Wenger picked the wrong team and almost lost the Hull game.
Arsenal started so badly that it took them 20 minutes to get the ball to Arshavin.
HE DID NOT HAVE A KICK FOR 20 MINUTES.
That’s how bad Arsenal were.
That’s how wrong his team selection was.
His best player did not have a kick for 20 minutes.
Guus Hiddink, Russia’s manager, was watching.What did he make of that?
What did Hiddink make of Arshavin stuck out on the left wing, not involved at all, as Arsenal went a goal down in 12 minutes ?
Once Fabregas joins Arshavin, Arsenal will have two of the world’s best chance-makers. Two assist-kings.
When Fabregas and Arshavin play together it should become crystal-clear what kind of striker is needed to make Arsenal’s team as good as their stadium.
Clearly, Bendtner should stay because he’s improving with every game.
But Van Persie and Adebayor must be sold.
Van Persie is an individualist who makes goals for himself. He did not fit into Arsenal’s style of play before Arshavin came and he sure doesn’t suit it now. He takes too many touches. He played against Hull and gave Arsenal nothing. And Wenger made him captain!
Adebayor is a blunt instrument with running power. He is six foot five but not good in the air. He runs offside 12 times in a game. He needs six chances to score a goal. He’s powerful but doesn’t knock centrebacks over. Last season was a one-off : the team was firing, he was scoring,
Last summer Wenger asked for £30 million for him and would have taken £25m but turned down £19m. That was a mistake. There are dozens of far better strikers than Adebayor, players with more skill, more awareness, a better attitude.
He’s had a hamstring since February 8th, so we have not seen him play with Arshavin yet. A hamstring is three weeks, normally. Can Ade play with Arshavin? I don’t think so. I could be wrong. We might find out next month. I’ve had doubts about that since before Arshavin signed. I even wonder if Wenger has dropped Ade to protect his value for the summer, as he did with Thierry.
Yes, it IS a big challenge.
How do you sell Ade and Robin??
Who would take them?
What club would match Ade’s wages?
Turning down £19 million for him was a colossal error of judgement.
Giving him £80,000 a week, or whatever he gets, was a huge blunder. Because Ade has been abysmal. And he says he doesn’t mind if he doesn’t score another goal this season, as long as Arsenal win something. If they win a trophy, Ade gets more money.
My guess is this : If Ade does play for Arsenal again this season, he won’t deliver. He has retired. He’s won the lottery. He doesn’t care any more.
Against Hull, Robin van Persie was static, invisible and irrelevant. But he scored.
Carlos Vela skipped and scampered on the periphery of the game.
As a pair, Vela and RVP were clueless, did not click at all..
Walcott has pace but no final ball.
A winger has to pick out a man and make goals. When is Walcott going to do that regularly? OK, he been out with very serious injuries. But when is he going to improve his game? When is this 20-year old going to show us that he’s worked on the part of his game that’s weak? What’s the point of electric pace if there is no final ball, no killer shot ? He wins a few free-kicks.That’s it.
The player who links best with Arshavin is Bendtner, as I pointed out the first time they played together.
Diaby cannot partner Song and is a big risk in central midfield.
Diaby tried to nutmeg a Hull player ten yards outside his own penalty area early in the game. George Graham would have strangled him for doing that. I once saw Brian Clough take Stuart Prearce off at West Ham for making two mistakes in the first half. Stuart Pearce! He substituted Stuart Pearce. How long would Diaby have lasted with Brian Clough? Later on, when Arsenal were still 1-0 down, Diaby missed a header from four yards.
Watching the first half, I thought : Tinkerwenger deserves to lose this game.
I tuned in late as we have a friend staying with us and we didn’t sit down to dinner till seven and as I was switching on at 7.35 to get the team news, I got a phone call from a friend at the ground who gave me the team news player by player, in formation, and I said, “That team will not score goals !”
It was obvious. In the first half Arsenal did not win a second ball once. In the first 30, Hull dominated by working hard and made four chances and took one when Nicky Barmby’s shot nicked off Djourou’s leg and looped over Fabianski.
For the last 60, Hull sat back and defended the box. Doing that was kamikaze, just as Wenger’s starting eleven was kamikaze. Every team which has done that for an hour against Arsenal has lost. Every team that has let Arsenal have the ball has lost ! When they have the ball they find their rhythm, and then they fine-tune their rhythm, and then they create chances, and then they score. When Arsenal are denied the ball, they can’t find their rhythm and fall apart.
So my verdict was : Phil Brown’s Hull were good for 30 minutes and stupid for 60.
Their time-wasting disrupted Arsenal’s rhythm and to waste time in the first half of an FA Cup tie was disgusting. Hull assistant manager Brian Horton was swearing at Wenger throughout the first half and Fabregas, sitting nearby, heard all that abuse from Horton.
If Hull had scored again, it was over. Arsenal were such a shambles that they would not have come back from 2-0 down, regardless of what subs came on. Hull’s big blunder came when they stopped passing the ball, sat back to defend the box, and started booting it to a striker who could not hold it up. They have the ability to pass the ball. What they did was suicidal.
Bendtner’s perseverance created the goal for 1-1 He grafted and won the ball and crossed to Arshavin. who teed it up for Van Persie to smash in the equaliser. In the previous game, Wenger picked the right team against Blackburn but it still took Arsenal 63 minutes to score the second goal before winning 4-0
On Tuesday night, Arsenal took 74 minutes to equalise because he picked the wrong team and had to bring Nasri and Bendtner on.They made hard work of it and the game almost went to a replay at Hull. But goalpoacher Gallas did well to beat that defender and backhead the winner.
The linesman’s flag didn’t go up and the ref gave an offside goal and Arsenal will play Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday April 18 at 5.15 pm.
ARSHAVIN was magnificent against Blackburn, jumping against six foot centrebacks like a midget on a pogo stick and winning headers, scoring a wonder-goal despite stitches in his foot.
Against Hull, he churned out chance after chance. He’s super-mobile as well as super-brave, always moving, always thinking, always concentrating, always finding new positions, new angles, new solutions. His passing is amazingly sharp and accurate. For 30 years I’ve lazily used the phrase “inch-perfect” without seeing inch-perfect passes until now.
Arshavin is on a completely different level, as I said as soon as I saw his first game against Sunderland. After ten minutes of the Sunderland game I thought : he should be playing in the hole, as a half-striker in Van Persie’s position. He is intelligent and hungry. He knows his own mind. He knows what he wants to do. He decided to play for Arsenal, so he chartered a plane to fly here and check into a hotel in St. Albans to make sure he signed by the deadline.
How can a little genius like Arshavin be expected play with a big clown like Adebayor?
He doesn’t deserve Adebayor or van Persie. He deserves Ian Wright, Tony Cottee, Marco van Basten, Pato, Eto’o, David Villa, Luis Fabiano. He deserves a hot goal-machine who knows where to run and when to run. Not some French teenager who might do it in four years time. Somebody who can do it now. If David Villa goes to Barcelona, Eto’o will be available. Would you take a chance on Samuel Eto’o, the fireball of Cameroon?
CONCLUSION: Arshavin has shown Wenger the way forward and the manager’s next challenge is to grasp that nettle.Flog two over-rated strikers and sign a good one who can play with Arshavin. It’s not easy because selling is hard and buying is even harder. But if he could unload Ade and RVP, Arsenal would soon be as exciting to watch as Barcelona.