LAST NIGHT I did Off The Ball, the award-winning Dublin radio show, with host Eoin McDevitt and sportswriter Ken Early.
I was lined up with Amy Lawrence to talk about the fall-out from Arsenal’s exit from three Cup competitions.
In the end, Amy couldn’t do the show but she asked Ken to tell me not to be too hard on Arsene’s beleaguered team !
I did the show with Bernard Azulay, a Gooner I’ve met a few times, and we didn’t duplicate each other.
I said that Arsenal fans are not talking about PSV, they’re talking about the season and the future, and they’re divided into two camps, two schools of thought.
The first camp says : It’s a transitional season, the first in the new stadium, Henry’s been injured all year – the squad is young, we’ll have the world’s best team in 2 or 3 years time and win every trophy.
The second camp says : Lovely football but no cutting edge, this can’t go on. This must stop now. We need three big names in summer : a world class keeper, an experienced Champions League centreback, and a proven striker like Samuel Eto’o.
I said that Arsene can’t blame anybody but himself because he picked the wrong team against PSV.
He should not have moved Toure and Gilberto and he shouldn’t have used Thierry Henry at all. He should have started Diaby and brought Denilson on for Fabregas when Fab4 faded.
On the night, what Arsene did didn’t make sense. He needed power but he didn’t start Diaby, who looked very good when he did come on.
In a team of too few partnerships he broke up the only two partnerships he had : Toure-Gallas and Gilberto-Fabregas. He badly needed a goalscorer, but he took Gilberto, who has scored eight goals, and pushed him into the back four.
WHAT I DIDN’T have time to say on air was this : Before the game Arsene said Henry was fit enough to start if he wanted him to, and then he didn’t start him, and then he brought him on and he broke down, and then after the game Arsene said, “You could see he wasn’t fit, that’s why I didn’t play him.”
WHAT ?
EXCUSE ME ?
Could you run that by me again ?
It’s player power. Same thing at Anfield. After the Liverpool-Barcelona game, Frank Rijkaard was asked : Why did you play Eto’o when he wasn’t fit? And Frank said, “He wanted to contribute.”
What Frank probably meant was : If I didnt play Eto’o, he would never forgive me.
With Toure and Gilberto in their best positions, Arsenal could have beaten PSV by two goals. Djourou could have played at right back, Clichy should have attacked much more, Diaby or Denilson could have played on the left.
Even with Rosicky and Robin van Persie fit, Arsenal are well short of being a team. To become a team, they need TWO strikers and a keeper and a stopper.
Van Persie scores goals but he can’t play with other players.
SPANISH-based Graham Hunter was the pundit on Off The Ball just before us and he said he didn’t think Capello would be sacked before this Saturday’s Barcelona – Real Madrid game at the Nou Camp. Graham also said that Seville have a deep squad and could win La Liga.
P.S. I called my younger brother Paddy in Somerset. He said that on Wednesday morning two guys made the same remark to him at the swimming pool. They had read in the paper that Arsenal had been working on set-pieces and both asked, “Don’t they do that all the time?”