We can come from behind (again).

In various areas of the media yesterday there were reports of Arsenals failure to come from behind once we have gone a goal down. This was evident with the words of the commentators on ITV4, something along the lines of "so Arsenal can come back from being a goal down" just after Eboue scored. They did correct their mistake later but it does demonstrate two things, firstly if people keep saying the same thing for long enough people believe it's true and secondly people in the media have short memories (or more specifically they tend to report what sounds good and is not necessarily accurate). For those that need reminding we came back from a goal down to beat Dinamo Zagreb 2-1 in our second game at the Emirates (two myths dispelled there we can't win at our new ground and we can't come from behind).

As for the game itself it wasn't the same old story, we went a goal down but we battled back without actually having the number of chances we have of late, there was a touch of fortune about the Eboue goal but for me luck (or rub of the green) has been something we have been missing of late. To be honest while Eboue was his energetic self once again, his final ball wasn't so great last night and I think he went for a goal come shot rather than see a defender head away once again.

As for the other two goals, they were brilliantly crafted the first consisting of two fabulous dummies, first Cesc's look left pass right combo and then a glance at the left hand of the goal from Van Persie only to slot it past the right of the keeper. The last goal was right up Arsenals street, fast attacking football which hasn't been possible with the 10 men behind the ball merchants we have been playing recently. A fabulous first touch (I think from Flamini) released Walcott who's pace took him 40 yards up field, that pace was matched by both Henry and Baptista and while Henry drew the defender and keeper away a wonderful cross found the head of Baptista to drill a very accurate and powerful header home. I'm really pleased to see Baptista on the score sheet as I think it will give him a bit of confidence and hopefully Wenger will use him a little more.

As for the Henry yellow card, to be honest it was a joke, if that's the level of contact needed for a yellow then we had a sure fire penalty in the first half when a similar challenge was made on Henry. However in some ways it's a blessing in disguise, twice in the last calendar year Henry has been rested before Champions league games, at the weekend against Newcastle and last year against Spurs. We all know what happened on Saturday but let me remind you of what happened against Spurs, the first half we rested Henry, Cesc and Hleb, Spurs were all over us and we were lucky not to be a goal down at half time. In the second half they scored and Henry had to come on and salvage a point.

This year the Spurs game is the weekend before the Porto game, with Henry on suspension there is no reason whatsoever for him to be rested and therefore no reason for him to be anywhere near the bench.

Gallas out, Arsenal rocked (apparently)

News from Arsenal that William Gallas is out of the Hamburg game and "for a few weeks" according to the BBC. However they have given the story a rather bizarre title, "Gallas thigh injury rocks Arsenal"...

What's that supposed to mean, while Gallas has been great so far at the club I'm certainly not worried that he will be out, in fact in an odd way I'm rather pleased. Senderos was at the heart of an Arsenal defence that holds the record for clean sheets in the Champions league and when he has been used Djourou has been very impressive. If anything I think we have missed Senderos a little because we lack a bit of height defending set pieces when Gallas plays. Sure it's not ideal but the use of the term "rocked" is total rubbish once again from the press, I checked and the official word used by Wenger was in fact "blow" so not sure why the BBC felt compelled to change it to something more dramatic.

Still the good news is both RVP and Gilberto are back in the squad. Van Persie's injury wasn't at all serious despite him missing the second half against Newcastle and Gilberto is now back from Brazil. Strangely the BBC seem to totally ignore those two bit's of information still I suppose it doesn't fit in with their "Arsenal Rocked" theme.

Sign of the Times

I'm not proud of the fact but I read the Times. Not everyday just on Mondays for their football supplement The Game. Last year during our Champions League run they couldn't say enough good things about Arsenal, in hindsight that might have had some thing to do with Arsenal being the only British club left in the competition and with column inches to fill on a slow Wednesday what else could they do. But this week in the game it seems they have run out of things to talk about.

First a short bit in the two Fanny's (sorry Danny's) section. Criticising Wengers comments on international football. It seems the lads don't understand the concept of metaphor, when Wenger likens international managers to car thieves he doesn't actually mean it literally. Still I suppose you can't expect high journalism form a Spurs fan (hasn't seen real football for 15 years plus) or a Millwall fan who's feelings on Arsenal are well known.

The match report was typically useless 4 words about Arsenal and then 400 on yet another team playing 11 behind the ball, no mention of the numerous Arsenal chances including a shot hitting the bar. It seems week in week out the best the Times can manage is a quarter of a page on an Arsenal game yet, Man utd and Spurs regularly get a full page spread.

However there were a couple of small facts later which were worth repeating. Again in a thinly disguised jab at Wenger the fact that Tony Adams played 21 times in Europe and Henry 89, but in the league cup it was 59 and 3 respectfully. Interesting, but as they say lies, damn lies and statistics. Firstly Adams played (in his early career) at a time when English clubs were banned from Europe, European games were straight knockout affairs and of course the League cup was 2 legs all the way to the final. Today football players play a massive amount of games, the league cup is simply lowest on the priority list and all power to Wenger to taking a stand against it, if it brings about a change in the League Cup (like getting rid of it) then all the better in my opinion.

