Team News: Partizan v. Arsenal

I heard there was a power failure.

Just what we need, fabianski playing in the dark.

I bet Rosicky will play in that role, similar to Blackpool. @iceman that'd be funnier if it were so true

was following denilson on twitter (and translated his tweets) - he said they were in the dressing room and the lights were out, waiting for them to come back on to dress in their kits - then he tweeted again saying the lights had come back and gone out again - looks like things are ok now and the game will go on. Apparently there are lots of riot police around and the travelling gooners are being pelted with the usual items opposition fans get pelted with-also Belgrade gooners brought along 140 members of their contingent

Agreed PTV. What an atmosphere. I just want a win from this game, even if it is a scrappy 1-0, dont care. After the debacle on the weekend and the amount of injuries we have, any win will do.

YES! Thank you Arshavin, and brilliant play by Wilshere.

Jack has this habit of giving back-heel assists! :D

Whether that was a penalty or not, you just know that Arsenal can never keep a clean sheet. They're ALWAYS going to concede at some point.

Any chance we could swap Stojkovic for Flappyhandski? :-)

So far the liabilities for me are Djourou, Denilson and Rosicky. Rosicky will be subed. He is standing and losing passes everytime he touches it. Song is also playing below is level.

Nasri to come in for Rosicky.

Chamakh is amazing at getting people sent off and winning penalties (",)

Icant decide if it was a good save or just a *****e penalty by Arsh. Im gunna go with a bit of both.

Oh surprise, bloody surprise. We are in big trouble this year.

Do we want to win this bloody match or what?? Where's the aggression?

I'm dreading Sunday. What price Cesc, Robin and Theo.

I AM NOW A MASSIVE FAN OF CHAMAKH'S FUNNY HEAD!!!

Are there any travelling Gooners in that stadium? There is almost no reaction or cheering when we score.

So good to see us score a goal like that. More please.

Jaelle - totally agree, don't know what's gone on with Song the last few games. Wenger probably has told him he is now!

All too skeptical probably. Waiting for the final whistle and reserving judgement. Well done Chamakh...

We don't seem to attack with any kind of speed these days. Wenger must take some kind of perverse pleasure in wengerballing us to death.

Well done Flappy!!!

Good Save!! Finally something goes right for him.

What a see saw game. The result is all that matters and if it finishes like this the boys deserve credit.

Oh and well done to Toto for his first goal!

WTF is going on? Can't we just be boring?

6/6 points is all you could want in CL. Why do I still feel down, though?

Partisan are without doubt the poorest team in our group.

How many times has Chamakh forced a pen/sending off now?

jaelle, add nasri to the penalty list and thats about it.

Subs - Nasri - 6, Vela - 5, Clichy - 5.

Good win!! Do that 2-3 more times Chamakh, and all CBs won't tackle you in the pen box! Hoorraayyy!!!

detla, I forgot RVP maybe Chamakh as good pen takers too

Defense was terrible, tho. Play like that on the weekend & we'll get slaughtered. Tho if AW plays Squilacci, I'll be interested to see if he continues his good record v. Drogba. In club and int'l football, Squilacci has won nearly every game v. Ivory Coast/Marseille with Drogba, scored a couple of times too and won the physical battle each time.

Well done Fabianski. What this game showed was that the bile directed at the keepers is misplaced, the attack is letting us down by needing so many chances to score. We have now had 16 more shots than Chelsea but have 8 less goals this season, Arshavin, by my reckoning, has now created 20 chances for team mates this season with 3 converted. It baffles me that this is somehow all Almunia's fault! :-)

Agree with LD, the keepers have been good so far this season on the whole. Our problem has been sloppy finishing and bad defending. We need to sort out the rest of the team firts before we look at the goalkeepers. Part of this is down to injuries of course, let's hope we get Cesc back for the game against Chelsea.

Decent illustration of my point, ten days ago, Chelsea away at West Ham. Chelsea 3-0 up at half time like we should have been tonight. Cech makes an error and allows Parker to score in the last minute, it's inconsequential because the attack have killed the game off.

Apparently our players change into their kits using the lights from their cell phones

grone, fair pts, just grasping at straws re Chelsea on Sunday.

LD - You're way too over-defensive of our keepers. If someone says our keepers are good enough, it doesn't mean we're blaming not winning a game, not winning a league or being late to work on them, it's simply saying they're not good enough for a team that is striving for what we are trying to achieve. Fabianski makes too many mistakes, last season Almunia did. I don't think they're the reason we didn't win the league, but i think if we were to push close to winning the league we're in need of better goalkeepers because fact is, they DO make too many mistakes. For some reason everytime any seems to point out one of these mistakes you come down in them like they're blaming our keepers for some sort of forthcoming armageddon.

Grone - I don't think Gibbs will come underfire for conceding a penalty simply down to the fact that it was in no way shape or form, a penalty.

We have rvp, bendtner, walcott and fabregas to come in on the attacking side that may improve our finishing, so we have options. To improve the goalkeeping our options are WS and vito mannone. I agree that our attack being wasteful puts pressure on the defence but also how much pressure are the attack under to win us games because the defensive unit is so poor?

Its only the attack that can win us games - the defense can only stop us losing.

Absolutely Rock, he missed 2 one on ones and a penalty last night- despite a good performance. The opposition won't be that generous on Sunday and neither can Arshavin afford to be.

