Feeling Defensive

Well I think its fair to say, I did not see this weekend's result coming. I know things weren't exactly going to plan so far this season but four three at Blackburn was not something I would have predicted. However, this isn't going to be a sad, moping post. I didn't feel as despondent after this game as I did after the game we shall never speak of again. The thing about the Blackburn game was that the performance of the team was not reflected in the scoreline. It was a weird fluke of a scoreline. The first major thing to point out is that Yakubu's second goal was offside. Shouldn't have counted. Then we must also consider that Alex Song can't be blamed too much and castugated for his own goal as he knew absolutely nothing about it before it hit him, and it did just hit him, he didn't direct it or anything it just rebounded off him. Poor Laurent Koscielny's own goal was still horrific mind you. And one more thing, Theo Walcott should have got a penalty at the end of the game when Paul Robinson rushed out and took him down. Accuse me of bias all you want but there is no way on earth that if that was down the other end it wouldn't have been given. But its not all doom and gloom, there were plus points in there somewhere. For a start Mikel Arteta and Gervinho scored their first league goals for us and Marouane Chamakh scored his first goal in months. Also the boys responded admirably to going behind and fought back very well. The last five or ten minutes they threw absolutely everything they had at the Blackburn goal and were literally inches off an equaliser and given the amount of chances we had within the game we could conceivably have won the match. And at least there was some good news mid-week with some of our babies putting in some lovely cameos to secure a three-one win over Shrewsbury. Yes they scored first. Yes they're a couple of leagues below us but a win is a win.

Moto GP - the movie

Stumbled across a fabulous little trailer for 'Fastest' which is the follow to the imaginatively titled 'Faster' a sort of Moto GP road movie that follows all the dramatic developments and exciting moments of the season as a whole. Watch the trailer at the official website http://www.fastestthemovie.com/index-intl.html go on. Anyway the ridiculously dramatic cycle of flicking words like 'fame' 'girls' 'thrills' 'speed' and the really dramatic voiceover are all well and good and brilliantly OTT but I wish you could all see the trailer that very quickly assembled and started playing in my head. I think if I'd created a behind the scenes look at the season we can safely say it would pretty much be 'Bromance and sports innuendo- the movie.' My scrolling words would be very different- 'speed, thrills, secrets, bromance, accents, leather, podiums, crashes and....SIMONCELLI.' Speaking of Simoncelli, known to my mother as 'the big hairy one' I think my version of the movie would heavily feature 'Simoncelli cam' which is essentially a camera following him at all times capturing his wacky antics. One of my favourite things about the real trailer was that they subtitled him when he spoke, I know his accent's funny but it's not that bad. I think there would also have to be some sort of segment featuring 'Nicky's Frat house', security tips with the 'Texas Tornado' and a sort of eeyore type guide to all the problems (not of his own making of course) currently afflicting Casey Stoner. The main focus of course would be my constant real life quest to accrue evodence of the 'Pedrossi' bromance. I'm sure you can all work out that that's a combination of 'Pedrosa' and 'Rossi'.  Clever, I know. I'm pretty sure if you followed them all season with a camera (which God willing someone will allow me to do, one day)  you would get so much footage that someone of my very special mindset would have endless fun forming into a bromance montage. God knows there's the beginning of a photo series already. And in true moto gp- you think i've made this up but i actually haven't- style here is the fantastic return of extracurricular Thursday from Indianapolis. And the random activity selected for the boys this time is.....American Football!

(source )What I love about this is how Andrea Dovi (far right) looks like he has literally no idea what on earth he's doing there. So much so that he can't even be bothered to pose for the picture properly. Happy days.

World Championships!

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been lucky enough to catch  plenty of the IAAF world Athletics championships in Daegu, South Korea. What a spectacular competition it was. Drama across theboard. I love big athletics events like this because there's such a massive variety of sports on show, its great to learn all the little details you didn't know before and such a wide range of athletes means you not only get some wonderful stories but you aadopt new favourites too. I invariably end up adopting lots of new people at these big events, as if I don't support enough people as it is.

Opening a door, closing a window

Well, well, well it was a busy old day at the Emirates on transfer day. I bet Arsene's cheque book didn't know what had hit it. Pat and Gilles must have been working overtime in the old get away van. All in all I'm pretty impressed with our dealings. Park Chu-Young or as he shall forever be known thanks to be predictive text - Paul Chu Young seems a sensible and solid signing. Experience? Check- he's south Korea's national captain. Reinforcement in a vulnerable position? Check- We've had finishing issues of late and have shall we say a history of frailty in that position. Next comes a pair of much needed reinforcements. Andre Santos at left-back, who once again has plenty of national team experience, having just played at the Copa America. Also it's a postion that needs reinforcing as Clichy has departed and Kieran Gibbs seems to be made out of glass. And then the big one. The much needed centre half. And what a big one he is. Six foot six of Bremen captaining, national team lynchpinning German engineering. Beautiful. Nice move Prof. I wasn't massively thrilled about Yossi Benayoun but you can't argue with how much top level Premier League experience the guy has. Then we were all thinking this is great but we're still missing something, a certain sunny western European je ne sais quoi, soemthing cultured, sophisticated, something that maybe has a way with free kicks. Then lo and behold with about ten minutes to go, it happened. The missing piece began to click in. Mikel Arteta is coming. Yes. THAT is precisely the kind of something we all want. So maybe that heavy loss might not have been so bad if it's triggered this lovely rebuilding right here. I for one am VERY excited to see how this goes. Plus its so fun to have to keep track of deadline day for once, its normally boring for gooner.

Down at the Riverside

This weekend wasn't all doom and gloom for me though. I did manage to take myself off to the fabulous Riverside Stadium on Saturday to watch Middlesbrough (my local team!) play Coventry. I haven't been to the Riverside in a while but I always enjoy going because I used to work there on the turnstiles. It was a really great job because for a football fan nothing beats the matchday atmosphere and obviously we got to be part of it for every home game. Plus it had the fabulous perk that once we'd let all the fans in and counted our tickets we got to sit and watch the match for free.

Nightmare

Well Sunday's match was just a total disaster. I don't think I've been quite that upset at a football match for quite a while. I could have cried by the end. When Robin missed his penalty and just sank to his knees in the box, it just broke my heart. Seeing poor Jenkins get sent off was brutal. I know a lot of people are saying that we never expected to get anything out of the game anyway but I'm an insanely optimistic and devoted fan and there's always a part of me that thinks they can win every game, no matter what the circumstances so there was absolutely no way I saw anything like that coming. Its unbelievably difficult to find positives from a situation like that but you can look at it and see reasons. I mean let's be fair to the boys here, we had 8 players missing. That's more than half a team. Any team in the world would struggle in a big game with that many injuries and suspensions. Plus many people are saying that with that many players out Arsene should have set his team up differently and shouldn't have tried to outplay them, should have been more defensive. But how? What would this different set up be? What would this magical defensive solution be? The only experienced players he had left were all attacking players so obviously he went for an attacking set up. They slagged him off for using kids but ignore the fact that if he did go for this magic defensive strategy he would have had to use more kids. So before we all go crazy with knee jerk negativity lets all just remember that we've only played THREE games this season. There's plenty of time left of the season.

Quote of the Week

" It will be a long time before I want to get into the Europa Cup. If we ever look like winning the Fair Play League, I'll run on the pitch and tackle someone myself" - Mick McCarthy, and I don't doubt it actually I think he'd rather enjoy it too....