Finally a little fact about our home recorded (still unbeaten), every games has finished either 1-1 or 3-0. Lets hope the next home game can be the latter.

Same old Arsenal always Drawing

And so it happens again, the sucker punch followed by an Arsenal assault for 60 minutes which yields just a single goal. For various reasons I couldn't get to the game yesterday and could only listen to it on the internet. From what I heard it seemed to be the same old story, plenty of chances but no goals.

Personally I never thought the title was on and that didn't change with the results against Man Utd and Liverpool, but what I did hope for was progress on last year and to be at least in touch come the end of the season. Don't get me wrong I'm not one of these doom and gloom mongers but I think up and half way down form will mean 3rd is possibly the best we can expect this year. Come the end of the season I can see the number of games being a problem for most of the premiership out side of the top 4, they either don't have big enough squads or the distraction of the cup competitions will take their toll, I still say top 4 because I do expect Liverpool to come good, in rather an odd way because of Rafa’s rotation policy, they just need to make sure they don’t give themselves too much to do.

I always like to look at the positives, we are still creating chances, we are still in the top 4 with a game in hand which would take us to third and finally it seems the rest of the chasing pack are as good at dropping points as we are, the difference with them is it seems they are prone to the odd loss where as we tend to draw. If we did win that game in hand it would mean, with the exception of Portsmouth we would be pulling clear of that chasing pack, putting us 4+ points ahead which I think is important from a psychological point of view, meaning the odd loss along the way doesn't mean we yo yo up and down the table.

... Oh yeah I nearly forgot, we are still unbeaten at home, and despite the points situation that can never be bad.

FIFA - Shooting themseleves in the foot?

Sorry for dragging up old news but it's the first time I have had a chance to comment on something I feel strongly about. As an Arsenal fan it really gets on my nerves when people go on about Arsenal only fielding foreign players, it happened again, as I'm sure it will do more often this season, against Liverpool when there wasn't an English playing for Arsenal.

As we all know by now FIFA have plans afoot to introduce a 6+5 ruling which limits the number of players in any side to 5 foreign, or more accurately 6 English or home grown players. Apart from the fact this is a total no starter from an EU perspective Arsenal are well set for this anyway given we have plenty of players in the current set up who would easily qualify as home grown, it's the likes of Chelsea and Spurs I worry about.

Anyway what I think is odd is that FIFA or more particularly Sepp Blatter has changed all manner of things in the game, most noticeably the format of World Cups to make it easy for the minnows to have a bite of the cake. Now I don't have a problem with this but if, as they want, teams will be restricted to 6 foreign players what’s going to happen to all the players from what you might call lesser nations? The bigger teams will simply keep the best players who are generally from the bigger footballing nations such as Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Brazil and Argentina. What about players like Hleb, Eboue, Toure even. Sure some of the bigger stars will stay but all I can see happening is nations like the Ivory Coast, Belarus having just one or two players at decent clubs and their national side suffers as a result.

The other thing that gets me is the idea that if we pack English clubs with English players they will suddenly become good, how does that work? Arsenal have in fact produced some top English talent over the last few years, Bentley, Upson, Pennant, Cole and Sidwell and have plenty coming through who look half decent. The simple fact of the matter is they have never been good enough or more specifically in some of the cases think the world owes them a living. Give me Flamini, a hard working player committed to the club and happy to fight for his place over a muppet like Cole who swerves off the road over £5,000 a week.

Value for money?

Sky sports news are reporting that Lehman, Ljundberg and Baptista are back in the squad for tomorows game. With Rosicky still out it will be interesting to see which of the midfield players takes his place, Flamini did a good job last week filing in but despite the goal I think it's obvious he is down the pecking order behind both Freddy and Baptista.

I don't expect Baptista to start as before his injury it seemed as if Wenger was easing him in to the squad, but I do think we will see him on the pitch at some point, either to boost the midfield if things are not going well or as a replacement to give somebody a rest after the mid week internationals. It's also good to see that nobody came back from international duty injured, however Wenger still had something to say to the French manager as both Henry and Gallas played the full 90 minutes.

On the subject of internationals it was interesting to see a report in the Independent about how many players were away from each club this week. With the odd exception the list closely resembled the Premiership table with Chelsea, Man Utd and Arsenal in the top places with 13,12 and 11 respectively, at the bottom of the list were Reading, Sheffield and West Ham.

That would suggest to me (if it wasn't already obvious) that the more internationals you have the better you will do. However none of the 11 players from Arsenal played in the England side, with the departure of both Campbell and Cole in the summer we now don't have any obvious first team England players.

Personally I couldn't give a monkeys but it did make me think, one of the reason Wenger doesn't buy English players is the cost, so I though what would the comparision between the 2 sides be?

I used the two starting line ups from their last games which were.

Arsenal : Almunia, Eboue, Toure, Clichy, Gallas, Faberagas, Flamini, Gilberto, Hleb, Henry and Van Persie.

England : Robinson, Richards, Ferdinand, Terry, Cole, Gerrard, Carrick, Lampard, J Cole, Rooney, Johnson.

So what's the totals?