A level of goalkeeping errors are inevitable. It only really matters when they cost us games.

Funny how differnent reports onthe same game change. It was reported that a 1000 gunner fans travel to watch last nights match and it was suggested that they change by using their cellphones. Nevertheless although Song did IMO go too far forward to often his game was not that bad really was it? I thought jack was on top of his game and how the player who elbowed him did not receive marching orders is beyond Jack was hacked and hacked and hacked and still kept coming back for more. We have IMO a real star, the lad has a heart as big a Par Lap's; and that was bloody big. Agree with you Rocky re Arshavin, he had enough to score 10 goals. IMO Jack made him look good. Chamakh as usual gave 100%, and I did think Tommy went missing on occasions. And if it werenot for Flabski in goal we may have all been moaning about a 3 all score line. Still cant talk about last Saturdays game, if Ces does not play.

Arshavin is looking for his form, he's nowhere as decisive as his first 6 months with us and i am not sure what the problem is. Chamack is such a teamplayer and he's showing the same qualities as at Bordeaux, none of the lazy Adebayor strutting around. One issue i have is that Chamack seems to be our only option upfront right now and we are one knock away from fielding Arshavin up there. How do we find ourselves in this position again? I think Arshavin didnt enjoy it up there last season. Fabianski did good but he needs a string of consistently good performances, starting on Sunday. I am worried about his jittery nerves and he seems to have blood rushes to the head, a bit like Almunia a few years back. Enough has been said about Almunia, for me he is a good keeper, nothing more, nothing less. That said, i want Arsenal to have a world-class spine from gk to cf to makes us more solid and increase our chances of silverware. The last one we had was Seaman/Lehman, Adams/Campbell, Vieira, Henry. Right now, we don't have that in the goalkeeping position or centre-back. RvP and Cesc are world-class. Vermaelen is showing signs he could get there, but Almunia is not.

And just one more point on how much more comfortable I feel seeing Gibbs in that left-back position than Clichy. I feel Wenger has to give Gibbs a run in the team now because their respective performances merit this.

"Pointing out that our attack is missing more goals than our keepers are letting in isn't being over defensive at all. " - that would be the case if Fui were only referring to LD's first post in which he made that argument. But clearly Fui isn't referring only to ONE post - he's referring to LD's exaggerated defensiveness and caricaturizing of some fans' arguments over a period of weeks on this blog about the keeper issue. It's like it's a sin or something to say we need a better keeper. Kind of obvious that Fui is not just focusing on one post from LD, sorry you didn't get that. BTW, LD's point about how our attack is also very much a problem is spot-on. When I first posted on the previous thread re Almunia, I pointed out that the greater issue v. WBrom was the performance of the entire team, not just Almunia - and that it was telling that Almunia's performance dropped (after a good run) exactly in the game that his teammates were seriously dropped their own performance. As to LD's point, our attack is no longer lethal like it used to be during the Invincibles, it's incredibly wasteful and it puts our defense under incredible pressure. That, coupled with the fact that we have no consistent defensive solidity, and that this season our DM Alex Song suddenly thinks he's an attacking midfielder - then it's no wonder our good-but-not-great keepers come in for more scrutiny. Either AW has instructed Song to do what he's doing or Song has just decided he can express himself as an attacker but he's seriously leaving our backline vulnerable. He has to knock it off. Oh, I also made the passing comment that I sometimes wonder even if we had a Buffon or Casillas in their prime if we still wouldn't have serious defensive problems given the other issues that are not being addressed.

BTW, we have the dubious distinction of being top of the injury league: http://ladyarse.tumblr.com/post/1209889343/premier-league-injury-table

The main gripe for me is that Wenger himself wanted a new goalkeeper because he obviously was not satisfied with what we have. Once he has identified that problem it is his job to fix it. Not fixing it will invite criticism from all corners. Its funny also to think that he appears obsessed to get a good bargain and not pay over the odds while earning a handsome wage himself.

paul_ownz, wages of top football coaches are market driven. Wenger's wages are not exceptionally high. They are on a par with Ferguson and are lesser than what Ancelotti and Mourinho make. Complaining about Wenger's wage is like complaining about Fabregas's or RvP's wages - they are top footballers and their wages are market driven as are AW's wages. Ofcourse AW messed up by not being able to close a deal for a keeper in the summer. But thats like saying if Fabregas is below par for 3 games, he should be docked his wages.

Fair enough Paul. AW could definitely have done better in securing a quality keeper. That said, overall he is a top manager who fully deserves his wage.

If AW deserves whatever wages he gets as we're still overachieving for a club with our resources. Song seems to develop more of a wanderlust when Cesc is not playing, perhaps he needs Cesc's authority on the field to keep him in check. Our midfield balance has looked at it's best this season when we have Cesc, Wilshere and Song playing in the middle. I'm hoping we can have all 3 playing again on Sunday to give us a chance of winning.

Agree with you there, FKK, as we may be without them on sunday and for most games. There is still speculation as to whether Almunia and Cesc shall play against Chelsea on Sunday, or not. It is my view that the starting team should know by Friday, so they can settle into focussing on the game. We do have a fairly well balanced squad and the other players (other than our "superstars") need to step up to the plate and make a name for themselves, come Sunday. I expect a good Drogba-slaying performance from Kos and someone must keep Malouda quiet.