a few out of context quotes from a PR appearance.

Moving on, Sol Campbell says he’s talking with the club about a new deal and I’d be very surprised if that didn’t happen. Especially when you listen to what Robin van Persie has to say:

He is one of those characters you need in a squad – when someone is easing off he just tells you, ‘listen, this is not the way to do it. Sharpen up because otherwise this isn’t going to work.’
 
We need that and that is why I am very pleased that he is here. When you look at when he came and the way he ended the last couple of months – fantastic.

I think the return of Campbell has highlighted something, to the fans and I believe the manager, that this team has been missing. There’s so much to be said for character and I know we’ve been over it before but it bears repeating. While Arsene tried to build a team which has grown up together his mistake was getting rid of experience too quickly.

Bringing through young players is brilliant and something we all want to see – it’s worked at a club like Barcelona where the guts of their team have come through the academy. The difference is the way they’ve been blended into the team and who they’ve had to learn from. Would Diaby and Denilson be better players if they had someone like Sol or Martin Keown or Tony Adams playing with them? I think so. You need to learn from experienced guys, you need a bit of fear that a Roy Keane style character is going to bite your head off if you don’t put in the effort, and that’s what’s been missing at Arsenal, I think. 

Is Denilson going to give out to Diaby if he doesn’t track his man? Of course not. It’s the ultimate pot-kettle thing going on there. The blend has been wrong and while we do have players who give it their all, we have too many strollers who have never been challenged properly in their footballing youth. In every team I played in, from the time I was a teenager and even now, there have been guys who demand you give everything you’ve got in every game. You’re afraid to let them down and it’s a good thing to have them in your team. It’s clear that’s not the case at Arsenal and when you go into the final part of the season without most of those players (Cesc, van Persie, Vermaelen) you will struggle.

We’ve got players of a certain age and a certain character now who have got a responsibility next season not just to perform because they’re our best players, but to demand more of their teammates. If there are players too precious to take it, get shot of them. You get the sense that a few of these Arsenal players don’t really understand how ruthless and how unforgiving professional football can be. It’s about time they learned. Either with us or elsewhere.

Lee Dixon reckons we need at least four new players this summer. I have to go along with that. I’m still struggling with my squad analysis but I think that’s about right. We currently have a first team squad of 28 according to the official site. I know some of them are out on loan but when we can only name 25 for the Premier League next season we have to be a bit more clever in the way we make up our squad. More on that anon.

Now then, time for this week’s Arsecast. It features some of your thoughts about this season, Tony Adams has a poem about his new adventure and there’s a look over the shoulder and a walk into the distance, perhaps for the last time, for Sylvester.

You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here (23mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

And there we go. It’s time for some bacon powered recovery from last night’s impromptu beers. Till tomorrow.