Arsenal : 31.5 Million
England : 100 Million

Given the quality of football, I know which was better value for money. It gets even worse when you compare player for player, 150,000 for Toure or 31m for Ferdinand, 200,000 for Faberagas or Lampard for 11m and so it goes on. Also worth pointing out that many of the England players are home grow, Gerrard and Terry for example, so they are not included in the total.

Arsenal Striker Crisis

It seems we may have an impending striker crisis at Arsenal. Currently we have 4 strikers at the club, Henry, Adebayor, Van Persie and Aliadiere and also 2 backups in Walcott (whom Wenger sees developing as a winger for the time being) and Baptista who played up front for 2 seasons for Sevilla.

The crisis comes in that we currently have 3 strikers out on loan, Stokes at Falkirk, Bendtner at Birmingham and Lupoli at Derby. That in itself isn't a problem but the fact they are all banging them is. Both Stokes and Bendtner are top scorers for their clubs with 11 and 7 goals respectfully and Lupoli is only a goal off the pace with 6 at Derby. Before I get too carried away we do have to take into account the level of opposition, whichever way you look at it the Scottish Premiership is not the most difficult league in the world and there is a fair drop off in class from the English Premiership and the Championship, but it's also true that the level of service a striker receives is of a lower standard. Stokes is also not only the top scorer for Falkirk but the top scorer in the Scottish Premiership.

So where's the problem you ask, at some point these loan deals will come to an end, Bendtner in January, Lupoli and Stokes in the summer. Part of the problem with that is we don't have players waiting to leave, at least not for age reasons, Adebayor is 21, Van Persie 23 and Henry still has at least 3 years left. I'm pretty sure a couple of the players will go back out on loan next year and Steve Bruce is keen to extend Bendtners stay but how long can that go on, certainly not the 8-9 years until Van Persie retires. I think Aliadiere will be gone either in January or next summer as I simply don't see him getting a regular starting place, it's also true while he has suffered from various injuries he didn't set the world alight during his loan spells at Celtic, West Ham and Wolves.

The crisis is that opportunities at Arsenal for these players is limited, I can personally see room for one more full time striker at the club (especially if Aliadiere goes) and simply 3 into one won't go. We have seen it in the recent past with Bentley and Upson that if players don't get the chance to play regular first team football they get itchy feet and want to move on. For me it just seems like we are spending time and money developing talent only for it to move on before they get a decent chance in the team.

I think the only thing is that these players would qualify under the new home grow player rules and I think that might ultimately be their saving grace, however you can be pretty sure at least one of the three strikers out on loan won't be with the club in 2-3 years time.

The Great Arsenal Myths - Part One

I mentioned in my first post about rubbish from the press, one of the things that keeps coming up and getting repeated almost everywhere when mention is made of Arsenal's next home game is how we are struggling in our new home. Sunday's result might have put pay to that (in some part) but it still seems odd people are still going on about it.

In the closed season any mention of a title challenge from Arsenal was questioned because we would be getting used to a new stadium, the old examples of Man City and Southampton were trotted with one important factor missing, that both Man City and Southampton hardly set the world alight at home before they moved.

I listen to the Guardian football podcast (and fantastic it is too) and almost as soon as they mentioned the Arsenal vs Liverpool game our iffy home form was mentioned. Yet before Sunday we found ourselves in a position of having played 9 games at the Emirates, not a single one of those resulting in a defeat. We have scored in all but one of those games (against CSKA Moscow whom we dominated like no other team I have ever seen without scoring). Despite the fact we have drawn 3 of those premiership games we have scored just 1 goal less than Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool (all on 13 goals at home, Arsenal on 12) and conceded just 3, the same as Chelsea and Liverpool and only 1 more than Man Utd on 2. As mentioned above we are unbeated, only 3 other teams can say that Liverpool, Chelsea and Villa.

The other thing we keep hearing is how great Liverpool's home record is and it's just their away form that's the problem, but who exactly have they played at home, Reading, West Ham, Newcastle, Spurs, Blackburn Rovers and Villa, all teams that anybody with half an eye on the league title should be knocking over without question. Now I know that we failed to beat Villa and Boro but the point isn't that Liverpool's home record is better than ours (it is) it's the fact people keep going on about how great Liverpool's home record is and how terribly bad ours is, how Arsenal are having problems adapting to their new home.

Let's hope we can go through the whole season having the problem of being undefeated at home.

Welcome

Welcome to Tales from the Grove, a new blog all about Arsenal and football. However this won't be the usual sort of Arsenal blog, a regurgitation of news from other sources but will look a little bit deeper at what's going on. This will have special emphasis on stats and reaction to the general bollocks which the media trot out.

I'll also be commenting on general football related stories with particular attention to the failure of our local North London rivals.

Just for the record I'm a season ticket holder, so I get to see the team first hand. Any comment I make will be based on the evidence I see with my own eyes rather than second hand via the media which to be honest often totally perplexes me in the way it reports on games and incidents.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, this is a 2 way thing I want your comments on the things I will be talking about, for the moment it will be a free for all but knowing blogs as I do if the amount of spam and bollocks builds up I might have to turn on some small verification tools, nothing major, but for now we will see how it goes.