Without Jens Lehmann’s Blackburn blunder, Arsenal would have three wins from three games.
Without timid Thierry as “captain”, Arsenal now have a team that won’t roll over every time it gets physical.
As expected, Man City was a very tight game and it was won by a late Arsenal goal, following their recent pattern.
This Arsenal outfit are a short-passing team, and when Hleb’s four-yard pass found Fabregas, he hit a rocket shot high inside Kasper Schmeichel’s near post in 80 minutes and I said, “Fabistuta !”
Fab4 placed that shot where Argentinian hot-shot Gabriel Batistuta would have put it from that range and that angle. Bang ! and it’s 1-0 and Arsenal are sixth with a game in hand and Portsmouth, Spurs and Derby coming up
Adebayor hasn’t played since pre-season in Austria and he got 76 minutes and the team needed his size and perseverance. My view, since last season, is that Adebayor was signed to battle with defenders because Henry wouldn’t do his share of competing for 50-50 balls and jumping into centrebacks. Adebayor was a prop for a vain, timid superstar. While Henry did an impersonation of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, Adebayor had to be Rambo, the lone commando who fought an army on his own. Now that the flaneur has gone, the bodyguard could be redundant.
Yes, it was Adebayor’s first game back. And you always make allowances when it is a player’s first game back in the team.
But he had a shocker. He was awful. He can’t head the ball, can’t anticipate chances, can’t play people in. Once he got in front of Micah Richards and won a free-kick. He is the only Arsenal player who could have got in front of Richards and won that free-kick. But that was all he did.
Adebayor will improve in September and October but he’ll always be a blunt instrument. I don’t know one Arsenal fan who thinks he’ll ever be as good as Drogba and I can’t see him being as good as Peter Crouch or even John Carew in his prime. The French themselves were baffled by his arrival at Arsenal. He was on the bench at Monaco.
The main point is this : Like Robin van Persie, Adebayor can’t really make passes in the last third. Like van Persie, he is too erratic to make chances for his partner or other players.
Arsene himself says Bendtner isn’t quite ready to start in the Premier League.
So the manager, who bluffed the end of last season with Aliadiere and Baptista up front, still has two strikers. One is a moody Dutchman who did nothing after he missed a penalty, the other a Croatian poacher who got 15 minutes.
Most Gooners think the Arsenal squad is thin – but it’s also unbalanced.
It lacks balance because Arsene has eight central midfield players and no flank men : Gilberto, Fabregas, Rosicky, Hleb, Denilson, Diaby , Flamini and Song.
What other Champions League club has eight central midfielders and no wingers? Man United ? Liverpool ? Chelsea? AC Milan? Barcelona ?
Much sooner than I feared, Gilberto is playing centreback. With Gallas is out for the next few weeks and Djourou on loan at Birmingham till January, the defensive cover was slender.
Third league game, at home to Man City, the injury-prone Senderos turned his ankle in the warm-up, so Gilberto, who was expecting 20 minutes in midfield, joined Toure at the back for 90.
Then right back Sagna went off after 19 minutes. At this rate, Arsenal’s centrebacks will soon be Toure and Steve Bould.
ROSICKY can’t be happy on the left.Out wide, he slows the game down. In the middle, with his quick feet and even quicker vision, he speeds it up and fires thunderbolts that can scare goalkeepers
HLEB must be baffled after scoring two goals and being moved back to right wing so that Adebayor can start. Needless to say, it was Hleb who won the penalty, when Richards brought him down, and Hleb who gave the short pass for Fabregas’s goal.
Any good news?
Well, Toure, Alumnia, Flamini and Denilson played well.
Any other good news?
Arsenal will finish comfortably in the top four.
Why?
Because the next six, despite spending millions, are still a long way behind.